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The ability to block a moving ball affected the ball's perceived speed
Is There a Chastity Belt on Perception? Jessica Witt, Nathan Tenhundfeld and Michael Tymoski. Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617730892
Abstract: Can one's ability to perform an action, such as hitting a softball, influence one's perception? According to the action-specific account, perception of spatial layout is influenced by the perceiver's abilities to perform an intended action. Alternative accounts posit that purported effects are instead due to nonperceptual processes, such as response bias. Despite much confirmatory research on both sides of the debate, researchers who promote a response-bias account have never used the Pong task, which has yielded one of the most robust action-specific effects. Conversely, researchers who promote a perceptual account have rarely used the opposition's preferred test for response bias, namely, the postexperiment survey. The current experiments rectified this. We found that even for people naive to the experiment's hypothesis, the ability to block a moving ball affected the ball's perceived speed. Moreover, when participants were explicitly told the hypothesis and instructed to resist the influence of their ability to block the ball, their ability still affected their perception of the ball's speed.
Consumers who experience the sensation of going against the flow pick alternatives that are normatively not preferred
Going against the Flow: The Effects of Dynamic Sensorimotor Experiences on Consumer Choice. Mina Kwon and Rashmi Adaval. Journal of Consumer Research, ucx107, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx107
Abstract: Sensorimotor experiences of going against the flow can affect the choices consumers make. Eight experiments show that consumers who experience the sensation of going against the flow pick alternatives that are normatively not preferred (experiments 1a and 1b). These effects are evident only when the sensations are dynamic and self-experienced (experiments 2a and 2b), subjective feelings are elicited (experiments 4a and 4b) and no other objective, external norm information is supplied (experiment 5). Experiences of going against the flow typically involve both movement and direction and are represented in memory schematically. Re-experiencing these sensations leads to the activation of this schematic representation and elicits a feeling-based behavioral disposition to do something different, or to go against one's initial inclination (experiment 3), leading participants to pick an option that is normatively not preferred
Keywords: sensory motor experiences, embodied cognition, choice, affect, norms
Indoor Prostitution Lowers Sex Crime: Evidence from New York City
The Effect of Indoor Prostitution on Sex Crime: Evidence from New York City. Riccardo Ciacci & María Micaela Sviatschi. Columbia University Working Paper, November 25 2016. http://www.micaelasviatschi.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/sex_crimeNYC.pdf
Abstract: We use a unique data set to study the effect of indoor prostitution establishments on sex crimes. We built a daily panel from January 1, 2004 to June 30, 2012 with the exact location of police stops for sex crimes and the day of opening and location of indoor prostitution establishments. We find that indoor prostitution decreases sex crime with no effect on other types of crime. We argue that the reduction is mostly driven by potential sex offenders that become customers of indoor prostitution establishments. We also rule out other mechanisms such as an increase in the number of police officers and a reduction of potential victims in areas where these businesses opened. In addition, results are robust to different data sources and measures of sex crimes apart from police stops.
Check also Street Prostitution Zones and Crime. Paul Bisschop, Stephen Kastoryano, and Bas van der Klaauw. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2017, 9(4): 28–63. http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/10/opening-prostritution-zone-decreases.html
The ability to block a moving ball affected the ba...
Consumers who experience the sensation of going ag...
Indoor Prostitution Lowers Sex Crime: Evidence fro...


This page helps answer: how do I use the word pronounces in a sentence? How do you use pronounces in a sentence? Can you give me a sentence for the word pronounces?
Example sentences with the word pronounces, a sentence example for pronounces, and pronounces in sample sentence.


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Q: AngularJS with Laravel 4 protect API calls from browser address bar im working on an existing Laravel 4 and AngularJS application. The routing is completely done by Angular. I use the $routeProvider and redirect if e.g. the user types in a not existing route in the browser address bar. This does work well. However, when I type something like 'website.com/api/users' the angular redirect does not work and I see the JSON response of the site.
I already tried adding a Laravel filter which checks if the request is an ajax request:
if(Request::ajax()){
   return Redirect::to('/');
}

However, the expression does always validate to false. I would not want any user, logged in or not, to make such API calls via the browser address bar. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

A: JSON Web Token would help you if you want to protect your API from public access.
Link : https://jwt.io/
Using routes to secure your APIs is not a good practice and will always lead to vulnerabilities.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Every wardrobe needs a touch of the whimsical and this design is the perfect addition. A keyhole neckline and ruffle detailing around the shoulders, collar and cuffs lend a romantic feel while the black and white floral print keeps it feeling contemporary. We suggest sporting it with simple accents, such as a leather belt and knee-high boots to let the dress do all the hard styling work.


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Obama fact-check on Guns
I don't care how people vote, or who they support. I do care about correcting revisionist history.
Gun advocates listen closely to what gun-controllers say, and how they say it, because they care more about the consequences of what the speaker is going to try to do. On top of it, they have an understanding of the terms and technology that the gun-controllers do not (so they hear a lot more in terms or misuse of them than the gun controllers even fathom). By listening to Obama speak, they knew Obama was looking for an opportunity to oppress the liberties of gun owners, in what he said and how he says it.
One example is that Obama spoke the other day spoke, and as usual, that means he either lied, distorted or made the following well recognized mistakes:
http://time.com/4168056/obama-gun-control-speech-transcript/
2 Lies, Errors and Deceptions
2.1 Fraud #1: "30,000 die because of guns".
2.2 Lie #1: "We are the only advanced country on Earth that...
2.3 Lie #2: "We're here today to try to prevent the next mass shooting"....
2.4 Lie #3: We understand constraints on freedom to protect innocent people
2.5 Fraud #2: A majority of gun owners agree...
2.6 Fraud #3: background checks don't infringe on the 2nd Amendment
2.7 Fraud #4: this is not a plot to take away everybody's guns
2.8 Lie #4: Anyone can buy a weapon over the Internet without background checks
2.8.1 Internet Loophole
2.8.2 Gun-show Loophole
2.9 More lies
5 Crocodile tears
His speech brought him to tears. Oh the humanity.... from a man that uses robots to bomb thousands on foreign soil, but a few Americans due to his failed security policies (domestic and foreign) makes him cry, and blame innocent gun owners that had nothing at all to do with it. He mentioned Fort Hood, SandyHook, Binghamton, Aurora -- all long before he was President. He ignored bigger massacres in countries with gun control, during his tenure. Then he whined about Oak Creek, Newtown, The Navy Yard, Santa Barbara, Charleston, San Bernardino, Gabby Giffords. All with guns that not one of his new proposals would have addressed. And he ignored the innocents that would be hurt by his policies. And you wonder why civil rights defenders aren't fans of his?
His biggest complaint (and deception) was in this whole Gun-show/Internet "loophole". There is no real gun-show or Internet "loophole". There are a few transactions happening that aren't as regulated as the left would like -- but this is like saying that we need to block all the commerce tax/regulation loopholes like: garage sales, getting given a drink/cigarette at a friends house, freecycling (where you sell/trade items you don't need/want), and or neighbor kid washing your car, selling lemonade or mowing your lawn. Where are the W-2 or 10-99's? Oh the lost tax revenues are destroying us! It misses completely for those who know what they're talking about, but that's not his base. As exemplified by the number of deceptions/frauds (misleading half-truths), lies (complete falsehoods), and errors (mistruths that he may be too ignorant to realize, despite having hundreds correcting him for decades on it).
Lies, Errors and Deceptions
Fraud #1: "30,000 die because of guns".
Only polemics and rubes quote 30,000. Gun deaths are about 8,124 murders. Then he's throwing in 22,000 suicides, but America has a lower suicide rate than many countries like Japan or Finland with strict gun-control. No one has ever shown evidence that guns increase suicide rates, despite decades of lefties trying. Thus, they didn't die because of guns, they died because they're suicidal or mental health issues. So if you have to start with a fraud, you're not very honest, and going to polarize the informed against you. His base cheered, everyone with a clue groaned.
Lie #1: "We are the only advanced country on Earth that...
According to him,
"we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence.... erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn't happen in other advanced countries. It's not even close. "
We are also the only advanced country that's put a man on the moon, invented the Internet, or that does over half the world's medical R&D, and subsidizes other countries national defense, and so on. So we could correlate completely unlike things, as he does. But I'll ignore the big stupidity, and just pick nits with the little ones.
Even if he was right, that would just be another way of saying, "liberty comes with a price". But of course he's not right. We're not the worst. We're actually fairly low on the list even in OECD countries, but that's cherry picking data. Read [U.S. vs World - Crime/Murder] and it lays out that we're middle of the pack in murder rates. And low for countries in our hemisphere. And we have some of the largest aggravators of violence (which is cultural diversity and mixing). If you adjust for race, we're way better than Europe.
The frequency of mass shootings has spiked under his administration, because he and the media keeps drawing attention to them (that encourages copycats). Still, the biggest mass shootings happen in places with gun control (Norway, Russia, Germany, France, etc). And mass murder by bomb or vehicles, is higher in Europe as well.
What we've known for 40 years, is that when you televise mass shootings and draw attention to them, you get more of them. Which is why his administration has gotten more than the prior 2 or 4 combined (depending on where you put the thresholds). Obama's crocodile tears, and giving as much attention as he can, is lubrication for future copy-cats. He either knows this, and doesn't care, or he's and his entire administration are ignorant of the basics of the topic he's speaking on. And his base, gobbles it up. If the truly cared about the victims, they'd ask why these events have gone up, spend the time researching the topic, and then being embarrassed by his actions of ghoulishly preying on the victims for political gain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKehfI8nJrw
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/120215-783412-obama-wrong-mass-shootings-happen-elsewhere-and-more-frequently.htm#ixzz3tI2K9DhK
Lie #2: "We're here today to try to prevent the next mass shooting"....
"we're here today. Not to debate the last mass shooting, but to do something to try to prevent the next one"
And that's why he's announcing gun control laws that would NOT have stopped ANY of the past mass shooters he mentioned? Not one of his recommendations would have stopped any of the cases he pointed to as a problem. How does that make sense to anyone that's informed on the topic?
Plus we know that's a lie, if he cared about mass shootings he wouldn't draw attention to them, he'd pass these as quietly as possible. He cares about not letting a political opportunity go to waste to draw attention to himself, and vilify his opposition (the informed and innocent gun owners).
Lie #3: We understand constraints on freedom to protect innocent people
"We all believe in the First Amendment, the guarantee of free speech, but we accept that you can't yell "fire" in a theater. We understand there are some constraints on our freedom in order to protect innocent people."
Comparing 1st and 2nd Amendment dishonestly? Sure, yelling fire (and trying to hurt people / incite pandemonium) is against the law, so is murdering someone with a gun.
His implication is that those who oppose him on this, would have a problem with the "Oliver Wendel Holmes invented 'fire' standard". First, let's remember that the "Fire in a crowded theater" excuse was invented by a progressive/fascist judge (Oliver Wendel Holmes), so that he could rationalize the bigotry and the racism the progressives gave us with the Espionage Act of 1917, and using that rationalization as an excuse to imprison anti-war protestors for disagreeing with them. (The Espionage Act makes the Patriot act look like something the ACLU wrote). Most people that use that quote, don't remember the context around it, because if they did, they wouldn't be using it. Which goes to tell you how much the smartest Constitutional Law professor, ever, knows about the cases he's citing.
In the real world, we already have more laws/restrictions "constraints" against the 2nd, to the tune of 30,000+ gun laws/regulations — far more than we ever will against speech (I hope). So we're not debating a common-sense standard of just one gun law that will make things better. We're discussing whether we need 30,000+5 or 6 more gun regulations to fix what 30,000 would not. Even when none of those laws would address any of the mass shootings that he's whining about.
Not every new constraint is a good one, and pretending that those opposing him are against ANY constraints, or against reasonable protection as basic as "fire in a crowded theater" is dishonest at best.
Fraud #2: A majority of gun owners agree...
" A majority of gun owners agree that we can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, law-breaking feud from inflicting harm on a massive scale."
Yes, gun owners believe that, they just don't believe the regulations he's proposing will do anything to stop/slow that.
He's misleading people that even gun owners agree with him, and the gross majority polled regularly do not (with these "cures"). Most of us don't like being lectured to by hypocrites with armed guards, who want to make legislation that harasses law abiding gun owners for the actions of few criminals, that he doesn't want to do anything about.
http://buzzpo.com/obama-administration-gun-prosecutions-plummet-still-demands-laws/
Fraud #3: background checks don't infringe on the 2nd Amendment
"[background checks are] not seen as an infringement on the Second Amendment"
Correct, they infringe on the 4th Amendment. You know the ones that says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause..." Isn't he supposed to know the Constitution?
Heck, if they don't violate the 2nd Amendment, let's have background checks on voters, illegal immigrants, welfare recipients, those getting medical care, etc? Close the sanctuary city loophole? The left would consider all those things unnecessary intrusions on liberty, and definitely stretching into voter suppression (or other suppressions) and their rights. But when they do it, they pretend it's OK?
And they are infringements on the 2nd as well (they suppress a liberty)... the question is whether they are tolerable infringements or not. So at best, Obama is defrauding his listeners with a mis-framing of the issue. At worst, he knows what he's talking about and flat out lying. So I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt by assuming he's only an ignorant asshat, and not a lying one. A self deluded polarizing "community organizer", that he can't help that every speech is filled with false dichotomy fallacies (either his way, or you're an idiot/radical).
Fraud #4: this is not a plot to take away everybody's guns
"Contrary to the claims of what some gun rights proponents have suggested, this hasn't been the first step in some slippery slope to mass confiscation... this is not a plot to take away everybody's guns."
I disagree. Not that I think he'll succeed at it. But that every step away from liberty, and passing laws to intrude on the innocents liberties IS a step towards reducing that liberty. What else would you call it?
We all know the following:
he and the democrats would do far more to take away guns, if they could (they often get caught saying so). So their intent is clear.
Obama kept comparing us to Australia and the success of their gun confiscation there, while ignoring the failures and increases in crime, that it actually brought. Why do that, if your ultimate goal isn't heading towards that ideal?
To those paying attention, in one breath he's saying he'd LIKE to follow in their footsteps — in the next he's claiming, "why would you possibly think we want to follow in their footsteps and take your guns? This is a completely new innocent intrusion into your rights that you should welcome readily, just don't you dare do anything like this to issues we care about".
So he's not being honest. He's either lying to us when he says he doesn't want us to be more like Australia, or he's lying to us now when he says he doesn't want gun confiscation — but it can't be both. If he doesn't want us to be worried about copying Oz (Australia), then maybe he should stop bringing it up? Or stop being surprised that when he keeps bringing it up, that because it's what he actually wants, and everything else is just baby steps towards his utopia.
But the argument most make against his laws aren't just about the slippery slope towards his ultimate goals, it's that these laws are usually an ineffective annoyances. There are virtually NO (zero) criminals stopped from getting a gun through these means. At best, a few dozen a year might be slowed down, and have to get their guns through the readily available black market. But you can't stop mass shooters in places that have absolute gun bans, so what makes you think a little regulation like this could stop it here? It does nothing. NOTHING! Except annoy many legal gun owners, who are harassed by these regulations that fail to stop real criminals. There are fees and delays, there is the criminalization of the parent that gifts or loans a gun to their child or spouse (or other family member). So these laws don't stop the criminals, but they make the otherwise law abiding into criminals.
So the complaint is, "if you have a bad law, that isn't enforced well, and that doesn't work, and annoys the innocent, and gives the potential for abuse and corruption", what should we do? Expand the bad laws, or repeal and fix them? (Focus on something else?) He's for the former, civil libertarians are for the latter.
Lie #4: Anyone can buy a weapon over the Internet without background checks
"The problem is some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules. A violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked."
The Whitehouse tweeted:
Which caused responses such as:
If the truth is on your side, then you don't have to lie. Someday, it's going to be on Obama's side. Today is not that day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.
Internet Loophole
Even Liberal-Leaning Politifact begrudgingly admitted it wasn't completely true. Which is the closest they come to objectivity. It was funny watching the exchanges of people wondering how Politifact could spin this one (and then laughing at their yoga poses to try to weasel out of calling the President a pants-on-fire liar).
Here's what that means:
You can't legally buy guns on the Internet without going through a dealer and background check
You can't legally ship guns, without going through a dealer (FFL)
It is a felony (and violation of parole) for that felon to do any such thing
It is a felony, if you knowing sell to that felon without asking questions (and filling out paperwork of transfer), so this almost never happens
What you can do, is advertise a gun, and if someone lives near you, make an arrangement to meet face-to-face and sell them that gun, under the table, which is violating the law in many states. You can do the same exact thing for prostitution, drug deals, and even hiring a hitman — but no one honest would claim that it's a "prostitution/hitman loophole".
You can advertise those services in Newspapers, bulletin boards, leaving flyers around, word of mouth with your friends — but it's still illegal to advertise for illegal activity (which is also illegal).
So what is another regulation going to do, but make it double-secret illegal, because the first 5 classes of laws you're breaking by doing this activity aren't illegal enough?
This is the same as saying there's no law against selling fakeID's on the Internet. True, but there's a law against buying/selling fake ID's in the first place, the Internet didn't change anything. So they're not "operating under a different set of rules", these are the same rules. And there are hundreds of laws around dealing with guns, that apply on the Internet or not.
FactChecker (by far-left WaPo) admitted [it was worthy of 2 Pinocchio's], which means it would have been worthy of 4 Pinocchio's if a Republican has said it.
"There is nothing unique about the Internet; the laws governing private transactions and interstate sales are exactly the same... Obama erred in saying the rules are different for Internet sellers. They face the same rules as other sellers — rules that the administration now says it will enforce better."
What PolitFact ignored is that this isn't the first time he made these fallacious claims, so the lie can't be a slip of the tongue, or something he can feign ignorance on -- since he's been tone deaf to the corrections for 8 years, so far. How many times do you have to repeat the same lie before FactChecker admits that it was more than just accidentally "misleading" of 2 Pinocchio's and worthy of outright deception that 4 would mean?
But PolitiFact admits one of many studies that shows how very few are ever transacted this way (<3%), and of those, the gross majority are legal sales. You'd have to align up 2 criminals (a buyer and a seller) that are both willing to violate the law, before there would be an illegal transaction. Virtually all the mass shooters (who bought their guns) passed background checks. So a law requiring background checks in edge cases that no one used, wouldn't have made a difference. A couple of the mass shooters (Dylann Roof, John Houser), that bought their guns, shouldn't have gotten past the background checks, but that shows the incompetence of government failing to do it's job, not the need for more laws.
No mass shooter has ever gotten a gun through the "internet loophole" that Obama, the Media and Democrats distract their base about. (This "loophole" is called "meeting people on a social network, then agreeing to a black market face-to-face transaction, which is already a crime").
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2016/01/06/Obama-s-Gun-Control-Micro-Moves-Will-Have-Less-Impact-Stop-Frisk
Gun-show Loophole
And it gets worse for Obama's arguments -- less than 0.7% of all criminals get their guns through the "Gun show loophole" that administration whines about. (People meeting at a gun-show and agreeing to do a parking-lot, or home exchange sale). The parking-lot exchange being against the rules of almost every gun show. Logic implies that the Internet Loophole would be much less frequent than the better anonymity and less electronic traceability of a gun-show.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/30/the-gun-show-loophole-myth/
Frankly, I got bored going through all the frauds and lies in his speech. That's about 25% through it, and the rest goes off on silliness that has nothing to do with the mass shooting epidemic fed by daft speeches and free TV time. And his do-nothing proposals were mostly yawn-worthy, unless there's some overreach (something he's known for).
He threw out things like:
Hire more people to do background checks
This is something he could have done on day-1 and no one cares about. In fact, it goes back to the Brady bill in 1994 that gave us the promise that background checks would be point-of-sale (and not require long waits). Gun-controllers have failed to deliver on that one for 22 years. The fact that they'll now to try to do it, isn't something that bugs most gun owners — just the lies he'll use to justify finally doing it.
We're going to try to enforce the laws we have
Now that's novel. Gun rights folks have been saying that all along too. A little better reporting on the laws we have isn't likely to help anything (since most of the guns by mass shooters are legally gotten), but it isn't going to hurt anything either. So it won't do anything but convince the gullible that Obama cares enough to do something 7 years in, that he could have done on day-1 if he really cared.
Help with mental illness
again, gun rights folks have been saying that for 30+ years. Most of the mass shooters seem to have, "taking anti-depressents". The gun-suicide correlation is a fraud, and annoying. And his misleading comments about how ACA brought mental health treatment to the masses (when it was covered under almost all insurance already) is misleading at best. But good for him -- address something 7+ years into his administration that you could have done on day-1. But I'd ask, if this is so important, why didn't you do this earlier?
Gun safety technology
"safe guns" have been proposed and supported by the ignorant for 20+ years. The problem is nobody wants or would use them. These guns have existed for a decade or so, and no police force, military, or home shooter wants them -- which is why they never sold. Heck, if he wants to lead by example, I'd say fine -- arm the secret service with them, and we'll go from there. (Others will probably start collecting them at that point, for comedic effect -- take them to the range and show your friends how poorly they work in real-life situations -- when seconds count, a dead battery only takes a few minutes to change).
The man is incapable of representing any topic in an intelligent and informed way (without misrepresenting the other side and the facts). Which is good enough for Democrats, but annoys the crap out of everyone else.
He blathered about how he taught constitutional law, but not how he's had more Supreme Court Unanimous decisions against him than any other President (including FDR who had 4 terms in office, for goodness sake). The amount of dumb-fuckery in his speeches makes Carter look like a competent President.
Here's the problems:
the President made many grotesque mistakes that were likely to offend anyone with a basic clue of the topic discussed
He said the goal was to make a difference on the types of crimes that his very proposals would do absolutely nothing to address
Not one of the prior shootings he mentioned would have been stopped by his solutions. Thus he's doing less than nothing. (It wastes time and political capital on non-fixes)
Even the AP (short for Administration's Press: when a Democrat is in office) admits it would have never made a difference in any of the cases offered.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d0a31a86e9a64d78aaf3213b034993fc/obama-measures-wouldnt-have-kept-guns-mass-shooters
Summary: So to stop mass shootings, the President does nothing, but pretend to close an imaginary loophole (called the black market), by harassing the white market with some theoretical regulations that won't make a difference. He broke-wind about safe-guns that no one cares about, or will use or buy. And he cried crocodile tears that either demonstrated his hypocrisy, or the gullibility of those that bought his ridiculous gesture.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/429235/obama-gun-control-executive-orders-mistake?target=author&tid=23105
https://reason.com/blog/2016/01/06/obamas-executive-actions-on-guns-vague-l
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/obamas-executive-action-on-guns-is-moresymbolism-than-substance/
http://thefederalist.com/2016/01/06/obamas-claims-about-internet-gun-sales-are-completely-false/
http://twitchy.com/2016/01/05/not-even-close-to-being-true-obama-just-lied-about-buying-guns-online/
Retrieved from "http://igeek.com/index.php?title=Obama_fact-check_on_Guns&oldid=18124"

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HomeNewsMexico to impose tariffs on US goods
Mexico to impose tariffs on US goods
June 5, 2018 DairyBusiness News Team DP News 0
Mexico's Economy Ministry announced on Tuesday it will impose retaliatory tariffs against the U.S.
In its official gazette, the ministry said it will impose 20% to 25% tariffs on U.S. cheese, 20% on apples and potatoes, 20% on pork legs and shoulders and 15% to 25% on steel products, as first reported by Reuters.
The ministry said it would open a 350,000 tariff-free quota for imports of pork legs and shoulders from other countries.
The announcement comes after President Donald Trump imposed steep tariffs on steel and aluminum from Mexico, as well as Canada and the European Union, all allies of the U.S.
Registration is Open for 79th MN Nutrition Conference
Junior Owned Cow Honored as 2017 Star of the Breed
U.S. dairy industry calls for greater access to Japan
December 11, 2018 DairyBusiness News Team DP 0
Mexico's Economy Ministry announced on Tuesday it will impose retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. In its official gazette, the ministry said it will impose 20% to 25% tariffs on U.S. cheese, 20% on apples and [Read More …]
Trade talks with Japan are in the works
October 30, 2018 DairyBusiness News Team DP 0
WASDE Weighs in on Soybean Tariffs
July 13, 2018 DairyBusiness News Team DP 0


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Disability-eCafe.net
Asia-Pacific Development Center on Disability (APCD)
The "Asia-Pacific Development Center on Disability (APCD)" is a regional center on disability and development. APCD was established in Bangkok, Thailand as a legacy of the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons, 1993-2002, with the joint collaboration of the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, Royal Thai Government and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Government of Japan.
APCD was endorsed by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) as a regional cooperative base for its Biwako Millennium Framework for an inclusive society in the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons, 2003-2012. ESCAP identified APCD as the regional center on disability for the Incheon Strategy to Make the Right Real, 2013-2022.
In cooperation with more than 30 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, APCD is currently managed by the Foundation of Asia-Pacific Development Center on Disability (APCD Foundation) under the Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn.
1st ASEAN Autism Friendship Games, Laguna, Philippines, 15-16 January 2016
The Third ASEAN Autism Network (AAN) Congress kicked off with the First ASEAN Autism Friendship Games at the University of the Philippines Campus in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, on 15-16 January 2016. The event was graced by Ms. Mona Magno-Veluz (President, Autism Society Philippines), Mr. Malai Hj Abdullah bin Hj Malai Othman (Chairperson, ASEAN Autism Network), Mr. Hiroaki Uesugi (Director, The Japan Foundation, Manila), Mr. Noriaki Niwa (Chief Representative, Japan International Cooperation Agency Philippine Office), Hon. Procopio A. Alipon (Vice Mayor, Municipality of Los Baños, Laguna) representing Hon. Mayor Caesar Perez, and Ms. Carmen Reyes Zubiaga (Acting Executive Director, National Council on Disability Affairs of the Philippines). Over 350 persons with autism and their parents from nine ASEAN countries including Japan participated in various activities including track and field events, swimming, bowling, and cultural fellowship programs, among others. Apart from sports and recreational activities, a cultural program showcased the talents of persons with autism and their parents from ASEAN and Japan. The winners of the Games were presented and honored at the Angels Walk for Autism on 17 January 2016 at the SM Mall of Asia Arena, Pasay City, Philippines. Angels Walk for Autism, Manila, Philippines, 17 January 2016
The second major event of the Third AAN Congress was the Angels Walk for Autism led by Autism Society Philippines on 17 January 2016 at the SM Mall of Asia, Pasay City, Manila, Philippines. This year's event drew more than 15,000 participants from all over the Philippines and other ASEAN countries. Special guests included H.E. Dr. A.K.P. Mochtan (Deputy Secretary General, Community and Corporate Affairs), Hon. Sonny Angara (Senator of the Republic of the Philippines), Mr. Akiie Ninomiya (Executive Director, APCD), Engr. Bien Mateo (Program Director, SM Cares) and Ms. Mona Magno-Veluz (President, ASP). With the theme 'Onwards to an Autism-OK Philippines', the event also featured various talents of persons with autism from the ASEAN region and announced the ASP Autism Angels Achievement Award 2016 recipients, as well as the formal turnover of the AAN chairmanship. The ASP Angels Walk for Autism is a Philippine-wide event. ASP chapters from all over the country held simultaneous walks in Davao, Iloilo, Naga, Puerto Princesa, Tacloban and Tagbilaran.
Marcus Wilnei, one of Mr. Aldolpho's proteges gained recognition for several major accomplishments, including a very successful business venture in which he and his partner, both graduates of the program, continue to operate in New York City. He migrated there to make use of his skills in cleaning fabrics, especially delicate handwoven carpets and rugs. With the help of Mr. Aldolpho, they created a website promoting a highly specialized rug care service focusing on persian and oriental carpets and wall hangings. His business has been recognized by the Chamber of Commerce and the Immigrant Focus Group. They've grown from one small delivery van to a fleet of 10 trucks serving the carpet cleaning needs in the most competitive market in the world, New York City. Marcus will attend and present next year's recipient of the Autism Angels Achievement Award.
4 KEY OUTCOMES
1. Persons with autism, their parents and supporters in the ASEAN region and Japan were provided with opportunities to participate in various autism-friendly activities in sports, leisure and recreation for the first time in Southeast Asia.
2. An initial guide on how to organize autism-friendly sports, leisure and recreation activities based on the Philippines' experience was shared with those from the Mekong sub-region namely Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam.
3. It was demonstrated that persons with autism are capable to actively participate in sports, leisure and recreation given the opportunity and appropriate support.
4. Positive relationships among persons with autism, parents and supporters across the ASEAN region and Japan were developed.
5. Understanding and acceptance of the different cultures of each country in Southeast Asia and Japan were promoted through a series of autism-related events.
6. The rights of persons with autism to participate in sports, leisure and recreation were realized as stipulated in Article 30 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
7. AAN members were inspired to come up with their own Autism Friendship Games and enhanced their Walk for Autism event.
LIST OF GROUP PARTICIPANTS
Society for the Management of Autism Related Issues in Training, Education
and Resources (SMARTER), Brunei Darussalam
Cambodia Intellectual Disability and Autism Network (CIDAN), Cambodia
Association for Autism (AfA), Lao PDR
Autism Foundation of Indonesia, Indonesia
National Autistic Society of Malaysia (NASOM), Malaysia
Myanmar Autism Association (MAA), Myanmar
The Association of Parents of Persons with Autism (AU Thai), Thailand
Vietnam Autism Network (VAN), Vietnam
Autism Society Japan (ASJ), Japan
Autism Society Philippines (ASP), Philippines
ASP National Office
ASP Laguna Chapter
ASP Bacoor, Cavite Chapter
ASP Carmona, Cavite Chapter
ASP Dasmariñas, Cavite Chapter
ASP Mandaluyong City Chapter
ASP Taguig City Chapter
ASP Diliman, Quezon City Chapter
ASP Parañaque City Chapter
Best Buddies, Philippines
Collaborators and Sponsors
Autism Society Philippines (ASP)
ASEAN Autism Network (AAN)
Japan Foundation Asia Center
ASEAN Secretariat
Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) of the Philippines
National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA) of the Philippines
Ministry of Social Development and Human Security (MSDHS) of Thailand
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)
Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF)
Municipality of Los Baños, Laguna
SM Cares
Autism Society Japan
The Royal Government of Thailand
National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA)
The Local Government of Mandaluyong City
The Local Government of Taguig City
The Local Government of Carmona, Cavite
Empowerment Cafe Weekly Bulletin 20-26 December 2014
WORLD: UN General Assembly adopts resolution on disability
http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=36
WORLD: Incheon Strategy to Make the Right Real for Persons with Disabilities in Asia and the Pacific (Easy-to-understand version)
http://www.unescapsdd.org/publications/incheon-strategy-make-right-real-persons-disabilities
THAILAND: Free wheelchair friendly taxis from next year for people with disabilities and elderly: BMA
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Free-wheelchair-friendly-taxis-from-next-year
JAPAN: Japan Airlines JAL Conducts Trial of COMUOON
http://www.eturbonews.com/53763/japan-airlines-jal-conducts-trial-comuoon
INDIA: Act against those not implementing disability quota: Parliamentary panel
http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/health-news/act-against-those-not-implementing-disability
UAE: Give disabled students access to education
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/nation/inside.asp?xfile=/data/educationnation/2014/December
NEW ZEALAND: Removing barriers for disabled people in 2014
https://www.national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/detail/2014/12/22/removing-barriers
JORDAN: Crown Prince launches 'Hearing Without Borders' initiative
http://jordantimes.com/crown-prince-launches-hearing-without-borders-initiative
WORLD: People with Disabilities Earn 37% Less on Average
http://www.disabled-world.com/disability/employment/earnings.php
AZERBAIJAN: Azerbaijan's War-Disabled Struggle to Access Home Care
https://iwpr.net/global-voices/azerbaijans-war-disabled-struggle-access-home-care
WORLD: Disabled man Nico Reed's death sparks call for legal aid at inquests
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-30575174
WORLD: Beyond the game: Stories of courage, determination and hope
http://blogs.icrc.org/new-delhi/2014/12/23/beyond-the-game-stories-of-courage-determination
WORLD: Obesity Now Being Recognized as a Disability
http://lastresistance.com/9162/breaking-obesity-now-recognized-disability
WORLD: Update-Patrick Speaks, 10 Weeks On | Unreported World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f31_UbCPq4


Exit aprt onto Tucson Blvd. which becomes Benson Hwy. Right onto S. Kino Pkwy. S. Kino Pkwy becomes N. Campbell Ave. Continue on Campbell for 6.7 miles. Right on Skyline Dr. Right into 2nd entrance of Paloma Village complex.
Exit aprt right on Sky Harbor Blvd. Left on East Buckeye. Left on 24th St. Left on I-10 East exit-take I-10 East to Tucson. Exit Ina Rd exit 248 left Ina becomes Skyline Dr 7 miles to Paloma Village. Rt in 2nd entrance of Paloma Village.
Fleming*s offers classic Steakhouse fare artfully prepared for contemporary tastes. Indulge in succulent prime beef the freshest seafood and a tempting array of delicious salads sides and desserts.
Anthony*s in the Catalina*s is located in the plush foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains and offer breath-taking views continental cuisine and a **Grand Award** winning wine list.


Aspergers101 asks the experts about driving safely with Autism. In this blog we focus especially on preparing to drive with motor skill challenges.
Dr. Berenice de la Cruz, Training and Research Director at the Autism Community Network, offers a great overview into the differences of the Autistic brain and how those differences affect the skills it takes to drive.
Both fine and gross motor skills are typical challenges for many diagnosed with High Functioning Autism or Asperger's Syndrome.
So when it comes to learning to drive, or at least considering if driving may be an option, it is imperative to overcome the challenges that can impede safe driving.
Dr. Temple Grandin asserts that if she did not have the ability to drive she would never have been able to visit all of the feed/stock yards to do her prep work for her cattle handling designs. When learning to drive motor skills can be a challenge, especially with multi-tasking, but not impossible to overcome.
When being pulled over by a police officer, Asperger drivers with motor skill issues can exhibit a speech delay. Dr Grandin recommends that police take this into consideration and allow time for the driver to process the information spoken. Oftentimes people on the spectrum will be slow to respond as they are dealing with loud sights, sounds, and basically a sensory overload that causes them to freeze.
If you are an Autistic driver or a parent considering whether you Asperger child could indeed one day drive, realize that it is possible if they want to.
Understanding challenges, such as motor skills and coordination, is a large part of preparing for independence through driving.
My son Samuel is 20 with Asperger's and has been driving for three years. But it took several years of practicing in a safe large area to hone in on his multi-tasking challenges. Practice a lot, as Dr. Temple Grandin recommends, and take this huge step towards independence slowly. Allow extra time to introduce the radio, talking passengers, turn indicator, air/heat controls or other distractions that we, as neuro-typicals take for granted.
Like most all behaviors, driving is learned with much practice!
Learn more about AS101's "Driving with Autism" here!
Please consider donating to help support this initiative.
"Driving with Autism" is an Asp ergers101 on-going series that educates and empowers the driver diagnosed with High-Functioning Autism or Aspergers Syndrome. Aspergers101 has teamed up with the Texas DPS in training Texas State Troopers about the uniqueness of Autism and understanding the Autistic driver. This partnership is garnering encouraging results.
After an extensive career broadcast marketing, Jennifer and her husband searched for answers when their oldest son hit the kinder years with great difficultly. After finally learning that their oldest son had Aspergers Syndrome, she left her career in television and became a full time mother to both of her sons. Jennifer elicited the participation of her sons and together they produced several independent programs including a children's animated series titled Ameriquest Kids (now distributed by Landmark Media) as well as her documentary and book titled, Coping to Excelling: Solutions for school-age children diagnosed with High-Functioning Autism or Aspergers Syndrome. The need for more information encouraged Jennifer to elicit a team of autism experts to provide weekly, original content to a website free to anyone seeking to live their best under the diagnosis of High-Functioning Autism/Aspergers Syndrome… appropriately titled: Aspergers101.com.
A natural expectation would be that, if someone is driving a car, that they would be able to respond verbally to a police officer. Of course the entire experience of being pulled over is unnerving for most of us, but for persons with autism, we all know that could definitely be a case of sensory overload. I would recommend having an information card in a convenient location to hand to a police officer that gives some brief information about the person. There is also something called "If I need help" which can be attached to someone's shoe or maybe a purse. A third option is an app, such as an ICE app. I have created an app to help with decision making or problem solving, intended to support persons who may be on overload. It's called Smart Steps Mobile. It has a profile button that leads to a screen with the app user's name and address. This year we are adding many features, including a text box on the profile screen so that you can add information for a situation like this. The download is free, on iOS and Android.
Get your Driving with Autism Decal!
Generous in size, this 6″ round full color logo is offered as a decal or magnet which are both water resistant and UV stable for your vehicle display.
While driving with the autism diagnosis is not for everyone, some may seek their independence by way of obtaining their driver license. You might be weighing this option for yourself or for your son or daughter, either way, you are probably seeking more information on the topic so in addition to our "Driving with Autism" section on Aspergers101, we offer the following resources. Additional Resources: DriveWise and Drive Advise - The goal of DriveWise at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is to provide objective information about driving safety while providing support for individuals and their families. Teen Driver Source - If your teen is ready to drive, download the TeenDrivingPlan Practice Guide, an interactive resource based on years of research, to help you effectively supervise your teen's driving practice, and a Goal Guide and Logging and Rating Tool to keep you on track. The Challenge of Driving with Aspergers - Insightful article by By John O'Neil from the New York Times. Driving : The National Autistic Society - Applying for a Drivers License in the UK Teaching the Person with Autism How to Drive - This article written by a parent and speech pathologist whose young adult son has been taught to drive shares what steps are necessary for teaching the person with autism to drive. My Aspergers Child: Asperger Teen and Driving a Car - Driving Tips and national statistics for you to consider. Is Your Asperger Teen Ready to Drive? - Craig Kendall, the author of The Asperger's Syndrome Survival Guide, discusses (in part 1 of 2) the driving challenges for teens with Aspergers.


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HomeNews The CARES Act, RMD, and Hardship Distribution Changes: What You Need to Know
The CARES Act, RMD, and Hardship Distribution Changes: What You Need to Know
By Simplicity Digital Advisor No comments yet
The CARES Act (The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) became law on March 27th, 2020. It contains significant legislation for Required Minimum Distributions (RMD) for those over age 70 ½ who have already started RMD. Under previous IRS distribution laws, a minimum distribution from a pre-tax retirement savings account, such as a 401(k), IRA, or other tax-sheltered accounts, would have to happen in 2020 to avoid the penalty for not taking a distribution. Under the CARES Act, no RMD is required for individuals or beneficiaries of inherited retirement accounts in 2020 due to COVID-19. How will this help investors?
RMD amounts base on a December 31st valuation; in December 2019 account values were much higher in comparison to now, requiring a more considerable RMD amount before the CARES Act legislation
Eliminating RMD for 2020 will decrease an individual's overall earnings, therefore resulting in a lower state and federal tax liability.
Investors experiencing market loss can forego a distribution in hopes of capturing the upside of the market later on the shares that would've liquidated for the RMD.
The CARES Act provides an opportunity for an RMD to be applied toward a Roth IRA conversion anytime in 2020. Taxes on the distribution will apply as usual, but the RMD will now occur during a down market. Investors will capture the upside of the market with no tax consequences on the Roth IRA's growth on their initial conversion contribution.
RMD from a tax-qualified plan can invest in an annuity under the same tax provisions of the CARES Act.
Additional Economic Relief
Under the CARES Act, an additional economic relief provision is built-in for COVID-19 hardship distributions. Investors can access up to $100,000 from their employer retirement savings without penalty if impacted in any of the following ways:
They or an immediate family member diagnoses with COVID-19.
They were not able to work due to a lack of childcare.
Their job eliminates, reduces operational hours, lays them off, or they quarantine, resulting in financial duress.
Taxes and Hardship Distribution
As with the act's RMD provisions, taxes are due on any hardship distribution from a tax-sheltered retirement plan, but no early distribution penalty will apply. Despite what is happening to the stock market, our economy, and health, right now may be the best time to consider an RMD distribution or a hardship distribution. If you have any questions about the CARES Act and the above information, feel free to reach out anytime.
Disclosure: The newsletter and links are being provided as a service to you. Please note that the information and opinions included are provided by third parties and have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. The information is not intended to be used as the sole basis for financial decisions, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the particular needs of an individual's situation. Disclosure: This article is not intended to provide legal advice and is for informational purposes only.
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Dubai: Some flights from UAE have been disrupted due to a strong cyclone that is heading towards the coast of Oman.
Tropical cyclone Mekunu is expected to make a landfall in several hours. It is forecast to reach areas in the neighbouring country of Oman, particularly the region of Salalah and surrounding areas on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
With the cyclone developing, budget carrier flydubai confirmed on Thursday that a number of its flights have to be rerouted as a precaution. The affected flights are mainly those to the East African destinations like Zanzibar, Juba and Addis Ababa, among others.
It is not clear yet when the operations will return to normal, with the airline's spokesperson saying that they will continue to monitor the weather situation over the next 36 hours and make changes accordingly.
"Due to forecasted tropical storm over the Arabian Sea, flydubai has rerouted a number of its flights as a precaution. The affected East African flights will now operate over the Saudi airspace," flydubai said in a statement sent to Gulf News.
Weather forecasters in UAE have assured that the cyclone will not affect the country.
So far, no flights operated by Emirates have been affected. "[There are] no cancellations or delays as of now," a spokesperson said.
Oman Air issued an advisory on Wednesday that its flights to and from Salalah, Zanzibar, Nairobi and Dar Es Salam may be affected by the cyclone.
"Guests are advised to check information about their flight timings through www.omanair.com. Changes if any in flight will be posted and shared through Oman Air's social media channels," the airline said.


Born and raised in Omaha, Greg has attended Burke High School, Metro, ITT Technical Institute, and Randall School of Real Estate.
The majority of Greg's work experience has been gained while working at their family-owned outdoor power equipment company, Terry's Small Engine. This business has been a part of Greg's family for 30 years. Greg started learning the ropes from his dad, working his way up the chain to managing, and ultimately co-owning the business with his brother, Jeff.
Growing up in the small engine shop developed Greg's passion and natural knack for fixing things. Whether it's building a dirt bike from steering to exhaust, rebuilding entire engines, or installing new flooring and drywall for home remodeling projects, Greg's drive and determination has always kept him trying new things.
Greg has been married to his wife, Shelly, for more than 20 years. They have three adventurous sons who have all graduated from the Papillion School District. One of the Stotts's family passions is martial arts, Greg obtained his second-degree black belt in Karate and his first-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Giving back is a high priority for the Stotts family. They have spent time volunteering for Make-A-Wish and various projects in the Papillion community where they have lived for over 20 years.


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ccpopculture
ccpopculture: movie reviews and other pop culture analysis, 200 words at a time.
Extended Cut
A Goddess Among Us: Wonder Woman Entertains Despite Inability to Innovate
davecrewe / June 3, 2017
It's official: Wonder Woman is the best-reviewed film of the young DC Extended Universe. With a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, it well outstrips the reaction to Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad. To be fair, that's a pretty low bar to clear – none of those films were particularly well-reviewed.
So is Wonder Woman the saviour of DC? Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. This is an entertaining, fast-paced bit of popcorn entertainment. As (arguably) the first big budget female superhero-helmed film, it's significant purely as a step forward, representation-wise. Despite the feminist momentum Wonder Woman's earned – particularly in the wake of Alamo Drafthouse's inexplicably-controversial women-only screenings of the film – this is very safe commercial cinema. It succeeds by marrying the proven Marvel superhero formula with a very dialled-down take on the awkward ambition that has defined Zack Snyder's approach to the DCEU, but this ain't no revolution.
Wonder Woman's storyline is pure Phase 1 Marvel Studios, mashing up Captain America: The First Avenger's historical revisionism and unadulterated heroism with Thor's fish-out-of-water humour (with a dash of Crocodile Dundee and The Fifth Element for spice). While the darkness of the DC universe remains – at least, outside of the paradisiac shores of Diana's island home – it's enlivened with splashes of humour and light.
This isn't just a MCU rip off, though. DC's been chasing (with some success) that cinematic superhero universe money since at least their second film, but Wonder Woman is smart enough to emphasise the difference between the two brands. Marvel's superheroes are teenagers in tights, coming to terms with their identities and personal responsibilities through the lens of global justice; DC's superheroes are modern gods etched into Western pop culture.
Director Patty Jenkins and her sausage party of screenwriters recognise that by incorporating iconic moments into the jokey origin story formula. One moment there's a dick joke; the next, an Amazon princess is frozen in mid-air, plucking three deadly arrows from her quiver with regal grace. One moment there's a trying-on-clothes-montage straight of a John Hughes film; the next, a shining superhero charges through the grey morass of the Western front. While none of three prior DC films were particularly good, they're each memorable by virtue of their grand gesturing to the deific heft these heroes carried.
Wonder Woman adapts that approach. I suspect the lightness – the banter between Diana (Gal Gadot) and love interest Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) and such – is a studio-mandated course correction away from all-encompassing darkness. Thankfully, it rarely feels contrived; the jokes are often funny, and not too indebted to sub-Whedon mimicry. The grand gestures are different, though. While Superman and Batman represent America – at its idealistic best and its militaristic worst – Wonder Woman is not quite as evocative. So Jenkins finds a simple shorthand: she represents palatable, marketable feminism – strength, independence, ambition – and the hoariest cliché of clichés: the power of love. (The messier things Wonder Woman represents – coded queerness, even bondage – are carefully avoided.)
This probably shouldn't work. But by and large it does because the film satiates a hunger for a female role model like this: someone true and powerful and perfect. She's not recognisably human – compared to, say, Katniss Everdeen, she's utterly alien – but that's the point. She's an icon, a god, a symbol of something greater. You can see the desire for a character like this in the success of Frozen with young girls. That film succeeded not just because of its catchy tunes, but because Elsa represented the rare female superhero: stylishly-costumed, utterly independent and (of course) possessed of stupendous magical powers. Wonder Woman will be that icon for so many young people, and that's something that can't be underestimated.
But it's not like Wonder Woman is without its problems. Most of the criticism I've seen is directed at its climax, which admittedly plays an awful lot like Rocky IV ("If I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!") but in the context of superhero iconography plays on just the right side of ridiculous. For me, anyway. I think the reason that the climax is regarded as one of the weaker elements of the film is less because of the sequence itself than the path taken to get there.
If we're going to reduce the character of Wonder Woman down to a simplistic symbol of female exceptionalism, then surely she should be front and centre in her own story? Her name is right there in the title, so she's the protagonist. Right?
Not exactly. Yes, the film is framed as a recollection of Diana's in the present day (allowing for the necessary tie-in to the upcoming Justice League film). Yes, it begins with her childhood, her training, her Amazon family. But for the most part, her role in the story is subsumed into serving the objectives of Steve Trevor. Steve arrives on Diana's home of Themyscira in the final years of World War I, and demands her assistance in transporting information on a German biological weapon (basically high-powered mustard gas) to British intelligence. Diana sees this an opportunity to defeat Aries – yes, the God of War, that one – based on a myth/bedtime story she was told as a child. So she accompanies Steve to England and, eventually, the Western front, with that goal in mind.
All well and good. The problem is that we're never really given reason within the diegesis to see her quest as anything other than folly. Steve goes along with her fanciful stories about Aries because he wants to bring her superpowers to bear on defeating the Germans. That's fine, but without reason to believe Diana's quest has merit, she ends up playing second fiddle in her own story. Granted, she's the one winning all the battles, but she's acting (unbeknownst to her) in service of a man. It's not hard to see that this plays somewhat uncomfortably with the film's themes of female empowerment.
To some extent, this is likely a reflection of Gadot's casting. In many ways, she's perfect for the role: beautiful, statuesque, athletic, possessed of a regal bearing befitting a demigod. But she's no Robert Downey Jr, or even a Chris Hemsworth; she's best suited to playing the straight woman, and thus that's the role the screenplay gives us. But it feels like a misstep to not give the audience reason to believe her motivations. The reveal that Aries does, in fact, walk amongst humans sprinkling seeds of enmity is revealed far too late in the piece to give Wonder Woman the agency she deserves within the narrative. One wonders if the studio bigwigs were simply reluctant to rely on Gadot as lead when Pine – a proven quantity in such blockbusters – was available to shoulder the load.
The late Aries reveal also undercuts any attempt to address themes of warfare with any kind of complexity. That's understandable, I suppose; Marvel's attempts to tackle serious geopolitical themes with any seriousness have been pretty hamfisted thus far. But to have a scene where your hero kills the 'bad guy' only to realise that war is more than one person, that complex international struggles can't be so easily solved, that no one man or woman can save the world… only to immediately undercut that with a CGI-swathed finale feels kinda cheap.
There are other missteps throughout the film – mainly plot holes and average action papered over with quickfire editing. At the end of the day, though, Wonder Woman still makes for an entertaining trip to the theatre. There are enough laughs and pyrotechnics, and the sheer fact that this is Wonder Woman makes it more memorable than the last middling superhero movie. Don't expect a gamechanger and you'll have a good time – but I can't help but hoping that Diana's next outing is somewhat less conventional.
June 3, 2017 in Extended Cut, Film. Tags: ★★★, batman v superman, captain america: the first avenger, chris hemsworth, chris pine, crocodile dundee, dc, film, frozen, gal gadot, man of steel, patty jenkins, review, robert downey jr, rocky iv, rotten tomatoes, suicide squad, superhero, the fifth element, thor
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2 thoughts on "A Goddess Among Us: Wonder Woman Entertains Despite Inability to Innovate"
Courtney Young says:
Thank God I finally found a review similar to mine. Everyone is hailing Gadot, which is deserved, but that's masking the fact that this movie as a whole is alarmingly mediocre and safe. You nailed it here: "but this ain't no revolution." THANK YOU. THANK. YOU. Give me Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor any day for female representation…I don't need a scantily clad Wonder Woman for me to squeal yay feminism.
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text:
Bye Golly, Noddy!
March 23, 2021 John Quiggin14 Comments
One of the striking features of the Dr Seuss fuss is that most commentators seem to be treating this as something new. No one I've read in US commentary on the topic seems to be aware that "Dr Seuss, cancelled" is a shot-for-shot remake of a British drama.
It reminded me immediately of the arguments about golliwogs in Enid Blyton's Noddy books, which started just about the time (a long, long time ago) I grew out of those books, and moved on to reading such gems as the Famous Five . After a long series of adjustments, turning golliwogs into goblins and so on, the issue was resolved by the reissue, in 2009, of a new canonical series, with no golliwogs. (There's still controversy about golliwogs in general, but not wrt Noddy).
As is always the case, once you know what to look for, you can always find someone who's made the same point before. In my case, very close to home. Here's Kate Cantrell and Sharon Bickle from the University of Southern Queensland making exactly this point, with many more examples.
Finkel on getting to zero
The Economic Consequences of Mr Biden
14 thoughts on "Bye Golly, Noddy!"
Sonia Bennett says:
I must admit I hated all these stupid Noddy books and hated Enid Blyton and her boring children's stories. Spent a lot of time painting, going to art classes singing, learning songs around our piano which my grandmother olayed and also swimming in the ocean and lots of sailing when I was young. Us kids also made our own fun snd adventures and used to disappear all day doing playing and having fun. Books were around, but not Noddy and other silly English stories. I grew up in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) a very different cultural experience. Lots of festivals of course.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/10/censorship-is-alive-in-new-zealand-i-should-know-my-book-was-banned
Family First appealed the decision, a new body was assembled (four co-opted members) and they overturned the censor, imposing an R14 restriction. To my knowledge this was the first-ever restricted New Zealand novel.
The campaign against reality in children's books has been going on a lot longer than any concern with racism or any similar "modern PC nonsense". Books are quietly edited, or written in the first place, to take account not just of social standards but of whatever the trigger words for activist groups are. I'm sufficiently old that I recall "Lady Chatterley's Lover" being the preferred case study even though Lolita was available and both more offensive and more topical (possibly too much of both?)
Another side to the story was the fact that librarians mostly regarded Blyton's books as worthless trash (agreeing with Sonia above). I was a voracious and undiscriminating reader and went through a fair bunch of them – our school library must have had them despite the general attitude.
Can't remember anything about them except that one of the girl characters was called George (for Georgina), something which seemed like pretty daring gender-bending to a child in the early 1960s.
stereotypes.
put me down as blardy strayan plus cork hat and skin cancer.
frogs and rosbifs and nips and yanks and chingchongchinaman and lots of derogatory, petty spite.
everybody cops that kind of thing.
but while not everybody is spiteful enough to do it,it's good idea to not forget what it is.
sometimes though, just sometimes.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/3/22/2022246/-On-Cute-Names-for-Impeached-Stochastic-Mass-Murderer-Donald-Trump-With-Poll
"figjam fuhrer?
Ikonoclast. says:
I read Biggles books from Grade 3. Was that any better? I doubt it. Heck, I had a Reader (Grade 6 & 7) that had an excerpt called "The Relief of Lucknow". It lauded the Brits of course. The Reader didn't mention the Massacre of Amritsar, April 13, 1919. Gee, I wonder why? We were taught reading comprehension with the most blatant propaganda, so obvious from our modern perspective.
I read everything. As Barry Crump once memorably described it "he'd read the back of a cereal packet". Also, before I was allowed to graduate to the adult section of the local library I "had to" read every single book in the young adult section… this was before I started secondary school, so I would have been maybe 12. So technically I've read the entire "Black Beauty" series (something about horses) as well as "Anne of Green Gables" and whatnot. I genuinely did read them, but the price of getting access to the science fiction section was steep.
The Grimm Brothers peddled real terror and I didn't find anything particularly funny about Punch & Judy shows.
There was an episode of the Argonauts where an escaped prisoner had kidnapped a young boy, threatening him with all sorts of dire consequences. I remember hanging on to that wireless like grim death.
There seemed to be a violent streak running through much comedy, the 3 Stooges were always violently beating each up and Monty Python had a fair bit of slap stick bomb throwing with dismemberment.
Mr Magoo was a wonderful panacea to all this bloodshed and mayhem as were Dad and Dave
I'm somewhat skeptical of librarian book reviews, they're library operators not literary critics for the most part, and even today many "children's librarians" lack alone formal qualifications in that sub-field (or even education qualifications generally)*. That's not to downplay their actual skills and qualifications, but their opinion about arbitrary classes of literature is not necessarily more informed than yours or mine.
I quite liked the Famous Four books by Blyton, but then I also enjoyed the Swallows and Amazons series, Commando comics, Biggles, Ramona and Beezus, Readers Digest magazines, all sorts of books. Ayn Rand gave me mental indigestion, albeit I read that when I was maybe 14 or 15, about the time L Ron Hubbard excreted Battlefield Earth (it was long! In the opinion of some of my relatives that made it a good book for me, it might take me more than a couple of hours to finish it).
* when I was allowed to read "adult" books none of them thought to steer me away from books with graphic rape scenes or other really ugly material. There's multiple levels of WTF there.
I found Ayn Rand weird but everybody was raving about her so I figured I wasnt as smart as them and I was missing out on something important.
Many years later I figured out that nobody ie everybody hadn't understood Ayn Rand at all, they thought she wrote tragic mega blockbusters that you avidly read on trains and later on, planes.
Maybe Trump wasn't so bad after all 🙂
I read quite a few Biggles, and I still have a copy of Biggles Flies North. All I can remember now is that for some reason Johns modified the names of the planes. For example, Heinkel became Weinkel.
Afterthought: The best "As you know, Bob .." explainer I ever read was when Biggles (sometime in the 1950s) asks the Wing Commander (or similar), why the Chinese government would be unlikely to help him deal with Russian bad guys, and is told about global Communism.
I presume the Weinkelization of Heinkels and other planes was so Johns wouldn't constantly be involved in snail mail flame wars with people aggrieved that he wrote that a plane's left flange had the wrong number of rivets.
remember Benny Hill?
the A rand?
what grated for me was the utter contempt for the everyday skills.
only the overseeing managermind had the ability to hold the crumbling wreck of society together.
Heinlein was better.
and he wasn't the best (just my opinion)
Jones says:
As a matter of fact, the most — unexpectedly!! — vile Seuss book is still on the shelf, viz. 'Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose'. It's about how the well-meaning but naive moose lets one bug ride on his antlers and, well, you know what it's like when you let one in… They invite some more animals in, those invite others, eventually Thidwick's carrying around an entire menagerie on his antlers, he's cold and hungry and worn out, he ends up in real physical danger…it's a pret-ty gross book, and a surprising and *blunt* metaphor against accepting refugees
Mulberry St is a good one, though; odd that they wouldn't just further edit the 'chinaman' thing, since it is so incidental.
@Ronald That makes sense to me! I'm always getting into trouble with battleship stans. https://johnquiggin.com/2015/08/25/what-do-destroyers-destroy-what-do-frigates/comment-page-1/#comments


text:
\section{Conclusion}\label{sec:conc}
In this work, we introduced a new Transformer language model (\textbf{\texttt{IndT5}}) and a dataset (\textbf{\texttt{IndCorpus}}) for ten Indigenous languages and Spanish. We applied \textbf{\texttt{IndT5}} to the MT task on eight languages pairs as part of our submission to the AmericasNLP 2021 Shared Task.  While \textbf{\texttt{IndT5}} helps improve translation, the task remains hard due to absence of parallel as well as monolingual data. In the future, we plan to integrate statistical MT methods to augment our data as well as investigate best hyperparameters for our neural models.

\vspace{2mm}
\section*{Acknowledgements}\label{sec:acknow}

\vspace{2mm}
We gratefully acknowledge support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Compute Canada, and UBC ARC-Sockeye. We also thank the Google TFRC program for providing us with free TPU access.\\
\section{Introduction}\label{sec:introduction}
\vspace{2mm}
Indigenous languages are starting to attract attention in the field of natural language processing (NLP), with the number of related publications growing in recent years \cite{mager-etal-2018-challenges}. In spite of this interest, there remains a multitude of challenges for handling Indigenous languages. Complexity of the morphological systems of some of these languages and lack of standard orthography for writing them are among these challenges~\cite{mager-etal-2018-challenges,  littell-etal-2018-indigenous}. The most fundamental issue facing NLP efforts, however, remains the lack of digital textual data that can be exploited for systems development.

In this work, we describe a scenario usually faced when trying to develop NLP systems for Indigenous languages and we focus on machine translation (MT). We adopt a neural machine translation approach (NMT)~\cite{koehn2017neural} as our method. We show that, in spite of its recent success on many contexts, NMT still struggles in very low-resource settings involving Indigenous languages. This is due to the core difficulty of lack of parallel textual data, but also even monolingual data.

\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{centering}
\includegraphics[scale=0.30]{IND_langs_large7.png}
  \caption{A map of the ten Indigenous languages covered by IndT5, our text-to-text Transformer model, and our IndCorpus dataset. The languages are mainly spoken in five Latin American countries.}
  \label{fig:cities}
 \end{centering}
\end{figure}

Although our main goal in this work in particular is to develop translation models from Spanish to several Indigenous languages of the Americas, we adopt a transfer learning approach where we offer resources that can be exploited for other downstream tasks. Namely, we build a  dataset for ten Indigenous languages and Spanish which we refer to as \textbf{\texttt{IndCorpus}}.  Figure~\ref{fig:cities} and Table~\ref{tab:langs_overview} provide an overview of the ten Indigenous languages in our new dataset~\cite{Ethnologue2021}.  We also exploit \textbf{\texttt{IndCorpus}} for pre-training a Transformer language model following the unified approach introduced by~\cite{raffel2019exploring}. Our resulting model, \textbf{\texttt{IndT5}}, treats every text NLP problem as a ``text-to-text" problem, i.e. taking text as input and producing new text as output. We apply \textbf{\texttt{IndT5}} to the MT task as a way to transfer knowledge acquired by the model to this particular context. Our experiments show the utility of our new language model and the dataset it exploits for the downstream Indigenous MT task but that very large space for improvement still exists.

\input{Tables/langs_overview}

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In Section~\ref{sec:literature}, we introduce recent MT work in low-resource and Indigenous languages settings. In Section~\ref{sec:LM}, we describe how we develop our new language model for ten Indigenous languages. In Section~\ref{sec:our_MT_models}, we describe our NMT models. We conclude in Section~\ref{sec:conc}.

\section{Related Work}\label{sec:literature}

\subsection{Low-Resource MT}
A number of methods and techniques have been proposed to mitigate the effects of having rather small datasets for machine translation. These include data augmentation, transfer learning, hyperparameter tuning, incorporating linguistic knowledge, and knowledge distillation.

Since the main bottleneck of low-resource MT is the lack of abundant parallel textual data, data augmentation is straightforwardly a potential method to enhance the model performance. Back translation is a way to augment parallel data \cite{sennrich-etal-2016-improving}. By training a target-to-source translation model with original data and feeding in monolingual data of target language, synthetic parallel data is generated. If the target language is rich in textual data, much synthetic parallel data can be added into training data and may benefit the final translation model.

Transfer learning is another method that can boost the performance of MT on low-resource languages \cite{zoph2016transfer,DBLP:journals/corr/abs-1708-09803,DBLP:journals/corr/abs-1809-00357}. The rationale behind one approach to transfer learning is that knowledge obtained while translating high-resource languages may be transferable to translation of low-resource languages. In \newcite{zoph2016transfer}, a parent model is first trained on a high-resource language pair (i.e., French to English) then a child model is trained on a low-resource language pair (i.e., Uzbek to English). The Uzbek-English model has $10.7$ BLEU score without parent model and $15.0$ with the parent model. It is also shown that the more similar the two source languages, the more performance gain is possible. For example, a Spanish-English MT model has $16.4$ BLEU score without parent model and $31.0$ with French-English parent model. The performance gain is much more than when transferring French-English parent model to the more distant context of the Uzbek-English child model.

\newcite{sennrich2019revisiting} argue that instead of using hyperparameters that work in high-resource settings, there should be a set of hyperparameters specific to the low-resource scenario. For example, keeping the vocabulary size small, training a model with relatively small capacity, and having smaller batch size may be beneficial to model performance. When building a vocabulary with BPE, by reducing the the number of merge operations, a smaller vocabulary can be obtained and an inclusion of low-frequency (sub)words can be avoided. Inclusion of inclusion of low-frequency (sub)words could otherwise negatively influencing representation learning effectiveness.

Leveraging linguistic knowledge for data augmentation,~\newcite{zhou2019handling} use a rule-based syntax parser and a dictionary to generate parallel data. By reordering target-language sentences into source-language syntactic structure and then mapping target-language words into source-language words with a dictionary, the size of  parallel data is enlarged and translation performance is improved.

\newcite{baziotis2020language} leverage a language model to help enhance the performance of the translation model. Similar to the idea of knowledge distillation \cite{hinton2015distilling}, a teacher model and a student model are trained where the language model plays the role of teacher and translation model plays the role of student. With this design, the teacher model needs only monolingual data and does not have to rely on large parallel data.

\subsection{MT of Indigenous Languages}

Unlike high-resource languages such as English and French, Indigenous languages are often low-resource. Due to this, it is common that researchers of Indigenous languages adopt methods that can fare well in low-resource scenarios. This includes using the Transformer architecture and its variants in both low-resource~\cite{adebara2021translating,adebara-etal-2020-translating,przystupa2019neural} and Indigenous language~\cite{feldman2020neural,orife2020neural, Tan2020AddressingCO} settings.

Despite the fact that Indigenous languages face difficulties similar to most low-resource languages, there are some challenges specific to Indigenous languages. As~\newcite{mager-etal-2018-challenges} point out, some Indigenous languages have complex morphological systems and some have various non-standardized orthographic conventions. For example, \newcite{micher2018addressing} shows that in Inuktitut, an Indigineous language in North America with a complex morphological system, a corpus of one million tokens, there are about 225K different types for Inuktitut while about 30K types for English. Also, \newcite{micher2018addressing} shows that there can be lack of standardized spelling for some words. For example, the word \textit{Haammalat} in Inuktitut has another seven different forms.

To cope with the issue of complex morphology,~\newcite{Ortega-et-al-2020} build a translation model for Qeuchua, an Indigenous language of South America, with an integrated morphological segmentation method. To treat orthographic variation, \newcite{feldman2020neural} standardize text with a rule-based system which converts diacritics and letters to contemporary orthographic convention.

\section{Example Appendix}

\end{document}

\section{System description}
\input{Tables/IndT5_data}
\section{IndT5}\label{sec:LM}
\vspace{2mm}
We train an Indigenous language model adopting the unified and flexible text-to-text transfer Transformer (T5) approach~\cite{raffel2019exploring}. T5 treats every text-based language task as a ``text-to-text" problem, taking text format as input and producing new text format as output. T5 is essentially an encoder-decoder Transformer~\cite{vaswani2017attention}, with the encoder and decoder similar in configuration and size to a BERT\textsubscript{Base}\cite{devlin2019bert} but with some architectural modifications. Modifications include applying a normalization layer before a sub-block and adding a pre-norm (i.e., initial input to the sub-block output). We call our resulting model \textbf{\texttt{IndT5}}. We now describe our dataset, vocabulary, and pre-training method for developing \textbf{\texttt{IndT5}}.

\subsection{Training Data}
We build \textbf{\texttt{IndCorpus}}, a collection of ten Indigenous languages and Spanish comprising $1.17$ GB of text ($\sim$5.37M sentences), to pre-train \textbf{\texttt{IndT5}}. \textbf{\texttt{IndCorpus}} is collected from both Wikipedia and the Bible. Table~\ref{data_tab} provides the size and number of sentences for each language in our dataset.

\subsection{IndT5 Vocabulary}

The T5 \cite{raffel2019exploring} model is based on a vocabulary acquired by the SentencePiece library\footnote{\url{https://github.com/google/sentencepiece}} using English, French, German, and Romanian web pages from ``Colossal Clean Crawled Corpus" (or C4 for short). We use a similar procedure to create our Indigenous languages vocabulary. Namely, we use SentencePiece \cite{kudo2018subword} to encode text as WordPiece~\cite{smp2016} tokens with a vocabulary size of $100$K WordPieces extracted from \textbf{\texttt{IndCorpus}}.

\input{Tables/ST_data}

\subsection{Unsupervised Pre-Training}
We leverage our unlabeled Indigenous corpus, \textbf{\texttt{IndCorpus}}, to pre-train \textbf{\texttt{IndT5}}. For that, we use a denoising objective \cite{raffel2019exploring} that does not require labels. The main idea is  feeding the model with corrupted (masked) versions of the original sentence, and training it to reconstruct the original sentence.  Inspired by BERT's objective (i.e., masked language model)~\cite{devlin2019bert}, the  denoising objective ~\cite{raffel2019exploring} works by randomly sampling and dropping out $15$\% of tokens in the input sequence. All consecutive spans of dropped-out tokens are then replaced by a single sentinel token. We pre-train our model for $100$K steps on the \textbf{\texttt{IndCorpus}} using the T5\textsubscript{\textsubscript{Base}} architecture.\footnote{Both encoder and decoder of T5\textsubscript{Base} model has $12$ layers each with $12$ attention heads, and $768$ hidden units.} We refer to this model as IndT5\textsubscript{100k}. Afterwards, we further pre-train on only the ten Indigenous languages part of our dataset (i.e., without the Spanish data) for $40$K steps. We refer to this version of the model as IndT5\textsubscript{140k}. For both pre-training steps, we use a learning rate of $0.01$, a batch size of $128$ sequences, and a maximum sequence length of $512$. We use the original implementation of T5 in the TensorFlow framework.~\footnote{\url{https://github.com/google-research/text-to-text-transfer-transformer}}.  We train the models on Google Cloud TPU with $8$ cores (v$3.8$) from TensorFlow Research Cloud (TFRC).\footnote{\url{https://www.tensorflow.org/tfrc}}

\section{Our Machine Translation Models}\label{sec:our_MT_models}

\input{Tables/examples}

\subsection{Parallel Data }
As part of the AmericasNLP 2021 Shared Task on Open Machine Translation, the training (Train) and development (Dev) datasets for ten target Indigeneous languages along with the source language Spanish were released. All the datasets are  manually translated. Table~\ref{tab:ST_data} shows the number of sentences of different language pairs in shared task data.
Table~\ref{tab:exp} provides example sentences extracted from the Dev dataset with their corresponding translations.

\subsection{Approach}\label{subsec:Approach}
For all languages pairs except \textit{quy} and \textit{gn}, we fine-tune each of the two versions of our language model, i.e., both  IndT5\textsubscript{100k} and IndT5\textsubscript{140k}, under two conditions:
\textbf{(A)} we train on Train using $100$\% of Dev data for validation, for 150 epochs; \textbf{(B)} we fine-tune the best epoch from setting A for 50 epochs, adding $80$\% of Dev data to Train (using the remaining $20$\% Dev for validation).

\subsection{Evaluation}

We report the results of both IndT5\textsubscript{100k} and IndT5\textsubscript{140k} models using two metrics: BLEU score~\cite{papineni2002bleu} and ChrF++~\cite{popovic2017chrf++}. Tables \ref{tab:res1} and \ref{tab:res2} show the results of both models  on Test sets for each of the language pairs using settings A and B described in Section~\ref{subsec:Approach}, respectively.

\subsection{Discussion}

The results presented in Table~\ref{tab:res1} and Table~\ref{tab:res2}  show that all our models, with both settings A and B, outperform the respective baselines across all languages. An exception is the languages \textit{aym} and \textit{shp}. As expected, fine-tuning the IndT5\textsubscript{100k} and IndT5\textsubscript{140k} models using the training data and $80$\% of the Dev data (i.e., setting B) improves the results with a mean of $+0.003\%$ and  $+0.04\%$ in ChrF++ on the Test data, respectively. Interestingly, further pre-training IndT5 on only the  ten Indigenous languages  (i.e. target languages) produces better results with an average improvement of  $+0.003\%$ and $+0.004\%$  in settings A  and B, respectively. Overall, the impact of limited data is clear.

 \input{Tables/IndT5_100k_res}
 \input{Tables/IndT5_140k_res}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Q: Deploying docker images I have a nodejs server app and a separate reacts client app.
I have created docker images for both and a docker compose at the top level to build and run both
I'm struggling to understand how I can deploy/host these somewhere?
Do I deploy both separate images to the docker register? Or is this a way of hosting this on it's own as an entire docker container?

A: Docker Registry is storage for built images. Think it as location for compiled "binaries" if comparing regular software.
Regularly, you might have some kind of CI for your source code, and when you trigger it for example by committing into 'master' branch, new image is built on the CI. It can push it into registry for long term storing, or push it directly to your hosting server (or registry in your server).
You can configure your docker-compose to pull latest images from private registry, when you just rerun it in your server.
Basically, hosting happens when you just run docker-compose up in some server, if you have done required configurations. It really depends where you are going to host them.
Maybe helpful:

*

*https://www.docker.com/blog/how-to-deploy-on-remote-docker-hosts-with-docker-compose/

*https://medium.com/@stoyanov.veseline/pushing-docker-images-to-a-private-registry-with-docker-compose-d2797097751

A: If you've already built the docker images on local, you can use DockerHub for hosting the docker images. If you're using Github Actions this gist script can be helpful.