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Issues Of The Environment: What Happens Next With The Gelman 1,4 Dioxane Plume

The 1,4 dioxane plume emanating from the old Gelman Sciences facility on Wagner Road in Scio Township continues to expand through groundwater in the greater Ann Arbor area. At a recent public forum, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said it would take decades to get the contamination designated as a Superfund site and clean-up could take decades beyond that. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," WEMU's David Fair talks to Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners chair Jason Morgan about what is happening now to better address the environmental threat.




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Less expensive mirrorless camera for video?

So what do you buy in 2020 if you want an inexpensive ILC that you're going to use primarily for video? Panasonic? I'm thinking of buying used for less than, say, $850 with lens. Probably just leave the kit lens on there for the moment, probably just use it for family videos. I love the form factor of the GX9 but the lack of a mic jack is a bummer. But if I'm not shooting super serious video do I even need a mic jack?

Please don't suggest phones, I really hate phones.




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What Happened Today: Health Care System Crumbles, Testing Questions

Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, answers questions about access to testing for COVID-19, false-negative results and the challenges of mass testing.




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Reopening After COVID: The 3 Phases Recommended By The White House

President Trump wants states to begin relaxing stay-at-home orders and reopen businesses after the spread of the coronavirus pummeled the global economy and killed millions of jobs. The White House coronavirus task force released guidelines on April 16 to encourage state governors to adopt a phased approach to lifting restrictions across the country. Some states have moved ahead without meeting the criteria . The task force rejected a set of additional detailed draft recommendations for schools, restaurants, churches and mass transit systems from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that it considered " overly prescriptive ." A number of states have already begun to lift restrictions, allowing for businesses including hair salons, diners and tattoo parlors to once again begin accepting customers. Health experts have warned that reopening too quickly could result in a potential rebound in cases. States are supposed to wait to begin lifting any restrictions until they have a 14




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Public Health Experts Say Many States Are Opening Too Soon To Do So Safely

As of Friday in Texas, you can go to a tanning salon. In Indiana, houses of worship are being allowed to open with no cap on attendance. Places like Pennsylvania are taking a more cautious approach, only starting to ease restrictions in some counties based on the number of COVID-19 cases. By Monday, at least 31 states will have partially reopened after seven weeks of restrictions. The moves come as President Trump pushes for the country to get back to work despite public health experts warning that it's too soon. "The early lesson that was learned, really, we learned from the island of Hokkaido in Japan, where they did a really good job of controlling the initial phase of the outbreak," said Bob Bednarczyk, assistant professor of global health and epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta. Because of that success, many of the restrictions on the island were lifted. But cases and deaths surged in a second wave of infections. Twenty-six days later




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Fort Worth Officer Kills Woman In Her Bedroom In Response To 'Open Structure Call'

A white police officer fired through the window of a black woman's home early Saturday and killed her after responding to a call that a neighbor placed about an open front door, authorities in Fort Worth, Texas, say. Around 2:25 a.m., officers responded to an "open structure call" made by a neighbor to the police department's nonemergency number. Inside the home, Atatiana Jefferson, 28, and her 8-year-old nephew were playing video games. Body camera footage released by the police shows the officer outside the home, looking into Jefferson's bedroom window and shouting, "Put your hands up! Show me your hands!" before firing a single bullet that killed Jefferson. Kyev Tatum, a pastor and community activist who was on the scene shortly after the shooting, told NPR that the neighbor who called the police was worried about the welfare of Jefferson. He said Jefferson may have had her front door open for a reason. "This was probably one of the first days that we had cool weather in Fort Worth.




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03 - crows happen - vampire deer by pyramid termite

my daughter has a treefull of crows outside her window and she's convinced they're as interested in her as she is in them she's sure they are her friends i've tried to tell her that i'm not sure they're really all that interested in her, but i don't really think that's getting through to her - and i don't know whether she really understands the current situation - why she has to stay home, why her dad had to stay in quarantine for 14 days just because he was a little sick, why her dad was worried about what was going to happen i guess this song is about all that i can't tell you if the crows like you even though you believe they talk to you they were created for another world but maybe we pretend that it's not our world too fly around and looking for a meal fly around and looking for a summer deal but it's april and where we live everything takes so long to happen well, it's not much fun, wondering if i'll be gone i can't even go for a walk on the lawn the days all count to the last fade away but then again, it's always really been that way do you think the crows don't think about all that? somehow i think they do - the way they gather at their friend lying there, complaining everything more or less has to happen but with any luck, it will warm up a little and i think my hourglass isn't ready to settle we can go out and watch the crows once again and you can tell me that they are your friends one day we'll get to walk out and feel free and not think about the things that could be we can be like crows and bluff our way through all the things, good and bad, that happen and the secret to life, so i've been told is you keep lucking out and then you find yourself old and you wonder, what the hell did i do with all that time? and it didn't make much sense, and it didn't even rhyme and if i gave you a ring for surety some crow would go and grab it and hide it in a tree and forget about it - that crow and you and me just more of those things that happen




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Dubspot Radio Rewind: J.Pennyworth + Exclusive Interview

Dubspot Radio Podcast revisits an exclusive interview and chill mix selection recorded live by a Dubspot student known as J.Pennyworth.

/files/2014/09/J_Pennyworth_Thumb.jpg

The post Dubspot Radio Rewind: J.Pennyworth + Exclusive Interview appeared first on Dubspot Blog.




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Metatalktail Hour: Open Thread!

Just chat it up, fuzzballs!




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Kurz nach hochrangigem Treffen – Sprecherin von Mike Pence positiv getestet

Die Corona-Erkrankungen im Umfeld des Weißen Hauses häufen sich: Die Sprecherin von Vizepräsident Mike Pence hat sich mit dem Coronavirus infiziert, ebenso ein Assistent von Trumps Tochter Ivanka. Der Präsident gibt sich unbeeindruckt.




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As Governors Urge Businesses To Reopen, Workers May Be Pushed Off Unemployment

There's a call Laura Jean Truman is dreading, and she's convinced it's just a matter of time before it comes. Truman, who's a server at Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta, says the source of her angst is the fear that sometime in the next few weeks her boss is going to call and say it's time to go back to work, putting her in the position of having to make a choice between her safety and being able to pay the bills that continue to arrive despite the coronavirus. "Right now, everyone who is not working at restaurants is able to be on unemployment," she told NPR. "But once restaurants decide to open, and if we decide that we don't feel safe going back into those restaurants, we then are no longer eligible for unemployment because then we have a job opportunity that we're turning down," Truman explained. "It's a tremendously scary thing to have to think about," she said. The predicament is one in which millions of people receiving state unemployment benefits along with federal dollars from the




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Shanghai Disneyland Sells Out Of Tickets For Post-Shutdown Reopening

It took only minutes for Shanghai Disneyland to run out of tickets to Monday's reopening as people jumped at a chance to visit the amusement park for the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak forced it to close in late January. Visitors to the theme park will be required to wear face masks at all times unless they are eating. Shanghai Disneyland said it's taking "a deliberate approach" as it reopens. It will require physical distancing and sharply reduce capacity; some crowd-oriented features, such as children's play areas and theater shows, will remain shut down. There will be no selfies with famous Disney characters, the company said. Hand sanitizer is being widely deployed, and cleaning measures have been stepped up. Before they can enter the park, visitors will also need to prove they don't pose a coronavirus risk. They will undergo a temperature screening and a check of their personal QR code — reflecting their "green" or "red" status on a phone-based app. A green code, signaling




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What Happened Today: Health Care System Crumbles, Testing Questions

Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, answers questions about access to testing for COVID-19, false-negative results and the challenges of mass testing.




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Grand Re-Opening!

The store is open (again)! It's finally open (again)!




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A Few Schools Reopen, But Remote Learning Could Go On For Years In U.S.

May 7 is the date that Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, declared it was safe to open up schools. The state has had fewer than 500 reported cases of the coronavirus as of this week. But according to the state's Office of Public Instruction, just a few school districts in small towns have taken the governor up on the offer. That gap — between a state executive proclaiming schools OK to open and the reality of tiny groups of students gathering in just a few schools — shows the logistical challenges educators and state officials around the country face in any decision to reopen. Willow Creek School in Three Forks, Mont., is opening its doors and expects a few dozen of its 56 students to show up. Troy, a northwestern Montana town, is holding limited and voluntary "study hall" visits, focusing on special education students, as well as some outdoor activities. The town of Glasgow says it will open its schools on a limited basis to students without devices. Libby, a town of fewer than 3




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CDC Guidance For Reopening Schools, Child Care And Summer Camps Is Leaked

No field trips. No game rooms. No teddy bears. These are some of the CDC's guidelines for reopening schools, childcare centers and day camps safely in places where coronavirus cases are on the decline. The guidance, which also covers restaurants, churches and other public places, was obtained by The Associated Press , which reports that the White House tried to keep it from coming to light. The New York Times quoted Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, as being concerned that the guidelines were "overly prescriptive." The CDC does not have authority to enforce its guidance, which is intended for public information only; the actual policy decisions are up to state and local governments. Schools are closed through the end of the school year throughout much of the country, with the exception of Montana, which welcomed a handful of students back this week. Child care protocols are different in different states. But millions of parents need child care so they can work, and socialization and




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France Is Planning A Partial Reopening Of Schools

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: More than 50 million children here in the U.S. will be out of school for the remainder of the academic year due to the coronavirus. In Europe, however, a different story. This coming Monday, France is set to join a small number of European countries attempting a partial reopening of schools. This week, French president Emmanuel Macron visited a primary school northwest of Paris that has remained open for the children of essential health workers. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Speaking French). PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON: (Speaking French). UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Speaking French). MACRON: (Speaking French). KELLY: That little girl there telling the president her mother works as a nurse in a coronavirus unit. Well, Macron's education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, was there at the school as well. He is overseeing the reopening of schools next week, and he joins us via Skype now from Paris. Bonjour.




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French Education Minister Says School Reopenings Will Be Done 'Very Progressively'

Primary schools in France are reopening next week. There will, of course, be social distancing measures in place. Class sizes will be limited to 15 and no games at recess. It's a gradual three-week process beginning with preschoolers. The government says the reopening is voluntary and students won't be forced to return. Still, many parents and administrators are against the plan. More than 300 mayors in the Paris region signed an open letter to President Macron, urging a delay in reopening and saying the timeline is " untenable and unrealistic ." They said schools needed more time to implement the required sanitary measures. Jean-Michel Blanquer, France's minister of education, talked with Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered about bringing students back to class for the first time since mid-March. Here are selected excerpts: Do you think they will come? Do you think you will have 15 students in classrooms come next week? Yes, because we are asking the parents during the last




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TV Opening Sequences Quiz

Identify each TV show by a single frame taken from their opening titles. All those years spent on the sofa watching mindless entertainment can finally pay off, if only in Internet glory.

I wrote this to give my friends (mostly longtime pub-quizzers) something to puzzle over. None of the shows are obscure (I tried to provide a healthy mixture of old and new shows) but this is harder than it seems.

[Link]




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Minnesota Gov. Walz Says More Testing Is Needed Before Many Businesses Can Reopen

As Minnesota Gov. Walz weighs his decision on when to let nonessential businesses reopen, he's facing a lot of pressure from a frustrated workforce, especially from small business owners who are trying to stay afloat during the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus outbreak. "The frustrations that they have are real. These are businesses that, they may have been in families for generations or they built up," the Democratic governor says in an interview with Morning Edition . The state is under a stay-at-home order until at least May 18 . In reopening the economy, he says, businesses will face another challenge: consumer confidence. Walz worries that — even with stay-at-home orders lifted — many consumers will be skittish about reengaging with businesses until they feel safe. Walz says many businesses should remain closed until the state ramps up its testing capacity. Achieving that goal will help contain the virus's spread, as well as bolster the public's confidence, he says.




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Pence Spokeswoman Katie Miller Tests Positive For Coronavirus

Updated at 4:02 p.m. ET The White House on Friday confirmed a second case of coronavirus this week, now in Vice President Pence's office, as both the president and his No. 2 have recently begun traveling again. Pence spokeswoman Katie Miller tested positive for the virus on Friday, after having tested negative Thursday. President Trump told reporters Friday that Miller hasn't come into contact with him but has "spent some time" with the vice president. "She is a wonderful young woman, Katie," he said. "She tested very good for a long period of time. And then all of a sudden today she tested positive." "So, she tested positive out of the blue," he continued. "This is why the whole concept of tests aren't necessarily, right, the tests are perfect but something can happen between a test where it's good and then something happens and then all of a sudden, she was tested very recently and tested negative." The discovery caused Pence's departure to Iowa on Friday morning to be delayed by




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Civilian Coronavirus Corps Aims To Get Pennsylvania Back To Work

Pennsylvania's governor wants to attempt a New Deal-inspired solution for getting the state's more than 1.7 million unemployed residents back to some semblance of regular work. This week, Democrat Tom Wolf announced a still-vague plan for a "Commonwealth Civilian Coronavirus Corps" which, he said, would ideally be a broad program to train workers to test for COVID-19 and conduct contact tracing to monitor infection rates, while simultaneously reducing unemployment. Wolf's spokeswoman, Lyndsay Kensinger, said it's no accident that the proposed program's name is reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Great Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps , which focused on the preservation of state parks and forests. "The governor will announce more details in the coming weeks, but the corps would be a 21st-century approach to historic programs like those in the New Deal," Kensinger said. Still unknown: When exactly the program would start, how many people the state might hire and




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What Happened Today: Health Care System Crumbles, Testing Questions

Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, answers questions about access to testing for COVID-19, false-negative results and the challenges of mass testing.




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Reopening After COVID: The 3 Phases Recommended By The White House

President Trump wants states to begin relaxing stay-at-home orders and reopen businesses after the spread of the coronavirus pummeled the global economy and killed millions of jobs. The White House coronavirus task force released guidelines on April 16 to encourage state governors to adopt a phased approach to lifting restrictions across the country. Some states have moved ahead without meeting the criteria . The task force rejected a set of additional detailed draft recommendations for schools, restaurants, churches and mass transit systems from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that it considered " overly prescriptive ." A number of states have already begun to lift restrictions, allowing for businesses including hair salons, diners and tattoo parlors to once again begin accepting customers. Health experts have warned that reopening too quickly could result in a potential rebound in cases. States are supposed to wait to begin lifting any restrictions until they have a 14




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It’s Happening Now! Pope Summons World Leaders to Rome

This is simply stunning! The Vatican has just made an unprecedented, audacious overture for religious unity.




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Small Business Owners In Georgia Open Their Doors To A Great Unknown

In the week since Georgia’s shelter-in-place order ended for most, businesses have started to open back up. But with new rules and wary customers, many small businesses are still finding their feet. GPB News reporters fanned out across the state to ask small business owners how their reopening process changes the way they operate.




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Closed For Quarantine, Georgia's Independent Cinemas Turn From Silver Screen To Digital Streams

Among the small businesses shuttered by shelter-in-place orders are two of Georgia’s historic art-house theaters. How are these independent cinemas surviving, and innovating, now that their screens have gone dark? Christopher Escobar, owner of Atlanta’s Plaza Theatre and executive director of the Atlanta Film Society, said that business had already been slowing down for about two weeks prior to their closing. And Pamela Kohn, executive director of Ciné in Athens, said their decision to shut down the theater was difficult, but necessary.




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Musician And Author Billy Bragg Says Free Speech Depends On Accountability, Music On Empathy

Billy Bragg is many things: a poet, punk rocker, folk musician, and singer-songwriter. He’s also an activist, music historian, and best-selling author. In the words of another poet, he contains multitudes. Bragg’s newest work, The Three Dimensions of Freedom , is a slim volume that makes a weighty argument. It’s a pamphlet in the tradition of Thomas Paine, whose influential polemics helped spark the American Revolution, and later got him convicted of sedition.




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Episode 0x0E: Open Source Projects and Corporate Entanglement

This episode is a recording of Richard Fontana's talk, Open Source Projects and Corporate Entanglement from the 2011 Linux Collaboration Summit, with some commentary from Bradley and Karen on the talk.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:34)

Segment 1 (03:48)

Segment 2 (48:25)


Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).




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0x2C: FOSDEM 2012: Laurent's Open Licences before European Courts

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Philippe Laurent's FOSDEM 2012 talk, Open Licences before European Courts from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:36)

Karen and Bradley mention there is one talk remaining after this one from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

Segment 1 (03:04)

Philippe's slides are available from faif.us. Note: the slides are licensed differently than the show: they are CC-By-SA-3.0-Unported (rather than -USA).

Segment 2 (32:22)


Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).




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0x53: Can Plagiarism Happen Under Copyleft?

Bradley and Karen discuss what plagiarism is (or isn't) and how it interacts with copyleft licenses.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:00:37)

Segment 1 (00:16:16)


Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).





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Open Church, Go to Jail?

An arrest warrant was issued for a Florida pastor who refused to suspend in-person worship during the coronavirus crisis. New York’s mayor also issued a dire warning to congregations.




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Charity: Janet Poppendieck (Ep. 8)

In this edition of The Secret Ingredient, we talk with Janet Poppendieck, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York and author of Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement (Penguin, 1999), about the complexities of food charities, governmental food programs, and the overall condition of our economy, our nations...



  • The Secret Ingredient

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Spencer Haywood (Ep. 11, 2020)

This week on In Black America, producer and host John L. Hanson, Jr. presents a 2015 interview with ground-breaking and record-setting NBA legend Spencer Haywood. Haywood was inducted into The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in September 2015.




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Fight Over Virus’s Death Toll Opens Grim New Front in Election Battle

Elements of the right have sought to bolster President Trump’s political standing by turning scientific questions into political issues.




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White House Rejects C.D.C.’s Coronavirus Reopening Plan

Detailed guidelines for reopening drafted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were blocked from publication after Trump administration officials labeled them “overly prescriptive.”




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Sweet Repentance

We can do nothing by ourselves except make daily the decision to depend on Christ ; by His virtue we can reflect, regret and reform. We are all struggling amid this time of separation and distance, but our Friend is Always there... commune with Him and reach for your Bible with us ! You'll learn about the unpardonable sin and Satan's repentance, and you'll understand which biblical laws are still active for us to obey today, or if we can solely fall under God's grace with no other regard.



  • Bible Answers Live

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Italy Opens Its Own Probe of Agent's Slaying in Iraq

ROME, April 27 -- Dissatisfied with the results of a joint investigation with the United States, Italy on Wednesday began its own probe into the March 4 killing of one of its intelligence agents by U.S. troops in Baghdad.




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CONTEST: 7 Virtual Jazz Club's Contest - 5th Edition Applications For 2020 Are Now Open

7 Virtual Jazz Club continues its worldwide search for emerging and underrecognized creative musicians of all ages and backgrounds. This Year's Categories Under 25 Amateurs and Pros To enter the contest, soloists and groups pay a small registration fee and submit a video (maximum seven minutes) of their ...




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“Me uní a 'Los Danieles', porque quiero defender la prensa independiente”

El periodista colombiano Daniel Samper Pizano escribirá su columna cuando quiera y cuando pueda




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Iglesia Católica suspende 19 sacerdotes por presuntos actos de abuso sexual




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A top aide to Vice President Pence tests positive for coronavirus


WASHINGTON — A top aide to Vice President Mike Pence tested positive for coronavirus on Friday, making her the second known person working at the White House to contract the illness in the past two days, according to several sources familiar with the situation. Katie Miller, the vice president’s press secretary, was notified Friday about […]




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As India reopens, deadly accidents break out


Many of the country’s struggles before the pandemic — including mass internal migration, unsafe workplaces and industrial disasters — have been amplified by the lockdown and the subsequent move to reopen businesses.




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Reopenings bring new cases in S. Korea, virus fears in Italy


ROME (AP) — South Korea’s capital closed down more than 2,100 bars and other nightspots Saturday because of a new cluster of coronavirus infections, Germany scrambled to contain fresh outbreaks at slaughterhouses, and Italian authorities worried that people were getting too friendly at cocktail hour during the country’s first weekend of eased restrictions. The new […]




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How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

Brian McCullough, who runs Internet History Podcast, also wrote a book named How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone which did a fantastic job of capturing the ethos of the early web and telling the backstory of so many people & projects behind it's evolution.

I think the quote which best the magic of the early web is

Jim Clark came from the world of machines and hardware, where development schedules were measured in years—even decades—and where “doing a startup” meant factories, manufacturing, inventory, shipping schedules and the like. But the Mosaic team had stumbled upon something simpler. They had discovered that you could dream up a product, code it, release it to the ether and change the world overnight. Thanks to the Internet, users could download your product, give you feedback on it, and you could release an update, all in the same day. In the web world, development schedules could be measured in weeks.

The part I bolded in the above quote from the book really captures the magic of the Internet & what pulled so many people toward the early web.

The current web - dominated by never-ending feeds & a variety of closed silos - is a big shift from the early days of web comics & other underground cool stuff people created & shared because they thought it was neat.

Many established players missed the actual direction of the web by trying to create something more akin to the web of today before the infrastructure could support it. Many of the "big things" driving web adoption relied heavily on chance luck - combined with a lot of hard work & a willingness to be responsive to feedback & data.

  • Even when Marc Andreessen moved to the valley he thought he was late and he had "missed the whole thing," but he saw the relentless growth of the web & decided making another web browser was the play that made sense at the time.
  • Tim Berners-Lee was dismayed when Andreessen's web browser enabled embedded image support in web documents.
  • Early Amazon review features were originally for editorial content from Amazon itself. Bezos originally wanted to launch a broad-based Amazon like it is today, but realized it would be too capital intensive & focused on books off the start so he could sell a known commodity with a long tail. Amazon was initially built off leveraging 2 book distributors ( Ingram and Baker & Taylor) & R. R. Bowker's Books In Print catalog. They also did clever hacks to meet minimum order requirements like ordering out of stock books as part of their order, so they could only order what customers had purchased.
  • eBay began as an /aw/ subfolder on the eBay domain name which was hosted on a residential internet connection. Pierre Omidyar coded the auction service over labor day weekend in 1995. The domain had other sections focused on topics like ebola. It was switched from AuctionWeb to a stand alone site only after the ISP started charging for a business line. It had no formal Paypal integration or anything like that, rather when listings started to charge a commission, merchants would mail physical checks in to pay for the platform share of their sales. Beanie Babies also helped skyrocket platform usage.
  • The reason AOL carpet bombed the United States with CDs - at their peak half of all CDs produced were AOL CDs - was their initial response rate was around 10%, a crazy number for untargeted direct mail.
  • Priceline was lucky to have survived the bubble as their idea was to spread broadly across other categories beyond travel & they were losing about $30 per airline ticket sold.
  • The broader web bubble left behind valuable infrastructure like unused fiber to fuel continued growth long after the bubble popped. The dot com bubble was possible in part because there was a secular bull market in bonds stemming back to the early 1980s & falling debt service payments increased financial leverage and company valuations.
  • TED members hissed at Bill Gross when he unveiled GoTo.com, which ranked "search" results based on advertiser bids.
  • Excite turned down offering the Google founders $1.6 million for the PageRank technology in part because Larry Page insisted to Excite CEO George Bell ‘If we come to work for Excite, you need to rip out all the Excite technology and replace it with [our] search.’ And, ultimately, that’s—in my recollection—where the deal fell apart.”
  • Steve Jobs initially disliked the multi-touch technology that mobile would rely on, one of the early iPhone prototypes had the iPod clickwheel, and Apple was against offering an app store in any form. Steve Jobs so loathed his interactions with the record labels that he did not want to build a phone & first licensed iTunes to Motorola, where they made the horrible ROKR phone. He only ended up building a phone after Cingular / AT&T begged him to.
  • Wikipedia was originally launched as a back up feeder site that was to feed into Nupedia.
  • Even after Facebook had strong traction, Marc Zuckerberg kept working on other projects like a file sharing service. Facebook's news feed was publicly hated based on the complaints, but it almost instantly led to a doubling of usage of the site so they never dumped it. After spreading from college to college Facebook struggled to expand ad other businesses & opening registration up to all was a hail mary move to see if it would rekindle growth instead of selling to Yahoo! for a billion dollars.

The book offers a lot of color to many important web related companies.

And many companies which were only briefly mentioned also ran into the same sort of lucky breaks the above companies did. Paypal was heavily reliant on eBay for initial distribution, but even that was something they initially tried to block until it became so obvious they stopped fighting it:

“At some point I sort of quit trying to stop the EBay users and mostly focused on figuring out how to not lose money,” Levchin recalls. ... In the late 2000s, almost a decade after it first went public, PayPal was drifting toward obsolescence and consistently alienating the small businesses that paid it to handle their online checkout. Much of the company’s code was being written offshore to cut costs, and the best programmers and designers had fled the company. ... PayPal’s conversion rate is lights-out: Eighty-nine percent of the time a customer gets to its checkout page, he makes the purchase. For other online credit and debit card transactions, that number sits at about 50 percent.

Here is a podcast interview of Brian McCullough by Chris Dixon.

How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone is a great book well worth a read for anyone interested in the web.




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Seattle parks will remain open this weekend with same coronavirus guidelines, plus rain


Seattle banned the use of playgrounds, athletic fields and sports courts weeks ago, taping off playground structures and swings.




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Atari plans to open video-game themed hotels in Seattle and 7 other U.S. cities


Atari, the brand known for pioneering video games like Pong, Asteroids and RollerCoaster Tycoon, is taking its business in a new direction: hotels. In a move that underlines the popularity of esports, the demands of its growing audience and how video games are escaping the bounds of their consoles, Atari announced on Monday that it […]




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Seahawks get four prime-time games, open Sept. 13 at Atlanta as 2020 schedule is set


Seattle will play four prime-time games for the eighth consecutive year (and could get the maximum five later if one is flexed), including its home opener Sept. 20 against the Patriots on "Sunday Night Football."




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Seattle could open 15 miles of streets for pedestrians, bicyclists by banning cars during the coronavirus outbreak


People who live along the streets will still be able to drive to their homes, and delivery workers can still operate on the streets. Through traffic will not be permitted.