Americans gave Republicans a mandate to "enact President Trump's agenda," Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said on Tuesday as he vies for the Senate leadership position.

The post Senate Majority Leader Contender Rick Scott: America Gave Us a Mandate to ‘Enact President Trump’s Agenda’ appeared first on Breitbart.

I want candy! If you're a big fan of sweet treats (or have children who are) and like to let your imagination run wild then you'll need to tweak the "I want candy" notion a little bit to "I Want Candytopia!"

Malachi Scott and his Brock men’s basketball teammates returned to their winning ways with a decisive 78 – 66 victory over Waterloo at the Bob Davis Gymnasium. This win marks Brock’s second victory of the Ontario University Athletics [OUA] season. Scott contributed valuable minutes off the bench, playing 11 minutes and recording four points, four […]

A SCREAMING 419 scammer. Maybe he is frustrated because nobody believes in the $700,000 prize money.

You need to contact Mr Mark Van Jas... but what if you are under the age of 18?

Tune in at 8pm tp hear an At The Opera debut of Ottorino Respighi's Belfagor staring Sylvia Sass.

Tune in at 8pm to hear a special tribute to honor the passing of Soprano Renata Scotto on August 16th at the age of 89 followed by the feature opera Bellini's Il Pirata staring Maria Callas recorded live in 1959.

A kangaroo gave three Durango police officers a late-night workout after taking an evening hop through the southern Colorado city's streets, according to a video shared by police Wednesday.

Looking to build out a showstopping cheese board for your holiday guests? Grab the biggest board you've got and fill it with baguette slices, cheeses and these two incredible cheesy dips.

Keke's stylist tells us about her shoes.

Let the queen conquer.

Cory Booker Dismisses the accusation

The Black Republican thinks America isn’t racist.

Being Mary Jane returns to your screen on July 18th 10/9c!

Trott & Duncan Limited appointed Rakaya Simmons-Landy as its new qualified litigation associate. A spokesperson said, “Trott & Duncan Limited [T&D], a Bermuda-based law firm known for its unparalleled dedication to legal excellence and client service, is thrilled to announce the official appointment of Rakaya Simmons-Landy as the firm’s newest qualified litigation associate. Ms. Simmons-Landy, […]

Bermuda national team footballer Knory Scott scored the winner in Lancing’s 2-1 victory at home to Ashford in the Isthmian League South East Division yesterday [November 9]. The forward struck in the 61st minute with a close-range finish to make it 2-1. Scott has previously played for English non-league sides Kidderminster Harriers and Hastings United. […]

Attorney Perry Trott has launched ‘And the Drama Begins’, which is described as a “vital handbook aimed at demystifying the complexities of estate management for everyone, not just the wealthy.” A spokesperson said, “Well known Bermudian attorney Perry Trott is pleased to announce the release of his book, “And the Drama Begins,” which officially launches today. […]

Youngsters from Victor Scott Preschool in Pembroke brought their favourite book characters to life on Friday [November 1] as they participated in a Storybook Character Parade. The event aimed to ignite a love for reading among children and inspire them through the magic of storytelling. Over 40 preschool children and their families embraced the spirit […]

[Opinion column written by Kim Swan] I offer this tribute in honour of the life of Chesley Trott. Although my art teacher during my years attending Warwick Secondary School in the early 1970s, it was through golf at Port Royal Golf Course from 1971 that we truly came to know each other. To Maria, Chet, […]

There will be a celebration on Wednesday [July 3] marking the 65th Anniversary of the success of the Theatre Boycott. A spokesperson said, “This coming Wednesday, July 3rd , at Harbour Nights, starting at 7 pm, there will be a Celebration of the 65th Anniversary of the Success of the Theatre Boycott. This event is […]

The 65th anniversary of the Theatre Boycott was celebrated during a recent Harbour Nights, with historical tributes, live performances, and community participation. A spokesperson said, “Harbour Nights – July 3rd – was dedicated to the celebration of the 65th Anniversary of the success of the Theatre Boycott. A few minutes after 7 pm, the Ed Christopher […]

Bermudian distance runner Sean Trott said he is delighted with his performance at the TCS New York Marathon on Sunday [November 3]. Trott, a four-time runner-up in the Bermuda Half-Marathon Derby, finished 468th out of 55,508 finishers in 2hr 41min 48sec, shaving 1:16 off his previous personal best. “What an experience!” Trott wrote on social […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Scott Barnes will make his debut in the opening round of the Stars Championship Series at Charlotte Motor Speedway and is eyeing a podium finish. The Bermudian, who competes in the Shifter Masters class, expects to be in a stacked field of 25 to 35 drivers, including the defending champion, Joe […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Bermudian karter Scott Barnes made a sensational start to the opening round of the Stars Championship at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, at the weekend. Barnes, competing in the Shifter Masters class for Maranello Kart USA, almost completed a clean sweep of victories, winning heat one, the pre-final […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Karting driver Scott Barnes will aim to build on his impressive display in the Stars Championship Series opening round when he races in round two, the King of the Castle, in New Castle, Indiana, this weekend. Barnes made a flying start to the series at Queen City Gambit, held at the […]

Scott Barnes was in action at the Stars Championship Series event at the New Castle Motorsports Park in Indiana. In the ROK Shifter Masters Warm-Up race, Barnes completed 5 laps, his fastest lap was his fourth clocking 1:08.313 which was the fastest time in the Class. Clocking 10:19.912, Barnes won the 9-lap ROK Shifter Masters […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Karting driver Scott Barnes endured a weekend blighted by bad luck during the second round of the Stars Championship Series, the King of the Castle, in New Castle, Indiana. Barnes, who made a flying start to the series at Queen City Gambit at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina last […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Karting driver Scott Barnes aims to build on his promising start to the Skusa Pro Tour when he races in the SpringNationals at the Motorsports Country Club of Cincinnati this week. Barnes, who competes in the Shifter Masters class, won the pre-final and final in the opening round and the pre-final […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Karting driver Scott Barnes enjoyed a “double podium” weekend in the Skusa Pro Tour Spring Nationals at the Motorsports Country Club of Cincinnati in Ohio at the weekend. The Bermudian, who competes in the Shifter Masters class, entered rounds three and four of the series leading the standings after a successful […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Karting driver Scott Barnes will look to return to top form when he races in the third round of the Stars Championship Series, the Clash at the Club, in Cincinnati, Ohio, this weekend. Barnes, who competes in the Shifter Masters and ROK classes, knows he needs some impressive displays at the […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Scott Barnes has been honoured as one of three “All-Star” drivers in the Masters division by eKartingNews – the leading karting racing website. Barnes, who competes in the Shifter Masters class, has been named alongside Maranello USA team-mate Joe Ruch and Niki Coello, of Franklin Motorsport, as the three Masters All-Stars. […]

Karting driver Scott Barnes heads into the SummerNationals – the final rounds of the Skusa Pro Tour – this weekend looking to wrap up the Shifter Masters title. Barnes, who will race at the New Castle Motorsports Park in Indianapolis in rounds five and six, is second in the overall points standings after a successful […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Karting driver Scott Barnes wrapped up the Shifter Masters title after a superb showing in the final two rounds of the Skusa Pro Tour SummerNationals in Indianapolis at the weekend. Barnes trailed his Maranello Kart USA team-mate Joe Ruch by 33 points heading into rounds five and six at the New […]

Karting driver Scott Barnes is aiming to add to his collection of titles at the Xtream Rock Island Grand Prix – the largest kart street race in North America – when he competes this weekend. Barnes has won nine titles at the two-day event in Quad Cities – a metropolitan area on the Mississippi River […]

Scott Barnes added another chapter to his impressive legacy at the Xtream Rock Island Grand Prix, securing his tenth title at North America’s largest kart street race last weekend. Barnes, competing over two days in the Quad Cities—a metropolitan area straddling the Mississippi River between Illinois and Iowa—claimed victory in the Briggs L206 Light class […]

Karting driver Scott Barnes is gearing up for a thrilling showdown at the final round of the Stars Championship Series – the highly anticipated Night Fight – in Mooresville, North Carolina. Set to take place at the Trackhouse Motorplex, Barnes is aiming to close out the series on a high note. Sitting second in the […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Karting driver Scott Barnes finished runner-up in the Rok class in his maiden Stars Championship Series after another impressive showing overseas. Barnes competed in the final round of the series – Night Fight – at the Trackhouse Motorplex in Mooresville, North Carolina, finishing second in the two heat races on Friday […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Karting driver Scott Barnes is set to challenge himself against some of the top L206 class drivers in the United States when he competes in the Cup Karts North American [CKNA] Grand Nationals 8 in New Castle, Indiana, this weekend. Barnes, racing in the Masters and Senior Heavy classes, will make […]

Karting driver Scott Barnes expressed pride in his performance after competing against some of the top L206 class drivers in the United States at the Cup Karts North America [CKNA] Grand Nationals 8 at the weekend. Barnes, who raced in the Masters class, made his debut in the prestigious event in New Castle, Indiana. In […]

Karting driver Scott Barnes stepped up his preparation for the upcoming Skusa SuperNationals 27 in Las Vegas by claiming a podium finish at a club race in Orange County, New York, yesterday [November 3]. Barnes competed in the Shifter class at the Oakland Valley Race Park in Cuddebackville, finishing third in his race. “I popped […]

A sea turtle found on a Nova Scotia beach in a “hypothermic and semi-comatose” state received care in Canada, and has now been transported to Bermuda to continue her recovery before being returned to the wild. The CBC reported, “An endangered green sea turtle found on a Nova Scotia beach has been revived and shipped […]

After being discovered “disoriented and cold-stunned” in Canada last November, a green sea turtle named ‘Scotti’ has been successfully rehabilitated in Bermuda and released back into the wild. The Bermuda Zoological Society posted the video below on Instagram and said, “A disoriented and cold-stunned green sea turtle found in Canada last November was released back […]

In my first couple of years of garden mothing, almost everything species that appeared was new to me, there were dozens and dozens. Well over 120 moths I’d never knowingly seen before. In subsequent years, there were the dozens of regulars, but even then still a few dozen species that were new to the garden … Continue reading "Moth of the Moment – Black-spotted Chestnut"

The 2024 Good Furry Awards were presented this Tuesday, 15 October, at Biggest Little Fur Con.

This year saw the Award divided into three categories, the winners of which were:

• Image Award: Finn the Panther
• Furtastic Award: Spottacus Cheetah
• Good Egg Award: Shutter Karelian

Meanwhile, 2024's Lifetime Achievement award was presented to Albedo creator Steve Gallacci.

Tracing the Line is a book of plotter art available for preorder now, coming out this November. Many of our featured artists are included in the book, and AxiDraw makes several appearances in the video teaser. Looks like it will be fantastic!

NEWS – If you’re a Harry Potter fan and also love writing, the new LAMY Harry Potter fountain pens will be a magical addition to your pen collection! These special edition fountain pens combine the charm of Hogwarts with high-quality craftsmanship, making them perfect for jotting down your own stories or doodling your favorite characters. […]

Pieces of a Woman [US, Kornél Mundruczó, 3.5] Grief tears a couple (Vanessa KIrby, Shia LaBeouf) apart after the death of their baby in childbirth, abetted by the insistence of her domineering mother (Ellen Burstyn) that they pursue legal action against their midwife (Molly Parker.) Wrenching drama marked by deep performances and key long take scenes. An otherwise masterful script reaches for the conventional when it hits its climax.

The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel [Canada, Joel Bakan & Jennifer Abbott, 4] Polemical documentary deploys narration, stock footage and talking heads (some appearing via lockdown video conference) to survey corporate capitalism and the struggle against it from Reaganomics to COVID and the George Floyd protests. Comprehensive primer for the prospective young progressives includes a call to continued electoral action.

The doc starts by tackling apparently public-minded initiatives as Trojan Horses for privatization. It is a Crave Original. Crave, Canada’s premium cable/streaming service, is a division of Bell, one half of our reigning telecom duopoly and the lead sponsor of the Toronto International Film Festival

Violation [Canada, Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli, 4] Woman (Madeleine Sims-Fewer) exacts meticulous revenge after her brother-in-law rapes her. Although this jarring, meditative drama includes gruesome imagery and horror-exploitation motifs, it’s closer in spirit to Michael Haneke than Dario Argento or Wes Craven.

Many years the power of coincidence throws up an unintended motif running through many of the movies we pick. Past examples have included cats, stress vomiting, animal slaughter, and teddy bears. This year’s motif: plastic bags as a suffocation weapon.

Falling [US, Viggo Mortensen, 3] Pathologically forbearing airline pilot (Mortensen) attempts to find a new situation for his lifelong miserable prick of a father (Lance Henriksen) as his dementia worsens. With one character incapable of change and another not needing to change, almost all of the scenes repeat the same dynamic.

[BULLETIN: Quicklisp now has the latest version of FSet.]

Sycamore, primarily by Neil Dantam, is a functional collections library that is built around the same weight-balanced binary tree data structure (with leaf vectors) that FSet uses.  While the README on that page comments briefly on the differences between Sycamore and FSet, I don't feel that it does FSet justice.  Here is my analysis.

Dantam claims that his library is 30% to 50% faster than FSet on common operations.  While I haven't done comprehensive micro-benchmarking, a couple of quick tests indicates that this claim is plausible.  A look through the internals of the implementation confirms that it is clean and tight, and I must commend him.  There may be some techniques in here that I could usefully borrow.

Most of the performance difference is necessitated by two design choices that were made differently in the two libraries.  One of these Dantam mentions in his comparison: FSet's use of a single, global ordering relation implemented as a CLOS generic function, vs. Sycamore's more standard choice of requiring a comparison function to be supplied when a collection is created.  The other one he doesn't mention: the fact that FSet supports a notion of equivalent-but-unequal values, which are values that are incomparable — there's no way, or at least no obvious way, to say which is less than the other, and yet we want to treat them as unequal.  The simplest example is the integer 1 and the single-float 1.0, which have equal numerical values (and cl:= returns true on them), but which are nonetheless not eql.  (I have a previous blog post that goes into a lot more detail about equality and comparison.)  Since Sycamore expects the user-supplied comparison function to return an integer that is negative, zero, or positive to indicate the ordering of its arguments, there's no encoding for the equivalent-but-unequal case, nor is there any of the code that would be required to handle that case.

Both of these decisions were driven by my goal for the FSet project.  I didn't just want to provide a functional collections library that could be called occasionally when one had a specific need for such a data structure.  My ambition was much grander: to make functional collections into a reasonable default choice for the vast majority of programming situations.  I wanted FSet users (including, of course, myself) to be able to use functional collections freely, with very little extra effort or thought.  While Lisp by itself reaches a little bit in this direction — lists can certainly be used functionally — lists used as functional collections run into severe time complexity problems as those collections get large.  I wanted the FSet collections to be as convenient and well-supported as lists, but without the time complexity issues.

— Or rather, I wanted them to be even more convenient than lists.  Before writing FSet, I had spent years working in a little-known proprietary language called Refine, which happened to be implemented on top of Common Lisp, so it was not unusual to switch between the two languages.  And I had noticed something.  In contrast to CL, with its several different predefined equality predicates and with its functions that take :test arguments to specify which one to use, Refine has a single notiion of equality.  The value space is cleanly divided between immutable types, which are compared by value — along with numbers, these include strings, sets, maps, and seqs — and mutable objects, which are always compared by identity.  And it worked!  I found I did not miss the ability to specify an equality predicate when performing an operation such as "union".  It was just never needed.  Get equality right at the language level, and the problem goes away.

Although FSet's compare generic function isn't just for equality — it also defines an ordering that is used by the binary trees — I thought it would probably turn out to be the case that a single global ordering, implemented as a generic function and therefore extensible, would be fine the vast majority of the time.  I think experience has borne this out.  And just as you can mix types in Lisp lists — say, numbers and symbols — without further thought, so you can have any combination of types in an FSet set, effortlessly.  (A project I'm currently working on actually takes considerable advantage of this capability.)

As for supporting equivalent-but-unequal values, this desideratum flows directly from the principle of least astonishment.  While it might not be too surprising for a set or map implementation to fail distinguish the integer 1 from the float 1.0, it certainly would be very surprising, and almost certainly a source of bugs in a compiler that used it, for it to fail to distinguish two uninterned symbols with the same name.  (I saw a macro expansion recently that contained two distinct symbols that both printed as #:NEW.  It happens.)  A compiler using Sycamore for a map on symbols would have to supply a comparison function that accounted for this; it couldn't just compare the package name and symbol name.  (You'd have to do something like keep a weak hash table mapping symbols to integers, assigned in the order in which the comparison function encountered them.  It's doable, but FSet protects you from this madness.)

Along with those deep semantic design choices, I've spent a lot of time on developing a wide and featureful API for FSet (an effort that's ongoing).  FSet has many features that Sycamore lacks, including:

• seqs, a binary-tree sequence implementation that holds arbitrary Lisp objects (Sycamore ropes hold only characters, which is certainly an important special case, but why restrict ourselves?)
• default values for maps and seqs (the value to return when the key is outside the domain is associated with the collection, not supplied at the call site; this turns out to be a significant convenience)
• generic functions that operate on both lists and FSet collections, to shadow the CL builtins
  
• the powerful map-union and map-intersection operations (I'll blog about these in the future)
• more ways to iterate over the collections (the FSet tutorial has a good summary, about 3/4 of the way down)
• speaking of the tutorial, FSet has lots more documentation

Let me digress slightly to give an example of how FSet makes programming more elegant and convenient.  Joe Marshall just put up a blog post comparing Go(lang) with Common Lisp, which is worth a read on its own; I'm just going to grab a code snippet from there to show a little bit of what programming with FSet is like.  Here's Joe's code:

 (defun collate (items &key (key #'identity) (test #'eql) (merger (merge-adjoin #'eql)) (default nil))
   (let ((table (make-hash-table :test test)))
     (dolist (item items table)
       (let ((k (funcall key item)))
         (setf (gethash k table) (funcall merger (gethash k table default) item))))))

 (defun merge-adjoin (test)
   (lambda (collection item)
     (adjoin item collection :test test)))

And here's what I would write using FSet:

(Well, I would probably move result outside the dolist form to make it clearer what the return value is, but let's go with Joe's stylistic choice here.)

For those who haven't used FSet: the form (map :default (set)) creates a map whose default is the empty set, meaning that lookups on that map will return the empty set if the key is not in the map.  This saves the includef form from having to handle that possibility.

My version makes assumptions, it's true, about how you want to collect the items with a given key; it doesn't give you other choices.  It could, but what would be the point?  It's already using a general set with better time complexity than lists, and saving you from having to write anything like merge-adjoin.  The extensible global equivalence relation means you're not going to need to supply a :test either.

I think the FSet-enhanced code is cleaner, more elegant, and therefore clearer than the plain-CL version.  Don't you agree?  Maybe you wouldn't say it's a huge improvement, okay, but it's a small example; in a larger codebase, I would argue, these small improvements add up.

* * * * *

To summarize: if you just want a library you can call in a few places for specific purposes, Sycamore might work better for you (but think hard if you're writing a comparator for symbols).  FSet can certainly be used that way, but it can be much more.  If you want to see one way in which Common Lisp can be made into a better language, without giving up anything that we love about it, I urge you to give FSet a try.

FSet has changed the way I write Lisp programs.  — an FSet user

(UPDATE: the magnitude of the performance difference between FSet and Sycamore surprised me, and inspired me to do some profiling of FSet.  It turned out that I could get a 20% speedup on one micro-benchmark simply by adding some inline declarations.  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; I should have done this years ago.   With that change, the generic function overhead appears to be the only significant cause of the remaining ~20% performance difference.  I tried creating a Sycamore set using a thin wrapper around fset:compare, and the resulting performance was very similar to that of FSet with its new inlines.)

1. Man die slapende dakloze in Rotterdam ernstig verwondde met steen mogelijk aangehouden in Franse stad Toulon  VRT.be
2. Man die zware tegel op hoofd van slapende dakloze gooide mogelijk gearresteerd in Frankrijk  Het Laatste Nieuws
3. Verdachte (32) van aanval met betonblok op slapende dakloze in Rotterdam opgepakt in Franse stad Toulon  Het Nieuwsblad
4. Poging moord op slapende, dakloze man  Opsporing Verzocht
5. Arrestatie in Frankrijk na dood dakloze, link met Rotterdamse zaak onderzocht  NOS