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Process for producing ketones from fatty acids

The invention relates to a process for producing ketones or hydrocarbon base oil from fatty acids preferably derived from a biological origin or other renewable source. The process is directed at making an aliphatic ketone or a mixture of aliphatic ketones having 14 to 52 carbon atoms, comprising a ketonization reaction of a fatty acid in a vapor phase with a decarboxylation-coupling catalyst to provide ketones, which can be deoxygenated to give saturated hydrocarbons, unsaturated hydrocarbons, and mixtures thereof. Base oils and transportation fuels may be produced from the process herein.




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Use of oils with high concentrations of polyunsaturated fatty acids in plastics and surface coatings

Oil compositions having a high concentration of polyunsaturated fatty acids are described for use in various applications including use as drying oils, in ink compositions and coating compositions. Oil compositions wherein the double bonds of the fatty acids are substantially epoxidized are described and used as plasticizers and thermal stabilizers for various halogenated polymer compositions.




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Method and an apparatus for removing fat from meat cuts

A method and apparatus for removing fat from one face of a meat cut, where a knife tool cuts a layer of fat and possibly skin from the face. The knife tool is adapted to cut across the entire width of said meat cut along a desired trimming interface. The knife tool includes at least two controllable blade parts, each having a cutting edge, the blade parts extending between the first face and a fat-to-lean interface without intersecting said first face. The position of said cutting edges and the angle of the blade parts are continuously adapted, by controlling the at least two controllable blade parts, to cut following the desired trimming interface, whereby the fat and possible skin is trimmed from the lean in one single piece of fat.




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Process for reducing oil and fat in cooked food with pea protein

A process for cooking a food in oil and/or fat is provided. A dry pea protein mixture or an aqueous pea protein is added to a food prior to cooking. The amount of oil and/or fat absorbed by the food during cooking is substantially reduced.




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Method of increasing lean body mass and reducing body fat mass in infants

Disclosed is a method of increasing lean body mass and reducing fat body mass in infants, said method comprising administration to an infant, term or preterm, a nutritional formula comprising a source of DHA and ARA. It has been found that the administration of DHA and ARA, or a source thereof, in infants can increase lean body mass and reduce fat body mass, when compared to an unsupplemented control formula, without impacting the total overall growth of the infant. This method is especially useful in preterm infants.




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Nutritional products including monoglycerides and fatty acids

Disclosed are nutritional formulations including predigested fats that can be administered to preterm infants, infants, toddlers, and children for improving tolerance, digestion, and absorption of nutrients and for reducing the incidence of necrotizing enterocolitis, colic, and short bowel syndrome. The predigested fats include fatty acid-containing monoglycerides and/or a fatty acid component.




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Systems, apparatus, and methods for receiving paging messages by creating fat paths in fast fading scenarios

This disclosure provides systems, methods, and apparatus for receiving paging messages in fast fading scenarios. In one aspect, a method of demodulating a paging message during an assigned time slot by a wireless communications apparatus operating in an idle mode is provided. The method includes determining, in anticipation of the assigned time slot, an expected time position corresponding to a path of a pilot signal having a greater signal strength relative to other pilot signals. The method further includes assigning a first demodulation element to demodulate the pilot signal with reference to the expected time position and assigning a second demodulation element to demodulate the pilot signal with reference to a time offset from the expected time position. Other aspects, embodiments, and features are also claimed and described.




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Railway coupler core structure for increased strength and fatigue life of resulting knuckle

A finger core for forming the front part of a knuckle for a railcar, said finger core comprising a single opening to form a single rib at the horizontal center line of the resulting knuckle.




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Container closure with overlying needle penetrable and resealable portion and underlying portion compatible with fat containing liquid product, and related method

A container and method are provided for storing fat containing liquid products. The container includes a body defining a storage chamber for receiving the product, and a container closure. A first material portion forms at least most of the surface area overlying the storage chamber that can contact any product therein. Neither the body nor the first material portion leach more than a predetermined amount of leachables into the product or undesirably alter a taste profile thereof. A needle penetrable and thermally resealable second material portion either (i) overlies the first material portion and cannot contact any product within the storage chamber, or (ii) forms a substantially lesser surface area overlying the storage chamber that can contact any product therein in comparison to the first material portion. A sealing portion is engageable with the body to form a substantially dry hermetic seal between the container closure and body.




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Physical refining of triglyceride oils and fats

A process for the physical refining of edible oils and fats, said process comprising three consecutive stages, whereby in a first stage at least 60% by weight of the volatiles are evaporated in a flash vessel, in a second stage some residual volatiles are evaporated by countercurrent steam stripping using a packed column (3), and in a third stage further residual volatiles are evaporated in a cross-flow tray system (2), wherein the pressure in said flash vessel is maintained at a value below the pressure prevailing above said packed column (3); and an apparatus for the physical refining of edible oils and fats comprising a flash vessel, a packed column (3), sparging trays (2) and the means to maintain the pressure in said flash vessel at a value that is below the pressure prevailing above said packed column.




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Cement that is resistant to internal sulfate reactions and to external sulfate attacks

The present invention relates to a novel cement which makes possible the preparation of concrete, grout or mortar which is resistant to internal sulfate reactions and to external sulfate attacks, and also the use of this cement for the preparation of concrete, grout or mortar.




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Removal of hydrogen sulfide as ammonium sulfate from hydropyrolysis product vapors

A system and method for processing biomass into hydrocarbon fuels that includes processing a biomass in a hydropyrolysis reactor resulting in hydrocarbon fuels and a process vapor stream and cooling the process vapor stream to a condensation temperature resulting in an aqueous stream. The aqueous stream is sent to a catalytic reactor where it is oxidized to obtain a product stream containing ammonia and ammonium sulfate. A resulting cooled product vapor stream includes non-condensable process vapors comprising H2, CH4, CO, CO2, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.




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Bearing steel being excellent both in workability after spheroidizing-annealing and in hydrogen fatigue resistance property after quenching and tempering

Provided is bearing steel excellent in workability after spheroidizing-annealing and in hydrogen fatigue resistance property after quenching and tempering. The bearing steel has a chemical composition containing, by mass %: 0.85% to 1.10% C; 0.30% to 0.80% Si; 0.90% to 2.00% Mn; 0.025% or less P; 0.02% or less S; 0.05% or less Al; 1.8% to 2.5% Cr; 0.15% to 0.4% Mo; 0.0080% or less N; and 0.0020% or less O, which further contains more than 0.0015% to 0.0050% or less Sb, with the balance being Fe and incidental impurities, to thereby effectively suppress the generation of WEA even in environment where hydrogen penetrates into the steel, so as to improve the roiling contact fatigue life and also the workability such as cuttability and forgeability of the material.




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System and method for production of granular ammonium sulfate

A system for the production of ammonium sulfate granules including a pipe cross reactor (PCR) configured to contact concentrated sulfuric acid with anhydrous ammonia to produce a PCR product comprising ammonium sulfate; and a granulator fluidly connected to the PCR, whereby PCR product extracted from the PCR can be introduced into the granulator, an inlet for ammonium sulfate seed material, an ammonia sparger configured to spray liquid anhydrous ammonia directly onto a bed of ammonium sulfate granules within the granulator, a granulator vent configured for extraction of a vapor comprising unreacted ammonia from the granulator, and a granulator product outlet configured for extraction of granulator product comprising ammonium sulfate granules from the granulator. A method of producing ammonium sulfate granules is also provided.




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Method for determining the fatigue capital of a cable

The invention relates to a method for determining the fatigue capital of a cable supporting a civil engineering structure, the method including: a measuring step (S1, S2) during which the normal tensile stress in the cable and the bending stress in the cable are measured in a synchronized manner so as to obtain the compound stress in the cable; a counting step (S3) during which a count of the number of stress cycles, depending on the amplitude of the stress, is carried out from the measured compound stresses; and a step (S4) of assessing the fatigue capital of the cable during which the fatigue capital of the cable is determined by comparing the count, carried out in the counting step, with a pre-set Wohler curve for the cable.




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Longitudinally ground file having increased resistance to torsional and cyclic fatigue failure

A method of producing an endodontic file that involves grinding in a plane substantially parallel to the longitudinal axis of a rotating dental instrument blank. By grinding the dental instrument blank in this manner, the torsional strength of the resulting endodontic file is not eroded during its production, thereby providing a file that is less susceptible to breakage during its use.




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Dye composition using a 2-hydroxynaphthalene, (acylamino)phenol or quinoline coupler in a fatty-substance-rich medium, dyeing process and device therefor

The present invention relates to a cosmetic composition for dyeing keratin fibers, in particular human keratin fibers such as the hair, comprising: a) one or more fatty substances; b) one or more surfactants; c) one or more oxidation bases; d) one or more couplers based on 2-hydroxynaphthalene derivatives or particular phenol derivatives, acylaminophenol derivatives or quinoline derivatives; f) one or more basifying agents; e) optionally one or more chemical oxidizing agents; and the fatty substance content representing in total at least 25% by weight relative to the total weight of the formulation. The present invention also relates to a process using this composition, and to a multi-compartment device that is suitable for performing the said process.




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Fatigue reduction device

The fatigue reduction device includes a frame configured to receive a handle substantially perpendicularly to a longitudinal axis of the frame. A user-faceable portion of the frame is inwardly concave to conform to an arm of a user.




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METHOD FOR PROTECTING ARTICLE FROM SULFATE CORROSION AND ARTICLE WITH IMPROVED RESISTANCE TO SULFATE CORROSION

A method for protecting a surface of an article from sulfate corrosion resulting from exposure to a sulfate containing material at an elevated temperature includes coating the surface with a nickel based material to form an anti-corrosion coating. The nickel based material includes NiO, a spinel of formulation AB2O4, or a combination thereof, wherein A includes nickel, and B includes iron or a combination of manganese and a B site dopant.




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Process to produce sodium sulfate and magnesium hydroxide

This invention refers to a novel process to obtain magnesium hydroxide and sodium sulfate from a solid raw material, which contains sodium and magnesium soluble salts, preferably in the form of sulfates, coming from a natural source or as a byproduct of an industrial process. The process consisting in the conditioning of the raw material to guarantee the correct concentrations of sodium and magnesium sulfates that is subjected to a salting-out crystallization when mixed with sodium sulfate obtaining sodium sulfate; the resulting solution is subjected to an alkali treatment to precipitate the magnesium hydroxide and the mother liquor is fed to a regeneration stage of the alkali used in the precipitation of the magnesium hydroxide as well in the sodium sulfate solution for the crystallization. The crystallization can be performed as a multistage process countercurrent to increase the purity of sodium sulfate.




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Method for producing a coarse-grained ammonium sulfate product via crystallization and installation for operating the method

Method for the production of a coarse-grained ammonium sulphate product by crystallization and installation for carrying out the method from an ammonium sulphate solution in a DTB type crystallizer having an internal suspension circuit and a clarifying zone, from which a clarified partial flow of solution is constantly drawn off into an external circuit, is heated in a heat exchanger to dissolve the solids contained therein and is guided back as a clear solution into the lower region of the crystallizer. A fine crystal suspension flow is drawn off from the clarifying zone as a further partial flow and guided back into the internal circuit of the crystallization stage without any previous dissolution of the solid proportion contained therein.




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BIOSYNCHRONOUS TRANSDERMAL DRUG DELIVERY FOR LONGEVITY, ANTI-AGING, FATIGUE MANAGEMENT, OBESITY, WEIGHT LOSS, WEIGHT MANAGEMENT, DELIVERY OF NUTRACEUTICALS, AND THE TREATMENT OF HYPERGLYCEMIA, ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE, SLEEP DISORDERS, PARKINSON'S DISE

Systems and methods for longevity, anti-aging, fatigue management, obesity, weight loss, weight management, delivery of nutraceuticals, and treating hyperglycemia, Alzheimer's disease, sleep disorders, Parkinson's disease, Attention Deficit Disorder and nicotine addiction involve synchronizing and tailoring the administration of nutraceuticals, medications and other substances in accordance with the body's natural circadian rhythms, meal times and other factors. Improved control of blood glucose levels, extended alertness, and weight control, and counteracting of disease symptoms when they are at their worst are possible. An automated, pre-programmable transdermal administration system is used to provide pulsed doses of medications, pharmaceuticals, hormones, neuropeptides, anorexigens, pro-drugs, stimulants, nutraceuticals, phytochemicals, phytonutrients, enzymes, antioxidants, essential oils, fatty acids, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, coenzymes, or other physiological active ingredient or precursor. The system can utilize a pump, pressurized reservoir, a system for removing depleted carrier solution, or other modulated dispensing actuator, in conjunction with porous membranes or micro-fabricated structures.




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Hydroprocessing of fats, oils, and waxes to produce low carbon footprint distillate fuels

Methods for making a fuel composition comprising contacting one or more components of a hydroprocessing feedstock, for example both a fatty acid- or triglyceride-containing component and a paraffin-rich component, with hydrogen under catalytic hydroprocessing conditions are disclosed. The methods are effective to upgrade the component(s) and provide a hydroprocessed biofuel. A representative method utilizes a single-stage process in which hydrogen-containing recycle gas is circulated through both a hydrodeoxygenation zone and a hydrocracking zone in series.




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Thursday's Briefing: BART anticipates huge budget deficit next year; San Leandro Police release body-camera video of fatal shooting at Walmart



News you don't want to miss for April 23:

1. BART learned on Thursday that $250 million in recent federal relief funds will allow it to balance its budget for this fiscal year, with $78 million remaining, BART Board Director Rebecca Saltzman said.…





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'Freddie' Flintoff to star on stage at Southampton's Mayflower theatre in Kay Mellor's Fat Friends - The Musical

HE’S the former England cricket captain best known for his ability as an all-rounder.




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Father and son reach Quorn Tennis Cup's national finals

A father-son tennis double act from West Tytherley strutted their stuff on the big stage at the National Finals of the .




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Luis Suarez to learn fate today as Uruguayan lawyer claims Liverpool striker is victim of Anglo-Italian conspiracy

Luis Suarez is set to learn his fate today as his lawyer claimed calls for the Uruguay striker to face a lengthy ban for biting Giorgio Chiellini were part of an Anglo-Italian conspiracy.




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Castlevania: Mirror of Fate - Nintendo 3DS

A host of undead enemies foolishly stand in your way as you stride through all manner of gloomy gothic environments.




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Working On A Cathedral, Roofer Finds His Grandfather's Message In A Bottle

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit SCOTT SIMON, HOST: A note written in March of 1930 said, difficult times of war lie behind us. We hope for better times soon to come. Poor roofers who worked on a cathedral in Goslar, Germany, left that note in a glass bottle, stashed it in the roof and patched it over. Eighty-eight years later, a roofer named Peter Brandt was working on that same roof and found the bottle. He knew one of the names on that note, Willi Brandt - his grandfather, not the former leader of Germany. Peter Brandt used to work with his grandfather and eventually took over the family business. The Washington Post reports Peter Brandt has memorized a line from his grandfather's 1930 note. (Reading) We worked an entire week for one pound of butter and one bread. Every day, we're discussing the many problems we have as a city, says Peter Brandt, but with this letter from 1930, we can see that the many problems that we perceive aren't really problems. The note is now in the




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Billie Eilish Enlists Father to Help Her Host Weekly Radio Show

The 'Bad Guy' hitmaker and Patrick O'Connell will debut 'Me and My Dad Radio', featuring music and conversations between the father-daughter duo, on Apple Music starting on Friday, May 8.




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VE Day memories – man visits the same spot his father was in when VE Day was declared

IN 1945 my late father, Peter Samuel Winton, was 18 years old and a merchant seaman sailing from Southampton on the dangerous Atlantic Convoy Run.




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Three Shot, One Fatally, In Rhode Island

Three women were shot during an incident that took place Thursday morning in Westerly. State police have confirmed that one of the victims, age 47, was killed.




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150: Fat Joe & Remy Ma

Fat Joe and Remy Ma are longtime friends and collaborators who have been making music together since the heyday of their crew The Terror Squad in the early 2000s. Their 2004 Grammy-nominated smash “Lean Back” was number 1 for three weeks and became one of the most popular songs of the decade.

But as any hip-hop fan knows, both of their stories go much deeper than that. Joe first came on the scene in the early 1990s as part of the powerhouse Diggin’ in the Crates crew. Joe’s first verses were on DITC member Diamond D’s classic 1992 debut Stunts, Blunts and Hip Hop, and Diamond would produce most of Joe’s own debut record, Represent, the following year.

As Joe’s career developed, he started his own crew called the Terror Squad, which came to include Remy and her mentor, the late Christopher “Big Pun” Rios.

Pun’s death in 2000 took a toll on crew morale, and the group gradually split apart. By the time of Remy’s 2006 debut There’s Something About Remy: Based On A True Story, Joe and Remy had fallen out completely.

In July 2007, Remy was arrested for shooting an acquaintance outside a Manhattan nightclub. She served six and a half years behind bars, and was released in August 2014. A reconnection with Joe soon followed, and the two began working together again. Joe and Remy’s latest hit single is “All The Way Up,” and they have a duo album coming out very soon.

See http://theciphershow.com/episode/150/ for full show notes and comments.




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Sins of the Fathers

In Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, the Catholic church had a problem with Jesuit priests sexually abusing children. The church’s first solution was to send the priests to remote Native villages, but there they continued to abuse. So the church tried something else: hiding them in plain sight.

*Listeners should know that this episode includes descriptions of abuse and predatory behavior, and is not a story for all listeners.

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.




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Tricky Dick and Dirty Don: How a Compelling Narrative Can Change the Fate of a Presidency

In 1972, Richard Nixon’s political future seemed assured. He was reëlected by one of the highest popular-vote margins in American history, his approval rating was near seventy per cent, and the public wasn’t interested in what newspapers were calling the “Watergate Caper.” But the President’s fortunes began to change when new revelations suggested that he knew about the Watergate break-in and that he had participated in a coverup. In May of 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee hearings were broadcast on television, and millions of Americans tuned in to watch compelling testimony about Nixon’s illegal activities. A narrative emerged, of Nixon as a scheming crook who put his own interests before those of the country. His poll numbers plummeted, his party turned on him, and, in August of 1974, Nixon resigned from the Presidency in disgrace. Thomas Mallon dramatized Nixon’s downfall in his 2012 novel “Watergate.” As Congress again debates the impeachment of a President, Mallon joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the power of a good story to affect the course of political history.




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MeFi: Get Fat, Don't Die

[many links may be NSFW]

In his inaugural food column, Beowulf Thorne included recipes for gingerbread pudding, Thai chicken curry, and vanilla poached pears, plus a photo of a naked blond man spread-eagled in a pan of paella. Eat your cereal with whipping cream, he advised readers, and ladle extra gravy onto your dinner plate. "Not only does being undernourished reduce your chances of getting lucky at that next orgy, it can make you much more susceptible to illness, and we'll have none of that," Wulf wrote.

"Get Fat, Don't Die," the first cooking column for people with AIDS, ran in every issue of Diseased Pariah News, the AIDS humor zine that Wulf started and edited from 1990 to 1999.
Beowulf Thorne's cooking column for people with AIDS claimed the right to pleasure, but in each recipe was embedded an urgent appeal, Jonathan Kauffman

Digging for the Edges of Life
Some archival collections, while technically separate, produce more meaning when viewed in tandem. Although they are housed on opposite ends of the vault, I have always felt this way about the papers of Arion Stone and his friend Beowulf Thorne, who until his 1999 death was an editor of the AIDS humor zine Diseased Pariah News.

How To Eat In An Epidemic

That's Not Funny! (Or Is It?)
Vice: There's been a lot of response to the new DPN online archive. Why do you think people remember it so fondly?
Tom Ace: I think the impression that people got from our magazine is not something you forget.

What was your target audience?
Gay men like us who were living with HIV and AIDS at the time. Tom Shearer, in the first issue, wrote, "Our editorial policy does not include the concept that AIDS is a Wonderful Learning Opportunity and Spiritual Gift From Above. Or punishment for our Previous Badness."

Wulf used to say that the magazine was "A combination of Spy and Good Housekeeping, for the HIV set." From the start, DPN set out to be sensible. We saw AIDS as a disease, and our essential element was humor. We didn't seek advertising. I used to cite Mad and Consumer Reports as our two main inspirations.

Diseased Pariah News covers at PLUS Magazine and a contemporary review from POZ

Diseased Pariah News - Issue #1
Diseased Pariah News - Issue #2
Diseased Pariah News - Issue #3
Diseased Pariah News - Issue #4
Diseased Pariah News - Issue #5
Diseased Pariah News - Issue #6
Diseased Pariah News - Issue #7
Diseased Pariah News - Issue #8

The zine survived the death of co-founder Tom Shearer before issue 3. The fifth issue announced that Shearer's ashes were incoprorated into the ink of that issue. DPN ceased publication with issue no. 11 following the death of Beowulf Thorne, concluding, on the masthead "Diseased Pariah News has been a patently offensive publication of, by, and for people with HIV disease (and their friends and loved ones.) This is the final issue of this journal (sniff, sniff). In the eternity since DPN #10 appeared, 66.67% of the editorial staff expired."




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Former Fort Worth Officer Charged With Murder In Fatal Shooting Of Woman In Her Home

Like a lot of young women her age, 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson had a date Friday night — but unlike many of her peers, Jefferson's date was with her 8-year-old nephew. They were enjoying a heated video game that went into the early hours of Saturday when police arrived at the house Jefferson shared with her mother. Officers were responding to a nonemergency call from James Smith, a neighbor who knew Jefferson's mother was not well. (Jefferson, a pre-med graduate of Xavier University, had moved home to care for her ailing parent, who was in the hospital recovering from unspecified injuries.) Smith was worried when he saw doors to the Jefferson home wide open late at night. Despite the nonemergency nature of the call, two police officers crept up to the house unannounced, their flashlights sweeping the yard. Then one spotted Jefferson peering out of a window. In body camera footage released by the Fort Worth Police Department, an officer can be heard shouting, " Put your hands up!




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Fort Worth Interim Police Chief 'Deeply Sorry' For Fatal Shooting

Updated at 8:11 p.m. ET The interim chief of the Fort Worth Police Department apologized on Tuesday to the family of Atatiana Jefferson in the aftermath of her fatal shooting by a police officer while she was in her home. "This incident has eroded the trust that we have built with our community and we must now work even harder to ensure that trust is restored," said Interim Police Chief Ed Kraus. Aaron Dean, the officer who shot Jefferson, resigned from the department and has been charged with murder . Kraus said that there is "absolutely no excuse" for the incident and that Dean will be held responsible for his actions. He asked the Fort Worth community to not allow the incident to reflect poorly on the entire police department. "The officers are hurting," he said. "They try hard every day to try to make this city better." Jefferson's family is calling for an independent investigation so that the Fort Worth Police Department is not investigating itself. The mayor told NPR she




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Unicorn Riding Scooter In Fatal Crash

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . A majestic unicorn Pixabay In late March, the scooter-sharing company Bird invited about a third of its employees to attend a thirty-minute "COVID-19 update" via Zoom. The meeting only lasted about two minutes, and it wasn't really an update. With what one employee later described as a "robotic-sounding, disembodied voice," an executive told the 406 employees they were fired. "It felt like a Black Mirror episode," the employee said . (Bird later issued an apologetic statement, saying the employees got severance pay and extended health insurance. Their CEO's salary is also supposed to get cut to zero). The Bird layoffs are part of a widespread collapse in the startup world right now. Billions in investment dollars are drying up. Companies are going bankrupt. Thousands of workers are losing their jobs. Martin Pichinson, a Silicon Valley veteran, says the downturn caused by the coronavirus is




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„Fatale Wirkung“ – Kritik am Neustart der Bundesliga nimmt zu

In einer Woche soll der Ball wieder rollen. Während sich die Klubs von München bis Bremen und von Köln bis Berlin darauf vorbereiten, üben ehemalige Sportler Kritik. Auch ein aktiver Fußballer hat etwas zu bemängeln.




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Father, Son Charged With Murder, Arrested In Shooting Death Of Ahmaud Arbery

Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, have been arrested on murder charges in connection with the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed Thursday.




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A Liar and the Father of Lies

The image of the beast, the deadly wound healing, the small time of trouble... As we face these surprising health and economic crises, many are wondering about the timeline for last-day prophecies and events. In this edition of Bible Answers Live, listen in as the pastors speak on these topics and others, including a most important question : saved by faith or works ?



  • Bible Answers Live

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Subscription Fatigue

Subscription Management

I have active subscriptions with about a half-dozen different news & finance sites along with about a half dozen software tools, but sometimes using a VPN or web proxy across different web browsers makes logging in to all of them & clearing cookies for some paywall sites a real pain.

If you don't subscribe to any outlets then subscribing to an aggregator like Apple News+ can make a lot of sense, but it is very easy to end up with dozens of forgotten subscriptions.

Winner-take-most Market Stratification

The news business is coming to resemble other tech-enabled businesses where a winner takes most. The New York Times stock, for instance, is trading at 15 year highs & they recently announced they are raising subscription prices:

The New York Times is raising the price of its digital subscription for the first time, from $15 every four weeks to $17 — from about $195 to $221 a year.

With a Trump re-election all but assured after the Russsia, Russia, Russia garbage, the party-line impeachment (less private equity plunderer Mitt Romney) & the ridiculous Iowa primary, many NYT readers will pledge their #NeverTrumpTwice dollars with the New York Times.

If you think politics looks ridiculous today, wait until you see some of the China-related ads in a half-year as the 2019 novel coronavirus spreads around the world.

Arresting a doctor who warned about the outbreak doesn't have good optics, particularly after hundreds of other deaths piled up from it & when he later died from from the virus.

The optics keep getting worse.

How does a broad-based news site compete with the user generated Tweets in such a zone?

And any widely known individual journalist who builds a large audience might get disappeared.

Twitter recently surpassed $1 billion in quarterly revenues, but time spent on Twitter is time not spent on other news websites.

McClatchy filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Outside of a few core winners, the news business online has been so brutal that even Warren Buffett is now a seller. As the economics get uglier news sites get more extreme with ad placements, user data sales, and pushing subscriptions. Some of these aggressive monetization efforts make otherwise respectable news outlets look like part of a very downmarket subset of the web.

Users Fight Back

Users have thus adopted to blocking ads & are also starting to ramp up blocking paywall notifications.

Each additional layer of technological complexity is another cost center publishers have to fund, often through making the user experience of their sites worse, which in turn makes their own sites less differentiated & inferior to the copies they have left across the web (via AMP, via Facebook Instant Articles, syndication in Apple News or on various portal sites like MSN or Yahoo!).

A Web Browser For Every Season

Google Chrome is spyware, so I won't recommend installing that.

Here Google's official guide on how to remove the spyware.

The easiest & most basic solution which works across many sites using metered paywalls is to have multiple web browsers installed on your computer. Have a couple browsers which are used exclusively for reading news articles when they won't show up in your main browser & set those web browsers to delete cookies on close. Or open the browsers in private mode and search for the URL of the page from Google to see if that allows access.

  • If you like Firefox there are other iterations from other players like Pale Moon, Comodo IceDragon or Waterfox using their core.
  • If you like Google Chrome then Chromium is the parallel version of it without the spyware baked in. The Chromium project is also the underlying source used to build about a dozen other web browsers including: Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, Cilqz, Blisk, Comodo Dragon, SRWare Iron, Yandex Browser & many others. Even Microsoft recently switched their Edge browser to being powered by the Chromium project. The browsers based on the Chromium store allow you to install extensions from the Chrome web store.
  • Some web browsers monetize users by setting affiliate links on the home screen and/or by selling the default search engine recommendation. You can change those once and they'll typically stick with whatever settings you use.
  • For some browsers I use for regular day to day web use I set them up to continue session on restart, and I have a session manager plugin like this one for Firefox or this one for Chromium-based browsers. For browsers which are used exclusively for reading paywall blocked articles I set them up to clear cookies on restart.

Bypassing Paywalls

There are a couple solid web browser plugins built specifically for bypassing paywalls.

Academic Journals

Unpaywall is an open database of around 25,000,000 free scholarly articles. They provide extensions for Firefox and Chromium based web browsers on their website.

News Articles

There is also one for news publications called bypass paywalls.

  • Mozilla Firefox: To install the Firefox version go here.
  • Chrome-like web browsers: To install the Chrome version of the extension in Opera or Chromium or Microsoft Edge you can download the extension here, enter developer mode inside the extensions area of your web browser & install extension. To turn developer mode on, open up the drop down menu for the browser, click on extensions to go to the extension management area, and then slide the "Developer mode" button to the right so it is blue.

Regional Blocking

If you travel internationally some websites like YouTube or Twitter or news sites will have portions of their content restricted to only showing in some geographic regions. This can be especially true for new sports content and some music.

These can be bypassed by using a VPN service like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Witopia or IPVanish. Some VPN providers also sell pre-configured routers. If you buy a pre-configured router you can use an ethernet switch or wifi to switch back and forth between the regular router and the VPN router.

You can also buy web proxies & enter them into the Foxy Proxy web browser extension (Firefox or Chromium-compatible) with different browsers set to default to different country locations, making it easier to see what the search results show in different countries & cities quickly.

If you use a variety of web proxies you can configure some of them to work automatically in an open source rank tracking tool like Serposcope.

The Future of Journalism

I think the future of news is going to be a lot more sites like Ben Thompson's Stratechery or Jessica Lessin's TheInformation & far fewer broad/horizontal news organizations. Things are moving toward the 1,000 true fans or perhaps 100 true fans model:

This represents a move away from the traditional donation model—in which users pay to benefit the creator—to a value model, in which users are willing to pay more for something that benefits themselves. What was traditionally dubbed “self-help” now exists under the umbrella of “wellness.” People are willing to pay more for exclusive, ROI-positive services that are constructive in their lives, whether it’s related to health, finances, education, or work. In the offline world, people are accustomed to hiring experts across verticals

A friend of mine named Terry Godier launched a conversion-oriented email newsletter named Conversion Gold which has done quite well right out of the gate, leading him to launch IndieMailer, a community for paid newsletter creators.

The model which seems to be working well for those sorts of news sites is...

  • stick to a tight topic range
  • publish regularly at a somewhat decent frequency like daily or weekly, though have a strong preference to quality & originality over quantity
  • have a single author or a small core team which does most the writing and expand editorial hiring slowly
  • offer original insights & much more depth of coverage than you would typically find in the mainstream news
  • Rely on Wordpress or a low-cost CMS & billing technology partner like Substack, Memberful, sell on a marketplace like Udemy, Podia or Teachable, or if they have a bit more technical chops they can install aMember on their own server. One of the biggest mistakes I made when I opened up a membership site about a decade back was hand rolling custom code for memberhsip management. At one point we shut down the membership site for a while in order to allow us to rip out all that custom code & replace it with aMember.
  • Accept user comments on pieces or integrate a user forum using something like Discord on a subdomain or a custom Slack channel. Highlight or feature the best comments. Update readers to new features via email.
  • Invest much more into obtaining unique data & sources to deliver new insights without spending aggressively to syndicate onto other platforms using graphical content layouts which would require significant design, maintenance & updating expenses
  • Heavily differentiate your perspective from other sources
  • maintain a low technological maintenance overhead
  • low cost monthly subscription with a solid discount for annual pre-payment
  • instead of using a metered paywall, set some content to require payment to read & periodically publish full-feature free content (perhaps weekly) to keep up awareness of the offering in the broader public to help offset churn.

Some also work across multiple formats with complimentary offerings. The Ringer has done well with podcasts & Stratechery also has the Exponent podcast.

There are a number of other successful online-only news subscription sites like TheAthletic & Bill Bishop's Sinocism newsletter about China, but I haven't subscribed to them yet. Many people support a wide range of projects on platforms like Patreon & sites like MasterClass with an all-you-can-eat subscription will also make paying for online content far more common.




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Man, 20, fatally shot in White Center


The shooting occurred near the 10700 block of 14th Avenue Southwest.




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Man fatally shot by Renton police who were responding to domestic violence call


According to the police department, the officers who arrived at about 11 p.m. at the complex in the 1100 block of Sunset Boulevard Northeast were confronted by a man with a knife.




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Medical Examiner identifies 24-year-old man fatally shot by Seattle police during domestic-violence call


A woman called 911 and reported she'd been beaten and shot at by her boyfriend, who fled with their 1-year-old daughter. Seattle police officers chased the man on foot and a SWAT officer shot the man in the head. The man later died at Harborview Medical Center. He has been identified as 24-year-old Shaun Fuhr.




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Man, 51, fatally shot in Tacoma apartment


Tacoma homicide detectives are investigating after a 51-year-old man was found fatally shot inside an apartment early Friday. Police were called to the 5100 block of South 58th Street for reports of a shooting. Police tried lifesaving measures, a Tacoma Police Department spokesperson said. The victim was taken to a hospital, where he died.  




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Dividends of a father’s life well lived


A father's life well lived is rewarded with grateful children.




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Anderson Cooper is a father; gives infant son a special name


NEW YORK (AP) — Anderson Cooper is a father, a milestone the CNN anchor says for a while he didn’t believe would ever happen. Cooper announced the birth of his son, Wyatt, Thursday evening on his show and in a lengthy Instagram post. His son was born on Monday via a surrogate, the newsman said, […]