Construction of load-carrying geosynthetic-reinforced bridge abutments are surging worldwide. The design directly supports the load of bridge girders without the need of deep foundation. TRB is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 from 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern that will provide an overview, comparison, and discussion of methodologies used in the design of such bridge abutments. They have the potential of alleviating the “bump at the bridge,” expediting construction, and requiring comparatively smal...

Help those searching for transportation research on your site. If you have already implemented the TRIDGET (TRID Widget)  on your website or LibGuide, it will now take you to a result list in TRID based on the keyword(s) you entered into the TRIDGET keyword box.It is a widget that can be embedded on your own web platform and allows your customers to initiate a TRID search directly from your site. It is particularly easy to implement in LibGuides: just copy the TRIDGET code/markup into a Media/W...

Most U.S. state departments of transportation (DOTs) are collecting weigh-in-motion data with a wide variety of sensor types and using them in a variety of applications. Many agencies use WIM data to aid in pavement design, although most are not currently using a Pavement ME (mechanistic-empirical) Design application. WIM for bridge and asset management purposes is used much less often. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Synthesis 546: Use of Weigh-in-Motion Data for Pavement, ...

Help those searching for transportation research on your site. If you have already implemented the TRIDGET (TRID Widget)  on your website or LibGuide, it will now take you to a result list in TRID based on the keyword(s) you entered into the TRIDGET keyword box.It is a widget that can be embedded on your own web platform and allows your customers to initiate a TRID search directly from your site. It is particularly easy to implement in LibGuides: just copy the TRIDGET code/markup into a Media/W...

University of California Pavement Research and National Center for Sustainable Transport have postponed the International Symposium on Pavement Life Cycle Assessment from June 3-6, 2020 to January 13-15, 2021 in Sacramento, CA. TRB is pleased to cosponsor this event. The symposium will focus on the implementation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for pavements. The workshop address the implementation of LCA in pavement operations at the network and project levels.

Self-consolidating concrete (SCC) is a highly flowable, nonsegregating concrete that is placed without any mechanical consolidation. TRB will conduct a webinar on Thursday, June 11, 2020, from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern to discuss how SCC may be used to fill heavily congested or irregularly shaped members in bridge applications more easily while providing improved in-place quality and surface finish.The use of SCC may also decrease construction costs due to the reduced labor requirements during construct...

The University of Texas at Austin is hosting Bridging Transportation Researchers (BTR) Online Conference  on August 11-12, 2020. TRB is pleased to cosponsor this event. This zero-carbon, zero-cost conference will host multiple Zoom-based tracks to virtually and globally unite transportation engineers, planners, and policymakers to discuss a wide range of transportation research topics and results, including: Multi-modal transportation network and systems Travel demand forecasting, including connecte...

She passed away just not too long ago, 6-12-13. It was very hard for me to put her down. I had her for 21 years, going on 22 years. I know I feel her presence

Now, before I start this, I want to reassure you all that this is a true story. I'm not making this up. This really happened, and I thank God every night

My 19 year old cat had to be euthanized a couple of days before Christmas. I must admit the guilt was horrible and all I could do is wonder where my dear

Have you heard of Heath Freeman? He's a thirty-something hedge fund boss, who runs "Alden Global Capital," which owns a company misleadingly called "Digital First Media." His business has been to buy up local newspapers around the country and basically cut everything down to the bone, and just milk the assets for whatever cash they still produce, minus all the important journalism stuff. He's been called "the hedge fund asshole", "the hedge fund vampire that bleeds newspapers dry", "a small worthless footnote", the "Gordon Gecko" of newspapers and a variety of other fun things.

Reading through some of those links above, you find a standard playbook for Freeman's managing of newspapers:

These are the assholes who a few years ago bought the Denver Post, once one of the best regional newspapers in the country, and hollowed it out into a shell of its former self, then laid off some more people. Things got so bad that the Post’s own editorial board rebelled, demanding that if “Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here, it should sell the Post to owners who will.”

And here's one of the other links from above telling a similar story:

The Denver newsroom was hardly alone in its misery. In Northern California, a combined editorial staff of 16 regional newspapers had reportedly been slashed from 1,000 to a mere 150. Farther down the coast in Orange County, there were according to industry analyst Ken Doctor, complained of rats, mildew, fallen ceilings, and filthy bathrooms. In her Washington Post column, media critic Margaret Sullivan called Alden “one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism.”

And, yes, I think it's fair to say that many newspapers did get a bit fat and happy with their old school monopolistic hold on the news market pre-internet. And many of them failed to adapt. And so, restructuring and re-prioritizing is not a bad idea. But that's not really what's happening here. Alden appears to be taking profitable (not just struggling) newspapers, and squeezing as much money out of them directly into Freeman's pockets, rather than plowing it back into actual journalism. And Alden/DFM appears to be ridiculously profitable for Freeman, even as the journalism it produces becomes weaker and weaker. Jim Brady called it "combover journalism." Basically using skeleton staff to pretend to really be covering the news, when it's clear to everyone that it's not really doing the job.

All of that is prelude to the latest news that Freeman, who basically refuses to ever talk to the media, has sent a letter to other newspaper bosses suggesting they collude to force Google and Facebook to make him even richer.

You can see the full letter here:

Let's go through this nonsense bit by bit, because it is almost 100% nonsense.

These are immensely challenging times for all of us in the newspaper industry as we balance the two equally important goals of keeping the communities we serve fully informed, while also striving to safeguard the viability of our news organizations today and well into the future.

Let's be clear: the "viability" of your newsrooms was decimated when you fired a huge percentage of the local reporters and stuffed the profits into your pockets, rather than investing in the actual product.

Since Facebook was founded in 2004, nearly 2,000 (one in five) newspapers have closed and with them many thousands of newspaper jobs have been lost. In that same time period, Google has become the world's primary news aggregation service, Apple launched a news app with a subsription-based tier and Twitter has become a household name by serving as a distribution service for the content our staffs create.

Correlation is not causation, of course. But even if that were the case, the focus of a well-managed business would be to adapt to the changing market place to take advantage of, say, new distribution channels, new advertising and subscription products, and new ways of building a loyal community around your product. You know, the things that Google, Facebook and Twitter did... which your newspaper didn't do, perhaps because you fired a huge percentage of their staff and re-directed the money flow away from product and into your pocket.

Recent developments internationally, which will finally require online platforms to compensate the news industry are encouraging. I hope we can collaborate to move this issue forward in the United States in a fair and productive way. Just this month, April 2020, French antitrust regulators ordered Google to pay news publishers for displaying snippets of articles after years of helping itself to excerpts for its news service. As regulators in France said, "Google's practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector, while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise fragile." The Australian government also recently said that Facebook and Google would have to pay media outlets in the country for news content. The country's Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg noted "We can't deny the importance of creating a level playing field, ensuring a fair go for companies and the appropriate compensation for content."

We have, of course, written about both the plans in France as well as those in Australia (not to mention a similar push in Canada that Freeman apparently missed). Of course, what he's missing is... well, nearly everything. First, the idea that it's Google that's causing problems for the news industry is laughable on multiple fronts.

If newspapers feel that Google is causing them harm by linking to them and sending them traffic, then they can easily block Google, which respects robots.txt restrictions. I don't see Freeman's newspaper doing that. Second, in most of the world, Google does not monetize its Google News aggregation service, so the idea that it's someone making money off of "their" news, is not supported by reality. Third, the idea that "the news" is "owned" by the news organizations is not just laughable, but silly. After all, the news orgs are not making the news. If Freeman is going to claim that news orgs should be compensated for "their" news, then, uh, shouldn't his news orgs be paying the actual people who make the news that they're reporting on? Or is he saying that journalism is somehow special?

Finally, and most importantly, he says all of this as if we haven't seen how these efforts play out in practice. When Germany passed a similar law, Google ended up removing snippets only to be told they had to pay anyway. Google, correctly, said that if it had to license snippets, it would offer a price of $0, or it would stop linking to the sites -- and the news orgs agreed. In Spain, where Google was told it couldn't do this, the company shut down Google News and tons of smaller publications were harmed, not helped, but this policy.

This surely sounds familiar to all of us. It's been more than a decade since Rupert Murdoch instinctively observerd: "There are those who think they have a right to take our news content and use it for their own purposes without contributing a penny to its production... Their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not fair use. To be impolite, it's theft."

First off, it's not theft. As we pointed out at the time, Rupert Murdoch, himself, at the very time he was making these claims, owned a whole bunch of news aggregators himself. The problem was never news aggregators. The problem has always been that other companies are successful on the internet and Rupert Murdoch was not. And, again, the whole "misappropriation" thing is nonsense: any news site is free to block Google's scrapers and if it's "misappropriation" to send you traffic, why do all of these news organizations employ "search engine optimizers" who work to get their sites higher in the rankings? And, yet again, are they paying the people who make the actual news? If not, then it seems like they're full of shit.

With Facebook and Google recently showing some contrition by launching token programs that provide a modest amount of funding, it's heartening to see that the tech giants are beginning to understand their moral and social responsibility to support and safeguard local journalism.

Spare me the "moral and social responsibility to support and safeguard local journalism," Heath. You're the one who cut 1,000 journalism jobs down to 150. Not Google. You're the one who took profitable newspapers that were investing in local journalism, fired a huge number of their reporters and staff, and redirected the even larger profits into your pockets instead of local journalism.

Even if someone wants to argue this fallacy, it should not be you, Heath.

Facebook created the Facebook Journalism Project in 2017 "to forge stronger ties with the news industry and work with journalists and publishers." If Facebook and the other tech behemoths are serious about wanting to "forge stronger ties with the news industry," that will start with properly remunerating the original producers of content.

Remunerating the "original producers"? So that means that Heath is now agreeing to compensate the people who create the news that his remaining reporters write up? Oh, no? He just means himself -- the middleman -- being remunerated directly into his pocket while he continues to cut jobs from his newsroom while raking in record profits? That seems... less compelling.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple News and other online aggregators make billions of dollars annually from original, compelling content that our reporters, photographers and editors create day after day, hour after hour. We all know the numbers, and this one underscores the value of our intellectual property: The New York Times reported that in 2018, Google alone conservatively made $4.7 billion from the work of news publishers. Clearly, content-usage fees are an appropriate and reasonable way to help ensure newspapers exist to provide communities across the country with robust high-quality local journalism.

First of all, the $4.7 billion is likely nonsense, but even if it were accurate, Google is making that money by sending all those news sites a shit ton of traffic. Why aren't they doing anything reasonable to monetize it? And, of course, Digital First Media has bragged about its profitability, and leaked documents suggest its news business brought in close to a billion dollars in 2017 with a 17% operating margin, significantly higher than all other large newspaper chains.

This is nothing more than "Google has money, we want more money, Google needs to give us the money." There is no "clearly" here and "usage fees" are nonsense. If you don't want Google's traffic, put up robots.txt. Google will survive, but your papers might not.

One model to consider is how broadcast television stations, which provide valuable local news, successfully secured sizable retransmission fees for their programming from cable companies, satellite providers and telcos.

There are certain problems with retransmission fees in the first place (given that broadcast television was, by law, freely transmitted over the air in exchange for control over large swaths of spectrum), and the value they got was in having a large audience to advertise too. But, more importantly, retransmission involved taking an entire broadcast channel and piping it through cable and satellite to make things easier for TV watchers who didn't want to switch between an antenna and a cable (or satellite receiver). An aggregator is not -- contrary to what one might think reading Freeman's nonsense -- retransmitting anything. It's linking to your content and sending you traffic on your own site. The only things it shows are a headline and (sometimes) a snippet to attract more traffic.

There are certainly other potential options worth of our consideration -- among them whether to ask Congress about revisiting thoughtful limitations on "Fair Use" of copyrighted material, or seeking judicial review of how our trusted content is misused by others for their profit. By beginning a collective dialogue on these topics we can bring clarity around the best ways to proceed as an industry.

Ah, yes, let's throw fair use -- the very thing that news orgs regularly rely on to not get sued into the ground -- out the window in an effort to get Google to funnel extra money into Heath Freeman's pockets. That sounds smart. Or the other thing. Not smart.

And "a collective dialogue" in this sense appears to be collusion. As in an antitrust violation. Someone should have maybe mentioned that to Freeman.

Our newspaper brands and operations are the engines that power trust local news in communities across the United States.

Note that it's the brands and operations -- not journalists -- that he mentions here. That's a tell.

Fees from those who use and profit from our content can help continually optimize our product as well as ensure our newsrooms have the resources they need.

Again, Digital First Media, is perhaps the most profitable newspaper chain around. And it just keeps laying off reporters.

My hope is that we are able to work together towards the shared goal of protecting and enhancing local journalism.

You first, Heath, you first.

So, basically, Heath Freeman, who has spent decade or so buying up profitable newspapers, laying off a huge percentage of their newsrooms, leaving a shell of a husk in their place, then redirecting the continued profits (often that exist solely because of the legacy brand) into his own pockets rather than in journalism... wants the other newspapers to collude with him to force successful internet companies who send their newspapers a ton of free traffic to pay him money for the privilege of sending them traffic.

Sounds credible.

On Wednesday, May 1, 2019, Flayrah contributor 2cross2affliction wrote in the article 'Sonic the Hedgehog' ... the movie ... the trailer:

Fun fact: no movie directly adapted from a video game has ever scored as "fresh" on the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. [...] But, a new challenger approaches! [...] The question of whether this movie is going to be any good, perhaps unfairly, has mostly already been answered by the Internet. The answer so far has been no. No. Just no. Okay, maybe Jim Carrey? But otherwise, why? Why the human teeth? Why ten times?

Whoops. Turns out Sonic the Hedgehog somehow, against the odds, is rated Fresh by Rotten Tomatoes, with a score of 64% positive reviews from 175 professional opinions, as of this writing.

read more

After the bumper here, the review will get into spoiler territory. I will say that if you are a Sonic fan this movie will give you a sense of pride as it is far better than it should have had any right in being. Taking the franchise’s lore and resetting it to tell its own story, but retaining the strong characterization and quip heavy personalities of Sonic and Robotnik that makes their rivalry such a strong one. It also keeps the first entry simple with the hedgehog and doctor being the only two characters from the universe being in the film. This makes the story stronger since it can develop those two far more and not have to worry about any other kind of side character fan service for now.

Hey, at least now Sonic fans can brag to Mario ones that Mario may still be the king of games, but Sonic blew the plumber’s cinematic pieces out of the water. Not that that was a high bar I suppose. Then again, having better quality games than Sonic these days isn’t one either (the author quips while using a quote from Sonic Forces for his review’s headline).

In the video game Sonic the Hedgehog, timing is everything. While at the heart of the game is a fast paced platformer, its foundation has always been learning the layout of a level and timing your actions appropriately. In a twist, the timing of this film and its release had quite a bit of impact on my view of it.

read more

The Town of Berlin Connecticut continues to raise property taxes in the face of a never-ending recession. The Berlin Property Owners Association has been speaking out against these increases in property taxes. Recorded herein are four speeches by residents of the Town of Berlin at the first Town Council meeting subsequent to the Town Council's approval of an increase in property taxes, resulting from giving raises to virtually all town employees, who are already very well compensated. Continue reading →

Chris Hedges speaks the truth about American politics while Robert Reich shows that he is still an establishment Democrat after all, like Bernie Sanders. Continue reading →

"Well, reducing the election to personalities is kind of infantile at this point. The fact is, we live in a system that Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism. It’s a system where corporate power has seized all of the levers of control. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil or Raytheon." Continue reading →

Noor asks Hedges how the presidential nominees should respond to these types of terrorist attacks in the U.S. “Their response should be the end of the occupation in the Middle East and the cessation of saturation bombing by drones and military aircrafts and missiles in parts of Iraq and Syria and Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia,” Hedges responds. He goes on to explain how decades of foreign policy decisions made by both parties have created the circumstances for terrorist attacks. Continue reading →

"And you know, we have to stop looking beyond this election cycle and see that this corporate driven ideology, you know, this commodification of the culture, this constant extracting of blood from us as citizens to pay what in essence were private debts of the banks which engaged in casino capitalism, has political consequences. History has taught us that. And Hillary Clinton is only going to further that process." Continue reading →

PAUL RODGERS (BAD COMPANY, FREE) был вынужден опровергнуть слухи о своей смерти, опубликовав в социальной сети видео со следующим посланием:

«Привет. Это Paul Rodgers. Сегодня седьмое мая 2020 года. Сообщения о моей кончине были излишне преувеличены. Я рад сказать, что я вполне себе живой. О да. Берегите себя и тех, кто рядом. Надеюсь, что скоро сыграю для вас. Спасибо за беспокойство. Посылаю лучи любви!».

#Paul_Rodgers #PaulRodgers #BluesRock #Blues_Rock

По сообщению Rolling Stone, музыканты SOUNDGARDEN выдвинули встречный иск против вдовы Криса Корнелла, Vicky Cornell, обвиняя её в том, что она использовала доходы от трибьют-концерта в январе 2019 года на свои нужды.

В ответном иске, который был подан в окружной суд Южного округа Флориды, Майами, в среду (6 мая), утверждается, что в конце 2018 года Vicky Cornell потребовала, чтобы Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron и Ben Shepherd согласились выступить на концерте "I Am The Highway: A Tribute To Chris Cornell" 16 января 2019 года в Лос-Анджелесе без компенсации. «Чтобы побудить SOUNDGARDEN согласиться на эту просьбу, Vicky Cornell заявила, что доходы от Cornell Concert будут использованы в благотворительных целях», — говорится в жалобе.

Thayil, Cameron и Shepherd утверждают, что «заявление Vicky Cornell было ложным в том смысле, что Vicky Cornell не имела намерения использовать часть или всю выручку от Cornell Concert в благотворительных целях, а скорее — в личных целях для себя и своей семьи. SOUNDGARDEN сообщают, считают и в связи с этим утверждают, что Vicky Cornell заранее знала о том, что заявление было ложным, либо она проявила небрежность или безрассудство в отношении его правдивости с целью и с намерением склонить SOUNDGARDEN к согласию выступить на Cornell Concert без компенсации», — говорится в ответном иске.

Согласно иску, «представление Vicky Cornell было существенным для SOUNDGARDEN в том смысле, что участники SOUNDGARDEN не были заинтересованы в том, чтобы выступить без компенсации на концерте, который принёс бы финансовую выгоду Vicky Cornell и её семье. SOUNDGARDEN полагалась на свою веру в то, что доходы от этого концерта будут использованы в благотворительных целях, когда принимали решение согласиться выступить на Cornell Concert без компенсации. Как прямой и непосредственный результат нарушения правил игры Vicky Cornell, участники SOUNDGARDEN понесли ущерб в результате искажения фактов, допущенных Vicky Cornell, включая потерю разумной компенсации за Cornell Concer и репутационный ущерб».

В ответном иске добавляется, что «все получатели дохода с Cornell Concert не были идентифицированы, а компания Vicky Cornell не смогла адекватно ответить на официальные и неофициальные запросы следователей о том, как эти доходы были использованы и израсходованы. В заявлении в поддержку ее несогласия с ходатайством о прекращении дела Vicky Cornell утверждает, что 643 000 долларов дохода от концерта были пожертвованы в Фонд медицинских исследований эпидермолиза Bullosa Medial Research Foundation. Но контрагенты не установили местонахождения и возможности распоряжения оставшимися доходами. Контрагенты до сих пор отказывались отвечать на запросы, связанные с Cornell Concert, в том числе не предоставили ответы на вопросы по существу и не задокументировали материалы в ответ на обнаружение SOUNDGARDEN в этом деле, связанном с Cornell Foundation и Cornell Concert. Более того, незадолго до подачи этой заявки, когда Cornell Foundation выпустил Форму 990 2018 года (почти год спустя), Cornell Foundation не публиковал никакой информации, подробно описывающей его финансовое положение, начиная с 2017 года. Наконец, на момент подачи данных встречных исков веб-сайт Cornell Foundation, судя по всему, не обновлялся с 2017 года. Требуется тщательный учёт, поскольку Vicky Cornell пообещала SOUNDGARDEN, что никакая часть доходов, полученных от Cornell Concert, не будет использована ни в каких иных целях, кроме благотворительных, как повод для побуждения SOUNDGARDEN к участию в Cornell Concert». #Soundgarden #AlternativeRock #Alternative_Rock #GrungeRock #Grunge_Rock

Вдова Криса Корнелла ответила на контриск со стороны бывших коллег её мужа словами своего адвоката Marty Singer'a:

«Очень жаль, что три бывших участника группы Криса Корнелла, заработавшие миллионы долларов на упорном труде, таланте и творчестве Криса, продолжают нападать на наследие Криса, его вдову и маленьких детей, делая непристойные, злобные и агрессивные обвинения, чтобы отвлечься от правды. Их откровенно отчаянные встречные претензии, которые были намеренно поданы незадолго до годовщины смерти Криса и годовщины свадьбы Криса и Вики, не меняют того факта, что именно они неправомерно утверждали, что являются владельцами записей, которые были созданы исключительно Крисом, и что именно они незаконно удерживали значительные суммы денег у вдовы и детей Криса (что является основанием для нынешнего судебного процесса).

Достаточно сказать, что Вики Корнелл и Cornell Estate яростно отрицают предполагаемые "факты", содержащиеся во встречных претензиях SOUNDGARDEN, которые будут встречены быстрым судебным разбирательством. Ирония заключается в том, что бывшие соратники Криса по группе теперь изображают невинность в связи с трибьют-концертом 2019 года под управлением фонда Криса, который собрал более 1 миллиона долларов США для благотворительного фонда и выплатил более 650 000 долларов США в адрес EBMRF на медицинские исследования, и который не имеет никакого отношения к вопросу о том, кому принадлежат вокальные записи Криса, когда SOUNDGARDEN получили более 78 000 долларов США за выступление на благотворительном концерте.

Как хорошо известно бывшим участникам группы Криса, каждый цент выручки от концерта был должным образом распределён и учтён, а их заявления не только фальшивые и клеветнические, но и демонстрируют глубину, до которой бывшие товарищи Криса готовы опуститься, чтобы запятнать его наследие.

Также иронично, что, потратив значительное количество времени и средств на гонорары адвокатов (оплаченных из денежных средств, причитающихся Chris estate) и утверждая, что судебная система Флориды не обладает персональной юрисдикцией над ними, бывшие товарищи Криса по группе теперь обращаются за помощью к той же самой судебной системе, подавая свои встречные иски». #Soundgarden #AlternativeRock #Alternative_Rock #GrungeRock #Grunge_Rock

Taking place tomorrow 1:00PM PT/4:00PM ET

The post WB announces a watch party for JL DARK: APOKOLIPS WAR, the endgame of the DC Animated Movie Universe appeared first on The Beat.

IBM and Stone Ridge Technology today announced a performance milestone in reservoir simulation designed to help improve efficiency and lower the cost of production. Working with NVIDIA, the companies shattered previous published results using one-tenth the power and 1/100th of the space. The news demonstrates the ability of NVIDIA GPUs to simulate one billion cell models in a fraction of the published time, while delivering 10x the performance and efficiency than legacy CPU codes.

While I usually stick to halloween costumes, I couldn't resist the temptation to hitch onto the Fidget Spinner fad before it flames out. Also, I wanted to make a costume that spins!

Less than half of global CEOs believe their enterprises are adequately prepared to handle a highly volatile, increasingly complex business environment, according to a major new survey by IBM of more than 1,500 Chief Executive Officers from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, including 22 respondents from New Zealand – the largest number of respondents in eight years of research.

IBM collaborates with academia and industry to educate and prepare IT professionals, telecommunications engineers, and electrical power engineers for the electricity networks of the future

20aliens:

Home of Architect Colin St. John Wilson, Cambridge, England 1972. 

• 2 bananas, sliced and frozen ($.60)
• 1/2 cup almond milk ($.40)
• 2 tablespoons raw cacao powder or cocoa powder
• pinch salt
• few drops of stevia, if more sweetness is desired

• 1/4 cup melted coconut oil ($.80)
• 1/4 cup raw cacao powder or cocoa powder ($.80)
• 1/4 cup finely ground coconut palm sugar ($.80)
• pinch salt 
• 2 tablespoons chopped pistachios ($.40)

1. Place all fudgesicle ingredients into  blender and puree until very smooth. Add more almond milk or water if needed to facilitate blending. 
2. Pour into popsicle molds and freeze for several hours until fully frozen. 
3. Prepare the chocolate shell coating. 
4. Place all the chocolate shell coating ingredients into a small bowl and stir well until smooth.
5. Remove the fidgesicles from the freezer and pop them out of their molds.
6. Dip the fudgescicles into the hard chocolate shell, or drizzle it over them to coat. 
7. Just heating the coconut oil up enough to melt it and not any warmer will yield the best results. If needed, gently remelt the chocolate hard shell. 
8. Add a sprinkle of chopped pistachios or other chopped nut, if desired. Cacao nibs also work well.
9. Any leftovers can be wrapped and stored in the freezer for a week or so.

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A hedge fund manager in Hong Kong has publicly apologised after a parody video of him licking his finger and wiping it on a hand rail in a metro car went viral, sparking anger in the city which is grappling to contain an outbreak of the new coronavirus.

Tiffany is ruthless.

Creative Commons has joined forces with other legal experts and leading scientists to offer a simple way for universities, companies, and other holders of intellectual property rights to support the development of medicines, test kits, vaccines, and other scientific discoveries related to COVID-19 for the duration of the pandemic. The Open COVID Pledge grants the … Read More "Open COVID Pledge: Removing Obstacles to Sharing IP in the Fight Against COVID-19"

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Momentum continues to swell in support of the Open COVID Pledge, with the announcement today by Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Microsoft, and Sandia National Laboratories, that they are pledging their patents to the public to freely use in support of solving the COVID-19 pandemic. Following in the footsteps of Intel, Fabricatorz Foundation, and … Read More "Tech Giants Join the CC-Supported Open COVID Pledge"

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Explores how the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS) promotes the delivery of cost effective social services in Scotland that will support the achievement of positive outcomes for people accessing support. It identifies a number of principles that underpin the work of IRISS and suggests how these facilitate innovative evidence-informed practice. The approach to evidence-informed practice comprises four pillars of activity. The first pillar focuses on improving awareness and access to evidence and is exemplified by the Learning Exchange, the IRISS Insights series, and audio and video recording. The second pillar refers to strengthening the evidence base and is discussed in the context of work on self-directed support. Improving skills and confidence to use evidence forms the third pillar and is represented by work on data visualisation and peer support for self-evaluation. The final pillar is embedding evidence in organisations, through co-production, creating spaces to test and challenge evidence, and through the development of evidence-based products. Supporting people to share knowledge, learn from each other and to collectively produce new knowledge and solutions is an innovative approach but also one which should be cost-effective. Pre-print. Published in Evidence and Policy, 2014 (10)4 as Embedding research into practice through innovation and creativity: a case study from social services