We haven’t seen Carmella in a while! Let’s fix that.
https://twitter.com/nkulw/status/727682776875470848
I can’t stop watching the footage of the fires consuming Fort MacMurray (I had family members who were working there until relatively recently, and they’re watching friends and loved ones lose their home):
“We’ve had a devastating day,” fire chief Darby Allen said. “Fort McMurray has been overrun by wildfire.”
Allen said firefighters were “a little worried” earlier in the day, but with the 30 C heat and dry conditions, once the wind came up the fire became an inferno.
“It’s been the worst day of my career,” Allen said. “It’s a nasty, ugly fire and it hasn’t shown any forgiveness.”
Earlier in the day, the downtown area, and 10 of the 12 neighbourhoods in the oilsands city, were placed under mandatory evacuation orders because of the fire.
I have seen only a TINY bit of this, and I am sure none of you would go there, but you can have very strong negative feelings about the oil sands industry and still feel horrible for the families working there who are facing the loss of their homes, so let’s not.
I was a Marine, and I am considered 90 percent disabled by the VA for various things, including TBI, hearing loss, and tinnitus (IEDs). My girlfriend insists on calling me on the phone, especially while she drives. My state has a law where you need hands-free phones, so she puts it on speaker. I cannot hear anyone on the phone, much less when they put it on speaker. I stopped answering when she calls and she gets furious, and this has led to fights. My 70-year-old dad texts me, so why can’t she? She says I don’t care because I don’t answer or call her—no, I just can’t hear over phones, and I need to be in the same room and preferably looking at the person to hear/understand. How can I make her understand? She knows about my hearing problems.
Meet the first American climate change refugees:
Each morning at 3:30, when Joann Bourg leaves the mildewed and rusted house that her parents built on her grandfather’s property, she worries that the bridge connecting this spit of waterlogged land to Louisiana’s terra firma will again be flooded and she will miss another day’s work.
Ms. Bourg, a custodian at a sporting goods store on the mainland, lives with her two sisters, 82-year-old mother, son and niece on land where her ancestors, members of the Native American tribes of southeastern Louisiana, have lived for generations. That earth is now dying, drowning in salt and sinking into the sea, and she is ready to leave.
With a first-of-its-kind “climate resilience” grant to resettle the island’s native residents, Washington is ready to help.
“Yes, this is our grandpa’s land,” Ms. Bourg said. “But it’s going under one way or another.”
So why did Holmes and Theranos get such a break? Was she an anomaly who somehow pulled one over on the tech press in Silicon Valley? Not even close.
The system here has been molded to effectively prevent reporters from asking tough questions. It’s a game of access, and if you don’t play it carefully, you may pay sorely. Outlets that write negatively about gadgets often don’t get pre-release versions of the next gadget. Writers who ask probing questions may not get to interview the C.E.O. next time he or she is doing the rounds. If you comply with these rules, you’re rewarded with page views and praise in the tech blogosphere. And then there’s the fact that many of these tech outlets rely so heavily on tech conferences. “If you look at most tech publications, they have major conferences as their revenue,” Jason Calacanis, the blogger and founder of Weblogs, told me. “If you hit too hard, you lose keynotes, ticket buyers, and support in the tech space.”
I work for a very large Fortune 500 company. There is an HR policy in place regarding conflicts of interest for family members and opposite-sex relationships. However, there is not a policy regarding same-sex friendships.
In my department, my manager and coworker have a very intense personal relationship (non-sexual). They work out together during the week and on weekends, they attend all sorts of sporting events, they dine together, they take expensive vacations together (spas/vacations out of the country – one of which was financed by my manager), they text, they are in each other’s offices all day, they take selfies and post them on Facebook, and they share clothing. It is a very close friendship.
As a result, the coworker has a LOT of power in our group. She has unlimited access to our boss, and she is able to direct her own narrative. Our boss maintains that she can be objective. I disagree. There have been a number of instances where this coworker’s behavior was excused instead of addressed. She can act, essentially, with impunity. My bosses’ boss knows about this friendship, and either hasn’t or won’t address it. It could be that I have been existing in this dysfunctional environment for too long, but I’m starting to think that maybe I am wrong. Is this a conflict or am I off base?
My Dinner With Rasputin (always relevant to our interests):
“This Manuilov,” said Izmailov, “has suggested to Filippov that he should ask round some writers who’d like to get a glimpse of Rasputin. Just a few people, carefully chosen so there’s no one superfluous and no chance of any unpleasant surprises. Only recently a friend of mine happened to be in the company of Rasputin—and someone covertly took a photograph. Worse still—they sent this photograph to a magazine. ‘Rasputin,’ the caption read, ‘among his friends and admirers.’ But my friend is a prominent public figure; he’s a serious man, perfectly respectable. He can’t stand Rasputin and he feels he’ll never get over the disgrace of this photograph—of being immortalized amid this picturesque crowd. Which is why, to avoid any unpleasantness of this kind, I’ve made it a condition that there should be no superfluous guests. Filippov has given his promise, and this morning Manuilov came over and showed me the guest list. One of the writers is Rozanov, and Rozanov insists that you absolutely must be there. Without you, he says, the whole thing will be a waste of time. Evidently he has a plan of some kind.”
I am watching American Horror Story: Hotel, and I am ASHAMED of how much I am enjoying it, and especially how much I am enjoying watching Gaga just kind of posing and looking incredible and dead-eyed and great?
