To prove a point about common location-sharing apps, I asked my wife to use them to spy on me.
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Tuesday, July 2, 2019
LAPD’s internal affairs will investigate police handling of getaway driver in Nipsey Hussle case
The Los Angeles Police Department’s Office of the Inspector General is now investigating why the woman who fled the scene of Nipsey Hussle’s murder, driving the suspect in a getaway car was sent home by police after she attempted to turn herself in.
The Internal Affairs Group is evaluating a desk officer’s response in the incident, according to CBS News.
The woman, whose name is being withheld by police, reportedly helped the suspect, Eric R. Holder, flee from the March 31 killing but later went to the police station after her car and license plate were widely featured on the news.
“Oh my God,” the woman told her mother, according to Grand Jury testimony. “My car is on here and everything, and I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know this boy was gonna do this.”
—Nipsey Hussle reportedly called his killer a ‘snitch’ before he was shot dead—
CBS News reported that when her mother tried to notify police, she was allegedly told that detectives wouldn’t be available until 6 a.m. the next day.
The next morning, when they showed up at the police station, a front desk officer said “don’t worry about it” and “don’t listen to the news,” according to Grand Jury transcripts. The woman left but attempted to reach detectives again later, but was turned away, according to LAPD Detective Cedric Washington’s testimony.
Now an internal investigation will examine what went wrong.
—Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist was victim of hoax 911 police call—
“While the initial indications pointed to a miscommunication, we have initiated an administrative investigation to ensure all policies and procedures were followed,” Josh Rubenstein, an LAPD spokesman, told CBS News in an email. “We will review all statements that have already been given, interview all of the individuals involved, and look for any potential body cam video that may have captured the interchange.”
But so far, Rubenstein told the Los Angeles Times that police appeared to have acted properly.
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Nike pulls Betsy Ross-era flag sneaker after Colin Kaepernick reached out to the company
This is why representation matters.
Nike has made the decision not to release a sneaker that features an old 18th-century replica of the American flag. Nike had created the sneaker to commemorate the July 4th holiday.
In a statement released to CNN Business, the athletic-wear giant wrote: “Nike has chosen not to release the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July as it featured an old version of the American flag.”
—Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist was victim of hoax 911 police call—
This comes after Nike had already delivered some of the sneakers to retail stores. But after Nike received a complaint from former NFLer, Colin Kaepernick, that he and others found the sneakers to be offensive, Nike is asking stores to return them, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The sneaker was priced at $140 and set to release on Monday, according to Sneakernews.com. Released photos of the shoe show a version of the American flag with 13 stripes and 13 stars arranged in a circle – the Betsy Ross version of the American flag used in the United States from 1777 to 1795. It was used during the era of slavery.
It is not known whether any of the sneakers were sold before Nike pulled them and asked stores to return already distributed shoes.
—“Old Town Road” #1 on Billboard for 13th week setting hip-hop record—
CNN was unsuccessful in reaching Kaepernick for comment on Monday. Last year, Kaepernick became the face of a groundbreaking Nike advertising campaign.
Nike has had its share of pulled products in recent months.
The company recently halted selling some of its products in China following a fashion designer’s support for protests in Hong Kong, which sparked backlash across social media.
In a statement, Nike said it made a decision to remove some products “based on feedback from Chinese consumers.”
And in May, Nike stopped an Air Force 1 sneaker from being released after an indigenous group in Panama took issue with its design.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist was victim of hoax 911 police call
A prank phone call led police to the Bowie, Md. home of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Leonard G. Pitts Jr., where they handcuffed him while investigating a report of a crime.
Pitts, a columnist for The Miami Herald, said police woke him up early Sunday morning at 4:48 a.m. to investigate a reported crime taking place inside Pitts’ home. The phone tip, which called into the Bowie police and referenced that a serious crime was taking place, was found to be false, according to The Washington Post.
—“Old Town Road” #1 on Billboard for 13th week setting hip-hop record—
Pitts told reporters that he didn’t have a clue who would make such a call, but that someone called 911 to report to police that his wife or another person was “being murdered” inside his house. Pitts said police ordered him out of the house and told him to get on his knees. It was then that they handcuffed a surprised Pitts.
Pitts’ wife and other family members soon exited the house, and after police checked the house to determine there “were no corpses,” Pitts was released with a police apology, he said.
The column that Pitts, 61, writes covers national issues and runs in roughly 250 papers. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary in 2004.
Bowie Police Chief John Nesky, who also arrived at the scene early Sunday morning, told the Miami Herald that his department would investigate the matter, according to The Washington Post.
Nesky also told the Miami Herald that his officers have to “assume the information is valid until we prove otherwise.”
Swatting is a common type of fraudulent call where callers send police to random people’s homes on the report of a crime. However, Nesky told the paper he isn’t sure if this incident can be classified as swatting or something that was more targeted.
Pitts said he is clueless as to who could have done this, and said police informed him that the caller’s telephone number was blocked.
When a reporter asked him whether he had recently written on a topic that may have been controversial, Pitts laughed and responded that much of his work could be deemed that way. But say most recently he was on vacation so couldn’t have ruffled any feathers.
And he said he holds no grudges against the police, who were just doing their jobs.
The police “were pretty cool,” he said. “I can find no fault with them.”
Hoax call about a murder sends cops to @MiamiHerald columnist and Pulitzer-winning writer Leonard Pitts Jr.’s door. Cops apologize https://t.co/UZcaI5uyLs pic.twitter.com/IU80S7MT40
— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) July 1, 2019
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Secrets from a Recovering Multitasker
Be honest: None of us are as good as multitasking as we think we are. Research shows that it takes the brain of a multitasker 15 minutes to refocus on the task they were originally committed to completing.
Natalia Peart, is a clinical psychologist, business consultant, and author of the book FutureProofed: How to Navigate Disruptive Change, Find Calm in Chaos, and Succeed in Work & Life. She says that it is time to dispel the myth that being a “good multitasker” makes for more productivity in the workplace and for individuals personally when it’s actually the cause of burnout.
With over 25 years of experience problem solving for Fortune 1000 companies, nonprofits, and corporate America, Peart says that with the pace of people’s lives being quicker than ever, and the digital age, it is time stop championing the unproductive behavior of multitasking.
Natalia Peart
“We try to multitask; we realize it’s not working; we assume that we’re not doing it well enough—and so you know, what we do? We look for the next productivity tip, we look for the next hack,” says Peart.
And it simply does not work. “We exhaust ourselves some more until we’re completely burned out.”
Dr. Peart offers these tips to become a recovering multitasker to prevent burnout and prioritize yourself and your health:
- See it [life and assignments] as a series of sprints and not a marathon. — Our bodies and our brains can only absorb about 90 to 120 minutes until we’re going to need a break.
- Pay attention to your body. – If you need rest, rest. Do not caffeinate in efforts to get more done.
- Give yourself a quick break.– Get up, walk, clear your brain a little bit, let it rest, especially you know, those days where you have a lot happening and you’re just mentally fatigued.
- Don’t work against yourself, work with yourself.
- Take regular stretch breaks. – Take yourself away from your work, come back, you’ll be able to get more done.
“We always have a to-do list and we feel really good about checking stuff off but then we put off happiness because we’re always trying to figure out what’s that next thing to check off,” says Peart. To that point, she says that you should find time to restore yourself.
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“Old Town Road” #1 on Billboard for 13th week setting hip-hop record
For the 13th straight week, Lil Nas X ‘s “Old Town Road,” which features country crooner Billy Ray Cyrus tops the Billboard Hot 100 – setting a record for the longest reign of a hip hop song.
“Old Town Road” (on Columbia Records) leads the Streaming Songs chart for a 13th week, with 88.7 million U.S. streams, which was down slightly at 3%, for the week ending June 27, according to Nielsen Music.
The track supersedes previous records set by Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again,” in 2015, The Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow” in 2009 and Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” in 2002-2003, according to Billboard. Each of these songs topped the chart in the rap category for 12 weeks.
Lil Nas X is in rarefied company. “Old Town Road” is only the 12th single in the Hot 100’s 60-year history to dominate the charts for as long as it has. In fact, it’s the first hit since “Despacito,” Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’shit maker featuring Justin Bieber, which spent 16 weeks at No. 1 back in 2017 and ties the record for that length of time with Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” in 1995-96.
Coming in at No. 2 this week is Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello’s “Señorita.”
“Road” is the little song that could. Despite some controversy earlier in the year, when Billboard, recategorized it from its Hot Country Songs chart to hip hop, it has continued to gain traction and rule the charts. Billboard removed “Old Town Road” from the Hot 100 chart, the Hot Country Songs chart, and the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, saying it doesn’t reflect a traditional country music song. The organization notified Lil Nas X’s label, Columbia Records, that the song was ranked by mistake, according to Rolling Stone.
In a statement released in late March, Billboard said: “It does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version,” according to a statement Billboard released in late March, sparking backlash and allegations of racism.
Fast-forward to the week of July 6th. “Old Town Road” is at the top spot on the hip hop charts.
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Monday, July 1, 2019
WATCH: Here’s why Lizzo should play Ursula in ‘The Little Mermaid’ over Melissa McCarthy
Disney has had tons of success remaking their iconic animated features into live-action versions and The Little Mermaid is reportedly next on their list. Although the studio is reportedly in talks with Melissa McCarthy to play Ursula, Lizzo has her eyes on the role and we agree she would make the perfect choice.
When news broke that Melissa McCarthy was being considered for the role, the body-positive beauty reacted with a sad face emoji on social media.
Lizzo calls out “racist” security guard at Summerfest, says she will file complaint
— |L I Z Z O| (@lizzo) June 28, 2019
It wasn’t long before she took matters into her own hands and released an audition tape that proves she has what it takes to bring the vivacious villain to life. “I’M URSULA. PERIOD @Disney,” she posted along with a video of herself dressed as the sea witch.
Check it out:
I’M URSULA. PERIOD. @Disney pic.twitter.com/9YPVPPvVpz
— |L I Z Z O| (@lizzo) November 1, 2018
While Melissa McCarthy is a great comedian and has proven she can dive into drama as well, Ursula isn’t exactly a humorous character. Lizzo has the voice to pull off Ursula’s biggest moments, including “Poor Unfortunate Souls” the song she nailed in her impromptu audition.
Our new fave: 5 powerful life lessons we could all learn from Lizzo
The role would certainly take Lizzo’s career to the next level, and who could deny that this would be a perfect opportunity for Disney to take their diversity initiatives to new heights? Huge stars like Will Smith and Beyonce are featured in Aladdin and The Lion King, but what about getting a rising star in a big role?
We can’t help but be proud of Lizzo for going after what she wants, especially when an award-winning actress is already being considered. Let’s hope she gets the shot she deserves.
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Getting more heat out of sunlight
A newly developed material that is so perfectly transparent you can barely see it could unlock many new uses for solar heat. It generates much higher temperatures than conventional solar collectors do — enough to be used for home heating or for industrial processes that require heat of more than 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit).
The key to the process is a new kind of aerogel, a lightweight material that consists mostly of air, with a structure made of silica (which is also used to make glass). The material lets sunlight pass through easily but blocks solar heat from escaping. The findings are described in the journal ACS Nano, in a paper by Lin Zhao, an MIT graduate student; Evelyn Wang, professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Gang Chen, the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor in Power Engineering; and five others.
The key to efficient collection of solar heat, Wang explains, is being able to keep something hot internally while remaining cold on the outside. One way of doing that is using a vacuum between a layer of glass and a dark, heat-absorbing material, which is the method used in many concentrating solar collectors but is relatively expensive to install and maintain. There has been great interest in finding a less expensive, passive system for collecting solar heat at the higher temperature levels needed for space heating, food processing, or many industrial processes.
Aerogels, a kind of foam-like material made of silica particles, have been developed for years as highly efficient and lightweight insulating materials, but they have generally had limited transparency to visible light, with around a 70 percent transmission level. Wang says developing a way of making aerogels that are transparent enough to work for solar heat collection was a long and difficult process involving several researchers for about four years. But the result is an aerogel that lets through over 95 percent of incoming sunlight while maintaining its highly insulating properties.
The key to making it work was in the precise ratios of the different materials used to create the aerogel, which are made by mixing a catalyst with grains of a silica-containing compound in a liquid solution, forming a kind of gel, and then drying it to get all the liquid out, leaving a matrix that is mostly air but retains the original mixture’s strength. Producing a mix that dries out much faster than those in conventional aerogels, they found, produced a gel with smaller pore spaces between its grains, and that therefore scattered the light much less.
In tests on a rooftop on the MIT campus, a passive device consisting of a heat-absorbing dark material covered with a layer of the new aerogel was able to reach and maintain a temperature of 220 C, in the middle of a Cambridge winter when the outside air was below 0 C.
Such high temperatures have previously only been practical by using concentrating systems, with mirrors to focus sunlight onto a central line or point, but this system requires no concentration, making it simpler and less costly. That could potentially make it useful for a wide variety of applications that require higher levels of heat.
For example, simple flat rooftop collectors are often used for domestic hot water, producing temperatures of around 80 C. But the higher temperatures enabled by the aerogel system could make such simple systems usable for home heating as well, and even for powering an air conditioning system. Large-scale versions could be used to provide heat for a wide variety of applications in chemical, food production, and manufacturing processes.
Zhao describes the basic function of the aerogel layer as “like a greenhouse effect. The material we use to increase the temperature acts like the Earth’s atmosphere does to provide insulation, but this is an extreme example of it.”
For most purposes, the passive heat collection system would be connected to pipes containing a liquid that could circulate to transfer the heat to wherever it’s needed. Alternatively, Wang suggests, for some uses the system could be connected to heat pipes, devices that can transfer heat over a distance without requiring pumps or any moving parts.
Because the principle is essentially the same, an aerogel-based solar heat collector could directly replace the vacuum-based collectors used in some existing applications, providing a lower-cost option. The materials used to make the aerogel are all abundant and inexpensive; the only costly part of the process is the drying, which requires a specialized device called a critical point dryer to allow for a very precise drying process that extracts the solvents from the gel while preserving its nanoscale structure.
Because that is a batch process rather than a continuous one that could be used in roll-to-roll manufacturing, it could limit the rate of production if the system is scaled up to industrial production levels. “The key to scaleup is how we can reduce the cost of that process,” Wang says. But even now, a preliminary economic analysis shows that the system can be economically viable for some uses, especially in comparison with vacuum-based systems.
The research team included research scientist Bikram Bhatia, postdoc Sungwoo Yang, graduate student Elise Strobach, instructor Lee Weinstein and postdoc Thomas Cooper. The work was primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program.
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