Slack, the messaging platform that is slowly becoming a go-to for bothindividual and group chats, is getting much better today. Via an acquisition of startup Screenhero, Slack will soon have video and voice chat, as well as screen-sharing capabilities. According to Slack, it will “allow people working remotely to work as if they were in the same room, and people … Continue reading
Amal Clooney is definitely one of our newest style icons. But getting asked fashion questions while she’s working? Amal is obviously SO over it.
Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin) is an accomplished human rights lawyer who has previously represented WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange and been involved in many other notable negotiations, lawsuits and council appearances.
Clooney is currently representing Armenia’s interests in a case against Doğu Perinçek, a Turkish politician who denies the Armenian Genocide. According to The Independent, Clooney appeared before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg on Wednesday and some reporters took this time to talk about her style choices.
Bruno Waterfield, a correspondent for The Telegraph in Brussels, tweeted that he asked “Amal Clooney about the fashion speculation.” Check out her reply:
I ask Amal Clooney about the fashion speculation. She laughed & pointed to her robes, “I’m wearing Ede & Ravenscroft” pic.twitter.com/cEsuy87Vda
— Bruno Waterfield (@BrunoBrussels) January 28, 2015
That’s right — Ede & Ravenscroft — AKA the tailors that make her legal robes when she’s “busy” being a human rights attorney. **Mic drop**
MANAGUA – In March of 2013, I was asked in an interview: What did I think of an Argentine pope?
It was a surprise for me that they had not elected a European pope and that it was a cardinal I had known nothing about. The existing cardinals had been named bishops by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and they were conservative and reactionary. I did not expect anything new from this papal election. In fact, I did not have any interest in it.
But from the moment the new pope went out on his balcony, I noticed changes. He came out wearing a simple white robe, rejecting other papal garb with golden adornments and fabric. On the balcony, before giving the pope’s traditional blessing, he bowed before the multitude, asking for their blessing.
Instead of one of the traditional papal names, he took Francis. Leonardo Boff was very right when he said later it was not simply a name, but a life project he chose. And in this case, it was not just a new pope, but a new project for the church.
We are seeing a true revolution in the Vatican. Pope Francis does not want to live like a pope. He has refused to occupy the pontiff’s palace, with its 14 rooms. He has rejected the popemobile. He talks directly to people on the telephone. He uses simple and clear language. He does not want to be called pope, but simply bishop (the Bishop of Rome).
Pope Francis has not talked about liberation theology that I know of. But liberation theology is not something one believes in — it’s something one practices. I think the name “liberation theology” is not as strong as it could be. It would be better understood as “revolutionary theology.”
This theology is the true theology of the Gospel, which comes from a Greek word that means “good news” and “announce the good news.” The meaning Jesus gave to it was good news for the poor, for their liberation. Which is the same as revolution. Or changing the world. Turning the world upside down. Or better put, righting the world, because right now it is upside down.
Under the pontiffs Juan Pablo II and Benedict XVI, the bishops and priests of liberation theology were replaced by conservative elements from the far right. Everything that had to do with this theology was suppressed. At the same time, the U.S. government fought this theology by appealing to fundamentalists who preached an individualistic and conservative gospel. They fought the liberation guerrilla groups with counter-intelligence forces and a most cruel repression that created an immense multitude of martyrs.
In the so-called Santa Fe Document, under the title “A New Latin American Policy for the 1980s,” President Reagan was advised to combat the liberation movements by promoting U.S. fundamentalist churches in Latin America. In 1999, the School of the Americas, which trained soldiers and gave them classes in repression and torture, declared that liberation theology had been defeated with the help of the U.S. Army.
During John Paul’s second visit to Nicaragua, journalists on an Alitalia flight asked him about liberation theology, and the Pope said it was no longer a danger because communism had been defeated. But the from the depths of the Amazon, Bishop Casaldaliga said: “While there are poor people, there will be liberation theology.”
For me, the election of this new pope is like a miracle. Pope Francis is carrying out a revolution in the Vatican. It will also be a revolution in the world, setting it right because it is upside down. The revolution of Jesus of Nazareth:
The last will be first, and the first will be last.
Legal marijuana is reportedly the fastest-growing industry in the United States, and Nancy Grace is not thrilled about that.
On Tuesday’s episode of HLN’s “Nancy Grace,” she and Dr. Drew Pinsky got into a heated debate about marijuana legalization.
Grace pointed to a recent case in which a man in Colorado was accused of killing his wife after eating marijuana candy, saying it is a perfect example of how dangerous pot can be.
When Pinsky disagreed, saying the incident could have been due to a prescription drug withdrawal, Grace quipped, “Dr. Drew, I really appreciate ‘Dr. Drew on Call’ — I do, I’m a big fan — but you’re in our house now.”
“In the police report that that you say is the factual matter that you have taken off the Internet, there were empty pill bottles found in his room,” Pinsky shot back. “And the fact is … there’s a common thing right now that people are being dismissed from their medical care … because they go into withdrawal and in fact they use pot to try to deal with withdrawal from the prescription meds.”
The debate then continued on HLN’s “Dr. Drew On Call,” when Pinsky noted that taxes from pot sales could benefit rehab centers and education, but Grace didn’t buy it.
“Never once has the federal government or state governments said, ‘You know what, let’s not spend all these millions of dollars on pork. Let’s try to rehab people … It ain’t happening, Drew.”
H/T The Wrap
Despite a number of delays and setbacks over the past several months, on Tuesday night Bloomberg L.P. successfully launched its highly anticipated “flagship digital destination,” Bloomberg Business.
The site is intended to serve as a central hub for all of Bloomberg’s media outlets, allowing visitors to access content from Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg TV, as well as a number of new channels. With the goal of streamlining the company’s services, the new portal has done away with Bloomberg.com and Businessweek.com, bringing both entities together under one roof.
“Bloomberg Business will be the flagship for all of our consumer media activities on the Web and beyond,” Justin Smith, CEO of Bloomberg Media, said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “We have so many content assets, and what you’re seeing us do here is reorganizing, re-architecting them into what we believe is a clear and more simple — and frankly more consumable — menu of choices.”
Though the portal was slated to launch last fall, Bloomberg decided to flip the release date of Bloomberg Business with Bloomberg Politics in order to capitalize on the potential wealth of content driven by the 2014 midterm elections. Bloomberg Business was then expected to be unveiled on Jan. 20 ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, but again the launch was delayed, leading Bloomberg to cancel a press briefing.
“The tech team and the editorial team spent the six days, through the weekend, fixing what were these pernicious bugs that had emerged,” Smith said, admitting that the most recent delay was a “bit of an embarrassing situation.”
“Listen, this is Bloomberg,” he continued. “We wanted it to be in great shape and we wanted it to be both incredibly technologically sound, but also beautiful and just world class in every way. So we didn’t want to press the go button until that was guaranteed, and that happened to be last night.”
Since returning to the company in January 2014, Smith says Bloomberg founder and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been “very hands on” and “very involved with the strategy and the execution of this project.”
In a memo to staff, also provided to the HuffPost, Bloomberg expressed his hopes for Bloomberg Business.
“The new site capitalizes on Bloomberg’s unique media strengths,” he wrote. “It combines the heart of Bloomberg News — factual, reliable, authoritative, and lightning-fast reporting that covers the world — with the spirit of Bloomberg Businessweek, which has earned a well-deserved reputation for excellence in both design and journalism, offering insightful, imaginative — and at times irreverent — stories and features.”
“Bloomberg Business unifies our news and media assets, something I’ve been particularly focused on since returning to the company last year,” he continued. “For the first time, our users will easily be able to capitalize on the combined strengths of our global media assets, which are unmatched.”
One of the things I’ve always tried to do at the Dish is to be up-front with readers. This sometimes means grotesque over-sharing; sometimes it means I write imprudent arguments I have to withdraw; sometimes it just means a monthly update on our revenues and subscriptions; and sometimes I stumble onto something actually interesting. But when you write every day for readers for years and years, as I’ve done, there’s not much left to hide. And that’s why, before our annual auto-renewals, I want to let you know I’ve decided to stop blogging in the near future.
Su Daocheng is a farmer in a China who is also a self-taught mechanical genius. He built this gas engine-powered horse not just to ride around on being cool, but to help him plow his fields. It’s not the fastest horse in the world, but you will get there eventually. He’s like the one horseman of the crappy apocalypse.
It must take a long time to plow his fields is all I’m saying. It is pretty awesome that he built this himself, but it is pretty funny to see in action. The part where it starts up like a lawnmower is particularly amusing:
Some of his crazy kinetic sculptures can be seen near the end of the video. We need more guys like this in the world. He hasn’t lost that child-like sense of wonder and drive to create.
[via Boing Boing via Neatorama]
When you’re a kid, dominoes are for stacking and toppling in magnificent chains circling your bedroom floor. But when you’re older, and realize that all those dots can be used to play an actual game, suddenly dominoes become yet another form of competition. And nothing says you’re in it to win it like playing with a set of dominoes stuffed full of actual US currency.
Despite what you see in numerous daily tweets and hear in everyday conversation, luddism is not wasn’t a passive refusal to adapt to technology and join with to modern world. The real historical Luddites sought to understand technology, even as they attempted to resist it.
Two weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg wrote an impassioned post about the importance of free speech following the Charlie Hebdo killings. This week, in a total about-face, Facebook is censoring images of the Prophet Muhammad in Turkey, including images similar to the Hebdo cartoons. Come on.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.