The Google Play Store serves over a billion users globally a month, so the potential for an app to go big is nothing to sneeze at. Alas, the chances of that actually happening is a different story, which is why Google is outing a bunch of updates to…
Internet, meet your new favorite cat.
A 4-year-old rescue cat named Kevin, a Russian blue, was born with hydrocephalus, according to his Instagram page. The condition, in which there’s a buildup of fluid inside the skull, has led to the kitten’s uniquely adorable, perpetually surprised look.
The feline, who wasn’t expected to live past 6 months, has risen to Instagram fame, racking up over 14,000 fans as of Friday afternoon. His unique look, coupled with his resilient attitude, makes it no surprise that he’s so popular.
Just look at that face!
Though Kevin’s senses are impaired because of his condition, he still lives a happy life and even has his own toy-filled play area where he can safely and comfortably frolic.
Kevin’s human, a veterinary nurse named Tailah, told LoveMeow that the kitty was found abandoned in a carpark and later surrendered to a clinic. The nurse just fell in love with the kitten and knew she “had to give him a chance.”
“I told myself that even if he passed away, I gave him all the loving I could,” she told the outlet. “Four years later and he’s still my best little love bug.”
With a face as cute as Kevin’s, it must be mighty difficult to avoid charming anyone and everyone you meet.
To see more of Kevin and his feline high jinks, check out the photos below.
To learn more about Kevin, visit his Instagram page here.
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The year was 2004, and Motorola had just announced what was then an insanely thin flip phone, the RAZR V3. It was — and still is — a head-turner, and eventually over 130 million units were sold in total. Such were the glorious days of Motorola. Twe…
As a father and grandfather, a college professor and president, and now as president and CEO of UNCF (the United Negro College Fund), the umbrella organization for 37 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and the nation’s largest provider of college scholarships to students of color, I have attended my share of college graduation days. And what never fails to move me is the presence of so many parents and grandparents beaming with pride as their children walk across the stage to receive their diplomas.
And beam they should. Professors and teachers have played important parts in getting students to and through college. But nobody has played a longer or more important role than their parents. If only we could equip and empower more mothers and fathers to get fully behind their children’s education, our college graduation rate would be much higher than it is.
Which is why everyone who wants more young people to get the college education they need–and that we as a country need them to have–should applaud the release last week of Parents 2016: Hearts and Minds of Parents in an Uncertain World, a study commissioned by Learning Heroes, a non-profit that “helps parents navigate the changes happening in classrooms across the country so they can help their children be successful in school.”
Hearts and Minds dispels the widespread misconception that when students don’t go to college it’s because their parents don’t recognize the importance of a post-secondary education. In fact, however, Hearts and Minds finds that “parents of K-8 public school students–irrespective of race, ethnicity, income level, and educational attainment–share high expectations for their children. Chief among these is that 75% of all parents and even higher proportions of African American (83 percent) and Hispanic (90 percent) parents believe that attaining a two- or four-year college degree is very important for their child.”
Hearts and Minds confirms the findings in Done to Us, Not With Us: African American Perception of K-12 Education, UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute’s 2012 study of the attitudes toward college of low-income African American K-12 parents and caregivers. Our research shows that “87 percent of African American parents have high aspirations for their children and overwhelmingly want them to graduate from college,” and that “74 percent of low-income parents believe it is extremely important for their children to attend and graduate from college.”
What’s the obstacle then? Why aren’t more students getting college degrees?
Hearts and Minds identifies two major factors. One is that although parents believe that their children are mastering the subjects they need to succeed in college, the evidence of attainment tests says otherwise. Ninety percent of parents believe their children are performing at or above grade level in reading and math. But only one out of three students, and only 18 percent and 19 percent, respectively, of African American students, are actually doing so.
Here, too, Hearts and Minds confirms the findings in UNCF’s Done to Us, Not With Us. “The gap between parental aspiration for their children to attend a four-year college and the reality of their academic readiness is much more troubling than parents realize,” Done to Us, Not With Us reported, adding that this gap often negatively affected their sons’ and daughters’ ability to get into college.
And in those areas where parents are recognizing the need–paying for college, peer pressure, children’s emotional health and happiness, and safe use of the Internet and social media–many feel they need more information to enable them to be effective influencers of and advocates for their children. “Fifty-nine percent of parents say they would benefit most from more information and knowledge in the area of financing college,” the Hearts and Minds report found. “A notable share (52 percent) could also use tips on minimizing the stress of standardized testing. Half of all parents say they would benefit from information in dealing with peer pressure and fostering self-esteem.”
In light of those parental anxieties, perhaps Hearts and Minds’ most valuable contribution is its “Readiness Roadmap,” an online toolkit to assist parents in helping and supporting their children.
Created by Learning Heroes with resources from Univision, National PTA, Scholastic, GreatSchools, Common Sense Media and other partners, the Readiness Roadmap provides parents with academic expectations by grade, tips on paying for college, information on emotional health and happiness, conversation guides to make the most of parent-teacher conferences and parent-child conversations, tools to help parents understand where their child might need additional support and personalized resources to meet their child’s individual needs.
Learning Heroes’ Parents 2016: Hearts and Minds of Parents in an Uncertain World and the Readiness Roadmap are important contributions to the growing movement to empower parents in the education of their children. UNCF’s report confirms Learning Heroes’ findings: parents want to guide and support their children’s educational progress to and through college, but they need information about the most effective way to do so. In the Hearts and Minds study and Readiness Roadmap, they have a powerful toolkit to fulfill the role their children need them to play.
The more parents who get and use the aids Learning Heroes has just released, the more students we will see receiving their college degrees, and the more beaming parents we will see on college graduation days across the country.
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Donald Trump is accusing Hillary Clinton of playing the “woman card,” saying that she wouldn’t reach “5% of the vote” if she were a man. What exactly does that mean, anyway? Clinton faces the challenge of convincing America that she is both empathetic and a tough commanding leader. This isn’t a balance that Trump even has to pretend to strike. So perhaps her use of the “woman card” means she is exercising that empathetic side, she is being a woman who cares about “womanish” things. Is that pandering to women? Well for goodness sakes, so what if it is? Someone has to care about women because Trump sure doesn’t (at least not in this way).
Trump is playing his own card, ironically, “The Trump Card,” and its implications extend far beyond the political campaign, effecting every company in which a woman holds a seat of power… or strives to.
A trump card is a playing card that is elevated above its normal rank (that fits!), is used in order to win a trick (that also fits), is used to surprise (yep), in order to gain an advantage (most certainly). Hmmm…
The Trump Card consists of sly pronouncements that reinforce negative female stereotypes. Clinton is “not to be trusted,” “shouting,” “overly emotional.” The Trump Card is a way to divert attention from Clinton’s credentials and achievements, to undermine her by sowing doubts about her qualifications and to distort her achievements into failures. Trump uses this with men as well as women, but The Trump Card he throws at women relates to gender – appealing to the stereotyped assumptions we have lurking in some primitive part of our brains.
So what is the effect of The Trump Card- at least subconsciously- for women in business? Because of his position on the political stage, every proclamation Trump makes is THX-amplified, in HD and in continuous loop. It loudly resurrects and reinforces the stereotypes of women’s “weaknesses” and “unsuitability” to advance to roles with more responsibility and higher pay. While the card bears his name, he didn’t invent it. It’s been used against women ever since they first tried to claim their place in the c-suite. And this shows up in how their performance on the job is viewed.
Research for Fortune.com by linguist Kieran Snyder has indicated that 76% of critical feedback given to women was personality related. Words used to describe women leaders include “abrasive,” “judgmental,” “strident.” Women’s performance reviews reflect unconscious bias that discount, distort or ignore their achievement of bottom-line results, and emphasize characteristics that are viewed more negatively when demonstrated by women than by men. Only 2% of men’s critical feedback included negative personality comments. Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research discovered that compared with men, women receive only half as much performance feedback about their vision and their technical expertise. They receive only a third as much feedback linked to a business outcome.
And when women take risks and make mistakes as CEOs, this is seen as proof that they weren’t up to the job; whereas, men’s missteps are often overlooked as a hiccup.
A recent article in Linked In, describing Marissa Mayer’s difficulties leading a struggling Yahoo, stated that “women get way more flak than men.” The piece generated 153 comments in less than 24 hours, most from angry men, claiming that if Marissa were a man she’d get the same scrutiny and criticism. Well, not exactly. For example, there was BlackBerry’s Thorstein Heins who after the company reported a $1 billion quarterly loss and cut thousands of employees, botched an offer from an investment company to buy Blackberry for $4.7 billion; there was Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who missed the shift from PCs to smart phones and tablets and on whose watch the company’s stock fell 36%; and, Sears chairman and CEO Eddie Lampert who presided over losses of $4.5 billion and failed to invest in stores and marketing. We didn’t hear so much about these major missteps, did we?
Women leaders have always had to deal with a double standard, and not only when they struggle. Assertive, confident go- getters are top performers when they are men. When they are women, they are feared, viewed as pushy, overbearing and ambitious, and get left in the dust.
But women have made great strides in finding a way to break through this double standard, to be viewed as strong and effective leaders. Some of them have led the way for other women and men to think differently about what it is to be “leading while female.” These men and women have adopted her characteristically “female” actions, such as inclusiveness, empathy, self-awareness, and “we” not “I” thinking, in order to be more effective.
Now The Trump Card is being played.
Will it now be acceptable to directly or covertly assert or assume that women who aren’t model-attractive and aren’t deferential aren’t worthy of endorsement? That women who have been recognized for their achievements, are successful and are being paid top dollar see themselves as superior? That women who work to be collaborative in problem solving and decision-making do it because they are incapable of making up their own mind? The Trump Card risks poisoning the environment in organizations where women are trying to advance and lead effectively, which would be a huge setback both for women and for their companies.
Carol Vallone Mitchell, Ph. D. is the author of the new book “Breaking Through “Bitch” – How Women Can Shatter Stereotypes and Lead Fearlessly” and cofounder of Talent Strategy Partners.
Image attribution: keeweeboy / 123RF Stock Photo
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by Will Tucker
The Federal Election Commission is raising questions about reports filed by the biggest super PAC associated with Scott B. Mackenzie, who’s listed as the treasurer of more than two dozen PACs. As OpenSecrets Blog has reported previously, much of the money raised by Mackenzie’s PACs goes to vendors with ties to him.
Mailers from Freedom’s Defense Fund implore recipients to respond quickly and stand up to “school yard bullies.” (Jennifer Bell)
The FEC’s letters, two dated May 18 and one dated May 10, focus on apparent independent expenditures made by the group, Freedom’s Defense Fund, and debts owed by the PAC to a company with ties to Mackenzie called Forth Right Strategies.
The FEC noted that Freedom’s Defense Fund failed to properly disclose nearly $300,000 in independent expenditures against Hillary Clinton in the first quarter of 2016.
As for the debts to Mackenzie’s company, they amounted to about $164,000 at the end of 2015. Meanwhile, the group paid Mackenzie’s company $10,000 for “consulting – compliance” in the second half of last year.
While the group does spend some money promoting or attacking candidates, as is the norm for super PACs, most of its money goes toward raising still more money and, ultimately, winds up padding the revenues of Mackenzie’s companies. And the fundraising mailers sent by Freedom’s Defense Fund convey a breathless sense of urgency. One sent last year, for instance, gave recipients a “48 hour deadline” to respond and implored them to stand up to “dangerous school yard bullies” like Barack Obama.
An analysis of campaign finance records and business paperwork last year showed that 65 percent of all of Freedom Defense Fund’s income went to firms tied to Mackenzie. Three firms, all based at the same address, received $613,405 between March and June 2015.
Now, Freedom’s Defense Fund has raised nearly $1.9 million so far this cycle and spent $1.8 million of it. The lion’s share — $965,000 — is categorized as fundraising expenses. Forth Right Strategies, one of the companies at the address linked to Mackenzie and the one that has caught the FEC’s attention, received $41,253, and Mackenzie’s main company received $34,000.
What’s more, most of the fundraising expenses — $694,610 — have gone to DSSI, a company that also serves VIGOP, another Mackenzie PAC with similar spending patterns and notoriety. In all, there were about 30 PACs under Mackenzie’s guidance as treasurer at last count.
With letters also sent to Conservative Strikeforce, perhaps the most notorious Mackenzie PAC, last month, the FEC appears to be questioning whether something’s amiss with his groups. It’s unlikely the FEC’s inquiries will make much of a difference, however. The inquiries aren’t audits. And as a whole, the commission lacks not only the will to act on “scam PACs,” but also the authority: Last year, FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel put it on the Department of Justice to take on “fraud in the electoral arena.” Ravel and the other Democratic commissioners wanted to ask Congress to enable them to do more, but good luck with that.
Rather, scam PAC activity is likely to continue apace. The cottage industry has already begun to take advantage of the rise of Donald Trump, creating confusion about which outside spending groups will actually, and effectively, promote his candidacy.
For Mackenzie, maybe that trend is already old hat. After all, he started Patriots for Trump in September 2015, paid himself a few thousand dollars, and terminated the committee in January.
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IBM’s Watson is pitching in to tackle California’s drought.
The supercomputer, which may be best known for destroying human opponents in games like Jeopardy and Go, has been enlisted by environmental consulting firm OmniEarth to track water use across California.
OmniEarth announced the partnership on Friday. But for over a month, the company has been tapping into Watson’s computing power to scan satellite and aerial images of California’s lush valleys and barren deserts to figure out how Californians are using their dwindling water reserves.
Even without OmniEarth or Watson’s help, Californians are working to track and cut down their water consumption. Since January, the state has required farmers and ranchers who hold long-time water rights to monitor their water consumption using meters and gauges. Just this week, the state lifted certain restrictions on water use.
OmniEarth says Watson is valuable because it can track water use across the state at warp speed. Instead of laboring for several hours to scan 150,000 images, OmniEarth can tap Watson to process those images in 12 minutes, according to Jonathan Fentzke, chief strategy officer at OmniEarth.
“We can do the whole U.S., all 144 million parcels, in hours,” Fentzke told The Huffington Post.
To get information about water use, Watson uses “visual recognition” to scan images of land parcels for valuable information, according to Pesenti.
But unlike less-powerful image detection software, Watson doesn’t just identify a specific object — say, a crop field — in an image. Instead, it combs through lots and lots of information about the image — like the objects it contains and the colors of those objects — and uses that information to “understand” the image as a whole.
In the case of OmniEarth, researchers can use Watson not just to determine if a given parcel of land contains a crop field, but also to calculate the exact amount of water used by that parcel based on all of the information contained in the photo.
What’s more, Watson doesn’t need to know much about water consumption to tell OmniEarth if people are using too much water. Using machine learning, Watson can scan lots of images and, over time, figure out what aspects of those images are most important.
“Watson doesn’t know anything about water usage or Earth images,”Jerome Pesenti, vice president of IBM’s Watson platform, told HuffPost. “But if you give it some training images, the system can take those as examples and learn from them.”
That means OmniEarth can cut down on the amount of human labor needed to track water use. “Because of machine learning, we don’t necessarily need humans in the loop,” Fentzke said. “When when policy or other things change, we just automatically update it.”
With accurate, real-time water consumption data, OmniEarth says it can help water authorities develop customized water budgets for cities and towns based on how much water households, industries and farms are actually using. It can also help governments crack down on people or companies that flout water restrictions, according to Fentzke.
“It makes for more efficient outreach,” Fentzke said. “They can target messages to users who might not be aware that they’re overusing water.”
The company has already seen some early success in California. Thanks in part to Watson’s super fast calculations, there’s been a 15 percent reduction in water consumption among some of OmniEarth’s clients, according to Fentzke.
Reductions like that are a big deal in California, where water scarcity remains a major concern. While California announced on Wednesday that it would be lifting some water restrictions, water shortages continue to plague cities and counties across the state, especially in drier southern California.
Watson made its public debut in 2011, when it used its computing skills and ability to parse language to crush two Jeopardy champions. Since then, IBM has converted Watson into a cloud-based computing platform that anyone can pay to tap into. The platform’s basic appeal is its ability to suck up huge amounts of raw data and convert it into useful information, according to Pesenti.
“There’s all this very unstructured information out there, and you need some tools to be able to extract understanding out of that information,” Pesenti said. “I think OmniEarth is a great example of how people can leverage the platform for their own needs.”
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Before becoming pregnant last year, I had a clear and distinguished vision of what my life would look like as a pregnant woman and a new mom. I knew for me, pregnancy would be a breeze. I mean after all, my mom had 7 children, and my sister had 2, neither of them had any pregnancy alignments and my mother says she didn’t even have pain during labor…
And if pregnancy was so carefree, motherhood would be like a cake walk. I mean my mom raised 7 kids, how hard could it really be, right?
My vision went a little something like this…
Pregnancy would be effortless. I would walk around glowing, smiling ear to ear and feeling better than ever. Once my baby was born (with no pain of course) I would take on to motherhood swimmingly (even though I’ve maybe held a baby for a combined total of 10 minutes in the last 32 years). How hard could it be?
I would also be the mom who didn’t need to use a pacifier, because, well, my baby just isn’t fussy. Oh, and my baby, she’ll be the most well behaved child ever.
Let’s just say I had high expectations…
Flash forward to 4 weeks into my pregnancy and I am hurled over a toilet feeling like hell at 6pm at night wondering,
1. Why am I having terrible morning sickness when I’m super healthy, and my sister and mom never experienced this?
And..
2. Why do they call this morning sickness if it lasts all day?
This exact moment was when my motherhood journey started to go every direction other than the one I planned.
My “morning” sickness lasted for 4 months and it was rougher than anything I could have ever imagined. It also didn’t help that I rode the NYC Subway to work every morning while feeling nauseous and having that lovely heightened sense of smell that comes along with pregnancy, which made each ride (you guessed it) the worst experience ever.
And then there’s the fact that all the pregnant women I knew had pretty amazing pregnancies, where they felt better than ever which made me feel like there must be something wrong with me.
But even though pregnancy wasn’t going as planned, I still had high expectations for labor. Labor, yes, that’s when I was really going to shine! I mean, I consider myself pretty tough, and I’m a yoga instructor, so I know how to breathe, so I pretty much had this labor thing in the bag. I mean I was almost certain my doctor was probably going to be so impressed by my “performance” that he would want me to help him coach other patients on how to be a rockstar during birth.
Then labor happened… and I cried like a baby, felt the worst pain I have ever felt in my life, screamed at my doctor to give me the f#%king epidural and eventually gave birth after 14 hours of, ahem, hell.
And then, as you may have guessed, motherhood gave me a reality slap in the face. My little girl is a screamer, and by screamer I mean my mother (who, remember, had 7 children) was convinced something was very wrong with my baby because she had never heard a baby scream like that before… turns out, that’s just her regular cry. As for the pacifier, that came into the picture on day 2, and is very much still in the picture, and may never be leaving the picture. Oh and did I mention my baby is high on the fussy scale?
Yeah…
It wasn’t until about a month into being a mother that I realized that the expectations I was creating were actually holding me back. Every expectation I set was keeping me from enjoying the present moment. As I’m sure you’ve heard or experienced, kids REALLY do grow up quickly and that time speeds up rapidly when you’re not really focusing on what’s occurring around you. This means that I needed to stop thinking about the past or the future and instead start focusing on right now. Learning to meditate was a huge help in that process.
This has also made me realize that my motherhood journey is just another part of my life, which means it’s probably not going to go as planned. Which, turns out is great news because now I can look at my life as a bundle of surprises each and every day. Surprises that I wouldn’t pass up for anything.
What I’ve noticed is that when I allow my life to unravel organically, I am more present and in turn a happier person, wife and mother. This has led me to let go of expectations, let go of what I dreamt will happen, and instead allow my life to happen.
This practice has also helped me to view the relationships I have with others differently. When I let go of my own expectations I also let go of the expectations I set around other people. As a wife, that means not expecting my husband to be a mindreader and instead doing my best to keep an open communication about our individual needs. As a mother, that means not expecting my daughter to hit certain milestones and instead just enjoying watching her grow at her own pace.
Of course, as you may have suspected, I’m not able to be present all the time (shocker, I know), nor am I always the most understanding wife, mother or friend. I have been known to take things out on my husband, almost lose my mind after my daughter cries for hours and not be the most responsive person when it comes to getting back to my friends. I’m not immune to letting my thoughts get away from me or to reacting negatively to those thoughts. My mind naturally goes off on tangents hourly about how my life will look or should look in the future, or how I should have done things differently in the past.
I am however, trying.
I do my best to catch myself setting expectations in my thoughts, and when that happens I simply just notice it and move on from there.
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Some workouts will make you sweat, but leave you feeling like you could’ve done more. There’s cycling and Zumba, but aside from getting in a bit of cardio there’s not much strength training happening. While you can find some really great routines and get to work in the weight room, not everyone wants to be in a room full of people with massive muscles that constantly look and sound like they’re on the verge of going on an all-out rampage.
If you want to hulk out at home without the possibility of causing anyone bodily harm, but also want to feel like you’re smashing concrete, the Core Hammer is going to be the best thing ever. This sprung from the workout where you take a sledgehammer and haul back on a giant tire. It’s literally the exact same workout, but this won’t send you to the ER if you miss. It comes in sizes of 8 and 12 pounds, so you can work your way up to a higher weight whenever you feel like your level of rage is disproportionate to how difficult it is to swing this mock hammer.
While this will definitely give you a full body workout, it is more expensive than the real sledgehammer and tire version. You’ll be looking at paying out $199.95-224.99 for this exercise tool. It’s likely going to be best used by those who live in city areas that don’t have the room or capability to swing a hammer at a tire and chance missing. Either way, you’re going to look five times more insane and awesome while doing this rather than trying to keep up with Zumba.
Available for purchase on Amazon
[ The Core Hammer will let you hit things without getting arrested copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
A company called Star-ALE hopes to create the most awesome aerial display ever seen in the skies over Tokyo as part of the opening ceremony of the 2020 Olympic games. Fireworks just won’t do for a celebration of such epic proportions. The company wants to pull off something called Sky Canvas that involves shooting fiery pellets from micro satellites orbiting the Earth into our atmosphere.
Yeah, instead of shooting fireworks into the air to explode, these will rain down from space. Each of the satellites would hold 500 to 1000 pellets, and each pellet costs over $8000 to make. If the cost of the pellets alone doesn’t make your sphincter pucker, don’t forget about the cost of building the satellites and getting them into orbit.
The pellets would be made from a variety of elements and metals that glow in a rainbow of colors as they ignite and burn about 50 miles over the surface of Earth. Their inventors say they’ll also burn longer than a real shooting star so they’ll be visible to more people.
The company is also working on technology to track the the probabilities of particles colliding with other objects to help ensure safety of the deployment.
I hope they pull this off, the company says that about 30 million people in an area 120 miles around Tokyo would be able to see the display.
[via Gizmodo]
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.
