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Grind The Anger Away
Grind The Anger Away
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JULY 18TH- MASSACRE AT McDONALD’S
This Day In History: July 18, 1984
On July 18, 1984, 21 people lost their lives and another 19 were injured when James Oliver Huberty went on a shooting rampage in a McDonald’s just outside of San Diego, California. Huberty kept shooting for 77 minutes until a sniper’s bullet pierced his heart and killed him.
James Oliver Huberty brought his family to California when he lost his job in Ohio the year before. He’d been working as a security guard in San Diego until he lost that job a few weeks before the shootings. Huberty had a history of being mentally unstable. His wife claimed he’d been trying to get an appointment for counseling, but never received a call-back to his requests to see a therapist.
He also had an unhealthy obsession with firearms and kept an arsenal in his bedroom. Probably not the best idea for someone neighbors described as “very angry.” On the afternoon of July 18, 1984, he grabbed a long-barreled Uzi, a 9mm automatic pistol, and a semiautomatic rifle. As he left his house, he informed his wife that: “I’m going hunting… hunting for humans.” …
John Oliver Joins Clinton and Trump With Endorsements
Get ready for “Uncle Sam’s rock-bottom yankee doodle suicide pact”
THANKS to HBO and Last Week Tonight for making this program available on YouTube.
John Oliver is back, and this time, he’s making some endorsements. As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump rake in their own backings from celebrities and public figures, Oliver has used a special web exclusive episode of Last Week Tonight.
It’s just four months until the U.S. presidential election. “Or, as it’s better known, Uncle Sam’s rock-bottom yankee doodle suicide pact,” said Oliver.
Clinton has been receiving endorsements from the likes of Oprah Winfrey. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s endorsements include Kid Rock and Steven Baldwin. Oliver, due to his British citizenship, is out of luck on this front. “The only people I can endorse are prime ministers, viceroys and magical railway conductors,” he said. …
The Investor Who Bought TrumpPence2016.com in April for $10
And hopes to sell it for a six-figure sum.
In the middle of last week, reports started trickling in that Indiana Governor Mike Pence would be named as the running mate to presumptive Republican president nominee Donald Trump. From there the story developed with more than the usual campaign drama. For hours, the reports went unconfirmed. Then Trump postponed the announcement. Finally, in underwhelming fashion, Trump confirmed the story via Tweet. According to some reports, Trump later regretted the decision and almost changed his mind.
One man watching all this unfold was Shannon Burchett, a Dallas-based investor who purchased the domain TrumpPence2016.com (and several variations thereof) back in April, before the nomination seemed a lock for Trump and long before Pence’s name entered the rotation of veep speculation. Seeing that traditional candidates were having a tough time, “I made some guesses and I guess I was right,” Burchett said over the phone on Friday. “Pence just struck me that he might be the kind of match that Trump would go for.” …
10 Common Misconceptions About The US Military
With over 330 million people living in the United States, only 1.4 million people (4 percent of the population) serve in the US military. As of 2014, the number of veterans living in the US was estimated to be 22 million.
Most people never think of serving in the military, and their only interaction might be through Hollywood. Although some films have depicted military life accurately, most miss the mark entirely. So many people have a great number of misconceptions about service in the armed forces.
10. Go To Jail Or Go To The Military
All branches of the military conduct a thorough background check before you can even begin the process of enlistment. This check is done by the FBI and examines your juvenile record, even if you believed it was sealed when you turned 18. (It’s not.)
In 2006, a man in Arlington, Virginia, pled guilty to an aggravated assault charge and his attorney attempted to persuade the judge to let the man enlist in lieu of a prison sentence. The judge agreed, but the army said, “No, thank you.” Army regulations specifically state that a person cannot enlist if he or she is coerced into doing so. …
Republicans Will Nominate a Candidate Who Would Violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments
If the GOP had any respect for the Bill of Rights, it would reject Trump.
As Republican Party “constitutionalists” prepare to nominate authoritarian billionaire Donald Trump for the presidency this week in Cleveland, the American Civil Liberties union has determined that the candidate’s proposals would violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments of the Constitution.
It is not news that Trump has, during the course of his campaign for the GOP nomination, put himself at odds with basic premises of a Bill of Rights that defends a free press, guarantees freedom of religion, and guards against torture and abuses of privacy. But when his proposals are pulled together—as the ACLU has done in a new analysis of the Republican candidate’s public statements and policy positions—the extent to which Trump would shred the Constitution in general and the Bill of Rights in particular is breathtaking.
“Taken together, his policies and positions, if put into place, would violate the Constitution and federal and international law,” says Anthony Romero, the executive director of the ACLU, which reviewed the candidate’s agenda and determined that “Trump’s proposals would violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments of the Constitution.” …
DONALD TRUMP’S GHOSTWRITER TELLS ALL
“The Art of the Deal” made America see Trump as a charmer with an unfailing knack for business. Tony Schwartz helped create that myth—and regrets it.
Last June, as dusk fell outside Tony Schwartz’s sprawling house, on a leafy back road in Riverdale, New York, he pulled out his laptop and caught up with the day’s big news: Donald J. Trump had declared his candidacy for President. As Schwartz watched a video of the speech, he began to feel personally implicated.
Trump, facing a crowd that had gathered in the lobby of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, laid out his qualifications, saying, “We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ” If that was so, Schwartz thought, then he, not Trump, should be running. Schwartz dashed off a tweet: “Many thanks Donald Trump for suggesting I run for President, based on the fact that I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ”
Schwartz had ghostwritten Trump’s 1987 breakthrough memoir, earning a joint byline on the cover, half of the book’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance, and half of the royalties. The book was a phenomenal success, spending forty-eight weeks on the Times best-seller list, thirteen of them at No. 1. More than a million copies have been bought, generating several million dollars in royalties. The book expanded Trump’s renown far beyond New York City, making him an emblem of the successful tycoon. Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of New York, where Schwartz worked as a writer at the time, says, “Tony created Trump. He’s Dr. Frankenstein.” …
10 Fascinating Bastard Children Of Popes
Although it would raise a few eyebrows today, Popes usually came with offspring in Renaissance Italy. Some were given immense power by their fathers. While a few papal love children remained grounded and became extraordinary adults, others enjoyed the dark side a little too much and became some of the most feared people of their time.
10. Felice della Rovere
Felice della Rovere, one of the most powerful women during the Italian Renaissance, was the illegitimate daughter of Pope Julius II. Born around 1483 to Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, she was publicly ignored by her father when he became Pope.
Widowed at age 14, Felice resisted his attempts to put her into the arms of politically advantageous husbands. She chose her own husband—an uncaring baron from the sociopathic Orsini family. Felice’s exceptional political mind won her husband Gian’s admiration and brought reconciliation with the Pope. …
Trump Dared To Call Elizabeth Warren A Fraud. Her Response Was DEVASTATING
Donald Trump must have figured out the password that campaign manager and Putinist turncoat Paul Manafort placed on his phone, because after a few days of relatively civil Twitter pronouncements Trump launched into an unprovoked storm of racist insults against Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MASS), possibly in response to pundit soothsayers idly discussing the idea of a Clinton-Warren ticket.
Goofy Elizabeth Warren, who may be the least productive Senator in the U.S. Senate, must prove she is not a fraud. Without the con it's over
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 17, 2016
I hope that Crooked Hillary picks Goofy Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to as Pocahontas, as her V.P. Then we can litigate her fraud!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 17, 2016
If Goofy Elizabeth Warren, a very weak Senator, didn't lie about her heritage (being Native American) she would be nothing today. Pick her H
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 17, 2016
Bristling at being called a fraud and having her heritage disparaged by an open racist and a proven fraud for the umpteenth time, Senator Warren pulled out all the stops and unleashed a cluster of truth-bombs at the Republican nominee: …
Ted Cruz contemplates the unthinkable
Unfortunately for us all, he’s not contemplating shutting the hell up.
Still smarting from his loss in the primary, Cruz says he’ll use his convention speech to outline his own vision of the Republican Party’s future. But will he endorse?
One of these days, and maybe soon, Ted Cruz just might have to endorse Donald Trump.
But he’ll never concede Trump could have beaten him in a fair fight — and he’ll never accept that Trump’s me-first philosophy represents a sustainable future for the GOP. Above all, Cruz wants to use the big stage in Cleveland to present a non-Trump alternative vision for his party’s future, one rooted in constitutional conservative principles and competent campaign management modeled, oddly enough, on Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 White House runs.
“In this election I am where a great many voters are, which is that I am listening and watching and coming to a decision,” Cruz, the highest-profile Trump holdout heading into this week’s convention, told me when I asked him if he intended to throw his support behind the former reality TV star imminently.
Cruz, speaking to POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast on the eve of the Republican National Convention, was in a reflective mood about his second-place finish (“I don’t know that I’m in a position to give campaign advice to Donald Trump, given that he just whipped me in a primary,” he said with a rueful laugh), but there was an unmistakably defiant edge to his pre-Cleveland mind-set, and his criticisms of Trump were veiled but vivid. …
“THE [AMERICAN CIVIL] WAR BEGAN IN MY FRONT YARD AND ENDED IN MY PARLOR.”
Cannons at Manassas National Battlefield Park
“The war began in my front yard and ended in my parlor.” This statement about the start and the end of the U.S. Civil War was spoken by Wilmer McLean and is surprisingly almost perfectly true.
A little background- Wilmer McLean was born on May 3, 1814 in Alexandria, Virginia, one of fourteen children. When his parents passed away at an early age, McLean was raised by various family members. At 39, McLean married a widow by the name of Virginia Mason, who had two daughters from a previous marriage. Mason also inherited her family’s 1,200 acre Yorkshire plantation located in Bull Run, Virginia.
Life was peaceful at the Yorkshire plantation with McLean working as a fairly successful wholesale grocer. As tensions mounted between the North and South, McLean, a retired military man (former member of the Virginia militia with the rank of Major) and current slave owner, offered to let his plantation be used by the Confederate army and it was soon put into service as the headquarters for General P.G.T. Beauregard of the Confederacy. …
The End Of A Republican Party
Racial and cultural resentment have replaced the party’s small government ethos.
Legend has it that after leveling Carthage in the Third Punic War, Roman army generals ordered that the city’s fields be sown with salt so that they’d lie fallow for years, Roman generals not being particularly well known for their benevolence in victory.
Many Republicans think Donald Trump’s nomination is doing roughly the same thing to their party: destroying any chance for growth it once had and leaving the GOP to wither and die on Trump vineyard vines.
“My general sense, looking at this election, is that what we’re witnessing here is the end of something much more than the beginning of something,” Yuval Levin, editor of the conservative policy journal National Affairs, told me recently.
Moments of historical change in the course of a party’s life can be difficult to spot. In “Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996,” political scientist John Gerring marks the beginning of the modern Republican Party as Herbert Hoover’s shifting campaign rhetoric in 1928 and 1932, when he talked more about the virtues of the American home and family than hard-tack economics. Hoover’s oratory about the progress of the individual being threatened by an overzealous government bureaucracy stuck around for the next eight decades, and the wisdom of generations has helped us discern that this was indeed the start of a new Republican era. …
Stephen Colbert Hijacks the RNC Stage, Delivers Anti-Trump Burn
On July 17, Late Show host Stephen Colbert made an unexpected evening appearance at the Republican National Convention where, after seizing the podium, he managed to lob insults at both Donald Trump and Mike Pence before being escorted offstage.
Donning the coiffure and suit of Caesar Flickerman from the Hunger Games, Colbert can be heard announcing, with gravitas, that Trump “has formed an alliance with Indiana Governor Mike Pence.” He then abruptly droops his head, as if the mention of Pence has brought about a narcoleptic episode.
Upon “awakening,” Colbert says, “Sorry, I blacked out there for a moment” and finally declares, “it is my honor to hereby launch and begin the 2016 Republican National Hungry for Power Games!” …
At the center of power at the RNC pic.twitter.com/R8kBtEI7Hq
— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) July 17, 2016
How Your Brain Warps Everything You See & Hear
There are parts of our daily lives that we just take for granted as being normal, but science proves us wrong. One of the best ways to look at this is language. We’ve previously discussed on the podcast how languages with future tenses (like English) make us really bad at planning for the future. We just think the future is some imaginary place that we’ll always to go later. That’s why we’re great at fun things like procrastinating, drinking and smoking.
Chinese, on the other hand, doesn’t have tenses at all, so native speakers find themselves naturally better at planning for the time ahead. For Chinese speakers, the future isn’t some magical fairy island that will always come tomorrow-the structure of the language just makes the consequences of life more immediate in their brains.
These little cultural differences literally affect how we perceive the world. In languages with more words for the color green, for example, speakers can actually see more shades of green than us. What is a superpower to us is completely mundane to them because they’ve just had that language and ability their whole life.
On this week’s podcast Jack O’Brien is joined by Cracked executive editor Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) to outline some of the scientific ways our brains trick us with this phenomenon– how our sense perception, something we assume is uniform across all humanity, actually changes depending on what culture we’re brought up in. …
What Can’t Medical Marijuana Do?
Recent studies indicate that the drug is making seniors healthier and helping stem the tide of the opioid epidemic—all while making their health care cheaper.
Things aren’t going so hot in the public-health war against the opioid epidemic that is sweeping America right now. Deaths from opioid overdoses hit an all-time high in 2014, the latest year for which there’s official data, and there isn’t much reason to believe the epidemic will be over any time soon. New legislation provides for a range of policy options for addressing the epidemic, but all will likely be woefully underfunded. States hit the hardest by the crisis are passing their own legislation to combat it, but the different elements of health-care regulation, criminal law, and public-health law that are involved make the scope of the problem difficult to deal with. All the while, groups like elderly Americans are becoming increasingly vulnerable to opioid addiction.
At the same time, seniors already beset by the fears of the opioid crisis are faced with another major issue: Health care—especially prescription drugs—is getting more and more expensive. The twin issues of prescription drug costs and opioids have been among the country’s most pressing concerns for months, and have defied easy policy solutions. But these problems might have at least one cheap and unmistakably pungent partial solution: medical marijuana. A growing body of research indicates legalization of medical marijuana is associated with lower health-care costs and fewer prescriptions for seniors, and also associated with reduced deaths from opioids. …
If Microsoft can’t install Windows 10 on your PC, it’ll give you a new one
Terms and conditions apply, but if the company’s stores can’t perform a same-day upgrade on your Windows 10-compatible PC, it’ll give you a new Dell notebook.
As July 29 gets closer and the free Windows 10 upgrade offer reaches its final days, Microsoft is pulling out all the stops in order to convince users to upgrade. It’s even willing to give you a new laptop.
As spotted by Neowin, Microsoft retail stores are offering to install Windows 10 on any compatible machine for free. If the store’s technicians don’t complete the upgrade by the end of that business day, they’ll give you a free 15-inch Dell Inspiron notebook.
The offer runs between now and July 29.
There is, of course, plenty of fine print. The free installation offer only applies to a single PC that’s capable of running Windows 10 (If it isn’t, you may be eligible for a $150 credit toward a new PC). You also need to check in your computer by noon for the offer to be valid. It’s also limited only to the US and Canada, so customers of the Microsoft Store in Sydney are out of luck. …
10 Extraordinary Discoveries That Weren’t
Many discoveries re truly remarkable, revolutionizing history and science. Others, on the other hand, are not even true discoveries. They are just ordinary, everyday things that due to people’s limited perception have been mistakenly identified as something extraordinary.
10. Geological Formations Thought As Lost Greek City
When a group of snorkelers saw what looked like paved floors, colonnades, and courtyards, they thought they discovered the ruins of an ancient Greek city. Unfortunately, they were wrong. A joint study conducted by the University of Athens and the University of East Anglia discovered that the structures found in Zakynthos, Greece, were not man-made but naturally occurring geological formations.
Led by Professor Julian Andrews of the University of East Anglia, the researchers used X-rays, stable isotope techniques, and microscopy to examine the texture and content of the underwater structures. After investigating the site, they discovered that the formations were created during a natural geological phenomenon that happened five million years ago. Another important factor that led them to conclude that the formations were not man-made was the lack of other signs of life, such as pots. …
Please Allow Trevor Noah To Reintroduce Himself
How The Daily Show host is finally coming into his own—during one of the most turbulent times in America, no less.
Trevor Noah is fast approaching his one-year anniversary as the host of The Daily Show, and he’s not reticent to admit that it’s been a dicey run at best. Since assuming his new role in September, Noah has been eclipsed by Jon Stewart’s 16-year legacy. His night-to-night viewership has failed to consistently hit the million mark as Stewart’s tenure was wont to do. Critics have been universal in giving praise for Noah’s charm but docking him for not having Stewart’s level of political authority.
But it was an impossible situation from the start.
Stewart’s hand in shaping the current landscape of satirical news is unquestionable. That custom mold he created for himself obviously wouldn’t fit anyone else to a T, and Noah is finally feeling some pliability in making The Daily Show his own. …
This webcam malware could blackmail you into leaking company secrets
Criminals are using webcam malware to recruit new insider threats.
Attackers are using a new piece of malware to gather private moments of employees in order to manipulate them into leaking company secrets.
According to Gartner fraud analyst Avivah Litan, the malware, which is dubbed “Delilah”, has earned the title of the world’s first insider threat trojan since it allows its operators to capture sensitive and compromising footage of victims, which can then be used to extort the victim or convince them to carry out actions that would harm their employer.
Details of Delilah were shared with Litan by Israeli threat-intelligence security firm Diskin Advanced Technologies. The firm reported that the malware is being delivered via multiple popular adult and gaming sites. It’s not clear from Litan’s report whether the attackers are using social engineering or software vulnerabilities to install the malware.
“The bot comes with a social engineering plug in that connects to webcam operations so that the victim can be filmed without his or her knowledge,” noted Litan. …
HITLER’S FLATULENCE
What was it that caused Adolf Hitler’s physical and mental health to collapse in the closing days of World War II? He was losing the war, of course— surely that had a great deal to do with it. But for more than 60 years, historians have wondered if there was more to it than that.
THE LEADER
On April 21, 1945, an SS physician named Ernst-Günther Schenck was summoned to Adolf Hitler’s bunker in Berlin and ordered to stock it with food. By that time Germany’s war was hopelessly lost—most of the country was already in Allied hands. Soviet troops had almost completely circled Berlin and were battling their way into the center of the city. Rather than flee, Hitler had decided to make his final stand in his führerbunker in the heart of the Nazi capital. He would remain there until the end, which for him was just nine days away.
Like all Germans, Dr. Schenck had been fed a steady diet of photographs, films, and propaganda posters of Hitler since the dictator had come to power in 1933. But the man he saw in the bunker looked nothing like those images. The 56-year-old Hitler “was a living corpse, a dead soul,” Schenck remembered in a 1985 interview. “His spine was hunched, his shoulder blades protruded from his bent back, and he collapsed his shoulders like a turtle.… I was looking into the eye of death.” …
Video Goodnesses
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