Most people sleep about seven or eight hours a night. That leaves 16 or 17 hours awake each day. Or about 1,000 minutes.
Let’s think about those 1,000 minutes as 100 10-minute blocks. That’s what you wake up with every day.
Throughout the day, you spend 10 minutes of your life on each block, until you eventually run out of blocks and it’s time to go to sleep.
It’s always good to step back and think about how we’re using those 100 blocks we get each day. How many of them are put towards making your future better, and how many of them are just there to be enjoyed? How many of them are spent with other people, and how many are for time by yourself? How many are used to create something, and how many are used to consume something? How many of the blocks are focused on your body, how many on your mind, and how many on neither one in particular? Which are your favorite blocks of the day, and which are your least favorite? …
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: OCTOBER 23RD- THE LONDON TORNADO
This Day In History: October 23, 1091
Tornadoes aren’t the first thing to leap to mind when picturing Merry Olde England, but a whopper of a twister tore through London on October 23, 1091. It is thought to be the largest known tornado in the UK, as well as the earliest – at least that we know about.
From contemporary accounts of the damage meteorologists conclude that the tornado was most like a T8 (severely devastating) on the tornado scale, which runs from T0 to T10. A tornado of this magnitude would have had wind speeds as high as 240 mph.
Back in 1091, during the reign of William Rufus, there was obviously drastically less infrastructure than today for a tornado to wreak havoc on. But its 200+ mph winds did cause the London Bridge to, indeed, fall down, and the nearby church of St. Mary-le-Bow was also leveled. Accounts from the time report that four 26-foot long rafters were driven so deeply into the earth by the force of the tornado that only four feet remained visible above-ground. …
The Democrats’ Bad Map
Hillary Clinton looks increasingly likely to win the White House, but her party faces a big obstacle to success in congressional races — Democrats are sorting themselves into geographic clusters where many of their votes have been rendered all but superfluous.
Even as Hillary Clinton appears poised to win easily against a highly erratic candidate with a campaign in meltdown, a sobering reality awaits Democrats on Nov. 9. It seems likely that they will eke out at most a narrow majority in the Senate, but will fail to pick up the 30 seats they need to reclaim the House. If they do manage to win a Senate majority, it will be exceedingly difficult to hold it past 2018, when 25 of the party’s seats must be defended, compared with eight Republican ones.
The Republican Party may seem in historic disarray, but it will most likely be able to continue to stymie the Democrats’ legislative agenda, perpetuating Washington’s gridlock for years to come.
Liberals have a simple explanation for this state of affairs: Republican-led gerrymandering, which has put Democrats at a disadvantage in the House and in many state legislatures. But this overlooks an even bigger problem for their party. More than ever, Democrats are sorting themselves into geographic clusters where many of their votes have been rendered all but superfluous, especially in elections for the Senate, House and state government.
This has long been a problem for the party, but it has grown worse in recent years. The clustering has economic and demographic roots, but also a basic cultural element: Democrats just don’t want to live where they’d need to live to turn more of the map blue. …
Why Hillary Wins
Hillary Clinton is a terrible candidate. Hey, that’s what pundits have been saying ever since this endless campaign began. You have to go back to Al Gore in 2000 to find a politician who faced as much jeering from the news media, over everything from claims of dishonesty (which usually turn out to be based on nothing) to matters of personal style.
Strange to say, however, Mrs. Clinton won the Democratic nomination fairly easily, and now, having pummeled her opponent in three successive debates, is an overwhelming favorite to win in November, probably by a wide margin. How is that possible?
The usual suspects are already coalescing around an answer — namely, that she just got lucky. If only the Republicans hadn’t nominated Donald Trump, the story goes, she’d be losing badly.
But here’s a contrarian thought: Maybe Mrs. Clinton is winning because she possesses some fundamental political strengths — strengths that fall into many pundits’ blind spots. …
US election 2016: Hillary Clinton’s bid for Republican stronghold
If Hillary Clinton is going to break through the narrow electoral map that has dominated the US presidential landscape for 16 years, some traditionally conservative states are going to have tilt her way.
If she is going to not just edge past Donald Trump but win in a rout, states like Arizona will have to fall into her column.
The home of the Grand Canyon last went Democratic in 1996, when Bill Clinton carried it.
Before that? Harry S Truman in 1948.
The state has a Republican governor and two Republican senators. Going into this election, it had a solid conservative red hue. Now, however, polls indicate Arizona and its 11 electoral votes (out of 270 needed to win the presidency) aren’t just in play, they may be leaning toward Mrs Clinton. …
Hillary Clinton sets sights on Congress as Donald Trump attacks his accusers
Republican voices grievances at Gettysburg while his Democrat opponent looks towards winning down-ballot contests
• Porn star Jessica Drake is 11th woman to allege Trump sexual misconduct
With the presidential election 17 days away, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both focused on other targets on Saturday.
Trump used what was billed as a major policy address to threaten lawsuits against women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, hours before a new accuser came forward. Clinton, ahead in national polls by around six points, shifted her focus to the Senate and the House.
Speaking in Pittsburgh, Clinton turned her focus on to the incumbent Republican Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey, who faces a tough re-election fight against Democrat Katie McGinty. Clinton boosted the challenger while criticizing Toomey, who has yet to say if he will vote for Trump in November.
Later, Clinton told reporters: “As we’re traveling in these last 17 days, we’re going to be emphasizing the importance of electing Democrats down the ballot.” …
10 Historical Records That Tell Another Side Of Bible Stories
The Bible isn’t just a religious book. The characters in the Bible lived through a real history that was shared with other nations, but we usually hear only Israel’s side of the story. The other nations of Biblical times were also keeping histories, which tell very different versions of the stories we’ve heard so many times.
10. The Greek Historian Strabo Said Moses Was An Egyptian Priest
The story of Moses and the Ten Commandments is one of the best-known stories of the Bible. With God’s help, the Bible says, Moses brought plagues upon Egypt until the pharaoh set the Jews free.
According to the Greeks, though, Moses wasn’t even Jewish. He was an Egyptian priest. Strabo tells us that Moses didn’t like Egypt’s institutions. He believed that God was in all things and so couldn’t take the form of an animal or a person. This wasn’t divine revelation. Here, it’s just presented as a philosophical musing.
In Strabo’s version, Moses didn’t talk to God or fight the pharaoh. Moses just convinced a lot of people that he was right, and they emigrated freely to Jerusalem. …
A Reading Guide for Those in Despair About American Politics
Nearly three dozen book recommendations to help make sense of the collapsing polity, from academics, comedians, activists, and more.
No matter who wins the U.S. presidential election on November 8, America’s got some grappling to do. This race has been full of sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and general bigotry. Many voters are unenthusiastic about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and the two candidates are widely rated as dishonest and untrustworthy in polls. Meanwhile, police shootings have rocked cities across the country. Muslims have been attacked by hate groups. Long-standing political coalitions have devolved into in-fighting.
It’s been rough. No vote will change the tenor of American politics overnight.
ooks may seem like small comfort. But in a time like this, when it’s hard to understand how American culture became so hate-filled, reading is probably the best possible option—to put down the Twitter, pick up a hardback, and think deeply about how the country has gotten here.
Besides, The Atlantic’s harshest burn against Donald Trump is that “he appears not to read.” As a courtesy to our readers, we’ve compiled nearly three dozen titles, recommended by academics, comedians, political activists, and more—plenty of material to help avoid Trump’s bookish sin. …
TV contracts keep lid on stars’ offensive remarks, insiders say: ‘Tapes are deleted’
After the leak of Trump’s groping remarks, people in the television industry say stars are protected despite ‘horrifying’ and ‘abusive’ comments
Arguably the worst moment of the Trump presidential campaign so far was the leaked audio of the candidate proclaiming his mistreatment of women to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush – a revelation that shocked voters on both sides of the political divide. But according to industry insiders, the bigger surprise is that we ever got to hear them at all.
Multiple TV producers across several kinds of unscripted and news programming say outtakes like Trump’s boast that his star status let him get away with grabbing women “by the pussy” are prevalent. But one of the reasons we rarely hear about them is that production companies go to great lengths to let their talent escape the consequences of harassment, producers say in interviews with the Guardian.
Networks maintain an arm’s-length distance from the productions themselves – leaving the executives who run production companies the only ones with the power to expose celebrities who mistreat their staff.
“It’s not an accident that we don’t know the specifics,” said one network executive at a reality network who asked not be identified. “Some of the talent is great, but a lot of the talent is really abusive and you just have to grow a thick skin. The behavior is often really lousy.” …
10 More Things We’ve Learned From Wikileaks
With the presidential election right around the corner, still more emails are being released by Wikileaks. These new batches of emails provide a continuing look into what goes on behind the scenes in the democratic campaign, and are a sobering look at the real story behind the media crusade.
10. Laura Graham
Laura Graham was deputy director of White House scheduling during Bill Clinton’s time in office, a job that required her to interview with John Podesta. She’s also become the Clinton’s chief of staff and the chief of operations for the Clinton Foundation, meaning that she is in the center of everything that is going on in the Clinton camp. Doug Band, who has been at the heart of newly-exposed comments regarding Chelsea Clinton, called Graham “the glue that holds it all together”.
The leaked emails suggest that not all is rosy behind the scenes at the Clinton Foundation. On December 8, 2011, Band sent an email warning about the state of Graham’s mental health. Not only did he tell other Clinton supporters that he had just talked Graham out of driving her car off a Staten Island dock and ultimately committing suicide in the water, he gave a reason, too. He writes, “She called to tell me the stress of all this office crap with wjc and cvc as well as that of her family had driven her to the edge and she couldn’t take it any more.” The email goes on to say that Chelsea would undoubtedly not care, and be more worried about what the press was saying about her in recent articles. …
Former Arizona Governor Dismisses Hispanics: ‘They Don’t Vote’
“They don’t get out and vote. They don’t vote.”
Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) dismissed the suggestion that Hillary Clinton could win her state in the presidential election, claiming that Hispanics there wouldn’t vote.
GOP nominee Donald Trump narrowly leads Clinton in Arizona ― a state that has traditionally voted for Republicans ― according to HuffPost Pollster. (One recent poll this week even showed her leading Trump in the state.) But there has been rapid growth in the number of eligible Hispanic voters in the state, which could be a problem for Trump, who launched his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and criminals.
Still, Brewer, who has endorsed Trump, said she wasn’t concerned with the Hispanic vote.
“Nah,” she told the Boston Globe. “They don’t get out and vote. They don’t vote.” …
I CALL BULLSHIT, MS. BREWER! The number of FUCK TRUMP bumper stickers in the colors of the Mexican flag tell the real story of what most hispanics seem to think of Donald Trump.
Frugality Isn’t What It Used to Be
What use is there today for one of the oldest virtues?
As many Americans go about their days, I imagine they have two little angels perched on their shoulders, whispering conflicting messages about happiness and material wealth. One angel is embodied by James Altucher, a minimalist self-help guru recently profiled by The New York Times. Altucher claims to have only 15 possessions, after having unburdened himself a few months ago of 40 garbage bags’ worth of stuff and never looking back. As I read about Altucher, I rolled the numbers 15 and 40 over in my mind, thinking about the belongings in my bedroom and the garbage bags under my kitchen sink.
The other angel is Tyler Brûlé, the editor in chief of the fantastically high-end lifestyle magazine Monocle and a columnist for the Financial Times. He is the sort of writer who tosses off such lines as “I zipped along the autostrada through the Val d’Aosta with the ever-trusty Mario (my Italian driver for the past 20 years) at the wheel” with little regard for how privileged and pretentious he sounds (especially in his superfluous parentheticals). Still, there is something, I’m a little ashamed to say, that I envy about Brûlé’s effortless cosmopolitanism—which, it’s hard to miss, is only made possible by unusual wealth. …
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: OCTOBER 23RD- 50,000 MARCH ON NEW YORK
This Day In History: October 23, 1915
At least 50,000 people took to the streets of New York City on October 23, 1915 to march in the country’s largest women’s suffrage parade up to that time.
Nearly 70 years after the founders of the women’s suffrage movement gathered in Seneca Falls, it seemed the tide was finally turning. (Interestingly, this matter was controversial even among the two main organizers of that gathering at Seneca Falls, with Elizabeth Stanton firmly for fighting for a woman’s right to vote and Lucretia Mott stating about that proposition, “Why Lizzie, thee will make us ridiculous.” It was ultimately a former slave, the great Frederick Douglas, that swayed the crowd at that gathering to include the right to vote in the Declaration of Sentiments.)
After enduring decades of ridicule and intimidation over the matter since then, 13 states had enfranchised women, and it was hoped that the progressive state of New York would be next to fall into line. …
Mike Holmes: Start now to keep the cold out and the money savings in
As we move into winter, we’ll start depending more on our heating systems. If your home is losing heat, you will definitely start to notice it on your monthly bills.
The goal of energy efficiency in a home is to reduce the total amount of energy required to maintain a set interior temperature. Proper building techniques, better products and regular maintenance can all be used to improve energy efficiency.
The best way to minimize heat loss is to improve the building envelope — that includes exterior walls, windows, doors, roof and foundation. Vapour barriers must be properly sealed to prevent air movement and drafts, insulation maximized to increase the R-value (a material’s resistance to heat loss) to reduce the rate at which hot air moves to cold, and all products between warm and cold zones must be made to contain thermal barrier properties. …
Flotsam and fashion: recycler of ‘ghost’ fishing nets makes marine litter trendy
Last year a company set up by an Italian former scuba recycled more than 5,000 tons of discarded nets into nylon for apparel brands including Speedo
‘Ghost netting’ and other discarded fishing gear makes up 10% of all marine litter.
The oceans are choked with discarded fishing nets, or ghost nets, that are estimated to kill 300,000 whales, dolphins and seals each year. It’s a grotesque and avoidable toll on nature, and one that Giulio Bonazzi, CEO of Aquafil, hopes to reduce using an unlikely ally – fashion.
The Italian firm is pioneering the use of “ghost” or discarded fishing nets to make a synthetic fabric marketed under the name Econyl that’s currently being used by several apparel brands, including Speedo and California surfer Kelly Slater’s Outerknown.
Last year, Aquafil recycled more than 5,000 tons of discarded nets at its factory in Trento in the north-east of Italy. With the exception of fish farming nets, which are coated with copper oxide to prevent algae and cannot be used, the company receives nets directly from fishermen, or through partnerships with two firms, Healthy Seas and Net-Works.
By breaking down the nets to a molecular level, the plastics are then recreated as yarn in a process the sustainability industry calls recommercialization. …
The Best Answer To Racist Questions About Your Ethnicity
Contrary to popular belief, it’s not always appropriate to rip your own face off with your bare hands in public, even if some random person on the street asks what kind of “ethnic” you are and then ponders aloud if you are “some type of Chinese,” or poses some other equally disdainful follow-up comment.
Ripping off your own face with your bare hands to finally end the flood of questions regarding your ethnicity, while being the appropriate response, lacks a certain civility. And the mess it makes! Oof! So in your best interest, I’ve written down some moments and places where it would be totally okay for you to rip your face off with your bare hands without being arrested and/or institutionalized.
#1. When You’re A Baby
It doesn’t hurt to start young. Faces don’t fully attach to the skull until sometime around age two, so a nice clean separation of face skin from skull would be super easy. While it’s true that, as a baby, you won’t be able to comprehend racism, it’s still good practice for a few years down the line, when life and everyone in it forces you to totally get it, and then never stops making you get it.
#2. First Thing In The Morning
If you ask me, there’s nothing sweeter than waking up to a hot cup of coffee, a nice warm shower, and the soothing sounds of your own screaming as you rip your face off until you get to the bone.
“Really hope I don’t have to spontaneously show off my Ghost Rider impression!”
So start the day off right before you go into your toxic work environment, and indulge in an invigorating angry ripping of your face clean off. Your shitty co-workers might treat you a little bit less like a Latina housemaid and a little more like the receptionist you originally applied to be. …
This is one of the oddest articles I’ve come across on Cracked…
The Horrifying True Story of the Black Brothers Forced to Become Circus Freaks
In 1899, George and Willie Muse, then nine and six, were abducted from Truevine, Virginia, and forced into the circus. The brothers were both albinos born of African-American parents at a time in Southern history when blacks had little to no rights. Their white skin and black features gave them an exotic appearance that the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s “Greatest Show on Earth” exploited by having them pretend to be cannibals, sheep-headed “freaks,” and “Ambassadors from Mars” in sideshows.
The brothers were international superstars long before the age of television, playing to huge crowds at Buckingham Palace and New York’s Madison Square Garden. But throughout all this their mother Harriet refused to accept that they were gone, and spent the better part of three decades trying to get them back.
In a new book, Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South, out October 18 from Little, Brown and Company, journalist Beth Macy gives a gripping account of what black oppression was like at its most extreme during the beginning of the 20th century. She recounts the Muse brothers’ tale, but more importantly details their mother’s quest to find them. For decades, the closely guarded story of how “Eko” and “Iko,” as they were called in the circus, became George and Willie once again was only known to family members—many of whom were illiterate. It took Macy 25 years to get the full story, using “gentle persistence” and building trust with the remaining family members before they’d share the entire narrative with her. …
American airline wins right to weigh passengers to prevent crash landings
Hawaiian Airlines implemented the new policy to distribute weight evenly around the plane cabin and save fuel
An American airline won the right to have weighed its passengers over a six-month period earlier this year to learn how it can save fuel, after discovering the average passenger and carry-on luggage was heavier than expected.
Hawaiian Airlines has now scrapped pre-booked seating for people flying the 2,600-mile route between Honolulu and the American Samoa.
Instead, they will be assigned seats when they check in to make sure weight is evenly distributed around the main cabin of the plane. The airline will keep at least one seat open per row or place children under the age of 13 in those seats.
Some passengers said the policy was discriminatory as it only affects people flying on one route, from Honolulu to Pago Pago, with most passengers being of Samoan descent. Samoans have among the highest rates of obesity in the world. …
10 Clever Methods To Date The Human Past
Based on his expertise on ancient documents and biblical genealogies, the Irish Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656) estimated that our planet was created in the morning of October 23, 4004 BC. Our understanding of world chronology has come a long way since Ussher’s times, thanks to many of the clever dating methods we have developed.
10. Linguistic Dating
As time goes by, two geographically isolated communities that speak the same language will display differences in the way they talk. After a few generations, language change becomes more significant. After thousands of years, we’re most likely faced with two related but totally independent languages.
Linguistics can date text on documents, pottery, building walls, and numerous other surfaces. Many important ancient texts have been dated on the basis of linguistic comparison, such as the Zoroastrian Avesta, which is believed to have been written somewhere between 1200–1500 BC based on linguistic similarities with the Indian Vedas. …
San Francisco’s 58-story Millennium Tower is upscale, but literally sinking fast
Looking ack, Pamela Buttery can recall an early clue that something could be amiss at the luxury high-rise where she’s lived for the past six years.
A golfer, she sometimes practiced her putting indoors, tapping the ball toward a portable cup on the hardwood floor in her living room.
If Buttery missed, the ball would carom off the wall and strangely change course, swerving right and gaining momentum as it rolled toward the northwest corner of her condo. At which point, she said, her cat Maximus would “go racing after the ball.”
It became a game between them, but it also presaged what in the past several months has become a sobering reality for the retired real estate developer and other residents of the 58-story Millennium Tower:
The tower is sinking — 16 inches so far, with projections that the amount could double over time. …
Pikachu Has Hijacked Your Brain’s Reward System
The yellow Pokémon captures attention by exploiting a neural bias towards cuteness, sugar content, and other rewards.
Cute things are usually vulnerable, fragile, and weak. But cuteness itself is mighty indeed. Morten L. Kringelbach and his colleagues at the University of Oxford recently described cuteness as “one of the most basic and powerful forces shaping our behavior.” And yet, despite its elemental importance, cuteness might be a fluid, evolving concept and trait.
The word emerged as a shortened form of the word ‘acute’, originally meaning sharp, clever, or shrewd. Schoolboys in the United States began using cute to mean pretty or attractive in the early 19th century. But cuteness also implies weakness. Mignon, the French word for cute or dainty, is the origin of the English word ‘minion,’ a weak follower or underling. Kawaii, a Japanese word referring to a similar concept, appears to have been first used in the 11th century to mean pitiable.
Yet the mascots of Japanese kawaii today are not always so pitiable. Pikachu, a rat-like creature from the videogame franchise Pokémon, can conjure bolts of searing electricity to attack opponents. But Pikachu’s infantile features—large eyes, plump red cheeks and a disproportionately large head—make this not-so-pitiable Pokémon paradoxically innocent, lovable, and cute. …
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE AMERICAN ACCENT
Hey, youz! Whah do ‘mericuns have all differnt aks-ay-ents? It’s, like, totally confusing and somewhat bizzahh, dontcha know.
TALK THIS WAY
An accent is “a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location, or nation.” That’s not to be confused with a dialect, which is a specific form of a language that has its own unique lexicon (words), grammatical structures, and phonology (a fancy word for accent). So an accent can be a part of a dialect, but not vice versa. Because dialects can be traced to geographic regions, they give linguists important clues to the origins of accents. And discovering where accents came from can explain why an American says “ta-may-toe” and a Brit says “ta-mah-toe,” or why a Bostonian says “pahk the cah” and a Nebraskan says “park the car.”
BRITISH INVASIONS
The United States began as colonies of Great Britain, but the settlers didn’t trickle across the Atlantic at random. According to Brandeis University Professor David Hackett Fischer in his book Albion’s Seed, there are four primary American accents, which derive from the major migrations from England to the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
THANKS to HBO and Last Week Tonight for making this program available on YouTube.
Chris Wallace (Tom Hanks) moderates the final debate between Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) and Hillary Clinton (Kate McKinnon).
THANKS to NBC and Saturday Night Live for making this program available on YouTube.
“Eric loves beer, no we don’t give him beer!, my son Brayden is the only one that drinks beer in the house and Eric will go to the end of the earth to find a beer can. Brayden thought hiding them would work but nooooooo!”
Bessie the African Grey will pick up a nearly empty beer can with her beak, tilt it back and drink… without spilling a drop.
FINALLY . . .
MIT’s Nightmare AI Images Will Haunt Your Dreams
Help MIT learn what will scare you on their new Halloween-themed deep learning site.
In the spirit of Halloween, MIT created a website called Nightmare, exploring the power of AI to make everything from the Eiffel Tower to random faces really, really creepy. The website showcases these efforts, including many spooky landscapes along with distorted, horrifying faces.
The creepiness of deep learning software-generated images isn’t exactly news–Google’s Deep Dream in particular is known for transforming images into many-eyed dog-faced horrors. But this is the first AI we’ve seen that is intended specifically to make things look scary. …