'Donut County' turns trash collecting and gaslighting into a perfect punchline

"What is a donut without a hole?"

That's Roma, the larger of the two talking donkeys (I'm pretty sure they're donkeys) that make up Donut County's premiere power couple.

"Wow, good question," BK, a talking raccoon and the proprietor of the local donut eatery, replied. "We should really stop to ponder this for as long as possible."

The raccoon is deflecting. No one realizes it except Mira, his human and employee and sort-of-friend.

But before she can say anything, Coco spoke up. The bright green talking alligator (or is it a crocodile?) seems to be a local source of wisdom. When Coco speaks, folks listen. Read more...

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from Mashable https://mashable.com/2018/08/27/donut-county-review/
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Best deals for Monday: Save on Apple iPad Mini, Bose wireless headphones, Amazon Echo Look, and appliances from Kenmore

With the start of a new week, we've gathered together the best deals on electronics, kitchen cookware, and major appliances from Amazon, Walmart, and Target. We've also rounded up deals on Amazon devices.

SEE ALSO: 13 content delivery networks to speed up your website

There are deals on products for the home kitchen today, such as on this cordless stick vacuum cleaner from Dyson, which is on sale for just $297.90. That's more than $100 off a top-rated vacuumFarberware's three-liter digital oil-less fryer is discounted to only $50.00, while Hamilton Beach's coffee maker is priced at $86.66. There are deals on major appliances from Kenmore on Amazon too. Read more...

More about Apple, Target, Walmart, Bose, and Ipad Mini

from Mashable https://mashable.com/2018/08/27/best-deals-apple-ipad-bose-amazon-echo-look-kenmore/
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Holy calamari: Giant squid washes up on New Zealand beach

Lots of weird things wash up on beachesSea potatoesA very old message in a bottleUnidentifiable sea creatures.

But by golly, this is one huge squid.

SEE ALSO: Penguin that loves untying shoelaces is the delightful little jerk you've been looking for

The 4.5 metre (14 foot, 9 inch) long cephalopod washed up on the south coast of Wellington, New Zealand on Sunday morning, its size easily eclipsing the mere mortals that dare to lie beside it.

Brothers Daniel, Jack, and Matthew Aplin told Newstalk ZB that they were looking for a place to dive when they spotted the creature.

"My brother said 'what's that over there?' and pointed it out," Daniel told the radio station. "It was right next to the track so we pulled over and we were like: 'It's a big squid'." Read more...

More about Animals, New Zealand, Squid, Culture, and Animals

from Mashable https://mashable.com/2018/08/27/giant-squid-new-zealand/
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Apple AirPods totally change the game

You may think wireless headphones would fall right out of your ears, but Apple's AirPods stay steady no matter what you're up to. El Pulso host, Alex Aspe, talks specs and software this week on Power Up. Read more...

More about Apple, Mashable Video, Apple Airpods, Airpods, and Airpods Case

from Mashable https://mashable.com/video/apple-airpods-review-el-pulso
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Vox Sentences: Nicaragua expels the UN

Photos: Aretha Franklin’s funeral was absolutely fit for the Queen of Soul

The US and Canada didn’t make a NAFTA deal. But it’s not over yet.

Trump’s deadline has passed, but the two sides will keep negotiating.

The Trump administration failed to reach a deal with Canada on a new version of NAFTA on Friday, missing its self-imposed deadline.

The White House said it will keep negotiating with its northern neighbor, however, in the hope of reaching an agreement soon. The administration’s decision leaves open the possibility that a revised North American Free Trade Agreement that includes Canada could still happen, though earlier this week, Trump suggested that a preliminary trade deal with Mexico could replace it.

Any new NAFTA deal would have to be approved by Congress, which strongly favors a trilateral agreement over a bilateral US-Mexico pact.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who is leading the talks, said in a statement on Friday that negotiations were ongoing but the president would move ahead and let Congress know a deal is coming soon. “Today the president notified the Congress of his intent to sign a trade agreement with Mexico — and Canada, if it is willing — 90 days from now,” he said.

Both Canada and the US had made positive sounds about the negotiations earlier in the week, but by Friday, talks started to break down. The Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail reported that the US and Canada remain divided over a few sticking points, including Chapter 19, a provision of NAFTA that sends trade disputes involving anti-dumping and countervailing duties to be decided before an independent panel, rather than domestic courts. The US wants to scrap it, but Canada says it’s necessary to protect its industries.

This situation worsened after Trump said he would refuse to make any concessions to Canada in leaked off-the-record comments made to reporters.

During an interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday, the US president reportedly boasted off the record that an agreement with Canada would be “totally on our terms” and suggested that his threats of auto tariffs were working, according to the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale.

“Off the record, Canada’s working their ass off. And every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” Trump reportedly said about the negotiations, referencing his threat of placing tariffs on auto imports.

Canada and the US ultimately couldn’t reach a deal by Friday, but negotiators will be at it again next week. So NAFTA isn’t totally dead yet — but these upcoming negotiations will be critical.

The US and Canada couldn’t reach a deal by Friday. So what happens now?

Let’s be clear: This Friday, August 31, deadline to reach a US-Canada agreement on NAFTA was something the Trump administration made up.

That’s because the US president, by law, has to give Congress 90 days’ notice that he plans to sign a trade agreement. He wanted to do that by this week because Mexico’s government will change hands by December 1, when the newly elected leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador takes over. Trump doesn’t want to risk losing the deal he made with the current Mexican administration, so he would prefer to get a new NAFTA pact locked down sooner rather than later.

On Friday, Trump officially notified Congress about the new trade agreement. And the administration also made clear it wants Canada included, too — if Canada wants in, of course.

Here’s Trump’s trade deal notification to Congress. pic.twitter.com/1Jgjg13liq

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 31, 2018

That can still happen, because though Trump has notified Congress that he has a preliminary deal with Mexico, he doesn’t have to deliver a finalized agreement to Congress for another 30 days. The idea is to add Canada into any agreement at that time.

That means the real deadline to carve out a new NAFTA is the end of September. Canada, the US, and Mexico will continue discussions until then.

Canada knew that Trump’s initial Friday deadline wasn’t firm and, thus, that the Trump administration was bluffing a bit.

Indeed, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made it clear this week that Canada wouldn’t rush to make an agreement if it wasn’t in their interests to do so. “We recognize that there is a possibility of getting there by Friday, but it is only a possibility, because it will hinge on whether there is ultimately a good deal for Canada,” Trudeau said. “No NAFTA deal is better than a bad NAFTA deal.”

Canada also has an unexpected ally in this dealmaking process: Congress. Democrats and Trump’s Republican allies want any new NAFTA deal to include Canada, and they’re not eager to move ahead solely with a bilateral agreement with Mexico.

There are a few reasons why, but it’s mainly because Canada is one of the US’s largest trading partners, and the supply chains between the two countries — particularly the automotive industry — are deeply intertwined. This means that Trump can threaten to place auto tariffs on Canada, but US manufacturers and consumers will feel the pain too.

Trump could of course try to send the Mexico-US bilateral agreement to Congress as a NAFTA replacement, as he suggested in his notification to Congress.

But that seems unlikely to go over well. Lawmakers — pro-business Republicans among them — want Canada involved. It’s also not clear if Trump can legally push through a Mexico-US deal.

Trump could also take more drastic measures. He could potentially threaten to withdraw from NAFTA, or attempt to do so, though Congress would likely be able to block such a move. He could also follow through on his threat to retaliate with tariffs.

The bottom line: NAFTA isn’t dead, and the worst case scenario — that the 24-year-old agreement implodes — isn’t happening yet.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and US Trade Representative Lighthizer both said Friday that the two sides were negotiating in good faith, despite the cloud that Trump’s off-the-record comments brought to the negotiations. (Trump, meanwhile, seemed less concerned about the negotiations than the “dishonest reporting.”)

“A win-win-win agreement is within reach,” Freeland said Friday.

That win-win agreement, if it does happen, will likely look a lot like the old NAFTA, with just a few tweaks around the margins that could potentially benefit workers — even though Trump will probably come up with a brand new name.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2018/8/31/17804290/nafta-canada-us-mexico-deal-trump-friday
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Why people are angry over a Washington Post fact check about police shootings

The article argued that there were “virtually no shootings of unarmed black children” in recent years.

Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat currently campaigning for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat in Texas, attracted national attention when he offered a full-throated defense of the NFL kneeling protests earlier this month. But this week, the politician’s comments sparked a separate debate within the media about the ways police shootings affect black children.

During a campaign town hall on August 10, a voter asked O’Rourke if he thought NFL players’ protests against police violence and racial inequality were disrespectful.

O’Rourke gave a lengthy response, one that not only addressed the protests themselves but also reflected on the history of the civil rights movement. It was the final portion of his statement, though, that attracted the most attention.

From O’Rourke:

Peaceful, nonviolent protests, including taking a knee at a football game to point out that Black men, unarmed; Black teenagers, unarmed; and Black children, unarmed, are being killed at a frightening level right now, including by members of law enforcement, without accountability and without justice.

And this problem — as grave as it is — is not gonna fix itself, and they’re frustrated, frankly, with people like me and those in positions of public trust and power who have been unable to resolve this or bring justice for what has been done and to stop it from continuing to happen in this country. And so nonviolently, peacefully, while the eyes of this country are watching these games, they take a knee to bring our attention and our focus to this problem and ensure that we fix it. That is why they’re doing it, and I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up or take a knee for your rights anytime, anywhere, anyplace.

Cruz criticized O’Rourke’s statements, calling the “nothing more American” remark unpatriotic and disrespectful to the military. A similar argument has been used heavily by President Donald Trump, who has regularly argued that NFL players protesting racial injustice are disrespecting America, the national anthem, and the flag.

Cruz’s comments drew more attention to O’Rourke’s initial remarks. On August 21, NowThis News tweeted out an edited clip of O’Rourke’s comments, which quickly went viral. Since that post went up, it has been tweeted by a number of celebrities, including Colin Kaepernick, who originated the NFL kneeling protest in 2016. The NowThis News clip has been viewed some 44 million times since being posted last week, Vanity Fair reports.

For the most part, discussion of O’Rourke’s comments has largely centered on what he said about the NFL protests. But on Thursday, the Washington Post took the discussion of O’Rourke’s remarks in a different direction when it published a piece fact-checking his claim about black children being shot by police, concluding that “there have been virtually no shootings of unarmed black children by police in the past five years.”

The post was swiftly met with backlash, with critics noting that black children like Tamir Rice have been killed in police shootings. Defenders of the article meanwhile, like Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum, argued that the core claims of the Washington Post analysis were correct.

It’s sparked a debate that gets at something much deeper than the single claim the Washington Post set out to verify, calling attention to the ways police shootings can have damaging effects on black communities in ways that go beyond raw numbers.

The Washington Post has been criticized for its fact check

Prompted by a reader, the August 30 Washington Post fact check, written by Glenn Kessler, focuses solely on one part of O’Rourke’s comments, the line that “black children, unarmed, are being killed at a frightening level right now, including by members of law enforcement.”

To determine the accuracy of that statement, Kessler turned to the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database, which tracks fatal police shootings across the country each year. Drawing a distinction between black children and teenagers (the Washington Post database lumps both into an under 18 category), Kessler notes that based on the database, no unarmed children had been killed by police between 2015 and this month. Kessler acknowledged the 2014 death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed by a police officer, but noted that because he was holding a toy gun, the database did not count his death as being unarmed.

Kessler also acknowledged the police fatalities of unarmed black teenagers — including Jordan Edwards, Antwon Rose, and David Joseph — in recent years, but concluded that unarmed black teenagers killed by police ultimately “represent a small set” of those killed by police. He adds that “six teenagers and three children who were white or Hispanic — and unarmed — were fatally shot in the 2015-2018 time period.”

“There have been virtually no shootings of unarmed black children by police in the past five years,” Kessler concluded.

He also evaluated O’Rourke’s claim from a different angle, this time looking into whether unarmed black children are more likely to face violence beyond police shootings. Looking at homicides in America’s 50 largest cities, Kessler cited WaPo data that found that black children and teenagers accounted for some 70 percent of those killed since 2007. Based on those numbers, Kessler noted that this level of violence “would qualify as a frightening level.”

The piece was immediately challenged by other outlets. Over at Splinter, Katherine Krueger argues that Kessler’s article is “what happens when you’re straining so hard to uphold some misplaced standard of ‘objectivity’ and are so horned up about delineating fact from fiction that you lose any sense of moral clarity.” On Twitter, commenters noted that the post itself was based on somewhat shaky footing, arguing that the act of determining if children’s deaths at the hands of police reached a “frightening level” was completely subjective.

Later on Thursday, Kevin Drum, an opinion writer for Mother Jones, mounted a defense of Kessler’s piece. Pointing to a recent paper on fatal police shootings in 2014 and 2015 published by the Public Administration Review, Drum noted that researchers found an incredibly small number of unarmed deaths at the hands of police in general.

“Are unarmed children being gunned down by police at harrowing levels? Obviously not, if this data is correct,” Drum noted.

This debate is about more than the number of black children killed in police shootings

For the most part, this debate has mostly played out online, focusing on a largely subjective question. After all, a “frightening level” of violence to one person might not mean the same thing to another. And while the reader who emailed Kessler was particularly curious about black children killed by police, one could also look at O’Rourke’s comments and argue that he was speaking about police violence against black people as a whole, a perspective that would make this entire debate seem like a lot of needless hair-splitting.

Focusing on the exact number of black youth killed by police can miss important context and make it much easier to dismiss arguments about policing and the ways it affects black children, an omission that is likely fueling some of the frustrations about Kessler’s piece.

It’s worth noting here that discussions of police shootings and children and teens have largely focused on high-profile cases, including those of Rice, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Laquan McDonald in Chicago; and more recent cases like Edwards and Rose. Not all of these cases were included in Kessler’s assessment. McDonald, for example, would likely be classified as “armed” in the Post’s database because he had a knife when he was shot 16 times while walking away from a Chicago police officer in 2014.

These incidents have deepened black Americans’ distrust of police, and have affected the ways black youth interact with law enforcement. While the Washington Post article is meant to be a straight fact check, it doesn’t grapple with the ways police shootings can disrupt lives and affect a community, making its focus on the raw numbers of police shootings of unarmed children come off as dismissive.

Black children are still exposed to violence that their peers are less likely to face. Research has shown that starting in childhood, black people are subjected to heightened scrutiny and suspicion. In 2014, researcher Phillip Goff found that by the age of 10, black boys begin to be seen as less innocent than their white peers. And a Georgetown study released in 2017 found that black girls as young as 5 are already perceived as more adult-like and less innocent than white girls of the same age. And it’s likely that these beliefs play a role in police violence against black children, like when an 11-year-old girl suspected of shoplifting in a grocery store was struck by a police Taser earlier this month.

Violence against black children can’t be separated from policing issues that affect black adults and black communities. In the years since Mike Brown’s shooting in Ferguson sparked a national discussion about racial disparities in policing, there have been countless examples of the reasons black communities often struggle to trust law enforcement. They include not only police shootings and brutality but also racial profiling, unnecessary police stops and searches, racially disproportionate arrests, and systems of fines or even outright theft that have plundered the wealth of black residents.

Ultimately, these are some of the very disparities highlighted by the NFL protests that O’Rourke spoke about this month. And that focus shouldn’t be sidetracked by discussions that seek to determine exactly what level of police violence against black children is or isn’t “frightening.”

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/31/17806216/washington-post-police-shootings-black-children-glenn-kessler-tamir-rice-jordan-edwards
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Ozark’s muddy season 2, explained in 11 incomprehensible screenshots

I didn’t read Harry Potter when I was growing up. And I wasn’t alone.

The US plans to end all support for UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees

The organization provides food, education, and health care for nearly 5 million refugees.

President Donald Trump is planning to cut all US funding to the United Nations program that administers aid to millions of Palestinian refugees, multiple outlets reported on Friday, alarming the international community and potentially putting the program itself at risk.

The cuts would come amid a general push from the Trump administration to reduce foreign aid and assistance to other countries, and are reportedly intended to pressure Palestinian politicians into making concessions ahead of a US-sponsored Middle East peace plan.

“What we’re seeing right now is a capricious move that has a very high risk of unsettling the region,” R. David Harden, a former official at the United States Agency for International Development who resigned in April, told the New York Times.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was formed one year after the creation of the state of Israel in 1949. It provides health care, food, and education services to nearly 5 million Palestinian refugees spread out across the Middle East.

The US is the largest single donor to the UN agency, responsible for providing about $350 million each year — a quarter of its annual budget.

Trump administration officials have openly criticized the agency in recent days. “I think it is long overdue that we have taken steps to reduce funding,” US National Security Adviser John Bolton told Reuters last week, calling it a “failed mechanism.”

And Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, criticized US support of UNRWA on Tuesday. “First of all, you’re looking at the fact that, yes, there’s an endless number of refugees that continue to get assistance, but more importantly, the Palestinians continue to bash America,” she said, according to the Washington Post.

The US had already stated its intention to withhold $65 million in UNRWA funding back in January. But after a concerted push by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is also a senior Middle East adviser, the State Department will now withhold the remaining amount, Harden said.

This news comes on top of other, separate funding cuts to Palestinians: The Trump administration announced last week that it will “divert” $200 million in aid to Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, at least some of which would have been dispersed through the Palestinian Authority.

The cuts are apparently intended to pressure Palestinians to comply with aspects of Kushner’s Middle East peace proposal, which has yet to be unveiled. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Palestinians would not cooperate after Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem last year.

But it’s unclear if cutting funding will have the desired effect, and experts don’t believe that the US-brokered Middle East peace plan has a high chance of succeeding.

“The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale,” Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, told the New York Times last week in response to the news of the earlier cuts. “There is no glory in constantly bullying and punishing a people under occupation.”

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has talked about slashing funding to Palestinians

Back in December 2017, Trump declared that he planned to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, effectively recognizing that city as the capital of Israel and breaking with decades of established US policy.

The UN and the international community reacted with outrage to the announcement. Palestinians were angered too, and many said that this effectively killed any attempt at a US-brokered peace process. This annoyed Trump, who went on Twitter in January to complain about US funding to Palestinian refugees.

It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

Also in January, Haley said that the US would cut funding to UNRWA unless Palestinians decided to come to the table and continue peace talks with Israel. ”We’re trying to move for a peace process, but if that doesn’t happen, the president is not going to continue to fund that situation,” Haley said.

On May 14, when the Jerusalem embassy move took place, Israeli soldiers clashed with Palestinians who were protesting along the border with Gaza, leaving more than 60 Palestinians dead.

Palestinians were protesting the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, which is suffering from an Israeli and Egyptian blockade, and demanding their right to return to lands in Israel that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were evicted from during the creation of the Jewish state.

As Miriam Berger writes for Vox, during Israel’s war for independence, which Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, at least 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes. Today, their descendants remain refugees, and many still live in urban, slumlike refugee camps across the Middle East. According to the UN, “Socioeconomic conditions in the camps are generally poor, with high population density, cramped living conditions and inadequate basic infrastructure such as roads and sewers.”

In the months since the embassy move, US relations with the Palestinians have not improved — though Trump’s hardline approach has been popular with Israel’s ruling right-wing government. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed the Palestinians for disrupting the peace process and heartily expressed his support for Washington’s decision to slash funding to the UN aid agency, though others in Israel — including some Israel Defense Forces officials — believe the decision will have severe and negative ramifications.

According to Foreign Policy, the decision to cut US funding to UNRWA was made earlier in the month at a meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kushner, and was intended to place pressure on Palestinian leadership:

Kushner contends that UNRWA’s assistance has built a culture of dependency among the Palestinians and that it helps preserve unrealistic expectations that they might one day return to the homes they left in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

He and Haley are gambling that the financial pressure will force the Palestinians to resume negotiations with Washington’s Middle East peace team, which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas halted over Trump’s decision last year to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

A US official told the Washington Post this week that the Trump administration will announce the coming cuts to UNRWA’s funding soon. Though other countries have promised to raise their allotted funding to help make up the shortfall, it’s unclear when or if that will actually happen.

Back in January, when the US first announced plans to withhold some funding to UNRWA, UN Secretary General António Guterres expressed concern about what would happen next.

”In my opinion, and an opinion that is shared by most international observers, including some Israeli ones, [UNRWA] is an important factor of stability,” he said. If the agency could not provide vital services to millions of Palestinian refugees, Guterres continued, it could create “a very, very serious problem.”

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2018/8/31/17804262/palestinian-refugees-unrwa-funding-cut
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Trump just lost his best chance to kill DACA this year

A conservative judge in Texas refuses to issue an injunction, so unauthorized immigrants currently protected from deportation will still be allowed to renew.

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — which President Trump sought to shut down in September 2017 but which has been partially reanimated by judges elsewhere — is probably illegal.

But Judge Andrew Hanen is refusing to order the program shut down immediately.

That’s a setback for the Trump administration, which has refused to defend DACA against the group of red states led by Texas suing over it (leaving its defense to advocacy groups), and which was hoping to use Hanen as a weapon against rulings in favor of DACA in New York, California, and Texas.

In the absence of a stop from Hanen, the Trump administration will have to continue accepting and processing two-year renewals of protection from deportation and work permits for the 690,000 unauthorized immigrants who came to the US as children already covered by DACA.

Hanen decided that the group of red states suing the Trump administration to end DACA waited too long to challenge the legality of the program. “The States could have brought a lawsuit against the entire program in 2012 or anytime thereafter,” he noted. But by now, because DACA has been protecting immigrants for six years, Texas can’t claim it would suffer irreparable harm if the program were allowed to continue for several more months.

The ruling doesn’t mean DACA is safe. The program has already been closed to new applicants, and it’s expected that the Supreme Court, with an eventual five-conservative majority, will rule that the Trump administration had the legal authority to wind down the program in 2017.

But the question of how long DACA renewals will be available is a crucial one for the immigrants currently protected by the program and trying to figure out how to stay protected for as long as possible. Friday’s ruling means they could be safe through June 2019.

Why Judge Hanen’s refusal to shut down DACA immediately is so surprising

Hanen’s refusal to grant a preliminary injunction against DACA is extremely surprising. The group of red states, led by Texas, who sued the Trump administration to end the program (after federal judges in California, New York, and DC ordered them to keep processing renewal applications) deliberately filed their case in Hanen’s court because of his record on immigration issues.

Most notably, Hanen had all but declared DACA unconstitutional while ruling against the Obama administration’s efforts to expand DACA in 2014 (as well as against a larger program to grant deportation protection and work permits to parents of US citizens).

In that case, Hanen issued a preliminary injunction against the Obama administration — preventing it from implementing an expansion of DACA while he considered the case in full — mere days before it was set to start. He was expected to issue a similar ruling in this case, ordering the government to stop processing renewals preliminarily while hearing the case more fully.

But in Friday’s ruling, Hanen drew a clear distinction between ordering the government to stop something before it starts and ordering it to stop something it’s already doing:

The Court used two time-worn sayings [...] when it ruled that an injunction was warranted to stop the implementation of DAPA and Expanded DACA: “One cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube” and “One cannot scramble the egg.” Here, the egg has been scrambled. To try to put it back in the shell with only a preliminary injunction record, and perhaps at great risk to many, does not make sense nor serve the best interests of this country.

The timeline for DACA’s future is still uncertain — but the odds of an imminent end are lower

If Hanen had issued an order to stop DACA, the Trump administration would have faced mutually contradictory judicial injunctions — pitting the Texas one against the California, New York, and DC ones — creating a legal paradox that the Supreme Court would have had to resolve over its summer recess, and raising huge questions about what the Trump administration would do with DACA renewal applications in the meantime.

But the paradox didn’t emerge, because Hanen isn’t issuing an injunction to counter the others.

The paradox could still happen. Hanen gave the federal government 21 days to appeal the lack of an injunction to the Fifth Circuit, which is a pretty conservative circuit court — and it’s possible they’d be willing to overlook the timeliness issue. But it’s not likely that they’d go further than Hanen would.

Without that legal paradox, the Trump administration will have to wait for one of the four DACA-related lawsuits to make it to a circuit court ruling and then appeal to the Supreme Court. At this point, it’s unlikely the Court would hear the case until spring of 2019 — making a ruling in late June of 2019 most likely.

A nine-month lease on life for DACA might not sound like much. But because DACA is valid for two years after a renewal, it could make a big difference for hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients, who are trying to stay protected for as long as possible.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2018/8/31/17806724/daca-injunction-trump-judge-court
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The Village Voice has been shut down

The loss of the legendary New York publication is a tragedy for local media, alt-weeklies, and criticism.

For 63 years, New York’s most venerated alt-weekly, the Village Voice, has been an institution — not just for the city but for several generations of writers and critics whose careers were launched or inspired by the groundbreaking writing on art and popular culture found in its pages.

Now it’s gone.

On the Friday before Labor Day, Village Voice staffers found out the paper was being shut down. According to Gothamist, the paper’s owner, Peter Barbey, told the staff in a phone call that “due to the business realities, we’re going to stop publishing Village Voice new material.” Some staff members are being retained to “wind things down” and migrate the Voice’s archive online. The rest have been let go.

Barbey, a member of one of the wealthiest families in America, is currently the CEO and president of Reading Eagle Company, which also owns the Reading Eagle newspaper and the WEEU 830 AM radio station, both based in Reading, Pennsylvania. Barbey bought the paper in 2015 from Voice Media Group.

Almost exactly a year ago, on August 22, 2017, the paper announced that it would cease publishing a physical printed copy, which had for decades been available from ubiquitous red distribution boxes on New York’s street corners. The last printed issue of the Voice was dated September 21, 2017.

But apparently the move to digital wasn’t enough to save the publication.

Gothamist reported that Barbey told the staff, ”I bought the Village Voice to save it, this isn’t exactly how I thought it was going to end up. I’m still trying to save the Village Voice.” According to the Columbia Journalism Review, he also indicated that selling the paper wasn’t possible until this shutdown was made; why that would be case isn’t clear.

The Village Voice shutdown is another depressing example of the decimation of local and alternative media, in New York and nationwide

This is depressing news for media observers. The Village Voice’s shutdown comes on the heels of decreasing local news coverage in New York City: The Tronc-owned New York Daily News fired half its staff in July. Papers including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have drastically reduced their local coverage in the past two years, and the New York Observer ceased print publication in 2016 (though it continues to publish online).

The Village Voice often stepped up to fill the void, reporting on New York City’s news with a sensibility that felt more grounded in reality and deep knowledge of the city than some of its peers. With straphangers living through an especially bad stretch in MTA service over the past couple of years, for instance, the Voice’s subway coverage has been especially vital.

But it’s not just New York news that’s been suffering — alt-weeklies around the country have been in turmoil as well. The independent and often contrarian papers, vital launching pads for many writers, have been eulogized recently as they’ve been purchased by shadowy groups of investors (though in some cases, they’ve instead been purchased by folks who seem keen on supporting a mission over making money). In this case, despite Barbey’s claims that he wanted to save the Village Voice, the publication appears to be the latest casualty of the challenge and expense of producing high-quality local news.

For those who care about culture and the arts — and about the critics who write about them — the loss of the Village Voice is almost unspeakable. The Voice is one of the few papers left in New York City that has consistently covered local repertory cinema, art exhibitions, music, and more with wit, craft, and consistently high-quality writing.

Throughout its storied 63-year run, it has published many of the most revered critics and writers in American letters — people like Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, Katherine Anne Porter, Nat Hentoff, James Baldwin, Colson Whitehead, Tom Stoppard, Allen Ginsberg, Lester Bangs, Jonas Mekas, Andrew Sarris, Nelson George, Jill Johnston, Robert Christgau, J. Hoberman, Manohla Dargis, and many, many others. Its current stable of staff and freelance critics are among the country’s best.

For New Yorkers, losing the Village Voice means losing a vital lifeline to the city’s local culture and politics. For readers outside New York, it means losing an outlet known for some of the best writing and criticism around. To say it will be missed is an understatement.

from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2018/8/31/17805964/village-voice-shut-down-closed
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The quiet end of the Medicaid private option

8K TVs are here, and they're totally pointless

Every now and then, TV manufacturers start a new trend to keep the hype for their products going. If you bought a TV in the last year, a salesman probably told you that some iteration of HDR is a must-have. Your current TV likely supports 3D — and I bet you haven't used that feature in ages. 

The hot new thing at this year's IFA, Berlin's trade show which gathers the largest consumer electronics manufacturers, was 8K TVs. I've seen those TVs, and I can tell you, they all had an absolutely stunning picture.

I can also tell you that you absolutely don't need one. 

SEE ALSO: Samsung's massive 8K QLED TV will hit stores in October Read more...

More about Samsung, Lg, Ifa, 8k Tv, and Toshiba

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/8k-tvs/
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Our favorite rumor is dead: Google confirms no Pixel watch release this year

Sorry, folks! 

Google is not releasing a smartwatch this year.

The company confirmed on Friday in an interview with Tom's Guide that it has no plans to release it's own-branded smartwatch in 2018.

Tech news sites have been in a frenzy over the past few months over what many believed was proof that the company planned to launch its own competitor to the Apple Watch. The product was expected to be named the Google "Pixel" watch and sold as a compliment to the existing Pixel phone — but now that dream is dead.

The idea was that the Pixel watch would used to showcase the best of the company's WearOS software, similar to the way existing Pixel phones show off the best features of Android. Google currently relies on hardware makers like Fossil, Michael Kors, and Tag Heuer to make the physical watches. Read more...

More about Google, Smartwatch, Pixel, Wearos, and Tech

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/google-confirms-no-pixel-watch-release/
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Missing 'Rick and Morty' or 'Bojack'? Try HBO's hysterically offbeat 'Animals'

The need to fill that niche, adult animated show hole in our lives right now is real. And we've got just the cure.

HBO's obscure comedy Animals, currently in its third season, is it's own very unique beast (pun intended). But it shares a lot of DNA with the more known and watched heavy hitters of the adult animated show genre. At the very least, it'll help scratch that itch while we wait until Sept. 14 for Bojack Horseman, and an indefinite amount of time for more Rick and Morty.

SEE ALSO: Why 'Rick and Morty' is the realest show on TV right now

Animals first premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival before getting picked up by HBO, but that all sounds a lot more avante-garde than what the show actually is. As the name implies, it takes on the perspectives of different animals and their disparate cultures through a hilariously deadpan approach to comedy. Read more...

More about Entertainment, Animals, Hbo, Rick And Morty, and Bojack Horseman

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/animals-hbo-adult-animated-show-like-rick-morty-bojack/
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Slide-out cameras are the next big thing for smartphones

Apple and seemingly every Android phone maker under the sun want us to embrace the smartphone notch, but things don't have to be this way.

There is a realistic path toward a phone with a true all-screen display without any ugly cutouts: cameras that slide up when you need them and retract when you don't.

SEE ALSO: The Xperia XZ3 is Sony's nicest phone in years, but it may not be enough

If there's any one thing that science fiction movies have taught me, it's that pocket communicators (or phones as we call them) have only one final form: They're just a screen. They should have no bezels at all. Read more...

More about Mobile, Android, Trends, Ifa, and Ifa 2018

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/next-big-phone-trend-sliding-cameras/
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Save up to $650 during HP's Labor Day sale

Have you been dying to outfit your home office with a brand new desktop? Biting your nails, waiting for the moment your ancient laptop finally gives up the ghost?

Don’t let this situation get to death-rattle territory. Friends, it’s time to upgrade — and HP has you covered. From Labor Day through mid-September, the company is offering discounts on over 20 different laptops and desktops, with free shipping and returns, plus price matching.

The biggest deal of the bunch is on the 15t Touch, which is discounted to $559.99 through September 12 — at a savings of a whopping $680. (Think about it: you are literally saving more than you’re spending.) This laptop has a 7th Generation Intel Core i7 processor with 8GB memory, and it’s not holding out in the looks department. The sleek design, with its black matte finish, basically announces, “I woke up like this.”  Read more...

More about Tech, Supported, Hp, Desktop Pc, and Desktop

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/laptop-desktop-laborday-sale/
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NASA holds out hope that the Opportunity rover will phone home

It's make or break time for the longest-living rover on Mars. 

NASA's Opportunity rover has survived 15 years exploring the red planet thanks to solar power, but due to an extreme, planet-enveloping dust storm, the space agency hasn't been able to communicate with it since June 10. 

Now, however, the dust is clearing, and NASA is listening for the little rover to phone home once it powers up.

SEE ALSO: The Opportunity rover is caught in a huge dust storm on Mars, but NASA remains hopeful

“The sun is breaking through the haze over Perseverance Valley, and soon there will be enough sunlight present that Opportunity should be able to recharge its batteries,” John Callas, Opportunity project manager, said in a statement.  Read more...

More about Space, Nasa, Science, Opportunity Rover, and Science

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/nasa-opportunity-rover-hibernation/
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We went to the first tennis match in space and it was lit

We were invited to check out the first tennis match in space, which was broadcast on the Unisphere in Queens, New York, on August 21. The event included some free ice cream, fancy 3D projection, and zero-G fun. We were also able to talk to astronaut Andrew J. Feustel — one of the first people to play tennis in space — about the match and why physical activity in space is a must-do.  Read more...

More about Sports, Space, Mashable Video, Tennis, and Us Open

from Mashable https://mashable.com/video/space-tennis-match-us-open/
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Bradley Cooper's 'A Star is Born' left critics with stars in their eyes

At this point, it takes a lot to get critics raving over a remake (of several other remakes). 

But it looks like Bradley Cooper's directorial debut, in which he stars alongside Lady Gaga, achieved the impossible. It not only made reviewers go goo-goo for Gaga, but it also seems to have reminded them that unabashedly heartfelt melodramas still have a place in the world in 2018.

SEE ALSO: Fall movie preview: What to watch if you want to feel some feels

The movie, which releases in theaters on Oct. 5, had an early screening for critics and audiences in attendance at Venice Film Festival. And it seems to have lived up to the hype that's been brewing ever since the first trailer debuted. Read more...

More about Entertainment, Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born, and Review Roundup

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/star-is-born-bradley-cooper-review-roundup/
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Parkland survivor plans livestream fundraiser to support families of the Jacksonville shooting victims

It's been nearly a week since the mass shooting at a Madden NFL 19 esports tournament in Jacksonville, Florida claimed the lives of two people and injured 11 others. But in the face of tragedy, the gaming community refuses to give in to fear.

On Monday, professional gamer and shooting survivor Shay "Young Kiv" Kivlen, will play again publicly as part of an esports livestream put together by Cameron Kasky, the 17-year-old mass-shooting survivor and student activist who co-founded the March For Our Lives. He was a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, when a mass shooting killed 17 people earlier this year  Read more...

More about Gaming, Social Good, Shooting, Madden, and Cameron Kasky

from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/parkland-cameron-kasky-jacksonville-madden-tournament-shooting/
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The 'really start dressing' meme will get you ready for fall with lots of lols

SURPRISE! Twitter made another meme this week. The "really start dressing" meme might just make saying goodbye to summer a little easier. Read more...

More about Twitter, Memes, Mashable Video, Twitter Reactions, and Web Culture

from Mashable https://mashable.com/video/really-start-dressing-meme/
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Mattel Alpha Training Blue review: a cute lil' robot raptor you can train

Alpha Training Blue

$249.99

View Product

The Good

Heavy • durable plastic • Looks exactly like the dinosaur from the movie • Total Control Mode lets you control the dino like a puppet

The Bad

Indoor only • Charging port hidden by screwed-on panel • Controller settings aren't as intuitive as we'd like

The Bottom Line

Mattel's Alpha Training Blue is a sure bet for anyone who loved the movie. Surprisingly expressive and fun to play with for hours.

Mashable Score4.0

Cool Factor5.0

Learning Curve3.0

Performance4.0

Bang for the Buck4.0

Mattel's newest Jurassic World toy, "Alpha Training Blue," is an adorable, controllable, cheeky little robotic velociraptor that comes with dozens of animations and game modes. Mattel lets users take full control so that they can basically use the toy like a futuristic puppet, or, in our favorite mode, train the raptor to respond to different controller motions. Read more...

More about Reviews, Review, Toys, Robot, and Blue

from Mashable https://mashable.com/review/mattel-alpha-training-blue-review/
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