Postcards on the Edge

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

Personally, I think there's a fair few countries that need to have a serious rethink on effective immigration policy.

I'm most familiar with NZ's policy(being a 1st world to 1st world immigrant myself). And while it has it's flaws it seems to be doing a reasonably good job(for a government).

I'm familiar with a couple of immigrant communities here in NZ. Specifically Somali and Afghan immigrant communities.

Our Afghan community(coming in several waves over the last 12+ years) have done quite a good job of integration into NZ society. They've joined "Team NZ" and all parties seem to be benefitting from this particular slice of immigration policy. They're becoming Kiwis with a Dari/Pashto accent.

Our Somali community on the other hand seems to be failing miserably. Failure to integrate/adapt seems quite high and that's coming from personal observation, friends in the Police providing anecdotals, and the same from public housing, welfare, business community, etc. They remain Somali first and last.

But it's a relatively low level problem. There are substantial social costs associated, but we have had zero collective criminal/subversive activity.

Comparing it to the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and even Australia we seem to be doing pretty good comparatively.

Granted, we don't have the illegal immigration risk the others have(the Southern Ocean is a nasty piece of work), but my anecdotal experience with the seeming cultural/social divide in the US/UK/Australia leaves me feeling quite troubled about their respective futures.

Friends from Sweden have mentioned via email over the last decade their growing immigration/integration problem....I am not the least bit surprised in anything other than why has it taken so long to get to this stage.

I do think it's worth keeping an eye on, both aggressive/subversive immigration integration failures as well as far left/right political activity with associated militant street thugs.

The good news is that while things are moving towards boiling point it is still a very far cry from the worst bits of European history over the 1970's-1980's when things got more than just a bit heated.

But the parts up to and just after here are reasonably predictable, no?

It's what comes after the predictable-ish socio-political escalation that worries me, like risk of far left/right populism.

[don]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

faces of the times . . .

The number of happy faces on Lego toy mini-figures is decreasing and the number of angry faces is increasing, a robot expert at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand has discovered.

Dr Christoph Bartneck – who studied all 6,000 Lego mini-figures – said his findings could give rise to concern about he frowning faces' impact on child development and the manufacturer appeared to be moving towards more conflict-based themes in its toys.

"The facial expressions are not directly matched to good and evil. Even the good characters suffer in their struggle and the villains can have a smug expression. In any case, the variety of faces has increased considerably.''

"The example of the mini-figures show that to appeal to users it is necessary to offer a wide range of emotional expressions for today's users."

[don]

Greenshoots - Roadkill Division

Roadkill Gains Traction as a Home Menu Item


Sonny Lawson says that every year he picks up three or four fresh deer carcasses killed by vehicles near his home in South Carolina.

Under a new state law, people who come across dead deer, elk, moose and antelope — or strike them with their vehicles — may now haul the animals home for dinner.

“If there is some good stuff there, why not use it, rather than throw it away?” said Steve Lavin, a state representative from Kalispell, who introduced the legislation. “If someone has suffered damage to their vehicle, why not let them use that animal for some food?”

“You have to take the animal in its entirety,” said Ron Aasheim, spokesman for the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department.

Eating roadkill has long been mythologized in American cultural lore, from John McPhee’s 1973 essay “Travels In Georgia,” to Barth, the slovenly chef on the Nickelodeon show “You Can’t Do That on Television,” who served repulsive-looking roadkill burgers to unsuspecting patrons.

Sandor Katz, a culinary author, touched on roadkill harvesting in his 2006 book, “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements.” Mr. Katz said that during his travels, some people he encountered who ate roadkill identified themselves as primitive enthusiasts.

“It’s just like any other meal,” he said. “It’s all about how you prepare it.”

The meat must be fresh and not too bruised, said Nick Bennett, owner of Montana Mobile Meats, a mobile wild game processing company.

In Appalachia, roadkill cuisine has become the focus of an annual cook-off and autumn festival in Pocahontas County, W.Va. Twenty years ago, it drew several thousand people, said David Cain, the cook-off’s organizer. Now, as many as 20,000 attend, he said.

Last year’s menu included possum stew, venison teriyaki and the winner: “Stuffed bear-ron-a-soar-us with groundhog gravy.”

“They once cooked a rattlesnake in some kind of a gravy type stuff and they had the whole rattlesnake in there,” Mr. Cain said. “That was tough for me, but we got through it.”

Near future headlines:

Entree tire tracks claimed fraudulent in roadkill chef competition

"Officer, I didn't intentionally hit that on-coming car - I was aiming at the deer"

Man sues Roadkill Coo-Zine Restaurant, claiming ingested gravel has damaged his digestive track





Siberian Squirrel Roadkill had to be finished off by more traditional means

[don]

Lender of Necessity

I have seen the future and it's Mexico . . .

Platinum Card and Text Alert, via Pawnshop

2013-08-25 — nytimes.com

As banks zero in on more affluent customers who promise twice the revenue of their lower-income counterparts, close branches in poor areas and remain stingy with credit, pawnshops are revamping their image and stepping into the void to offer financial services.... pawnshops are offering services like check cashing, Western Union money transfers, bill payment and prepaid cards to customers who are "getting forgotten in the banking system," said Jerry Whitehead of the Pawnshop Consulting Group.

The services are not, generally, big moneymakers for the shops. The main attraction is that they bring in traffic, and many of those shoppers go on to buy items from the pawnshop or to take out a pawn loan themselves -- and that is where the stores make their money.

[vt]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/inv...-with-nothing/

Black leaders not protecting poor blacks in our nation's capital? Other cities have protections against this for the poor.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/inv...-with-nothing/

Black leaders not protecting poor blacks in our nation's capital? Other cities have protections against this for the poor.

Having read the full report, I fell sick; dreadful!

[don]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

MSM Crews Held Up in the Field

Television news stations in the San Francisco Bay Area are struggling to cope with a spree of brazen robberies involving their reporting crews, despite the additional protection of security guards.

In the latest incident on Friday night, a KRON 4 reporter filming in the high crime Bayview district of San Francisco was set upon by two armed men demanding his computer and camera equipment. Jeff Bush immediately took cover, and the private security guard who had been assigned to accompany him fired on the men, injuring one of them who later turned up in hospital.

Police said that two 19-year-olds, Armani McFarland and John Woods, had been arrested on suspicion of robbery and conspiracy.

Friday night's attack was the latest in a spate of violent seizures of TV news equipment over the past year involving crews working the streets of Oakland and San Francisco. Unions representing the reporters and technical workers have stepped up calls for greater protection, and many stations have taken on private guards including retired police officers from the two cities.

The most audacious attack happened last November in broad daylight. A KPIX crew was filming outside a school in Oakland at noon and were live on air when five men descended on them and grabbed the camera from their tripod. The reporter was punched in the mouth and the gang sped off in a Mercedes.

Viewers of the local TV station were treated to the image on their screen shaking and then going blank. The equipment that was stolen was valued at about $6,000.

At the time of that attack, an unnamed TV journalist told the San Francisco Chronicle: "It's rattled even some of the veteran staffers. It made the resolve to cover Oakland stronger, but the resolve to protect ourselves even stronger than that."

Despite the resort to security guards, attacks on crews are still occurring repeatedly. Last month a KGO-TV crew was robbed at gunpoint of its camera equipment in West Oakland, with journalists made to prostrate themselves on the ground as the assailants fled.

Stills photographers have also been fleeced of their expensive digital cameras and lenses. Print reporters have also been set upon, with laptops and briefcases stolen from them as they sit in their cars.

[lektrode]

Re: Postcards on the Edge

wonder how many of them will continue to rail against right to carry...

[don]

Keepin' On

Portugal

[don]

Down Another Notch Into the 3rd World

More Retailers See Haggling as a Price of Doing Business

By HILARY STOUT

Pay no attention to the price on that tag.

Or even the markdown.

This year some shoppers are quietly taking the art of bargaining up the escalator to the floors selling cashmere or over-the-knee leather boots, building on the haggling skills they acquired in the last few years getting big-box store deals on TVs and the like.

Armed with increasingly sophisticated price-tracking tools on their smartphones and other devices, consumers have become bolder, and they know that they often have the upper hand during a tough season for retailers. Recognizing the new reality, some retailers, desperate for sales and customer loyalty, have begun training their employees in the art of bargaining with customers.

Last month, Best Buy essentially invited consumers to bargain when it announced that it would match the prices of any competitor this holiday season if customers showed proof of the lower price.

But other retailers are doing the same with less fanfare, or even making steeper concessions. DealScience, a new website that collects, compares and ranks online deals from thousands of retail brands, discovered that at least 20 percent of big-box retailers had price-matching policies, though many do not advertise them.

The site’s co-founders, Brandon Hunt and Cory O’Daniel, said that they had been surprised to find that at least a half-dozen merchants — including some of the original haggling stages like Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowe’s — now let managers go a step better and offer 10 percent below a competitor’s price.

The bargaining practices are more commonplace for home and sporting goods or electronics, but even higher-end retailers like Nordstrom have price-matching guidelines — though they usually do not broadcast the terms.

Joe Marrapodi, one of the founders and the chief executive of Greentoe.com, a new name-your-own price website, walked into Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s the other day in Santa Monica, Calif., and without identifying himself or his occupation, casually asked employees if they were open to bargaining. Both the sales representatives and the managers said yes without hesitation, he said, and cited specific price-matching policies.

“I think they kind of keep it low key,” he said. “They don’t want it to be a thing.”

[Slimprofits]

Re: Down Another Notch Into the 3rd World

I'm doing some medical transcription work, and I think, it's giving me a bird's eye view of the parts of the USA that do not have wide spread internet access. One of the more common applications is one that asks patients to provide their email address. Nine times out of 10, if their response is that they don't have an email address or internet access at all, I am noticing they're clustered in certain areas.

[don]

Re: Down Another Notch Into the 3rd World

Slim: Can you tell if it's unavailable, unaffordable or did they quit their service?

[lektrode]

Re: Down Another Notch Into the 3rd World

wonder if the 'clusters' are in comcast 'service' areas...

[don]

The Compelling World of A.S.M.R.

Rustle, Tingle, Relax


A few months ago, I was on a Manhattan-bound D train heading to work when a man with a chunky, noisy newspaper got on and sat next to me. As I watched him softly turn the pages of his paper, a chill spread like carbonated bubbles through the back of my head, instantly relaxing me and bringing me to the verge of sweet slumber.

It wasn’t the first time I’d felt this sensation at the sound of rustling paper — I’ve experienced it as far back as I can remember. But it suddenly occurred to me that, as a lifelong insomniac, I might be able to put it to use by reproducing the experience digitally whenever sleep refused to come.

Under the sheets of my bed that night, I plugged in some earphones, opened the YouTube app on my phone and searched for “Sound of pages.” What I discovered stunned me.



There were nearly 2.6 million videos depicting a phenomenon called autonomous sensory meridian response, or A.S.M.R., designed to evoke a tingling sensation that travels over the scalp or other parts of the body in response to auditory, olfactory or visual forms of stimulation.

The sound of rustling pages, it turns out, is just one of many A.S.M.R. triggers. The most popular stimuli includewhispering; tapping or scratching; performing repetitive, mundane tasks like folding towels or sorting baseball cards; and role-playing, where the videographer, usually a breathy woman, softly talks into the camera and pretends to give a haircut, for example, or an eye examination. The videos span 30 minutes on average, but some last more than an hour.



For those not wired for A.S.M.R. — and even for those who, like me, apparently are — the videos and the cast of characters who produce them — sometimes called “ASMRtists” or “tingle-smiths” — can seem weird, creepy or just plain boring. (Try pitching the pleasures of watching a nerdy German guy slowly and silently assemble a computer for 30 minutes.)

Two of the most well-known ASMRtists, Maria of GentleWhispering(more than 250,700 subscribers) and Heather Feather (more than 146,500 subscribers), said that although they sometimes received lewd emails and requests, many of their followers reached out to them with notes of gratitude for the relief from anxiety, insomnia and melancholy that their videos provided.



Some say the mundane or monotonous quality of the videos lulls us into a much-needed state of serenity. Others find comfort in being the sole focus of the A.S.M.R. actor’s tender affection and care. Or perhaps the assortment of sounds and scenarios taps into pleasing childhood memories. I grew up falling asleep hearing the sounds from my father’s home office: A computer engineer, he was continually sorting through papers, tapping keys and assembling and disassembling PCs and MACs.
Dr. Carl W. Bazil, a sleep disorders specialist at Columbia University, says A.S.M.R. videos may provide novel ways to switch off our brains.

“People who have insomnia are in a hyper state of arousal,” he said. “Behavioral treatments — guided imagery, progressive relaxation, hypnosis and meditation — are meant to try to trick your unconscious into doing what you want it to do. A.S.M.R. videos seem to be a variation on finding ways to shut your brain down.”

So far, it seems to work for me. Like many insomniacs, I have over the years tried natural remedies like valerian root or melatonin, vigorous exercise regimens and strong sleeping pills like Ambien and Lunesta. But sleep rarely came. Nothing has worked as well and consistently as watching a man in an A.S.M.R. video sort through papers and his collection of Titanic paraphernalia.



But locating the neurological underpinnings of this trippy sensation won’t be easy. Many of the scientists I reached out to shied away from the subject, saying the area is pseudoscience with a lack of published studies.

Bryson Lochte, a post-baccalaureate fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse who looked into A.S.M.R. for his senior thesis as a neuroscience major at Dartmouth College last year, has submitted his paper for publication in a scientific journal. Mr. Lochte said, “We focused on those areas in the brain associated with motivation, emotion and arousal to probe the effect A.S.M.R. has on the ‘reward system’ — the neural structures that trigger a dopamine surge amid pleasing reinforcements, like food or sex.

He compared A.S.M.R. to another idiosyncratic but well-studied sensation called musical frisson, which provokes a thrilling ripple of chills or goose bumps (technically termed piloerection) over one’s body in emotional response to music. Mathias Benedek, a research assistant at the University of Graz in Austria who co-authored two studies on emotion-provoked piloerection, says A.S.M.R. may be a softer, quieter version of the same phenomenon. “Frisson may simply be a stronger, full-blown response,” he said. And like A.S.M.R., the melodies that ignite frisson in one person may not in another.

Robert J. Zatorre, a professor of neuroscience at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at McGill University who hasalso studied musical frisson, said that “the upshot of my paper is that pleasurable music elicits dopamine activity in the striatum, which is a key component of the reward system” in the brain. Writing in The New York Times last year, in an article titled “Why Music Makes Our Brain Sing,” he notes, “What may be most interesting here is when this neurotransmitter is released: not only when the music rises to a peak emotional moment, but also several seconds before, during what we might call the anticipation phase.”

Perhaps the everyday experiences that A.S.M.R. videos capture — whispering, crinkling, opening and closing of boxes — evoke similar anticipatory mechanisms, sparking memories of past pleasures that we anticipate and relive each time we watch and listen.

“The whole topic is still very much unknown,” Mr. Lochte said. “I would be very interested to see what other traits correlate with A.S.M.R sensitivity, whether it is an inherited attribute and what sort of physiological effects the sensation has on the body. All of these questions will be easy to answer with quick follow-up studies. Our study, we hope, will help lay the groundwork.”

[LazyBoy]

Re: The Compelling World of A.S.M.R.

Some say the mundane or monotonous quality of the videos lulls us into a much-needed state of serenity.

Hmm. I do fall asleep watching documentaries. Maybe I should check into this.

Or perhaps the assortment of sounds and scenarios taps into pleasing childhood memories. I grew up falling asleep hearing the sounds from my father’s home office:

I grew up falling asleep to talk radio blaring from my hard-of-hearing dad's bedroom. He fell asleep instantly and only woke if someone turned it off. I won't be recreating that. (Although, sometimes I got to hear Dr. Demento, which I wasn't allowed to stay up for.)