Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 150
May 13, 2017
May 12, 2017
School Accused Of Hiding Bathroom Assault Before 8-Year-Old Boy’s Suicide
The attorney for the mother of the 8-year-old boy who committed suicide in Ohio has accused the elementary school, where the boy attended, of hiding the truth of an assault from his mother.
Attorney Jennifer Branch, who is representing Gabriel Taye’s mother, told Fox 19 News, that reports of surveillance footage being investigated showing the 8-year-old boy being kicked and hit repeatedly in a bathroom and being knocked unconscious directly contradicts what Gabriel’s mother was told.
“Mom is called, and she’s told that he fainted,” Branch said.
But in the surveillance footage, according to a police report by Detective Eric Karaguleff, Gabriel was hit and kicked for five minutes while he was unconscious in a bathroom at Carson Elementary School before the school’s assistant principal, Jeff McKenzie, rushed in.
Gabriel’s mother took him to the doctor for what she thought was the stomach flu when he complained of stomach pain. She never knew that he was being bullied.
“Maybe this had been going on for years, and she had no idea, so she couldn’t help him,” Branch said. “She couldn’t protect him, and now she wants to know what was really going on.”
Cincinnati Public Schools released a statement on Thursday confirming that Gabriel had been found “motionless” but said that the events of the video had been “mischaracterized.”
“The article suggests that other students were beating Gabriel during this incident, a description that video evidence does not support. The article also portrays other students in the video as ‘aggressors.’ Video evidence does not support this characterization,” school officials said.
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Source:
http://thegrio.com/2017/05/12/boy-8-suicide-school-assault/
J.K. Rowling begs fans not to buy stolen ‘Harry Potter’ prequel
It’s been 20 years since the first Harry Potter book came out, but fans would still do almost anything to own an authentic piece of Potter memorabilia. But if you’re offered a one-of-a-kind prequel story to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, no matter how tempting, do not buy it — J.K. Rowling herself is begging you.
The famous author took to Twitter on Friday to ask her fans and followers not to purchase the prequel, because it was recently stolen from the home of its rightful owner. The prequel was handwritten on both sides of a postcard and auctioned off for charity in 2008. “PLEASE DON’T BUY THIS IF YOU’RE OFFERED IT. Originally auctioned for @englishpen, the owner supported writers’ freedoms by bidding for it,” J.K. added to a retweet of a series of tweets about the crime from the West Midlands, England, police department.
According to a press release from the West Midlands Police, the postcard was stolen along with some jewelry from a Kings Heath home sometime between April 13 to April 24. “The only people who will buy this unique piece are true Harry Potter fans. We are appealing to anyone who sees or is offered this item for sale to contact police,” investigating officer PC Paul Jauncey said in the release.
Rowling wrote the story almost 10 years ago to raise money for English PEN, an organization that works “to defend writers and readers in the U.K. and around the world whose human right to freedom of expression is at risk,” according to the organization’s website. The 800-word story describes an encounter James Potter and Sirius Black had with Muggle police and involved Sirius’ magical flying motorcycle (#tbt). It sold for 25,000 pounds (more than $32,000) at an auction that took place in London about a year after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — the last book in the world-famous series — was published, according to BBC News. So here’s your chance to be a Harry-esque hero, Potterheads! Keep an eye out for the stolen manuscript and report it to police immediately if you find it — no matter how willing you are to empty your Gringotts vault to buy it.
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Source:
http://www.teenvogue.com/story/jk-rowling-asks-fans-not-buy-harry-potter-stolen-prequel-manuscript
Amazon Video for Apple TV will reportedly be announced next month
The long wait to be able to stream TV shows and movies from Amazon on the Apple TV is nearly over. BuzzFeed News is reporting that an Amazon Video app designed for Apple’s set-top box will be announced at next month’s WWDC keynote. Recode revealed last week that Amazon and Apple were nearing an agreement that would bring to rest their years-long living room standoff. The Amazon app is likely to launch sometime this summer, though BuzzFeed News notes that the release timeframe could change.
In exchange, Amazon will resume sales of the Apple TV. The online retail giant halted sales of the device in October 2015 because Apple’s box didn’t offer any way for Prime subscribers to access Amazon’s content. (Google’s Chromecast was also kicked off of Amazon for the same reason.)
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Keeping its content off the Apple TV for this long has ultimately been Amazon’s decision, however. Last May, CEO Jeff Bezos said that Amazon had yet to release an Apple TV appbecause the two sides couldn’t land on “acceptable business terms.” It took many months, but these two recent reports suggest that Apple and Amazon have reached a deal that’s acceptable to both.
Bringing Amazon to the Apple TV could be essential if Apple plans to release an updated version of the product that supports 4K playback. Amazon is one of the largest sources of 4K movies and TV shows, though a fair amount of content is also available from services like Netflix and YouTube. Both of those companies offer apps for Apple TV.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/11/15626724/amazon-video-apple-tv-app-wwdc-announce-rumor
Syfy orders Superman series ‘Krypton,’ new George R.R. Martin project
Syfy has announced series orders for Superman prequel, Krypton, and a graphic novel adaptation of Happy! starring Christopher Meloni.
Joining the series orders is a new development project from Syfy and Universal Cable Productions based on George R.R. Martin’s novella Nightflyers.
“Syfy is partnering with the biggest names in the business to tell the boldest stories in the sci-fi world, and I can’t think of any bigger and bolder than Krypton, Happy! and Nightflyers,” said Chris McCumber, President, Entertainment Networks, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment.
Nightflyers will join Brave New World, Hyperion, and Stranger in Strange Land as previously announced projects in development at Syfy.
Krypton and Happy! have not received official release dates, but will join Syfy’s 2017-18 lineup of original scripted series.
Set two generations before the destruction of the legendary Man of Steel’s home planet, KRYPTON follows Superman’s grandfather (Cameron Cuffe, “The Halcyon”) — whose House of El was ostracized and shamed — as he fights to redeem his family’s honor and save his beloved world from chaos. Based on DC characters, KRYPTON is from Warner Horizon Scripted Television and is executive produced by David S. Goyer (“Man of Steel,” “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” “The Dark Knight” trilogy) through his Phantom Four banner. Damian Kindler (“Sleepy Hollow”) will serve as executive producer and showrunner.
In addition to Cuffe, KRYPTON stars Georgina Campbell (“Broadchurch”), Elliot Cowan (“Da Vinci’s Demons”), Ann Ogbomo (“World War Z”), Rasmus Hardiker (“Your Highness”), Wallis Day (“Will”), Aaron Pierre (“Tennison”) with Ian McElhinney (“Game of Thrones”).
The pilot teleplay was written by Goyer and Kindler, from a story by Ian Goldberg (“Once Upon a Time,” “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”) & Goyer, with Colm McCarthy (“She Who Brings Gifts,” “Peaky Blinders”) serving as director and co-executive producer. KRYPTON is based on characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, published by DC.
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May 11, 2017
Google’s New AI Tool Turns Your Selfies Into Emoji
Machine learning and artificial intelligence have, for a couple years, been hailed as the death knell to almost everything you can imagine: The information we consume, the way we vote, the jobs we have, and even our very existence as a species. (Food for thought: The stuff about ML taking over Homo sapiens totally makes sense, even if you haven’t just taken a huge bong rip.) So maybe it’s welcome news that the newest application of ML from Google, worldwide leaders in machine learning, isn’t to build a new Mars rover or a chatbot that can replace your doctor. Rather, its a tool that anyone can use to generate custom emoji stickers of themselves.
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It lives inside of Allo, Google’s ML-driven chat app. Starting today, when you pull up the list of stickers you can use to respond to someone, there’s a simple little option: “Turn a selfie into stickers.” Tap, and it prompts you to take a selfie. Then, Google’s image-recognition algorithms analyze your face, mapping each of your features to those in a kit illustrated by Lamar Abrams, a storyboard artist, writer, and designer for the critically acclaimed Cartoon Network series Steven Universe. There are, of course, literally hundreds of eyes and noses and face shapes and hairstyles and glasses available. All told, Google thinks there are 563 quadrillion faces that the tool could generate. Once that initial caricature is generated, you can then make tweaks: Maybe change your hair, or give yourself different glasses. Then, the machine automatically generates 22 custom stickers of you.
The tool originated with an internal research project to see if ML could be used to generate an instant cartoon of someone, using just a selfie. But as Jason Cornwell, who leads UX for Google’s communication projects, points out, making a cartoon of someone isn’t much of an end goal. “How do you make something that doesn’t just convey what you look like but how you want to project yourself?” asks Cornwell. “That’s an interesting problem. It gets to ML and computer vision but also human expression. That’s where Jennifer came in. To provide art direction about how you might convey yourself.”
Cornwell is referring to Jennifer Daniel, the vibrant, well-known art director who first made her name for the zany, hyper-detailed infographics she created for Bloomberg Businessweek in the Richard Turley era, and then did a stint doing visual op-eds for the New York Times. As Daniel points out, “Illustrations let you bring emotional states in a way that selfies can’t.” Selfies are, by definition, idealizations of yourself. Emoji, by contrast, are distillations and exaggerations of how you feel. To that end, the emoji themselves are often hilarious: You can pick one of yourself as a slice of pizza, or a drooling zombie. “The goal isn’t accuracy,” explains Cornwell. “It’s to let someone create something that feels like themselves, to themselves.” So the user testing involved asking people to generate their own emoji and then asking questions such as: “Do you see yourself in this image? Would your friends recognize you?”
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Kendall and Bella Are on Vacation
Being a member of the Kardashian-Jenner family means one thing: You must take several ultra-glamorous vacations a year.
In April, elder sisters Kim and Kourtney Kardashian took a luxurious vacation to Punta Mita, Mexico to celebrate Kourtney’s 38th birthday, alongside more than a dozen girlfriends. Now it’s Kendall Jenner’s turn to flaunt her travels on social media and make all of us supremely jealous.
Jenner, with her model pals Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, and Justine Skye, shared a few gorgeous photos of their vacation at some far-off secret paradise. Though no exact location was shared, we can only assume it’s a sunny, warm, and piña colada-filled destination thanks to the clear blue waters and jet skis present in each of the Instagram photos shared by the famous friends.
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In one photo, Jenner lounged on a jet ski with a few islands dotting the background landscape, with a caption that simply read: “You won’t find me.”
Meanwhile, Skye was the only traveler to post a photo of the entire traveling group, captioning it: “Love my girls crazy.” The enviable vacation comes just as Jenner revealed she has actually been friends with Bella Hadid far longer than her sister Gigi.
“Gigi and I just started getting close when we started modeling, but Bella and I were actually really good friends since high school, and hung out everyday in high school before either of us started working,” Jenner told famed photographer Mario Testino in an interview for People. “It’s just funny because a lot of people don’t know that Bella and I have been friends for like five or six years.”
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