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nuadox · 3 years

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US patent system can stifle the innovation it was designed to encourage

- By Michael J. Meurer , Janet Freilich , The Conversation -

Over his career Thomas Edison garnered more U.S. patents than anyone in his time. Edison profited from his patents, but he was also exposed to the dark side of the patent system. He had to contend with lawsuits by other patentees who sought – and sometimes won – a piece of his success. While the patent system is designed to spur innovation like Edison’s, it also hampers it.

Easy copying and imitation discourage innovation, because why make the effort if someone else will profit from it? The patent system works by enabling inventors to block unauthorized use of patented technology.

Most technologies are developed by many inventors over many years, a process called “cumulative” innovation. Too often, however, early inventors get a patent on a small and perhaps insignificant piece of the technological puzzle, yet their patent covers the entire puzzle. Inventors who solve subsequent parts of the puzzle may need to pay royalties to the patentee, even if their contributions are larger.

As legal experts who focus on technology law and policy, we suggest that the problem boils down to two issues: too many patents and too little accurate information about them.

Too many patents

The U.S. is awash in patents. Over 350,000 U.S. patents were granted in 2019, four times the per capita rate in 1980. From the perspective of research managers at big firms, patents are cheap and easy to get. For example, in the early 2000s Bill Gates decided that Microsoft was patent-poor, and within a few years the company increased annual patent applications by 50%.

Patents are easy to get because the standards of patentability are low and because the burden is on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to prove an invention is not patentable. Patent examination is slow. It often takes three years or more. Despite increased staffing, the backlog of patent applications has continued to grow, and examiners spend on average only 20 hours reviewing each application. The patent examiner is required to read and understand the invention in an application, determine whether the invention meets the claims of the application, search existing technology to see if the invention already exists and write a response to the application.

Helter-skelter examination causes errors – many patents are too broad, or they cover obvious inventions. To draw attention to problems caused by the flood of low-quality patents, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban endowed a chair at the Electronic Frontier Foundation dedicated to elimination of “stupid patents.”

Innovative firms that succeed in assembling many pieces of a technology puzzle into a finished product must consult with a patent lawyer to learn whether their new technology is covered by one or more patents owned by others. Ideally an innovator will get permission to use patented technology, usually for a fee, or redesign its technology to steer clear of relevant patents.

In practice this patent “clearance” process is difficult, costly and sometimes impossible. For technologies like smartphones, a patent attorney likely would need to review hundreds of patents, including many patents that are not granted until long after the new product is launched. Failure to license relevant patents creates a risk of litigation and the threat the new technology could be forced out of the marketplace.

Apple secured a patent on slide-to-unlock despite earlier work that set the stage for the feature. Angelo Su/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

As a result, smartphone patent litigation is far too common. Apple – a smartphone pioneer – has participated in scores of lawsuits around the globe as both a defendant and plaintiff. As a plaintiff, Apple sometimes uses its patents opportunistically to hinder innovation by its rivals.

For example, Apple sued Samsung using a patent that claimed the slide-to-unlock feature on a phone as Apple’s invention. Despite strong evidence that inventors before Apple had already accomplished the key steps to implement this feature, Apple convinced the courts that their version of this feature was patentable, and after seven years Samsung agreed to pay license fees to Apple to settle the case.

Economic research suggests that these litigation costs and license fees burden innovative firms to such a degree that on balance the patent system discourages innovation. In other words, innovative firms gain a benefit from their patents on their new technology, but that benefit is more than offset by the many patents owned by others that might be asserted against the new technology.

Too little information

When an inventor gets a patent, she is supposed to reveal the secret sauce behind the invention in the patent, a public document. This allows scientists and engineers to learn about the invention and use that information to improve the technology.

Or at least, that’s the theory. In practice, many inventors make shoddy disclosures. Experiments reported in patents are sometimes fictional and often rely on dubious methodology. For instance, patent law permits an inventor to disclose the fictional finding that a drug treats cancer as evidence that she deserves a patent on that drug.

Inventors applying for patents are allowed to include predicted experimental results. The intent is to allow for earlier disclosure and to help smaller companies secure funding. But when evidence in patents is wrong, other innovators can be misled. Further, if other innovators want to figure out if the patented drug really treats cancer – or any other disease – they need a license from the patentee.

Edison was the victim of a broad light bulb patent that covered one of his subsequent inventions. Edison Electric Light Company

Sometimes key pieces of evidence are missing entirely from patents. This happens when a patent covers aspects of a technology that the patentee didn’t actually invent. Imagine discovering that paper is a mediocre incandescent conductor in light bulbs and using that discovery to get a patent covering thousands of other conductors, including ones that, unbeknownst to you, work much better. Later innovators might want to figure out whether other substances are better conductors than paper, but they can’t even start experiments without a license.

This happened to Edison. He was sued for patent infringement after discovering a far better conductor than that discovered by the patentee – but because the patent was written broadly, it nevertheless covered Edison’s invention.

There is also too little information about the boundaries of patents. When an inventor gets a patent, she is also supposed to provide clear boundary information – what a patent application covers and what it doesn’t – to the public about her patent rights. The patent system fails to ensure this, however.

The boundary information in patent applications is hidden for 18 months until the application is published, and even longer if the boundaries change later during examination. Once the patent is granted, lawyers, judges and the public often have difficulty reaching agreement on the meaning of boundary language that may be intentionally vague or ambiguous.

How to fix the system

Inventors who come up with new chemicals, including pharmaceuticals, tend to benefit from the patent system. Unfortunately, the system appears to impose a net cost on most other technologies, especially in high-tech industries. Opportunistic patent owners, often called patent trolls, surprise inventors with patent claims about inventions that are minor or distantly related to the technology that is the target of the suit. Economics research shows such trolling activity slows innovation.

The patent system can be improved to deliver a net gain to all inventors even without being drastically reworked. A good start would be to rigorously enforce existing standards about information disclosure. Courts should push inventors to clearly describe and explain their inventions.

The flood of patents on minor technical advances could be ended if patent fees were increased and if the nonobviousness standard, which screens out minor advances, was made stronger. Reducing the number of patents and increasing the amount of information about each patent would go a long way toward making the patent system work the way it was intended.

Michael J. Meurer, Professor of Law, Boston University and Janet Freilich, Associate Professor of Law, Fordham University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read Also

Can AI truly ‘invent’?

#patents #innovation #usa #inventions #entrepreneurship #law #patent law #intellectual property

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happyweddingblogs · 4 years

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110 Most Romantic Wedding Couple Quotes

Wedding quotes can make any of your social media status more charming and worth reading. Here we are sharing with you some of the best wedding couple quotes. These quotes can be fit in aptly on any occasion from your wedding to your first wedding anniversary. You can even use these wedding couple quotes on your wedding invites or other wedding stationery.

It is a mix of cheesy, funny, and romantic quotes for all moods! So, without wasting any time, let’s move on to the quotes.

Source: Happy Wedding App

Here we go…..

#1. “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

#2. “There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.” — Sarah Dessen

#3. “I would find you in any lifetime.” — Kanye West

#4. “A great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.” — Dave Meurer

#5. “I love your feet because they have wandered over the earth and through the wind and water until they brought you to me.” — Pablo Neruda

#6. “I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes; I am out of control and at times, hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” — Marilyn Monroe

#7. “I love you, not only for what you are but for what I am when I am with you. I love you, not only for what you have made of yourself but for what you are making of me.” — Roy Croft

#8. “I have, for the first time, found what I can truly love. I have found you.” — Charlotte Bronte

#9. “Marriage is another momentous life change. Choose right, and it might be the most positive decision you ever make.” — Patrick Foley

#10. “There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage.” — Martin Luther

#11. “Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly at your service.” — William Shakespeare

#12. “When two people become one by way of marriage, it is not only their hearts that are united but their minds and souls as well.” — Julie Donner Anderson

#13. “Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.” — Robert Browning

#14. “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” — David Viscott

#15. “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” — When Harry Met Sally

#16. “When you love someone, you love them as the person they are and not as you’d like them to be.” — Leo Tolstoy

#17. “Wedding is destiny, and hanging likewise.” — John Heywood

#18. “Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.” — Samuel Richardson

#19. “A strong marriage rarely has two people strong at the same time. It is a husband and wife who take turns being strong for each other at the moment the other is weak.” — Ashley Willis

#20. “Love me and the world is mine.” — David Reed

Anniversary Wishes for Husband

150 Funny Marriage Quotes for Newlyweds

#21. “Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threaded, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.” — Simone Signoret

#22. “Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.” — Leo Buscaglia

#23. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” — Wuthering Heights

#24. “Only one is a wanderer; Two together are always going somewhere.” — Vertigo

#25. “As God by creation made two of one, so again by marriage, He made one of two.” — Thomas Adams

#26. “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.” — Winston Churchill

#27. “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” — Epicurus

#28. “A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.” — Michel de Montaigne

#29. “Marriage a bond between a person who never remembers anniversaries and another who never forgets them.” — Ogden Nash

#31. “Who, being loved, is poor?” — Oscar Wilde

#32. “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” — Fredrich Nietzche

#33. “I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.” — J. R. R. Tolkien

#34. “To say that one waits a lifetime for his soul mate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soul mates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.” — Criss Jami

#35. “In your light, I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.” — Rumi

#36. “If I know what love is, it is because of you.” — Hermann Hasse

#37. “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” — James Baldwin

#38. “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” — Maya Angelou

#39. “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” — Mignon McLaughlin

#40. “You know, there is a name for people who are always wrong about everything all the time – Husband!” — Bill Maher

#41. “The highest happiness on earth is the happiness of marriage.” — William Lyon Phelps

#42. “Love can come when you’re already who you are, when you’re filled with you. Not when you look to someone else to fill the empty space.” — Deb Caletti

#43. “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness–and call it love–true love.” — Robert Fulgham

Related: Lovely Wedding Captions (2020) for Status Updates on Social Media

#44. “Being in a long marriage is a little bit like that nice cup of coffee every morning – I might have it every day, but I still enjoy it.” — Stephen Gains

#45. “You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss

#46. “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” — Plato

#47. “The essence of marriage is companionship, and the woman you face across the coffee urn every morning for ninety-nine years must be both able to appreciate your jokes and to sympathize with your aspirations.” — Elbert Hubbard

#48. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” — Shakespeare

#49. “If I had a flower for every time thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.” — Alfred Tennyson

#50. “They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

#51. “You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” — Oscar Wilde

#52. “For you see, each day I love you more. Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.” — Rosemond Gerard

#53. “The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” — Audrey Hepburn

#54. “In other relationships, people are different entities but in marriage, the couple is considered as one. This is what makes marriage a different kind of bond.” — Mark McGrann

#55. “For the two of us, home isn’t a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.” ― Stephanie Perkins

#56. “Marriages are like fingerprints; each one is different and each one is beautiful.” — Maggie Reyes

#57. “A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.” — Andre Maurois

#58. “There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?” — Mary Oliver

#59. “What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

#60. “Your absence has not taught me to be alone, it merely has shown that when together we cast a single shadow on the wall.” — Doug Fetherling

#61. “Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage.” — Zig Ziglar

#62. “The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” — Rumi

#63. “The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they’re too old to do it.” — Ann Bancroft

#64. “You have made a place in my heart where I thought there was no room for anything else. You have made flowers grow where I cultivated dust and stones.” — Robert Jordan

#65. “For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.” — Judy Garland

#66. “To the world you may be one person, but to one person you are the world.” — Taylor Hanson

#67. “If you want your wife to listen to you, then talk to another woman; she will be all ears.” — Sigmund Freud

#68. “I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” — Rita Rudner

#69. “Faith makes all things possible. Love makes all things easy.” — Dwight Moody

#70. “Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.” — E.E. Cummings

#71. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope…I have loved none but you.” — Jane Austen

#72. “People are weird. When we find someone with weirdness that is compatible with ours, we team up and call it love.” — Dr. Seuss

#73. “In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.” — Maya Angelou

#74. “Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.” — Helen Keller

#75. “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” — Mignon McLaughlin

#76. “Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.” — Nicole Krauss

#77. “Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. It’s the way you love your partner every day.” — Barbara De Angelis

#78. “A marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s the way you love your partner every day.” — Barbara De Angelis

#79. “To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.” — Robert Brault

#80. “Every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favourite.” — Anonymous

#81. “The greatest marriages are built on teamwork. A mutual respect, a healthy dose of admiration, and a never-ending portion of love and grace.” — Fawn Weaver

#82. “When someone else’s happiness is your happiness that is love.” — Lana Del Ray

#83. “Marriages, like a garden, take time to grow. But the harvest is rich unto those who patiently and tenderly care for the ground.” — Darlene Schacht

#84. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” — Lao Tzu

#85. “Marriage, ultimately, is the practice of becoming passionate friends.” — Harville Hendrix

#86. “When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.” — C.S. Lewis

#87. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss

#88. “Love is like a friendship caught on fire.” — Jeremy Taylor

#89. “Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” — Mark Twain

#90. “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow–this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

#91. “Marriage is like trading in the adoration of many for the sarcasm of one.” — Mae West

#92. “There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.” — Ronald Reagan

#93. “For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.” — Judy Garland

#94. “Marriage is a wonderful institution… but who wants to live in an institution?” — Groucho Marx

#95. “A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.” — Andre Maurois

#96. “Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#97. “Marriage is such a beautiful relationship and a gift from God. It’s God’s design, created between a man and a woman.” — Whitney Meade

#98. “So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, every day. You and me… every day.” — Nicholas Sparks

#99. “The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they’re right if you love to be with them all the time.” — Julia Child

#100. “To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.” — Mark Twain

#101. “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” — Paulo Coelho

#102. “Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.” — Martin Luther

#103. “There is only one happiness in life: To love and be loved.” — George Sand

#104. “Great love affairs start with champagne…” — Honoré de Balzac

#105. “The greatest marriages are built on teamwork. A mutual respect, a healthy dose of admiration, and a never-ending portion of love and grace.” — Fawn Weaver

#106. “Remember, we all stumble; every one of us. That is why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.” — Emily Kimbrough

#107. “True love stories never have endings.” — Richard Bach

#108. “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.” — Benjamin Franklin

#109. “A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.” — André Maurois

#110. “Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.” — Tom Mullen

You can use these 110 wedding couple quotes in your wedding from your wedding invitation to wedding vows. These quotes can be fit in your wedding perfectly.

Happy Wedding….

#wedding quotes #couple quotes #Wedding Couple Quotes #Romantic Wedding Quotes #Quote #Quotes for Couple #Romantic Couple Quotes #Quotes #quotes for your wedding #Best Wedding Quotes #Best Quotes #Best Couple Quotes #Best Wedding Quote #love quote #marriage quotes #best marriage quotes

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 7 years

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The gunman who attacked members of Congress on Wednesday morning, wounding a GOP leader, had a long history of domestic violence that included the use of a gun and hated Republicans.

James T. Hodgkinson, 66, of Belleville, Illinois, opened fire on a congressional baseball practice outside of Washington, D.C., a senior law-enforcement official told The Daily Beast. Hodgkinson was killed by police.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, two Capitol Police officers, and congressional staffers were wounded. They are all expected to survive, according to police.

Hodgkinson may have practiced before the attack, a neighbor told The Daily Beast.

On March 24, neighbor William Schaumleffel called the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office to complain that Hodgkinson had fired approximately 15 shots outside. A responding officer found Hodgkinson shooting into nearby trees and advised him to stop, according to a sheriff’s report, which added that Hodgkinson had a valid firearm license.

“I thought, my God, what is that guy shooting?” Schaumleffel recalled.

He told The Daily Beast that he was out in his backyard with his grandchildren when the shooting started. He heard one shot, then another, and then three in rapid succession.

Hodgkinson held the gun to his shoulder and fired across Schaumleffel’s field, he said. Schaumleffel said he yelled to him to say that there were houses in that direction and that he should stop, but wasn’t sure if he heard him.

The shooting started again, in what Schaumleffel now calls “target practice.”

“I told my wife, ‘hey, I’m gonna call the sheriff. He’s liable to turn the gun on us,’” Schaumleffel said.

Schaumleffel said he had never met Hodgkinson, and said that almost everyone in the neighborhood owned a gun. But no one starts shooting randomly, into the distance, like Hodgkinson did.

“He was being very reckless that day,” Schaumleffel said.

Shortly after the incident, Hodgkinson reportedly left Illinois and was living in Virginia.

A brutal foster father

Hodgkinson had a history of violence that did not rise to the level to prohibit him from legally owning a firearm.

He was the foster father of at least two girls. The first, Wanda Ashley Stock, 17, committed suicide in 1996 by pouring gasoline on herself and setting herself on fire after a few months of living with the Hodgkinsons, the Belleville News-Democrat reports. The Hodgkinsons gave an interview to the paper after her suicide, calling her a “very practical, level-headed girl.”

Privacy laws do not allow the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to release foster records.

In 2002, Hodgkinson became the foster father of another girl whom he allegedly abused, according to police records.

In 2006, he was arrested for domestic battery and discharge of a firearm after he stormed into a neighbor’s home where his teenage foster daughter was visiting with a friend. In a skirmish, he punched his foster daughter’s then 19-year-old friend Aimee Moreland “in the face with a closed fist,” according to a police report reviewed by The Daily Beast. When Moreland’s boyfriend walked outside of the residence where Moreland and Hodgkinson’s foster daughter were, he allegedly aimed a shotgun at the boyfriend and later fired one round. The Hodgkinsons later lost custody of that foster daughter.

“[Hodgkinson] fired a couple of warning shots and then hit my boyfriend with the butt of the gun,” Moreland told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.

Hodgkinson was also “observed throwing” his daughter “around the bedroom,” the police report said. After the girl broke free, Hodgkinson followed and “started hitting her arms, pulling her hair, and started grabbing her off the bed.”

Moreland said Hodgkinson’s daughter “told me a lot of stories that he was really awful to her.”

“According to his foster daughter, he was always angry,” Moreland said. “She was really unhappy there. She had come over to get away from them.”

When Moreland tried escaping with Hodgkinson’s daughter in a vehicle, Hodgkinson reached inside and “turned off the ignition,” the report said.

“We were panicked and when I tried to reverse, I hit neutral instead and he opened my car door and hit me, and then came to her car door and pulled out a knife and cut her seatbelt and dragged her out,” Moreland said. “She was only 15 or 16, I think. She was so tiny.”

“Do I think he’s capable of [the shooting]?” Moreland said. “Definitely.

“It sounds really awful, but I’m not surprised,” she said. “Every interaction I’ve had I’ve thought, ‘that guy’s crazy.’”

At court, Hodgkinson was no less angry. Moreland said that at an initial court appearance, Hodgkinson had to be removed from the courtroom after a series of eruptions.

“Every time the judge would talk to me, he would have an outburst and start screaming,” Moreland said.

The charges were dismissed, Moreland said, after she got her dates “mixed up” and failed to appear on time for a second court date.

“I tried to tell the court that this guy’s crazy, that this is a big deal, but they didn’t listen to me,” she said.

A Daily Beast reporter tracked down Judge Brian Babka, who presided over the April 2006 charges, at his home in a quiet middle-class subdivision of Belleville. The reporter heard him tell his wife to say that he was not available. The judge would not come to the door to answer questions about why the case was dismissed.

Angry at home, irate online

In June 2006, police were dispatched to Hodgkinson’s home in response to a domestic dispute that began when Hodgkinson allegedly hit a woman’s dog while it slept in her driveway, according to a sheriff’s report.

Hodgkinson also repeatedly called the police to report people on his lawn. In February 2005, he called police to claim juveniles had driven drunk on his property; although there was no damage, he requested extra patrols in the area. In August 2006, he called police to report a vehicle doing a donut in his yard overnight. In January 2007, he called the police after his neighbors’ trash company allegedly turned around on his driveway. In February 2007, he called police to report a car driving on his lawn.

Politically, Hodgkinson was also angry at Republicans, as expressed in letters to the Belleville News-Democrat newspaper.

“I don’t ever again want to hear how great a president [Ronald Reagan] was,” he wrote in March 2010. “All he did was give tax breaks to the rich and put the rest of the country (or at least 13.1 percent) out of work.

“To think the Republican Party can call this man their idol is un-American,” he added. “It’s all about the money.”

The year before, he suggested in a letter to the editor that legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana would be a way to “stimulate the economy.”

“Also to fund the government deficit I hope the Obama administration raises the income tax rate for the rich to 70 percent or more,” he wrote.

On social media, Hodgkinson presented himself as a Sanders supporter and a longtime critic of Republicans, particularly Trump. (Sanders said in a statement that Hodgkinson had volunteered on his campaign.)

Hodgkinson’s Facebook profile was linked to his listed telephone number.

“Trump is a Traitor,” Hodgkinson wrote in a May 22 Facebook post above a Change.org petition to remove Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for treason. “Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”

On Facebook, he was a member of groups including “Terminate the Republican Party,” “The Road To Hell Is Paved With Republicans,” “Donald Trump is not my President,” and “Memic Overlords.” He recently became particularly vocal, posting anti-Trump messages multiple times a day over two Facebook accounts. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports he attacked Republican congressional candidate Karen Handle, writing on Facebook: “Republican Bitch Wants People to Work for Slave Wages, when a Livable Wage is the Only Way to Go!”

Hodgkinson’s brother told The New York Times he was distraught by Trump’s victory. “I know he wasn’t happy with the way things were going, the election results and stuff,” Michael Hodgkinson said.

Hodgkinson’s Facebook account is vocal in support of Sanders, who lost the Democratic presidential nomination last year. On Twitter, Hodgkinson has tweeted at Sanders as early as 2014. Many of his friends are also Sanders supporters, according to social media.

On a mission?

Neighbor Aaron Meurer told The Daily Beast he lived next to Hodgkinson and his wife for about six years.

“I knew he wasn’t very happy when Trump got elected,” he said, adding that Hodgkinson had a Sanders sign in his yard during the election.

But he hadn’t seen Hodgkinson lately, estimating it had been a few weeks to a couple of months, Meurer said.

“I thought maybe he retired and went on a trip,” he said. “I know he bought a new van. He always drove a truck and then he all the sudden had a van one day.”

And while Meurer never saw Hodgkinson with a gun, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if he had owned one.

“I assume he had guns,” he said. “We live out in a rural area—everybody has guns out here.”

Hodgkinson reportedly left Illinois several weeks ago and was living in Alexandria prior to the attack. Former Alexandria mayor Bill Euille told The Washington Post that he had spoken with Hodgkinson every morning for the past month and a half at a local YMCA. Euille said he frequently observed Hodgkinson showering or working on his laptop at the gym.

Hodgkinson was unemployed and appeared to be living out of his gym bag. “What I did notice about this gentleman is he’d open up his gym bag and in it, he had everything he owned,” Euille told the Post. “He was living out of the gym bag.”

—with additional reporting by P. Richelle White in Belleville, Illinois, and Patricia Murphy in Atlanta, Georgia

#james hodgkinson

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t-baba · 5 years

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Using TensorFlow.js to check for naughty content client-side

#425 — February 22, 2019

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JavaScript Weekly

NSFW JS: A Way to Check for NSFW Images Client-Side — Billed as ‘client-side indecent content checking for the soul’, this is an interesting, though imperfect, way to screen content prior to upload. It uses TensorFlow.js behind the scenes. Demo here.

Gant Laborde

JavaScript Loading Priorities in Chrome — How browsers schedule and execute scripts can impact the performance of your pages. Addy Osmani compares the different approaches here.

Addy Osmani

Frontiers 2019: Explore New Ways to Build Apps on Slack — Teams move faster with apps on Slack. And, it wouldn’t be possible without the people who built them. Connect with app builders like you, get hands-on training and spark new ideas at Frontiers 2019.

Slack sponsor

TypeScript Linter TSLint to Give Way to ESLint — The developers of TSLint, the TypeScript linter, have decided to deprecate it and focus on improving TypeScript support in the popular ESLint linter instead. This will greatly help existing ESLint users who are picking up TypeScript.

Palantir

CodeCrumbs: Document Codebases by Adding 'Breadcrumbs' — One of those things that’s better to see visually than read about. Essentially you annotate your code in a certain way and it can produce visualizations of how your codebase works.

Bohdan Liashenko

Ionic React Now Available in Beta — Ionic, a framework for building cross-platform hybrid mobile apps, is commonly associated with Angular but now it’s available in a React flavor too with around 70 components intended to cover the main use cases when building mobile apps. — Via our Mobile-focused newsletter.

Josh Thomas (Ionic)

💻 Jobs

Sr. Fullstack Engineer (Remote) — Sticker Mule is looking for passionate developers to join our remote team. Come help us become the Internet’s best place to shop and work.

Sticker Mule

React/TypeScript Dev (Berlin, Germany) — Build the tools behind the world’s leading app retargeting platform. Make your own decisions. Solve hard, real-world problems with a cutting edge stack in an experienced & ambitious team.

Remerge

Find a Job Through Vettery — Vettery specializes in developer roles and is completely free for job seekers.

Vettery

📘 Articles, Tutorials and Opinions

for vs forEach() vs for/in vs for/of — An overview of the difference between these looping constructs using several different edge cases.

Valeri Karpov

JSConf US & The Expanding Web — Check out a recent blog by Anna Sedlar.

Big Nerd Ranch sponsor

Using Fastify and Preact for Quick Web App Prototyping — Two technologies we haven’t mentioned for quite a while come together here in building a simple full-stack app.

Luciano Mammino

Styling an Angular Application with Bootstrap — A tutorial using the latest versions of Bootstrap 4 and Angular 7.

Smashing Magazine

Working with TypeScript in Visual Studio Code — Since VS Code and TypeScript both originated at Microsoft, it’s no surprise they work well together.

James Quick beginner

How to Disallow Large Imports from JavaScript Projects — Are there known large dependencies your team wish they could disallow from a project? ESLint supports disallowing specific imports.

Addy Osmani

How Does Aurelia 'React'? — Aurelia is an interesting framework in its own right - this new series aims to show how Aurelia approaches things you might otherwise do in React.

Rob Eisenberg

Replace Tedious Coding with MongoDB Stitch and Public APIs

MongoDB sponsor

'We Migrated to Next.js to Serve Our Home Page 7.5× Faster' — Going from a basic React boilerplate to Next.js can yield serious initial render time improvements and without much work, too.

Drew Powers (Manifold)

Faster Calls with Arguments Mismatch — Technical notes on a special V8 optimization for situations where you have strict mode functions that don’t use the arguments object or rest parameters. The performance improvement can be significant.

Benedikt Meurer and Toon Verwaest (V8)

🔧 Code and Tools

VS Code Settings and Extensions for Faster JS Development

Tilo Mitra

Cryption: In-Browser AES File Encryption with Data Integrity Check — It’s limited as to the size of data it can work with, however, but is an interesting project.

Tim-Luca Lagmöller

Supercharge Your Code, Test, Debug Feedback Loop — Wallaby runs unit tests as you type and reports results right beside your code in your text editor.

Wallaby.js sponsor

SimpleFS: Handle Files in IndexedDB Like You Would in Node — Node-style file operations for files stored in IndexedDB.

Fagbokforlaget V&B AS

Cleave.js: Format Input Text Content While Typing — Ideal for things like phone numbers, credit card numbers, dates.. or define your own.

Max Huang

Howler.js: An Audio Library for the Modern Web — Get a simple API for your audio needs across all platforms. No dependencies, too.

James Simpson

A JavaScript-Interop Library for ClojureScript

Applied Science Studio

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baydorz-blog · 6 years

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Attention seeking actress Rosaline Meurer poses half naked with dollar bills

Nollywood actress Rosaline Meurer of course decided to steer some conversation her way when she took to IG tos ahre a semi-nude photo of herself surrounded by what looks like fake dollar notes.The picture of course got many talking with someone saying the photo is from an old music video shoot.Read comments below;

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jennifer-wayne · 4 years

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Some People Are Investments And Some Are Bills, Know The Difference: Tonto Dikeh Advises

Tonto Dikeh

Controversial Nollywood actress, Tonto Dikeh has dished out advice to her teeming fans as regards the true nature of human beings.

According to the screen diva, some people are investments while some are liabilities.

She concluded by stating that it is left for them to decipher which is which.

Read Also: Rosy Meurer Is A Better Wife Material And Not A Drama Queen: Nollywood Actor…

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newyorkthegoldenage · 1 year

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He didn't make his reservation early enough, 1951. A man sits outside after he wasn’t able get a seat to celebrate New Year’s Eve at Sammy’s Bowery Follies.

Photo: Bill Meurer for the NY Daily News via Getty Images/ Considerable

#New York #NYC #vintage NY #1950s #Bill Meurer #drunk #New Year's Eve #New Year's Day #January 1 #Jan. 1 #Sammy's Bowery Follies #Bowery #too late

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streetsofnaija · 6 years

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Attention seeking actress Rosaline Meurer poses half naked with dollar bills

Nollywood actress Rosaline Meurer of course decided to steer some conversation her way when she took to IG tos ahre a semi-nude photo of herself surrounded by what looks like fake dollar notes.

The picture of course got many talking with someone saying the photo is from an old music video shoot. Read comments below;

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onlineafric-blog · 7 years

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Check Out Rosaline Meurer Lavishly Celebrated Her Dogs On Their Birthday

Nollywood Actress, Rosaline Meurer who was fingered as the cause of Tonto Dikeh’s marriage crash to stir up more controversy.

The actress, who is the PA to Tonto Dikeh‘s estranged husband Churchill, shared a video of herself spraying her dogs wads of dollar bills as she marks their birthday.

Here’s the video:

Cuz it’s their birthday

#birthday #doglover #pets #ice #coco

A post shared by

ro…

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#Gossip

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samludas · 7 years

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Rosaline Meurer sprays dollar bills on her dogs to mark their birthday

Nollywood Actress, Rosaline Meurer who was fingered as the cause of Tonto Dikeh’s marriage crash to stir up more controversy.

The actress, who is the PA to Tonto Dikeh‘s estranged husband Churchill, shared a video of herself spraying her dogs wads of dollar bills as she marks their birthday.

Well, it’s her money. Right? And they are her dogs?

Watch the video below…

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#Rosaline Meurer

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juliandmouton30 · 7 years

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Architects protest lack of women keynotes for 2017 AIA National Convention

US architects have expressed "outrage" at the lack of gender diversity at the American Institute of Architects' upcoming annual conference in Orlando.

Fifty architects, firms and students signed a letter sent to the Architect's Newspaper, highlighting the fact that no female architects are billed to give keynote presentations at the event.

The 2017 AIA National Convention is due to take place in at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, from 27 to 29 April 2017.

Of the seven keynote speakers currently listed, only one is a women, and the letter points out that Amy Cuddy – a Harvard professor and best-selling author – is not an architect.

"The keynote panel is in no way representative of our collective intellect," says the letter.

"If the AIA was serious about changing its image – and we do not mean a superficial marketing strategy – then they should lead the profession and put forward a panel of keynote speakers that is reflective of the diversity in architecture."

Gender pay gap is broadening shows Women in Architecture survey

Gender parity in the architecture industry is an ongoing issue. The AIA's own survey released in March 2016 found that 70 per cent of female architects and architecture students in the US feel that women are still underrepresented in the profession.

Earlier this year, on the day that so-called Women's Marches took place internationally, David Adjaye said the industry still doesn't provide the same opportunities for both sexes. And this week a survey by the Architect's Journal found that men are paid more than women across the board in the profession, and that pay disparity is widening.

Signatories have also used the letter to criticise the AIA's actions following a statement supporting Donald Trump after he won the US presidential election last November.

CEO Robert Ivy and president Russ Davidson issued an apology for the statement and pledged $1 million towards improving diversity, but the architects do not feel it is enough.

"The financial support is a weak attempt to cover their errors in judgment and misrepresenting the desires of AIA membership, specifically, and all architects in general," the letter says.

It urges others to contact the organisation and express their outrage, and suggest speakers for the conference.

Inequality still a serious issue in US architecture, say female architects

Read the full letter and list of signatories so far:

Where is the Female Representation: shouldn't we ALL be outraged?

How is it that the AIA could not come up with a single female architect as a keynote speaker at the convention? If you have not seen the AIA's keynote speaker list for their newly rebranded national convention, it is shocking to see that out of the seven speakers listed only one is a woman (and she is not even an architect).

In what seems to be a string of missteps by the AIA, this announcement of the keynote speaker list for the national convention is not surprising. AIA CEO Robert Ivy and AIA President Russ Davidson recently apologized to the architecture community for their ill-conceived letter of support of the Trump administration which does not respect women and minorities. Ivy and Davidson, also, announced a nationwide listening tour to find out what the AIA membership wanted. After additional criticism of that response, Ivy and Davidson produced a video apologizing for a second time and promised to commit $1 million to boost diversity in architecture. The financial support is a weak attempt to cover their errors in judgment and misrepresenting the desires of AIA membership, specifically, and all architects in general.

The AIA currently dedicates a small corner of the national website to the Equity in Architecture Commission with a generically worded "Diversity and Inclusion Statement". The stunningly short statement totals 175 words, including title and dates, and merely ensures rights that are already protected by federal law. Apparently, the apologies are only lip service. The organization continues to not put equity issues front and center in ALL of its programming and events. Why are they only TALKING about change and not MAKING change?

In their annual conference literature, the AIA states "it's about tapping into the collective intellect and entrepreneurial spirit of architects and design professionals who are shaping our industry". However, their actions speak volumes against such sentiments. The keynote panel is in no way representative of our collective intellect.

If the AIA was serious about changing its image – and we do not mean a superficial marketing strategy – then they should lead the profession and put forward a panel of keynote speakers that is reflective of the diversity in architecture. When the AIA states that they are committed to "broadening equity, diversity, and inclusion in the profession of architecture through dedicated leadership", we must ask where are the diverse leaders?

A recap of the AIA leadership as it relates to equity issues can be found in the 2012 Places article by Gabrielle Esperdy titled "The Incredibly True Adventures of the Architectress in America". The article thoroughly documents the history of the AIA's refusal to act on behalf of women members. Particularly depressing is the fact that women pressed for these same issues of equality in the 1970s. The latest Equity by Design report seems to indicate that while our schools continue to graduate almost 50% women into the field, keeping women once they have entered the profession has reached a point of stagnation.

We are calling for a more active and aggressive stance on equity by the AIA, starting with the National Convention keynote speaker line-up. Following this, we request more diverse representation on the AIA board and presence for the Equity by Design initiative on the AIA National website.

If you are equally outraged by the lack of female representation for keynote speakers at the AIA convention we encourage you to reach out to your AIA boards and the national organization including CEO Robert Ivy ([email protected]). Tell them the following:

1 – That you are outraged 2 – Who you would like to see as a keynote speaker

Making the AIA leadership aware of our outrage and changing the demographics of the keynote speakers at one convention is clearly not a solution to the larger issues of systemic homogeny in the organization. But it is a step in the right direction and will show the leadership that we expect more than platitudes on issues of diversity and inclusivity within the AIA.

Signed:

Mo Zell, RA, Women in Design – Milwaukee; Jori Ann Erdman, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP; Ali Kopyt, AIA, NCARB; Angie Tabrizi, AIA, LEED AP BD+C; Ursula Twombly, AIA; Patricia Frost, AIA; Allyson Nemec, AIA, LEED AP, Past President AIA WI; Paula Verboomen, AIA; Kristin Dufek, AIA, EDAC, LEED AP; Alexa Wojciechowicz; Angela Kehl, Allied ASID; Taruna Gupta; Ganesh Nayak; Barbara Hughes; Ellie Lange; Shannon Criss; Marie-Alice L'Heureux, PhD, AIA, NCARB; Kathryn e. Martin-Meurer; Ai Csuka; Lyssa Olker; Bridget Owen; Erica Chappelear; Vaishali Wagh RA, LEED AP; Kathy Osowski; Rosheen Styczinski, PLA FASLA; Sara A Maas; Patricia S Algiers, ASID, CNU-Accredited; Maria Wenzel, Associate AIA; Nicole Craanen; Nikole Bouchard; Rachel Momenee; Nancy Chu; Layla Qarout, LEED GA; Brian K Schermer; Mark Keane; Linda Keane; Emma Price; Don Hanlon; Matt Rinka AIA NCARB (and firm of Rinka Chung); Chris Cornelius; Mike Utzinger, RA, PE; Karen W Plunkett, AIA; Jacki Kinney; Laura Gainer; Nader Sayadi; Kyle Reynolds; Jennifer L Lehrke, AIA, LEED AP, NCARB; Melinda Pogwizd

The post Architects protest lack of women keynotes for 2017 AIA National Convention appeared first on Dezeen.

from ifttt-furniture https://www.dezeen.com/2017/02/10/architects-protest-lack-of-women-keynotes-2017-aia-national-convention/

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jeniferdlanceau · 7 years