swooning over this g October 02 2014
swooning over this golden engraved pop-out closet
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If I were a food. #f October 01 2014
If I were a food. #frenchcanadian #detail #canada http://instagram.com/christianelemieux
If I were a food. #f October 01 2014
If I were a food. #frenchcanadian #detail #canada http://instagram.com/christianelemieux
13 Things For History Lovers To Do Online When They're Bored October 01 2014
Help out historians by volunteering to transcribe old documents online. Here are some fun projects to work on.
There are tons of libraries, institutions, archives, and historical societies out there that have gobs and gobs of documents, letters, data logs, and basically anything written. To fully digitize all this handwritten information, they're asking for help from volunteers to transcribe the pages.
They've already taken photographs or scans of the pages; all you need to do is look at the image and type out what you see written there. That way, the information can be made searchable.
Here are a few really interesting projects from organizations asking for help transcribing. If you think you can read old-timey handwriting and have an hour or two to spare, help out!
Help the University of Texas with its collection of Texan historical documents.
Letters, land claims, sermons, war records, slave sale receipts, advertisements, jail records, and more and need transcription. This is one of the more fun ones, with a wide variety of things that need to be transcribed, and they can be easily sorted by expertise level.
Uncover the history of the pioneer women of Iowa through their diaries and letters.
The University of Iowa's DIY History project includes a lovely collection of women's letters, diaries, and other personal papers from the 1800s–1900s. If you ever wanted to read someone's diary, now you can actually do it for a good cause.
Council Bluffs Public Library / Via Flickr: cbpl
Love shipwrecks? Help catalog the manifests of shipwrecks of the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes was (and is!) a major shipping route with tons of wrecked ships. Researchers need help transcribing a mix of newspapers, handwritten insurance records, and more shipping records. A niche undertaking, sure — but a fascinating project.
13 Things For History Lovers To Do Online When They're Bored October 01 2014
Help out historians by volunteering to transcribe old documents online. Here are some fun projects to work on.
There are tons of libraries, institutions, archives, and historical societies out there that have gobs and gobs of documents, letters, data logs, and basically anything written. To fully digitize all this handwritten information, they're asking for help from volunteers to transcribe the pages.
They've already taken photographs or scans of the pages; all you need to do is look at the image and type out what you see written there. That way, the information can be made searchable.
Here are a few really interesting projects from organizations asking for help transcribing. If you think you can read old-timey handwriting and have an hour or two to spare, help out!
Help the University of Texas with its collection of Texan historical documents.
Letters, land claims, sermons, war records, slave sale receipts, advertisements, jail records, and more and need transcription. This is one of the more fun ones, with a wide variety of things that need to be transcribed, and they can be easily sorted by expertise level.
Uncover the history of the pioneer women of Iowa through their diaries and letters.
The University of Iowa's DIY History project includes a lovely collection of women's letters, diaries, and other personal papers from the 1800s–1900s. If you ever wanted to read someone's diary, now you can actually do it for a good cause.
Council Bluffs Public Library / Via Flickr: cbpl
Love shipwrecks? Help catalog the manifests of shipwrecks of the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes was (and is!) a major shipping route with tons of wrecked ships. Researchers need help transcribing a mix of newspapers, handwritten insurance records, and more shipping records. A niche undertaking, sure — but a fascinating project.
Uber's Fleet Partnerships Might Be Undercutting Uber's Promise To Drivers October 01 2014
Companies can rent their older cars out to aspiring Uber drivers, but the costs might not add up. “The [Uber] rates are so cheap … and the commission and gas is too high,” one driver tells BuzzFeed News’ Johana Bhuiyan.
Uber Press Kit
Uber has pegged itself as a service that is good for both riders and drivers. That's a sentiment the company continues to echo even after it announced the discounted fare prices that the company introduced as a summer promotion in New York City and San Francisco — which aim to make UberX rides cheaper than a taxi — permanent all year-round: Uber provides the best economic opportunity for drivers.
The idea is that Uber drivers are making more money than they did before the price cut, according to Uber NYC General Manager Josh Moher, because they can accept more rides per hour due to a higher demand from customers who like the low rates.
And in drivers' minds — save for the company's no-tip policy and the low UberX fares — app-based car services like Uber, Lyft, and Gett do make their lives better. With these services, drivers can make their own hours, don't have to wait at a base to be dispatched, and are not subject to the whims of a dispatch agent or a "middle man," as one driver told BuzzFeed News in a previous interview.
But those prospective benefits for drivers are seemingly undercut by a service in New York that Uber hasn't been touting: the fleet partner program. According to the site, a fleet partner is anyone who owns more than one car in the Uber system and pays the drivers themselves, instead of Uber paying the drivers directly.
Here's how it works: Car services or private individuals who own more than one car and register with one of Uber's bases can either rent their cars to or set up a contract with Uber drivers. These fleet partners — who are usually looking to make an extra buck on older cars in their fleet or idle inventory — then accept payment from Uber and pay the driver accordingly. In some cases, fleet partners take a percentage of the drivers' total fares, in others, fleet partners charge a standard weekly (or in rare cases monthly) rental fee, a price point the fleet partner decides. Theoretically, then, these fleet partners can operate as mini-Uber bases, much of the time mimicking some of the economics and practices of yellow cab or black car bases — fees, lack of flexibility, and middle men.
Uber encourages potential and current fleet partners to look for prospective drivers and renters on the Uber marketplace, which serves as sort of a Craigslist for both drivers looking for cars and renters looking for drivers. Not all listings on the site are for fleet partners, however. Some listings are just car owners looking to cover some of the expenses on a car they may not use often but still need by renting it out to Uber drivers.
At its best, the program offers a low-commitment way of becoming an Uber driver. At its worst, however, drivers can be bound to several months-long contracts where they only see 60% of the net fares — after Uber's 20% cut and other taxes and fees — and may be forced to pick shifts that are less flexible.
Uber's Fleet Partnerships Might Be Undercutting Uber's Promise To Drivers October 01 2014
Companies can rent their older cars out to aspiring Uber drivers, but the costs might not add up. “The [Uber] rates are so cheap … and the commission and gas is too high,” one driver tells BuzzFeed News’ Johana Bhuiyan.
Uber Press Kit
Uber has pegged itself as a service that is good for both riders and drivers. That's a sentiment the company continues to echo even after it announced the discounted fare prices that the company introduced as a summer promotion in New York City and San Francisco — which aim to make UberX rides cheaper than a taxi — permanent all year-round: Uber provides the best economic opportunity for drivers.
The idea is that Uber drivers are making more money than they did before the price cut, according to Uber NYC General Manager Josh Moher, because they can accept more rides per hour due to a higher demand from customers who like the low rates.
And in drivers' minds — save for the company's no-tip policy and the low UberX fares — app-based car services like Uber, Lyft, and Gett do make their lives better. With these services, drivers can make their own hours, don't have to wait at a base to be dispatched, and are not subject to the whims of a dispatch agent or a "middle man," as one driver told BuzzFeed News in a previous interview.
But those prospective benefits for drivers are seemingly undercut by a service in New York that Uber hasn't been touting: the fleet partner program. According to the site, a fleet partner is anyone who owns more than one car in the Uber system and pays the drivers themselves, instead of Uber paying the drivers directly.
Here's how it works: Car services or private individuals who own more than one car and register with one of Uber's bases can either rent their cars to or set up a contract with Uber drivers. These fleet partners — who are usually looking to make an extra buck on older cars in their fleet or idle inventory — then accept payment from Uber and pay the driver accordingly. In some cases, fleet partners take a percentage of the drivers' total fares, in others, fleet partners charge a standard weekly (or in rare cases monthly) rental fee, a price point the fleet partner decides. Theoretically, then, these fleet partners can operate as mini-Uber bases, much of the time mimicking some of the economics and practices of yellow cab or black car bases — fees, lack of flexibility, and middle men.
Uber encourages potential and current fleet partners to look for prospective drivers and renters on the Uber marketplace, which serves as sort of a Craigslist for both drivers looking for cars and renters looking for drivers. Not all listings on the site are for fleet partners, however. Some listings are just car owners looking to cover some of the expenses on a car they may not use often but still need by renting it out to Uber drivers.
At its best, the program offers a low-commitment way of becoming an Uber driver. At its worst, however, drivers can be bound to several months-long contracts where they only see 60% of the net fares — after Uber's 20% cut and other taxes and fees — and may be forced to pick shifts that are less flexible.
Facebook Apologizes To LGBT Community, Promises Changes To "Real Names" Policy October 01 2014
In a Facebook post, the company’s chief product officer apologized to “the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community.”
A sign at Facebook's Menlo Park, California headquarters.
AP Photo/Ben Margot, File
In an apology to the LGBT community Wednesday, Facebook said it promises to make fixes to how it enforces a long-held policy requiring users to display their "real names" on personal profiles. LGBT community advocates have railed against the policy in recent weeks, saying it unfairly affects transgender users and drag queen performers.
"We owe you a better service and a better experience using Facebook, and we're going to fix the way this policy gets handled so everyone affected here can go back to using Facebook as you were," said Chris Cox, the company's chief product officer, in a statement on Facebook. "[W]e see through this event that there's lots of room for improvement in the reporting and enforcement mechanisms, tools for understanding who's real and who's not, and the customer service for anyone who's affected."
The development comes after LGBT community advocates met with Facebook representatives, including Cox, at the company's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters on Wednesday to follow up on concerns raised last month that LGBT users, particularly transgender people and drag queen performers, have been targeted under the policy.
Mark Snyder, who was present at meeting and who serves a communications director at Transgender Law Center, told BuzzFeed News he welcomes the company's apology and plan as "significant progress."
"I think that Facebook is going to make sure everyone in our community is able to be their authentic self online," Snyder said when reached by phone. "We are grateful for this apology and we look forward to working with Facebook on specific solutions in the coming months. It was a very productive meeting."
Facebook has long asked users to provide various forms of identification to prove the name on their profile matches the name they use in everyday life if their accounts are reported to be violation of the policy. The social network came under fire for these requirements after hundreds of users, many of them drag queen performers, were recently locked out of their accounts after someone reported them to Facebook, which Cox said "took us off guard."
"An individual on Facebook decided to report several hundred of these accounts as fake. These reports were among the several hundred thousand fake name reports we process every single week, 99 percent of which are bad actors doing bad things: impersonation, bullying, trolling, domestic violence, scams, hate speech, and more — so we didn't notice the pattern," Cox said in the statement. In such cases, Facebook would ask for some form of ID like a piece of mail or gym membership, among others.
However, Cox didn't mention any specific steps the company would take to address the issue, other than that, "we're taking measures to provide much more deliberate customer service to those accounts that get flagged" and "building better tools" to respond to these issues in the future.
Snyder said Facebook told advocates it plans to test specific changes behind the scenes. "It's going to be a series of bandages before the wound is healed," Snyder said. "We're working together and we will be in complete collaboration with them moving forward."
Drag queens argued the policy would disenfranchise them in their communities, where they are often known primarily by their performer names. And LGBT advocates said the policy could put transgender users at risk if they no longer identity with the names they were given at birth and use their preferred names on their Facebook profiles. Transgender users, particularly transgender youth, may not be able to provide such documents to demonstrate proof of the name they identify with if asked by Facebook, advocates said.
"Facebook's requirement that users provide a form of identification to prove their 'real names' is unfair and disproportionately impacts our already vulnerable communities," advocates — representing numerous LGBT, immigrant, and anti-violence groups across the country — said in a letter presented to Facebook at the meeting. "This policy lends itself to abuse; some people are using this tool to target and harass our communities with the intent of erasing our identities. Many people need to use a chosen name in order to feel safe or to be able to express their authentic identity online."
The advocates first met with Facebook officials on Sept. 17, which resulted in the company temporarily reinstating the hundreds of accounts that were deactivated. However, Facebook refused to budge on changing the policy at the time.
Read Cox's full statement:
Facebook Apologizes To LGBT Community, Promises Changes To "Real Names" Policy October 01 2014
In a Facebook post, the company’s chief product officer apologized to “the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community.”
A sign at Facebook's Menlo Park, California headquarters.
AP Photo/Ben Margot, File
In an apology to the LGBT community Wednesday, Facebook said it promises to make fixes to how it enforces a long-held policy requiring users to display their "real names" on personal profiles. LGBT community advocates have railed against the policy in recent weeks, saying it unfairly affects transgender users and drag queen performers.
"We owe you a better service and a better experience using Facebook, and we're going to fix the way this policy gets handled so everyone affected here can go back to using Facebook as you were," said Chris Cox, the company's chief product officer, in a statement on Facebook. "[W]e see through this event that there's lots of room for improvement in the reporting and enforcement mechanisms, tools for understanding who's real and who's not, and the customer service for anyone who's affected."
The development comes after LGBT community advocates met with Facebook representatives, including Cox, at the company's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters on Wednesday to follow up on concerns raised last month that LGBT users, particularly transgender people and drag queen performers, have been targeted under the policy.
Mark Snyder, who was present at meeting and who serves a communications director at Transgender Law Center, told BuzzFeed News he welcomes the company's apology and plan as "significant progress."
"I think that Facebook is going to make sure everyone in our community is able to be their authentic self online," Snyder said when reached by phone. "We are grateful for this apology and we look forward to working with Facebook on specific solutions in the coming months. It was a very productive meeting."
Facebook has long asked users to provide various forms of identification to prove the name on their profile matches the name they use in everyday life if their accounts are reported to be violation of the policy. The social network came under fire for these requirements after hundreds of users, many of them drag queen performers, were recently locked out of their accounts after someone reported them to Facebook, which Cox said "took us off guard."
"An individual on Facebook decided to report several hundred of these accounts as fake. These reports were among the several hundred thousand fake name reports we process every single week, 99 percent of which are bad actors doing bad things: impersonation, bullying, trolling, domestic violence, scams, hate speech, and more — so we didn't notice the pattern," Cox said in the statement. In such cases, Facebook would ask for some form of ID like a piece of mail or gym membership, among others.
However, Cox didn't mention any specific steps the company would take to address the issue, other than that, "we're taking measures to provide much more deliberate customer service to those accounts that get flagged" and "building better tools" to respond to these issues in the future.
Snyder said Facebook told advocates it plans to test specific changes behind the scenes. "It's going to be a series of bandages before the wound is healed," Snyder said. "We're working together and we will be in complete collaboration with them moving forward."
Drag queens argued the policy would disenfranchise them in their communities, where they are often known primarily by their performer names. And LGBT advocates said the policy could put transgender users at risk if they no longer identity with the names they were given at birth and use their preferred names on their Facebook profiles. Transgender users, particularly transgender youth, may not be able to provide such documents to demonstrate proof of the name they identify with if asked by Facebook, advocates said.
"Facebook's requirement that users provide a form of identification to prove their 'real names' is unfair and disproportionately impacts our already vulnerable communities," advocates — representing numerous LGBT, immigrant, and anti-violence groups across the country — said in a letter presented to Facebook at the meeting. "This policy lends itself to abuse; some people are using this tool to target and harass our communities with the intent of erasing our identities. Many people need to use a chosen name in order to feel safe or to be able to express their authentic identity online."
The advocates first met with Facebook officials on Sept. 17, which resulted in the company temporarily reinstating the hundreds of accounts that were deactivated. However, Facebook refused to budge on changing the policy at the time.
Read Cox's full statement:
Lockwood Sheet Set | October 01 2014
Lockwood Sheet Set | Inspired by vintage textiles, our Lockwood sheet set layers a modern palette over a timeless print. The cool flint and warm cranberry beautifully compliment our Chateau Duvet, and feel fresh with our Modern Border Smoke Duvet.