Amazon bills its Rekognition image classification system as a "deep learning-based image and video analysis" system; it markets the system to US police forces for use in analyzing security camera footage, including feeds from police officers' bodycams. Read the rest
A few years ago, I was invited for a bartending demo at 1901 Lounge, California's Adventure Club 33 counterpart. It was cool but I still dream of knocking Club 33 off my bucket list.
Well, acccording to the Orlando Sentinel, my chances for getting in are increasing, though I will have to travel to Florida. The news outlet is reporting that four new "versions of the high-end establishment will open in each of the four WDW (Walt Disney World) theme parks by this fall." Those four parks being the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney's Animal Kingdom, and Disney's Hollywood Studios.
The Sentinel article continues:
Disney has not revealed the price structure for Florida’s Club 33s, although a spokeswoman says one fee will cover all four clubs. The “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” adage springs to mind.
Disney also has not shared where in the parks its new “limited membership clubs” will be or their themes. They might not mirror the California version; we’re not even sure that the ones in Florida will include restaurants.
photo by Sam Howzit Read the rest
A letter from the ACLU to lawmakers asked them to vote down the Democrats' proposed limits on firearm sales, but not for the same reasons that the NRA objected to the legislation. Read the rest
The NRA -- tone-deaf, intransigent, monied -- are seemingly unstoppable, but if anyone can shoot 'em down, it's Samantha Bee, whose tight, funny, rage-filled 5:30 on America's gun lobby is practically armor-piercing. (via Rolling Stone) Read the rest
Everyone processes grief differently. One attendee at this year's Electric Daisy Carnival wore these fabulous kandi bracelets "honoring the 49 lives taken at Pulse." Orlando nightclubs were packed with defiant crowds. Read the rest
Like many youtubers, the incomparable, fast-talking, sharpie-doodling mathematician Vi Hart (previously) was stunned by the Orlando shooting of Christina Grimmie, a Youtube singing star who broke out into the mainstream, and who was murdered by a man who attended her public appearance. Read the rest
The NRA has disbursed $3,782,803 since 1998 in campaign contributions to 42 senators and 252 members of Congress. Read the rest
I spoke to KCRW Press Play host Madeleine Brand today about some of the macabre social media details coming out of the Orlando Pulse mass shooting in Florida, and the terrorist attack two days later on a police officer and his family in Paris. Read the rest
Sen Chris Murphy [D-CT] and colleagues are attempting to push an amendment to a spending bill that would require background checks on gun sales and exclusion of terror suspects from sales. Read the rest
This week's Orlando aftermath commentary has ranged from the scorching to the touching to the offensive to the spectacularly stupid. Read the rest
One day after Omar Mateen opened fire in a gay-friendly Orlando nightclub, killing 49 people and injuring 53 more, reports are surfacing that suggest Mateen may have been attracted to and obsessed with gay men. Read the rest
The shooter who killed 49 people at a gay-friendly bar in Orlando, Florida had been on the FBI's radar for three years. Read the rest
Last night Lin-Manuel Miranda won the Tony for Best Original Score for the astounding Hamilton, and his acceptance speech beautifully honored the dead in the Orlando gay nightclub shooting. Read the rest
