The resurgence of West Indian cricket

Sri Lanka is currently touring the West Indies and playing a series of three five-day Test matches. Both teams have been struggling of late and the first Test saw the Windies winning very easily. The second test was poised for an exciting finish on the final day before rain caused play to be abandoned and the game ending in a draw (as no decisions are called in cricket). That game was also marred by the Sri Lankan captain being found guilty of ball tampering and banned from playing in the third Test that is currently underway in Barbados and rain has already interrupted play a couple of times.
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Film review: Won’t you be my neighbor? (2018)

I have long had a soft spot for Fred Rogers, host of the long running children’s show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, that I used to watch with my children when they were little. This was not because of the show itself. While its wholesome messages were universal and timeless, the presentation unabashedly aimed itself at very young children and its languid pace, low production values, and simple format made it somewhat dull for adults. It did not have the fast pace and dualistic sensibilities of Sesame Street that catered to children and also to their parents. The reason I like him was because of a very specific incident that occurred when my older daughter was just about to enter kindergarten at the local public school.
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Smarmy Piers Morgan is a fool – example XLVI

I hate people who try to show their intellectual superiority by asking people to answer esoteric questions. It only reveals them to be annoying pedants. Knowing random facts is not a sign of intelligence. Smarmy Piers Morgan tried to embarrass a person on a reality show by asking her “Do you know what Pythagoras’s theorem is to the nearest five decimal places?” and embarrassed himself instead, as this clip shows.

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Athletes standing together for justice

Many people would have heard of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, winners of the gold and bronze medals in the 200 meters event at the 1968 Olympics held in Mexico, because of their black-gloved clenched fist salute protesting racism captured in the iconic photograph below. Carlos had left his pair of black gloves back at the Olympic village, which is why he and Smith each wore a single glove on different hands.

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HAL has entered the building

Ibrahim Diallo was fired from his job by a machine algorithm that, once set in motion, no one in his company seemed to be able to override however high they were in the administrative structure.

The story of Mr Diallo’s sacking by machine began when his entry pass to the Los Angeles skyscraper where his office was based failed to work, forcing him to rely on the security guard to allow him entry.
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The Trump executive order will make a bad situation worse in the long run

[UPDATE: If you want to get a\look at the deliberate callousness and cruelty of the government’s behavior, read this sad and infuriating account by a public defender assigned to the detained parents who have been separated from their children.]

It turns out that the government has not only been separating immigrant children from their parents, it may have been been drugging and otherwise abusing them up too, according to a news article based on a report by Reveal of the excellent Center for Investigative Reporting from court filings protesting the practices. A lawsuit has been filed that charges that some immigrant children in detention centers who have been separated from their parents have been sent to shelters with long histories of abuse and are being forcibly injected with drugs to make them docile.
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