Free Republic

Model Amy Elmore Shares Harrowing Personal Abuse: “It’s Time To Talk About Sexual Predators In The Modeling Business”Amy Elmore, a model for 29 years, has experienced and witnessed years of the sexual predatory nature of men in positions of power. She was raped at the age of 17 “by a famous musician” and then as a struggling model had to face the realities of the predatory nature of fashion photographers, only to come to Hollywood to find further systemic abuse. Elmore is one of the first models to come forward, following the sexual assault allegations against mogul Harvey Weinstein, to...

Rosemary LaBonte to the editors of a California newspaper in response to an article written by Ernie Lujan who suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the immigrants of today aren’t being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry. The paper never printed this response, so her husband sent it out via internet. Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there...

What Are My Healthcare Rights? What are my rights in health insurance?The Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare”) prohibits most health insurers from discriminating based on gender identity and transgender status. Insurance companies that receive federal funding or that have one or more plans on a federal or state Marketplace have to comply with this requirement. That includes all major insurance companies and the majority of smaller insurance companies, but some small health insurance companies may not be covered.Here are some policies or practices that would be illegal under the ACA: Excluding transition-related care from coverage: Insurance companies can’t have automatic or...

A new market for super high-speed weapons is fueling investments in rocket engine technologies as companies seek to gain an edge. The industry foresees a demand for advanced rocket engines, particularly if the U.S. military moves to acquire revolutionary missiles that fly at hypersonic speeds. The Pentagon expects to invest $2 billion over the next five years in high-speed weapons including lasers and hypersonic missiles  that travel at five times the speed of sound. ... Large solid propellant rocket motors are critical systems for the United States to be able to launch payloads into space or warheads in intercontinental ballistic missiles. The industry...

Director Kevin Smith said that he will donate future residuals from his films that were produced or distributed by Harvey Weinstein to Women in Film, a nonprofit organization supporting female filmmakers. Smith, who has directed many films with Weinstein connections, including “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy” and his 1994 directorial debut “Clerks,” got emotional while speaking about the allegations against the veteran Hollywood producer during the recent edition of his podcast, “Hollywood Babble-On.” “My entire career is tied up with the man. Everything I did in the beginning has his name on it,” Smith said, adding that he “spent many years lionizing...

Link only...Bloomberg

Just after graduating from high school, Nicholas LeBerth got an ambiguous letter inviting him to an job interview. The firm was called Vector Marketing and it promised generous compensation and flexible work schedules. The job was selling kitchen knives, first to his parents. “I started mostly trying to sell to my family and ran out of them to sell to in like two weeks,” LeBerth told The Daily Beast.

Game Of Thrones star Lena Headey has claimed movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was "furious" after she rejected his advances. The British actress, who plays Cersei Lannister in the HBO show, detailed meetings between herself and Weinstein in which he allegedly made "suggestive" comments and left her in tears. Headey is the latest in a growing list of women to make accusations against the producer. Headey joins a list of celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Cara Delevingne, Rose McGowan, Alice Evans and Sophie Dix who have spoken out against Weinstein's conduct. In a series of posts on Twitter, she told...

After James Green realized that his heart rate was consistently spiking, he knew something was wrong PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF TWITTER/JAMESTGREEN Your health tracker may not always be perfect—but for 28-year-old James Green of Brooklyn, New York, receiving a simple alert from his Apple Watch saved his life.Green tweeted on Friday that HeartWatch, one of the Apple Watch’s health sensors, measured his heart rate at consistently above his resting rate of 54, even though he was just sitting at his desk. Turns out those spikes were signaling a pulmonary embolism, his doctors told him after he made his way to the...

Caveat: This is a Microsoft Marketing Announcement of Windows 10 Version 1709 "Fall Creators Update".This update __WILL__ be pushed out to ALL Windows 10 users, so those of you who run Win10 should pay attention because your computing experience is about to change. "Today, we deliver the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update offering breakthroughs in creativity – from bringing mixed reality and 3D to the masses, to faster broadcasting for gaming, to turning photos and videos into real memories, and so much more. The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update can be experienced on a wide variety of Windows 10 PCs...

What do you do to top Google's highly regarded first-generation Pixel phone camera? The same, only more. More HDR+ image processing. More chip power. More artificial intelligence. And more image stabilization. The result for photos: "All the fundamentals are improved," said Tim Knight, head of Google's Pixel camera engineering team. On top of that are new features including motion photos, face retouching and perhaps most important, portrait mode. In the days of film, a photo was the product of a single release of the camera's shutter. In the digital era, it's as much the result of computer processing as old-school...

The Gartner Hype Cycle shows a remarkably consistent pattern. A new technology is first ignored, then begins to show promise and expectations get inflated beyond any realistic assessment of value. That leads to disillusionment and the technology is almost forgotten until, some years later, it begins to make a true competitive impact.What makes the Hype Cycle so pervasive is that it is, essentially, a pattern based on our obsession with patterns and stories, which is so universal that there is a whole branch of mathematics devoted to it. Our love of patterns is so great, in fact, that once we...

Choosing a business name? Here’s everything you should consider Dear M & M: I’ve got almost every aspect of my business plan figured out except the name! Can you give me advice on picking a good one? – Wanda Dear Wanda: Picking the right name for your business can play a big role in the success of your endeavor. The decision process when choosing a business name can be almost as difficult as picking a name for a child! Except in the case of children, you don’t have to register the name with the Arizona Corporation Commission, but we’ll get...

https://youtu.be/zpIN-8Q9Ahw Food: Weapon of Mass Destruction

The company last week quietly patched vulnerabilities in the WPA2 protocol used to secure wireless networks, but did not reveal the fix until today. Microsoft today revealed that it quietly patched Windows last week against vulnerabilities in the Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) protocol used to secure wireless networks. Details of the security update were only published Monday to Microsoft's Security Update Guide, the catalog-like portal that earlier this year replaced the decades-old practice of delivering explanatory bulletins. All supported versions of Windows received the update, according to the catalog listing, including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server...

In its ongoing effort to improve browser security, school Microsoft on security, and retain its search audience, Google is today rolling out several Chrome for Windows fortifications.The search biz has modded Chrome for Windows to detect when extensions switch people's Chrome settings, such as the default search engine, without authorization, a common tactic for deceptive software. The browser will now ask whether it can restore previous settings, which for the majority of Windows users will reestablish Google as Chrome's default search engine.The operation can also be done by visiting a reset URL: chrome://settings/resetProfileSettingsWhat's more, Google has enlisted security biz ESET...

Almost one month after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, technology firms like Tesla are stepping in to fill the relief-effort void that many say President Donald Trump has created. Following through with a pledge by Elon Musk that his company could solve Puerto Rico’s energy crisis with solar panels and batteries, Tesla Powerwall battery packs were spotted at San Juan airport on the island over the weekend.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he thinks NFL players should stop protesting during the national anthem and instead speak out against domestic violence. The Republican former presidential hopeful sent a letter Monday to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith saying he believes players are showing disrespect for the flag and veterans. Players should drop the “divisive political sideshow” and speak out against domestic violence instead, the governor wrote. NFL league meetings Tuesday offer an opportunity to strongly condemn domestic violence, Walker added. “My request is simple: stand for the American flag and the national anthem...

It’s not often that one can point to a last-minute (from the public side) addition of a mission to a launch manifest – let alone one that manages to stay secret until 30 days before the opening of its launch campaign. But that is the case for a mystery Falcon 9 mission that is now set to launch between Koreasat-5A and CRS-13/Dragon. The mystery mission, codename Zuma, is known on its FCC launch license as Mission 1390 and will see a Falcon 9 rocket launch from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center before performing a RTLS (Return To Launch Site)...

ASRC of Beltsville, Md., has test fired a subscale propellant injector built via additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, paving the way for a version that could support whichever engine United Launch Alliance chooses to replace the Russian-built RD-180 on the Atlas 5 rocket. ASRC's Federal Technical Services division conducted the full-power test in April, retiring risk on an engine component that could potentially be built in a quarter of the time of previous techniques. We reduced production time for this injector to eight days, which would have been over a month using traditional machining," Joseph Sims, ASRC Federal Technical Services project...