https://www.techspot.com/news/77995-check-out-195-gigapixel-image-shanghai.html

Forward-looking: It’s long been said that smartphones are killing off the need for traditional cameras, but we’re unlikely to see a handset that can create a 195-gigapixel photo anytime soon. A panoramic image of this size was made by a Chinese company and is reportedly the world’s third-biggest photo and Asia’s largest.

The image is the work of a company called Jingkun Technology, or Bigpixel Technology Corporation. It’s obviously a little too large to put here, but you can explore it on the company’s website. The firm recently said over 8 million people had visited the site, though that number will be a lot higher by now.

The panorama was created from a series of photos taken from the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai over the course of several months. These were then put together using image-stitching technology to come up with the final piece.

Bigpixel says their photos are 2000 times more precise than those captured by consumer-level cameras. Despite being taken from so high in the air, you can zoom right down to street level and even see the expression on pedestrians’ faces.

*end of excerpt* At the website above, you can click and drag the image and zoom in and out with your mouse. Really incredible detail from so high up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/simcha-rotem-jewish-resistance-fighter-and-holocaust-survivor-dies-at-94/2018/12/24/b775c070-0791-11e9-a3f0-71c95106d96a_story.html

Simcha Rotem, an Israeli Holocaust survivor who was among the last known Jewish fighters from the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis, died Dec. 22 in Jerusalem. He was 94.

Israeli government officials announced his death. The cause was not disclosed.

Mr. Rotem, who went by the underground nickname “Kazik,” took part in the single greatest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Though guaranteed to fail, the uprising symbolized a refusal to succumb to Nazi atrocities and inspired other resistance campaigns by Jews and non-Jews alike.

Mr. Rotem helped save the last survivors of the uprising by smuggling them out of the burning ghetto through sewage tunnels. The Jewish fighters fought for nearly a month, fortifying themselves in bunkers and managing to kill 16 Nazis and wound nearly 100.

https://twitter.com/Gabriele_Corno/status/1077518799748980736

https://twitter.com/GabeAul/status/1076638251174191104

Trump 2020 campaign used a shell company to pay ad buyers at the center of alleged illegal coordination scheme with NRA

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/12/trump-2020-campaign-coordination/

The Trump campaign funneled money to ad buyers alleged to have facilitated illegal coordination between the campaign and the NRA by routing funds through a secretive LLC that appears to be little more than a shell company, an investigation by the Center for Responsive Politics has found.

While the Trump campaign stopped reporting payments to ad buyers alleged to have facilitated illegal coordination between the campaign and the NRA after the 2016 election cycle, Trump’s 2020 campaign has continued to deploy the same individuals working for the firms at the center of the controversy through payments to Harris Sikes Media LLC — a low-profile limited-liability company operating with no website or public-facing facade whatsoever.

Facing the illegal coordination allegations are National Media, Red Eagle Media Group and American Media & Advocacy Group (AMAG), closely tied consultancies that share staff, resources and adjacent storefronts in Alexandria, Va.

CRP’s analysis of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records found that Trump campaign political ad disclosures on file with stations across the country have continued to include signatures and names of individuals working for National Media, despite no mention of National Media or its known affiliates on any FCC or Federal Election Commission (FEC) disclosures. Those individual ad buyers’ names have simultaneously continued to be included in ad documents for the National Rifle Association (NRA) and America First, but with the ad buyers’ affiliation listed as National Media or one of its affiliates.

'That's what Christmas is all about,': Newlyweds take guests to Orlando Target to shop for kids in need

https://www.wesh.com/article/thats-what-christmas-is-all-about-newlyweds-take-guests-to-orlando-target-to-shop-for-kids-in-need/25593748

A couple's tradition of giving to others every year extended to their wedding day, with their guests taking part.

Brad and Jessica Bond's love story starts with their first date seven years ago.

Brad Bond said he wanted to do something special, because he knew since then that she was the one.

"So we pulled in the parking lot of Target," Brad Bond said. "I explained my parents have always made Christmas special for me."

"It's something that has been a tradition for us, like, ever since we started dating," Jessica Bond said.

The newlyweds invited their entire wedding party to Target on Saturday to shop for the Toys for Tots program.

Source: CNN

New York (CNN) Former FBI Director James Comey asked American voters Sunday night to end Donald Trump's presidency with a "landslide" victory for his opponent in 2020.

"All of us should use every breath we have to make sure the lies stop on January 20, 2021," Comey told an audience at the 92nd Street Y on New York City's Upper East Side. He all but begged Democrats to set aside their ideological differences and nominate the person best suited to defeating Trump in an election.

"I understand the Democrats have important debates now over who their candidate should be," Comey told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, "but they have to win. They have to win."

Over the course of more than an hour, Comey repeatedly derided Trump's character, again likening the atmosphere around the President to what he saw in prosecuting mafia figures and suggested that Trump's tweets could eventually amount to witness tampering. Asked if Trump might be an unindicted co-conspirator in some of the crimes recently described by special counsel Robert Mueller, Comey said he didn't know, "but if he's not there, he's certainly close."

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/09/politics/james-comey-donald-trump-2020/index.html

https://twitter.com/nytimesbooks/status/1071026596037967873

(maybe this is old news to some of you, new to me)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/trumps-bid-for-sydney-casino-30-years-ago-rejected-due-to-mafia-connections

A bid by Donald Trump to build Sydney’s first casino was rejected 30 years ago after police expressed concerns about his links to the mafia.

News Corp revealed on Wednesday morning minutes of the New South Wales cabinet that show police had warned the state government against approving a 1986-87 bid by a Trump consortium to build and operate a casino in Darling Harbour.

Trump, in partnership with the Queensland construction company Kern, was one of four groups vying for the lucrative project. The NSW government dumped it from the process on 5 May 1987, along with two other bidders.

At the time, the state treasurer, Ken Booth, said he had received reports on the bids from the police board, the state’s Treasury, the Darling Harbour Authority, and an independent financial consultant.

https://people.com/human-interest/holocaust-survivor-reunites-family-hid-her-nazis-after-73-years/



In November 2014, Charlotte Adelman received a message 70 years in the making — through Facebook. The young boy whose family had hid her from the Nazis in a cellar for nine months during the Holocaust wanted to reconnect.

But the French-born Adelman, who now lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, had “never forgotten” Alain Quatreville.

Adelman, 86, was only 11 in 1943 when her Jewish family was separated, and her father orchestrated a daring escape to Eastern France, where she lived in hiding with the Quatrevilles for nearly two years.

Quatreville’s message, Adelman says, left her “enthusiastic.”