An artist created a giant mural across 50 buildings in Cairo without the government noticing
eL Seed
Amid Cairo's brick buildings and heaping piles of trash is a sprawling work of art, which, at first, looks messy and incoherent.
But when you stand on the nearby hillside and read the spray-painted Arabic "calligraffiti," as its creator Tunisian-French artist eL Seed calls it, the message reads loud and clear: "If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes."
The quote represents the importance of withholding judgment of people just because of their circumstances, says eL Seed, who first visited the community a few years ago. He's called the piece "Perception" for just that reason, hoping to get people to see past the area's physical appearance.
The entire piece took three weeks to complete, and eL Seed says it was done in total secrecy from the Egyptian government due to the country's strict laws forbidding artistic expression.
An Open Letter to Trump Voters from His Top Strategist-Turned-Defector
Even Trump's most trusted advisors didn't expect him to fare this well.
Almost a year ago, recruited for my public relations and public policy expertise, I sat in Trump Tower being told that the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count. That was it.
The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy.
My support for Trump began probably like yours did. Similar to so many other Americans, I was tired of the rhetoric in Washington. Negativity and stubbornness were at an all-time high, and the presidential prospects didn't look promising.
In 2015, I fell in love with the idea of the protest candidate who was not bought by corporations. A man who sat in a Manhattan high-rise he had built, making waves as a straight talker with a business background, full of successes and failures, who wanted America to return to greatness.
I was sold.
Last summer, I signed on as the Communications Director of the Make America Great Again Super PAC.
It was still early in the Trump campaign, and we hit the ground running. His biggest competitor had more than $100 million in a Super PAC. The Jeb Bush deep pockets looked to be the biggest obstacle we faced. We seemed to be up against a steep challenge, especially since a big part of the appeal of a Trump candidacy was not being influenced by PAC money.
After the first debate, I was more anxious than ever to support Trump. The exchange with Megyn Kelly was like manna from heaven for a communications director. She appeared like yet another reporter trying to kick out the guest who wasn't invited to the party. At the time, I felt excited for the change to the debate he could bring. I began realizing the man really resonates with the masses and would bring people to the process who had never participated before.
That was inspiring to me.
It wasn't long before every day I awoke to a buzzing phone and a shaking head because Trump had said something politically incorrect the night before. I have been around politics long enough to know that the other side will pounce on any and every opportunity to smear a candidate.
But something surprising and absolutely unexpected happened. Every other candidate misestimated the anger and outrage of the "silent majority" of Americans who are not a part of the liberal elite. So with each statement came a jump in the polls. Just when I thought we were finished, The Donald gained more popularity.
I don't think even Trump thought he would get this far. And I don't even know that he wanted to, which is perhaps the scariest prospect of all.
He certainly was never prepared or equipped to go all the way to the White House, but his ego has now taken over the driver's seat, and nothing else matters. The Donald does not fail. The Donald does not have any weakness. The Donald is his own biggest enemy.
A devastating terrorist attack in Pakistan targeting Christians occurred on Easter Sunday, and Trump's response was to tweet, "Another radical Islamic attack, this time in Pakistan, targeting Christian women & children. At least 67 dead, 400 injured. I alone can solve."
Another radical Islamic attack, this time in Pakistan, targeting Christian women & children. At least 67 dead,400 injured. I alone can solve
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Ignoring the fact that at the time Trump tweeted this (time-stamped 4:37 p.m.) the latest news reports had already placed the number differently at 70 dead, 300 injured, take a moment to appreciate the ridiculous, cartoonish, almost childish arrogance of saying that he alone can solve. Does Trump think that he is making a cameo on Wrestlemania (yes, one of his actual credits)?
This is not how foreign policy works. For anyone. Ever.
Superhero powers where "I alone can solve" problems are not real. They do not exist for Batman, for Superman, for Wrestlemania and definitely not for Donald Trump.
What was once Trump's desire to rank second place to send a message to America and to increase his power as a businessman has nightmarishly morphed into a charade that is poised to do irreparable damage to this country if we do not stop this campaign in its tracks.
I'll say it again: Trump never intended to be the candidate. But his pride is too out of control to stop him now.
You can give Trump the biggest gift possible if you are a Trump supporter: stop supporting him.
He doesn't want the White House. He just wants to be able to say that he could have run the White House. He's achieved that already and then some. If there is any question, take it from someone who was recruited to help the candidate succeed, and initially very much wanted him to do so.
The hard truth is: Trump only cares about Trump.
And if you are one of the disaffected voters — one of the silent majority like me — who wanted a candidate who could be your voice, I want to speak directly to you as one of his biggest advocates and supporters.
He is not that voice. He is not your voice. He is only Trump's voice.
Trump is about Trump. Not one of his many wives. Not one of his many "pieces of ass." He is, at heart, a self-preservationist.
In fact, many people are not aware of the Trump campaign's internal slogan, but I will tell you. It is stolen from a make-believe television presidency on The West Wing where Martin Sheen portrayed President Bartlet. The slogan on the show amongst the idealistic group of Bartlet's staff was "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet."
Inside the Trump camp, the slogan became "Let Trump Be Trump."
It is a repurposed slogan that seemed spot-on for the candidate. He is an intelligent, charismatic man who is involved in every aspect of his organization and would rather speak from the cuff than read briefing notes and recite them. I, in fact, admire Trump for this. But saying this qualifies him to be president is like saying that Seth Rogen is suited to be president. Another extraordinary improvisor, not an extraordinary presidential candidate.
Trump has undoubtedly lived up to the slogan, right down to his main public-relations liaison. Rather than go for a focus-group Washington insider, his communications person had previously taken press calls for the Trump Organization and directed them to the appropriate Trump child. She joked that before joining the campaign she thought "Common Core" was a class at Equinox.
The primary problem with this? What I've seen the longer I've helped prop him up along with the millions who are helping Trump is that we got the slogan wrong. A more accurate internal slogan would read, "Let Trump Help Trump."
I don't dismiss any single Trump constituent, which is why I believe it's important to let you know that the candidate does.
I, too, think our country has gone off track in its values. I, too, think that we need a dramatic change of course. But I am, in my heart, a policy wonk and a believer in coming to the table with necessary knowledge for leading the free world.
The man does not know policy, nor does he have the humility to admit what he does not know — the most frightening position of all.
I remember watching the second Trump debate and thinking, After this, he is going to have to start hammering it home on policy; the country needs substance to make an informed decision.
I wished for it six months ago and am still waiting for it today. He had an opportunity after the terror attacks in Belgium and instead he used the opportunity to talk about closing the borders and what a mess that country had become. I was appalled that he offered no condolences or words of support; he merely gave his "build a wall" stump speech and talked about his greatness.
I felt sad for him at that moment.
And now, with the latest horrifying terror attack in Pakistan, my sadness has turned into anger.
I consider myself a part of the silent majority that led to Trump's rise, which is why I want you to know that I am with you — I wanted Trump to be real, too.
His presidential candidacy? That's a character, too.
The problem with characters is they are the stuff of soap operas and sitcoms and reality competitions — not political legacies.
Trump made me believe. Until I woke up.
And he has no problem abusing your support the same way he cheated hard-working men and women out of millions of dollars, for which he is now being sued.
I came into this eager to support a savvy businessman who received little outside funding. I loved Trump's outsider status. But a year has now passed since I was first approached to become part of Team Trump.
While the pundits pontificated about what type of PR stunt Trump had up his billion-dollar sleeves, I met with people who convinced me he was serious about changing the political conversation. I wanted to raise millions for him. I wanted to contribute to millions of votes.
And as part of that support, in October, I supported the internal decision to close the Super PAC in order to position him as the quintessential non-politician. I still supported him with great passion after that. The decision to close the Super PAC was part of that devotion to his message of outsider change.
But something was shifting.
Without intending to do so, I began to hear and evaluate him more critically and skeptically as a member of the voting public rather than a communications person charged with protecting his positions.
I no longer felt that he was the leader the country was looking for, and I found myself longing — aching, really — for policy substance that went beyond building a wall and making Mexico pay for it. What were once bold — although controversial — statements now seemed to be attempts to please the crowds, not direction to lead this country to a better place. I began to realize his arrogance and isolation had taken over and were now controlling his message.
And here's what he tapped into: the unprecedented, unbelievable anger.
Because we are all angry — and we all have a right to be. But Trump is not our champion. He would stab any one of his supporters in the back if it earned him a cent more in his pocket.
Unfortunately, the more vitriolic Trump has become, the more the people responded to him. That drove him to push the boundaries further and further.
I also started seeing a trend of incompetence and deniability.
When there was a tweet that contained an error, he would blame it on an intern; when there was a photo containing a World War II Nazi Germany background, he would blame it on an intern; when he answered questions in an overtly controversial fashion, he would claim that he did not properly hear the question. He refused to take responsibility for his actions while frequently demanding apologies from others.
Imagine Trump wronged you, even in the smallest possible way. He would go to the grave denying he had ever done anything wrong to you — ever.
Trump acts as if he's a fictional character. But like Hercules, Donald Trump is a work of fiction.
No matter how many times he repeats it, Trump would not be the "best" at being a president, being in shape, fighting terrorism, selling steaks, and whatever other "best" claim he has made in the last 15 minutes.
He would be the best at something, though. He is the best at looking out for Donald Trump — at all costs.
Human-Caused Earthquakes Are So Common That US Geologists Had to Change Their Maps
USGS
For the first time ever, the United States Geological Survey has published earthquake hazard maps that includes both human-induced as well as naturally occurring earthquakes. USGS maps had previously only featured natural earthquake hazards, but thanks to the alarming rise of man-made quakes, the scientific body has now started to track both kinds.
Published on Monday, the maps identify potential activity in the central and eastern parts of the country and are accompanied by a detailed report. The writeup includes a number of eye-popping figures, including the conclusion that roughly seven million Americans live in places that are at risk for man-made earthquakes. Even more alarmingly, some of those regions are just as vulnerable to seismic activity as noted earthquake oasis California.
The new maps are born from necessity: over the last six years, the middle of the country has experienced a "dramatic increase in seismicity." Between 1973 and 2008, the average number of earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or higher was 24 per year; between 2009 and 2015, that number skyrocketed to 318 per year. Thus far in 2016, there have been 226 such earthquakes in the central U.S.
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The most vulnerable states, from highest potential hazard to lowest, are Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arkansas.
USGS
The primary culprit, according to the USGS, is wastewater disposal from oil and gas operations. "While most injection wells are not associated with earthquakes, some other wells have been implicated in published scientific studies," the agency said.
While it may seem tempting to blame the increase in quakes on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking—the much-maligned but increasingly popular method of natural gas extraction—the USGS cautioned against jumping to such conclusions.
"In general, fracking is still not the major culprit for earthquakes," George Choy, a USGS seismologist who studies induced earthquakes, told Gizmodo. "It's certainly not completely innocent, but we have to worry about regular gas and oil explorations," he added. (Choy wasn't involved in the publication of this particular report.)
According to Choy, while wastewater injections are at the heart of the induced earthquake increase, they're not necessarily coming from fracking, but rather from an increase of oil and gas production more generally.
"Most of the water does not come from fracking, it just comes from regular oil and gas," Choy said.
Still, the effects of fracking—seismic-related or not—are still being studied, and there's certainly evidence out there to connect it to earthquakes. Interestingly, however, there's some disagreement within the scientific community itself over the connection between fracking and earthquakes.
On the bright side, we can all agree at least that humans are the goddamn worst, and now we have the maps to prove it.
Apple's CareKit Is the Best Argument Yet for Strong Encryption
On the eve of his company's court date with the FBI, where it will defend its right to not weaken the security of its own devices, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at a small theater in Cupertino to introduce a few new devices. The message of the event's opening, though? Encryption matters. And soon, on iOS, it will matter even more.
While Cook's remarks were brief, they were determined.
"We need to decide as a nation how much power the government should have over our data, and over our privacy," Cook said before a mixed crowd of journalists and Apple employees. "We did not expect to be in this position, at odds with our own government. But we believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you protect your data, and protect your privacy. We owe it to our customers, and we owe it to our country. This is an issue that impacts all of us, and we will not shrink from this responsibility."
That Apple is prepared to fight the FBI's insistence that it create software that would help law enforcement unlock an iPhone has been clear from the beginning. The company's response has been active on its own site, in the media, in legal briefs, and before Congress. Cook's message was of a piece with what Apple has repeatedly stressed.
Our phones, if they didn't already, will know more about us than we know about ourselves.
The more powerful message, though, came a few minutes later in the keynote address in the form of a new platform called CareKit, which would let developers introduce health care apps capable of monitoring a wealth of information though Apple devices. The kind of data that you'd want to guard as closely as your own heartbeat.
Your Body's Secrets
CareKit is best seen as a close cousin to ResearchKit, a platform Apple introduced last year that helped research institutions implement large-scale studies through the use of iOS devices. CareKit applies that same motivation to the individual level.
"We believe that giving individuals the tools to understand what is happening with their health is incredibly powerful," says Apple COO Jeff Williams. "Apps designed using CareKit make this a reality by empowering people to take a more active role in their care."
CareKit won't be broadly available until next month, but Apple demonstrated several apps that were given early access. One, developed by Sage Bionetworks and the University of Rochester, monitors the effectiveness of Parkinson's disease medication. Another, called Start, helps those taking antidepressants track the effectiveness of their medications. Still another, from the Texas Medical Center, replaces a pile of take-home paperwork with software that prompts patients to help them follow their often complicated post-operative steps to the letter.
The possibilities continue. CareKit will include a Care Card, which helps keep tabs on medication or physical therapy. People can measure their symptoms, upload photos that illustrate the healing process, and more. And it includes something called Connect, which enables information-sharing between patients and doctors, or family members.
The implications of CareKit, and ResearchKit before it, are momentous. ResearchKit has already helped track everything from asthma outbreaks to, through a new partnership with 23andMe, genetic profiles. Now, in addition to trying to find a cure for Parkinson's disease on a large scale, and iPhone will be able to help a Parkinson's patient deal with its everyday realities.
The Most Sensitive of Data
This is powerful stuff. And the iPhone makes for an ideal health care aide, thanks to its motion-tracking M-series coprocessor suite of sensors, and its huge install base. There's no limit to what people with serious medical conditions can track, and no cap on how useful an iOS device might be in coping with the day-to-day realities of illness. Our phones, if they didn't already, will know more about us than we know about ourselves.
It's the sort of information you can't provide unless you know that it will be protected, and the kind of data you can't collect unless you know you can protect it. The sort of information that simply can't be given or received without strong encryption. It's not simply a matter of giving up a sent message or a private photo. It's an intimate record of your health, in some cases, presumably, down to the second.
It's the sort of information you can't provide unless you know that it will be protected, and the kind of data you can't collect unless you know you can protect it.
FBI Director James Comey often complains of "dark spaces," and the dangers of a digital locker that can't be opened. "The problem with the safe comparison is there's no safe in the world that can't be opened," Comey testified to Congress last month. "If our experts can't crack it we'll blow the door off. This is different."
Thank goodness. If anything merits the safety of a "dark space," it's our biological ticks and tocks, our blood pressure and our treatments and our tremors. Those things are ours, and no one else's, whether they're in our bodies or in our phones. The safe analogy doesn't work not just because you can't blow off a door; it doesn't work because you can't store your most vulnerable self inside a safe.
And that's what CareKit, and the apps it will enable, means. Our phones will become more than just extensions of ourselves. They're not just the equivalent of a photo album or a stack of telegraphs. They're our our diseases and our therapies, heartbeats and breaths. If anything, the idea of sharing that much even with our devices should make us squeamish, especially given that even strong encryption isn't always fully safe. The idea that anyone, would actively attempt to weaken an already fragile system, with this kind of information at stake, seems unthinkable. Especially when that "anyone" is a law enforcement agency.
"If we are going to trust Apple with this data, I think this makes a very strong argument for keeping the data away from prying eyes," says Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, who also highlighted potential concerns about handing over this much data to any company in the first place, including insecure apps, and the potential that sensitive data would be subject to subpoena. "In other words, this makes a great case for wide scale encryption on the iPhone with no back doors."
The alternative would be for Apple not to introduce CareKit at all, and to withdraw ResearchKit, and to bail on the idea that it can use its millions of iPhone sales to enrich the human experience through science. That hardly seems viable either, especially when what's gained in exchange—the degradation of both privacy and security for all Apple users—rings so hollow.
As Apple and the FBI bring their arguments into the courtroom, remember that the fight is not just about one iPhone, or even about every iPhone that exists today. It's not just about privacy and security. It's about progress, and for what that's worth impeding. The answer, if there is one, probably isn't whatever's in that San Bernardino iPhone.
At the height of her Hollywood career, actress Hedy Lamarr was known as "the most beautiful woman in the world." For most of her life, her legacy was her looks.
But in the 1940s — in an attempt to help the war effort — she quietly invented what would become the precursor to many wireless technologies we use today, including Bluetooth, GPS, cellphone networks and more.
An Unlikely Beginning
A new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes sets out to rewrite America's memory of Lamarr. Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, chronicles her life and the inventive side that is not often mentioned.
Rhodes tells Rachel Martin, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered, that Lamarr had been fascinated with science as a child growing up in Austria, but pursued acting instead. Her first break into Hollywood came when she heard Louis Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios was scouting for actors.
"She went to see him in London. He wasn't willing to offer her a very good deal, so she said no and walked out, having great confidence in herself," Rhodes says.
When Lamarr found out Mayer was headed back to the United States, she bought a ticket for the same boat.
"Once she was aboard, she found a way to make him long for her — after all, she was an actress. And before the ship landed in New York, she had a much, much better contract — the equivalent of about $3,000 a week for seven years," he says. "Within a year, with the appearance of her in the film Algiers opposite Charles Boyer, she was a superstar."
Un-Hollywood
Rhodes says Lamarr was most often cast based on her looks and had few lines. She quickly grew bored in Hollywood.
"Hedy didn't drink. She didn't like to party," he says. "Her idea of a good evening was a quiet dinner party with some intelligent friends where they could discuss ideas — which sounds so un-Hollywood, but Hedy had to find something else to do to occupy her time."
Rhodes says she had a drafting table installed in her house and started inventing. Among her projects was an improved stoplight and a tablet that, when dissolved in water, created a soda similar to Coca-Cola.
"She laughed later and said, 'Well, it never really worked.' It probably tasted like an Alka-Seltzer tablet, which is basically what it was," he laughs. "But she was constantly looking at the world and thinking, 'Well, how could that be fixed? How could that be improved?'"
Richard Rhodes is a journalist, a historian and the author of more than 20 fiction and nonfiction books.
Random House
Inspired By War
As she was inventing, Rhodes says, Lamarr was simultaneously glued to the events of World War II. When German submarines began targeting passenger cruise liners, he says, she felt compelled to invent something to help the Allied cause. She zeroed in on torpedoes, which were powerful weapons but hard to control. Rhodes says she thought that if they could be radio-guided, there was a better chance they would hit their target.
"She understood that the problem with radio signals was that they could be jammed. But if you could make the signal hop around more or less randomly from radio frequency to radio frequency, then the person at the other end trying to jam the signal won't know where it is," he says. "If they try to jam one particular frequency, it might hit that frequency on one of its hops, but it would only be there for a fraction of a second."
Thus, her take on "spread-spectrum radio" was born. Lamarr and her co-inventor, composer George Antheil, submitted their idea to the National Inventor's Council and received a patent for their "Secret Communication System" in 1942. They were anxious to share their invention with the Navy, but got a lackluster response.
"The Navy being the Navy, if it hadn't been able to make a torpedo that worked, obviously it wasn't going to be receptive to ideas coming in from outside," Rhodes says. "The Navy basically threw it into the file."
Untouched For Years
The Navy classified the patent as top secret and it remained untouched for years. But after World War II, the Navy was interested in developing a so-called "sonobuoy" that would use sonar to detect submarines in the water and transmit the information to an airplane above. However, it needed a way to jam-proof the signal between the buoy and the plane.
"They resuscitated the idea of frequency-hopping and built it into the sonobuoy. And after that, the whole system just spread like wildfire," Rhodes says.
The military and private companies all started developing their own technologies around Lamarr's invention. Today, vestiges of her frequency-hopping technique are found in most digital devices that communicate wirelessly.
But Rhodes says Lamarr's contribution was "lost in the noise" for decades. In the 1990s when she was in her early 80s, one of the pioneers of wireless communications for computers came across Lamarr's patent and realized she'd never been honored.
"He started the ball rolling so that one of the major communications organizations would give her one of its awards. She by then had had so much bad plastic surgery that she didn't like to go out in public so she received the award by telephone," he says. "When they called her up to tell her she would get the award her first words were, Hedy Lamarr being Hedy Lamarr, 'Well, it's about time.'"
