A Daring Street Art Escape by Daan Botlek

While poking around a condemned building in Berlin, street artist Daan Botlek (previously) dreamed up the idea of his white shilhouette figures executing a daring escape. The series of pieces here, Escape from Wuhlheide, was the result. (via Lus...

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Should Brian Hoyer Or Johnny Manziel Start At Quarterback For The Cleveland Browns?

The Cleveland Browns ignited hope in their fanbase in the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft by selecting the insanely popular and polarizing Johnny Manziel with their second of two first-round picks. In doing so, most assumed Manziel would step in and start from day one, because really, “Who else plays quarterback in Cleveland, […]
Should Brian Hoyer Or Johnny Manziel Start At Quarterback For The Cleveland Browns?

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Uber Looks To Eventually Replace All Its Drivers With Self-Driving Cars

Uber has seen its evolution in the form of Google’s self-driving car. According to the Verge, the $17 billion company plans to eventually replace every single one of its drivers with cars that drive themselves. It will undoubtedly cost a lot to purchase tens of thousands of self-driving cars, but those funds will come from […]
Uber Looks To Eventually Replace All Its Drivers With Self-Driving Cars

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What Carmelo Anthony’s 30th Birthday Means To His Career And The Future Of The Knicks

It is May 29 and Carmelo Anthony is now 30 years old. As he celebrates the day, he’s likely to receive many gifts that may make him happy. However, there is one thing that neither LaLa Anthony nor any sum of money can grant his, which is of course an NBA Championship. Looking back to the top […]
What Carmelo Anthony’s 30th Birthday Means To His Career And The Future Of The Knicks

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#TBT: When Carmelo Anthony And Lebron James Dominated High School Basketball

In honor of Carmelo Anthony’s birthday, Sports Illustrated’s Andy Gray tweeted a photo from the SI Vault that is likely to make basketball fans nostalgic. Carmelo Anthony turns 30 today. Here’s Carmelo (sporting the dread-’fro) and LeBron in high school. pic.twitter.com/D3GRyfhIcm — Andy Gray (@si_vault) May 29, 2014 It’s impossible to look at this photo […]
#TBT: When Carmelo Anthony And Lebron James Dominated High School Basketball

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Meat That Tests Positive For E. Coli Is Cooked And Sold In Human And Pet Food

And this might not be such a bad thing.













Pre-cooked meat, like the patties used in fast food burgers, may have once tested positive for pathogens such as E. coli.


Flickr: roboppy











But when a batch tests positive, the meat does not necessarily get thrown away. It can be cooked according to a USDA-approved method then sold as processed food that you'd find in a supermarket freezer aisle, at a fast-food chain, or as pet food. Many Americans — and even several food experts contacted by — are unaware that a secondary market for pathogen-tainted meat exists (or that it is regularly processed into safe, consumable food). But because the process is considered safe, even by consumer awareness experts, and uses meat that would otherwise go to a landfill, many see it as an efficient and economically savvy method of reducing waste. The existence of the secondary market for tainted meat, however, points to weakness in an increasingly industrialized and consolidated food system as industry leaders will not share information about how much meat is processed this way.

Since 1998, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service ("FSIS") has required every slaughterhouse and processing plant in the U.S. to have a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points ("HACCP") plan to handle and reduce occurrences of "food safety hazards." One type of hazard addressed by these plans is the appearance and spread of pathogens such as E. coli. Under HACCP, companies are required to continuously sample and test the meat in their facilities. If a sample tests positive for a pathogen, the company has the option of cooking the meat for a specific length of time and at a specific temperature, proven to kill it (called the "lethality step"). This process is scientifically validated and FSIS-approved as safe. Not all slaughterhouses and processors have the resources for this kind of cooking, though, so they can sell their tainted meat to another facility that does.

The meat can also be rendered into pet food through a process that involves collecting the meat, adding heat to it and then removing and straining all the resulting liquid to leave behind a "meal" of fat, bone, and protein.





















Workers at the Sam Kane beef slaughterhouse in Corpus Christi, Texas on June 10, 2008 dissect, sort and separate beef parts. USDA FSIS inspectors are on site to ensure the beef is processed in accordance with regulations.


Flickr: usdagov / USDA / Alice Welch











It is difficult to gauge the size of this secondary market. The USDA told that it does not specifically track these numbers, but is in the process of collecting the information to respond to our request. A spokesperson for American Meat Institute, the largest trade association representing the U.S. meat and poultry industry interests, said the organization "certainly [doesn't] track that," and that she is "guessing the data doesn't exist."

Customers cannot differentiate between a cooked product that is made from meat that once tested positive for a pathogen and one that is made from meat that was always safe because large food companies do not need to inform customers about whether its meat has undergone an FSIS-approved process to kill contaminants (or disclose who supplies their meat).







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Comcast, Netflix CEOs Battle Over Net Neutrality And Its Metaphors

Reed Hastings and Brian Roberts sparred in separate interviews at the inaugural Code conference. The phone company or the Post Office?
















Kimberly White / Reuters / Reuters











The deep tensions around net neutrality, and its consequences for key tech and media players, emerged on stage in San Francisco this week, where the chiefs of Comcast and Netflix offered dueling metaphors for cable's future role.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings today accused Comcast CEO Brian Roberts of wanting "Comcast to be like the Post Office — a big national monopoly."

"It's a general way of taxing the internet. They want the whole internet to pay them for when their subscribers use the internet," he said on stage at the Code Conference.

Roberts, who appeared at the same event the day before, had a different utility in mind.

"I don't think phone regulation ever resulted in a great phone system," he said at the conference.

Netflix and Comcast — the iconic new media content company and the nation's largest cable provider — are partners in a controversial deal in which Netflix pays to ensure smooth service. They are also, however, publicly at odds over the principle, with Hastings emerging as a leading critic of Comcast's planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

Roberts, like other providers, argue that it would allow Comcast to offload costs to heavy bandwidth users. However, a ruling like such could effectively "kill" net neutrality and hamstring younger and less-financed companies that are trying to compete with established services that have lots of capital — like the Facebooks and Netflixes of the world.

Roberts is simultaneously to make his case for the Time Warner deal. At the Code Conference, he argued that the deal, which would give it control over about a third of the United States' broadband users, wasn't going to eliminate competition because Comcast was a "regional" company. "You can't buy a Comcast in New York, a Time Warner in Philadelphia," he said at the conference in a follow-up interview with CNBC. "There's no reduction in competition in broadband."

Hastings has made it clear that he disagrees with that, saying it would give Comcast control over an unprecedented number of broadband users in the United States, which would allow Comcast to extract greater fees from "not just us, but to the whole Internet," he said on stage. In a letter to shareholders in April, he said "the combined company would possess even more anti-competitive leverage to charge arbitrary interconnection tolls for access to their customers."

"They used to send DVDs by postage, they used to pay $750 million in postage. They would like it all to be free," Roberts said on stage, referring to Netflix not wanting to pay for a deal with Comcast to ensure faster access. "I don't blame them for that. I would like to not pay for cable boxes." Roberts said 34% of Internet traffic during primetime hours comes as a result of Netflix streaming, and he had warm words for his critic, calling it an "astonishing achievement."




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