February 6, 2012 at 5:23 pm by laura.haynes@chron.com (Laura Weisman)
In the top shot are the original signs; at bottom are the signs edited by Chrysler. (YouTube/Vimeo)
One of the most powerful Super Bowl ads from Sunday is one from Chrysler about America’s comeback, complete with Clint Eastwood and a catch phrase: “It’s halftime in America.” The message is that we’re coming back from the financial precipice, like Detroit.
One little nagging thing though, according to The Nation. In one of the clips (at the :50 mark in the first video), which they used with permission from a filmmaker, they’ve altered the content of protest signs from pro-union protests in Wisconsin last year:
The images from Madison were taken from a historic video by Matt Wisniewski, a Madison photographer whose chronicling of the protests drew international attention and praise.
Wisniewski’s original video, from an evening rally at the King Street entrance to the Wisconsin Capitol, features images (at the 2:17 mark in last video) of signs raised by members of Madison Teachers Inc. (MTI), the local education union that played a pivotal role in the protests. One sign features the MTI logo, another reads: “Care About Educators Like They Care for Your Child.”
In the Chrysler ad, the MTI logo is missing and the “Care About Educators…” sign is replaced with one featuring an image of an alarm clock. Several other union signs are simply whited out.
Apparently, Chrysler was comfortable using the Wisconsin Capitol shot as a symbol of the nation’s discontent, but actually using pro-union signs was too much for the bailed-out car company. Somewhere along the line, red hearts and text were removed from the “Care for your educators like they care for your kids” signs. Plus, Madison Teachers Inc. signs — MTI in a circle — were weirdly written over
Need an embarrassing photo deleted? He's working on it. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
Have you ever posted a photo to Facebook and then regretted it? Well, turns out deleting it doesn’t actually remove it.
Ars Technica first reported in 2009 the glitch that means a photo deleted from Facebook may disappear from the main site, but is still visible to users with a direct link for as many as three years after the fact. The site reports that even a photo of a naked toddler, deleted in May of 2008, is still visible as of 2012. Jacqui Cheng writes:
I reached out to Facebook once again, looking for an answer as to why this is still going on nearly three years after the company first promised it was “working” on the issue.
“The systems we used for photo storage a few years ago did not always delete images from content delivery networks in a reasonable period of time even though they were immediately removed from the site,” Facebook spokesperson Frederic Wolens told Ars via e-mail.
Wolens explained that photos remaining online are stuck in a legacy system that was apparently never operating properly, but said the company is working on a new system that will delete the photos in a mere month and a half. For really real this time.
“We have been working hard to move our photo storage to newer systems which do ensure photos are fully deleted within 45 days of the removal request being received,” Wolens said. “This process is nearly complete and there is only a very small percentage of user photos still on the old system awaiting migration, the URL you provided was stored on this legacy system. We expect this process to be completed within the next month or two, at which point we will verify the migration is complete and we will disable all the old content.”
You can read the rest of Cheng’s odyssey to confirm deleted photos are actually deleted here.
For now just consider this another friendly reminder that anything and everything you post to the internet never really goes away.
Travis, who owns a ranch in nearby Tioga, was arrested outside of Sanger Baptist Church in Sanger, Texas, a city about 55 miles north of Dallas, according to the newspaper.
He was booked into the Denton County Sheriff’s Department jail on Class C misdemeanor charges at 1:30 a.m. and released this morning.
February 6, 2012 at 10:21 am by laura.haynes@chron.com (Laura Weisman)
Chisinau, Moldova, Monday, Feb. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/John McConnico)
The ice and snow covering Europe and beyond is creating problems for almost everyone. There is a baby elephant in Amsterdam, though, who seems quite thrilled to just play in the white stuff.
If only more people took the elephant’s point of view in Eastern Europe today, where record snow and harsh temperatures have closed schools and clogged public transportation in Serbia and Bosnia and trapped thousands in the region’s remote mountain villages.
Europeans across the continent were continuing to dig out from heavy snow after a week of bitter cold in which the death toll, mostly homeless people, continues to rise into the hundreds, the Associated Press reports:
Temperatures have fallen as low as minus 33 Fahrenheit (minus 36 Celsius) in Ukraine, the hardest-hit country.
The big freeze has caused traffic chaos throughout Europe, blocking roads, and shutting down airports from the U.K. to Russia.
But it has also offered opportunities for snowy fun: Ice skaters in the Netherlands were hopeful they could stage a race that hasn’t happened in more than a decade; children in Rome and along the usually temperate Adriatic coast in Croatia frolicked in rare snow; and Bosnians in the capital, Sarajevo, spontaneously organized a winter “Olympics” in which they boarded down main streets and leapt out of windows into deep snow banks.
A lion cub plays with a snowball at the Belgrade Zoo on Feb. 5, 2012, in Serbia, where almost 70,000 people are cut off from their villages and 32 municipalities have declared a state of emergency. (ALEXA STANKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images)
Here is a scene from Overtoom Westzaan en de Gouw in the north of Holland in a video uploaded Feb. 4:
February 3, 2012 at 12:08 pm by bstewart@express-news.net (Bob Stewart)
Actress Eva Longoria-Parker arrives for the State Dinner in honor of the visiting Mexican President Felipe Calderon on May 19, 2010, at the White House. (Getty Images)
Actress Eva Longoria has used her celebrity before to express opinions about political causes.
Now, the “Desperate Housewives” star is using Twitter to lash out at Republican hopeful Mitt Romney over his lack of support for citizenship for illegal aliens who attend college or serve in the military.
Texas Monthly reports on the effort in a blog:
Longoria, a Corpus Christi native, called out Mitt Romney on Twitter for not supporting the DREAM Act, the Huffington Post wrote. The Dream Act, if passed, would grant permanent residence to people who came to the U.S. illegally but have contributed to society, whether by seeking an education or enlisting in the military.
The irony here, of course, is that Romney is a Mexican by way of his father, who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico.
The report also states that Longoria, ex-wife of the Spurs’ Tony Parker, is working to help re-elect President Barack Obama.
Zachary Roth of Yahoo’s The Ticket reported that Longoria has raised $200,000 for President Obama, with the hope that if he is reelected, she can make good on the immigration brainstorming sessions she has had with him.
Giorgio Fareira set out to make the Sonic employee taking his order smile.
In doing so, he’s put a grin on the face of hundreds of thousands around the country who have watched the video of him singing his food order.
Fareira, 23, an aspiring musician who graduated from Bassick High School and now lives in Fairfield, starts his order by singing his name, and then, as a guitar plays along, he belts out his order at the Wallingford Sonic.
In his description of the video on Youtube, Fareira wrote, “I’m kinda strange and like to do random stuff to make people smile! Mission accomplished. They got everything on the order absolutely right and were super nice!”
A Barista at Starbucks who has attended Norwalk Community College, Fareira recently released an EP with his band, The Interstate Life.
He told Fox CT he didn’t intend to make the video. Fareira was on a trip to Hartford with his friends and brought his guitar along to entertain them, because their car radio was broken.
Fariera will be performing with his band Feb. 4 in New Haven at the Taco Hut and then at the Acoustic Cafe in Black Rock on March 10.
February 2, 2012 at 10:34 pm by phockaday@sfgate.com (Peter Hockaday)
Michelle Obama and Ellen DeGeneres (AP)
It’s been a big week in Ellen’s world. First came Kristen Bell and her crazy sloth-love, now this.
Recently, DeGeneres was hired as a new spokesperson for JC Penney. She worked there as a teen and said “I’m excited to tell everybody about this partnership.” But not everybody was excited: Today, one organization called for the department store to fire DeGeneres and get off the “pro-gay bandwagon.” The organization One Million Moms said in a statement: “Degeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there.”
DeGeneres’ supporters swiftly responded. GLAAD’s online petition had more than 20,000 signatures as of this evening, and there was no reversal from JC Penney. Nor is that likely. When the move was first announced, new JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson (a former Apple exec) said “I think Ellen is someone we all trust. She’s loveable, likeable, honest and funny, but at her soul, we trust her.”
And despite that incident, DeGeneres managed to engage in a fierce push-up battle with the first lady on national television. Michelle Obama has been making the rounds to promote her “Let’s Move!” campaign. And after getting Jay Leno to eat some veggies, Obama got DeGeneres to move even more than normal:
