Star Wars: The Last Jedi
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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
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The Greatest Showman
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Ferdinand
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Justice League
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Get the most profit of your computer and smartphone. Automine coins with highest exchange rate.
https://minergate.com/a/1b77e1a05f59e94d06990bf6

NO COUNTRY imprisons a larger share of its people than America. Its incarceration rate—693 of every 100,000—is nearly five times Britain’s, six times Canada’s and 15 times Japan’s. And that rate masks huge variations: Washington, DC, Louisiana and Georgia each lock up more than one in every 100 residents. Why?

“Blind Injustice” tries to answer that complex question from an unusual perspective. The author, Mark Godsey, used to be a federal prosecutor in New York. He went on to co-found the Ohio Innocence Project, which works to free the wrongly convicted. His book is about how his career change also changed his outlook, by showing up “problems in the system that I, as a prosecutor, should have seen, but about which I had simply been in denial”.

And it is about the police and prosecutors who uphold that system—the “normal, regular people…who would help an old man cross the road, or who would shovel the snow from a sick neighbour’s driveway, [but who] go back to their offices and commit acts of heartbreaking, callous injustice…because they are operating under a bureaucratic fog of denial.” Each of Mr Godsey’s six central chapters centres on a different systemic flaw: denial, ambition, bias, memory, intuition and tunnel vision.

People in all fields, of course, commit these deeply human sins. Tunnel vision, conformity born of a desire to please bosses and not to rock the boat, answering difficult questions not by trying to work out the right answer but by determining what is best for your team: such behaviour is not unique to America’s criminal-justice system. But for police and prosecutors, it can deprive people of their liberty and lives. Last month, for instance, Wilbert Jones left a prison in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after almost 46 years. A judge threw out his conviction for rape because the prosecution failed to turn over to the defence evidence that might have helped his case (the state is appealing). Mr Jones entered prison at 19; he is now 65.

Mr Godsey’s work is memorable because he is able to show precisely how these flaws work in action. He describes prosecutors routinely denying requests to give inmates DNA tests, even though these could help free them. Prosecutors think of themselves as the good guys and, therefore, their opponents as bad. This leads to routine dehumanisation, such as when prosecutors in Chicago competed in a “two-ton contest” to see who could be the first to indict 4,000lb of human flesh (which led prosecutors to be especially hard on overweight defendants).

He is particularly—and with good reason—tough on elected judges, who know that being “tough on crime” will always win more votes than promises of sober fairness and probity; and on forensic science, a contributing factor in nearly half of all wrongful convictions (second only to false eyewitness accounts). He ends the book on a hopeful note, though. States across the country are implementing some of the changes he recommends. These include recording interrogations, standardising eyewitness-identification procedures, expanding access to post-conviction DNA testing and, perhaps most important, opening conviction-review boards inside prosecutors’ offices, to investigate post-conviction claims of innocence.

If Mr Godsey focuses on how people are unjustly jailed, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a former lawyer now at New York University, has written a deeply researched, scrupulously fair book about private prisons, which house 126,000 people in America, or 7% of state inmates and almost 18% of federal prisoners. They are opaque in a way that state prisons are not; despite the book’s title, Ms Eisen barely manages to get inside a private prison.

Some liberals cast private prisons as a driver of mass incarceration. Their business model is built around it and, as Ms Eisen notes, they have lobbied for policies that have helped them. Some feel that profiting from other people’s incarceration is inherently immoral, or that it violates constitutional protections against involuntary servitude and cruel and unusual punishment.

But Ms Eisen convincingly argues that they are a symptom, rather than a cause, of America’s over-punitive, carceral state. Private prisons took off because governments could not build prisons quickly enough to hold all the people they sentenced. Now private-prison firms are diversifying with the times by building treatment centres and electronic-monitoring services as America’s justice system explores alternatives to imprisonment. Some may find it depressing that these firms are simply looking for another way to profit from society’s unfortunates. But it also shows that these companies respond to political demand, and that the best way to do away with private prisons is to lock up fewer people.

….

1. Ask yourself, “What’s the worst that can happen?”

There’s a simple three-step technique that can help when you’re besieged by personal or professional worries.

First, ask yourself what’s the worst that could possibly happen. Second, prepare to accept the worst. Finally, figure out how to improve upon the worst, should it come to pass.

This technique is based on an anecdote from Willis Carrier, founder of the modern air-conditioning industry. While working for the Buffalo Forge Company as a young man, Carrier found that a new gas-cleaning service his company provided wasn’t as effective as he’d hoped.

Carrier realized that the worst that could happen was that his company would lose $20,000. He then accepted it: The company could qualify the loss as the cost of researching a new strategy. Finally, he figured out how to improve the situation: If the company bought $5,000 worth of new equipment, they could resolve the issue. Ultimately, that’s exactly what they did, and they ended up making $15,000.

2. Gather all the facts in an objective way

As Herbert E. Hawkes, former dean of Columbia College, told Carnegie, “If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in light of knowledge.”

two ways to go about collecting facts objectively. You can pretend that you’re gathering this data for someone else, so you’re less emotionally invested in what you find.

Or you can pretend that you’re a lawyer who is preparing to argue the other side of the issue — so you gather all the facts against yourself. Write down the facts on both sides of the case and you’ll generally get a clearer picture of the truth.

3. Generate potential solutions to the problem

Leon Shimkin, then general manager at Simon and Schuster (he later became the owner), figured out a way to cut the time he spent in meetings by 75%.

He told his associates that every time they wanted to present a problem at a meeting, they had to first submit a memorandum answering four questions: What is the problem? What is the cause of the problem? What are all possible solutions of the problem? What solution do you suggest?

According to Shimkin, once he instituted this new system, his associates rarely came to him with their concerns.

“They have discovered that in order to answer those four questions they have to get all the facts and think their problems through,” he told Carnegie. Once they did that, they typically found that “the proper solution has popped out like a piece of bread popping out from an electric toaster.”

In other words, action replaced worrying and talking.

4. Remember the law of averages

The law of averages refers to the probability of a specific event occurring — and you should consult the law to find out if it’s worth fretting. Chances are good that whatever you’re worried about isn’t likely to transpire.

Carnegie writes that the U.S. Navy employed the law of averages in order to boost sailors’ morale. Sailors who were assigned to high-octane tankers were initially worried that they would be blown up when the tank exploded. So the Navy provided them with exact figures: Of the 100 tanks that were hit by torpedoes, 60 stayed afloat and only five sank in less than 10 minutes, leaving time to get off the ship.

5. Place stop-loss orders on your worries

This strategy is based on a principle in stock trading. One investor said he set a stop-loss order on every market commitment he made. Here’s how it works: Say you buy a stock that sells for 100 dollars a share and set a stop-loss order for 90 dollars a share. As soon as that stock dips to 90 dollars a share, you sell it — no questions asked.

You can use this principle in everyday life. For example, Carnegie once wanted to be a novelist, but after two years of toiling away without much success, he decided to cut his losses and go back to teaching and nonfiction writing.

Why ISIS is dwindling in Iraq and Syria
The U.S. military estimates the terror group now controls just 3 percent of Iraq and only 5 percent of Syria after the fall of Raqqa.

BAGHDAD – Hundreds of ISIS fighters had just been chased out of a northern Syrian city and were fleeing through the desert in long convoys, presenting an easy target to U.S. A-10 "warthogs."

But the orders to bomb the black-clad jihadists never came, and the terrorists melted into their caliphate — living to fight another day. The events came in August 2016, even as then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was vowing on the campaign trail to let generals in his administration crush the organization that, under President Obama, had grown from the “jayvee team” to the world’s most feared terrorist organization.

U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Andrew Croft said the Trump administration has put a strong leadership team in place.
“I will…quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS,” Trump, who would name legendary Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense, promised. “We will not have to listen to the politicians who are losing the war on terrorism."

ISIS CURSED, MOCKED IN MOSUL, WHERE OLD CITY REMAINS A HAUNTED WASTELAND

Just over a year later, ISIS has been routed from Iraq and Syria with an ease and speed that’s surprised even the men and women who carried out the mission. Experts say it’s a prime example of a campaign promise kept. President Trump scrapped his predecessor’s rules of engagement, which critics say hamstrung the military, and let battlefield decisions be made by the generals in the theater, and not bureaucrats in Washington.

"I felt quite liberated because we had a clear mandate and there was no questioning that.”

– U.S. Marine Col. Seth Folsom
At its peak, ISIS held land in Iraq and Syria that equaled the size of West Virginia, ruled over as many as 8 million people, controlled oilfields and refineries, agriculture, smuggling routes and vast arsenals. It ran a brutal, oppressive government, even printing its own currency.

Lt. Col. Seth Folsom credits the cooperation between Iraqi Security Forces and the U.S-led coalition for the military defeat of ISIS in Iraq. (Courtesy U.S Army)

The terror organization now controls just 3 percent of Iraq and less than 5 percent of Syria. Its self-styled "caliph," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is believed to be injured and holed up somewhere along the lawless border of Syria and Iraq.

ISIS remains a danger, as members who once ruled cities and villages like a quasi-government now live secretly among civilian populations in the region, in Europe and possibly in the U.S. These cells will likely present a terrorist threat for years. In addition, the terrorist organization is attempting to regroup in places such as the Philippines, Libya and the Sinai Peninsula.

But the military’s job — to take back the land ISIS claimed as its caliphate and liberate cities like Mosul, in Iraq, and Raqqa, in Syria, as well as countless smaller cities and villages, is largely done. And it has taken less than a year.

Mattis, a US Marine Corps general, said there would be no White House micromanaging on his watch (Associated Press)

“The leadership team that is in place right now has certainly enabled us to succeed,” Brig. Gen. Andrew Croft, the ranking U.S. Air Force officer in Iraq, told Fox News. “I couldn’t ask for a better leadership team to work for, to enable the military to do what it does best.”

President Trump gave a free hand to Mattis, who in May stressed military commanders were no longer being slowed by Washington “decision cycles,” or by the White House micromanaging that existed President Obama. As a result of the new approach, the fall of ISIS in Iraq came even more swiftly than hardened U.S. military leaders expected.

“It moved more quickly than at least I had anticipated,” Croft said. “We and the Iraqi Security Forces were able to hunt down and target ISIS leadership, target their command and control.”

U.S. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Robert Sofge said the military now has a clear mandate.)

IRAQI KURDS STILL LOVE US DESPITE ITS OPPOSITION TO KURDISH INDEPENDENCE, SAYS KURDISH LEADER

After the battle to liberate Mosul – ISIS’ Iraqi headquarters – was completed in July — the U.S.-led coalition retook Tel Afar in August, Hawija in early October and Rawa in Anbar province in November.

Marine Col. Seth Folsom, who oversaw fighting in Al Qaim near the Syrian border, agreed. He wasn’t expecting his part of the campaign against ISIS to get going until next spring and figured even then, it would then "take six months or more."

Instead, ISIS was routed in Al Qaim in just a few days.

Mosul, and several other cities liberated by ISIS, were largely destroyed in the fighting. (Fox News/Hollie McKay)

“We really had one mandate and that was enable the Iraqi Security Forces to defeat ISIS militarily here in Anbar. I feel that we have achieved that mission,” Folsom said. “I never felt constrained. In a lot of ways, I felt quite liberated because we had a clear mandate and there was no questioning that.”

Brig. Gen. Robert “G-Man” Sofge, the top U.S. Marine in Iraq, told Fox News his commanders have “enjoyed not having to deal with too many distractions and there was no question about what the mission here in Iraq was.”

Iraqi Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool was skeptical of Trump at first, but says success on the ground has been swift (Fox News/Hollie McKay )

“We were able to focus on what our job was without distraction and I think that goes a long way in what we are trying to accomplish here,” he said.

Sofge said while some had implied that there had been a "loosening of the rules," he insisted that such a suggestion is “absolutely not true.”

Col. Ryan Dillon. Combined Joint Task Force – Inherent Resolve Spokesman (Photo by CJTFOIR)

“We used precision strikes, and completely in accordance with international standards,” he said. “We didn’t lower that standard, not one little bit. But we were able to exercise that precision capability without distraction and I think the results speak for themselves.”

The U.S.-led coalition said this week the Coalition Civilian Casualty Assessment Team has added 30 new staffers to travel throughout the region. It said military leaders continue to “hold themselves accountable for actions that may have caused unintentional injury or death to civilians.”

The coalition also said dozens of reports of civilian casualties have been determined to be “non-credible,” and just .35 percent of the almost 57,000 separate engagement carried out between August 2014 and October 2017 resulted in a credible report of a civilian casualty.

In addition to air support, the U.S.-led strategy also includes training and equipping Iraqi troops on the ground.

While the Trump administration’s success is often underplayed in the U.S. media, it is obvious on the ground in Iraq, according to a spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, Yahya Rasool.

“I was not optimistic when Trump first came to the office,” Rasool said. “But after a while I started to see a new approach, the way the U.S. was dealing with arming and training. I saw how the coalition forces were all moving faster to help the Iraq side more than before. There seemed to be a lot of support, under Obama we did not get this.”

Al-Baghdadi, who once ruled a caliphate the size of California, is now inn hiding and likely badly injured

Despite the victories on the battlefield, U.S. officials cautioned much work remains to be done.

“ISIS is very adaptive,” noted Col. Ryan Dillon, the U.S.-led coalition spokesman. “We are already seeing smaller cells and pockets that take more of an insurgent guerrilla type approach as opposed to an Islamic army or conventional type force. So we have got to be prepared for that.”

He said as a result the coalition is “adjusting some training efforts” so the Iraqi forces — upwards of 150,000 have already undergone training — are equipped to address such threats and ensure long-term stability.

Folsom said “the worst thing we could do” is not finish the job.

“If a country becomes a failed state, if it becomes a lawless region, you begin to set the conditions for what happened in the years before 9/11,” he said. “In those ungoverned spaces where we don’t know what is going on, that is where those seeds of extremism begin to blossom.”

@holliesmckay

import requests
import json
from flask import Flask, request
import apiai

# FB messenger credentials
ACCESS_TOKEN = "EAAKsKOJ37rUBAKVZAQ21bn…UsZCXx6UWqQ6XuQr7OHnBYL3xD3Sy5u1ZAZCwip0XnTAHq25CsIpxRsbxZALRHOOguKm2unY7I06LRAZDZD"

# api.ai credentials
CLIENT_ACCESS_TOKEN = "78c0e0…d9404a2"
ai = apiai.ApiAI(CLIENT_ACCESS_TOKEN)

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route(‘/’, methods=['GET'])
def verify():
# our endpoint echos back the ‘hub.challenge’ value specified when we setup the webhook
if request.args.get("hub.mode") == "subscribe" and request.args.get("hub.challenge"):
if not request.args.get("hub.verify_token") == ‘foo’:
return "Verification token mismatch", 403
return request.args["hub.challenge"], 200

return ‘Hello World (from Flask!)’, 200

def reply(user_id, msg):
data = {
"recipient": {"id": user_id},
"message": {"text": msg}
}
resp = requests.post("https://graph.facebook.com/v2.6/me/messages?access_token=" + ACCESS_TOKEN, json=data)
print(resp.content)

@app.route(‘/’, methods=['POST'])
def handle_incoming_messages():
data = request.json
sender = data['entry'][0]['messaging'][0]['sender']['id']
message = data['entry'][0]['messaging'][0]['message']['text']

# prepare API.ai request
req = ai.text_request()
req.lang = ‘en’ # optional, default value equal ‘en’
req.query = message

# get response from API.ai
api_response = req.getresponse()
responsestr = api_response.read().decode(‘utf-8’)
response_obj = json.loads(responsestr)
if ‘result’ in response_obj:
response = response_obj["result"]["fulfillment"]["speech"]
reply(sender, response)

return "ok"

if __name__ == ‘__main__’:
app.run(debug=True)
view rawFlaskFBmAPI.ai rig hosted with ❤ by GitHub

https://chatbotnewsdaily.com/build-a-facebook-messenger-chat-bot-in-10-minutes-5f28fe0312cd

Build a Facebook Messenger chat-bot in 10 minutes
Let’s build a chat-bot using FB Messenger, API.ai and PythonAnywhere in about 10 minutes. No server setup, 60 lines of code — easy.

Ingredients we’ll need:

an api.ai account
a PythonAnywhere account
your Facebook account
Once you’ve registered for these, we can begin.

Please follow the steps in order as the FB Messenger setup requires our webApp to respond.

Create an ‘agent’ on api.ai, call it ‘MyAgent’

Click ‘Domains’ to import a few conversational domains: “Small Talk” and “Wisdom”.

Click on “Intents” and let’s create a simple intent:

and its response: 42

Click “Save” then test it by using “Try it now…” in the upper right.

We now have a simple chat-bot.

To call it from our code we’ll need its “Client access token”. To see this information, click on the gear to the right of ‘MyAgent’ in the upper-left.

The next step is to run a WebApp (our ‘webHook) using Python and Flask on pythonanywhere. This will be the back-end to our chat-bot.

Add a new WebApp.

Provide a prefix for your WebApp: some-name.pythonanywhere.com

Select ‘Flask’ for a framework, on Python 3.5

You should see a default flask_app.py in your WebApp files directory. Click to edit it.

Here’s our 60 lines of code to handle the flow between FB messenger and api.ai:

use your FB and api.ai credentials
You will need to pip install packages (eg. apiai) in your pythonanywhere Bash console, as follows:

installing apiai in Bash console
Also remember to restart your pythonanywhere web app anytime you alter the code. Click on the circular button in the upper-right, as shown below:

pythonanywhere shortcuts
If everything is in place you should be able to ping your new Flask app:

be sure to use your URL prefix instead of ‘gk.’

Now we can setup a FB page and messenger setup.

This will take 5 quick steps.

Step 1: create a new FB page
(click on the link above to create a new page) Give it a name, like ‘BuildBot10mins’, or something less idiotic.

Step 2: create a FB App
Click “Skip and Create App ID” at the top right. Then create a new Facebook App for your bot and give your app a name, category and contact email.

Step 3: create a new access token
Create a new token (for the FB page created in step 1):

Copy this new Access Token and Paste it in your pythonanywhere code (line 4: under # FB messenger credentials)

Step 4: create our WebHook, click “Setup Webhooks”
Provide your Callback URL (be sure to use https://)

Use the same verify token specified in your pythonanywhere code.

be sure to specify https:// for the Callback URL
Step 5: subscribe to our WebHook
Select your newly created FB page and click ‘Subscribe’, this connects our FB Page with the FB Messenger App we just setup.

don’t forget this last step
What did we just do? Let’s review our steps:

1 (handling responses)
In the first step we created a really simple chat-bot on api.ai, it has some basic conversational abilities, and knows the meaning of life. You can use whatever chat-bot framework you like.

2 (the back-end)
In the second step we built a Python Flask app on pythonanywhere, this allows us to host a WebApp without building a server. You can use other serverless platforms such as Amazon Lambda.

3 (the front-end)
Our third step was setting up FB Messenger and connecting a WebHook between it and our WebApp. You can also build the same bot using SMS.

The WebApp is the broker between incoming messages, the chat-bot interface and outgoing responses.

Makes sense? Good. Now you can chat with your bot, find it by searching for its name:

then scroll down the page to ‘Message Now’

There you have it — a FB Messenger chat-bot in 10min