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Where Was 'Love Actually' Filmed?
"I feel it in my fingers, I feel it my toes, Christmas is all around me and so the feeling grows"
If you sang along and felt it in your toes then you definitely know what this means. 'Tis the season to spread some holiday cheer, feel the love, and happy cry rewatching your favourite Christmas rom-com for the 100th time. Yup, it's time to revisit Richard Curtis' 'Love, Actually' and let it take you to the warm winter wonderland that restores your faith in humanity, and of course, love. Even if it's just for one day.
The film is about ten interconnected love stories, or really, stories about love, in all its different forms, that take place simultaneously in London during the Christmas season. In a lot of ways, 'Love, Actually' is an ideal title for a Christmas film because at the end of the day, the festival is all about love. This adds to the opening scene where Bill Nighy's Billy Mack accidentally mixes up the word "christmas" with "love". The film features an ensemble cast and majorly includes British actors like Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, Martin Freeman, Liam Neeson, among others.
Interestingly, Curtis did not initially intend to make the film about Christmas, but because of his own love for the festival, he ended up giving to us what's now considered a modern-day Christmas staple. In fact, it is voted to be Britain's favourite Christmas film of all time. 'Love, Actually' is also the film that turned London into every Christmas crazy person's winterland fantasy. Yes, this means you can actually have your very own self-guided 'Love, Actually' tour this holiday season, and we're here to help you with that.
'Love, Actually', is in many ways, a celebration of love, Christmas, and of course, London. The film tours across the city as it explores its different stories revealing to its viewers that both love and Christmas are, in fact, very much around us in London. Most the film was actually shot on location in the city. With the craze of the film and the way it maps out London, the scenes filmed in the city have become so iconic over time that there are, in fact, "Love Actually Tours" in the city which take you around all the places where these were shot.
If you think about it, airports are amongst the most emotionally charged spaces in our lives. These are spaces where all strangers have that one thing in common, despite all their differences. Everyone is either goodbyes or reuniting with someone. But especially around the festive season, airports mean thousands of strangers coming back home to their loved ones.
Curtis, through 'Love, Actually' romances airports like no other film has, with his montage of airport embraces. What makes it even more heartwarming is the fact that he captures the tenderness of these reunions with real-life people meeting their loved ones at the Heathrow airport, all filmed from hidden cameras. It is Curtis' way of telling us that love is really all around us, as the film opens with Hugh Grant's heartwarming dialogue:
"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport… If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around."
Heathrow Airport, the biggest and busiest airport in London, plays a key role to almost all the stories in the film. It is where the film both opens and closes. Each story concludes at the airport as end everyone comes home for Christmas, while little Sam (Thomas Sangster) runs after this first love, Joanna who is flying home to the US. All of the airport scenes were filmed in Heathrow's Terminal 3.
Somerset House, Strand
Another place that will make you feel the joy and love of Christmas is Somerset House, located along the Strand and the River Thames. Somerset House's grand neo-classical architecture makes it a prime location for visitors. But what makes it even better is the stunning ice skating rink that is set up each year around the festive season in the courtyard of the building.
Now, how can one not feel they are in a marvelous Christmas special while ice-skating here? It is impossible not to feel so. It also impossible to not feel all the love and warmth in this space around Christmas when you spot lovers, friends, and families holding hands and skating in the magical atmosphere the space has to offer. Somerset House was featured in 'Love, Actually' in the opening sequence of the film, as a part of the montage.
Selfridges, Oxford Street
The high-end department store, Selfridges, is a must-visit for anyone who goes to Oxford Street. It is the store where Harry (Alan Rickman) and his wife, Karen (Emma Thompson) do there Christmas shopping. Harry buys an expensive flashy necklace for his secretary Mia, who he is secretly having an affair with.
The scene becomes iconic because it introduces us to Rowan Atkinson's Rufus who hilariously gift wraps the necklace with utmost delicateness and precision, taking all the time in the world, which almost gets Harry found out. Just for the sake of Trivia, let me tell you that Rufus' character was initially supposed to be a Christmas angel. This explains why he takes so long with the packing, and also how he ends up helping Sam in the airport.
Grosvenor Chapel, Mayfair
A film with ten stories about love will obviously feel incomplete if doesn't feature even a single wedding. Curtis' 'Love, Actually' then gives us the absolutely marvelous Grosvenor Chapel in Mayfair, where Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Juliet (Keira Knightley) get married as The Beatles' "All You Need is Love" plays. The entire ceremony is recorded by Peter's best friend, Mark (Andrew Lincoln), who surprises the couples with a spectacular french horn band, adding to the magical feel of the wedding and the space.
Other Locations in London
Along with the locations mentioned above, there were also several others that featured some iconic scenes from the film. One such location is Gabriel's Wharf, central London, where young Sam drops some pearls of wisdom about love and confesses that he is in total agony because he is in love with his classmate. The scene where Mark finally confesses his love to Juliet through placards, without expecting anything in return, takes place in the pastel coloured rows of houses in St Luke's Mews, Notting Hill.
Other places also include Oxo Tower Wharf, Elliott School in Putney, Whiteley's, Trafalgar Square and many more. The scenes set in 10 Downing Street were filmed at the Shepperton Studios. Along with London, certain scenes were also filmed in Marseille Airport and Le Bar de la Marine in France. If 'Love, Actually' does not make you want to pack your bags and immediately leave for London during Christmas, I don't know what will. While going to London might not work out at the moment, you can definitely let the city cast its magical Christmassy spell on you by rewatching 'Love, Actually'.
Read More: Where to Stream Love Actually?


Spacious 3 bed, 3 bath resort townhouse with a private splash pool South Facing, located on the Windsor Palms resort in Kissimmee, just a short drive from Disney World.
You\'ll be delighted by the plentiful on-resort amenities, including a well-appointed clubhouse, cinema room and Olympic-sized swimming pool. Numerous shops, restaurants and other amenities are a short drive drive away, including a large Walmart on the 192, the main tourist artery serving the attractions.
The open-plan ground floor features a kitchen with breakfast bar, a separate, more formal dining area and comfortable lounge seating with a 41" TV with DVD player to keep everyone entertained.
Princess Palms is situated just 10 minutes from Disneyworld, on the excellently located Windsor Palms community in Kissimmee. As a guest here, you are welcome to free use of the resort\'s amenities which include the clubhouse, cinema room, fitness facility, Olympic-sized swimming pool and tennis court. Your close proximity to the 192 means there are a wealth of shops and restaurants to choose from nearby. There is a large Walmart on the 192 and a large Publix at the Orange Lake retail development to the North.
Thanks to Windsor Palm\'s proximity to the I4, it is also easy to explore the wider central Florida region from here. The Space Coast and Atlantic Coast beaches are just over an hour\'s drive to the East and it takes just a further 30 minutes minutes to reach the white sand beaches around Tampa, St Petersburg and the Gulf of Mexico.
8104 is situated on the Luxurious Resort of Windsor Palms. To view more about this resort please Click Here.


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O  Moderno alfabeto Filipino (em Filipino: Makabagong alpabetong Filipino), também chamado simplesmente de  alfabeto Filipino , é o alfabeto derivado do alfabeto latino usado pela língua filipina, a língua nacional das Filipinas e uma das duas línguas oficiais do país. O alfabeto filipino moderno moderno tem 28 letras e inclui as 26 do Alfabeto Latino Padrão mais o Ñ  do Espanhol e o dígrafo Ng do Tagalo. Essa escrita veio a substituir o alfabeto filipino anterior depois da reforma ortográfica de 1976 – 1987 ("Martial Law and the Fourth" – 4ª República - 1972–1986). Hoje, o moderno alfabeto Filipino pode também ser usado pelas línguas indígenas (autóctones) das Filipinas e também na língua chavacana, uma língua crioula derivada do Espanhol.

Alfabeto
{|class="wikitable" style="border-collapse:collapse;"
|-
|bgcolor="#EFEFEF" align="center" colspan="28" | Letras maiúsculas (ou caixa alta)
|-
|width=3% align="center"|A||width=3% align="center"|B||width=3% align="center"|C||width=3% align="center"|D||width=3% align="center"|E||width=3% align="center"|F||width=3% align="center"|G||width=3% align="center"|H||width=3% align="center"|I||width=3% align="center"|J||width=3% align="center"|K||width=3% align="center"|L||width=3% align="center"|M||width=3% align="center"|N||width=3% align="center"|Ñ||width=3% align="center"|Ng||width=3% align="center"|O||width=3% align="center"|P||width=3% align="center"|Q||width=3% align="center"|R||width=3% align="center"|S||width=3% align="center"|T||width=3% align="center"|U||width=3% align="center"|V||width=3% align="center"|W||width=3% align="center"|X||width=3% align="center"|Y||width=3% align="center"|Z
|-
|align="center" colspan="28" | Letras minúsculas (ou  caixa baixa')
|-
|align="center"|a||align="center"|b||align="center"|c||align="center"|d||align="center"|e||align="center"|f||align="center"|g||align="center"|h||align="center"|i||align="center"|j||align="center"|k||align="center"|l||align="center"|m||align="center"|n||align="center"|ñ||align="center"|ng||align="center"|o||align="center"|p||align="center"|q||align="center"|r||align="center"|s||align="center"|t||align="center"|u||align="center"|v||align="center"|w||align="center"|x||align="center"|y||align="center"|z
|}
As letras C, F, J, Ñ, Q, V, X, Z'' são usadas somente em nomes próprios, termos científicos e técnicos e ainda em palavras de outras línguas das Filipinas. A sílaba independente ng‹ é o marcador do caso genitivo e sua pronúncia é [naŋ] (nanh);

Notas

Referências externas
Commission on the Filipino Language Website
Comissão da Língua Filipina-Wiki
Omniglot.com – Língua Filipina
Sistemas de escrita
Línguas das Filipinas
Alfabetos

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Barrels of Biogas
There has never been a prohibition against innovation. Breweries, distilleries and related industries are using biomass and waste to produce renewable energy.
Thirty miles north of New Orleans, the Tammany Trace recreational trail with its 31 bridges travels over bayous, streams and rivers, marking the path of the former Illinois Central Railroad along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. One stop along the trail is Abita Springs, La., the home of Abita Brewing Co., where you can pass through French doors to the tasting room to enjoy sample quaffs of Abita, Jockamo, Purple Haze, Restoration, Turbodog, Andygator, Abbey Ale, or one of several seasonal brews, a choice of harvest brews, or even root beer-all brewed using natural spring water from the Southern Hills Aquifer. If you choose to tour the 49,000-square-foot facility, brewery President David Blossman might show you how the brewery makes its beer-and how it converts brewery waste into renewable energy.
Founded in 1986, Abita Brewing says it is the 30th largest commercial brewer in the nation. In 2008, the company expected to exceed 85,000 barrels of production and $16.5 million in revenue.
Beer is brewed by first milling malted barley into grist to expose starches in the grain. The grist is then mixed with warm water to make mash. Enzymes in the mash convert starches to sugars. Sugary wort is then drained and the leftover mash is sprayed with hot water to sparge the remaining wort from the mash. The wort is then boiled with hops and run through a whirlpool to remove solid proteins and hops fibers. The wort is then cooled and fermented into beer using yeast. As the beer ages, the yeast settles and is drained off. Finally, the beer is filtered to produce a finished product.
During the brewing process, anything that isn't put into a keg or bottled is considered waste, including spent grain, spent hops, sugars, proteins and yeast. "We have a lot of yeast because we make a lot more yeast than we can use," Blossman says. Specialty brews that rely on raspberry puree or strawberry juice for flavor also produce waste from those ingredients. "And when we're filtering and filling, we lose actual beer, too," he says. But one man's trash is another man's treasure, which is why Abita Brewing is turning waste into energy.
A portion of the waste Abita Brewing produces is turned into energy in the form of animal feed. Proteins from the brewery waste are mixed with spent grains and sold to a local dairy farmer. The rest "goes down the drain," Blossman says, but not into a sewer. Instead, the waste is fed to a 570,000-gallon Siemens Water Technologies anaerobic digester, which can convert 75,000 gallons of brewery waste per day into biogas. The methane-rich gas is then fed to the brewery's boiler, displacing the need for fossil fuel natural gas. Installed in April 2008, the system currently processes 45,000 gallons of brewery waste per day and produces 490 million cubic feet of biogas each month.
Blossman says he is pleased with how well the digester works. "So far, we have been very successful in the quality of the gas," he says. "We have tested it three or four times and every time it shows us that we have about 92 percent methane, which is incredible. We have a very clean gas." Blossman notes that biogas can be very corrosive. "Ours isn't, but we still go through the steps of drying it and putting it through an iron sponge, which is designed to take out any of the natural acids that are in the gas, which keeps it from pitting the steel of our boilers," he says.
Prior to installing the digester, Abita Brewing used an aerobic system to treat wastewater, Blossman says. "It was a good system and it worked," he says, "but we were outgrowing the system pretty quickly, and so we needed to add capacity. And when we decided to add capacity, we decided to change technologies and go to an anaerobic system."
Besides being able to capture and use biogas, moving to an anaerobic digester has provided Abita Brewing with additional benefits: the system requires less manpower, less energy and it smells better, too.
"In an aerobic system, you have a population of bugs that actually grow a lot more," Blossman says. "It's like yeast, it keeps growing and growing and you have to constantly take solids out of the system and dewater them, whereas in the anaerobic system, you don't have nearly the growth of the bugs.
"The other thing is that it requires a lot less energy," he says. "The aerobic system had these huge air blowers to stimulate the aerobic bacteria and that required energy.
"And I like the fact that it is totally sealed and we have an odor recovery system, and so we're better neighbors now," he says. "When an aerobic system is operating perfectly, you won't have much of a smell, but inevitably you do-I know from experience that you do-whereas with this system, we haven't had one complaint from a neighbor. You just don't smell it, because everything is enclosed. Anything that you're losing, you don't want to lose, because that's gas and you want to keep it."
Switching from an aerobic to an anaerobic treatment system wasn't cheap. Blossman says the anaerobic digester cost Abita approximately $1.5 million, whereas a similar-sized aerobic system would have been $900,000 or less. "But in the long run, we thought it was a better fit for us," Blossman says. "We liked the idea of using our own gas. We try to be as green as we can around here and we have had the luxury of being in business for 23 years and so we can do these kinds of things. If we had tried to do it 15 or 20 years ago, we wouldn't have had the resources to do it. But now, we don't have to be as picky about our payback."
Bacardi Limited
Breweries aren't the only ones recycling waste for energy. Distilleries, too, are producing energy along with spirits. Bacardi Limited, which has 31 plants around the world, makes Bacardi rum, Grey Goose vodka, Dewar's blended scotch whiskey, Bombay Sapphire gin, Cazadores tequila and more. The company also produces energy. According to Stephen Harvey, global environment, health and safety director for Bacardi, the company has patented its own technology for using anaerobic digestion to treat rum distillery wastewater and to produce energy from biogas. The company has licensed its technology to several other companies, including Cervecer�a India Inc. in Puerto Rico and Brugal & Co., C. por A. in Santo Domingo.
Harvey says the company's first anaerobic digester was commissioned in 1982 at Bacardi's largest distillery in Cata�o, Puerto Rico, with additional digesters built in 1992, 2000 and 2003. The system, engineered by Black & Veatch Holding Co., treats 1.2 million gallons of still bottoms, unfermented molasses and water from the distillery each day and has the capacity to treat 2 million. The 7 million cubic meters of biogas produced annually is fed to boilers to make steam, which is used in the distillery to make rum.
"Last year, the Cata�o plant derived more than 30 percent of its energy requirements from naturally created biogas," Harvey says. "[We] avoided consuming more than 5 million liters of nonrenewable fuel oil, which would have generated more than 16,000 metric tons of CO2. The distillery is currently investing nearly $7 million to build a cogeneration facility, which will produce electricity from the biogas, to further enhance the site's energy efficiency and lower its carbon footprint."
Another Bacardi facility that uses anaerobic digestion is the Martini & Rossi plant in Pessione, Italy, near Turin, which produces 12 million cases per year and is Bacardi's largest bottling operation. Harvey says the system, which was engineered by Biotechnical Processes International Ltd., was commissioned in 1998 to treat wastewater produced during blending, filtration, clarification and bottling operations, mostly from washing equipment. The wastewater contains sugars, vermouth, alcohol and other dissolved organics. The system treats 200,000 gallons per day at capacity. The 180,000 cubic meters of biogas produced annually is fed to a cogeneration facility that produces electricity and hot water.
The electricity powers the wastewater treatment system and also the production area. The hot water supplies 50 percent of the heat for the treatment system.
Overall, the Martini & Rossi operation is renewable intensive, where "92.5 percent of operational waste is recycled," Harvey says, "including solids such as paper, wood, glass, cartons, metal and plastic."
A third Bacardi facility with an anaerobic digester is Gemini Distillers, a Bacardi partner, in Nanjangud, India. Gemini supplies alcohol to Bacardi, and Bacardi owns and operates a distillation unit there to produce rum. The anaerobic digester was commissioned in 1990 to treat 110,000 gallons of still bottoms per day, with capacity to treat 130,000. The 3 million cubic meters of biogas produced annually is burned to generate high-pressure steam to power a turbine to generate 90 percent of the distillery's electricity. Exhaust steam is used to distill rum. The system originally was a fixed-film, random media technology built by Shakthi Sugars Ltd., later changed to an arranged media technology built by Lars Enviro Pvt. Ltd.
"All three sites benefit from deriving a stable source of energy from what would otherwise be a waste stream," Harvey says. "Biogas is a sustainable form of renewable energy that helps Bacardi reduce its carbon footprint with the added benefit of providing the sites cost stability at a time when fossil fuel prices have seen considerable fluctuation."
Ryan C. Christiansen is a Biomass Magazine staff writer. Reach him at rchristiansen@bbiinternational.com or (701) 373-8042.
DOE makes changes to biomass, biofuel advisory committees
Senators call on EPA to protect the integrity of the RFS
House Biofuels Caucus urges Trump to reject SRE petitions
Honeywell introduces simplified renewable diesel technology

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Spotify is Growing — But Why Isn't It Growing Faster?
By Josh Sanburn @joshsanburnAug. 16, 2012
David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Digital Notes: Spotify Offers a Bit More Information About Its Users The New York Times
Spotify doubles number of paying users The Financial Times
Rhapsody President: Spotify Hasn't Won Fast Company
Spotify has frequently been hailed at as the savior of the moribund music industry. Sooner or later, the pundits argue, a streaming music service that gives users unlimited access to virtually every piece of recorded music in the world for a modest price — and that creates a revenue stream for artists — will crowd out the competition. Right?
Maybe so. But even as Spotify steadily builds its paid user base, a number of obstacles seem to be preventing the kind of growth that could restore the music industry to its former healthy glow.
The latest setback for streaming theory comes from Nielsen's latest Music 360 study, which shows that teenagers get most of their music not from streaming services like Spotify, or from CDs, or even from iTunes — but from YouTube. That's right: Close to two-thirds of U.S. teens 18 years old or younger use the video site to listen to music. Radio (56%), iTunes (53%), and CDs (50%) are next. The only streaming service that a substantial number of teens use is Pandora (35%). In other words, young people do seem to like the idea of streaming music from the web — they just don't seem inclined to pay for it.
Nevertheless, Spotify is growing. The service updated its subscriber figures this month for the first time in a year, showing that it now had 15 million active users worldwide, 4 million of whom pay for the service every month. That's up from 3 million in 2011. And the service is signing up subscribers at an unprecedented rate: According to a report by MusicIndustryBlog, it took seven quarters for Spotify to reach a million paying users while it took Rhapsody, a similar service, 11 years to do the same thing.
(MORE: Reports of the Shopping Mall's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated)
Of course, Spotify — unlike Rhapsody — had the advantage of coming of age during the era of widespread broadband use and 4G mobile capabilities. And other streaming services have been just as successful as Spotify yet now don't even exist. (Ever heard of imeem?)
But perhaps even more discouraging for champions of Spotify is that streaming services seem to be bumping up against a number of immovable objects. For one, YouTube is emerging as a prime destination for music. Listeners can easily search and find virtually any band or artist, all at no cost, without having to download a separate program. And YouTube's made it much easier for users to re-listen to their favorite artists through saved playlists and customizable tools.
Then there's the fact that consumers continue to illegally download free music over the web. It's unclear how much of an effect piracy has on streaming services, but peer-to-peer file-sharing accounts for 15% of the music acquired in the U.S., according to Russ Crupnick, music analyst at NPD Group.
Another issue is our apparently stubborn desire to own the music we enjoy the most. Nielsen's study shows that while most adults discover new music on the radio, 61% say they still listen to music on CDs. Even the old cassette tape — yes, cassette tape — is outpacing most music services. Nine percent of adults say they still listen to tapes, while only 7% say they consume music through Spotify and 1% use either emusic.com or Rhapsody. Pandora registers much better, with 32% saying they use the service. About 30% of adults say they download music through iTunes.
"I thought streaming would rapidly overtake digital downloads," says Crupnick. "But I've reversed my feeling about that. What the research keeps saying is that people like the idea of ownership."
(MORE: The Economy's New Rules: Go Glocal)
Less than 10% of music listeners are digital-only consumers, according to Mark Mulligan of musicindustryblog. Most still listen to music through some combination of digital downloads, CDs, streaming music services, and vinyl records. More than 70% of Spotify listeners also buy digital downloads — mostly from iTunes — according to NPD Group.
"Four million paid subscribers [for Spotify] is a fantastic achievement, but it's a drop in the ocean in the music industry," says Mulligan. "I'm not sure we'll ever get to the position where most people will want to pay $9.99 a month for streaming music. The bottom line is that the vast majority of people value ownership."
In the digital space, iTunes boasts 80 million customers, and Spotify is nowhere close to seriously chipping away at those sales. While CD sales fell 6% last year, digital downloads and vinyl sales were up big. Album sales across all platforms rose for the first time since 2004 (but you can largely thank Adele for that).
Why do consumers want to own their music? Most consumers have a long history of purchasing musical recordings — but not TV shows or movies — a habit that seems hard to break. Another convincing theory is that the music we listen to is seen as a reflection of identities, more so than the TV shows or movies that we watch. Many streaming services attempt to address this impulse by allowing users to create their own individual playlists — but so far it appears that isn't enough.
On the other hand, Nielsen's latest numbers do provide a glimmer of hope for champions of streaming services like Spotify. The youngest generation's reliance on YouTube shows that it doesn't place as much emphasis on actually owning the music that they listen to. That means that a playlist, saved somewhere in the cloud, may eventually be a satisfying alternative to ownership for them. If so, streaming services may yet prove to be the music industry's salvation.
MORE: Spotify Keeps Getting Better at Phone Apps' Expense
Josh Sanburn @joshsanburn
Josh Sanburn is a Time.com writer.


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Solving the problem of racially discriminatory advertising on Facebook
Series: AI and Bias The Strengthening American Democracy Initiative
Jinyan Zang Tuesday, October 19, 2021
This report from The Brookings Institution's Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology (AIET) Initiative is part of "AI and Bias," a series that explores ways to mitigate possible biases and create a pathway toward greater fairness in AI and emerging technologies.
While Facebook profiles may not explicitly state users' race or ethnicity, my research demonstrates that Facebook's current advertising algorithms can discriminate by these factors. Based on research conducted in 2020 and 2021, I used Facebook's advertising tools to test how advertisers can use their targeting options like "multicultural affinity" groups, Lookalike Audiences, and Special Ad Audiences to ensure their ads are reaching white, African American, Asian, or Hispanic users. What I found is that discrimination by race and ethnicity on Facebook's platforms is a significant threat to the public interest for two reasons. First, it is a violation of the existing civil rights laws that protect marginalized consumers against advertising harms and discrimination by race and ethnicity, especially in the areas of housing, employment, and credit. Second, these same Facebook advertising tools can be used to disseminate targeted misinformation and controversial political messages to vulnerable demographic groups. To solve these concerns, regulators, advocacy groups, and industry must directly address these issues with Facebook and other advertising platforms to ensure that online advertising is transparent and fair to all Americans.
Racial Bias and Discrimination in Facebook Ad Targeting
Facebook's long-standing complaints in advertising
Over the last 5 years, Facebook has faced repeated criticism, lawsuits, and controversies over the potential for discrimination on its ad platform. Journalists have demonstrated how easy it is to exclude users whom Facebook has algorithmically classified into certain racial or ethnic affinity groups from being targeted by housing or employment ads. Researchers have also demonstrated racial and ethnic biases in Facebook's Lookalike Audience and Special Ad Audience algorithms, which identify new Facebook users similar to an advertiser's existing customers. In response to these allegations, Facebook has been sued by the National Fair Housing Alliance, the ACLU, the Communications Workers of America, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and others over issues of discrimination on its advertising platform and violations of civil rights laws such as the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which expresses intolerance of any types of racial discrimination.
Jinyan Zang
Fellow, Public Interest Tech Lab - Harvard Kennedy School
Twitter jinyanzang
There are also ongoing controversies over how Facebook's platform can be used by political actors, both foreign and domestic, to spread misinformation and target racial and ethnic minorities in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles. In July 2020, a high-profile boycott of Facebook's advertising platform to "Stop Hate for Profit" was organized by civil rights and advocacy groups including the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change, and other organizations over misinformation and civil rights violations. These groups called on major corporations to stop advertising on Facebook for the entire month of July. More than 1,000 large companies including Microsoft, Starbucks, Target, and others participated in the boycott.
On July 8, 2020, Facebook released its own civil rights audit conducted by Laura Murphy, former Director of the ACLU Legislative Office, and attorneys at the law firm Relman Colfax. The audit criticized Facebook for having "placed greater emphasis on free expression" over the "value of non-discrimination." Seeking to make concrete steps towards reducing discrimination, on August 11, 2020, Facebook announced that it would retire its controversial "multicultural affinity" groups that allowed advertisers to target users whom Facebook has categorized as "African American (US)," "Asian American (US)," or "Hispanic (US – All)."
has Facebook sufficiently addressed discriminatory ad harms?
Not every case of advertising discrimination may be illegal. Keeping this in mind, I devised a research study and tested the degree to which the different tools on Facebook's ad platform can—intentionally or not—carry out racial and ethnic discrimination, following the Fair Housing Act's criteria which makes it illegal to publish an ad that indicates "any preference, limitation, or discrimination" based on race or ethnicity.
To date, Facebook provides advertisers with four major ways to target advertisements:
"Detailed Targeting" options are prepackaged groups of Facebook users who share common attributes based on Facebook's data analysis of their behaviors online,
"Custom Audiences" allow an advertiser to upload their own list of customers or individuals for Facebook to target,
"Lookalike Audiences" allow an advertiser to reach people who Facebook determines to be similar to a designated Custom Audience, and
"Special Ad Audiences" allow an advertiser to create a Lookalike Audience that finds people similar to their designated Custom Audience in online behavior without considering sensitive attributes like age, gender, or ZIP code, specifically for housing, employment, and credit ads which are regulated by anti-discrimination laws.
I conducted my study in January 2020 and again in January 2021, before and after the Stop Hate for Profit boycott in July 2020. As Facebook no longer offers multicultural affinity groups – "African American (US)," "Asian American (US)," and "Hispanic (US – All)" – as targeting options for advertisers in 2021, I instead examined the similar-sounding cultural interest groups that Facebook still offered as targeting options, such as "African-American Culture," "Asian American Culture," and "Hispanic American Culture." In both years, I tested how many minority users could be targeted by these race- and ethnicity-related advertising options by Facebook.
Figure 1: Example of the difference in Facebook's ad-targeting options, 2020 to 2021
Year Available Targeting Option Targeting Category Hierarchy Description Size
2020 African American (US) Behaviors > Multicultural Affinity People who live in the United States whose activity on Facebook aligns with African American multicultural affinity 87,203,689
2021 African-American culture Interests > Additional Interests People who have expressed an interest in or like pages related to African-American culture 79,388,010
Note: Facebook offered the "African American (US)" targeting option until August 2020, but it has continued to offer the "African-American Culture" targeting option in 2021.
I also tested if Facebook's other advertising tools, such as Lookalike Audiences and Special Ad Audiences, can discriminate by race and ethnicity. For these tests, I used the most recent North Carolina voter registration dataset, which has voter-provided race and ethnicity information. In the North Carolina voter data, there were approximately 4.0 million white, 1.2 million African American, 90,000 Asian, and 180,000 Hispanic active voters. I created different racially and ethnically homogenous sub-samples of voters with Facebook Custom Audiences and then asked Facebook to find additional similar users to target for ads using their Lookalike and Special Ad Audience tools.
While Facebook doesn't permit direct demographic queries for a Lookalike or Special Ad audience, I was able to leverage the daily reach estimates of Facebook's ad planning tool to indirectly observe the racial and ethnic breakdown of a given Lookalike or Special Ad audience amongst North Carolina voters. For example, a Lookalike audience based on 10,000 African American voters in 2021 had an overlap in estimated daily reach of 139,000 users with a sample of 1 million African American voters but only an overlap of 17,000 users with a sample of 1 million white voters. This indicates that African Americans were likely over-represented in the Lookalike audience, since when intersecting the Lookalike audience with a combined 2 million voter sample that was 50% African American and 50% white at baseline, I found that 89% of the Lookalike audience's overlap was with African American voters and only 11% with white voters. I replicated a similar process for testing the demographics of Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences based on white, Asian, and Hispanic voters. More details on the methodology can be found here.
Figure 2: Overlap of a Facebook Lookalike Audience based on African-Americans with race-based North Carolina voter samples
A Lookalike Audience of 2.3 million Facebook users in the U.S. based on a customer list of African Americans had 139,000 users in common with the 1 million African American voter sample and only 17,000 users in common with the 1 million white voter sample.
A major concern about algorithmic discrimination is whether computers are reinforcing the existing patterns of discrimination that humans have made in the United States. Social science researchers have found in employment, housing, lending, and other aspects of life, racial proxies such as one's name and neighborhood can increase the degree to which human decision-makers discriminate. Thus, I used a frequently-cited computer algorithm trained on the names of 13 million voters in Florida to identify commonly used names for each demographic group and U.S. Census data to identify ethnic enclave ZIP codes. Then, I tested if using voter samples based on commonly-used racial proxies such as names and ZIP codes can affect the degree of bias in the resulting Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences. For example, would a Lookalike audience based on African American voters with common African American names and who live in majority African American ZIP codes be even more likely to over-represent African Americans above the 50% baseline?
Facebook still has a discrimination problem by race and ethnicity on its advertising platform
My research study of Facebook's ad platform in 2020 and 2021 had three major findings. Facebook's ad platform still offers multiple ways for discrimination by race and ethnicity despite the historic boycott it faced in 2020, and bad actors can exploit these vulnerabilities in the new digital economy.
Finding 1: The racial and ethnic targeting options by Facebook were even more accurate in 2021 than in 2020.
In 2021, certain racial and ethnic cultural interest groups that Facebook still offered to advertisers were even more accurate in targeting minority users than the old "multicultural affinity" groups Facebook retired in August 2020. For example, in 2020, 150,000 African American voters in North Carolina could be reached by Facebook's "African American (US)" targeting option each day, which is slightly more than the 142,000 who can be reached by Facebook's "African-American Culture" targeting option in 2021. However, there was a dramatic decrease in the number of white voters who can be reached by the same targeting options, from 428,000 in 2020 to just 109,000 in 2021. This means that in 2020, Facebook's "African American (US)" targeting option was likely to reach nearly three times as many white users as African American users, while in 2021, Facebook's "African-American Culture" targeting option became significantly more accurate in reaching nearly a same number of African American users while targeting 75% fewer white users.
Figure 3: Number of North Carolina voters by race reached by Facebook's African American related targeting options, 2020 and 2021
The number of white voters in North Carolina who can be reached by Facebook's two African American related targeting options decreased by 75% in 2021 vs. 2020, while the number of African American voters who can be reached by the same two targeting options stayed nearly flat over the same time period.
Finding 2: Facebook's algorithms to find new audiences for an advertiser permit strong racial and ethnic biases, which includes the algorithm that Facebook explicitly designed to avoid discrimination.
Facebook's Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences can be biased by race and ethnicity in both 2020 and 2021 depending on the demographics of a customer list that an advertiser provides to Facebook. For example, in 2020, a Lookalike audience based on African American voters in North Carolina had a sample share of 83% African Americans, which increased to 89% in 2021. Thus, these Lookalike Audiences significantly over-represented African Americans above the expected 50% baseline sample share (Figure 4). Similarly, Lookalike Audiences based on white voters had a sample share of 73% whites in 2020 and 71% in 2021, significantly over-representing whites above the 50% baseline. Other tests found that Lookalike Audiences based on Asian or Hispanic voters would also significantly over-represent Asians or Hispanics above the expected baseline share.
I also found a high degree of racial and ethnic bias in testing the Special Ad Audience tool that Facebook designed to explicitly avoid using sensitive demographic attributes when finding similar users to an advertiser's customer list. For example, in 2020, a Special Ad audience based on African American voters had a sample share of 83% African Americans, which decreased slightly to 76% in 2021 (Figure 4). Special Ad Audiences based on white voters had a similarly high sample share of 83% whites in 2020 and 81% in 2021. Finally, I also found that Special Ad Audiences based on Hispanic voters significantly over-represented Hispanics in both 2020 and 2021. This finding is especially problematic since it means that advertisers for housing, credit, and employment can use the Special Ad audience tool that Facebook has created for these legally protected sectors to pursue discrimination by race and ethnicity. This also undermines the goals of the 2019 legal settlement between Facebook and the ACLU, which required Facebook to create an alternative ad targeting solution for these sectors where an advertiser "cannot target ads based on Facebook users' age, gender, race, or categories that are associated with membership in protected groups, or based on ZIP code or a geographic area".
Finding 3: Racial proxies such as names and ZIP codes can increase the bias of Facebook's ad targeting algorithms.
In both 2020 and 2021, the degree of racial and ethnic bias in Facebook's Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences is higher when the ad targeting algorithm is trying to find users similar to individuals with racially stereotypical traits such as their name or neighborhood. For example, a Lookalike audience based on African American voters with commonly-given African American names and who live in majority African American ZIP codes had a very high sample share of 93% African Americans in 2020, which increased to 94% in 2021 (Figure 4). In the most extreme case, in 2021, I found that a Lookalike audience based on Asian voters with commonly-given Asian names and who live in popular Asian ZIP codes had a sample share of 100% Asians.
I also found that using racially stereotypical names and ZIP codes can embolden the opportunities for more precise discrimination in the use of Special Ad Audiences. For example, in 2020, a Special Ad audience based on African American voters with commonly-given African American names and who live in majority African American ZIP codes had a sample share of 97% African Americans, which was even higher than the 83% sample share observed when testing the Special Ad audience based on a generic sample of African American voters (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Sample share of African-American voters in Lookalike Audiences (top) and Special Ad audiences (bottom) based on lists of North Carolina voters with different traits
The top chart shows how Lookalike audiences based on African Americans significantly over-represent African American voters. They have a sample share of 83% and 89% in 2020 and 2021 respectively, which increases to more than 93% in both years when the Lookalike audience is based on African American voters with common names and in majority-African-American ZIP codes. The bottom chart shows similar results in tests with Special Ad audiences, which is a tool explicitly created by Facebook to address discrimination.
What's causing these research findings?
Based on algorithmic discrimination research, it's likely that a combination of multiple causes contributed to the biased outcomes observed in this study. One of the primary factors is that computer algorithms tend to replicate existing patterns and behaviors that already exist in society. Facebook's Lookalike and Special Ad Audience algorithms are using the enormous amounts of data that Facebook has about its users in order to identify which users are most similar to one another and thus most likely to respond well to the same type of ads. When it comes to demographic groups, researchers have found that racial and ethnic groups tend to behave differently from each other online and that Americans tend to have very racially homogenous friend networks. Thus, users within a racial or ethnic group may appear more alike to one another in the eyes of Facebook's algorithms than users in different groups to each other. However, this doesn't mean that Facebook should facilitate the discriminatory targeting of racial and ethnic minorities with ads, nor that commonly-used racial proxies such as name or ZIP code should also influence the digital world created by Facebook's advertising algorithms. After all, hard-fought civil rights laws in the U.S. have intentionally elevated society's interest in reducing discrimination above the private interest of landlords, employers, and lenders to maximize profits through possible discrimination. It would be taking a step backwards to make new allowances for discrimination on Facebook simply because the decision-maker is now a computer instead of a human.
Given these findings, policy makers have a role in mitigating the biases being activated by companies like Facebook and other advertisers reliant on online tools.
Policymakers, regulators, and civil society groups should demand and require greater transparency by Facebook and its advertisers
Clearly, at the heart of the problems, is the lack of transparency by Facebook to the public and to its advertisers about how its ad platform can potentially discriminate by race and ethnicity. This may be exploited by discriminatory advertisers while undermining the goals of non-discriminatory ones.
For example, discriminatory advertisers may already know that the "African-American Culture" targeting option contains fewer white users than the "African American (US)" option Facebook removed in 2020. Discriminatory advertisers may also be using similar proxy variable techniques to the ones tested in this study based on racially stereotypical names and ZIP codes to create biased Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences. On the other hand, non-discriminatory advertisers may be unintentionally choosing similar targeting settings as discriminatory ones but are unaware of how Facebook's ad platform is carrying out racially and ethnically biased targeting on their behalf.
Facebook can reverse this lack of transparency by more corporate accountability, transparency statement, disclosure to advertisers, and robust anti-discrimination engineering. However, it's vitally important that regulators, advocacy groups, and industry groups can respond to improve upon such outcomes.
Recommendation 1: Require Facebook and advertisers to release their ad targeting data.
Advertising platforms like Facebook should provide greater transparency about the way that advertisers are using their tools to target ads. Regulators can require Facebook's Ad Library for political, housing, employment, and credit-related ads to show the relevant metadata for establishing a "robust causal link" for racial or ethnic discrimination lawsuits. This is especially important since the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) "Implementation of the Fair Housing Act's Disparate Impact Standard" published on September 24, 2020 now requires a plaintiff to present evidence of a "robust causal link" in order to bring a disparate impact discrimination lawsuit in the first place. Facebook has begun to share relevant metadata for political ads with approved researchers in 2021, but doesn't currently release any ad targeting metadata for housing, employment, and credit-related ads.
Recommendation 2: Conduct regular algorithmic bias auditing of Facebook's ad platform.
Future civil rights audits of Facebook's platform should test its technologies for algorithmic bias based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and other protected classes. In July 2020, Facebook released its first civil rights audit primarily focused on political speech, misinformation, and legal issues during the Stop Hate for Profit boycott. The civil rights groups organizing the boycott called for regular audits of Facebook's platform. These future civil rights audits can build on the technical efforts by myself and other researchers. Ideally, if provided even deeper access to Facebook's data and systems, these audits can go even further in examining why these racial and ethnic biases exist and how to address them. Since 2014, many large U.S. tech companies such as Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, and others have participated in the related norm of releasing annual workforce diversity reports. Federal regulators such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can also audit Facebook's ad platform for discrimination and use their enforcement powers to address violations of Section 5 of the FTC Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
Recommendation 3: Design anti-discrimination solutions using the more effective "fairness through awareness" approach.
Technology and technology policy need to move beyond "fairness through unawareness"—the idea that discrimination is prevented by eliminating the use of protected class variables or close proxies—in order to actually address algorithmic discrimination. For example, Facebook created the Special Ad Audiences tool as an alternative to Lookalike Audiences in order to explicitly not use sensitive attributes such as "age, gender or ZIP code" when considering which users are similar enough to the source audience to get included. However, my research demonstrates that Special Ad Audiences based on African Americans or whites can be biased towards the race that is more dominant in the customer list used to create the audience, just like the corresponding Lookalike Audiences.
Statistics research has labeled this phenomenon as the Rashomon or the multiplicity effect. Given a large dataset with many variables, there exists a large number of potential models that can perform approximately to equally as well as a prohibited model that uses protected class variables. Thus, even though the Special Ad Audiences algorithm for finding similar users to a customer list does not use demographic attributes in the same way as the Lookalike Audiences algorithm, the two algorithms may end up making functionally comparable decisions on which users are considered to be similar enough to get included.
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There are public policy risks from continuing to implement a "fairness through unawareness" standard, which has been shown to be statistically ineffective. For example, the initially proposed language on August 19, 2019 by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for its updated Disparate Impact Standard, would likely have wrongfully protected companies like Facebook from being sued for discrimination simply because its Special Ad Audience algorithm follows "fairness through unawareness" and does not rely on "factors that are substitutes or close proxies for protected classes under the Fair Housing Act."
Instead, the more effective approach is to use "fairness through awareness" to design anti-discrimination tools, which could then accurately consider the experiences of different racial and ethnic groups on the platform. Thus, tech companies such as Facebook would need to learn the demographic information of their users. One way is to directly ask their users to provide their race and ethnicity on a voluntary basis, like with LinkedIn Self-ID. Another way is to use algorithmic or human evaluators to generate that information for their anti-discrimination testing tools. This was the approach taken by Airbnb's Project Lighthouse, launched in 2020 to study the racial experience gap for guests and hosts on Airbnb. Project Lighthouse used a third-party contractor to assess the perceived race of an individual based on their name and profile picture. In December 2009, Facebook researchers used a related methodology by comparing the last names of Facebook users to the U.S. Census' Frequently Occurring Surnames dataset in order to demonstrate how Facebook was becoming increasingly diverse over time by having more African American and Hispanic users.
The harms from discriminatory advertising on Facebook that target specific demographic groups are real. Facebook ads have reduced employment opportunities, sowed political division and misinformation, and even undermined public health efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. My research shows how Facebook continues to offer advertisers myriad tools to facilitate discriminatory ad targeting by race and ethnicity, despite the high-profile Stop Hate for Profit boycott of July 2020. To address this issue, regulators and advocacy groups can enforce and demand greater ad targeting transparency, more algorithmic bias auditing, and a "fairness through awareness" approach by Facebook and its advertisers.
In July 2020, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg stated that its civil rights audit was "the beginning of the journey, not the end." Faced with a long road ahead, it's time for Facebook to continue down the path to create more equitable and less harmful advertising systems.
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The opinions expressed in this paper are solely those of the author in their personal capacity and do not reflect the views of Brookings or any of their previous or current employers.
Microsoft provides support to The Brookings Institution's Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology (AIET) Initiative, and Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google provide general, unrestricted support to the Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are not influenced by any donation. Brookings recognizes that the value it provides is in its absolute commitment to quality, independence, and impact. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment.
Report Produced by Center for Technology Innovation
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Paris Paradis: A Free and So Nice Outdoors Exhibition!
A pleasant exhibition of photographs is taking place until the end of March in the Palais Royal Gardens in Paris. It is called: 'Paris Paradis, un journal photographique de Nicolas Guilbert'. It is in open-air and free and can be seen at any time as the photographs are lit up at night!
For thirty years the Parisian artist Nicolas Guilbert has been walking all over Paris so as to capture new pictures of the city. He takes an amused look at it by catching at the right time photographic opportunities: Parisian people or tourists, street scenes, metro stations or famous monuments. I like his view of Paris which is in the same time unusual, powerful and unpretentious.
The location of the exhibition looks like an allusion to the youth of the artist: Nicolas Guilbert used to work as a scene shifter in the nearby Comedie Française when he was 16… and the fences and his works were put up last January by some scene shifters of the theatre!
About 50 photographs representing the best of his most recent book 'Paris Paradis' are currently exhibited on wooden fences at the entrance of the Palais Royal Gardens next to the famous Buren's columns: Black & White or in colour, indoor or outdoor, showing people or animals, streets or monuments. I love all of them. One of my favourites is: 'Irène Krenz-Mouquin et Elliott, quai de l'horloge, 1er'. The whole makes a poetic travel through Paris. Not to be missed!
Practical information: Paris Paradis, un journal photographique de Nicolas Guilbert – Palais Royal 75001 – Between Buren's columns and the Gardens – Until 31 March 2018
Format ImagePosted on 2018-03-20 Categories EventsTags Events, Exhibition, free, Palais Royal Gardens, Paris, Paris ParadisLeave a comment on Paris Paradis: A Free and So Nice Outdoors Exhibition!
Along the Seine: Paris Bridges towards East
There was not only snow in Paris this winter but also much rain. So much rain that it had produced a significant rise in the river Seine level: the banks had been flooded and closed. When they reopened three weeks ago I had a walk along the Seine towards east, from the Ile Saint Louis to the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand. It was on a sunny Sunday afternoon, the light was superb, the views on the Paris bridges amazing and the signs of the drop in the water level could be seen here and there.
1.From the Pont de Sully to the Pont d'Austerlitz
Pont de Sully – View from the Open-air Sculpture Museum in the Jardin Tino Rossi
Our walk starts at the Institut du Monde Arabe. There the Seine divides into two branches round the Ile Saint Louis -and further west the Ile de la Cité. Along the river a pleasant garden has been laid out: the Jardin Tino Rossi.
There one strolls very close to the water in the middle of beautiful trees: pines, magnolias, Japanese cherry trees, weeping willows,… and discovers here and there the sculptures made by famous contemporary artists such as César, Brancusi or Zadkine. And on the esplanade one can see regularly groups of musicians or dancers.
The Pont de Sully and the Ile Saint Louis in the background
A little further one walks along the Péniche du Cœur, which belongs to the famous non profit organization created by Coluche in 1985, Les Restos du Cœur. It provides accommodation and food to homeless people and has just reopened after the Seine floods.
Jardin Tino Rossi-Seine flood and Sea birds
The Peniche du Coeur has reopened when the Seine level has dropped
The Seine flood in the Jardin Tino Rossi
2.From the Pont d'Austerlitz to the Viaduc d'Austerlitz
The Pont d'Austerlitz
The first bridge to span the Seine east of the Ile Saint Louis is the Pont d'Austerlitz. It gets its name from the victory won by Napoléon: the first bridge built at that location had been inaugurated in 1807, two years after the battle. It was renovated fifty years later and the present stone bridge dates from 1855. It is decorated with the names of the main officers killed during the battle.
A bit further one is surprised by a cable winch diving into the water. Here is liying at the bottom of the river La Louise-Catherine, a barge which used to be renovated by Le Corbusier in the early 20th century and turned into a refuge for homeless. For a couple of years the barge has been under repair so as to be converted into a cultural site. But last month the Louise-Catherine sunk when the Seine level has dropped. It should be afloat again when the Seine returns to its usual level.
One reaches then the Viaduc d'Austerlitz. This bridge was built by Eiffel and is used by the metro line 5 to cross the Seine between the stations Quai de la Rapée on the right bank and Gare d'Austerlitz on the left. I love its elegant silhouette!
Viaduc d'Austerlitz – Metro crossing the Seine
The Louise Marie sunk when the Seine level has dropped
View on the Viaduc d Austerlitz
3.From the Viaduc d'Austerlitz to the Pont Charles de Gaulle
Shortly after the Viaduc d'Austerlitz one notices a wooden construction on the water. This is the first and unique hotel on the Seine in Paris: The Hotel Off Paris Seine. It offers 54 rooms and 4 suites for a unique experience. One can also enjoy the bar either for an evening drink or a brunch on Sundays.
The Hotel Off: sleeping on the Seine
Then one walks under the Pont Charles de Gaulle which looks like a white airplane wing. This bridge was built in 1996 so as to face the development of the new areas of Bercy in 12th arrondissement and Bibliothèque in 13th arrondissement. It offers an additional road to reach the Gare de Lyon from the left bank.
The Pont Charles de Gaulle
4.From the Pont Charles de Gaulle to the Pont de Bercy
As one walks towards east the banks become less busy and more deserted. One is far from the bubbling city and the walk under the Cité de la Mode et du Design could even be a bit disturbing when there are no other walkers.
The Cité de la Mode et du Design was built in 2009 on the premises of former warehouses. The structure of reinforced concrete was preserved and a "plug over" made of glass and metal painted in bright green was added. The undulating shape of this plug over makes one think of a wave or a snake. I am not really fond of its design at daylight; I prefer the building at night when it is lit up and reflected in the river.
The Cité de la Mode et du Design shelters exhibitions and performances, a renowned School -the Institut Français de la Mode-, and several clubs, cafés and restaurants. My favourite is the Rooftop, so pleasant at night in summer!
Walking on the bank under the Cité de la Mode et du Design after the water level has dropped was a unique experience. The place looked like the end of the world; the ground was full of puddles, of mud and footprints. Even a shoe had been left behind by her owner…
Street art under the Cité de la Mode et du Design
The Rooftop of the Cite de la Mode et du Design
A shoe victim of the mud
One feels relieved when one leaves the basement of the Cité de la Mode and can see the sky again. The view on the Pont de Bercy is just amazing. I like this bridge with its two levels : one for the cars; and above it a viaduc for the trains of metro line 6. At the end of the bridge, on the right bank, one can see the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Accor Hotel Arena, where concerts and sports events take place.
The Pont de Bercy: for both cars and metro
Metro crossing the Seine on the Pont de Bercy
The Ministry of Economy and the Accor Hotel Arena at Bercy
5.From the Pont de Bercy to the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir
The banks now cross the new living areas of Eastern Paris: Bercy on the right bank and Bibliothèque on the left bank. Just before reaching the huge site of the Bibliothèque François Mitterand one can see the Piscine Joséphine Baker which is a public swimming pool where one can swim at the Seine level and with a view onto the river. Very pleasant indeed… but also quite crowded in summer.
The Josephine Baker swimming pool is reflecting the towers of the François Mitterrand Library
Around the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand the banks are really pleasant and lively by fine weather, especially in summer, as there are several trendy cafés where to enjoy a drink with a view on the elegant Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir. The atmosphere reminds the one of the Thames banks at Southwark in London: the river is wide, the surrounding buildings are modern, the clientele of the cafés are mainly local people.
The Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir is one of the four pedestrian bridges crossing the Seine in Paris. It was inaugurated in 2006 and makes the link between the esplanade of the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand and the Parc de Bercy; and next to it the pedestrian area of Cour Saint Emilion. The two levels of the Passerelle are reserved to Pedestrians and cyclists. One does not use it only to cross the river but also just to enjoy walking on it, feeling its undulation and admiring the views from it: a true delight!
The Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir: Only for Pedestrians and Cyclists
View on the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir
6.From the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir to the Pont de Tolbiac
Beyond the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir the landscapes are even wilder and less urban. One walks past the Batofar, an emblematic site for concerts and cultural events since 1999. Every Parisian knows the silhouette of this small red boat with its huge light: one cannot miss it!
Le Batofar, a place for events and concerts
Our walk ends at the Pont de Tolbiac, which is the last bridge but one spanning the Seine in Eastern Paris. Thanks to the rise in the river level the stairs leading to the upper banks are diving into the water and one has to walk back! At the foot of the bridge it looks like the seaside at ebb tide.
When the Seine level drops under the Pont de Tolbiac
The whole walk takes about one hour and a half -one way. The landscapes are as beautiful as unusual for Paris and I like it because it really takes you to another world. One piece of advice: choose a sunny day with a beautiful light!
Next time I will walk toward west, where the bridges are also superb and the views on the Parisian monuments amazing… although more traditional and familiar. See you soon!
Format AsidePosted on 2018-03-05 Categories Non classéTags Cité de la Mode et du Design, Garden, Ile Saint Louis, Jardin Tino Rossi, Paris, Paris Bridges, Seine, WalksLeave a comment on Along the Seine: Paris Bridges towards East


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Unique among Plata Tequilas, Gran Centenario Plata rests for 28 days in French Limousin oak barrels to soften the spirit's edges and achieve exception. Aromas of lime, citrus and pear are apparent in this Tequila. An herbal note with a spicy pepper hint is balanced with an agave aroma and underlying earthy tone.
Its smooth and clean profile makes it the quintessential Tequila for mixing in cocktails and enjoying straight in a snifter.


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Britain is leaving the European Union. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Palmyra's monuments have been destroyed by ISIS. The Antarctic shelf is breaking up. The warnings, the debates, the arguments and the elections have all given way to reality. What happens on the ground once the news cycle moves on? How do we understand what we've done, and why? This issue of Granta looks at what comes next. Don McCullin and Charles Glass return to a ruined Palmyra; Gavin Francis and Esa Aldegheri cross four Syrian borders on a motorbike; Jason Cowley on Harlow, a former 'Mark One New Town' where he grew up; Ben Rawlence on climate change relocation programmes. Plus excellent new fiction, poetry and photography.


The problem: you want white buttercream but buttercream is made with butter, butter is yellow, so buttercream tends to be a bit yellow. So what if you need white buttercream? Here are my 5 top tips to getting super white buttercream It's fine to have regular yellowish/cream coloured buttercream, it's just as delicious. But some occasions or designs might call for super white buttercream or frosting. Weddings often require white buttercream, Christenings too, or just because it's pretty. Also if you are trying to colour your buttercream a vibrant colour the yellow can interfere. Such as trying to make blue buttercream, the yellow can make it green. So how do you do get white buttercream?
There are ways to make buttercream or frosting without introducing any yellow. Don't use yellow butter. A lot of American Frosting recipes use Shortening. I myself have made buttercream with a mix of butter and solid coconut oil. Also, a lot of people making vegan buttercream use other butter substitutes which are either paler in colour or virtually white.
I have also recently discovered Korean Butter which is white but is only available in speciality Korean markets. This isn't 100% foolproof as not all of these products are totally white. They also make buttercream or frosting to different degrees of firmness so may not be the right consistency for what you need. I also don't like shortening/Trex in buttercream, but that's only a preference.
And, I know - I KNOW - if it isn't made with actual butter it isn't technically buttercream, but let's keep the terminology simple, for the sake of discussion.
Regardless of the type of butter you are using, it will become paler the more you beat or whisk it. This is actually a sort of trick on the eye, you aren't removing any of the yellow but you are adding air. When you whip or beat butter and icing sugar together you are creating a little network of sugar crystals and air pockets which makes the colour paler the more of them there are. This will also increase the volume of buttercream.
You can't overbeat butter. You can overheat it and liquidise it by mistake if you are doing it in a food processor. But in a stand mixer, or with a hand mixer, as long as you are working at roughly room temperature (or at least under 21℃ / 70℉ when butter starts to melt) you can't over work it. So beat it until it looks white to you.
If you are in the UK, the consensus amongst most of the bakers I have spoken to is that Lurpac and Lidl/Aldi's own-brand equivalent are the best butter for white buttercream. They are already quite pale and whip up very white.
Italian, Swiss and French Meringue Buttercream is basically butter added to a big bowl of fluffy egg whites. This means that, while you are still using yellow butter, there is already so much white in the mix you mitigate a lot of the yellow. I regularly make SMBC, with real yellow butter and often with light brown sugar and my buttercream is rarely yellow. Occasionally Ivory, but usually pretty white with no extra work.
You could always whip/beat the butter to a paler colour before adding it to the meringue, but you shouldn't need to.
If you are making buttercream and (having whipped or beaten the living daylights out of it) it still isn't as white as you would like you can add food colouring. Many colouring companies make White and it is a pretty effective option for making white buttercream.
I have used Wilton White-White, they also do a Super White and so do most other food colouring companies. You will have to find out what is approved for your country and which brand works for you.
As with any food colour with buttercream, gel or paste colours are usually the best option. You want to avoid adding more liquid than necessary to buttercream, it can destabilise it. Also, gel or paste colours tend to be more intense in colour so you don't need to use as much. This one is actually a liquid colour, but you still don't need much, and hasn't ruined any buttercream for me.
Rather than trying to overpower the yellow colour with white you can instead neutralise it with an opposing colour on the spectrum. In the case of Yellow that is Purples and Violets. That means a tiny dot of an intense violet or purple gel or paste food colour, beaten in, will cancel out the yellow and make your buttercream white.
It does only take a tiny tiny amount. I'd recommend using a toothpick, add a dot of colour and beat in thoroughly and only then add more if required. If you add too much the buttercream will go grey and if you add way too much it'll go purple!
As I mentioned at the beginning, if you are trying to colour your buttercream and the yellow is interfering with the shade you are getting, making Blue buttercream Green or Red buttercream Orange, then neutralising the colour with some purple/violet first will solve that problem for you.
Which method is your favourite? Or do you have any other successful ways of making buttercream white? Was this article helpful? Let me know in the comments.


"As a former NFL player, national spokesperson for the Positive Coaching Alliance, and someone who has personally experienced the significant effects of a concussion, I believe every parent of a young athlete and coaches should be fully aware of the signs and symptoms of a concussion in a young athlete. To help them act and respond to this injury the right way, they need to have proper tools. Based on the great CDC Heads Up work that Dr. Gioia helped to create, the Concussion Recognition & Response App gives parents and coaches a great tool to identify kids with suspected concussions. It also is a great resource of information about concussions and what parents can do to help their child recover from the injury. This app should be a necessary part of every comprehensive youth concussion management and awareness program."
The CRR is a free application for a smartphone or tablet that helps coaches and parents recognize whether an individual is exhibiting the symptoms of a suspected concussion. Updated with a new look in 2016, the app allows a coach or parent to respond quickly and appropriately to this potentially serious medical situation.
In less than 5 minutes, the user can complete a checklist of possible signs and symptoms to help decide whether to remove a child from play and determine the need for further examination. It also allows users to record pertinent information and share that information via e-mail with health care professionals.
Includes sections pertaining to concussion recognition and response and home symptom monitoring and features a return-to-play guide, concussion information, and acute concussion evaluation (ACE) post-concussion home/school instructions.
Concussion recognition. Using information from the CDC's Heads Up: Concussion in Youth Sports program, the app guides users through a set of questions to determine the likelihood of a suspected concussion based on observations by the parent or coach as well as symptoms reported by the athlete. In addition to the child's name, age, gender, and sport, the location of the injury is tracked by the device's GPS, and its camera can be used to photograph the injury. Along with the answers to the guided questions, this information can be e-mailed to a health care provider to provide accurate documentation of the child's condition at the time of the injury.
Home symptom monitoring (HSM). [image 1, 2, 3] After following up with health care providers, the app allows a parent or caregiver to record a child's symptoms through periodic evaluations, which are tracked in the hours, days, or weeks following an injury. The information compiled using the HSM can then be e-mailed to the health care professionals, providing an update on the child 's recovery.
Return-to-play guide. [image 1, 2, 3] Based on information from the CDC, the Return-to-Play Guide helps to protect children and athletes from further injury by guiding them through a daily exercise routine that assists in their ability to return to play. Through a five-step, tiered workout routine and in collaboration with the child's health care provider, parents and coaches can ensure that the child is able to handle additional exercise without further injury or discomfort.
Concussion information. [image 1, 2, 3, 4] The app's concussion information section helps coaches and parents to make an informed decision regarding how to proceed after a child's injury. Provided by authors Gerard A. Gioia and Jason Mihalik, concussion specialists from the Children's National Medical Center and the Matthew A. Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center, this feature includes answers to Frequently Asked Questions for coaches and parents.
Acute Concussion Evaluation (ACE) Post-Concussion Home/School Instructions. [image 1, 2] Included with the app is a concussion overview page that users can share with other coaches, parents, or athletes. This overview, which can be sent directly from the mobile device via e-mail, is an excellent way to share important information about how to recognize and respond to head injuries.
The app is available at the Apple® App Store and Google Play™.
Download the Concussion Recognition & Response app today!
For your iPhone®, iPad®, iPod® Touch, or Android™ device or tablet. Requirements: iOS version 4.0 or higher on your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad or Android Version 2.2 or higher on your Android-based device.


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Thirsty Bear creates beer for Clowns without…
Thirsty Bear creates beer for Clowns without Borders
By Monterey County Herald | migration@dfmdev.com |
San Francisco"s busiest brewpub, Thirsty Bear Brewing Co.
Clowns without Borders is an organization whose mission is to bring "laughter to relieve the suffering of all persons, especially children, who live in areas of crisis including refugee camps, conflict zones and emergency situations, like communities who have experienced trauma or crisis." ThirstyBear will donate $0.50 from each sale of Hop Clown to the standout non-profit.
On Saturday, July 11, 2015, beginning at 12:30 pm, Clowns Without Borders founder Moshe Cohen will perform a special free family show at the ThirstyBear brewpub, which is located at 661 Howard Street in San Francisco, to help kick-off the release of Hop Clown. To RSVP for the free family show and receive a complimentary appetizer during the performance, please visit their event page on Eventbrite.
Here"s more from the press release:
"Intentionally named to represent the ridiculous amount of hops that goes into Hop Clown Double IPA, it is brewed with organic Magnum, Bravo, Zeus and Wakatu hops in the kettle and dry hopped with Simcoe. As ThirstyBear Brewmaster Brenden Dobel notes, "In coming up with the recipe, I was thinking this Double IPA is hopped to comical levels. A slightly unhinged, almost Harlequin-like character first came to mind, so we called it Hop Clown. It"s looking to be a 85 IBU and 9.5% ABV monster of a beer. Whether you have one or a couple, you"ll definitely have a smile on your face!"
"We"re thrilled to share a performance in ThirstyBear"s celebratory atmosphere," says Moshe Cohen, "We"ll be offering families and friends a fun and funny moment in support of Clowns Without Borders" work of bringing laughter and celebration into the places where it is most needed on the planet."
ThirstyBear"s Founding Brewmaster Ron Silberstein adds, "Our mission is really quite simple, we want people to take time from their hectic days to share in good times. Clowns Without Borders brings joy to people in the midst of tragedy — war torn regions, refugees, and victims of natural disasters. Laughter is good medicine, especially in times of crisis. ThirstyBear couldn"t be happier to offer a little bit of help along the way with Clowns Without Borders" singular efforts."
Throughout the remainder of 2015, Clowns Without Borders will positively influence the lives of countless children around the world. Since Cohen officially launched the organization in 1995, Clowns Without Borders" 12 international chapters have collectively performed for more than 4 million kids. In July 2015, they"ll have artists in Turkey, training with Turkish performers and performing for Syrian refugees. In August 2015, they are sending a troupe to the Kakuma refugee camp in Northern Kenya, in partnership with UNHCR. Half Kenyan and half South Sudanese people, this is one of the largest and best-known refugee camps in the world. Clowns Without Borders is looking to develop a 3-year partnership with UNHCR in this camp, to send groups multiple times a year.
Several international Clowns Without Borders chapters are currently in Nepal, and the US chapter is exploring partner organizations for their upcoming work in Nepal. This fall, they"ll send performers to Clown Encuentro in Colombia, to be followed by a program in collaboration with their Colombian Partners.
Come raise a glass of Hop Clown Double IPA, served exclusively at ThirstyBear, and celebrate its release with a special family show featuring Moshe Cohen and select performers."
The post Thirsty Bear creates beer for Clowns without Borders appeared first on Eat, Drink, Play.
Monterey County Herald


I adopted Cali from a kill shelter in New Haven Connecticut in 2006. She is the most loving, loyal, and friendly dog of all time. She survived 2 years of college, living in two countries, and living with children.
She is the most amazing definition of what I hope people begin to see pit bulls as. I wouldn't trade her for the world.


Vela Manusaute, Lolo Fonua, Louise Tu'u, Leki Jackson-Bourke and 'Amanaki Prescot-Faletau.
The Little Island and Auckland Council present a free event series to celebrate the launch of Talanoa: Four Pacific Plays, published by Little Island Press.
Meet the playwrights; Lolo Fonua, Louise Tu'u, Leki Jackson-Bourke and 'Amanaki Prescot-Faletau.
Hear about the writing process and experience a live performance of a scene from each play.


On Tuesday June 11 Gov. John Hickenlooper signed an Executive Order committing the state to climate action. The full text is available here.
The post Colorado Commits to State Climate Action appeared first on Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association.


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Deserted Fear – Kingdom of Worms (FDA Rekotz)
Thursday, 9th October 2014 By Katarina McGinn
Much like the recently reviewed FDA Rekotz fellows in Arroganz, Deserted Fear take the old school approach but manage to bring forth a sound that merely tips it's hat as opposed to copping an overly generous feel (and without the "z" issues). Kingdom of Worms is the follow up to 2012's My Empire and proves the band is making some strides towards the big leagues if they continue in this direction.
Just listening to Kingdom of Worms, you can tell that there is "just enough" retro influence to let you know what you are listening to, but they acknowledge that there's been over two decades that have continued since then. The production is thick and meaty, with guitars that acknowledge the Swedish forefathers but don't ignore the Floridian movement either. All of this is done with a sound that leans more in the direction of clarity rather than excessive filth (don't worry it still sounds like death metal – no sterility here). Couple all of this with a sense to blend in some intriguing melodies (see "Shattering the Soil"), and you've got another winning combination of death metal. Vocalist Manuel Glatter rounds things out with some upfront roars that will most likely remind you of Martin van Drunen but certainly get the job done while commanding your attention.
Deserted Fear deliver a strong dose of old school influenced death metal with Kingdom of Worms. With an approach that will bring in fans of Dismember, Asphyx, and Bolt Thrower, you know you are going to get some crushing material here. Score another victory for the FDA Rekotz clan!
Deserted Fear on Facebook
Deserted Fear – Dead Shores Rising (Century Media)
DESERTED FEAR Streams Video For "Nocturnal Frags"
Deserted Fear – My Empire (FDA Rekotz)


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