The artist Grayson Perry turns to his formative years in a new exhibition of early works, The Pre-Therapy Years. He tells Amol Rajan about the ideas and influences that helped lay the foundations for his work, and about the emergence of his own identity as ‘the Transvestite Potter’.
Hashi Mohamed has a very different story of success: he is now a barrister but arrived in Britain aged nine as a child refugee from Somalia. He warns that his own path is denied to the majority of people in Britain. Social mobility is a myth, he says, with power and privilege concentrated among the privately educated population.
At just 26 Theresa Lola is already a prize-winning poet and Young People’s Laureate for London. Her first collection, In Search of Equilibrium, is an unflinching study of death and grieving. But she finds hope and solace in words, and believes in the power of poetry to bring about change.
On Nov. 4, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in Barton v. Barr, a case involving a dispute over whether, for the purposes of the “stop-time rule,” a lawfully admitted permanent resident who is not seeking admission to the United States can be “render[ed] ... inadmissible”. The stop-time rule affects the discretion afforded the U.S. Attorney General to cancel the removal from the United States of a lawful permanent resident who has resided in the U.S. continuously for 7 years. Under the stop-time rule, the requisite continuous residence terminates once the alien commits any of a certain number of offenses that render the alien inadmissible to (or removable from) the United States under federal law. Thus, committing a listed offense may cause an alien to fall short of the continuous 7-year residence requirement and thereby become ineligible for cancellation of removal. Andre Martello Barton, after receiving lawful permanent resident status, was convicted in 1996 on three counts of aggravated assault, one count of criminal damage to property, and one count of firearm possession during the commission of a felony, all in violation of state law. In 2007 and 2008, he was also convicted of several state law drug offenses. The federal government then initiated proceedings to remove Barton based on his various convictions. He conceded removability on the basis of his controlled substance and gun possession offenses but applied for cancellation of removal based on continuous residence. The government argued that Barton’s 1996 convictions triggered the stop-time rule, thereby disqualifying him for cancellation of removal. The Immigration Judge ruled in favor of the government and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed. Barton then petitioned for relief from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which rejected his argument that the stop-time rule only applies to aliens seeking admission to the United States, and therefore denied his petition. The Eleventh Circuit recognized that the federal circuit courts of appeals have split on the issue, however, and the Supreme Court ultimately granted certiorari to address whether a lawfully admitted permanent resident who is not seeking admission to the United States can be “render[ed] ... inadmissible” for the purposes of the stop-time rule. To discuss the case, we have Amy Moore, Associate Professor of Law at Belmont University College of Law. As always, the Federalist Society takes no particular legal or public policy positions. All opinions expressed are those of the speakers.
While Kate and Jaime recover from the live show, Leah and Melissa bring some exciting impeachment updates … including the Chief Justice caught on camera in Strict Scrutiny SWAG (?!?). They also recap two of the January arguments, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue and Shular v. United States, and offer some “I told you so” s about the Court’s recent cert grants.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
Sarah Parcak explains how she uses satellite imagery and data to solve one of the biggest challenges in archaeology: where to start digging. Her book is called 'Archaeology From Space: How The Future Shapes Our Past'. Follow host Maddie Sofia on Twitter @maddie_sofia. Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.
The "Bethel effect" is the term being used to describe the community impact of Bethel Church in Redding, CA. Bethel has gained national and international attention for their hands on approach to serving their city.
Pastor Kris Vallotton joins The Daily Signal podcast to explain how and why Bethel Church has chosen to love their community through action. He also explains how we can have real political impact and engage in dialogue with those who hold to different political views than our own.
Learn more about the work of Bethel Church and Kris Vallotton, check out these links:
In the 1630s, the Netherlands experienced 'tulip mania' - a surge in demand for tulips from wealthy buyers, with some individual bulbs costing twenty times more than a carpenter's annual salary. Then, in February 1637, the price suddenly crashed. It's often cited as the first great financial bubble, but is that really the case? Tim Harford tries to sort fact from fiction.
The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show (Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Jonathan Mohan and Stephanie Murphy) gathered to discuss Lightning Network technology and two innovative approaches at the wallet level which simplify the new-user experience at a tangible, but seemingly minimal cost.
On today's podcast we zero in on the challenge of "Channel Management", an until-recently-mandatory part of connecting to and utilizing the still-nascent Lightning Network.
Until recently, the way Andreas sends a payment to Stephanie through Lightning is either through a direct channel to her or through a route of hops that can eventually reach Stephanie.
But if a user is brand new to the Lightning network, how do they go about receiving their first payment? - This question has been answered by both ZAP wallet and Phoenix wallet, using different techniques.
Phoenix wallet is made by ACINQ, the makers of Eclair wallet. Eclair offers more advanced/technical users a deeper look behind the hood of the inner workings with channel management being a manual operation.
With Phoenix, ACINQ has taken this away, with the aim of it being a more user friendly wallet for the end user - A more Mom and Pop style wallet.
When Stephanie, a new user of Phoenix wants to be paid by Andreas, she will create an invoice on her phone, just like any other wallet. Andreas will then scan that QR code, send the payment, and it will look just like any other Lightning transaction to Andreas.
If Stephanie currently has channels open with enough inbound capacity - Then it will complete successfully. But what happens when there is not enough inbound capacity, or no channels at all?
This is where Phoenix differs. Phoenix wallet offers no channel management to the end user, it is all done under the hood. The wallet ONLY connects to the ACINQ node, initially through a ‘fake channel’ and when an incoming payment is detected by ACINQ, the ‘routing hint’ that was contained in the QR code points to Stephanie’s wallet through this fake channel.
[Andreas → Node X → Node Y → ACINQ Node -*-*-> Stephanie]
Stephanie will then get notified that she has an incoming payment and be asked if she would like ACINQ to open a channel with her and push her the balance due (Turbo Channel). This comes at a cost though, 0.5% of the amount received. [Phoenix state that this is to cover the cost of opening the channel and allocating additional liquidity on their side]
POINTS OF INTEREST
Is the ease of use factor worth the cost involved?
If only connecting to the ACINQ node, will this create centralisation?
Phoenix claims to be “trust-minimized, but not trustless”
Lightning node runs directly on the phone
Phoenix offers no on-chain balance. All monies on the wallet are contained in channels.
There is also the ability to send and receive on-chain bitcoin using swaps (this also comes with a fee)
ZAP takes a different approach to onboarding new users. Their aim is for users to be able to use their debit card to have bitcoin sent to them on the Lightning Network, even when they have a fresh wallet with no channels. Then the user has the ability to make payments on the Lightning Network.
The creator of ZAP, Jack Mallers has started a new services which he calls OLYMPUS. This service is standalone and can be implemented by other Lightning wallets, with there being no requirement for the Lightning wallet used to be ZAP.
Quoting from the Zap blog on what Olympus is:
“Olympus is an external service that clients make requests to. The service is responsible for the hard parts: onboarding users, processing payments, managing market risk, streaming quotes, and delivering bitcoins.”
Once payment has been received by Olympus, it will then open a Turbo channel to the user, with the pushed amount that they have just purchased with their debit card. With the use of a Turbo channel, the user is able to spend straight away. Jack Mallers has also stated that in the future Olympus will not only push the amount to the user but will also have some funds on their end of the channel. The amount to be staked by Olympus will vary depending on the users usage.
Currently Olympus is in Beta and available to only a few select users in the United States with a plan to roll out publicly and eventually to other countries
POINTS OF INTEREST
Olympus requires KYC/AML
If you are a business using the Olympus service will this mean that when the channel is opened to you, Olympus will open a channel with much higher funds on their end as opposed to if you are only an individual?
NOTES
ZAP is non-custodial
ZAP is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile (iOS and Android)
ZAP can connect through a remote node on Mobile - On Desktop offers remote node and own neutrino node.
Using ZAP wallet does not require KYC/AML - But using Olympus does
ZAP has the ability to offer a version of their wallet that doesn’t contain the Olympus feature\
The way in which a new virus has emerged in China is reminiscent of SARS, a highly infectious virus that spread rapidly. It’s so similar that Health officials demanded action as soon as its existence became known. And the Chinese authorities and global medical community have acted to try and stop the spread.
Events were still developing, even as we were in the studio making this programme, new reports of suspected cases were coming in. The WHO was yet to give its view on the severity of the outbreak. This week’s edition is very much a snapshot of what we know or knew about this virus on the afternoon of Thursday January 23rd 2020.
Super-sized volcanic eruptions and giant asteroids crashing in from outer space are the stuff of disaster movies. They have listener Santosh from South Africa slightly concerned. He’d like to know what’s being done in real life to prepare for this kind of event.
Although the chance of these events occurring is low, Santosh isn’t entirely wrong to be worried: Earth has a much longer history than humans do, and there’s evidence that several past extinction events millions of years ago wiped out the dominant species on the planet at the time, as we’ve heard before on CrowdScience. The kind of extraordinary geological and extra-terrestrial hazards thought to be responsible for the death of millions of lives do still exist. So is there really any way that humans could survive where the dinosaurs – and plenty of other species – have failed?
Presenter Marnie Chesterton finds out by meeting experts who are already preparing for the remote but real possibility of the biggest disaster we could face. It turns out that in real life most things we can think of which could cause an extinction event are being watched closely by scientists and governmental agencies. How worried we should really be by the possibility of a sudden super-volcanic eruption at Yellowstone in the USA, or one of the other enormous volcanoes dotting our planet’s surface? Marnie heads into an underground bunker near the remote Scottish coast to find out if hiding out is a viable survival option. Now a museum, Scotland’s Secret Bunker, formerly RAF Troywood, is one of a network of nuclear shelters built by nation states during the Cold War. And she hears about one of the combined space agencies most ambitious projects yet: NASA and ESA’s Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission to crash an impactor into an asteroid’s moon to find out whether we could knock any potentially problematic collisions off-course well before Earth impact.
(Image: Wuhan Residents wear masks to buy vegetables in the market. Credit: Getty Images)
Monica Eng and Louisa Chu, co-hosts of the Chewing Podcast, talk about the history of Chinese food in Chicago, and Monica softens her stance on Americanized Chinese food.
