Matt Vanecek Portraiture

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So hilarious! And a reason to trust your dog to your best bid instead of your girlfriend! ;) humansofnewyork: Every time I entrust my dog to my girlfriend, something like this happens…
So hilarious! And a reason to trust your dog to your best bid instead of your girlfriend! ;)

humansofnewyork:

Every time I entrust my dog to my girlfriend, something like this happens…

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timelightbox: Lauren Fleishman for TIME Same sex couple Stacy Minondo and Barbara Tremblay outside 210 Joralemon Street. The couple was one of the first to arrive.  When same-sex marriage became legal in New York, TIME sent photographers to each of New York City’s five boroughs to document the harmonious unions taking place throughout the city. Now seems like a good time to revisit that day. See more here. Time capturing moments that matter to persons.

timelightbox:

Lauren Fleishman for TIME

Same sex couple Stacy Minondo and Barbara Tremblay outside 210 Joralemon Street. The couple was one of the first to arrive. 

When same-sex marriage became legal in New York, TIME sent photographers to each of New York City’s five boroughs to document the harmonious unions taking place throughout the city. Now seems like a good time to revisit that day. See more here.

Time capturing moments that matter to persons.

490 notes

Yet another legend passes. Tuesday has been a day of moving on. npr: My father, world-renowned virtuoso violinist and teacher Roman Totenberg, whose professional career spanned nine decades and four continents, died early Tuesday morning at the age of 101. His death was as remarkable as his life. He made his debut as a soloist with the Warsaw Philharmonic at age 11, performed his last concert when he was in his mid-90s, and was still teaching, literally, on his deathbed. This week, as word flew around the musical world that he was in renal failure, former students flocked to his home in Newton, Mass., to see the beloved “maestro.” Mainly, he wanted to hear them play, and several of the sessions turned into long lessons, with my father, eyes closed, conducting with one hand to keep the tempo, slowing the phrasing here and there, and at one point, asking Daniel Han, now a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, to hand over his violin so my dad could show him some fingering. Letitia Hom, who has a class of students of her own now, wanted a lesson on the Brahms violin concerto, so on Saturday, she stood at his bedside playing beautifully for him. At one stopping point, though, he spoke so softly, she had to bend her ear to his lips. His words: “The D was flat.” Solo violinist Mira Wang, who came from China decades ago to study with him, played for hours on Sunday. Every time she would stop, he had just one word: “More.” And still they came, one after another, describing how he had changed their lives. So widespread was the outpouring, that one former student in Poland had to be dissuaded from jumping on a plane to the United States. He was a caring and wise father not just to us, his three daughters, but to literally thousands of students around the world who had studied with him. I dare say there is not a major orchestra in Europe or the U.S. that does not have at least one student who studied with him. When Wang, who is 40-something with a husband and two children of her own, left our house on Sunday, she said to my brother-in-law Ralph, “Now, I finally have to be a grown-up.” (via Roman Totenberg’s Remarkable Life And Death by Nina Totenberg) Photo courtesy of Nina Totenberg
Yet another legend passes. Tuesday has been a day of moving on.

npr:

My father, world-renowned virtuoso violinist and teacher Roman Totenberg, whose professional career spanned nine decades and four continents, died early Tuesday morning at the age of 101.

His death was as remarkable as his life. He made his debut as a soloist with the Warsaw Philharmonic at age 11, performed his last concert when he was in his mid-90s, and was still teaching, literally, on his deathbed. This week, as word flew around the musical world that he was in renal failure, former students flocked to his home in Newton, Mass., to see the beloved “maestro.”

Mainly, he wanted to hear them play, and several of the sessions turned into long lessons, with my father, eyes closed, conducting with one hand to keep the tempo, slowing the phrasing here and there, and at one point, asking Daniel Han, now a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, to hand over his violin so my dad could show him some fingering.

Letitia Hom, who has a class of students of her own now, wanted a lesson on the Brahms violin concerto, so on Saturday, she stood at his bedside playing beautifully for him. At one stopping point, though, he spoke so softly, she had to bend her ear to his lips. His words: “The D was flat.”

Solo violinist Mira Wang, who came from China decades ago to study with him, played for hours on Sunday. Every time she would stop, he had just one word: “More.” And still they came, one after another, describing how he had changed their lives. So widespread was the outpouring, that one former student in Poland had to be dissuaded from jumping on a plane to the United States.

He was a caring and wise father not just to us, his three daughters, but to literally thousands of students around the world who had studied with him. I dare say there is not a major orchestra in Europe or the U.S. that does not have at least one student who studied with him. When Wang, who is 40-something with a husband and two children of her own, left our house on Sunday, she said to my brother-in-law Ralph, “Now, I finally have to be a grown-up.”

(via Roman Totenberg’s Remarkable Life And Death by Nina Totenberg)

Photo courtesy of Nina Totenberg

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I love my dog. It’s wonderful how these animals can help people. humansofnewyork: This man sent me an email after I took his photo: “I suffer from documented clinical Post Traumatic Stress. I have been a victim of mistaken identity and was shot as a teen. I won the case, but left emotionally scarred. It makes me nervous to be outside at times.  My wife read about how dogs help Soldiers with PTS and got me a dog, Roscoe. Apparently, there were many clinical studies that support this…I am thankful she is a smart lady.  Roscoe makes me feel more confident to roam the New York streets again. He provides an Emotional support for me. I have three boys and they can see me strong when I am outside thanks to Roscoe.”
I love my dog. It’s wonderful how these animals can help people.

humansofnewyork:

This man sent me an email after I took his photo:

“I suffer from documented clinical Post Traumatic Stress. I have been a victim of mistaken identity and was shot as a teen. I won the case, but left emotionally scarred. It makes me nervous to be outside at times. 

My wife read about how dogs help Soldiers with PTS and got me a dog, Roscoe. Apparently, there were many clinical studies that support this…I am thankful she is a smart lady. 

Roscoe makes me feel more confident to roam the New York streets again. He provides an Emotional support for me. I have three boys and they can see me strong when I am outside thanks to Roscoe.”

1,004 notes

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance. . . . The FBI general counsel’s office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.“If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding,” an industry representative who has reviewed the FBI’s draft legislation told CNET.

Spread this message far and wide, and let your Senators and Representatives know that this Orwellian activity is unacceptable and, furthermore, completely unnecessary.

wilwheaton:

Moreover, for anyone who defends the Obama administration here and insists that the U.S. Government simply must have access to all forms of human communication: does that also apply to in-person communication? Should home and apartment builders be required to install monitors in every room they build to ensure that the Government can surveil all human communications in order to prevent threats to national security and public safety? I believe someone once wrote a book about where this mindset inevitably leads. The very idea that no human communication should ever be allowed to take place beyond the reach of the Government is definitive authoritarianism, which is why Saudi Arabia and the UAE — and their American patron-ally — have so vigorously embraced it.

Greenwald points out that the FBI does not need this, because they can go to a judge, get a warrant, and use traditional surveillance when it’s necessary. “But what about encryption?!” Well: 

the problem cited by the FBI to justify this new power is a total pretext: “investigators encountered encrypted communications only one time during 2009′s wiretaps” and, even then, “the state investigators told the court that the encryption did not prevent them from getting the plain text of the messages.” As usual, fear-mongering over national security and other threats is the instrument to justify massive new surveillance powers that will extend far beyond their claimed function.

I’m profoundly disappointed in the Obama administration’s record on civil rights and privacy. I expected better from a president who is a Constitutional law scholar.

tl;dr: The very idea that no human communication should ever be allowed to take place beyond the reach of the Government is definitive authoritarianism