Month: October 2021

Ghostbusters Firehouse

Aside Markozen.com Buildings

Firehouse, Hook & Ladder Company 8 is a New York City Fire Department (FDNY) fire station, located at 14 North Moore Street at its intersection with Varick Street in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Its exterior has become famous as the base of the Ghostbusters in the supernatural comedy film franchise of the same name.

The firehouse was selected as the base of the “Ghostbusters” for the 1984 film after an early draft of the script envisaged the Ghostbusters as a public service much like the fire department. Reportedly, the firehouse was chosen because writer Dan Aykroyd knew the area and liked the building. While the firehouse served as the set for exterior scenes, the interior of the Ghostbusters base was shot in a Los Angeles studio, and in Fire Station No. 23, a decommissioned Los Angeles firehouse.

In the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters, the firehouse makes two appearances.

The firehouse has also appeared in the 1994 film “The Mask” as a car repair facility, the 2005 film Hitch and in episodes of the television series Seinfeld and How I Met Your Mother. In 2015, Lego announced a 4,634-piece “Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters” set based on the building, released in January 2016. It is the ninth-largest set ever made by Lego.

Lego Firehouse.

Trump asks U.S. judge to force Twitter to restart his account

Aside Markozen.com Politics
LAS VEGAS, NV – APRIL 28: Chairman and President of the Trump Organization Donald Trump yells ‘you’re fired’ after speaking to several GOP women’s group at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino April 28, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Trump has been testing the waters with stops across the nation in recent weeks and has created media waves by questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)

Former U.S. President Donald Trump asked a federal judge in Florida on Friday to ask Twitter to restore his account, which the company removed in January citing a risk of incitement of violence.

Trump filed a request for preliminary injunction against Twitter in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, arguing the social media company was “coerced” by members of the U.S. Congress to suspend his account.

Twitter and several other social media platforms banned Trump from their services after a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in a deadly riot on Jan. 6.

That assault followed a speech by Trump in which he reiterated false claims that his election loss in November was because of widespread fraud, an assertion rejected by multiple courts and state election officials.

Twitter “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate,” Trump’s lawyers said in the filing. The filing was reported earlier by Bloomberg.

Twitter declined to comment on the filing when contacted by Reuters.

At the time of removing Trump’s account permanently, Twitter said his tweets had violated the platform’s policy barring “glorification of violence.” The company said at the time that Trump’s tweets that led to the removal were “highly likely” to encourage people to replicate what happened in the Capitol riots.

Before he was blocked, Trump had more than 88 million followers on Twitter and used it as his social media megaphone.

In the court filing, Trump argued Twitter allowed the Taliban to tweet regularly about their military victories across Afghanistan, but censored him during his presidency by labeling his tweets as “misleading information” or indicating they violated the company’s rules against “glorifying violence.”

In July Trump sued Twitter, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints.

Bodacious Bucking Bull

Aside Markozen.com Animals, Sports

Bodacious #J-31 (1988—May 16, 2000) was a bucking bull. He was known throughout the rodeo sport of bull riding as “the world’s most dangerous bull.” He was also known as “the greatest bull ever to buck.” During his rodeo career he was the 1994 and 1995 Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association (PRCA) Bucking Bull of the Year, as well as the 1995 Professional Bull Riders (PBR) World Champion Bull. He and Bruiser are the only bulls who have won bucking bull world championship titles in both organizations. Bodacious is most well known for his serious injury to bull riding icon Tuff Hedeman. Coincidentally, Hedeman is the only rider to win the world champion bull rider title in both organizations as well. Not long after, Bodacious also seriously injured Scott Breding. His owner, Sammy Andrews, then retired Bodacious. In 1999, Bodacious was inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, and in 2017 into the Bull Riding Hall of Fame. In 2019, the PBR inducted Bodacious into the Brand of Honor, which is part of the PBR’s Heroes and Legends Celebration, the PBR’s unique way of honoring outstanding individuals and livestock in the sport of rodeo. For a bucking bull, this is the highest honor he can receive in the sport of bull riding.

Google hires camel for desert Street View 

Aside Markozen.com Geography

It’s given us robot cars and internet-enabled glasses — but when it came to creating a “Street View” of a desert, Google hit on a low-tech solution.It hired a camel.The beast has become the first animal to carry Google’s Trekker camera, which is typically hoisted by humans to capture 360-degree images of destinations inaccessible to its Street View cars.Google spokeswoman Monica Baz says the camel, reportedly named Raffia, was an apt way of documenting the beautiful shifting sands of Abu Dhabi’s Liwa Oasis.

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“With every environment and every location, we try to customize the capture and how we do it for that part of the environment,” she told The National newspaper.“In the case of Liwa we fashioned it in a way so that it goes on a camel so that it can capture imagery in the best, most authentic and least damaging way,” Baz said.The Liwa Oasis is a 100 kilometer-wide (62-mile) scenic desert, southeast of the city of Abu Dhabi that includes some of the world’s biggest sand dunes.

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Liwa Oasis

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