In a car crash, things can get fiery quickly — it doesn’t matter if you’re driving a Tesla Model X electric car or a traditional gas-fueled Honda Civic.
That’s what happened in a fatal crash in Florida over the weekend. A man speeding in a Tesla Model S lost control and drove into the median and some trees. His car burst into flames, and he died.
In an email statement, a Tesla spokesperson said, “We are deeply saddened by this accident and our thoughts are with everyone affected by this tragedy. We have reached out to the local authorities to offer our cooperation. We understand that speed is being investigated as a factor in this crash, and know that high speed collisions can result in a fire in any type of car, not just electric vehicles.”
Car fires after a crash are all too common: The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) puts crashes as the reason for 3 percent of car fires for any type of vehicle. But with an electric vehicle, the car can burst into flames hours after the initial blaze. The NFPA puts out training materials for electric and hybrid vehicles for this very reason. In the Florida crash, which happened at around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, the Model S kept burning in the police tow yard into early Monday morning.
The same thing happened with another Tesla Model S in December, in Silicon Valley. The car burst into flames again hours after an initial car fire was put out. The driver was not harmed.
After the Florida crash, Davie Fire Rescue Battalion Chief Robert Diferdinando told the Sun-Sentinel, “We have a problem where the car keeps catching fire because the battery pack itself hasn’t drained yet,” He went on to explain that the battery still has power after the fiery crash and keeps sparking flames.
Tesla is well aware that this is how electric vehicle batteries behave after a crash. In its online emergency response guide for first and second responders, it clearly states, “battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish” and warns about potential “re-ignition.”
The guide offers tips and methods to safely extinguish the flames. In the Florida incident, authorities were in touch with Tesla representatives, who relayed helpful information to put out the fire once and for all.
ASMR artist and generally kind man, Thomas Clery, is making a splash. In six months, the “grandpa” of ASMR has amassed just shy of 500,000 subscribers. Posting under the username Morpheus ASMR, the influx of attention is in part due to his frequently uploaded videos and his charming content. He even has one video in which he just counts loose change while eating biscuits.
ASMR, which stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, is a tingling sensation in the body caused by audio and visual triggers like tapping or whispering. According to scientists, the phenomenon can inspire a state of relaxation. Even though it doesn’t work on everyone, ASMR’s popularity and prevalence is at an all-time high, thanks to the large and passionate community on YouTube.
Clery’s page launched in September of 2018, and just six months later, he’s blowing up. His first video was an “attempt” at ASMR in which he unboxes a spirograph. As one of the commenters on that video puts it, “…the legend was born.” To date, he has 186 videos that boast an impressive combined 12.5 million views.
Clery likes to ramble, albeit in a whisper, about anything and everything. “I only have a couple of contacts on my flip phone,” he whispers into the microphone while telling a story about how he saved the Little Caesar’s number to his phone while trying to obtain one of their pretzel crust pizzas.
Though he does feature universally popular ASMR food like crunchy cereal and fried chicken, he focuses on dishes that are unique to his page like swordfish and spaztle, a type of pasta. Clery’s most popular video is one of him eating Mochi for the first time.
Clery is often referred to as “grandpa” and”granpa” in his comment section, which is sweeter than the deserts he eats. People are constantly stating how happy his videos make them in gushy, all-caps comments littered with emoji hearts. A lot of viewers also make it a point to sit through the ads at the beginning of his videos, allowing Clery to be compensated through YouTube.
“HE MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS,” is a comment that turns up often. Though his viewers are devoted to his well-being, some take that devotion to the next level by saying things like, “He could thrust a knife into my chest and I would still forgive him.”
While scrolling through the comments on Clery’s video, though, it’s easy to gather that his subscribers just want the best for him. On a video of Clery eating a broiled Atlantic salmon dinner, someone wrote, “Ya better eat healthy! I want you to live a good life! I love your content, grandpa!”
While Clery hasn’t acknowledged the comments that refer to him as “grandpa,” he does take time to thank his viewers at the end of each video. To celebrate 1,000 subscribers, he got himself his favorite desert (Italian creme and rum cake.)
“To all my subscribers and all my viewers and everyone that has left comments, [I] appreciate your support,” he says, smiling as candles flicker on his cake. “Thank you so much, I can’t say it enough. I really appreciate it.”
If watching Clery ironing his clothes or playing solitaire with a cup of coffee isn’t for you, perhaps you’d like one of his other 3 channels. He has channels dedicated to New England gardening, home care, and tech. They aren’t as popularas Morpheus ASMR, but they do have substantial followings with around 20,000 subscribers each.
Watching Clery’s videos really is like sitting across from an affable grandfather figure, talking gently about nothing of importance. It’s more calming than it is weird, but we’ll let you be the judge of that.
If there’s anything we can glean from Clery’s videos, it’s that he has a bigger taste for oysters and cereal than he does for fame.
President Donald Trump has worked to seduce North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into giving up his nuclear arsenal by pitching dreams of beachfront condominiums and gold-plated casinos | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
The president has sold Kim Jong Un on peace and prosperity. But North Korea’s record on human rights stands in the way.
President Donald Trump has banked his North Korea policy on selling Kim Jong Un a future of prosperity and riches. But legislation Trump signed bars companies from investing in the country due to its abysmal record on human rights, an issue the president has given scant attention in talks with Pyongyang.
Heading into his second meeting with the North Korean leader, the president is planning to pitch him on a vision of North Korean modernization, White House officials say. Trump dangled the prospect of material wealth for Kim’s impoverished homeland on Monday, telling reporters, “I think he’ll have a country that will set a lot of records for speed in terms of an economy.”
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It’s not clear how, exactly, the president is proposing to help Kim realize his economic goals. But a provision Trump signed into law as a part of a 2017 sanctions bill cracking down on Iran, Russia and North Korea could prove a crippling obstacle to any American overture, experts say. The law expressly prohibits imports of anything produced or manufactured by a North Korean citizen — and it would fall on Congress, not the president, to repeal the measure.
“Because of U.S. law today, the general counsel of any U.S. company is not going to recommend going into North Korea because of human rights abuses,” said Victor Cha, who served as President George W. Bush’s top adviser on North Korea. The Trump administration, he said, “needs to talk about human rights if they’re going to achieve what they want to achieve.”
That means Trump could ink a nuclear deal with North Korea that lifts some sanctions on North Korea unilaterally in exchange for Kim’s promise to denuclearize, but he would have to rely on Congress to repeal the 2017 law in order for any American company to make any significant investment in North Korea. That’s unlikely, barring a deal that addresses human rights in a substantive manner.
Since their first face-to-face meeting Singapore last year, the president has worked to seduce Kim into giving up his nuclear arsenal by pitching dreams of beachfront condominiums and gold-plated casinos. During their inaugural meeting, Trump played a four-minute video for his counterpart — produced by the CIA and based on a psychological profile of the North Korean leader, according to a source familiar with its production. The video urged Kim to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons in order to “enjoy prosperity like he has never seen.”
This approach carried with it a sharp turn away from the brutal nature of the North Korean regime — something Trump had, in fact, called attention to during the first year and a half of his presidency. Among the first lady’s guests at the 2018 State of the Union address were the parents of Otto Warmbier, the American student imprisoned by North Korea whose lifeless body was returned to the country early in the Trump presidency, and North Korean defector Ji Seong-ho. Trump decried the “depraved character” of the regime and stated that “no regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea.”
There was no rhetoric like that during his discursive, 90-minute press conference at the conclusion of his meeting with Kim last June. Pressed on whether, and to what extent, he had challenged Kim on human rights, Trump told reporters, “It was discussed relatively briefly compared to denuclearization,” adding, “They will be doing things. I think he wants to do things.”
“After he met with Kim, never talked about it,” Cha said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Faced with mounting pressure to incorporate human rights into its North Korea policy, the Trump administration has in recent months provided little information to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, limiting the extent to which they have provided classified briefings on the matter, according to two senior Republican congressional aides. Though lawmakers have pressed administration officials on the issue, “they did not provide a lot of substance,” one of the aides said. “I can’t stress the extent to which, in recent months, things have really dried up.”
Experts insist that economic reform alone is not enough to effect change — it must be interrelated with national security and human rights, as the U.S. managed to do at the height of the Cold War. The Jackson-Vanik amendment to the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 cracked down on U.S. trade with the Soviet Union and its satellites in response to human rights abuses. The 1975 Helsinki Accords, signed by 35 countries, recognized Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe while extracting a commitment from the Soviet Union to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.
“We lose a great opportunity if we don’t focus on human rights as part of our arsenal on North Korea,” said Jay Lefkowitz, who served as special envoy for human rights in North Korea during the George W. Bush administration— a congressionally mandated post for which the Trump administration has yet to nominate anybody. “The irony is, of all the things he’s done in his presidency, the thing that looked the most promising was his North Korea policy during the first 18 months, where he kept both North Korea and China really off balance. And then literally, within the scope of a few hours in Singapore, we took a half dozen giant steps backward.”
Since the Singapore summit, North Korea has shown few signs of abandoning its nuclear weapons—over the last year, reports have shown, the country has expanded its ballistic missile programs and continued expanding its base of fissile material.
In fact, North Korea is likely to use any economic gains to finance its nuclear program, according to Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute. “The North Korean leadership doesn’t see it as an either-or trade,” Eberstadt said.
The only thing Kim might find harder to abandon than his nukes, moreover, is his police state.
North Korea “operates an all-encompassing indoctrination machine,” according to a 2014 report commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council. The report found that the state uses food as a means to control the population, regularly “disappears” its citizens for perceived disloyalty to the government and runs a vast network of prison and forced labor camps where torture, rape, and execution are routine occurrences. Kim is believed to have personally ordered the execution of his half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, who was assassinated in 2017 after two women attacked him with VX nerve agent in a Malaysian airport.
North Korea is one of many countries that uses forced labor, though American companies do business in many of them by providing voluntary compliance reports to Customs and Border Protection enforcement officials indicating that they are not using forced labor in their supply chain or operations. Coca-Cola, for example, re-entered Myanmar after the Obama administration eased sanctions in 2012 despite the fact that the country still engages in forced child labor, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, and opened a bottling plant in the following year with a reported $200 million investment.
The 2017 provision Trump signed into law prohibits American companies from doing the same in North Korea even if the president eases sanctions. It created a new and sweeping presumption that all North Korean labor is, by default, slave labor, stating that “any significant goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part by the labor of North Korean nationals or citizens shall … not be entitled to entry at any of the ports of the United States.
Despite this barrier for U.S. businesses, North Korea’s economy and those of neighboring states do stand to gain from an easing of multilateral sanctions. Countries such as Russia and China have limited though not completely curbed their economic engagement with North Korea due to U.N. sanctions, but those sanctions focus only on denuclearization and not human rights abuses. The Associated Press reported on Sunday that millions of Chinese border city residents hope to benefit from North Korea opening up to greater international trade and business investment should the Trump-Kim summit succeed in getting those sanctions lifted.
The president has not let the law get in the way of his sales pitch. Speaking to a group of the nation’s governors on Sunday evening, a day before departing for Hanoi, Trump told the assembled group that Kim “has a chance to have a country that is so vibrant economically. Maybe one of the most in the world.”
“So I tell him that but I said, ‘You can’t do that if you’re going to keep nuclear. If you do nuclear, that can’t ever happen.’”
Facebook’s army of content moderators — contract workers paid as little as $28,000 a year — spend their days sifting through some of the social network’s most extreme content, work that can have a lasting impact on their mental health and wellbeing. But the companies employing these workers are often ill-equipped to deal with the needs of their employees.
That’s the conclusion of a devastating new report in The Verge that details the sometimes harrowing working conditions at an Arizona facility that employs hundreds of Facebook moderators. Among the unsettling details:
Initial training that’s so intense some “fail out of the program before they can start”
Employees who “cope with the stress of the job… with sex, drugs, and offensive jokes”
Insufficient onsite counseling services
One employee, who feared retribution from disgruntled coworkers, who secretly took a gun to work “to protect himself”
Employees who begin to believe the conspiracy theories they’re supposed to be moderating
A constant fear of being fired “for making just a few errors a week”
Now, Facebook’s VP of operations, Justin Osofsky, says the company will do more to make sure its contractors are taken care of. In a statement, which makes no reference to the story in The Verge, Osofsky said, “we are committed to working with our partners to demand a high level of support for their employees.”
At the same time, he defended Facebook’s work with organizations like Cognizant, the company employing workers at the Arizona facility. “These partnerships are important because they allow us to work with established companies who have a core competency in this type of work and who are able to help us ramp with location and language support quickly.”
In order to improve conditions for employees, he said Facebook is working to standardize its contracts, and gather more feedback. The company is also setting up a “whistleblower hotline” so contractors can reach Facebook directly, rather than solely relying on their own HR teams.
“We want to continue to hear from our content reviewers, our partners and even the media – who hold us accountable and give us the opportunity to improve.”
Period. End Of Sentence., a Netflix documentary on the menstruation taboo in rural India, just won a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
The story is set in the Kathikhera village in India, where a local group of women is using a newly-installed machine to make and sell sanitary pads, raising awareness and fighting the stigma that surrounds menstruation in the local community.
LOS ANGELES — LeBron James is still one of the best basketball players in the world, but as the Los Angeles Lakers (29-30) struggle to climb into the top eight of the Western Conference, he needs to take some responsibility for the team’s shortcomings.
James recently said he has “activated” his playoff mode, but the Lakers just lost to the lottery-bound New Orleans Pelicans, even though Anthony Davis was sitting out to “rest.”
If James and the Lakers want to make the postseason, they can’t afford to drop many more games. They currently sit behind the San Antonio Spurs (33-28), Los Angeles Clippers (33-28) and Sacramento Kings (31-28). The Lakers need to leapfrog two teams for a playoff berth, and that’s not going to happen with losses to struggling franchises like the Pelicans and Atlanta Hawks.
James seemed to place some of the blame on his teammates following the New Orleans setback.
“When you’ve never been there or know what it takes [to win at a high level], sometimes you’re afraid to get uncomfortable. You’ve got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable,” James said of his squad, noting that he knew when he came to Los Angeles it would take some time for the team’s young players to learn.
He added: “It’s how you approach the game every day. It’s how you think the game every day. It’s how you play the game. It’s how you prepare for the game. And that’s not even like when you get to the arena. That’s like way before that. Is basketball, is that the most important thing, why we’re doing this. Is this the most important thing in your life at this time?”
Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press
It’s difficult to question James, based on his track record of advancing to the NBA Finals eight years running (nine overall) and three titles. But the Lakers are primarily struggling on the defensive side of the ball, and James hasn’t seemed engaged of late.
“LeBron rarely exerts himself beyond a casual job in transition defense and disregards spot-up shooters in most half-court situations, leaving them wide open,” Pete Zayas of Laker Film Room said. “His defensive game these days resembles a disinterested center rather than the high-end wing defender that he once was.”
James is still putting up tremendous numbers; his 24.6 points, 10.4 rebounds and 10.4 assists since he returned from injury are outstanding. He may not be the over-arching problem holding the Lakers back—the team is flawed in many ways—but James needs to be a bigger part of the solution. He needs to raise his effort defensively.
“He’s been doing that all year,” another video analyst said. “He’s been [coasting on defense] for a few years now.”
Per NBA.com, in 165 of James’ 263 minutes since his return (62.7 percent), the Lakers have a negative net rating. The team’s current starting lineup with Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, JaVale McGee, Reggie Bullock and James is giving up 116.2 points per 100 possessions over four games. For reference, the Cleveland Cavaliers have the worst defensive rating in the league at 115.9.
If James is questioning his teammates, does that include Ingram, who is playing some of the best, most consistent basketball of his career (averaging 20.9 points a game over his last 13)?
If anyone deserves criticism, it’s Rajon Rondo, who has 14 turnovers over the past three games, or Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who is shooting 32.4 percent from three-point range in February (a slight improvement over January’s 31.7 percent). James’ inexperienced teammates may not be as culpable as others.
Eric Christian Smith/Associated Press
One undeniable factor is Lonzo Ball’s absence, as he’s still sidelined with a sprained ankle suffered Jan. 19. Ball is a difference-maker defensively for the Lakers, and while he’s an inconsistent scorer, he’s an important part of the team’s offense.
“It sucks that my injury happened and [Ball’s] injury happened and so many of our injuries happened,” James said. “I’m so huge on, like, chemistry and camaraderie throughout the course of the season. … The injuries have taken a toll on our team.”
That’s not wrong, but it also doesn’t represent the entire picture.
Fair or not, James is closely associated with his agent, Rich Paul of Klutch Sports. The impression around the league is that the duo has more of a partnership than the typical player/agent relationship. It was Paul who publicly demanded a trade on behalf of Davis, pushing the Pelicans to send him to the Lakers before the deadline—but in a sense, it was also James.
“He killed the [Lakers’] chemistry,” one NBA executive said. “He shouldn’t have been so public about it. Even during the All-Star draft, he laughed about [wanting Davis to be his teammate].”
The gambit for Davis didn’t work. It still may over the summer, but in the meantime, it torpedoed L.A.’s chemistry and camaraderie (exemplified by the 136 points given up to the Indiana Pacers and 143 to the 76ers soon after).
Some of that is on team president Earvin “Magic” Johnson, who didn’t denounce the many rumors that bounced around leading up to the deadline. Lying about such things is all but customary in the NBA. Give some plausible deniability in case a deal doesn’t go through; otherwise, a team’s spirit can easily be crushed.
James clearly covets another star, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just become evident to many of his teammates that they are probably the next sacrifice, like Julius Randle, D’Angelo Russell, Larry Nance Jr. and Jordan Clarkson before them.
A cohesive basketball team is built on a foundation of trust. That may be lost in Los Angeles for the rest of the season. The best way for James to make an impact is to raise his intensity on defense. Instead of questioning his teammates’ dedication, show that he’s dedicated on both ends of the court.
The Lakers are only two losses behind the three teams they’re chasing. They still play the Clippers twice and the Kings once. Only the Spurs have locked in the tiebreaker over the Lakers.
Making the playoffs is a realistic goal. Even climbing to the seventh seed to avoid the Golden State Warriors in the first round is within reach, but the Lakers need James to dazzle not only offensively but defensively as well. That won’t require an all-defensive performance—just a consistent effort.
Otherwise, the most important thing in James’ life will be set aside for an early vacation in mid-April.
The Afghan Taliban’s co-founder is in talks with the United States in an attempt to bring an end to more than 17 years of war.
It’s the United States’ longest war and last year there was a record death toll in Afghanistan. Almost 4,000 civilians were killed and 7,000 wounded.
The UN is blaming the Taliban and ISIL for deliberately targeting civilians with suicide attacks. But Afghan and US forces have also stepped up their assaults on armed groups.
Now attempts to end the bloodshed are gathering pace.
The Taliban and the US are in talks in Qatar. Co-founder of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, has met the US special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad for the first time.
So could there be a breakthrough?
Presenter: Laura Kyle
Guests:
Mushtaq Rahim – analyst at Conflict, Peace and Security
Michael Semple – researcher and former deputy EU special representative to Afghanistan
Anthony Neal – advocacy manager at the Norwegian Refugee Council in Afghanistan
Mashable, MashBash and Mashable House are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission.
The Mate X might be the most promising foldable phone we’ve seen yet, but that’s really not saying much. Phone makers still face a huge uphill battle convincing people that foldable phones will be worth buying.
The move will clear up $4.6 million of cap space for the Ravens, according to Michael Ginnitti of Spotrac, but they will still have a dead cap hit of nearly $4.7 million on their books.
This article will be updated to provide more information on this story as it becomes available.
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By Sasha Lekach
I love your content, grandpa!” 
Daily Trends Hunter 