Joshua S. Freeman

The peonies are seriously in bloom. (at Rockefeller State Park Preserve)

Dusk. Maple leaves. Young tree. Hudson River. (at Scenic Hudson Park at Irvington)

I wish you could smell these. (at Old Croton Aqueduct)

Pretty flowers in the tree (at Old Croton Aqueduct)

Flowers I saw today (at Croton aqueduct trail)

Looking up. That’s it. (at Irvington, NY)

End of the workday (at Irvington, NY)

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom and all the moms of the world. (at mom’s apartment)

at Rockefeller State Park - Gory Brook

Ancient access structure on the old croton aqueduct trail. (at Old Croton Aqueduct trail)

Some kind or rare wild flower (at Old Croton Aquaduct In Sleepy Hollow)

Rockefeller preserve (at Rockefeller State Park Preserve)

Perfect spring day

It’s a lovely spring day. White plains vs. Scarsdale. I hope our team wins.

View Post

Manhattan island as seen from the north (at Scenic Hudson Park)

Something very useful, especially if there’s a chinatown in your city.

futurejournalismproject:

The Wall Street Journal reports that a little known government agency now has the authority to hold and monitor data on US citizens for up to five years, even if the individual has never committed a crime.

The goal, it appears, is to use the data to predict future — or potential — criminal activity.

Via the Wall Street Journal^*:

[New] rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited…

The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.

Under the new rules, the NCTC can request access to any governmental database that it “reasonably believes” contains “terrorism information.”

Considering the National Security Agency is currently building a massive information center in Utah to monitor almost “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails,” the NCTC wont be want for information.

BONUS: Looking for more about government surveillance? Check the FJP Surveillance Tag.

Wall Street Journal, U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens.

* This WSJ article is paywalled if you go directly to the site. If you want to read it, copy the title, paste it in Google and follow the search result back to the WSJ.

at Lyndhurst Castle

nybg:

PSA Time: You only have twoweekends left to see Monet’s Garden before it bids NYBG adieu! That’s this weekend and next weekend. Don’t dilly dally, Monsieur Monet would be so désappointé. ~AR

buongiorno:

To celebrate summer’s end I finally committed myself to the hour long 4 train commute and went to see the Monet’s Garden exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. It is open until the 21st of October, and I highly recommend you go to see it. Since the majority of the garden exhibit is inside the greenhouse you will find yourself surrounded by sunflowers and cockscomb and celosia, and many other plants that may have already had their summer farewells back in early August. The photo on the top is of me literally worrying that I had died because when we entered into this incredibly lush arrangement of flowers, we were immediately greeted with an incredibly twinkly, magical Ravel piece. It was just wonderful. The pairing of classical music and poetry all throughout the garden was excellent. I felt so pacified that I began to feel akin to Alice drifting off to sleep beneath the tree trunk. Was it real? The weather was perfectly mild and there were no clouds to be seen. Comically large bees buzzed about in their imminent purpose. Light parted tree canopies gently. The whole garden itself was so vast and lush that it didn’t feel like New York at all. It felt quite like what I would expect Versailles to feel like, or knew what I knew the Boboli gardens in Florence to feel like. I have spent most of my life longing to go to Giverny to see the real thing, so this was a very special end of summer jaunt.

Anyway, I can’t wait to visit again and I would implore any local new yorker to take a full day to go and get lost in the NYBG. It will do you wonders. 

USA!!! #makerfaire (Taken with Instagram at Rocket Park)