Instead, Trump used each ceremony as an opportunity to denounce Democrats for opposing his multibillion-dollar demands for U.S. taxpayer money to fund a southern border wall, launching Washington into its third partial shutdown this year.

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“It’s possible that we’ll have a shutdown. I would say the chances are probably very good because I don’t think Democrats care so much about maybe this issue,” Trump said Dec. 21 at the signing ceremony for the First Step Act, a criminal justice bill that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, personally negotiated with Democrats.

And this shutdown could last well into the new year as Trump digs in for a fight for a wall he repeatedly promised Mexico would finance. Republican lawmakers, unable to deliver the president’s top priority despite all-GOP control of government for two years, mostly hid from the spotlight.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) have not been seen in the Capitol since Saturday, the first day of the partial shutdown. Neither chamber is slated to hold a legislative session until after New Year’s Day, just as Democrats take over the House after a midterm thumping that gave them a net gain of 40 seats.

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Neither GOP leader has tried to back up Trump with the sort of news conference or partisan vote that demonstrates commitment to the cause — which has been the usual course of action for the president’s Capitol Hill allies in the periodic shutdowns of the past 25 years.

Republicans have not even convened conference calls of the rank and file to map out strategy to defend Trump.

Trump’s only outspoken allies have been members of the House Freedom Caucus, the band of hard-line conservatives who encouraged him to fight for wall funding even if it meant furloughing 350,000 federal workers and closing down national museums in the days ahead.

Among Republicans, the Freedom Caucus as well as those members elected in the tea party class of 2010 have clamored for reining in government and used shutdowns to challenge the Obama administration, with little success.

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Still, with no debate or votes in the House the past week, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) has been the only member of that caucus around the Capitol making media appearances to defend Trump.

Perhaps the most missing in action has been Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the incoming House minority leader who is taking over for Ryan as he heads into retirement next week.

McCarthy’s last public comment came on Christmas in a taped video about the “spirit of love” around the holiday season, without mentioning the ongoing shutdown.

For their part, Democrats have also fled the Capitol. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have rejected each offer from the White House for border wall funding, saying they will happily wait until next week, when Democrats take control of the House and are expected to approve legislation to reopen the government on their terms and send the bills to the Senate.

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“Schumer and Pelosi have been in constant and close contact and on the same page with regards to shutdown strategy,” Justin Goodman, Schumer’s spokesman, said Friday.

It’s an embarrassing end to a two-year run for McConnell and Ryan. For months they respectively called this the “most successful Congress” for Republicans and claimed it set “a record pace” for legislative production.

Democrats fiercely object to those assertions and note that the biggest GOP victories, a $1.5 trillion tax cut plan and the confirmation of two Supreme Court justices, passed on simple-majority votes with very little bipartisan support.

There were some other signs of progress, including a massive package to try to combat opioid addiction, and revamping laws overseeing aviation and waterways.

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But almost none of these gains has held the attention of the person Republicans most rely on to convey their message nationwide: the president.

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Time and again, Trump has paid lip service to these issues that Republicans consider wins and instead has focused on his demands for a border wall. Early this year, after the tax cuts took effect, GOP leaders winced as Trump focused on other issues and saw public approval for the legislation fade away.

By the fall, as Trump held rally after rally ahead of the midterm elections, GOP leaders pleaded with the president to focus his remarks on the falling unemployment rate and the sky-high stock market. Instead, Trump devoted the large majority of his speeches to a caravan of Central American migrants walking thousands of miles toward the California border, alleging without foundation that the group of mostly women and children were criminals.

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Weeks later, after House Republicans were thrashed at the polls, Ryan mildly criticized Trump for failing to push the economic message and instead undercutting suburban Republicans with a message of fear over immigration.

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“The immigration issue is more on the front of his mind. I think the caravan was, you know, on TV a lot,” Ryan said Nov. 30 at a Washington Post Live event. “My own view was I would rather talk about the economy and how successful it was.”

Now, with the financial markets falling toward their worst year in a decade, Republicans face a more difficult time selling the skeptical public on their proudest domestic policy accomplishment.

And in their last days of full Republican control of Congress, the shutdown blotted out attention from any other issue.

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For years McConnell has enjoyed hosting a long year-end news conference at which he declares his biggest wins and lays out his goals for the year ahead.

Normally, that would have happened at the end of last week, after the Senate unanimously approved on Dec. 19 a short-term funding plan that would have kept the government fully open into early February.

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That same day, Ryan gave a farewell address in the Library of Congress, believing that Trump agreed with the strategy to fund the government and fight for the wall next month, when he could try to blame Pelosi once she was in charge.

Instead, the next morning, Trump called Ryan and other Republicans to the White House. He rejected their plan and was ready to fight even if it meant a shutdown.

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McConnell never held his valedictory news conference, and what was probably Ryan’s last moment on the House floor came Saturday evening when he gaveled the empty chamber shut, the last legislative session of 2018 going out with a whimper.

The day before, at the end of the signing ceremony for the criminal justice bill, Trump tried to stay on message by deflecting a reporter’s question about how long the shutdown would last.

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“I’ll be honest,” he said. “This is such an incredible moment, what we’ve just done — criminal justice reform — that I just don’t think it’s appropriate to be talking about anything else.”

After some applause, he gave up the discipline on the big GOP win.

“Thank you,” Trump said, “but in five minutes we’ll be talking about other things.”


Middlewood, South Yorkshire

Middlewood is a north western suburb of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The suburb falls within the Stannington ward of the City.

Location
Middlewood was formerly an entirely rural location, it has been partly encroached on by the expansion of the city of Sheffield since the 1960s. The exact area of the Middlewood district is not easy to determine, but is popularly thought to extend from the "Middlewood shops" at the top of Leppings Lane northwest for three km along the A6102 past Middlewood Hall to the outskirts of Oughtibridge. Between those two points it includes the land on the south western side of the River Don up to Worrall Road.

History

Middlewood Hall
Middlewood Hall (grid reference ) is set in  and was constructed in 1810 by Mark Skelton, however a farmhouse is believed to have existed on the site well before that. The Skeltons were a family of steel forgers and merchants who owned forges on the River Don. The 1911 census records show that the Hall was occupied by the Thorp family and their servants. In 1926 the house was sold to the Wilson family (local snuff makers) and then in 1980 to Wharncliffe Construction who turned it into a luxury hotel. However the Hall lies on green belt land and further expansion was not possible. After changing hands twice more as a hotel, it was purchased by a private individual in 1999 who converted it back into a private family dwelling. The hall is a grade two listed building.

Middlewood and Wharncliffe Hospitals

Both hospitals were on the same site and were built and fitted out at a total cost of £150,000. Wharncliffe was a small medical hospital while Middlewood was a large psychiatric hospital. Middlewood was opened on August 21, 1872 on a large rural site (approx ). It was originally known as the South Yorkshire Asylum until 1890, then became the West Riding Asylum, Wadsley (1890–1930). It was known as Wadsley Mental Hospital between 1930 and 1948 when it became Middlewood Hospital. Not all of the original inmates were psychiatric patients, some were paupers from the workhouse, some were females suffering postnatal depression and some were suffering from epilepsy.

Insulin shock therapy was introduced at the hospital in 1935 for the treatment of schizophrenia. The hospital was evacuated during both World wars and used as a war hospital. The hospital had a working farm operated by the residents until the early 1960s and also its own church. Changes in mental health care meant that the hospital was scaled down and then closed in 1998. The site was bulldozed and is now a private housing development called Wadsley Park Village.

Other historical buildings
Middlewood Tavern is a public house which has documented history going back to 1835 when Joseph Bowden applied for a licence to sell liquors on the premises. It was, and still is partly, in a secluded situation on Middlewood Road North (A6102) surrounded by a few houses and formerly relied on trade from staff at Middlewood Hospital. Rocher bridge (footbridge) crosses the River Don at the Tavern and gives access to Beeley Wood. After the Sheffield flood of 2007, leading to the collapse of the road towards Oughtibridge, access was severely restricted and the Middlewood Tavern lost trade and subsequently never recovered and closed soon after.

Toll Bar Cottage is also situated on Middlewood Road North, just before it reaches Oughtibridge. The keeper collected tolls on the Wadsley, Langsett, Sheffield Turnpike road which opened in 1805. The road became toll free in 1875; the cottage is a private dwelling today. Middlewood Grange is a Victorian detached house in  which is set just behind the Tavern.

Present day

Housing developments
The Winn Gardens estate, a council housing scheme was built in the mid 1960s on land (grid reference ) which formerly belonged to Middlewood Hospital and was used as the farm and allotments and grew all the hospital's fresh produce. Middlewood Park stands at the NW end of the estate. Most of the housing around the lower end of Stockarth Lane, just before the tavern, dates from the second half of the 19th century, although there were some newer houses built in the early 1980s.

As mentioned, the Wadsley Park Village private housing scheme was built on the former site of Middlewood Hospital between 2001 and 2006. Certain parts of the old hospital such as the church, lodge and Kingswood ward are listed buildings and cannot be demolished; they have been incorporated and left within the new estate. Kingswood has been converted into luxury flats and the lodge has been included in a new nursery building. The church has stood boarded up and derelict for many years but in March 2012 plans were submitted by architectural design consultancy Coda Studios that will see the imposing Victorian church converted into a mixture of town houses and apartments. The scheme which needs approval from Sheffield City Council also contains proposals for a selection of partially underground eco-friendly bungalows beneath the building.

The village has a SSSI within it, created in 1990, it is the site of the Wadsley Fossil Forest, it “contains a number of in situ fossil tree stumps, two of which have been exposed for many years. They are considered to be the best preserved example in the British Isles of trees which were part of the extensive coal forming swamp forests growing some 300 million years ago”.

Facilities
Many important facilities for the district are located just outside the immediate Middlewood area. There are no large supermarkets and only a limited number of small shops within the district and most residents will commute to nearby Hillsborough to do their larger shopping needs. There is a small shopping area at the top of Leppings Lane known as the Middlewood shops. This contains a large concentration of take-away food shops although there is a medium-sized Asda supermarket located within the old Hillsborough Park cinema building on Catch Bar Lane. The cinema building dates from 1921 and ceased being a cinema in 1967, since then it has been a bingo hall and then a supermarket operated by Supasave, then Netto before Asda took over in August 2011.

The nearest primary schools are in Wadsley and Hillsborough, while the Hillsborough Leisure Centre just to the SE is the closest community sports facility. The Sheffield Wednesday training ground is situated on Middlewood Road, this is a private facility for use by the football club only, it was originally constructed in the late 1960s on old allotments it has undergone extensive redevelopment in recent years. As well as outdoor pitches the facility includes a 66 metre by 45 metre air dome which houses a synthetic pitch for indoor training, the dome is a notable sight in the area.

Late 2005 saw the opening of the Fairlawns Medical Centre and Polyclinic on Middlewood Road North () to give the area extra medical facilities due to the increased population brought by the Wadsley Park Village development. The medical centre includes at present, a GP practice offering a full service from Doctors, Practice Nurses and Health Care Assistants, a Dental practice, pharmacy and various PCT out patient services such as Physiotherapy, Chronic Fatigue, Lymphoedema, Mental Health. The Yorkshire Ambulance Service has an ambulance station adjoining the medical centre.

Supertram Terminus
Middlewood was chosen as the northern terminus of Sheffield Supertram and opened in October 1995. The terminus is an off-road single platform type and was built on old allotment land at grid reference  on Middlewood Road. There is a park and ride facility, originally with 200 parking spaces, it was enlarged to 350 spaces in October 2007. The system incorporates a SupertramLink bus service which connects to Stocksbridge, Deepcar, Wharncliffe Side and Oughtibridge. The park and ride is well used by commuters from these areas.

2007 Floods

The Middlewood area of Sheffield was badly hit by the June 2007 floods. The lower part of the Winn Gardens estate was inundated by the River Don which flows at the bottom of the estate. 200 residents had to be evacuated and given shelter at two nearby schools. A section of the A6102 road just past the Middlewood Tavern collapsed when the raised embankment was partly washed away. The road was closed for 17 months before finally re-opening in December 2008.

References

Category:Suburbs of Sheffield
Category:History of Sheffield


My girlfriend and I have been together for more than four years. We are a happy, normal couple. We love, we laugh, we occasionally disagree, we call each other names, we sometimes agree in the end, but most important of all: we make it work. I can honestly say that I’m happy in love. This is confirmed by the scatter chart below, which is a result of this thorough analysis. I will cover exactly how I was able to create this graph (and more!) in this article.

A brief introduction

So I can honestly say that I am happy in love. But can I actually support this statement with proof?

I have been tracking my happiness for over 3,5 years, including the influence of my relationship on my happiness. Who am I to boldly claim that I am happy in love if I don’t even have the data to back it up? Therefore, I have analyzed all my data and created something that is truly insightful to me. And I now want to share it with you.

What am I looking to prove?

After tracking my happiness and relationship for so long, I want to find the answers to some questions that I occasionally think about:

Does my relationship increase my overall happiness?

Can I determine the best and worst periods of our relationship via my data?

Can I quantify the exact effect that an event in our relationship (argument, holiday, dinner etc.) has on my happiness?

Subsequently, which of these factors has the biggest effects? I can imagine that a serious fight has a far bigger impact on happiness than a lovely weekend together.

Additional parts?

During this post, I will try to find the answers by using my data. Interestingly, I can easily think of plenty of follow-up questions.

For example: how does a Long Distance Relationship affect happiness over time? Does a happy relationship require frequent fun activities (romance, holidays, dinners etc.)? Is the happiness in my relationship correlated to a season? I should be able to answer these questions as well, based on my data. These topics are going to be analyzed in additional parts to this post.

I feel like I also need to add some sort of disclaimer. Of course, these results are all based on my personal situation. Therefore, my observations and results are not necessarily applicable to your situation.

Also, this is by no means an exact science. However, the big amount of data does allow me to do some quantitative analysis.

Quantitative analysis

As you can see in my Happiness Reports, I’ve started collecting this data on the 1st of December, 2013. This post is based on every single day of data I tracked, until the 23rd of June, 2017. That’s a total of 1.301 data entries. Plenty of data to analyze, in my opinion.

The start of my relationship tracking

Let’s take a look at the chart below. This chart shows every day of December 2013, in which my happiness was affected by my relationship.

I started tracking my happiness during this period. I have tracked exactly what influences my happiness on every single day, including my relationship.

The blue dots represent the days that were positively influenced by my relationship. For example, I spent the entire weekend of December 15th with my girlfriend and her family. These days were a lot of fun and had a positive influence on my happiness.

Similarly, the red dots represent the days in which my overall happiness was negatively influenced. Some days were not influenced by my relationship at all. I have included comments in the graph to add some context. It’s all pretty straightforward. For more context, you can always read my Happiness Report series, with the first post being December 2013.

You might notice that this is pretty basic quantitative analysis. Think of it as keeping a scoreboard. Every positively influenced day will score a point for my relationship. The negatively influenced days will reduce this score.

How can I turn this basic set of data into something that is more visual?

Visualising my data

The chart below shows the same data, but with added lines!

These lines represent the weekly moving average count of influenced days. On the 7th of December, the blue line has a value of 2. This value is calculated by counting the number of days that were positively influenced by my relationship between the 4th and the 10th of December. Feel free to click on any of these points to double-check my math here.

This graph is already quite a lot better at showing my happiness in my relationship. You can probably see that the last couple of days of the month were very positively influenced by my relationship.

Quantity over quality?

You may also notice that I’m only looking at the quantity here, not the quality. I’m not weighing these data points at all. Even though the confrontation I had with my girlfriend on the 12th of December might have been a lot harsher than the argument on the 21st, I’m not appointing different weights to these days.

I now hear you think, “But won’t that distort and skew the data and its results?!?!?!!!1?” Well, I believe that the size of my data set is large enough to compensate for any small spikes and dips. We are talking about more than 3,5 years of data here, so any noise in the data is likely to be smoothed out.

Anyway, I would love to be able to show the status of my relationship in a single metric.

The happiness ratio

And therefore, I will introduce you to the happiness ratio. This is a very basic metric, which is calculated by dividing the blue line by the absolute values of the red line. Simple as that. I have charted this metric in the graph below.

I need to address a few exceptions to this formula:

If there is no influenced day at all within a 7 day period, the happiness ratio will be neutral (1).

If there is no negatively influenced day within a 7 day period, the happiness ratio will be equal to the number of positively influenced days plus one*.

Finally, if there is no positively influenced day within a 7 day period, the happiness ratio will be equal to 1 divided by the number of negatively influenced days plus one*.

* The ‘plus one’ makes sure there is a difference between a week with 5 positives and 0 negatives and a week with 5 positives and 1 negative. Without the plus one, the happiness ratio would be equal for both weeks.

As you can see, the weekly moving happiness ratio does a pretty good job describing the status of my relationship. When this metric drops below 1, it means that my relationship causes me more mishap than happiness within a 7 day period. This usually means bad news. Simultaneously, a high weekly happiness ratio signals a very happy relationship, with the maximum being an 8. For example, the happiness ratio on the 29th of December was a 6, since only 2 days within the 7 day period were not positively influenced by my relationship.

I have also plotted the monthly average of this happiness rating. This metric will turn out useful when analyzing the full data set. We’ll get there in a minute, I promise!

Overall impression of December 2013

I have created this wonderful pie chart below, which shows the number and percentage of all the days in December 2013.

Almost half of the days in December 2013 were not influenced by my relationship. However, out of the 17 days that were influenced, the biggest part was luckily positive. As long as the blue piece of the pie is significantly bigger than the red piece, my relationship will logically be a source of happiness in my life.

All pretty easy, right?

Let’s zoom out and have a look at the entire data set!

The entire set of raw data

I have created the same charts as before, starting with the basics below. Please be aware that the charts are very wide, so feel free to scroll to the right to view the entire thing. Again, I have included some comments here and there to add context where necessary. For example, my girlfriend and I have survived multiple stretches of long distance relationship (LDR) periods.

As you can see, there’s a lot more blue than red in this chart. Great!

You can probably also see that the blue and red points are shifting a lot in density. Let’s see how that translates to the weekly moving average count of influenced days!

You can see here that my relationship has been quite a roller coaster ride. There’s been some lengthy periods where my relationship score was negatively influenced a lot. Luckily though, the blue line still reaches a lot higher in general. Especially the last year has been absolutely great for my girlfriend and me.

I will add some context to this data after I show you the chart with the happiness ratio.

This graph shows all the weekly moving and the monthly average happiness ratios. The monthly average happiness ratio does an exceptional job at explaining the overall state of my relationship during any period. Again, feel free to look around at the specific periods within my relationship.

Some context on my relationship

To add some context, I will briefly explain some key periods within this chart:

Summers of 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017: Holidays with my girlfriend had a huge positive influence on our relationship and my happiness. Awesome times!

From January 2014 to June 2014: Long Distance Relationship period where I traveled to New Zealand. We got through this period relatively easy, considering we didn’t see each other for 5 months. We communicated well together and didn’t have a lot of arguments.

From September 2015 to February 2016: Long Distance Relationship period in which my girlfriend traveled to Australia for 5 months. This period had a very big negative influence on our relationship and my happiness. Our communication was terrible in general, and it threw our relationship into a deep pit. It’s what I have been referring to as relationship hell.

From February 2016 to May 2016: Even though we survived the LDR period, we still had to climb out of the deep pit in which our relationship was at the time. It took a long time, with many ups and downs, but in the end we survived. We haven’t experienced a disastrous period like that ever since (I’m knocking on wood here). In hindsight, I tend to think these periods made our relationship stronger, even though times have definitely been tough.

Relationships are always challenged

What I have learned from this data and my time together with my girlfriend, is that our relationship experienced quite some ups and downs. I believe that’s true for every relationship. It’s how relationships work. The key to a healthy relationship is to both be aware of this, and work for each other during the dips. So if you recognize a similar roller coaster experience, don’t worry. In my opinion, it’s how relationships function.

“We decided to fight for what we had”

My girlfriend and I have survived a terrible period together. The happiness ratio was below 1 for a long period. It had obviously been below 1 before, but never for this long. We both openly discussed breaking up at one point. You know, whether breaking up would actually be a good decision.

In the end, we decided to fight for what we had, because we both knew that our relationship had great potential. Sure, we were in a deep pit, but we both knew that the great periods together were something worth fighting for.

After all, I had all this data telling me that this relationship had great potential. I couldn’t ignore it.

And I don’t regret it one bit. Have a look at the last year of data and you will know why. We are both happy in our relationship and have enjoyed each others company for month after month.

It makes me think of something Bob Ross used to say on his painting show.

“Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come.”

This kind of self-awareness has been extremely valuable to me, and I have tracking happiness to thank for it. Knowing (and accepting) that my relationship will alaways have its ups and downs is one of the key benefits of this self-awareness.

Overall impression of my entire relationship

What this shows, however, is that I can use the happiness ratio to confidently calculate when my relationship was at its peak. I can determine the state of my relationship through my data.

The pie chart below shows the entire data set.

The blue piece of the pie is much bigger than the red piece. Phew!

I feel like I need to address the big number of days that weren’t influenced at all. Me and my girlfriend have not been living together throughout this entire period. We both shifted between different countries, living at home and living near our university.

On average, I think we see each other about 3,5 times per week. This might explain the relatively large grey piece of the pie. We are planning on finding an apartment together, and once that happens, I expect the grey area to become smaller. Hopefully, the blue piece of the pie will not shrink relative to the red piece due to moving in together. But only time will tell. It will be the topic for another interesting post in this series, though!

Anyway, the pie chart confirms that my relationship has a positive effect on my happiness. Looking at the percentages, our relationship score tells me that we are winning by approximately 5 to 1.

All this data will obviously be different for any other couple, but the main takeaway here is that the blue needs to be bigger than the red. Want to know how your relationship ranks? Just start tracking your happiness.

I know now that I can confidently determine the state of my relationship via quantitative analysis.

But is there a way for me to add some qualitative analysis here as well?

There actually is. I have been rating my happiness all this time, which means that I have determined a qualitative value for each and every single day during this entire period.

Qualitative analysis

I have plotted my happiness ratings in the chart below, in addition to the happiness factor. There are multiple additional lines here: light blue represents the actual happiness rating for these days, darker blue is a trailing average and darkest blue is the monthly average happiness rating. If my math is correct here, these monthly averages should be equal to what I’ve calculated in the Monthly Happiness Reports.

As you can see, the monthly average does a pretty good job at showing the overall trend in the data. However, there are a lot of smaller spikes and dips which are buried this way. I don’t want that! I want to see how these spikes and dips are cooperating and influencing my happiness.

Therefore, the chart below shows the same set of data, but the monthly averages have now turned into weekly averages. How convenient, right? 🙂

You can see that the big spikes and dips in my happiness ratio are frequently affecting my general happiness. For example, on the 23rd of May, 2015, my girlfriend and I were on a holiday to Croatia. The average ratio during this time was at a maximum value of 8. My average happiness rating was also near all-time highs, and this is no coincidence. There are a lot of spikes like these in this data set, and a lot of them are correlated with each other.

The same works for the dips. For example, when I was in relationship hell, the ratio was far below 1. I was not exclusively unhappy during this period, but my general happiness was severely impacted nonetheless.

Of course, not all dips in my happiness are correlated to my happiness ratio in my relationship. The happiness ratings are influenced by every single factor in my life. There’s virtually an endless number of factors that could potentially influence my happiness. My relationship is a big factor, indeed, but certainly not the only one.

For example, during the week of 28-06-2016, my happiness dropped significantly, without my relationship having an influence whatsoever. This was due to me going to a rock festival in Belgium, where the weather sucked so badly, that it was simply impossible for me to be happy. My relationship didn’t influence this.

But I can still see that my happiness ratio in my relationship is somewhat correlated to my general happiness. Of course, I want to know just how much exactly!

Correlating my relationship to my happiness!

Therefore, I have created a scatter chart showing every week of data that was charted in the previous graph. This is the same graph that I have animated in the abstract of this article.

What this shows me is that my relationship happiness ratio is significantly correlated to my general happiness. So in general, I’m a much happier person when my happiness ratio from my relationship is above 1. It’s probably the single biggest influence on my happiness (and therefore my life?). However, this is something that I can only confidently claim when I have analysed other factors as well.

Please excuse me for using some tricky math here. I have calculated the Pearson correlation coefficient, and it shows a positive correlation of 0,46! This is obviously not a perfect 1,0 but is definitely significant nonetheless. It will be very interesting to see how the correlation between my happiness and relationship compares to other factors.

Anyway, the best weeks of my entire life were made possible by my girlfriend. These weeks are visualised at the top right corner of the graph. It’s the bunch of weeks in which my happiness was at all-time highs, while being around my girlfriend for most of this time.

“The best weeks of my entire life were made possible by my girlfriend”

There are also a couple of weeks which do not follow the trend, at all. Some of the weeks were terrible, despite my girlfriend having a positive influence. These are visualised in the upper left of the chart, where my happiness ratings were low but my relationship ratio was very much positive. For example, I was struck with the flu in week 10, 2015, which made me feel quite miserable. Still, my girlfriend was there to take care of me and cheer me up!

Also, during week 18, 2014, I traveled to Tauranga and McLaren Falls Park for a camping trip in New Zealand with my friends. It was a fantastic week overall, while in the meantime, my relationship did not positively influence it. There are obviously many more weeks like these, and they lower the correlation between my happiness and relationship. As I have said before, it makes sense since there are too many other factors (sickness, weather, traveling etc.) that can influence my happiness.

Loss aversion in relationships?

Humans are loss averse. It means that we dislike losses more than we like equal wins. More precisely, we dislike losing $5,00 more than we like winning $5,00. There are numerous highly informative studies on this topic.

I have created the picture below to help explain this theory.

Here I exhibit my true MS Paint skills

What this means is that a loss has a bigger negative value than the positive value of an equally sized win. It’s how we humans work.

“We dislike fighting more than we like cuddling”

I absolutely believe this is applicable to relationships as well, in some way. The damage done from a negative experience (argument, fight, bad communication etc) is bigger than the good that comes from an equally positive experience (nice date, holiday, laughing together etc). In other words, we dislike fighting more than we like cuddling.

As I’ve said before, this is not an exact science. There is no way for me to exactly determine the impact of any event within a relationship. I might be comparing apples to apples, but am I really comparing apples of the same size? Absolutely not.

However, I do have a pretty big set of data, which helps me see the bigger picture. I have over 3,5 years of data on my relationship. Sure, the events within this time period have had different impacts, both negatively and positively. But since I am using a big data set here, these different influence sizes will regress to the mean and be statistically useful.

Look at it this way: let’s say I want to calculate the average weight of apples from two different shipments. If I weigh a single apple of each shipment, the difference can be huge. Therefore, I will not be able to determine whether the average weight of shipment A is better or worse than shipment B. However, if I weigh all the apples of each shipment in bulk and divide that by the number of apples, I will be able to accurately tell the difference in average weight between both shipments.

And that’s what I’m going to do. I want to see if I actually dislike the fighting more than I like the cuddling, by looking at every single week of data. For the record, there are 189 weeks in this data set.

Proving loss aversion in my relationship!

I have divided all the weeks into two groups: the positively influenced weeks with a happiness ratio of 1 or higher (red) and the negatively influenced weeks with a happiness ratio lower than 1 (red). If I’m correct about this loss aversion theory being applicable to relationships, the graph will look similar to the enhanced example below.

Loss aversion theory applicable to happiness from relationships?

I believe a relationship with a happiness ratio of merely 1 is not sustainable. Even though you have just as many positive experiences as negative ones, the negatives will have a bigger influence on your happiness. Therefore, it is important that the happiness ratio is significantly bigger than 1. A relationship should add happiness to your life, not just sustain it!

I’m no expert, but I believe the happiness ratio of a healthy relationship should be well above 2.

But does my personal data actually confirm this loss aversion theory in relationships?

Absolutely.

I have created a scatter plot below, showing each of the 189 weeks within my data set. I have split the positively influenced weeks from the negatively influenced weeks.

Fighting and cuddling

You can see my average happiness during the weeks in which my relationship was positive and negative. Of course, there are always many other different factors affecting my happiness. But I believe in the law of big numbers. Trends will be visible if the dataset is big enough. I have tracked my happiness daily for more than 3.5 years, and so I believe my results carry some statistical value.

This scatter chart shows that a higher happiness ratio is likely to result in a higher happiness rating. Great. If it were any different, I would have to seriously reconsider my entire relationship.

But you can also see that this loss aversion theory does exist in my data set. The negative influences of my relationship have a much higher impact on my happiness when compared to the positive influences.

Please notice that the horizontal scale is logarithmic. Therefore, the negative happiness ratio (from 0.1 to 1.0) has the same scale as the positive happiness ratio (from 1,0 to 10).

Humans hate losing $5,00 more than we like finding $5,00. In a similar way, I hate the fighting more than I like the cuddling.

“A relationship with an overall happiness ratio of 1,0 is not sustainable”

That is why I believe a relationship with an overall happiness ratio of 1,0 is not sustainable. If you fight just as much as you cuddle, the effect on your happiness will be negative because the fights will have a bigger impact. Again, I’m no expert, but I think a relationship needs a happiness ratio of at least 2 to have a positive influence on your happiness.

My relationship in numbers

So after all that I’ve said, how does my relationship exactly influence my happiness?

I have created the picture below to answer that question.

The effect of my relationship on my happiness is definitely positive. Days influenced by my relationship – whether positively or negatively influenced – are rated higher with 0,04 on average. My happiness on positively influenced days is rated higher by 0,24 when compared to the overall average.

These numbers may not sound impressive to you, but I tend to think otherwise. You see, I am already a really happy person. An overall average happiness rating of 7,78 is already very high. The fact that my girlfriend is able to further increase this is quite impressive to me.

Long-distance relationship?

In addition, we have spent multiple periods in long distance relationships. One of these periods, which I refer to as relationship hell, had a huge impact on us. These results are even more impressive when you consider that we have a spent about 1 year in total apart. I will try to quantify the exact effect of these long-distance relationships in part 2 of this post series. I want to know how much these periods of long-distance decreased my happiness in our relationship.

“The negative events within my relationship have much more impact than the positive events”

What’s also interesting here, is that the loss aversion theory is further confirmed. On the days that I have spent with my girlfriend, the average happiness rating was 7,82. The average rating on the positively influenced days was 8,03: a positive difference of 0,21. However, the average rating on the negatively influenced days was 6,82: a negative difference of 1,00! The negative events within my relationship have much more impact than the positive events.

This may seem alarming. I don’t think it is, however. Remember the pie chart at the start of the post? My relationship influences my happiness positively much more often than it does negatively That’s what compensates the loss aversion theory in my overall happiness.

Closing words

I feel very lucky to be in this relationship and wouldn’t want to change a single thing.

To use the same words as before: yes, I may dislike the fighting more than I do like the cuddling, but at least we cuddle about 5 times more often! 🙂

I love my girlfriend and I’m very happy in love!

If you have any questions about anything, please let me know in the comments below, and I’ll be happy to answer them!

Cheers!


535 F.Supp.2d 1266 (2008)
Paul DELISLE, individually, and on behalf of others similarly situated, Plaintiff,
v.
LYG CORPORATION, a Florida corporation d/b/a Coral Rose Cafe, and Lidiya Umansky, individually, Defendants.
No. 07-61893-CIV.
United States District Court, S.D. Florida.
February 25, 2008.
*1267 Stacey Hope Cohen, Shavitz. Law Group, Boca Raton, FL, for Plaintiff.
Chris Kleppin, Glasser Boreth Ceasar & Kleppin, Plantation, FL, for Defendants.
ORDER PROVIDING NOTICE OF TREATMENT AS SUMMARY JUDGMENT MOTION AND SETTING DEADLINE FOR SUPPLEMENTAL FILINGS
PATRICIA A. SEITZ, District Judge.
THIS MATTER is before the Court on Defendants' Motion to Stay Pending Resolution of Defendants' Motion to Dismiss or Alternative Motion for Summary Judgment [DE-12]. On December 26, 2007, Plaintiff filed a single-count Complaint seeking overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"). Prior to taking any discovery, Defendants filed a motion to dismiss or alternative motion for summary judgment [DE-6] claiming that this Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the FLSA because there is no nexus to interstate commerce. Defendants also moved to stay all proceedings pending resolution of the motion [DE-12].
To establish a claim for overtime compensation under the FLSA, Plaintiff must show either individual coverage i.e., he was engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, or enterprise coverage i.e., that LGY Corporation ("LGY") is an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of commerce. See 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1);[1]see also Thorne v. All Restoration Serv., Inc., 448 F.3d 1264, 1266 (11th Cir.2006); Alonso v. Garcia, 147 Fed.Appx. 815, 816 (11th Cir.2005), By his pleadings, Plaintiff appears to travel under the enterprise coverage theory. (See Complaint ¶ 12; Response at 6-7 (claiming that LGY is an "enterprise" within the meaning of the FLSA.)) Thus, under this theory, Plaintiff cannot state a claim under the FLSA unless he can prove that LGY has gross annual sales not less than $500,000. See 29 U.S.C. § 203(s). Defendants dispute that LGY has sufficient gross sales.
Whether LGY has sufficient gross sales to be covered by, the FLSA implicates both the jurisdictional basis and an important element of Plaintiffs federal claim. Also, to determine LGY's gross sales, the Court must review documents outside of the pleadings. Where a factual attack on subject matter jurisdiction also implicates an element of the cause of action, a district court should "find that jurisdiction exists and deal with the objection as a direct attack on the merits of the plaintiffs case" under the Rule 56 summary judgment standard. Navarro v. Broney Automotive Repairs, Inc., 533 F.Supp.2d 1223, ___ n. 2, 2008 WL 320326, *3 n. 2 (S.D.Fla.2008) (citing Lawrence v. Dunbar, 919 F.2d 1525, 1529 (11th Cir.1990) (internal citations omitted)). Moreover, if a court considers matters outside of the pleadings, Rule 12(b) requires the court to comply with the requirements of Rule 56.[2] Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b); Jones v. *1268 Auto. Ins. Co. of Hartford, CT, 917 F.2d 1528, 1532 (11th Cir.1990). Therefore, the Court shall treat Defendants' motion as one for summary judgment.[3] Plaintiff, however, may supplement the record with further evidence in support of its position.[4]
Accordingly, it is hereby
ORDERED that
(1) Defendants' Motion to Stay Pending Resolution of Defendants' Motion to Dismiss or Alternative Motion for Summary Judgment [DE-12] is GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART. Plaintiffs may seek discovery relating solely to the Court's subject matter jurisdiction under the FLSA.
(2) Plaintiffs supplemental filing, if any, is due by March 24, 2007 and Defendants' response is due by March 31, 2008. Neither submission may exceed seven pages.
(3) Nothing in this Order shall alter any other deadlines set in this case.
NOTES
[1]  Under § 203(s) of the FLSA, an "[e]nterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce" means an enterprise that

(A)(i) has employees engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, or that has employees handling, selling, or otherwise working on goods or materials that have been moved in or produced for commerce by any person; and
(ii) is an enterprise whose annual gross volume of sales made or business done is not less than $500,000 (exclusive of excise taxes at the retail level that are (separately stated);
[2]  Under Rule 56(c), a court must give the parties 10 days notice prior to converting a motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c).
[3]  The Court also notes that the low amount in controversy, $5,012,28 in damages plus attorney's fees and' costs, weighs in favor of early resolution of this issue. (See DE-14.)
[4]  It behooves Defendants to provide Plaintiff with the necessary discovery in an expedient manner as failure to do so may result in the Court's allowance of additional time for discovery and the resultant increase in fees and costs.


2012: Two-year letterwinner ... will figure in the mix
for playing time at inside linebacker again this fall.

2011: Played in nine games,
totaling 11 tackles as an inside linebacker ... had a season-best
four tackles in a season-opening 24-10 win over Franklin &
Marshall (9/3).

2010: Played in all 11 games
as a linebacker, starting one contest ... logged 27 tackles (16
solo), including one tackle for a loss (-5) ... posted seven
tackles in a 45-3 win over Juniata (11/13) ... started in a 49-14
loss to Thomas More (11/20) in the NCAA Tournament, recording a
career-high 10 tackles.

2009: Saw action in several
games as a reserve linebacker and special teams player ... notched
four tackles ... had two stops in a 31-13 win over Sewanee (9/12)
and two tackles against Greensboro (9/19).

High School: Earned four
letters in football, four in lacrosse and one in indoor track &
field at Roanoke Catholic High School … helped lead the
lacrosse team to a state championship as a senior … served
as a captain for both the football and lacrosse teams …
earned honorable mention all-state honors at linebacker as a
sophomore, second team all-state laurels at linebacker as a junior
and first team all-state honors at running back as a senior
… two-time team MVP … three-time first team
all-conference honoree in lacrosse … holds the school
scoring record with 289 career points … also a record-holder
in the triple jump and 2x200 meter relay events.

Personal: Is an Eagle Scout
… studied great white sharks in South Africa over the summer
... biology major.


In the newest issue they had a bucket list for homebrewers, I was able to check a few off that list. Looking to knock some more off the list here soon. Next on my list is getting BJCP certified. What's on the top of your list?

+1. I've been rejected once. That wasn't on my bucket list, but it's a start. Attend the Northern California Homebrewers Festival. Attend an AHA conference. Brew a Belgian that's actually drinkable. (Spent my first summer as a homebrewer brewing undrinkable Belgians. Could probably do better now, several years later, but decided to work on the basics a while.)Get my nerve up to enter a beer in a contest.Publish an essay about homebrewing (in a magazine not primarily about beer or brewing).Build an all-electric, pump-driven, mobile brewstand.

I've been very lucky in that I've managed to have things happen in my brewing hobby that I never expected would happen. A Big Brew recipe, having my beer brewed commercially, being on the Governing Committee, having a brewing yeast named after me, and now I'll be attending Beer Camp next week. If I could just make it to GABF one of these days, that would about do it for me.

Brew a great brett beer like Goose Island SofieTravel to BelgiumHave a beer brewed at a local pub/breweryEnter Sam Adams homebrew compHave my back and knees work the day after I brewGet WLP570 to floccuate within my lifetime


HCPSS is looking for student input on bullying prevention

HCPSS needs YOU!

In an effort to gather student input on how bullying behaviors may be affecting our school environments and overall school climate, the Howard County Public School System is hosting four evening sessions for middle and high school students. Information gathered will inform future recommendations from the Anti-Bullying Task Force. The activity will be facilitated by student leaders who will work with small groups. Students are welcome to attend any one of the events - they will all be the same. If you want to attend, please complete the form below. We are limiting each session to 50 students so please only sign up if you are definitely able to attend. The event is for students but a waiting area for parents will be available. Thank you in advance for your input and willingness to help us make our schools a safer place for everyone. RSVP's will be accepted until March 13, 2013.

* Required

Student Name
*

This is a required question

Student's School
*

This is a required question

Contact email address (will be used only if rescheduling is necessary)


Q:

How to edit a key with Win32::TieRegistry?

I was doing a script with Perl and I came up with the following problem: I have to edit the name of a key in the Windows registry.
I'm using the module Win32::TieRegistry and searched at the documentation for any function, but didn't find it. I know that it should be easy, but can't find the way to do that. Any tip?
Thanks!

A:

You can't change the name of a key in a hash, but you can copy the value to a new key and delete the old one.
$hash{new} = delete $hash{old};

This should work the same for a tied hash, assuming the implementation is sane.


WNUX

WNUX is a Catholic Religious formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Montgomery, West Virginia, serving the Beckley/Oak Hill area.  WNUX is owned and operated by The Saint Thomas More Catholic Lawyers Society, Inc.

References

External links

Category:2012 establishments in West Virginia
Category:Catholic radio stations
Category:Radio stations established in 2012
NUX


Q:

Efficiency of gettext : in-memory translation

I have an embedded system with Flash and a very low end CPU and less RAM. I wanted to know how efficient is the gettext language translation using .MO file.
For doing the locale language string fetch, do every time gettext read MO file from flash OR, the complete MO binary file is first loaded into RAM,  and do the locale string fetch from there ?
If the MO file (It will be large ~1Mb since there are a lot of strings) is always loaded into RAM, it will eatup my RAM.

A:

As MSalters said it is open source, so you could tweak it.
If you give a fuller definition of the system (as per my comment) we might be able to help more.
If this is a deeply embedded system (the sort of stuff I do), with no OS, and no external file system of any type, the strings must all be in memory. There will very likely be a mechanism to store those strings in flash, so that they consume no RAM.
For example, on an ARM, data structures can easily be stored in flash. To do that, you need to tell the compiler which segment of the program to store them, using something like:
const char mesg1[] __attribute__((section (".USER_FLASH")))
             = "Ciao a tutti";
const char mesg2[] __attribute__((section (".USER_FLASH")))
             = "Riesco a sentire la mia mente va Dave";

When the program is linked, the linker script needs to be written to place the strings into Flash, and they will not be copied to RAM.
Approximately how much space can you dedicate to messages? How much space do they take?
You may be fighting a well researched problem; the amount of programming effort increases exponentially as resource limits are approached. It may take tremendous effort to fit stuff into the final few % of memory.
Once 'obvious' tweak is to try a few simple compression techniques. One might get applied on the raw messages, and uncompressed as the messages are printed.
Edit: I thought your question seemed so straightforward and natural, that I had assumed the answer would be straightforward to find.
I had a look at the gettext documentation, but failed to find it there. I downloaded the source. After 10 minutes, I honestly could not tell you how it worked. I can tell you it is much more complicated than I'd expected. I looked at the extensive documentation. Lots of documentation on how to best organise to do translation, on how to prepare the program, on things that can cause problems. Very helpful insights. Yet I could not find any documentation explaining its overall run-time architecture. None. Nothing.
My best advice is to go to the GNU gettext mailing lists, search/look and if necessary ask. The mailing list archives can be found at http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gettext/ I apologise that I couldn't be more helpful.


/****************************************************************************
**
** Copyright (C) 2011 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies).
** All rights reserved.
** Contact: Nokia Corporation (qt-info@nokia.com)
**
** This file is part of the QtGui module of the Qt Toolkit.
**
** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:LGPL$
** GNU Lesser General Public License Usage
** This file may be used under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
** License version 2.1 as published by the Free Software Foundation and
** appearing in the file LICENSE.LGPL included in the packaging of this
** file. Please review the following information to ensure the GNU Lesser
** General Public License version 2.1 requirements will be met:
** http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html.
**
** In addition, as a special exception, Nokia gives you certain additional
** rights. These rights are described in the Nokia Qt LGPL Exception
** version 1.1, included in the file LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt in this package.
**
** GNU General Public License Usage
** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU General
** Public License version 3.0 as published by the Free Software Foundation
** and appearing in the file LICENSE.GPL included in the packaging of this
** file. Please review the following information to ensure the GNU General
** Public License version 3.0 requirements will be met:
** http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
**
** Other Usage
** Alternatively, this file may be used in accordance with the terms and
** conditions contained in a signed written agreement between you and Nokia.
**
**
**
**
**
** $QT_END_LICENSE$
**
****************************************************************************/

#ifndef QVOLATILEIMAGEDATA_P_H
#define QVOLATILEIMAGEDATA_P_H

//
//  W A R N I N G
//  -------------
//
// This file is not part of the Qt API.  It exists purely as an
// implementation detail.  This header file may change from version to
// version without notice, or even be removed.
//
// We mean it.
//

#include <QtGui/qimage.h>
#include <QtCore/qshareddata.h>

#ifdef Q_OS_SYMBIAN
class CFbsBitmap;
#endif

QT_BEGIN_NAMESPACE

class QVolatileImageData : public QSharedData
{
public:
    QVolatileImageData();
    QVolatileImageData(int w, int h, QImage::Format format);
    QVolatileImageData(const QImage &sourceImage);
    QVolatileImageData(void *nativeImage, void *nativeMask);
    QVolatileImageData(const QVolatileImageData &other);
    ~QVolatileImageData();

    void beginDataAccess() const;
    void endDataAccess(bool readOnly = false) const;
    bool ensureFormat(QImage::Format format);
    void *duplicateNativeImage() const;
    void ensureImage();

#ifdef Q_OS_SYMBIAN
    void updateImage();
    void initWithBitmap(CFbsBitmap *source);
    void applyMask(CFbsBitmap *mask);
    void ensureBitmap();
    void release();
    QVolatileImageData *next;
    QVolatileImageData *prev;
    CFbsBitmap *bitmap;
#endif
    QImage image;
    QPaintEngine *pengine;
};

QT_END_NAMESPACE

#endif // QVOLATILEIMAGEDATA_P_H


Q:

Best Practices in Retrieving Related Data in a REST API

So I have a REST API in which I Have a resource in which other resources are linked to (related models, in programming point of view).
So how I am doing it right now is that whenever I request for a resource, related resources are referenced via URLs ('/related_data/related_data_id/').
However, I worry that, let's say there are 5 related resources to the one I'm retrieving, is that I would perform 5 GET requests. I am writing an iPhone client and I'm wondering if this is how to properly do it using REST (that I'm returning URLs). A sample JSON response is this:
{
"meta": {
            "limit": 20,
            "next": null,
            "offset": 0,
            "previous": null,
            "total_count": 2
        },
"objects": [
    {
        "away_team": "/api/team/3/",
        "country": "/api/country/1/",
        "event_date": "2011-08-16",
        "event_time": "06:00:00",
        "event_timezone": "GMT",
        "home_team": "/api/team/4/",
        "id": "1",
        "level": "/api/level/4/",
        "resource_uri": "/api/event/1/",
        "tournament": "/api/tournament/1/"
    },
    {
        "away_team": "/api/team/4/",
        "country": "/api/country/1/",
        "event_date": "2011-09-29",
        "event_time": "12:00:00",
        "event_timezone": "UTC",
        "home_team": "/api/team/3/",
        "id": "2",
        "level": "/api/level/1/",
        "resource_uri": "/api/event/2/",
        "tournament": "/api/tournament/6/"
    }
]
}

Is this a proper way of doing it in REST, considering that "each URI must map to a resource" and all those things?
I am using Django and django-tastypie
Thanks in advance!

A:

Yes; that is proper if the related resources are updated independently. REST architectures depend on caching for performance, and therefore work best with resources which act as atomic entities (see more here). That way, you can update resource B and have its representation be fresh without having to update resource A. See this SO comment for more design details.


Reflections on Performance Art among Friends

I n 2003, two years after I began attending Hartford (Conn.) Meeting, I went into a clearness committee, worried the weighty Friends might dismiss my attempt to artfully and comically explore my bizarre coming out experience, that they might judge it a sensational, self-centered, shallow parody, which had no place in serious Quaker circles. I began to relax after the first 30 minutes of the meeting, feeling comfortable and affirmed. But then Bill, a retired child psychologist and the most secular of all the people on the committee, jarred me when he said, “It sounds like yours is a prophetic ministry.”

I suddenly felt cornered. I explained I had attended Pentecostal and Evangelical churches for nearly 20 years. The words “ministry” and “prophetic” stirred up trauma for me. The “ministry” I had received attempted to “de-gay” me and destroy much of my personality. The prophecies, at times literally yelled in my face, served to undermine my sense of self. Bill nodded and listened. His tone softened as he assured me, “I am talking about something different. You are speaking truth to a generation that needs to hear a message about justice and equality. You are pointing out wrongs in the world and showing people a different, better way. Your prophetic ministry gives light for straight people like me who need to see the world in a fresh, new way.”

As I considered this, I relaxed back into my seat; my fists unclenched. His description of prophetic ministry was getting closer to what I sought to do with my play Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House, but still, something unsettled me. After a period of silence I spoke, “I hear what you are saying, but it is hard for me to accept that position. It sounds like you see me as a preacher, but I am not; I am a performance artist.”

The members of the committee wanted to know more about this difference, and I have been trying to answer that question ever since. In my one-person comedies, I take on deadly serious issues: justice for queer, transgender, gender non-binary, bisexual, lesbian, and gay people; white male power and privilege; climate change as a human rights issue; discrimination by lesbians and gays toward bisexuals, gender nonconforming, and transgender people; and the death of both of my parents from lung cancer.

While many individual Quakers love and appreciate art for art’s sake, we often look for a message in a work of art.

B eyond sharing a message, I understand the role of performance art is to open up the audience to thinking, feeling, remembering, reacting, and responding. A preacher has a clear message to communicate, while I, as a performance artist, toss out into the air images, characters, and scenarios. I trust the alchemy between my audience and my art and me will create multiple messages and lasting impressions.

After a performance, it is common for an audience member to approach me: “During your show, you said . . . ,” and here they share something that moved them deeply and thank me for reaching them. The strange thing is I never intended the message that moved them, but they heard it all the same. In the artful telling of stories, the characters on stage and the word images repeat and bend in ways so subtle the audience is hardly aware of what is happening, and messages are formed in their minds. My art created an opportunity for them; their openness allowed them to create along with me. Of course, this can happen when someone gives a lecture or a message in meeting for worship. It happens so frequently around my performances, however, and with messages that are so original that I have to believe the artistic presentation fosters the incubation of deeply felt personal messages, which audience members then attribute to me or one of my characters.

While many individual Quakers love and appreciate art for art’s sake, we often look for a message in a work of art that deepens our already deeply felt worldview or one that challenges us in fresh, new ways. A fellow playwright will ask me, how did you structure your play? or, how do you use language and setting to build tension? A representative from a Quaker meeting looking to book one of my performances will instead ask, what is it about? Political and moral messages upholding our testimonies of equality and peace are valued among the unprogrammed Friends, progressive churches, and religious institutions that host my presentations. The artful ways these ideas are presented is no doubt valued, but the message is primary.

Since that clearness committee meeting in 2003, I have written more than 12 plays. Typically I write a play the way I wish to present it: as art, and then I adapt it to a format I call a performance lecture. Think of this adaptation like the work of the clothing designer who displays unconventional fashion concepts on the Paris runway and then must alter them in order to sell on the racks to the public.

I adapted my play Transfigurations—Transgressing Gender in the Bible into a performance lecture. The original version was inspired by scholarship I did about gender nonconforming Bible characters. I love the narrative arc of the piece and the almost hidden but constant conflict in it. I include references to the Gospel of Thomas as the narrator, an unnamed disciple of Jesus on a journey, talks to the strangers who host him. He tells stories leading to a personal revelation he knows might result in his hosts turning on him to kill him. While the audience doesn’t know what is at stake at the beginning of the play, the tension in the performance and in the script builds to the courageous disclosure at the end.

In 2011 I was invited to perform Transfigurations at the Transfaith of Color Conference, attended by mostly African American and Latino transgender and gender nonbinary Christians. During the last ten minutes of the performance, I began to hear weeping in the audience that turned to sobbing throughout the hall. After the finale, I conducted a question-and-answer session. A man stood with tears streaming down his face, “You brought my ancestors back to me. I thought I had lost them, but you showed me where they have been all this time.”

The characters and the performance of gender and gender nonconformity are central to this piece. That weekend different audience members explained they felt echoes of their own life struggles in the dialogue and the emotions portrayed. Beyond a message about inclusion or equality, they experienced beauty and revelation, and this moved them deeply. This was the experience of many LGBTQ people who saw the performance during the first few years.

But as this piece was performed more widely, Quaker audiences, leaders from various Christian denominations, and the many LGBTQ people who came out of traditional Christian backgrounds wanted and needed something more than the art. For them, the question-and-answer sessions became as long as the play, with audience members probing me for the details that led to my original interpretations. Some revealed they felt their heads would explode by the end of the performance because there was so much more they wanted to know about the scholarship. They were moved by the art, but they also wanted more of the ideas behind it.

The performance lecture form seeks to give these three roles each equal pull, like the cords that enable a tent to hold its shape.

A fter breaking my wrist a week before a performance hosted by the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale University, I knew I could not perform the piece as designed. Hopped up on pains pills three days after surgery and with my arm swollen and in a sling, I reworked the presentation while traveling on the train to New Haven. I decided to perform excerpts while adding a mini-lecture between scenes to explain the scholarship and the ideas about gender explored in the text.

This is the sort of presentation I did three years later at the Friends General Conference gathering in 2012 when presenting the Bible Half Hour. In fact, I went one step further and even led the audience in theater activities that allowed them to experience the Bible stories for themselves, so they too could embody the characters. The response stunned me as LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ Friends came to me throughout the gathering in tears sharing revelations they had about the Biblical texts and themselves. What moved people most though was the scholarship—what it was about—and I recognized the value of the performance lecture hybrid presentation.

The performance lecture not only worked for my audiences, for whom the message was often primary, but also for me as I moved in the world as an artist, an activist, and an academic. These roles pull at each other, competing to take the primary role. The performance lecture form seeks to give these three roles each equal pull, like the cords that enable a tent to hold its shape.

This works well with Quaker audiences at gatherings and yearly meetings, in meetinghouses, and at Quaker schools and universities. Our strong commitment to education and scholarship coupled with our history of engaging in social justice issues melds well with artful presentations, particularly with word-based art like my performances or the work of writers and singer/songwriters.

My messages are not always direct and can be misinterpreted, as Quakers misunderstood the performed acts of James Nayler and Benjamin Lay, two fearless Quakers of old who experienced rejection when they got too creative with their preaching.

T he one place I can run into trouble though is with comedy. Our custom of speaking plainly in meeting for worship can make the wordplay essential for some comedy challenging for Quaker audiences and, as a result, for me as a performer. Satire and irony, especially when it is subtle, done in character, or relies on tone can be misunderstood when taken literally. Friends can get so caught up in the words that we miss the point. It is never fun explaining a joke to a Friend, but even that interaction is part of the work of presenting performance art for Quakers. We are committed to fairness and love. Comedy can be used to hurt others or to make light of serious issues. Unpacking a joke can lead to rich discussion. I seek to use comedy to shed light on important issues. Still, some Friends prefer the straightforward message over the comic performance.

That may be why I do not call my work ministry or refer to myself as a minister. My messages are not always direct and can be misinterpreted, as Quakers misunderstood the performed acts of James Nayler and Benjamin Lay, two fearless Quakers of old who experienced rejection when they got too creative with their preaching. Fortunately, Quaker audiences today are more open to artful approaches. Even so, I never use any of these techniques during a meeting for worship.

Since that initial clearness committee 15 years ago, I have made one adjustment in describing the nature of my work. Yes, I am a performance artist, but the general population and many Friends are not regularly exposed to the political and social aspects of performance art. Today when people ask me what I do, I tell them, “I am a theatrical performance activist.” I then apologize, “It’s hard to explain. I think you have to see it for yourself.”


Q:

timestamp определенной даты

Есть функция time(), она содержит timestamp текущей даты.
А как например узнать timestamp такой даты: 1 января 2013 г. 00:00

A:

mktime() - время по фиксированным параметрам
strtotime() - время из произвольной(почти) строки


The delicious symbolism of a Hurricane Isaac bearing down on Tampa just as the Teapublican convention begins is clearly the product of a divine script. But rain and gale force winds cannot possibly hide all the Krazy Klowns that have descended upon this Florida city. The powers that want to be of the Republican National Committee have tried to hack into the GPS devices of the Krazy Klowns, but they are coming to town anyway. And there aren’t enough attics, basements and closets available to hide them all.

Congressman Ted Akins kind of jumped the gun with his “legitimate” rape rant, but it is not as if Akins is the source of shame and dismay in the Teapublican Party. His odious and Neanderthal perspective on women is shared by many members of the legions of the right wing of the right wing including the presumptive vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan.

After all, it is Paul Ryan who has joined Congressman Akins in co-sponsoring bill after bill calling for the ban of all abortions, even in the instance of rape and incest. After all, the Teapublican Party platform calls for the ban of all abortions, even in the instance of rape and incest. And Mitt Romney is on the record as seeking to limit reproductive choice for women only in the instance of rape and incest – a position Paul Ryan calls “a step in the right direction”.

As you settle back to watch the Teapublican Klown Kavalcade with a glass of wine (or strychnine) there is an interesting bit of information that the leadership of the RNC would desperately prefer that you ignore. The following individuals have all led Mitt Romney in polling for president – Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Donald Trump, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry.

That would be Michele Bachmann who believes that God wanted her to run for president – although obviously God did not want her to win. Herman Cain, the pizza mini-magnate who couldn’t seem to tell the difference between a friendship and an affair and has ideas “twirling around” in his head was considered by many Teapublicans to be preferable to Mitt Romney.

Rodeo Rick “Oops” Perry was the darling of the right wing of the right wing until it became perfectly clear that Governor Perry was all hat and no cattle. And still, at this very moment, there are Teapublican delegates in Tampa who would vote for Rick Perry if they are allowed to do so. And we can’t forget Saint Santorum who wholeheartedly agrees with Paul Ryan that a rapist’s child is a gift from God to the rape victim.

Donald Trump, he of the manufactured hair and the contrived lies (or is it the contrived hair and the manufactured lies), played a latter day Dumb Quixote tilting at the birther windmill, that is until he was absolutely skewered and barbequed by President Obama at the National Press Club Annual Dinner. And The Donald, like a bad smell or a bad dream, still won’t go away.

And finally, it wasn’t too long ago that Newt Gingrich was the Teapublican flavor of the month (basically defined as Anybody But Romney). His ignoble failure at leadership as Speaker of the House and his pitiful personal narrative were bad enough. The fact that it was revealed on the national stage that he really had no reason to be so impressed with Newt Gingrich pretty much sealed the coffin of the Gingrich candidacy….and I haven’t mentioned Ron Paul who has been so moved by that fashionable neo-fascist Ayn Rand that he named his son, U.S. Senator Rand Paul after her (can you imagine a Democrat naming his son/daughter Marx?).

Nevertheless, there will be thousands of Teapublicans on full display who truly believe that a rapist’s child is a gift from God and that Barack Obama is a Kenyan, Muslim anti-Christ. There are presumably sane men and women who will contend that fraudulent claims of voter fraud are a legitimate tactic to deny the right to vote to black Americans.

The airwaves will be full of frothing Teapublicans who want to bomb Iran, shoot illegal immigrants and shred the social safety net. Shrinking the federal government to a size so that it could be drowned in a bathtub may be Grover Norquist’s ghoulish catch phrase, but most of the people that you see on television this week believe that this catch phrase articulates a strategy that will make this country better.

And underlying this entire maelstrom inside of a hurricane will be the gusting winds of racism. Toure and Chris Matthews at MSNBC have come under criticism for telling the truth. Ascribing foreign and un-American characteristics to President Obama are slick and slimy methods of playing the race card and stoking the mindless and soulless racist resentment that fuels the white heat of opposition to the very existence of Barack Obama on this planet.

And meanwhile, Mitt Romney blithely lobs not very subtle racist dog whistles and slime balls by touting his citizenship even though, ironically, his father George Romney actually was not born in the United States. But as Romney grips and grins his way through this outrageously gruesome Klown Karnival, the RNC leadership hopes that no one is watching…..or really listening.


Y. Wang, L. Feng, K. Zhang, K.‐Y. Wang, W. Fan, X. Wang, B. Guo, F. Dai, L. Zhang, D. Sun, H.‐C. Zhou, Uncovering Structural Opportunities for Zirconium Metal--Organic Frameworks via Linker Desymmetrization. Adv. Sci. 2019, 6, 1901855 10.1002/advs.201901855

Metal−organic frameworks (MOFs), or porous coordination polymers, are a well‐developed class of porous crystalline materials constructed from inorganic metal clusters and organic linkers.[1](#advs1384-bib-0001){ref-type="ref"}, [2](#advs1384-bib-0002){ref-type="ref"}, [3](#advs1384-bib-0003){ref-type="ref"}, [4](#advs1384-bib-0004){ref-type="ref"}, [5](#advs1384-bib-0005){ref-type="ref"}, [6](#advs1384-bib-0006){ref-type="ref"}, [7](#advs1384-bib-0007){ref-type="ref"}, [8](#advs1384-bib-0008){ref-type="ref"}, [9](#advs1384-bib-0009){ref-type="ref"} As highly tunable structures through judicious linker design, MOFs attracted considerable interests in fields, such as gas storage, separation, heterogeneous catalysis, sensing, light harvesting, and drug delivery.[4](#advs1384-bib-0004){ref-type="ref"}, [10](#advs1384-bib-0010){ref-type="ref"}, [11](#advs1384-bib-0011){ref-type="ref"} Among the numerous MOFs, zirconium MOFs have received increasing attention in recent years due to their highly stable feature originated from the robust Zr---O cooridnation bonds.[1](#advs1384-bib-0001){ref-type="ref"}, [12](#advs1384-bib-0012){ref-type="ref"} The high chemical stability of Zr‐MOF ensures its economical large‐scale production in water solution and also permits its structural intactness when exposed to harsh conditions.

The combination of Zr clusters and different organic linkers has contributed to the structural diversity and functional complexity of the MOF materials. Various synthetic approaches have been developed to synthesize Zr‐MOFs with structural complexicity, including linker design strategies, pillar strategies, postsynthetic methods, and preformed clusters.[1](#advs1384-bib-0001){ref-type="ref"} For example, Zhou group reported the steric control over ditopic linker based Zr‐PCN‐700, where bulky substituents on the 2‐ and 2′‐positions of BPDC (biphenyl‐4,4′‐dicarboxylate) were introduced to constrain the two carboxylates and phenyl rings into a perpendicular conformation.[13](#advs1384-bib-0013){ref-type="ref"} Later Guillerm and co‐workers descibed the topoligical influence of zigzag ligands during the assembly of **bcu** net.[14](#advs1384-bib-0014){ref-type="ref"} Speaking of 4‐connected linkers, the structural diversity based on Zr~6~ clusters can also be expanded by tuning linker conformation. For example, various topologies including **ftw**, **csq**, **shp**, **scu**, **she**, and **sqc** can be accessed when square or rectangle tetratopic linkers are chosen.[15](#advs1384-bib-0015){ref-type="ref"}, [16](#advs1384-bib-0016){ref-type="ref"}, [17](#advs1384-bib-0017){ref-type="ref"}, [18](#advs1384-bib-0018){ref-type="ref"}, [19](#advs1384-bib-0019){ref-type="ref"}, [20](#advs1384-bib-0020){ref-type="ref"} The effects of linker geometry and flexibility influenced by the bulkiness of substituents can also be utilized to enhance the diversity of Zr‐tetratopic carboxylate MOFs.[21](#advs1384-bib-0021){ref-type="ref"} However, how to continue enhancing the structural and compositional compilation of Zr‐tetratopic carboxylate MOFs poses a synthetic challenge.

Herein, we initiate a systematic study on Zr‐tetracarboxylate frameworks constructed from a series of bent tetratopic linkers with various substituents. The utilization of a bent ligand with lower symmetry overcomes the traditional topology problems limited by the rigid ligand backbones. The tunable linker geometries and conformations here by altering the composition of substituents generate a series of Zr‐MOFs with varying topologies including **scu**, **flu,** and **cor**. This work provides fresh insights into the discovery of Zr‐tetracarboxylate frameworks with unprecedented topologies and conformations of building blocks, and highlights the importance of linker desymmetrization for dictating MOF architectures.

As shown in **Figure** [**1**](#advs1384-fig-0001){ref-type="fig"}a, four bent tetratopic ligands with various substituents (R~1~ = ---H, ---CH~3~; R~2~ = ---NH~2~, ---CH~3~; R~3~ = ---SO~2~, ---CH~2~, ---O) were selected to construct Zr‐based MOFs. Due to the bulkiness differences of R~1~ substituents, the distances and angles between two central rings can be tuned. The presence of R~2~ substituents can effectively influence the rotation angles between two peripheral phenyl rings near the central ring, while R~3~ substituents are utilized to tune rotation degrees around the linker center.

![Illustration of various topologies in Zr‐tetracarboxylate frameworks based on bent linkers. a) The combination of bent tetratopic linkers and Zr~6~ clusters with varying connectivities (from 4‐c to 12‐c) leads to various topologies. b) The linking of 8‐connected Zr~6~ clusters with *C* ~2v~ linkers (L‐SO~2~) leads to the formation of a **scu** net. c) Employment of a *C* ~1~ 4‐c ligand (L‐O) prompted the formation of a novel 8‐c Zr~6~ cluster and its reticulation into a (4, 8)‐c **flu** net. d) Use of a *C* ~1~ 4‐c ligand L‐CH~2~ resulted in the discovery of the same (4, 8)‐c **flu** net. e) The combination of 6‐c Zr~6~ clusters and 4‐c ligands with multiple bulky methyl groups (*C* ~1~) generates a hierarchically assembled (4, 6)‐c **cor** net. Optical images of these Zr‐MOF single crystals were presented, showing varying morphologies of the corresponding structures.](ADVS-6-1901855-g001){#advs1384-fig-0001}

Large colorless crystals, PCN‐901‐SO~2~ (also named UPC‐901‐SO~2~), were obtained with cuboid morphology after the solvothermal reactions between L‐SO~2~ and ZrCl~4~ in the presence of trifluoroacetic acid as a modulator for 24 h (Figure [1](#advs1384-fig-0001){ref-type="fig"}b). The structure of PCN‐901‐SO~2~ was determined by single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction. Powder X‐ray diffraction (PXRD) patterns indicate the phase purity of the obtained product (**Figure** [**2**](#advs1384-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}d). PCN‐901‐SO~2~ crystallized in the tetragonal space group P4/mmm (Table S1, Supporting Information). Crystallographically, it contains an 8‐connected Zr~6~ cluster \[Zr~6~(µ~3~‐O)~4~(µ~3~‐OH)~4~(OH)~4~(H~2~O)~4~(COO)~8~\] and a bent tetratopic linker with *C* ~2v~ symmetry. The 8‐connected Zr~6~ clusters can be simplified as cuboid nodes, while the bent tetratopic linker can be viewed as 4‐connected joint triangular nodes (Figure [2](#advs1384-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}a). The overall structure was analyzed to be a 4,8‐connected **scu** net with a point symbol of {4^16^.6^12^}{4^4^.6^2^}~2~ as determined by TOPOS 4.0 (Figure [2](#advs1384-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}a).[22](#advs1384-bib-0022){ref-type="ref"} Note that this topology has been reported previously in NU‐901 and PCN‐606, which are constructed from rectangular planar nodes and cuboid nodes.[21](#advs1384-bib-0021){ref-type="ref"}, [23](#advs1384-bib-0023){ref-type="ref"} In the structure of PCN‐901‐SO~2~, the arrangement of Zr~6~ clusters leads to two types of pores (Figure [2](#advs1384-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}a). Remarkably, the linkers are restricted into a conformation with 113.6° dihedral angle between the two central phenyl rings, and 82.9° dihedral angle between the two peripheral phenyl rings and the central ones. The chemical stability of PCN‐901‐SO~2~ was further examined by immersing MOFs in various aquesous solutions for 24 h. PXRD patterns indicated that the PCN‐901‐SO~2~ has excellent chemical stability in solution with pH ranging from 0 to 12 as evidenced by the well‐maintained crystallinity (Figure S14, Supporting Information).

![Structural illustration of PCN‐901‐SO~2~ with (4, 8)‐c scu topology and PCN‐902‐O with (4, 8)‐c flu topology. a) The assembly of 8‐c Zr~6~ clusters and 4‐c ligands with a SO~2~ substituent (*C* ~2v~) into PCN‐901‐SO~2~ with a (4, 8)‐c **scu** net. b) The assembly of 8‐c Zr~6~ clusters and 4‐c ligands with an O substituent (*C* ~1~) into PCN‐902‐O with a (4, 8)‐c **flu** net. c) N~2~ isotherms of PCN‐901(Zr)‐SO~2~, PCN‐902(Zr)‐O, PCN‐902(Zr)‐CH~2~, PCN‐903(Zr)‐(CH~3~)~6~, and PCN‐903(Zr)‐(CH~3~)~6~ after Se adsorption. d) Simulated and experimental Powder X‐ray diffraction (PXRD) patterns of PCN‐901(Zr)‐SO~2~, PCN‐902(Zr)‐O, PCN‐902(Zr)‐CH~2~, and PCN‐903(Zr)‐(CH~3~)~6~.](ADVS-6-1901855-g002){#advs1384-fig-0002}

Interestingly, we observed large crystals of PCN‐902‐O with a different morphology formed after the reaction between ZrCl~4~ and L‐O under the same condition (Figure [1](#advs1384-fig-0001){ref-type="fig"}c). As indicated by single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction, L‐O possessed a *C* ~1~ symmetry due to the bulkiness influence of the substituents (Figure [2](#advs1384-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}b). Notably, the dihedral angle between the two central phenyl rings in L‐O is 113.9° and the dihedral angles between the central phenyl ring and the two peripheral ones are around 60°. The corresponding phase purity of the products was supported by PXRD analysis (Figure [2](#advs1384-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}d). PCN‐902‐O crystallized in the triclinic space group *P*‐1 (Table S1, Supporting Information). Crystallographically, it contains an 8‐connected Zr~6~ cluster \[Zr~6~(µ~3~‐O)~4~(µ~3~‐OH)~4~(OH)~4~(H~2~O)~4~(COO)~8~\] and a 4‐connected bent tetratopic linker with *C* ~1~ symmetry. The overall structure was determined to be a 4, 8‐connected **flu** net with a point symbol of {4^12^.6^12^.8^4^}{4^6^}~2~ by TOPOS 4.0 (Figure [2](#advs1384-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}b). Replacing L‐O with a similar bent linker L‐CH~2~ generated the isostrucural PCN‐902‐CH~2~, as indicated by the PXRD pattern. The **flu** (fluorite) topology can be viewed as a cubic close packing (**ccp**) of the Ca^2+^ cations where the F^−^ anions occupy all tetrahedral interstitial cavities (Figure [2](#advs1384-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}a), leaving all the octahedral interstitial cavities vacant. MOFs with **flu** topology can be assembled through 4‐connected linkers and 8‐connected metal clusters.

Additionally, introducing bulky methyl groups onto the phenyl rings of bent L‐CH~2~ can necessitate the two peripheral phenyl rings to exhibit a larger dihedral angle, leading to a different conformation for MOF construction. In order to obtain large single crystals, benzoic acid was used as the modulator to control the growth kinetics of PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~, in which a truncated octahedron crystal with **cor** topology was built based upon an unprecedent 6‐c Zr~6~ cluster. Single‐crystal X‐ray analysis revealed that PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ crystallized in the trigonal space group *R‐3c* (**Figure** [**3**](#advs1384-fig-0003){ref-type="fig"}). It contains a novel 6‐connected Zr~6~ cluster \[Zr~6~(µ~3~‐O)~4~(µ~3~‐OH)~4~(OH)~6~(H~2~O)~6~(COO)~6~\] and a tetratopic linker with *C* ~1~ symmetry. Crystallographically, six bent tetratopic linkers bridged four neighboring Zr~6~ clusters, which can be simplified into a fascinating (4, 6)‐connected net with **cor** topology (Figure [3](#advs1384-fig-0003){ref-type="fig"}b).

![Structural illustration of PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ with (4, 6)‐c cor topology. a) Structural illustration of corundum (Al~2~O~3~) constructed from four‐connected O atoms and six‐connected Al atoms. b) The assembly of 6‐c Zr~6~ clusters and 4‐c ligands with bulky methyl substituents (*C* ~1~) into a (4, 6)‐c **cor** net. c) The top and side views of PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~, showing the connectivity modes of the building units and pore arrangement. d) PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ contains three types of pores with 6.4, 10.1, and 17.2 Å size. e) Illustration of the cluster and linker conformations in PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~.](ADVS-6-1901855-g003){#advs1384-fig-0003}

Different from the traditional 6‐connected Zr~6~ cluster observed in MOF‐808 and other 6‐c Zr‐MOFs, the Zr~6~ cluster in PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ displays two types of dihedral angles, 64.7° and 22.1°, between the O--Zr--Zr--O plane and the equatorial plane (Figure [3](#advs1384-fig-0003){ref-type="fig"}e). This unusual asymmetric feature of Zr~6~ clusters brings new opportuities to explore topology diversity within highly connected MOFs. The overall structure was analyzed to be a (4, 6)‐connected net with a point symbol of {4^3^.6^3^}~3~{4^6^.6^9^}~2~ as determined by TOPOS 4.0 (Figure [3](#advs1384-fig-0003){ref-type="fig"}b).

The intriguing **cor** topology originates from the lattice of corundum, a crystalline phase of aluminium oxide (Al~2~O~3~), where each Al atom is surrounded by six O atoms.[24](#advs1384-bib-0024){ref-type="ref"} In the corundum lattice, the O atoms never locate at the corners of a regular octahedron, instead, they form a slightly distorted hexagonal close packing, where two‐thirds of octahedral interstitial cavities are occupied by Al atoms. By replacing Al atoms with distorted 6‐connected Zr clusters and O atoms with bent tetratopic ligands, the extension from an inorganic material to a porous inorganic--organic hybrid compound is achieved (Figure [3](#advs1384-fig-0003){ref-type="fig"}a). The assembly of 6‐c Zr~6~ clusters and *C* ~1~ ligands initially generates a supramolecular triangular bipyramid building unit, where all equatorial vertices are occupied by the ligand building units while both polar vertices are placed by the inorganic clusters (Figure [3](#advs1384-fig-0003){ref-type="fig"}d). As a result, a microporous cage with 6.4 Å size is formed. Further hierarchical assembly of these triangular bipyramid building units into 3D network can be visualized in Figure [3](#advs1384-fig-0003){ref-type="fig"}. Each triangular bipyramid unit is connected to neighboring six units, resulting in a second type of pore with 10.1 Å size between each two triangular bipyramid units. Further assembly of these units also generates a larger cage with 17.2 Å size (Figure [3](#advs1384-fig-0003){ref-type="fig"}c). The discovery of PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ presents a very rare case, and a new level of sophisticated assembly of Zr‐cluster based MOFs involving multiple levels of structural hierarchy. It should be noted that there is a β‐UH~3~‐like topology based Zr‐MOF constructed from 4‐connected elongated linkers reported by Zhang and co‐workers.[25](#advs1384-bib-0025){ref-type="ref"} Our work here presents a powerful strategy to ascertain new structural mysteries of MOFs which mimic complicated inorganic structures. In addition, there is also a Zn‐MOF, Zn~4~O(BenzTB)~3/2~ (DUT‐13) with very high pore volume, exhibiting **cor** topology.[26](#advs1384-bib-0026){ref-type="ref"}

The permanent porosity of the PCN‐90X(Zr) series was confirmed by N~2~ sorption isotherms measured at 77 K (Figure [2](#advs1384-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}c). PCN‐90X samples were washed thoroughly using *N*,*N*‐dimethylformamide (DMF), CH~2~Cl~2~ and hexane for several times before gas sorption measurements. PCN‐90X(Zr) series exhibit a typical type I isotherm, suggesting microporosity. Due to the densely packed building blocks, PCN‐902 and PCN‐903 showed relatively low N~2~ uptake and surface areas.

The effects of center functional groups on linker conformation have been explored through density functional theory calculations. The relative energies of selected linkers in PCN‐901, PCN‐902, and PCN‐903 were calculated and listed in **Figure** [**4**](#advs1384-fig-0004){ref-type="fig"} and Table S2 (Supporting Information). For clarify, the energies of a given linker fragment in different conformations were normalized by subtracting the energy of its unconstrained structure. Due to the constraints from Zr~6~ clusters in the frameworks, two lateral phenyl rings in the individual ligand will exhibit distinct torsion angles in the corresponding structures with different topologies. For linker L‐SO~2~, the linker is too rigid to distort, making the formation of conformations observed in PCN‐902 and PCN‐903 unfavorable. The energy difference of L‐O in PCN‐901 and PCN‐902 is ≈20.6 kJ mol^−1^, while the difference is ≈14.4 kJ mol^−1^ for L‐O in PCN‐902 and PCN‐903. This result indicates that the bent conformation of L‐O in PCN‐902 allows for the gyration of two lateral phenyl rings, which is beneficial for the formation of PCN‐902 with **flu** topology. For L‐CH~2~ with a similar conformation, the formation of **flu** topology is also favorable as indicated by the relative energies in PCN‐90X with varying topologies. Considering the linker L‐(CH~3~)~6~, its conformation is latched by bulky methyl groups. By comparing the relative energies of linkers in PCN‐90X, we observed that ligands with bulky groups such as ---CH~3~ tend to be obtained with a larger torsion angle, so only PCN‐903 with **cor** topology will be adapted in this case.

![Relative energies of ligands with various conformations in PCN‐90X series possessing different topologies. The relative energy for a given ligand is normalized through subtracting the energy of its unconstrained structure.](ADVS-6-1901855-g004){#advs1384-fig-0004}

Due to the existing large amount of coordinately unsaturated sites on Zr~6~ clusters, the highly defective PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ was tested for its ability to adsorb and remove selenite anions from aqueous solutions. Although trace amounts of selenium are vital for nutritional needs of animals, it becomes extremely toxic at high concentrations (\>400 µg d^−1^).[27](#advs1384-bib-0027){ref-type="ref"}, [28](#advs1384-bib-0028){ref-type="ref"}, [29](#advs1384-bib-0029){ref-type="ref"} The maximum acceptable concentrations were set as 40 and 50 ppb, respectively, by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).[30](#advs1384-bib-0030){ref-type="ref"} The uptake ability of PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ toward toxic SeO~3~ ^2−^ was first tested via a series of SeO~3~ ^2−^ aqueous solution from 10 to 500 ppm. To reach adsorption equilibrium, 10 mg PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ was immersed in the aqueous solutions for 24 h, which was followed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP‐MS) analysis of supernatant fraction to determine the remaining SeO~3~ ^2−^ concentration. As indicated by **Figure** [**5**](#advs1384-fig-0005){ref-type="fig"}a, the adsorb amounts of SeO~3~ ^2−^ in the MOF absorbent increase as the initial concentrations of SeO~3~ ^2−^ increase. The maximum Se capacity of PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ was calculated as 75.5 mg g^−1^, which exhibits one of the highest adsorption capacities among MOF absorbents (Figure [5](#advs1384-fig-0005){ref-type="fig"}a and Table S4, Supporting Information).[30](#advs1384-bib-0030){ref-type="ref"}, [31](#advs1384-bib-0031){ref-type="ref"} The kinetic behavior for SeO~3~ ^2−^ was subsequently investigated (Figure [5](#advs1384-fig-0005){ref-type="fig"}b and Table S5, Supporting Information). Remarkably, PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ exhibits rapid removal, \>90% of SeO~3~ ^2−^ within 7 min, \>99% removal within 1 h and complete removal, \>99.9%, of SeO~3~ ^2−^ within 3 h. The excellent selenite removal efficiency places PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ as a promising porous absorbent for detoxification.

![Efficient removal of toxic selenite ions by PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~. a) Sorption isotherms for selenite (SeO~3~ ^2−^) by PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~. b) Sorption kinetics curves for selenite (SeO~3~ ^2−^) by PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~.](ADVS-6-1901855-g005){#advs1384-fig-0005}

In conclusion, we have synthesized four new Zr‐MOFs based on desymmetrized tetratopic linkers with various substituents. For example, PCN‐901‐SO~2~ is constructed from the assembly between a bent linker L‐SO~2~ with *C* ~2v~ symmetry and an 8‐connected Zr~6~ cluster; PCN‐902‐O/CH~2~ contains a novel 8‐connected Zr~6~ cluster and a bent linker L‐O/‐CH~2~ with *C* ~1~ symmetry, exhibiting a CaF~2~‐like **flu** topology; further utilization of restricted bent linker \[(L‐(CH~3~)~6~)\] gives rise to PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ with a fascinating Al~2~O~3~‐like (4, 6)‐c **cor** net. Additionally, the highly defective PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ showed efficient removal of toxic selenite ions in aqueous solutions, achieving \>90% of SeO~3~ ^2−^ within 7 min, and complete removal, \>99.9%, of SeO~3~ ^2−^ within 3 h. This work points out a fresh direction for developing functional and stable Zr‐MOFs with unprecedented topologies by linker design.

Experimental Section {#advs1384-sec-0020}
====================

*Linker Synthesis*: The detailed synthetic approaches of organic linkers including L‐SO~2~, L‐CH~2~, L‐SO~2~, and L‐(CH~3~)~6~, are provided in the Supporting Information.

*Synthesis of PCN‐901(Zr)‐SO~2~*: ZrCl~4~ (20 mg), L‐SO~2~ (10 mg), and DMF (3 mL) were charged into a 10 mL vial, followed by the addition of 0.15 mL trifluoroacetic acid. The mixture was heated in 115 °C oven for 2 d. After cooling down to room temperature, the colorless crystals of PCN‐901(Zr)‐SO~2~ were harvested (yield: 75%).

*Synthesis of PCN‐902(Zr)‐O*: ZrCl~4~ (20 mg), L‐O (10 mg), and DMF (3 mL) were charged into a 10 mL vial, followed by the addition of 0.10 mL trifluoroacetic acid. The mixture was heated in 120 °C oven for 2 d. After cooling down to room temperature, the colorless crystals of PCN‐902(Zr)‐O were harvested (yield: 70%).

*Synthesis of PCN‐902(Zr)‐CH~2~*: ZrCl~4~ (20 mg), L‐CH~2~ (10 mg), and DMF (3 mL) were charged into a 10 mL vial, followed by the addition of 0.10 mL trifluoroacetic acid. The mixture was heated in 120 °C oven for 2 d. After cooling down to room temperature, the colorless crystals of PCN‐902(Zr)‐CH~2~ were harvested (yield: 71%).

*Synthesis of PCN‐903(Zr‐CH~3~)~6~*: ZrCl~4~ (20 mg), L‐(CH~3~)~6~ (10 mg), benzoic acid (500 mg), and DMF (3 mL) were charged into a 10 mL vial. The mixture was heated in 120 °C oven for 2 d. After cooling down to room temperature, the colorless crystals of PCN‐903(Zr‐CH~3~)~6~ were harvested (yield: 62%).

*Adsorption Isotherm Measurement*: PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ (10 mg) was mixed with a 10 mL stock solution of selenite (SeO~3~ ^2−^) with various concentrations. The mixture was kept at room temperature for 24 h to ensure complete adsorption. The ion concentration in the supernatant solutions was determined by ICP‐MS.

*Adsorption Kinetics Measurement*: PCN‐903‐(CH~3~)~6~ (10 mg) was mixed with a 10 mL stock solution of selenite (SeO~3~ ^2−^) at a concentration of 10 ppm. The mixture was kept at room temperature for various periods. During the adsorption process, the ion concentration in the supernatant solutions was analyzed by ICP‐MS.

Conflict of Interest {#advs1384-sec-0040}
====================

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Supporting information
======================

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Supplementary

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Click here for additional data file.

Y.W. and L.F. contributed equally to this work. This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC Grant Nos. 21875285 and 21571187), Taishan Scholar Foundation (No. ts201511019). The gas adsorption--desorption studies of this research were supported as part of the Center for Gas Separations, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under Award No. DE‐SC0001015. The PXRD characterization and analysis were funded by the Robert A. Welch Foundation through a Welch Endowed Chair to H.‐C.Z. (A‐0030).