Bridget

We've got a really wonderful and strange collaboration on our hands right here. Legendary German electronic musician Marcel Dettmann, who has been shaping the progression of techno since the 1990s, remixed a track by Slovenian industrial innovators Laibach. Laibach, in case you don't know, founded the influential Slovenian art collective NSK, and thanks to their use of WWII imagery they were accused of being Nazis by the 90s PC crowd.

Dettmann's remix of Laibach's song "Eurovision" layers the group's muttering, militant vocals over some beats that sound like they could score that Christian Bale movie Equilibrium. The song is part of the upcoming Spectremix album, a collection of remixes that will accompany the release of Laibach's bonus version of Spectre, out March 31 on Mute Records. Listen to the remix and imagine you're fighting against an EU police state in the not-so-distant future.

Preorder Spectremix via Mute Records.

1. NBC News is suspending anchor Brian Williams for 6 months with no pay (full statement below).
2. Williams has repeatedly misstated the events surrounding a helicopter trip he took in Iraq.
3. Williams apologized for his misstatements, but the controversy brought to light other episodes of Williams statements that appear to have been untrue.
4. Lester Holt will fill in for Williams on at least a temporary basis.
5. Williams signed a 5-year, $10 million contract extension in December so NBC had no long-term Williams replacement plan in place.

What happened to Brian Williams in Iraq

In 2003, Williams was in Iraq to cover the US invasion. He and his camera crew were riding in a Chinook helicopter across the desert. Another group of three Chinooks were flying in formation about an hour ahead of them, and one of those helicopters was hit by an RPG and forced down. The other two Chinooks in the formation also made emergency landings. When Williams' helicopter caught up with the others, it landed as well.

It is not clear whether Williams' Chinook landed because the others had already made emergency landings, or because a sandstorm was rolling in. However, the sandstorm did arrive, which meant that all four helicopters, their pilots and crews, and the NBC News staffers were all stuck in the desert for several days.

But the main thing to know here is that everyone — including Brian Williams — agrees that his helicopter did not get hit by enemy fire. That did not happen.

Williams told a false story several times

But Williams has said that his helicopter was hit by enemy fire — on several occasions.

During his tribute speech on January 30, Williams said, "The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG."

He went on to claim, "Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the US Army 3rd Infantry."

During a March 2013 appearance on David Letterman, Williams said that "two of our four helicopters were hit by ground-fire, including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47."

A few weeks earlier, Williams had told a similar tale during an appearance on Alec Baldwin's WNYC podcast "Here's the Thing." Williams said that his "unbridled confidence" occasionally got him into trouble. "I've done some ridiculously stupid things under that banner, like being in a helicopter I had no business being in in Iraq, with rounds coming into the airframe." Baldwin asked Williams if he had thought he was going to die, and he replied "Briefly. Sure."

Williams' fall is costly for NBC

Reactions from NBCers: "I am gobsmacked." "No guarantee of coming back." "Humiliating for this whole network." "I don't see how he returns."

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 11, 2015

Until "Choppergate," Brian Williams' nightly newscast was a bright spot in an otherwise sagging NBC News operation. NBC's morning show "Today," the longtime leader in its time slot, had slipped in recent years. The once dominant NBC News Sunday show "Meet The Press" fell so severely in the ratings that its anchor David Gregory got fired. MSNBC's ratings have also slipped,  and in 2014 CNBC had its worst ratings year since the mid-1990s.

By contrast, Williams hosted what was normally the top-rated prime time newscast.

NBC News' full statement on Williams' suspension

All,

We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately.  We let Brian know of our decision earlier today. Lester Holt will continue to substitute Anchor the NBC Nightly News.

Our review, which is being led by Richard Esposito working closely with NBCUniversal General Counsel Kim Harris, is ongoing, but I think it is important to take you through our thought process in coming to this decision.

While on Nightly News on Friday, January 30, 2015, Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues. This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian's position.

In addition, we have concerns about comments that occurred outside NBC News while Brian was talking about his experiences in the field.

As Managing Editor and Anchor of Nightly News, Brian has a responsibility to be truthful and to uphold the high standards of the news division at all times.

Steve Burke, Pat Fili and I came to this decision together. We felt it would have been wrong to disregard the good work Brian has done and the special relationship he has forged with our viewers over 22 years.  Millions of Americans have turned to him every day, and he has been an important and well-respected part of our organization.

As I'm sure you understand, this was a very hard decision. Certainly there will be those who disagree.  But we believe this suspension is the appropriate and proportionate action.

This has been a difficult time. But NBC News is bigger than this moment. You work so hard and dedicate yourselves each and every day to the important work of bringing trusted, credible news to our audience. Because of you, your loyalty, your dedication, NBC News is an organization we can - and should - all be proud of. We will get through this together.

Steve Burke asked me to share the following message.

"This has been a painful period for all concerned and we appreciate your patience while we gathered the available facts. By his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News. His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate. Brian's life's work is delivering the news. I know Brian loves his country, NBC News and his colleagues. He deserves a second chance and we are rooting for him. Brian has shared his deep remorse with me and he is committed to winning back everyone's trust."

Deborah

Faith No More recently SOLD OUT two shows at the Wiltern on Thursday, April 23, and Friday, April 24, as well as a show at the Observatory on Saturday, April 25. For those who missed out on buying tickets to...

seeszarun:

Mood .

[body_image width='640' height='506' path='images/content-images/2015/02/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/10/' filename='japan-is-opening-a-hotel-staffed-almost-entirely-by-robots-body-image-1423584352.jpg' id='26098']

Image via Flickr user k rupp

A hotel in Japan staffed primarily by humanoid robots is set to open this July. It will be located in the Nagasaki prefecture, and rather than a one-off, glitchy gimmick, the hotel is part of an influx of socially reactive service robots flooding Japan, backed by the government's support, as a means to solve some of the nation's labor force problems.

The concept for the Henn-na Hotel (whose name means strange and change and whose slogan is "A Commitment for Evolution") was first announced on January 28, but more details about its operations have trickled in over the past week. The hotel, located in Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park modeled after a 17^th century Dutch village and stocked with schlocky rides, will feature a staff of ten robot "actroids," lifelike replicas of young Japanese women created by the Kokoro company. Three actroids, capable of making eye contact, reading body language, and responding to organic conversation, and fluent in Chinese, English, Korean, and Japanese, will man the reception desk. Four more will work as maids and porters. It's unclear what the remaining three will do (beyond presumably mastermind their eventual uprising), but they will have a skeleton staff of human overseers... for now.

Aside from its robotic labor, the hotel boasts other futuristic accouterments as well—facial recognition locks, body heat-linked thermometers, and solar powered everything—to minimize waste and costs. This efficiency will allow people to stay in one of the hotel's 72 rooms for just $60 to $153 per night.

Huis Ten Bosch President Hideo Sawada appears to have plans on further mechanizing and expanding his network of cybernetic doomsday sleeper cells futuristic, affordable inns.

"In the future, we'd like to have more than 90 percent of hotel services operated by robots," The Verge quoted Sawada as saying.

"We'll make the most efficient hotel in the world," Sawada told reporters. "In the future, we're hoping to build 1,000 similar hotels around the world."

Sawada's not the first to figure out how much you can save by cutting humans out of the hotel service equation. Since 2013, Shenzhen, China, has been home to the Pengheng Space Capsules Hotel, a similarly mechanized hotel with minimal human managers that charges just $10 for a night in a basic bed pod. However, many of these mechanized hotels rely on less emotionally responsive, humanoid robots like Henn-na's actroids and more on traditional, impersonal droids.

While we've grown accustomed to seeing such traditional robots—expressionless and clearly controlled—assisting in all sorts of rote mechanical tasks, more humanoid machines, like Honda's Asimo, have been around since at least 2001. But they're usually portrayed as prohibitively expensive and still-clunky stunts, promises of some greater robotics future. With this background in mind, Henn-na's actroids seem like a great leap forward from the simple and one-use robot baseball pitchers or herky-jerky robot cheerleaders we've seen to date.

Yet the actroids themselves aren't new technology either. Kokoro's had them in development since 2003, building on earlier emotionally responsive humanoid robots out of Osaka University. By 2010, actroids and other expressive denizens of the uncanny valley were being used in hospitals to monitor patients and as stand-ins controlled by actors in plays. The rich and weird could order a custom-made copy of themselves for $225,000, and today there are even masses of almost-Cylons go-go dancing in outlets like Tokyo's Robot Restaurant.

And these actroids are only one of a slew of increasingly affordable, socially responsive (although often less physically human) service robots that have started flooding the Japanese labor market over the last few months. Nestlé Japan recently announced that they would start using 1,000 Peppers, four-foot white robots capable of reading emotions and comprehending about 75 percent of spontaneous conversation, to sell coffee pots in their retail outlets. The bots, manufactured by telecoms giant SoftBank, sold for just $2,000 each. And just last week Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group announced that, as of April 2015, two of their branches would try turning over teller operations to the nearly two-foot Nao robot, capable of analyzing emotions and responding to customers. Meanwhile companies like Kwanda Industries are trying to sell companies on their Nextage robots, which move like humans and run on less wattage than a hair dryer, as alternatives to menial laborers and cheap solutions to 24-hour service jobs. Alongside these big orders and projects, many smaller restaurants and other service providers have turned over basic customer-relations operations to socially responsive robots of one sort or another.

This rapid advance in robotics development, manufacturing, and services has the avid support of the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who sees it as a major component of economic growth for a nation facing labor scarcity and increasing healthcare and welfare costs. Abe has pledged to triple Japan's robotics industry within the next few years to a $24 billion market, and many others hope the field will skyrocket to $70 billion within a decade.

"We want to make robots a major pillar of our economic growth strategy," Abe told Jiji Press over the summer of 2014. 'We would like to set up a council on making a robotic revolution a reality in order to aid Japan's growth."

Abe followed this statement by floating the idea of hosting the world's first ever Robot Olympics parallel to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In doing so, he's pulling on Japan's deep-seated and globally infectious love for robo sports to fuel his own version of a Space Race, sparking innovation and fascination, driving support and interest in his vision of a cybernetic salvation.

Abe and company have good reason to look toward a robotic future given Japan's demographic trajectory. Due to declining birth rates, many fear that between 2005 and 2025 the nation will have lost 14 million workers. Already, as of 2014, the nation uses a million industrial robots in factories—more than any other nation—and (despite limited talk about turning back toward low-scale, high-quality human craftsmanship) hopes to keep pace with their declining workforce by adding another million by 2030. But as the nation's population decline will affect more than just industrial jobs, some hope to see the rollout of tens of millions of Peppers and similar communicative robots in the coming years to pick up the slack in the service industry, depressing the high cost of labor and making it easier for businesses to expand sans easy copious workforce.

Officials especially want to see more robots enter the elder care service industry. Right now, with birthrates below replacement levels and an average lifespan of 86 years, Japan already has a 22 percent over-65 population and massive social welfare expenses dragging down on the debt-ridden economy. Many fear that by 2060 the population will crash from 127 million to 87 million, and the geriatric demographic will rise to 40 percent. With so few workers to go around, the nation is already short by almost one million on the number of elder care workers needed, and care will only become more expensive, overburdened, and scare with each coming year.

So the government's sunk over $100 million into research over the past couple of years to create new elder care service robots and drive their cost toward $1,000 a pop. As a result, we've got a glut of chairs with human faces that hug lonely elders, fake seals that can reduce the anxiety of dementia patients, and even quasi-Iron Man suits to help with mobility and strength in old age, each going for a few hundred to thousand bucks apiece rather than the hundreds of thousands they would have a few years ago. Government officials believe they can save up to $21 billion in a decade by mechanizing elder care, and in the process create a globally-renowned and specialized $3.3 billion geriatric robotics industry to help float the Japanese economy in spite of its loss of workers, working toward balancing out the costs of its demographic shift.

As the Japanese show little interest in sex or procreation these days, it's unlikely that the country's demographic pressures will change anytime soon. So the government will probably continue to hype and subsidize research into cost effective, mass marketable, and interpersonally communicative robots to replace its waning workforce, buoy its economy, and provide for its aging populace. Meaning it's going to be both cheaper and more necessary year-by-year for companies to invest in actroids, Peppers, and Decepticons to serve as chefs, clerks, and concierges. That makes it likely that Henn-na will expand its operations—and that copycat hotels will start a race with them to provide more realistic and robotized hotel services.

All of this would be pretty cool, if not for Henn-na's staff's unshakable problem of the uncanny valley. The less realistic robots seem a lot better at first blush. But it's hard to shake a certain sci-fi fear about a future society dominated by emotionally responsive robots, increasingly capable of humor, learning, and personality—especially when at least one of the companies behind these technologies legitimately shares its name with the evil corporation from Terminator. So there's always that niggling fear that we're looking at the birth of Skynet here as well—in a Dutch village-themed amusement park. At least it's an amusing place to usher in the apocalypse.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Always daring and experimental in both her sound and aesthetics, Björk has made a name for herself not only with her music, but her striking videos, costumes, and use of multimedia. The interdisciplinary artist will debut her first retrospective, simply titled Björk, on March 8 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Curator Klaus Biesenbach collaborated with Björk to create installations that showcase her custom, avant-garde musical instruments, sculptural stage outfits, and documentation of her 20-year-long music career. In addition, the exhibition will feature a new short film and sound installation titled "Black Lake," which the MoMA commissioned specifically for this show. Spanning several floors of the MoMA, the retrospective will offer an encompassing look at Björk's multifaceted creative endeavors and impact on various creative fields and pop culture alike.

"Letting Go" is a beautiful, difficult true story of death. You know from the very first sentence — "Sara Thomas Monopoli was pregnant with her first child when her doctors learned that she was going to die" — that it is going to be tragic.

This is a story that Atul Gawande wrote for The New Yorker in 2010, and its long been one of my favorite pieces of health care journalism because it grapples so starkly with the difficult realities of end-of-life care.

In the story, Monopoli is diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, a surprise for a non-smoking young woman. It's a devastating death sentence: doctors know that lung cancer that advanced is terminal.

Gawande knew this too — Monpoli was his patient. But actually discussing this fact with a young patient with a newborn baby seemed impossible.

"Having any sort of discussion where you begin to say, 'look you probably only have a few months to live. How do we make the best of that time without giving up on the options that you have?' That was a conversation I wasn't ready to have," Gawande recounts of the case in a new Frontline documentary that premiers tonight, Being Mortal, based on his recent book of the same title.

What's tragic about Monopoli's case was, of course, her death at an early age. But the tragedy that Gawande homes in on — the type of tragedy we talk about much less — is how terribly Monopoli's last days played out.

Her cancer essentially did not respond to the chemotherapy treatments she received. It spread to her abdomen and her thyroid. And this, Gawande argues, is the point where he and other doctors messed up.

Their mistake wasn't the fact that they didn't have the treatments to save Monopoli. It's the fact that they engaged in a sort of magical thinking, convincing themselves that they did — and conveying that fact to Monopoli and her family. This became starkly clear to me watching Gawande sit down with Monopoli's widow Rich in the Frontline documentary, and tell him that, in the course of Sarah's care, he told "a complete lie."

Here's the part of the transcript of that conversation that stuck with me the most:

Atul Gawande: When I came on the scene was when she got diagnosed with a second cancer. In my mind what I was thinking was I wouldn’t offer this surgery because the lung cancer is gonna take her life. And yet I didn’t feel I could say that to you all.

I think we started talking about the experimental therapy that you all would like, or were hoping to get on for a trial with the lung cancer. And I remember saying something I sort of regret, which was, you know, maybe that experimental therapy will work for the thyroid cancer too. I said that. [Mutual laughter] And I know it was complete….

Rich Monopoli: Well you had joined us in our, in our sunny disposition, hoping for the best.

Atul Gawande: I knew, I knew it was not gonna, I mean I I, in other words, the reason I regret it is because I knew it was a complete lie. I just was wanting something positive to say.

Rich Monopoli: I did not know it was an outright lie.

We’re all conditioned when the doctor comes out of the room and and takes the mask off and says, There’s nothing else we can do. In other words, I’ve thrown the kitchen sink at this patient and there’s nothing else I can do. That that’s….

Atul Gawande: That’s your image of what the day will be that comes?

Rich Monopoli: Correct.

Atul Gawande: But we always have something more we can do. That’s the problem.

This conversation is difficult to watch as a viewer, and I can only imagine its even more difficult in person. And, fair warning, the entire hour-long documentary doesn't get much easier. This is a documentary about people at the end-of-life, grappling with difficult decisions about how to handle the inevitable.

At the same time, for a documentary completely about death, Being Mortal does offer surprising solace, mostly in the story of a man named Jeff Shields, an elderly man with lymphoma. Chemotherapy hadn't worked for him; a bone marrow transplant was failing. Shields sees the hopes of his doctors ("In my experience, oncologists are always optimists," he says) but also the need to plan out the end of his life.

He wants to die on his farm, he tells his wife. He doesn't want to die in the hospital. This takes work; it takes a decision to move to hospice care, and stop treatment when treatment no longer appears to be working. It takes saying no to possible other treatments, the "always something more we can do" approach to medicine that Gawande derides.

This is what Shields does and his death, at least in the documentary, appears to be what he imagined. He's on a bed at his farm. He has conversations with his grandchildren about his death. The Frontline documentary interviewed Shields at a moment that turned out to be hours before his death. And what he says there is the description of a good death: not easy, or painless, but with support and love, surrounded by the people he cared about most.

"The last couple of weeks I've been surrounded by family and friends," Shields says. "It's been terrific. Some of the best days of life, I must say. But then there's a downward trend that's more rapid than I expected. I felt great during that time and my body was in rapid decline. Since then my mind has been in rapid decline. I get confused. But I'm still a happy guy."

Don’t ever turn your back on a cup of smiling ice cream, for it might have a terrifying secret lurking beneath its cheerful surface. A frozen Japanese treat called called “Panapp” is a cup of ice cream infused with either a fruit or chocolate syrup that’s been injected down into the ice cream leaving a few spots on the surface, sometimes forming the shape of a smiley face. It didn’t take long for people to realize that this sweet treat can be transformed into all sorts of frightening faces as some of the ice cream is eaten and start to melt. They’ve been sharing the results of their ice cream sculpting on Twitter.

But don’t get too scared. Instead remember that you can always eat that freaky ice cream face to make it go away. Om nom nom nom!

[via That’s Nerdalicious! and RocketNews24]

William Mortensen

Bethesda Softworks will hold its first ever E3 news conference this year, the publisher announced today, which likely means it has big news to reveal from the industry's biggest expo.

Bethesda gave no other details, of course, in setting the date (June 14). What might Bethesda be talking about at this event?

• id Software is working on the long-awaited Doom (originally called Doom 4) and a beta for the game will be coming soon.

• BattleCry, a free-to-play online game coming from the newly formed Battlecry Studios of Austin, Texas, also is in the works and should have news at this event.

• Arkane Studios is the home of Dishonored and has two offices. Though a Dishonored sequel is unconfirmed, it's widely believed to be in the works....

Continue reading…

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/02/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/10/' filename='we-talked-to-the-people-planning-to-protest-the-fifty-shades-of-grey-film-body-image-1423570114.jpg' id='25995']Still from '50 Shades of Grey; courtesy of UPI Media

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

This Friday, 50 Shades of Grey fans will finally be able to see a physical, tangible Christian smack a physical, tangible Anastasia with a riding crop. Nauseatingly close to Valentine's Day, the film adaptation of E. L. James's best seller hits cinemas on the 13.

This has riled a number of women, who are now planning to boycott the film, furious at what they believe to be a glamorization of violence. In the UK, the 50 Shades Is Abuse campaign has rallied supporters for a protest of this week's premiere in Leicester Square.

"We want to challenge the romanticization of abuse," says Natalie Collins, the domestic violence worker who founded the campaign. "We want to give people the skills and resources to have conversations with their family and friends about these books, and use them as an opportunity to raise awareness about abuse, which could help women who are currently experiencing violence.

"People assume we're prudish or moralistic, but we're not anti-sex, we're not anti-BDSM," she adds. "We have a lot of supporters from the BDSM community who are outraged and disturbed by how the books misrepresent their lifestyle."

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/SfZWFDs0LxA' width='640' height='360']

The official trailer for 50 Shades of Grey

Fifty Shades has angered some with its implication that BDSM is rooted in trauma (Christian Grey was abused as a child) rather than being a healthy sexual expression. But for the 50 Shades Is Abuse campaigners, it's not even really the sex itself causing the most concern.

"For us, the most concerning bits relate to the controlling behavior that Christian exhibits outside of the bedroom," Collins says. "He stalks her, he tracks her phone, he finds her workplace, he takes away her independence. Those things are much more concerning in terms of modeling what a healthy, romantic, sexy relationship should be—especially for young girls who will see the movie."

The North American equivalent is #50DollarsNot50Shades, jointly launched by Stop Porn Culture and the London Abused Women's Center in Ontario. The campaign is encouraging people to boycott the movie and instead donate the cost of the ticket to a women's shelter.

Dr. Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and the president of Stop Porn Culture. She says donations are coming in from around the world, with people emailing her messages of thanks.

"I started this because I'm so incensed that you can take a major social problem of violence against women and glorify it, dress it up with a few whips and fancy underwear, and rebrand is as romance," she tells me. "It speaks to women's lack of understanding about how violence against them happens. All those women who love the book and fawn over it, I think if they were to read a few books on domestic violence they'd have a different view.

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/02/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/10/' filename='we-talked-to-the-people-planning-to-protest-the-fifty-shades-of-grey-film-body-image-1423570183.jpg' id='25999']
Still from 50 Shades of Grey courtesy of UPI Media

" Fifty Shades tells a story of what is really grooming by a stalker—a seasoned perpetrator going after a much younger, more immature woman," Dines continues. "She doesn't know her own body, she doesn't know what an orgasm is, she doesn't know what the clitoris is—she's never had sex. She's barely articulate. She's overwhelmed by this wealthy guy. Let me tell you, if this guy was living in a council house on welfare, he would not be so attractive."

Dines has her own take when it comes to the BDSM debate. "Everyone's talking about how the BDSM community doesn't like 50 Shades, and the reason is because it reveals what's going on," she says. "A lot of BDSM is actually just 'S': It's sadism. Sadistic men on the hunt for young, traumatized girls who are easy pickings. Now, that's not everyone, but I do have trouble with BDSM. In a society where one in four women are sexually abused, in a society where men get off on raping, mutilating, torturing, and murdering women—I do think we have to put BDSM in that context. Sexuality never exists outside of the culture in which it's happening. As violent porn becomes more mainstream, we have to talk about why BDSM is becoming more mainstream."

But what about the thousands of women who freely choose to engage in BDSM? Doesn't this perspective detract from women's hard-won sexual liberation?

"Choice is complicated," says Dines. "What is choice when you're socialized to see yourself as a subordinate? From the moment you're born into a patriarchal society, you've been socialized to think of your sexuality as being subordinate. It's about being on offer to men, it's about being fuckable—because you have to look fuckable to be hot. Choice is not something that just drops out of the sky; the choices you make are culturally constructed."

[body_image width='1200' height='793' path='images/content-images/2015/02/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/10/' filename='we-talked-to-the-people-planning-to-protest-the-fifty-shades-of-grey-film-body-image-1423570236.jpg' id='26000']
Still from '50 Shades of Grey' courtesy of UPI Media

Clearly not everyone agrees with Dines's standpoint: Some would argue her assessment of female sexuality is slightly patronizing, and when it comes to 50 Shades, at the height of its popularity two copies of the book were being sold every second. It also inspired a line of sex toys and a baby onesie reading: "Nine months ago my mommy read 50 Shades of Grey."

Everyone you knew was reading it, everyone was talking about it, everyone was copying things from it. It also allowed women a space in which to talk about sex and their own sexuality, which is so often sidelined or overwhelmed by male desire. There can be no doubt that these movie protests are going to piss off some of the (millions of) die-hard fans who see both the book and film as a bit of harmless escapism.

"Oh yes, of course," agrees Dines. "They come at me in a very hostile way, saying, 'I love this book.' But when we start to talk about it, the hostility goes right down. We talk about the character, how she's always scared of him. That's the key to knowing you're in a battering relationship, when you start to measure the mood of the man you're with and carefully moderate yourself. If you look at the lists in battered women's shelters of signs to watch out for, Christian Grey actually matches them all."

Collins says highlighting women's sexuality is a good thing—but 50 Shades doesn't do that in any meaningful way. "The books don't bring women's sexuality to the fore in their representation of sex; they bring a male desire to the fore, and a male shaping of what women should want," she argues. "The book's all about what he wants, what he finds sexually pleasurable. Her desires aren't encouraged or asked about; she's just expected to be part of his lifestyle."

Feminist.org has a list of domestic abuse hotlines and national organizations for donation.

50 Shades Is Abuse is protesting on February 12—more details on Twitter.

After a three-year break since 2012’s “In Our Heads,” Hot Chip finally return this year with “Why Make Sense?” Which I guess seems like a more gently inquisitive version of Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense.” Anyway, the band previously released a teaser for the new album and on Tuesday morning dropped their comeback single, “Huarache Lights.”

The hypnotic track is accompanied by an equally mesmerizing abstract video shot by Andy Knowles. Space out and listen below while your contemplate your sheer glee at Hot Chip’s return. “Why Make Sense?” Is out May 18 on Domino.

 

[h/t Stereogum]

With Valentine’s Day approaching, “Fifty Shades of Grey” hysteria is reaching critical mass, with advance ticket sales shattering records and confirmed sequels in the works. However, some of us have yet to be captivated by the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon, mainly because the leading man lacks a certain sex appeal. Sure, Jamie Dornan is hot an all, but he’s just  a talking set of abs. He’s missing that certain undefinable, but undeniable charisma. You know, the kind of charisma that Steve Buscemi has in spades. Thankfully, the people at Boo Ya Pictures managed to inject some of Buscemi’s je ne sais quoi into a trailer that desperately needed it.

[h/t A.V. Club]

There’s a lot of great, in-depth health information on the Internet, but there’s also a lot of weirdos who hate any medical advice more modern than, “I’ll need to check your humours.” Now Google will help all the hypochondriacs (and actual sick people whose doctors may or may not be failing them) out there with fact-checked medical search results.

That won’t stop people from disagreeing with the medical information returned by the 5% of Google searches that are health-related, but according to their blog post on the subject, the company doesn’t intend for it to substitute for actual medical advice. Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager at Google wrote,

Once you get this basic info from Google, you should find it easier to do more research on other sites around the web, or know what questions to ask your doctor.

That doesn’t mean these search results are intended as medical advice. We know that cases can vary in severity from person to person, and that there are bound to be exceptions. What we present is intended for informational purposes only—and you should always consult a healthcare professional if you have a medical concern.

The feature is rolling out in the U.S. first with plans to add information for more conditions and more countries in the future. The new results, which have been fact-checked by Google’s own medical team as well as doctors at the Mayo Clinic, will show up at the top of search results thanks to the Knowledge Graph. That means they’ll just be extra, encyclopedic information and still leave all of the other, more factually ambiguous information for you to obsess over sift through for yourself.

(via Wired, image via Tabitha Kaylee Hawk)

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Do you hold hands?

You may have already kissed that special someone, indulged in a couch makeout session, and even had sex; but the thrill of holding hands is as real and more important than any other type of physical intimacy.

We often view sex as the height of physical intimacy, so it seems counterintuitive that the innocent act of holding hands could be so emotionally charged. But in today's dating era, holding hands feels more intimate than ever. And if you find yourself wanting to reach out and grab your date's hand, that could be a sign that this relationship is the real deal.

Holding hands is a big deal. Even having sex with someone doesn't mean you'll hold their hand as taking someone's hand is a sign of wanting to be close to your partner in a nonsexual way. Read More

Police are worried that rich kids from two of L.A.'s toniest Westside enclaves might fight each other. Again. [ more › ]

Amazing sculpture by Forest Rogers - “Faun for the Sea of Trees,” in Kato Polyclay. About 15” tall 

artirl:

"You don’t tell me things, Joel. I’m an open book. I tell you everything, every damn, embarrassing thing."

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Directed by Michel Gondry in 2004.

Dot Dot Dot creates a series of new pieces on the streets of Los Angeles


Dot Dot Dot creates a series of new pieces on the streets of Los Angeles

Venice

revolutionarykoolaid:

theragetasticvoyage:

 Pharrell incorporates “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” message into grammy performance.

 Pisses off white america.

pharrell climbing out of that new black-phase

White tears are the tastiest tears.

So what exactly is Jupiter Ascending?

Let’s start with the basics: this movie is not The Matrix. This movie is not Dune. This movie is not Star Wars, nor is it The Fifth Element. No, this movie is like if all of those movies plus the music video for the Backstreet Boys’ “Larger Than Life” and the really weird parts of the Mass Effect trilogy all got really drunk at a party and had a massive orgy while H.P. Lovecraft filmed it. That’s Jupiter Ascending.

The plot is this: the Wachowskis were given an extraordinary amount of money to make whatever the hell they wanted, and what they wanted to make is exactly what we all, secretly, deep down, want to make: the big-screen adaptation of that Stargate fanfic you wrote when you were fourteen that really went off the rails and began to inhabit its own universe, complete with original characters, wolf-men, and bees. That’s Jupiter Ascending.

I mean, I want to have a serious discussion about the film’s plot, but I honestly can’t. I can’t because it just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter! What about the plot could possibly matter when part of it involves Mila Kunis as the reincarnation of an ancient space princess who falls in love with a Channing Tatum-shaped half-wolf hybrid angel alien with anti-gravity roller skates and a great debt to pay off? That’s Jupiter Ascending.

Okay, I’m going to try. [MILD SPOILERS THAT DO NOT MATTER AT ALL RE: YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THIS FILM AHEAD]. Mrs. S from Orphan Black but with a Russian accent falls in love with Agent Carter‘s Jarvis, but then he dies in a scene that tried really hard to be as emotional as the opening to Guardians of the Galaxy, but was mostly – like the rest of the movie – just preposterous, but so preposterous it was really kind of amazing. There are montages where Mila Kunis scrubs toilets. She discovers she is a space princess who owns the Earth when space-wolf Tatum saves her from Roswell aliens who attack her while she’s having her eggs harvested. Her space princessery is further confirmed by bees, who, as it turns out, can smell princesses (???????????). Eddie Redmayne is her space-family and he wants the Earth. You may have inferred from the trailers that Eddie Redmayne is this film’s antagonist.

Eddie Redmayne is literally flawless in this film. Eddie Redmayne knows Jupiter Ascending is bad. Eddie Redmayne knows this perhaps better than anyone else in our solar system, and he does what needs to be done. He swooshes around without a shirt but with a black cape for two hours, speaking only in whispers except for the very occasional ridiculous outburst. He is so over-the-top I am not sure where the top even is anymore. He should win an Oscar.

But if you’re not into shirtless Eddie Redmayne or dance-fighting Channing Tatum (who is wearing a blonde goatee potentially made out of Bradley Cooper’s hair from American Hustle???), that’s okay! Jupiter Ascending will serve you with unnecessary shots of Kunis’s underwear-clad employer and an almost all-female alien sex party. It also serves pure, pristine Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who can do so much better than this, but chooses not to – and for that, I respect her. I imagine Gugu and Eddie hanging out after the Golden Globes, laughing about how much they enjoyed filming this ridiculous movie and hoping for a sequel.

Despite all that, I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t enjoy myself every single second I was in the theater for Jupiter Ascending. Yes, I laughed my way through a significant portion of the film that I definitely was not meant to laugh my way through, but damn if that didn’t make it a good date night. The costumes are stunning, Kunis and Tatum are likeable, and how often do we get to see a full-out, ovaries-to-the-wall original space opera? I appreciate what the Wachowskis were trying to do here, and that alone had me sitting up in my seat (bees though??? Whatever.)

If I had to critique this movie in any sort of, you know, actual way (beyond “it was a hot-ass mess”), I would say that I do wish the film had been a little less caught up in the traditional model of princess-saving. When I hear “Mila Kunis black leather space princess,” I want to see her bulked the hell up, Emily Blunt style, kicking ass and taking names. We don’t get to see Kunis looking really cool until the very end of the film, at which point I wanted way more of that. Which, I guess, means I would pay for a sequel.

Jupiter Ascending is also one of the rare instances where the film would have benefitted from being longer. I rarely feel that way about movies, but this one needed some sort of tie-in comic or novel at the very least to make it work in a two-hour window. The jump from “I’m a cleaning lady!” to “I’m a space princess!” happens way too fast, and Kunis accepts her new life far too quickly. Equally shoehorned in is the burgeoning romance between Kunis and Tatum, who have absolutely zero chemistry with one another. Every time they have a romantic scene, I can actually see Tatum choreographing dances for Magic Mike 3: Just Cocks Everywhere This Time in his head.

I’ll also say that the film was, as has been mentioned in endless reviews, preposterously derivative. Everything reminded me of something else; the structure reminded me of Dune, the space-gates reminded me of Cowboy Bebop, that one ship was lifted directly from 2001, that rat dude was just Peter Pettigrew, and the cyberpunk mercenaries literally stepped out of Trinity’s Fashion School. But I couldn’t tell if they were all supposed to be intentional homages, or if it was just straight-up laziness on the part of the Wachowskis – and that’s not a good feeling.

The one design element in the film that I consistently found enthrallingly original (besides, like, “Hey, there’s a giant person refinery on Jupiter!”) were the spaceships. It’s unusual to see ships where all the pieces are separate, held together, I’m assuming, by some weird anti-grav field, and I could have gleefully watched them zoom around in space all day.

Anyways, Sean Bean is a hybrid sad space dad bee marine named Stinger who may (though it is left ambiguous) actually live to see the end of the film, so you’re going to want to devote $10 to this as soon as humanly possible. I swear to the ancient house of Abraxas it’ll be the best time you’ve had at the movies since you decided not to go see 50 Shades of Grey.

At the end of the day, the overwhelming feeling I had when leaving Jupiter Ascending was this: I really, really want a Mass Effect movie.

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With her increasingly provocative social media presence and aversion to wearing clothing, it should come as no surprise that the increasingly sex positive pop star Miley Cyrus is entering a short film into a porn festival. She’s submitting the short film “Tongue Tied” which features the fishnet clad singer exploring an array of BDSM imagery, tying herself up and smearing herself with what looks like black ink. It, in part, plays out as an affectionate and artful nod to Madonna’s classic “Justify My Love” clip while encompassing a surreal quality of its own.  The film, directed by Quentin Jones, was initially showed to the audiences of her Bangerz tour last year.

However, now the film clip will be showed to an entirely new audience, namely that of the Pornhub-sponsored NYC Porn Film Festival, which takes place in Bushwick starting February 27. Although the film isn’t pornography in and of itself, it’s definitely not something you want to watch in your work cubicle either.

“It’s a pop take on S&M,” festival founder Simon Leahy told New York Post. “She’s starting to become more of a contemporary artist.”

Cyrus’s contemporary art film will take its place alongside  other esteemed work, such as a Tila Tequila sex tape.

 

[h/t Daily Dot]

Rockstar always tries to sell its Grand Theft Auto games with fancy trailers. Moody music, social commentary, beautiful sunsets. The thing is, that's not how anybody actually plays Grand Theft Auto.

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We haven't seen much of Boston Dynamic's four-legged self-balancing Big Dog robot since it was last spotted hurling cinder blocks in a lab. And that's maybe because the company's robotic geniuses have been hard at work building a smaller more agile version called Spot that weighs just 160 pounds so it can safely operate both indoors and out.

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