Nate Haduch

♬ With the shovel out, the ice's less dangerous / Drop the shovel, entertain us / I feel stupid and contagious / Drop the shovel, entertain us ♬

Magisterial. I love the internet. This is even better than the door that sounds like Miles Davis. (via @slowernet)

Update: Oh, and this nightstand door sounds like Chewbacca. (via @steveportigal)

On his YouTube channel, Dylan Marron is cutting down films to only include dialogue spoken by persons of color. Under those conditions, Moonrise Kingdom is 10 seconds long. Her is about 40 seconds. Noah is 0 seconds.

(via @riondotnu)

Colorado has spent the last six years conducting a real life test to see if they could reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. As the NYT's Sabrina Tavernise explains, the results were stunning.

If we want to reduce poverty, one of the simplest, fastest and cheapest things we could do would be to make sure that as few people as possible become parents before they actually want to.

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Tim Grierson and Will Leitch did a pretty good job in this list of All 15 Pixar Movies, Ranked From Worst to Best.

We went back-and-forth on the top two here, but we ultimately had to go with [Wall-E], the most original and ambitious of all the Pixar movies. The first half-hour, which basically tells the story of the destruction of the planet and the devolution of the human race without a single line of dialogue, is total perfection: It's almost Kubrickian in its attention to detail and perspective, though it never feels cold or ungenerous.

Piece-of-shit Cars 2 is rightly parked at the bottom of the heap, Wall-E is obviously #1, and they correctly acknowledged Up as overrated. I would have rated the original Toy Story lower and Ratatouille higher, but overall: well done.

From Ralph Mirebs, photos of the abandoned Baikonur Cosmodrome, which houses the remains of the Buran programme, the Soviet version of the Space Shuttle program. (thx, tim)

From Parents Against Gun Violence, a few of the reasons people shot people in May 2015.

My fiancee and I had an argument, so I open-carried my gun to a park and shot four random people.

The bartender put Clamato in my beer when I wanted tomato juice, so I shot him and his dog.

I found suspicious calls on my boyfriend's phone, so I shot him. He was armed at the time too.

Rather than let my ex-wife win custody, I shot my own daughter to death.

Click through for the whole depressing list and links to news articles about each incident.

This is an interesting theory about the Harry Potter series: the whole thing is about a mentally ill young boy (Harry) who is institutionalized by his parents (the Dursleys) in a mental institution (Hogwarts) and the contents of the books are Harry's fantasy.

In the Harry Potter series, his parents are famous wizards, who were famous in all the world for their unparalleled love for the boy Harry, which set the whole series in motion, killing them and leaving the boy a scarred orphan. (This is a fantasy, crafted as the direct opposite of the way in which children usually end up scarred -- through abuse and neglect.)

If we interpret the story as Harry's fantasy, then the Dursleys are Harry's real parents, and the Potters are imaginary. The Durselys either can't cope with the increasingly-delusional boy living with them, or perhaps they are merely abusive, and it's the abuse that's making him delusional. In any event, the parent-figures constantly mistreat him, favor the brother, and inflict endless cruelty and humiliation on him. One day, Harry snaps, and Dudley (who is really Harry's brother) is severely injured, in a way requiring repeated hospital treatments. (In the delusion, Harry imagines that a pig's tail is magically grown from Dudley's buttocks.) As a result of this incident, Harry is taken away to a "special school."

This video features a man who plays with marbles for several hours each day, his custom-built marble alley, and his very patient & understanding wife.

The man has been playing with marbles for 60 years and owns over 1500 marbles, which are stored according to how quickly they move down the track. (via boing boing)

Update: I think this guy's head would explode if he saw this mega marble run with 11,000 marbles.

(via digg)

A force in the Chicago improv community, Lauren Lapkus moved to Los Angeles a little over five years ago to make a name for herself. And boy has she. From sitcoms, to guest appearances on some of the funniest comedy shows, to her own popular podcast and role in the upcoming Jurassic World, this woman knows how to work it. A fantastic improviser, her characters and dedication to the craft have proven to be the right recipe to make it in this town. I talked to Lapkus about her upcoming projects, what she’s learned along the way, and how she’s juggling it all.

Your podcast With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus is so funny. Tell me about it. How did it come about?

Well, I’d been doing guest spots on a bunch of different podcasts on Earwolf for a while. Mostly Comedy Bang Bang which is how I first got started over there, improv4humans, and pretty much most of the other shows over there I feel like I’ve been on at one point or another. Eventually they came to me and said, “Do you want to do a podcast and what would you do?” I think it was just part of becoming a part of the family slowly over time.

Was the concept an idea you already had?

I didn’t know what I wanted to do and my husband and I were talking and basically I was like, “Well, I don’t really like hosting stuff” and he was the one that helped me come up with the concept of me always being the guest and never having to host. (laughing) So it worked out perfectly.

That’s a smart way to do it.

Yeah, it’s really fun getting to do that and be in control and also be out of control at the same time. Because my host is the one who gets to decide what’s going to happen or what the show is. They decide my character as well. I really don’t know anything going in, but that’s how I like it.

You don’t even know the character ahead of time?

No. I had started out initially where I would plan my character and not know what they were going to do. I’d just tell them my character’s name and a brief description and then they would start their show and I would be surprised by what they brought. After a few episodes I realized it was probably more fun and possibly more cohesive if they came up with my character, because it would go with whatever character they wanted to do or whatever they had in mind. So, a few episodes in I had them decide it. That made it more exciting for me, because I knew that it’d be fully improvised, which is fun.

Do you have a favorite character that you’ve done so far?

One of my favorites so far, I mean I don’t know if this is necessarily a character I would revisit at least without Joe Wengert, but his episode was so much fun. We played brothers, so I just mimicked his actions. That was one of my favorites so far, especially because it was something I would never really come up with on my own.

Then you’ve got Jurassic World coming out this summer. First of all, what’s the role that you play?

Well, I don’t know how much I’m even allowed to say, because for the longest time we weren’t allowed to talk about it. Now you can see me in a couple of trailers and clips that have been released, but I’m still not exactly sure how much I’m supposed to reveal.

Can you talk at all about what was the best part about shooting it?

Yeah, it was so exciting to be a part of it. Just getting that role was so thrilling. We got to shoot in Hawaii and New Orleans. Going to Hawaii was great. It was a beautiful location that we were in, so that was really exciting to be a part of such an epic movie in such an amazing location. My first day of shooting I saw a rainbow over the ocean, so it doesn’t get much better than that.

Can you say if you worked with Chris Pratt and is he as awesome as he seems?

Yes, I did get to work with him and he was so funny and charming and awesome, so I really get why everyone’s all excited about him for sure. Just a few short hours I was with him he was all of those things.

The other show you’re a part of that’s premiering soon is Clipped.

This is a show for TBS. It’s a sitcom. Basically it takes place in a barbershop in Boston and other casts members are Ashley Tisdale and George Wendt and a few other really great improviser types who are so much fun. We all work at a barbershop. We went to the same high school in Boston, but hung out with different crowds. We’re all very different types of people. We all ended up staying in town working at this barbershop together. It’s all the hijinx that ensues within that world. It’s really fun.

And you play the receptionist.

Yeah, my character’s name if Joy. She’s the receptionist and is very wholesome and religious and naïve. She’s married and doesn’t seem to get any sexual innuendo or anything like that. Very wholesome girl.

Your Orange is The New Black character Susan is more on the wholesome side too. Do you think that’s based on characters you’ve developed or how much of you is in them?

It’s interesting, because I don’t really see myself that way and don’t really play that way when it comes to improv or the characters I do on my podcast, so it’s pretty fun to get out of my natural comedic zone. I never really go there in improv, but I tend to get cast that way. I think I maybe just have a sweet look like that, but it’s always so interesting to get those roles.

And you’re an awful person on the side in real life!

Yeah, I’m horrible. (Laughing)

It’s great too watching how quickly things seemed to move for you. Do you ever look out side of your body and think, “What the hell?!” What’s that been like for you?

Yeah, it’s definitely been exciting and there are those moments where I’m really surprised. I mean, I think being a part of Jurassic World was a big one for me, because it’s a franchise that I grew up watching and to be a part of that is kind of mind boggling. But yeah, I think there are definitely times I step back and am surprised by everything, but at the same time I feel like I’m working so hard and I’m busier than I’ve ever been that it’s hard to step back and do that. I really am so focused on what I currently am working on and what comes next. My mind kind of works that way, so it’s hard to totally get out of the situation and the moment and go, “Oh wow. It’s pretty amazing that I did this.”

I’m sure everyone is encouraging, but are there misconceptions that your friends and family must think your life is like now?

I don’t know. I think my family jokes around about stuff like that, but they know the truth of the matter. My life is not any crazy Hollywood lifestyle. I mean, I have a pretty simple life in general, but I think it’s easy to imagine things that way. I never knew anyone who was doing this when I was growing up. No one in my family is an actor or anything, so it’s a lifestyle that no one knows anything about, but of course from talking to me they learn how everything works and how TV shows are made and cast and all that stuff. So it’s cool to be able to share that with them.

Do you remember the first time you were like, “Oh, that’s how this works? I didn’t know that.”?

Yeah, I think I have that all the time.

What’s an example?

Well, I learned that I sweat a lot, especially when I first started. I think it’s slowed down a little bit. When I first was on Are You There, Chelsea? a multi-cam show that I did on NBC, that was really exciting, because I grew up watching multi-cam shows and that was amazing to see how many people are involved in the production and how it works with the live audience and everyone coming in. I mean that was something that was really mind blowing to me. I had never been to a show like that before I was in one.

And I mean, things like with stunts. That always blows my mind how stunts are done. On Orange is the New Black I got to do a couple cool moments with stunt people. For instance, when Susan Fisher gets choked by one of the inmates, we used a stunt person with some of that. That was really cool to practice how you make choking look real without actually hurting yourself. All that stuff was really fun to learn. And even a friend of mine was telling me the other day how she was working on a movie that involved an animatronics animal and she explained that they would use a, what do they call it, a witches ball or one of those lawn ornaments, those globes that you see in people’s lawns. They would use that and move it around the space to get what the character would be seeing in their eyes, the reflection of things that would be in their eyes. So, I didn’t know how that worked which is so cool. I’m constantly blown away with how everything is made.

Is there anything that maybe you don’t enjoy about this crazy life or don’t love as much about the business?

I think the biggest struggle or that I’m learning to live with all the time is that you can’t predict what your schedule is going to be. I think that’s difficult for me in terms of trying to keep all my friendships going or traveling for weddings or important events with family. It’s always hard to know if you’re going to be available or what’s going to happen. Because, really I’m still at that point where I really have to take jobs. I mean, I’m excited about all these jobs, but I also have to be there, because I need to keep it going, so it’s hard to say, “Oh I’ll be at that thing in five months.”

I remember reading an interview with Jenna Fischer or maybe it was a blog post she wrote where she talked about acting and you really have to take those trips and really let yourself do it and don’t worry about what you’re missing out on. I think that was really helpful advice for me, especially when I was first starting. You know, you’re really just waiting to get any job at all and you’re afraid to leave town or miss out. It’s good to just go home and see your family or whatever the thing is that you’re worried about doing. It’s almost more difficult as it goes along, because now I actually have work opportunities, so it’s more likely that I’ll have to cancel my trip or reschedule. Whereas when I was first starting, the odds were that I wouldn’t have anything to do that weekend. I would just be freaking out over nothing.

How hard was it to plan your wedding? You recently got married back in Chicago.

Yeah, that was really crazy. It was the kind of thing where I just had to be like, “This just has to be what it is. This is the date and whatever happens, it doesn’t matter.” But, of course when I booked Jurassic World I ended up being in Hawaii shooting that movie a few days leading up to my wedding, so that was definitely kind of stressful, but also awesome, because it was like a free honeymoon. I brought my husband with me. We kind of had a pre-honeymoon before our honeymoon by just getting to go to Hawaii, but yeah it was definitely stressful. Of course that’s bound to happen. The second you plan something everything has to go the opposite direction.

Yeah, sometimes I plan stuff on purpose like, “I’m going to say yes to this, because then I know I’ll book… whatever.”

Oh yeah, totally. It always goes that way. So, I wasn’t too surprised.

So you’ve got all these things that are coming out this summer. Is there anything new or projects you’re working on?

I have a few things in the pipeline that are going to be coming out. There’s nothing that I can really announce just yet, but I’m definitely running myself ragged trying to do a bunch of different things. I’ll be on Comedy Bang! Bang! the TV show on May 22nd. Other than that it’s just a bunch of stuff I’ve got under wraps a little bit, but hoping to get out to the people soon enough.

Clipped premieres in June on TBS. Check out the trailer here. Also, listen to her popular podcast, With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus here.

And you thought that can of QT was expensive.

An enterprising PC Music fan (who probably attended the label’s controversial Pop Cube installation) got QT, Hannah Diamond, Danny L Harle, Finn Diesel and label mastermind A. G. Cook to sign his white tee, and — like any millennial worth his salt — he’s monetized the experience, putting the shirt on Craigslist — for $100,000. [via Noisey]

FACT’s Walker Chambliss reviewed PC Music’s Pop Cube and found it “stupid, ridiculous, and annoying” — and that was exactly the point.

The post Buy a T-shirt signed by PC Music… for $100,000 appeared first on FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music..

[Label: Young Turks | Cat#: YT122]

1. Gosh (4:51)
2. Sleep Sound (3:52)
3. Seesaw (4:28)
4. Obvs (3:51)
5. Just Saying (1:23)
6. Stranger In a Room (2:57)
7. Hold Tight (4:03)
8. Loud Places (4:43)
9. I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times) (3:33)
10. The Rest Is Noise (4:58)
11. Girl (4:05)

For his project Trophy Scarves, artist Nate Hill photographed himself "[wearing] white women for status and power".

Hill says "it's a satire on black men who like to see white women as status symbols". NSFW (some nudity)...or you can view censored pics on Instagram.

Seymour Hersh, writing for the London Review of Books, says that the American account of how Osama bin Laden was located, captured, and killed is not entirely true. In particular, he alleges that bin Laden was being held in Pakistan since 2006 and that members of the Pakistani military knew of and supported the raid.

It's been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama's first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan's army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration's account. The White House's story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida's operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

And the plan all along was to kill bin Laden...the Pakistanis insisted on it.

It was clear to all by this point, the retired official said, that bin Laden would not survive: 'Pasha told us at a meeting in April that he could not risk leaving bin Laden in the compound now that we know he's there. Too many people in the Pakistani chain of command know about the mission. He and Kayani had to tell the whole story to the directors of the air defence command and to a few local commanders.

'Of course the guys knew the target was bin Laden and he was there under Pakistani control,' the retired official said. 'Otherwise, they would not have done the mission without air cover. It was clearly and absolutely a premeditated murder.' A former Seal commander, who has led and participated in dozens of similar missions over the past decade, assured me that 'we were not going to keep bin Laden alive - to allow the terrorist to live. By law, we know what we're doing inside Pakistan is a homicide. We've come to grips with that. Each one of us, when we do these missions, say to ourselves, "Let's face it. We're going to commit a murder."' The White House's initial account claimed that bin Laden had been brandishing a weapon; the story was aimed at deflecting those who questioned the legality of the US administration's targeted assassination programme. The US has consistently maintained, despite widely reported remarks by people involved with the mission, that bin Laden would have been taken alive if he had immediately surrendered.

Hersh is a regular contributor to the New Yorker -- he broke the Abu Ghraib story in the pages of the magazine -- so I wonder why this story didn't appear there? Perhaps because it goes against the grain of their own reporting on the subject?

Update: Max Fisher writes in Vox that Hersh's story has many problems -- inconsistencies and thin sourcing to start -- and is indicative of Hersh's "slide off the rails" from investigative journalism to conspiracy theories.

On Sunday, the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh finally released a story that he has been rumored to have been working on for years: the truth about the killing of Osama bin Laden. According to Hersh's 10,000-word story in the London Review of Books, the official history of bin Laden's death -- in which the US tracked him to a compound in Abottabad, Pakistan; killed him a secret raid that infuriated Pakistan; and then buried him at sea --- is a lie.

Hersh's story is amazing to read, alleging a vast American-Pakistani conspiracy to stage the raid and even to fake high-level diplomatic incidents as a sort of cover. But his allegations are largely supported only by two sources, neither of whom has direct knowledge of what happened, both of whom are retired, and one of whom is anonymous. The story is riven with internal contradictions and inconsistencies.

The story simply does not hold up to scrutiny -- and, sadly, is in line with Hersh's recent turn away from the investigative reporting that made him famous into unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

The single source for most of the juiciest details in the piece was the most glaring issue. My Spidey Sense started tingling as I read the latter third...it sounded like Hersh was quoting some dude in a bar who "had a friend who told me this story". I wonder how much of this was fact-checked and corroborated?

And on Hersh's affiliation with the New Yorker, they repeatedly rejected the story:

(Indeed, when I first heard about Hersh's bin Laden story a few years from a New Yorker editor -- the magazine, the editor said, had rejected it repeatedly, to the point of creating bad blood between Hersh and editor-in-chief David Remnick -- this was the version Hersh was said to favor.)

If you look at Hersh's page at the NYer, his contributions have dropped off. His only piece in the past two years was a revisiting of his earlier reporting on My Lai. (via @tskjockey)

Update: From Gabriel Sherman at New York Magazine, Why Seymour Hersh's 'Alternative' bin Laden History Did Not Appear in The New Yorker.

When I spoke to Hersh earlier today, it was clear that there is tension. Hersh told me that he published the piece in the LRB because Remnick was not interested in having him write a magazine piece on the bin Laden raid. Hersh explained that, days after the May 2, 2011 SEAL operation, he told Remnick that his intelligence sources were saying Obama's account was fiction. "I knew right away that there were problems with the story," Hersh told me. "I just happen to have sources. I'm sorry, but I do." Hersh told Remnick he wanted to write a piece for the magazine.

"David said, 'Do a blog,'" Hersh recalled. "I said, 'I don't want to do a blog.' It's about money. I get paid a lot more writing a piece for The New Yorker [magazine] ... I'm old and cranky." (Remnick declined to comment).

Through reporting of its own, NBC News has confirmed parts of Hersh's story.

The NBC News sources who confirm that a Pakistani intelligence official became a "walk in" asset include the special operations officer and a CIA officer who had served in Pakistan. These two sources and a third source, a very senior former U.S. intelligence official, also say that elements of the ISI were aware of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad. The former official was emphatic about the ISI's awareness, saying twice, "They knew."

R.J. Hillhouse claims she should get credit for breaking this story because of two pieces she wrote in 2011, using information from "clearly different" sources.

Kristen Wiig is known for appearing on The Tonight Show in disguise, and last night was no different. This time she showed up as Khaleesi from Game of Thrones, and she told Fallon all about her dragons, where she's from, her recent interest in standup, and her hit song "Wonderful Wonderful Wonderful."

The Hulu Upfront Presentation took place in New York this morning, and among the streaming network's announcements is the news that starting this June, Hulu will become the exclusive streaming home of all nine seasons of Seinfeld. "There’s no question that Seinfeld has played a major role in TV history, which is why we cannot wait to make all episodes of the series available to stream for the first time ever on Hulu," said Hulu exec Craig Erwich. "Whether you are an existing fan who just wants to relive your favorite moments over and over again, or are a new viewer who wants experience Seinfeld from the very beginning, Hulu will now be your destination to stream what has been dubbed as one of the greatest shows of all time." Added Seinfeld: "I think all the media and social and digital capability makes the world a more annoying place. What reason would Kramer ever have to come in? You lose all those entrances, he could just text me. The whole show goes in the toilet right there."

The episodes — which reportedly went to the streaming network at $700,000 each — will be available to Hulu Plus subscribers, and Hulu is dropping the "Plus" from the name going forward, which will certainly make things confusing if they still offer content for non-subscribers.