Curmudgeons is a 16 minute long film directed by Danny DeVito and starring Danny DeVito, Lucy DeVito, and David Margulies. NSFW due to adult themes and language, no nudity.
The preamble of the Australian Constitution defines the states to mean the colonies of New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia, including the northern territory of South Australia. Why New Zealand is listed as an Australian state?
Immigrants get the job done, and that extends to curing a mysterious disease once blamed on everything from bad corn to summertime. This week, Dr. Sydnee and Justin introduce you to the doc who cracked the case.
You are in the dentist’s office, getting a foot rub. Then you get a song to go with it. This guy is a delight, as he puts his own spin on the song “Sugartime” most famously recorded by the McGuire Sisters in 1958. You know the song, but you never expected to hear it from a yodeling Muslim dentist. Whoever he is, I’d buy his album. If he had one.
The leaves turn orange and begin to fall from the trees. A chill drifts down the back of your neck as you pull your coat tighter around your body on the way to work. Something feels different, but you're not sure what or why. Change is in the air—vague, impulsive, exciting. That change, friends, is a phenomenon known as "thirst." It descends upon us every October like a sexy fog—nature's way of imploring humans to attach themselves to other humans like erotic limpets so we don't have to spend winter alone eating cup of noodles in a snood.
We are now at the start of "cuffing season." Urban Dictionary defines "cuffing" as the moment when "people who would normally rather be single or promiscuous find themselves, along with the rest of the world, desiring to be tied down by a serious relationship." But another way of putting it is: "Going outside is horrible now because it is freezing and gets dark at 5 PM, so who wants to eat me out while I watch Blue Planet?"
According to Hello Giggles, cuffing season lasts from November to March, but culturally it begins in tandem with Starbucks changing its menu to "pumpkin spice and also some coffee." And this isn't some bullshit millennial trend; it's evolutionary history. When the days got darker and there was less food and firewood available, we had to shack up and start banging for a) body warmth and b) hopes of reproducing so offspring could look after us. We're not trying to have kids now, please God, but we do want someone to mutually masturbate with all the same.
Here's a handy guide on how to plough through the cuffing months with the sexual energy and seasonal enthusiasm of Santa and all his elves combined.
Photo by Bruno Bayley
EVERYONE IS A CUFFER
Cuffing doesn't recognize any of your preexisting sexual patterns. It doesn't care if you're usually the chaser or the chasee, the bottom or the top, the choker or the choked; cuffing season is all about throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. Except the shit is sloppy DMs at 2 AM, and the wall is literally anybody you're friends with on social media. We're all in this together to ensure our genitals don't get frostbite, so don't believe sentiments such as this Urban Dictionary entry on cuffing season:
"It's a despicable practice and I don't suggest anyone doing the aforementioned, especially since, during this time of year, emotions are extremely high and you risk getting your tires slashed (men)."
Sounds like someone got their dick burned because our guide wasn't around last cuffing season.
PRESEASON
It's time to get your sonar on; you're going to need it to navigate through all those wet lads. The preseason runs from September 20 to October 31, and during this period, your past lays come creeping out of the woodwork and, fair is fair, you consider them all. All bets are off—that laissez-faire, fucking-work-people-at-the-summer-party-just-cuz attitude to banging is over. You will find yourself anxiously whatsapping people back three months after the conversation dried up and reconsidering those who didn't make the summer cut because of some awkward sexist banter you uncovered while scrolling through their tweets. By the end of pre-season, you'll have consciously or subconsciously vetted your lineup more aggressively than border control at JFK.
CUTE ACTIVITY
Guys sending you photos of cute puppies, being nicer, more chatty, offering to do distinctly bae things such as lending you sweaters or meeting you with a take-away coffee: This is cuffing season.
You're thinking, Oh, that's kinda weird—that guy who sent me a zoomed in, bird's-eye picture of his log last year is now putting kisses at the end of his DMs and saying "awww" unironically. But that's the deal now, baby. Men want to be cuffed, make no mistake.
Alternatively, you can forget all that borderline relationshippy stuff and just restrict your engagement with them to getting an unsolicited Uber to their house at 11 PM, alerting them with a raunchy selfie and the semi-threatening words, "I'm outside."
EXES
If there is anyone who is primed to suck you into that relationship zone, it is the ex who will no doubt be peacocking over the next few months to remind you of their existence. They know how to make you orgasm in the least amount of time with the least amount of movement. They already know how demanding you are and just how much oral sex and food you need. You already know their bad bits so can make an informed decision about diving back in. And there's no shame in that: Exes are a reliable source of winter heat.
Photo by Ryan Harvey
HALLOWEEN
Historians, pagans, and Christians around the world will tell you All Hallow's Eve is a festival dedicated to remembering the dead. They are all wrong. Halloween is a cuffing season ritual where participants wear a costume that accentuates their best parts, flaunts their awareness of pop culture, and demonstrates their ability to put together an ensemble that isn't just a bin liner and some plastic teeth. As midnight approaches, people will pair off based on whether their costumes revolve around David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, or Harambe. This will dictate if you'll spend the next four months fucking to German art-house films or two-star romcoms on Netflix.
TRADE DEADLINE
By November 30, you will have a serious choice to make. Which out of the number of people you've been chirpsing are you going to force to put up with you all cuffing season? Will it be the one who's popped up on WhatsApp every time you've uploaded a selfie for the last six months but still doesn't know how to pronounce your last name? Will it be someone you know from college and enjoyed a decade-long platonic friendship with? Will it be someone who read an article about cuffing season that you wrote for VICE, thus indicating how painfully single you are? Either way, you have no idea what you're actually in for. It's basically Deal or No Deal but with a cock and balls. Choose wisely.
FUCKING
Why are there so many kids born between August and October? Cuffing season. Your work productivity will be dropping to abysmal levels, even for you, because all day will be spent sending filth back-and-forth and taking pictures of your boobs in the bathroom. You'll be shagging in every mildly uncomfortable position written about in Cosmo. You'll finish fucking and then do it again and maybe even again if you haven't already got thrush. Even then, maybe you'll have another go.
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
The thing about chirpsing is there's only so far you can go until someone catches the extremely common and deadly disease called feelings. Christmas is a fucking minefield, so just don't bother. You've been dating for, what, a maximum of eight weeks? There is food that lasts longer than that. Just buy yourself some fancy lingerie and claim it's for them; otherwise one of you will end up being more sentimental and making the other person want to cough up their appendix by gifting them tickets for a gig that doesn't happen for another five months.
PARTIES
Winter is horrible enough without dragging yourself out the house to go to some acquaintance's birthday drinks when you don't have the guaranteed promise of a bang. Have you ever seen anyone enter a pub between the months of December and March alone? No, I don't think so. This is where cuffing season comes into play: If anything, at least you'll have someone to get drunk with.
THE MOMENT WHEN ONE PERSON, WHO WAS PREVIOUSLY OBLIVIOUS TO THE FACT THIS IS A CUFFING SEASON RELATIONSHIP, GETS THEIR HEART AND SEXUAL EGO BRUTALLY CRUSHED AS IT ALL BECOMES CLEAR
What? You didn't know that cuffing season existed and the true reality of millennial hookup culture has come crushing down on you as quickly as it took for their unattended phone to voice a series of soft chimes of Tinder matches? This is brutal. This is cuffing season.
IT MIGHT NOT BE FOR YOU
Do you know how much shit you can get done when you're not having sex and navigating someone else's ego? I know it's almost a faux pas to suggest this in a culture where we scroll through Instagram on the toilet so we don't have to shit alone, but spending some time with yourself is also an option. Learn a language, start crafting or whatever, spend your winter nights trying out new masturbatory tactics. Emerge from cuffing season victorious and self-improved while everyone around you crumbles into a nonfunctioning puddle of emotional drama and UTIs.
Photo by Ben Bentley
THE RELEASE
Spring is here! Lambs are bleating, buds are opening, you feel moderately enthused about life again! The ideal conclusion of a successful cuffing-season relationship would be you both amicably allowing your hookups to fizzle out before going off your separate ways with freedom in your heart and a skip in your step. The grand release from cuffing season and time to hoe again.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT
However. However. There is, also, the chance you tried and failed. You didn't manage to cuff anyone successfully so spent the entire winter alone just like the winter before, and the winter before that, and your whole adult life. You're smiling along with this article, aren't you, but you haven't had sex for six months or more. Sometimes you find yourself wondering if you've forgotten how to actually have sex and start googling it only to laugh it off nervously. Sometimes you'll experience a moment of cold horror when you realize that it's 1 AM, and you've been masturbating endlessly—just, endlessly—because there is literally nothing going on in your life.
But then you remember that there was last year, and there's always next year, and Jesus is this how we live now? In sex cycles? Forever? Cuffing and fucking and fucking and cuffing? And then you masturbate again.
"Creampie" is an adult industry term for when a male porn star jizzes inside the orifice(s) of another performer, then allows the camera to linger on his cum seeping out. Interestingly, it has become a powerful porn sub-genre that's oozed it's way into America's sexual vocabulary. Although not as common in your average film as the cumshot or even its popular subset, the facial, it picks up substantially more search traffic on Google, was one of Pornhub's top overall searches in 2011 and 2012, and continues to be a top regional search term in parts of America. According to the industry's paper of record, one of this summer's top porn rentals was a creampie title. The all-but-mainstreamed fetish has even been referenced in Hollywood features like Michael Fassbender's Shame and the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Creampie scenes have become so pervasive in porn and beloved by consumers you'd assume it was a long-established trope.
However, according to Jeff Vanzetti, a porn archivist and founder of IAFD.com, porn's IMDB, the distinct genre of creampies didn't acquire its name, visual vocabulary, or norms until the 1990s. And it wasn't until the early 2000s that it became one of the more popular genres in porn, launching countless series like Creampie Cuties, Creampie Surprise, and Internal Combustion.
The spread of the creampie in porn was not some organic process. It was the result of sustained activism of a group of fans turned producers and lobbyists. These fans, who operated the still-extant site creampie.com, at first to aggregate and review scenes they liked and later to host original content, coined (and trademarked) the term "creampie," drew up rules for how these scenes ought to be shot, and sold some of the most mainstream, profitable studios of the era on their fixation.
VICE recently caught up with one of the main voices behind creampie.org and its creampie advocacy, a man who goes by the pseudonym "Sir Ron." Once just a fan and a self-described successful "tech guy," Sir Ron's work with creampies became so all-consuming that he eventually quit his job, moved to California, and dug himself deep into the adult industry, where he still works today. We talked about why he and his compatriots were so eager to see creampies in film, the tactics they used to popularize the act, and what he thinks of modern creampies.
Our project started back in 1994 in response to the adult industry only doing facials—scene where a guy jizzes on another porn star's face. Instead, we wanted creampies to become a variation of a popshot. You have five scenes in a movie. You don't want to see cumshots in all of them. We were over it.
In the magazine days, what did people jerk off to? The pussy shots. Having a close-up shot of a pussy is a turn on. Having a close-up shot of a pussy with cum coming out puts it over the top because men are visual. Now you're seeing the pussy shots—an extra stimulus—combined with the aftermath and the excitement of the aftermath.
The amateur market was doing creampies all along—e.g. Jan B, Amy French, Lynn Carroll. We originally started as a list and review site to find and present videos that contained creampies or internal cum shots. Adult-video fans contributed to the list, and we maintained it.
We started to do advocacy for creampies in the adult industry in 1996 by attending trade shows and asking video manufacturers for creampie videos. As you can guess, they didn't have any.
We started producing our own content around 1998. We had to recruit girls, and the only places you could really do that, outside of the one big gatekeeper talent agency, were the swinger's magazines like Oddity and Continental Contacts. You might see a girl in them and write to her. We had interviews beforehand, and in the beginning, some new amateur girls would say, "Isn't that how you're supposed to do sex?" It's what everybody does in real life. We just show it.
We had instructions on the site for making a good creampie video: You can fake a creampie, so one of the rules was you couldn't cut the footage. In the 1990s, if you cut, it's implied that you put something fake inside the girl. Now it's a little looser, a little easier. Still, you don't pan away on the popshot. You stick with it for up to two minutes. You've got to watch it come out. That's what made it successful, what makes it a creampie.
Our first attempt at marketing our content and spreading the term was to contact AVN and say, "Did you know that 'creampie' is the industry term for an internal cumshot?" Of course they'd write us back and say, "No, we didn't know that." So we started getting the word out like that.
"Creampie" is actually our registered trademark. It was 1999. Mainstream companies were going after adult companies that owned domain names like WhiteHouse.com, which was a porn site. Nina Footwear tried to sue Nina Hartley for her website—she was at nina.com. She fought it. But we didn't want Entenmann's or Pillsbury or whatever to go, "Hey, creampie, that's us!" So we trademarked it to protect ourselves and keep using the name. We almost never enforce it, though.
Toward the turn of the millennium, we also saw creampie series from big producers like 4-Play Video, Anabolic Video, Bangbros, Devil's Film, Elegant Angel, Kickass Video, Lethal Hardcore, and Randy West. This industry is sort of trend driven. If somebody's doing anal, then everybody has to do anal. So if somebody's doing creampie, then everybody's coming out with creampies one after the other.
Starting in 2001, Red Light District, which may have then been the largest adult studio around the millennium, put the genre over the top with a slew of creampies. . Basically we achieved so much success eventually our product wasn't unique anymore.
"This industry is sort of trend driven... So if somebody's doing creampie, then everybody's coming out with creampies one after the other."—Sir Ron
Creampie has now become a niche. There are super specific series like Creampie Thais. And Pulse has Anal Consumption, a creampie genre where the guy cums in a girl's butt and it comes out in a glass and she drinks it. So the genre has even micro-niched. People are trying to break it up more. It's about two factors: You need to find new stimuli. And, to survive in this market today, it's about people coming out and saying, "I have a micro niche, and I'm gonna exploit that."
We never meant for creampie to become a fetish, with an entire series devoted to creampie-only scenes. All we wanted was for one scene to be a creampie, vaginal or anal, and mix it up a little.
But the nice thing is that the fans are loyal, and we attracted a lot of fans early on without doing much advertising. One of the first guys who joined our site, his membership ended last year because he passed away. His name was Jerry. He stuck with it. He'd always write. "This is Jerry from 1996," he would say.
Screenshot from 'Living in an Unreal World: A Film By Adam Curtis For Readers of VICE'
This article originally appeared on VICE UK
Adam Curtis is one of the best filmmakers on planet earth. Every time a new film of his comes out we write about it because they're always important. Now he actually made a short one for us to help promote his new BBC project. You can read more about Adam and his work here, here, and here.
No one talks about power these days. We are encouraged to see ourselves as free, independent individuals not controlled by anybody, and we despise politicians as corrupt and empty of all ideas.
But power is all around us. It's just that it has shifted and mutated into a massive system of management and control, whose tentacles reach into all parts of our lives. But we can't see it because we still think of power in the old terms—of politicians telling us what to do.
The aim of the film I have made—HyperNormalisation—is to bring that new power into focus, and show its true dimensions. It ranges from a giant computer high up in the mountains of northeast America that manages and controls over 7 percent of the worlds total wealth, to the complex algorithms that constantly monitor every move and choice you make online, to modern scientific ideas about what the normal human being should be—in their weight and in their feelings and moods.
What links all these systems is an overriding aim is to keep the world stable. To avoid all change. The giant computer constantly compares events happening around the world to events in the past. If it sees a dangerous pattern, it immediately adjusts its trillions of dollars to keep things stable. That is real power. The algorithms on social media constantly look at the patterns of what you like and then feed you more of that—so you enter into an echo chamber that constantly feeds you back to you. So again nothing changes—and you learn nothing new that would contradict how you feel. That too is real power.
What results is a system which cocoons us and makes us feel safe. And that means we have become terrified of all change. But that fear of change is in the interest of a system that wants to hold everything stable. And stops us from ever challenging it.
But it is impossible to keep things frozen forever. The world is dynamic. Things happen that you can never predict just by reading the past. This is why more and more we are being hit by events—the horror in Syria, Brexit, Trump, the waves of refugees—that neither we nor our leaders have the mental map to understand let alone deal with. Because we have bought into the dream that the world can be held stable and safe.
The short film I have made for VICE is about how, if you pull back and look at the everyday life all around you, you can see the cracks appearing through the shiny surface of the cocoon we are living in. So much of the modern world is beginning to feel odd, unreal, and sometimes fake. I think these are the dynamic forces outside beginning to pierce through as the system begins to fail.
It will fail – because a system of power that has no vision of the future can never last. It cannot deal with change. We have to begin to look outside. Because there is more out there...
The History of the World. Since 200,000 BCE, humanity has spread around globe and enacted huge change upon the planet. This video shows every year of that story, right from the beginning.
Late on Wednesday evening, the United States bombed Yemen’s Houthi militants for the first time, launching cruise missiles at three Houthi-controlled radar installations. The strikes were billed as limited retaliation: Twice in the past week, missiles have been fired from Houthi-controlled territory at US warships in the area (which they luckily missed).
But there’s a bigger story here: The United States has, for more than a year now, been quietly participating in a Saudi-led war against the Houthis, providing valuable logistical support for Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes. So this missile exchange isn’t something out of the blue. It’s an escalation of current US policy, moving from indirect to direct participation in the Saudi offensive.
The problem, though, is that the Saudi campaign is utterly vicious.
Saudi airstrikes have struck civilian targets like marketplaces and funeral homes. Their warships have blockaded Yemeni ports, helping to create a humanitarian catastrophe in which children are literally starving to death.
“I honestly don’t know how to describe in words how desperate the situation is in Yemen,” says Kristine Beckerle, a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It’s a step away from famine.”
So the current exchange raises a fundamental question for the Obama administration: How much further are they willing to go in support of their allies’ war crimes?
Who are the Houthis and why is Saudi Arabia bombing them?
To understand the US missile exchange, you have to understand who the Houthi rebels are — and why one of America’s key allies in the Middle East has gone to war against them.
The Houthis are from the country's northwest and are religiously Zaydi, an offshoot of mainstream Shia Islam. Yemen's Zaydis are concentrated in the north, while southern Yemen is largely Sunni. This creates two axes of tension inside Yemen: Religious tension between Sunni and Shia, and regional tension between the country’s North and its South (which were separate countries until 1990).
Houthi militancy, which began in the 1990s, was principally motivated by regionalism rather than sectarianism per se. The issue was a perception that Yemen’s northern residents were being underserved and under-resourced by the central government, rather than a religious war between Zaydis and Sunnis.
“The current armed conflict in Yemen began, essentially, as a domestic struggle for power between political and tribal factions,” Farea al-Muslimi and Adam Baron, two leading experts on Yemen, write in a paper for Yemen’s Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies.
Between the early 1990s and 2010s, Houthi forces sporadically clashed with government forces. But in January 2011, the Arab Spring changed everything: A broad-based Yemeni uprising toppled dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been in power for 33 years. The chaotic aftermath of the uprising weakened the central government, fracturing its military forces, thus relatively strengthening the Houthis.
In November 2011, Saleh signed an internationally brokered agreement to hand over power to his deputy, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was tasked with forming a transitional unity government.
But the Houthis "had no representation in the transitional government," the Middle East Institute’s Charles Schmitz writes. So they saw "the transitional government as no different from the old regime that conducted wars against them — in other words, a body that cannot be trusted."
Eventually, after a series of failed attempts to reach a national consensus among the various rival groups, the Houthi forces mobilized and deposed Hadi, kicking off a full-on civil war in September 2014.
In response, Hadi asked his good friend Saudi Arabia to help him battle the Houthis and take back control of the country. The Saudis were more than willing to jump in the fight: The Houthis are hostile to Saudi involvement in their country, seeing the monarchy-cum-Sunni-theocracy as a force for Sunni sectarianism and repression of the Zaydis.
Perhaps more importantly, the Houthis receive some support from Iran — Saudi Arabia’s nemesis in the broader Middle East. As such, the Saudis see a Houthi-controlled Yemen as a direct threat right on its Southern border.
Now, it’s easy to overstate Iranian influence on the Houthis. An exhaustive survey of Iranian involvement in Yemen, from the University of Ottawa’s Thomas Juneau, concluded Iran’s support for the Houthis has been limited to small weapons shipments and limited deployment of advisers.
“There is no evidence, in particular, suggesting that the Houthis have become dependent on Iranian assistance, or in any way fallen under Tehran’s authority,” he writes.
But, regardless, the Saudis saw the rise of an Iranian-backed militant group in their backyard as a threat — and decided to intervene to stop them. In March 2015, the Saudis announced the formation of a coalition of Sunni-majority Arab countries aimed at reinstalling the Hadi government throughout Yemen.
And so the campaign began.
The US is aiding and abetting criminal behavior
(Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)
A victim of a coalition airstrike in Sanaa.
The United States has backed the Saudi-led effort, in part because it shares some of Saudi Arabia’s concerns about Iranian influence in the region, but also because it has a strong interest in keeping the Saudis happy so they’ll support the US-led fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In addition to providing logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi war effort, the US in November 2015 approved a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
But the Saudi-led coalition has succeeded in doing tremendous harm to Yemeni civilians. Since the bombing campaign began in March 2015, over 4,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting. According to Human Rights Watch’s Beckerle, most of those have been killed by the coalition or its Sunni Arab allies.
HRW has documented 58 separate instances of Saudi airstrikes on civilians that violate the laws of war, including attacks on hospitals and water bottling factories. Just this weekend, Saudi forces bombed a funeral home, killing 140 people and wounding another 525.
“One of the routine patterns that we’ve seen is attacks on civilian infrastructure,” Beckerle says. “It does really raise serious concerns that the coalition was trying to inflict widespread damage on Yemen’s production capacity.”
To make matters worse, the Saudis have also imposed a blockade on Yemen, preventing goods from entering the country by sea or air. This has put Yemen’s civilian population in great peril: Even prior to the war, Yemen was the Middle East’s poorest country. Over 90 percent of its food supplies were imported.
Since the Saudis cut off this flow of goods, the situation for civilians has become nightmarish. Half of Yemen’s population — 14 million people — doesn’t have enough food to eat, per the UN. A shortage of medical supplies is devastating the country’s health infrastructure.
“There are babies dying in incubators because we can’t get supplies to treat them,” Ahmed Yahya al-Haifi, a doctor at Sanaa’s Republic hospital, told Middle East Eye.
Of course, the Saudis aren’t alone in their indifference to civilian life. The Houthis have also shelled civilian neighborhoods indiscriminately and prevented food and medical supplies from entering to cities held by the Hadi loyalists in the south.
But the United States hasn’t sold the Houthis weapons that ended up being used in strikes on civilians, like it has with the Saudis. It hasn’t refueled 5,000 Houthi jets, like it has with the Saudis. It hasn’t turned a blind eye to the Houthis suppressing UN criticism of their behavior, as the Saudis have done.
This hasn’t been discussed that much in the American press, which doesn’t really see logistical support as the US being at war somewhere. But the fact of the matter is that the US is a co-belligerent with Saudi Arabia, providing the support that allows it to wage this brutal, bloody war. Even some Obama administration allies are publicly criticizing its approach.
“There’s an American imprint on every civilian life lost in Yemen,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Though the Saudis are actually dropping the bombs from their planes, they wouldn’t be able to do it without us.”
Now, as we’ve seen, this has led to direct bombing. It’s not quite clearly why, exactly,missiles were fired at US warships. It could be retaliation for the US role in the Saudi campaign, a sign that the Houthis may be becoming more militarily and ideologically aligned with Iran, or something else entirely. The Houthis themselves deny responsibility for the missile attacks, making it even harder to figure out what’s going on.
The US retaliation, so far, has been relatively proportional. The US targeted radar installations, not civilian infrastructure; it appears to be a one-off retaliatory strike rather than the beginning of a broader offensive.
But the incident shows the potential for the US presence in this war to escalate. The US, whether we acknowledge it or not, is helping one side of this war. Doing so requires putting US military assets in the region, which puts them in danger of being targeted. The more US forces are targeted, the more likely the United States is to step up its direct military involvement in a fundamentally unjust and vicious war.
Luckily, the missiles fired at US warships in the past week have all missed. But even that provoked a response. Imagine if they were hit, and US sailors had died. Imagine how much of an escalation this would result in.
Then ask yourself this question: What’s the upside for the US here? Why is it willing to put its own people in danger in service of a brutal, ineffective military campaign led by a theocratic dictatorship?
I sat down with James Gleick, the author of the fascinating, dreamlike new book Time Travel: A History. It chronicles the history of time travel as a concept, including the first story to include a fantasy about killing a young Hitler and, in the process, changing the course of history.
That first Hitler assassination (via time travel) came in Ralph Milne Farley's story "I Killed Hitler" (originally published in Weird Tales and later collected in The Omnibus of Time). In that first story, a man travels back in time to kill his cousin, Adolf Hitler, only to become a Hitler-like figure himself.
The above video takes a tour through the history of time travel killings, from H.G. Wells’s invention of time travel to modern pop culture like The Terminator. (If you want to truly geek out on time travel, this site provides a great timeline.) Though the fantasy of killing Hitler is comic on its surface, there’s surprising depth to the philosophical dilemma.
And after all that, the question remains: Would you kill baby Hitler?
We’ve only got about two weeks left before Halloween, so if you don’t already have a costume (like me), it’s time to lock that shit down. And, thanks to the Internet, it’s easier than ever. Want to be both sexy and indescribably weird? We—and most Halloween costume manufacturers—are here to help!
Female characters are prominent in scary movies, and not always as helpless victims. Think about the Final Girl, without whom slasher films would not exist, or other kick-ass heroines, like Alien’s Ripley. Behind the camera, though, you’ll find way more male writers and directors—which is why these horror movies directed by women are worthy of extra celebration.
by Casey Chan on Sploid, shared by Adam Clark Estes to io9
Pixar animators Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj made this short filmBorrowed Timeover the past 5 years, and it’s fantastic. The story is set up as a classic Western but then makes a pretty heavy turn and becomes a story about forgiveness. Basically, it’s a story made for adults.
Who came up with the idea of traveling back in time to kill Hitler as an infant, anyway? In this video, we find out that the concept of a time machine is pretty recent in the scheme of things. However, the concept of using it to kill Hitler is older then you think.
Vox spoke to author James Gleick, who wrote Time Travel: A History, about the possibility of changing history by killing Adolph Hitler before he came to power, or even before he could fight back. Would you do it? Even assuming time travel was possible, could you do it? Not only does the question bring out certain personality traits in those discussing it, it also delves into one’s understanding of the nature of time. -Thanks, Phil Edwards!
En galego temos recursos gramaticais específicos que, por causa da diglosia co castelán, están en risco de se perder ou sofren modificacións entre moitos galegofalantes que os coñecen pero que logo non son capaces de reproducilos. É o caso dos verbos compostos. Cada vez máis se escoita entre persoas que falan acotío a nosa lingua formas castelás tales como “eu había visto esa película” ou “Houberamos vido antes de sabelo”. En moitos casos, quen así se expresa nin sequera advirte de que esas formas son estrañas ao galego. É o que se chama castelanismo gramatical.
Mais hoxe quero falar doutro fenómeno quizais non tan evidente: o infinitivo conxugado.
O infinitivo conxugado non existe en castelán. É un elemento na nosa expresión que a dota de maior profundidade e precisión e que permanece vivo na maior parte das comarcas do país. A teoría xa se coñece. No idioma galego, o infinitivo flexiona en varias persoas e aparece así marcado cando a frase cumpre unha serie de condicións.
Nace natural cando o infinitivo e o verbo principal teñen un suxeito distinto: “Foi marchardes vós e empezar a festa”. Tamén cando nunha frase aparece o infinitivo antes do verbo principal. Neste caso, aparece xeralmente introducido por unha preposición. “Para convenceren os socialistas, os populares só teñen que ameazar con novas eleccións”. Cando durante unha frase hai moita distancia entre o verbo principal e o infinitivo, co cal pode non quedar claro cal é o suxeito. “As empresas chinesas adquiren patrimonio industrial galego como aposta de futuro por consideraren que ten unha boa razón calidade-prezo”.
En cambio, non podemos conxugar o infinitivo cando estea subordinado directamente ao verbo principal: “Deben coidar (non coidaren) as persoas dependentes”. “Tes que cociñar (cociñares) ese prato de pasta que tanto me presta”.
Como consecuencia da transmisión irregular (con ruído ambiente) do galego de xeración en xeración, moitas persoas galegofalantes saben que existe o infinitivo conxugado pero non saben flexionalo. As formas erroneamente utilizadas máis comúns son a segunda persoa do singular e a terceira do plural. “O neno veu para aprenderen a debuxar”. “Dous días levo sen durmir, para seres exacta”.
É moi útil reparar un tantiño no uso do infinitivo conxugado. Melloraremos a expresión, farémola máis eficiente e permitiremos que un recurso que só manteñen o napolitano e o húngaro a maiores da familia de linguas galegoportuguesa siga vivo.
Pasó casi un año desde que se grabó. La «Pesadilla en la cocina» del «Irlanda», que para los ochenteros como el que firma fue la marisquería «Moncho» y ahora se llama «Lembranzas», se emitió este jueves y el programa de Alberto Chicote fue el único que ganó audiencia en la franja de prime time entre las principales cadenas de ámbito estatal.
El espacio de laSexta subió a 1.919.000 espectadores, con un 11 % de cuota de pantalla. Muchas cosas han cambiado desde que el cocinero recaló en la ciudad, abundantemente reflejada con vistosas estampas de la ría o de su zona histórica. Sin ir más lejos, el plantel que desafió a los elementos, grasa incluida, ya no es el mismo. No queda ni uno.
El céntrico local de la calle Dolores, parte de cuyo trazado se ve ocupado por su terraza si el tiempo acompaña, suscita comentarios de todo tipo este viernes. La Pesadilla del Irlanda, motivo de todo tipo de frases en Twitter a golpe de trending topic, ha provocado que los cuchicheos frente a su fachada confirmasen que muchos ferrolanos se pegaron a la pantalla.
Imagen del local este viernes (foto: Raúl Salgado)
El establecimiento lucía tranquilo este viernes. Chicote dio una vuelta al concepto y al nombre. El «Irlanda», que dispuso de una ubicación anterior en el tramo inmediatamente superior de la calle María, pasó a ser «Lembranzas», pero todo parece indicar que recuperará el original. La pareja que lo regenta, enfrentada en el programa, se reconcilió en un lugar especial, el cine Dúplex.
Resta saber qué ocurrirá con su carta, objeto de disputa por estimar el presentador que no respondía al nombre del restaurante. La esposa del titular fue una de las protagonistas de una velada en la que el propio conductor, quién lo iba a decir, reivindicaba que las calles peatonales son objeto de deseo para cualquier negocio. Ya ven, en el Concello se habla estos días de eso.
Playa de Doniños desde Monteventoso (254 metros de altitud) donde están las ruinas de un antiguo observatorio meteorológico de la Armada.
Desde el mirador se ven por un lado los largos brazos de la entrada de la Ría de Ferrol, con Montefaro y sus antenas de TV, la entrada de la playa de Chanteiro (Ares), y al fondo la amplia Ría de Ares/Betanzos, apreciándose las bateas de Lorbé, cerca de Sada, e incluso el puente del Pedrido al fondo de todo. La zona de Mera y la bocana de la Ría de Coruña más a la derecha, la ciudad de Coruña con el espigón y la Torre de Vigilancia Marítima a un lado, la Torre de Hércules al centro y la entrada de la Ensenada del Orzán, Monte San Pedro, y a la derecha todo el perfil costero hasta las Islas Sisargas, que se ven si hay buena visibilidad. El Faro de Prioriño se ve después del Puerto Exterior de Ferrol.
Por la otra parte se ve la playa de Doniños, Lobadiz, ensenada de San Jorge/Cobas y Cabo Prior.
El lago de Doniños está a los pies. La vista es excelente, un lugar digno de ser visitado.
Featherweight Games, Dan Graf, and Yodo1 made one of the best endless-runner-type games of 2016 in Rodeo Stampede [Free], and they're also doing a swell job at keeping the darn thing updated. And with the latest update to the game comes a new environment that, frankly, I'm surprised wasn't added in the game early on: The Outback! I say that because the developers have significant ties to Australia, but no matter: now the game has fire hazards to avoid, dropbears to worry about, and a total of 49 new animals to ride and collect.
This isn't the only cool update – a crossover with Time Locker [Free] happened recently too, with each game getting characters from the other. The iOS version of Rodeo Stampede has the update now, with the Android version set to receiver the update in the near future.
Congratulations on bringing your little girl into the world! Now for the hard part: naming your child something that will encourage a love of crafting and other twee qualities she will soon embrace. Here’s how to force your will upon your little girl with these old-timey names that will guarantee she will one day grow up to make her own clothing.
Ethel
Ethel is great, especially when paired with a middle name like May or Rose. Naming your child Ethel is a surefire way to make sure she makes a skirt out of ties one day. Little Ethel will absolutely learn very basic sewing skills and then go nuts with scissors in her room after mandolin practice. You will want to warn her that the there’s a huge hole in the back, but you also want her to be free to make her own mistakes. That’s your Ethel!
Nanette
Nanette is the name if you want a daughter that not only makes her jeans into purses, and never stops talking about it. With a name like Nanette, she will aggressively become a fan of unicorns and wear socks that she made out of old socks. Good for her! Go with Nanette if you’re looking forward to a month where your daughter repeats the same raggedy fashion show for you every single night!
Tabitha
Tabitha is the perfect biblical name for a girl if you want to always be really nervous about her use of sewing needles. Tabitha is going to use her own blood as t-shirt dye and do most of her best work in the woods. So have a little Tabitha if you want to live your entire life in fear because she only eats hot dogs that she has skinned. Oh, Tabitha!
Opal
Look into the future and envision your daughter. Her name is Opal and she’s her own clothing maker, now. She’s sweet and smart and has the confidence of a child that never wears a bra, not even when employers tell her to. You love her, or at least that’s what you keep telling yourself. Actually, you’ve just realized that this “I don’t want anything on my body to look right” aesthetic she’s got going on is exhausting, but you knew exactly what you were getting into when you named her Opal.
Try out these new, old trendy names to guarantee that you will get really good at saying, “Wow, that looks amazing!” as she grows into a beautiful old woman.
After throwing on some leggings and Ugg boots to grab a pumpkin spice latte yesterday, I overheard someone call me a “basic bitch.” Even though I was pretty busy texting my mother at the time, I had to set the record straight: I am not a basic bitch—I’m just a very boring woman.
Basic bitches are fine and all, but that’s just not the kind of boring person I am. My love for bland, mainstream, stereotypical white girl stuff didn’t come from popular culture or even network television. They actually come from my general ambivalence and complete lack of taste. I don’t like Taylor Swift because she’s trendy; I like Taylor Swift because I’m straight up boring.
I’m not the kind of person who puts a bunch of hashtags on a photo of my legs at the beach; I’m the kind of person who doesn’t post anything at all – because I’m at home and not at the beach. There’s a huge difference there.
Now, some people say the term “basic bitch” unfairly belittles women’s interests. And if I were a basic bitch, I might have an opinion about that, too. But it turns out I’m very dull. Do I have a “take” on the latest season of Real Housewives? Nah, not really. I just like to watch them on TV. Pretty boring, I know.
As a boring woman, there’s plenty of stuff that’s fulfilling about my life. I enjoy the occasional trip to Target. My favorite movie is The Notebook, though I’m kind of sick of it now. I enjoy my work as a PR manager. And most of my clothes are from H&M and Forever 21. And that’s really it. My life, in a word, is “fine.”
Does this sound like a basic bitch to you? I doubt it. I am literally too boring for that.
The next time you see a woman in a messy bun taking a selfie at brunch, don’t judge her too quickly. She might be a basic bitch, but she might be just like me: just a regular old, insufferably boring woman.
MARTA CORRAL | Ferrol | Viernes 14 octubre 2016 | 8:34
Corría el mes de febrero del pasado año cuando el Partido Socialista de Ferrol desvelaba la lista que presentaría a los comicios de mayo. Después del número uno que ocupaba Beatriz Sestayo, dos independientes se adjudicaban los números dos y tres. Eran Felipe Sas y María Fernández Lemos, ambos conocidos por su trayectoria profesional y no por sus tendencias políticas.
Estos fichajes estrella le costarían entonces a Sestayo no pocas discrepancias con parte de la militancia, que no veía con buen ojos relegar a los canteranos a puestos más bajos, aunque finalmente la Asamblea ratificara al equipo propuesto por la Secretaria Xeral.
Lo que posiblemente no calculó la socialista es que Sas y Lemos, expuestos en campaña a diario para dotar a su propuesta política de un carácter más técnico que partidista, acabarían por revolucionarle el vestuario aún estando al frente de dos de las áreas primordiales para recuperar Ferrol.
Sas anunciaba su renuncia en el mes de abril de este año, sin ni siquiera cumplir un año de despacho en el Palacio Municipal, aunque por entonces alegó cuestiones profesionales. Ahora, Pipe ratifica lo dicho, pero añade: «Quizás me faltó matizar».
El matiz que añade el ex edil, frente a mí al otro lado de la mesa en una cafetería del Cantón de Molíns este jueves, es que la situación política que lo rodeaba se había convertido en un «barrizal» y tampoco supo franquear las trabas administrativas con las que se topó para llevar sus proyectos adelante: «No quería pasar a la historia como el peor concejal de Ferrol», admite, «era necesario que me fuera».
Sas no se encontró impedimentos para abandonar el Gobierno, más bien se topó con un puente de plata, porque la entrada de un afín a Sestayo como es Germán Costoya, alega, torcía la balanza del grupo municipal del lado de la Secretaria, que por aquel entonces ya comenzaba a discrepar con Lemos y Rosa Méndez.
Sas habla ahora porque dice estar «cabreado» con las acusaciones que la Ejecutiva y el grupo municipal socialista han vertido sobre María Fernández Lemos: «Todo el comunicado que se mandó, hablando de deslealtad y ocultación de información, es mentira», dice rotundo y dispuesto a romper una lanza a favor de sus dos antiguas compañeras.
«Aprecio a María, he discrepado con ella en algunas cosas, pero lo que se le ha hecho es increíble», asegura, añadiendo que se trata de una «gran profesional con un proyecto claro de ciudad», el mismo que, recuerda, defendió el PSOE de Ferrol tanto en campaña electoral como en el pacto de gobierno que rubricó con Ferrol en Común.
La chispa adecuada
Sas analiza que, en su opinión, «la chispa» que detonó la reprobación de Lemos fue su abandono, junto a Méndez, en la votación del pleno donde el PP pedía en moción el cese del gerente de Urbanismo, situación a la que se llegó por una acumulación de situaciones que ya habían tensado la cuerda, como la retirada de la decicación exclusiva a la concejala de Patrimonio o la imposición de asesores en detrimento de las demandas de personal del área que dirige la arquitecta.
«Ya cuando se propuso a Germán Costoya como asesor de Urbanismo yo le dije a Bea [Sestayo] que eso no era ilegal, pero era antiestético», recuerda Sas, subrayando que no tiene nada en su contra ni en contra de José Ramón Ramos -el gerente cesado en esa sesión plenaria-, pero que se trataba del número seis de la lista y, por lo tanto, no le pareció un nombramiento políticamente correcto.
«Creo que el tema personal no puede entrar en el ámbito político», dice, añadiendo que «Bea cometió un error» y «se ha cargado el PSOE de Ferrol». Reconoce que le tiene «muchísimo cariño», que todos en el equipo «trabajan un montón» y no tiene «nada personal» contra ellos, pero que adolecen de «manía persecutoria» y «celos».
Ruptura del bipartito
Explica que siempre «se dudó de María [Lemos] y de mí» por mantener una relación cordial con personas de Ferrol en Común, «se nos decía: “Os van a captar”, como si se tratase de una secta», relata Sas. «Yo veía que desde el principio nos dedicamos a ponerle la proa a Ferrol en Común, le estábamos haciendo oposición a nuestros socios», analiza, reconociendo que trató varias veces el tema con Sestayo, pidiéndole que se rebajara el tono de las cosas, sin respuesta.
«No soy afín políticamente a Jorge Suárez, pero ha sido la persona que más ha defendido el Gobierno. Él no lo ha roto, ha sido la Ejecutiva y el grupo. El Gobierno se lo ha cargado el grupo municipal socialista», asevera Sas, asegurando que, por ejemplo, fue la propia Sestayo y Bruno Díaz los que no quisieron facilitar los presupuestos de sus áreas consiguiendo así retrasar la presentación de las cuentas municipales.
«Me duele y estoy abochornadísimo, el ciudadano no puede sufrir esto con las necesidades que hay», se lamenta el ex edil, enumerando asimismo la «vergonzosa» reacción de los tres ediles socialistas votando en contra de una modificación de crédito que había solicitado ellos «en un 95 %»: «No se puede gobernar por berrinche», sostiene.
Dice que Suárez demostró «mucha paciencia» con Sestayo y que sólo tomó la decisión de retirarle competencias al verse respaldado por «políticos del PSOE de Galicia» que querrían quitarse a la Secretaria Xeral del medio y que, ahora, han preferido no salir a la palestra.
Alegando que no comparte con Sestayo que el paso de Méndez y Lemos suponga transfuguismo ni un secuestro de votos del PSOE, Sas afirma que, al contrario de lo defendido por la socialista, «hay gente que ha votado al partido porque yo iba en las listas, así me lo han manifestado, aunque no puedo precisar cuántos votos han ganado por mí o María».
«Espero que el Partido Socialista desde el Comité de arbitraje tome una decisión de una vez y se defina», desea Sas, explicando que a pesar de la situación en los próximos comicios «no voy a votar a Jorge». ¿Votará entonces al PSOE?, pregunto, «me gustaría, pero depende», contesta Sas sacando a pasear su retranca antes de despedirse y perderse entre la gente que pasea por la calle de la Iglesia.
With dozens of millions of monthly views, Putlocker.is is the go-to video streaming site for many people.
The site ranks among the 250 most-visited websites on the Internet and is particularly popular in the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa.
However, starting three days ago the site suddenly became inaccessible. While a brief downtime stint is nothing unusual for these type of sites, the prolonged downtime is cause for concern among users.
Many are voicing their frustration after being confronted by yet another CloudFlare downtime banner, showing them that the site’s servers are still unresponsive.
“Putlocker is down so I no longer have a reason to live,” one user dramatically announced.
“Putlocker has been down the whole day. I’m going through serious withdrawals,” another added.
Putlocker.is down
Looking for answers, TorrentFreak tried to contact the Putlocker.is team on their known support address. However, this email returned an error message as well.
As far as we can see the current problems are related to the site’s servers. The domain name itself is operating as it should and hasn’t been seized or suspended by the registrar.
Interestingly, the downtime occurs right after Hollywood’s MPAA reported the site to the United States Trade Representative, describing it as one of the largest piracy threats.
“Putlocker.is is the most visited infringing English language video streaming link site in the world,” the MPAA wrote.
According to the MPAA the site is believed to operate from Vietnam, with its servers being hosted at the Swiss company Private Layer. Whether there’s a direct relation between the report and the downtime is unclear though.
Meanwhile, several “other” Putlockers are seizing the opportunity to gain some traction, at least for the time being. Whether the real Putlocker.is will return as well has yet to be seen.
Update: The Whois information for Putlocker.is was updated today and shows a new owner. This means that something is happening. We’ll keep an eye on the situation.
An exploitation documentary that looks at Los Angeles youth culture in the 1960s. Without mobile phones they had to amuse themselves with sex, drugs, music, surfing, and motorcycles.
From the YouTube description:
Greasers, Mods, Beehived Go-Go girls, and pre-Hippie "Mod Generation" run wild in MONDO MOD, a lunatic look at the Hollywood Youth Scene of 1966 that's so hilariously dated it's almost breathtaking! From discotheques to dirt bikes, political protests to pot parties, MONDO MOD takes you to the Neon Neverland of the Sunset Strip, peers into an underground drug den, and even rides with an outlaw motorcycle gang!. Before there was Woodstock there was MONDO MOD, complete with mini-skirts, surfer dudes, narration by L.A. deejay Humble Harve, photography by Laszlo Kovacs (Easy Rider) and Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters Of The Third Kind) and non-hit title tune "It's a Mod Mod World!"
"Every Monday morning, we will post a new map on this site. The maps will be unlabeled, uncaptioned thematic maps with no scales or legends.... For each week's map, your job is simple: figure out what data is being presented by the map. To solve the map, you have to find the clues on it and come up with an explanation that ties them all together."
"Each day, we will add new hints that will help you figure out how to solve the map. If you're stumped by the blank map on Monday, check back for new information and suggestions that will guide you as you explore the map. On Friday, the fourth hint of the week should make the map solvable for most people who have taken the time to explore the map in detail."
Shared by Downtown L.A. Life and Dangerous Mind, these gorgeous photos are dated around 1860 to 1901. I've collected a few of my favorites, but both sites have even more portraits on display. They're the perfect rebuttal for those who argue diversity is a new phenomenon.
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Photo by Bruno Bayley
Photo by Ryan Harvey
Photo by Ben Bentley
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(United States Federal Government)
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(Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)
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RAÚL SALGADO | Ferrol | Viernes 14 octubre 2016 | 22:17
El establecimiento lucía tranquilo este viernes. Chicote dio una vuelta al concepto y al nombre. El «Irlanda», que dispuso de una ubicación anterior en el tramo inmediatamente superior de la calle María, pasó a ser «Lembranzas», pero todo parece indicar que recuperará el original. La pareja que lo regenta, enfrentada en el programa, se reconcilió en un lugar especial, el cine Dúplex.
With dozens of millions of monthly views, Putlocker.is is the go-to video streaming site for many people. 
