If You Want To Know How Annoying You Are During The World Cup, Watch This Video

Worst Friends is a DIY pair of comedians that has shared some seriously high-caliber shorts to date. This act is highly recommendable for fans of YouTube celebs, Good Neighbor. Worst Friends’ latest release is both flawlessly executed and exceedingly relevant. The short is called “Did You See The World Cup?” and the creators offer the following […]
If You Want To Know How Annoying You Are During The World Cup, Watch This Video

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Tinder Suspends Co-Founder In Wake Of Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

 Tinder co-founder and CMO Justin Mateen has been suspended by the company, after it was sued for sexual harassment and sexual discrimination by former VP of marketing Whitney Wolfe. The lawsuit makes a litany of claims against Mateen, including subjecting her to numerous “sexist, racist, and otherwise inappropriate comments, emails, and text messages.” Read More

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Justin Theroux Is The Best Eyebrow Actor Of Our Time

Sorry, Kim Richards.









Lost creator Damon Lindelof's new series The Leftovers premiered on HBO on Sunday and a real star emerged.






Paul Schiraldi / HBO














No, not actor Justin Theroux...






Paul Schiraldi / HBO














These babies:






Paul Schiraldi / HBO



















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MG GT small sedan revealed

The MG GT sedan has made a surprise debut in Longbridge, England, giving us our first look at the production version of the compact four-door. These images, posted on enthusiast blog MGUK.org, highlight the exterior design of the Chinese car maker’s newest model, which is reportedly scheduled to debut publically at September’s Chengdu auto show [...]

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Mercedes-Benz AMG speeds towards new sales record in Australia

This year will be the best ever for Mercedes-Benz’s performance division as it gears up to deliver the 10,000th AMG vehicle in Australia since the launch of the C36 in 1995. AMG currently accounts for nine per cent of Mercedes-Benz Australia’s passenger car and SUV volume – the highest proportion of any market in the world. This year [...]

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Patent Clears The Way For Caller-Based Talk TV

Inventor Tom Wolzien just received the patent for his Skype-based Video Call Center technology, which means he can roll it out to TV or web providers who want to offer an affordable video version of talk radio. He says this will be “the first new TV content genre since the inception of reality TV two decades ago.” That’s a bold forecast; several readers understandably were skeptical more than a year ago when I first wrote about the idea. I’d join them — except that I also know that Wolzien is a guy who has earned the right to be taken seriously. Before he decided to dedicate himself to inventions (he already has several major patents), advising moguls, and serving as TiVo’s lead independent director, he was one of the smartest media analysts on Wall Street, and had been a top exec at NBC News.
His Video Call Center technology is designed to make it easy for a small staff — from two to five people — to offer a professional-looking TV show that incorporates Skype video calls from as many as eight people at a time. “It’s relatively easy to do one Skype call, but when you do one after another after another, it’s fairly complex,” he says. He took four years to build a system that he says can handle many of the production chores at “a single-digit hundredth of the cost” currently needed to mount a video call-in ... Read More »

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Global Showbiz Briefs: ‘Revenge’s Henry Czerny Joins Atom Egoyan’s ‘Remember’; Michelle Gomez Heads To ‘Doctor Who’; More

Henry Czerny Cast In Atom Egoyan’s ‘Remember’
Revenge actor Henry Czerny has joined the cast of Atom Egoyan’s Remember. Christopher Plummer stars in the thriller in which the darkest chapter of modern history collides with a contemporary mission of … revenge. Czerny most recently was seen playing Conrad Grayson on the ABC primetime soap in which the character met his demise during the Season 3 finale – or did he? Either way, he’ll play Plummer’s son in the film on which IM Global’s specialty label Acclaim is handling world sales. Producers are Robert Lantos and Ari Lantos. Mark Musselman and Anant Singh are the executive producers. Czerny is repped by Domain and manager Perry Zimel.
Michelle Gomez Joins ‘Doctor Who’ Cast
Michelle Gomez (Bad Education, Green Wing) is joining the cast of Doctor Who. She will play the Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere when the series returns on August 23 with Peter Capaldi as the latest incarnation of the Time Lord. Lead writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat says: “I’ve known Michelle for years, and I’m thrilled to welcome her to Doctor Who. She’s everything we need — brilliant, Scottish, and a tiny bit satanic.” Filming is well underway for Series 8 of Doctor Who. Confirmed guest stars include Frank Skinner, Ben Miller, Tom Riley, ... Read More »

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A Growing Fight Over Same-Sex Marriages Granted In Boulder County, Colorado

“As things currently stand, nobody can be happy.” The state’s attorney general is locked in a fight against a county clerk.



























Suthers


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WASHINGTON — Colorado's attorney general is in a legal standoff with Boulder County officials, where the county clerk has been issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples since June 25.

The state attorney general's office has set a deadline of noon MT Tuesday for a response to a recent proposal that would stop the marriages for now and send the dispute to the Colorado Supreme Court, but the Boulder County officials asked late Monday for that deadline to be delayed until July 10.

The dispute is an unexpected result of the June 25 decision of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that Utah's ban on same-sex couples' marriages is unconstitutional — and a sign of the growing difficulty that state and local officials could face as court cases remain in limbo during the slow appeals court process.

Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall consulted with her county attorney on the afternoon of June 25 and decided that the county could legally issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Colorado because the 10th Circuit, which includes Colorado, had ruled that marriage is a fundamental right available to same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples alike.

That evening, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers shot back, saying that any such marriages were "invalid" because Colorado's amendment "remains in effect." Hall made clear in press statements, including to , that she was going to continue issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite the attorney general's statement.

Suthers then took another shot at it, with his office sending a letter to Hall's office late on the afternoon of June 27, stating, "As things currently stand, nobody can be happy." In the letter, Solicitor General Dan Domenico put forth "a proposal" that Hall stop issuing marriage licenses and, in exchange, the state would agree "to file a joint petition with you to the Colorado Supreme Court ... seeking expeditious resolution of the question of your authority to issue licenses to same-sex couples."

Domenico also formally stated that the state's position is that the same-sex couples' licenses issued by Hall "are invalid and of no legal effect." He also issued a threat to Hall, stating that agreeing to the proposal by noon July 1 would "obviate the need for us to take any further action regarding your issuance of licenses."

Late Monday, Boulder County Attorney Ben Pearlman responded that Hall "has found one-and-a-half days insufficient for both her office and mine to consider and formulate a response" — noting that the June 27 letter was sent to the county clerk's "generic e-mail box on Friday at 5:07 p.m." The Boulder County officials have asked for the attorney general's office to give them until July 10 to respond.

Pearlman made no reference to the county stopping the issuance of licenses to same-sex couples during that time.







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Is "Shower" 2014's "Call Me Maybe"?

Get out of my head.






1. Becky G is a 17-year-old who got started making remixes on YouTube.
2. Her song "Shower" is low key awesome and you totally get that "Call Me Maybe" I shouldn't be listening to this and why do I love this? vibe.
3. It's kind of awful and you'll love it.
























youtube.com
















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Robin Thicke's Planned Q&A Session On Twitter Flooded With Queries About Misogyny

VH1 tweeted Monday night to submit questions for singer Robin Thicke using the hashtag #AskThicke. People on Twitter took the opportunity to question his treatment of women.





















































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With Software Eating Hardware, Silicon Valley Enters “Hard” Times

 Software’s inevitable dominance is something of an axiom in Silicon Valley, where Marc Andreessen once famously wrote that it was “eating the world.” Software companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook are among the world’s most iconic and valuable, and new startups like Airbnb and Uber aim to transform traditional industries like hotels and taxis. Read More

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Hack Your Brain With A Machine That Reads Minds

 Star Wars first planted the idea over 35 years ago that we could move objects with our minds. That idea is now a reality that has come a long way in the last few years. Emotiv is on the cutting edge of that technology with headgear that allows yo...

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US National Archives To Upload All Holdings To Wikimedia Commons

 Ever since the National Archives and Record Administration launched the Open Government Plan in 2010, it has increasingly been uploading content to Wikipedia to digitize and gain a wider reach for its holdings. But all this time, uploading its di...

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Court Allowed NSA To Spy On All But 4 Countries

 A court permitted the National Security Agency to collect information about governments in 193 countries and foreign institutions like the World Bank, according to a secret document the Washington Post published Monday. The certification issued by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2010 shows the NSA has the authority to “intercept through U.S. companies not just the… Read More

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FBI, CIA Join NSA In “Backdoor” Searches On Americans

 Thousands of Americans were targets of so-called “backdoor” warrantless surveillance by the NSA and other intelligence agencies last year, according to a letter sent to Senator Ron Wyden. The missive, written by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to the Senator in response to a question posed earlier this month, is plainspoken. The Office also stated that… Read More

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UberX Wages War On Bay Area Taxis With 25% Price Cut

 If Uber’s intent to put taxis out of business wasn’t clear already, the email it just sent SF Bay Area users should make it crystal. “We just dropped uberX fares by 25%, making it 45% cheaper than a taxi.” No matter how much people want hard-working cabbies to be able to support their families, uberX is now just too much cheaper for most people to ignore in San… Read More

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Scientists Discover Supercooling Technology So Organs Can Live Longer Outside The Body

“Supercooling” is a new technique that scientists have employed to increase the amount of time human organs can survive outside the body. So far, it’s been difficult to keep organs viable for more than 24 hours. This technology, if it succeeds in humans, could enable donor organs to be allocated on a world-wide scale, allowing […]
Scientists Discover Supercooling Technology So Organs Can Live Longer Outside The Body

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Watch This Man Get Ejected From His Seat In A Car Crash. He’s Lucky To Be Alive.

One. Lucky. Dude.

(via)
Remember to buckle up and share


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Audi glass fibre-reinforced polymer springs up to 40 per cent lighter, coming this year

Audi will introduce new lightweight suspension springs made of glass fibre-reinforced polymer (GFRP) to a production model before the end of the year. Audi claims the GFRP springs, which were developed in collaboration with an Italian supplier, are 40 per cent lighter than standard steel springs. Where a steel spring may weigh 2.7kg, a GFRP [...]

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2015 Mazda 2 details emerge

The next-generation Mazda 2 is set for a local launch in Australia later this year as the Japanese company gears up to take on the light car segment with a new force. Although yet to be officially revealed, the 2015 Mazda 2 will in many ways resemble a smaller Mazda 3, following the company’s Kodo [...]

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Skoda Octavia RS Plus :: hardcore wagon spied testing

A sporty Skoda Octavia RS wagon prototype has been spied, revealing the Czech brand is working on an even higher-performance version of its hottest model to date. The test car, which was snapped by CarAdvice’s spy photographers in the Czech Republic, cuts a stealthy figure, finished in matt black paint and wearing the 19-inch black and red [...]

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2015 Mazda 2 Review

The 2015 Mazda 2 is scheduled for an Australian release in October this year, but last month we flew to Japan to drive a prototype version of what is a strong chance to become yet again the best-selling light car in Australia – a title it won in 2013. This third-generation model will arrive at a good time for [...]

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Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini release date rumoured for mid-July

We're yet to see an official announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini, but the handset will apparently go on sale in mid-July.According to an anonymous SamMobile source the Galaxy S5 Mini will be available worldwide from the middle of the month, alth...

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Apple reportedly gearing up to mass produce 12-inch MacBook Air

Rumours of Apple adding a 12-inch model to its MacBook Air line-up are hotting up, with the latest tidbit of information coming from those apparently involved on the supply chain side. Spilling the beans to Digitimes, unnamed sources from Quanta Comput...

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If the US government tapped Cisco routers, will your tech company be next?

Did the government tap Cisco routers?When former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden met with journalist Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong, he arguably changed the face of US intelligence forever. After the release of Greenwald's book No Place to Hide in May, even more was learned about the NSA's alleged controversial actions.Among the revelations in Greenwald's bestseller: A photograph showing a team of NSA employees intercepting and bugging a Cisco Systems router prior to it being sent to a customer who had been targeted for government surveillance. This photo originated from an internal NSA newsletter, which also includes the chief of the NSA's Access and Target Development Department explaining a "routine process" of intercepting routers, servers and additional hardware to install "beacon implants."According to the June 2010 newsletter:Shipments of computer network devices (servers, routers, etc.) being delivered to our targets throughout the world are intercepted. Next, they are redirected to a secret location where Tailored Access Operations (TAO)/Access Operations employees, with the support of the Remote Operations Center, enable the installation of beacon implants directly into our targets' electronic devices. These devices are then re-packaged and placed back into transit to the original destination. All of this happens with the support of Intelligence Community partners and the technical wizards in TAO.Let the controversy begin.Cisco's responseCisco's SVP of General Counsel and Security Mark Chandler recently published an official response on the company's website claiming that Cisco "does not work with any government, including the United States government to weaken our products.""There were allegations in Greenwald's book that the NSA intercepts and tampers with routers and servers manufactured by Cisco," says Nigel Glennie, Senior Manager of Corporate Communications at Cisco. "While the book had a photo that included a box with a Cisco logo, it didn't provide any information about specific Cisco products, possible NSA techniques, or product security vulnerabilities. If this indeed occurred, it happened without Cisco's knowledge or permission."Despite questioning the legitimacy of the allegations, Cisco's chairman and CEO John Chambers wrote a letter to President Obama on behalf of the company asking for his intervention so that US technology sales were not negatively impacted by a loss in consumer trust.Chambers' letter states:We simply cannot operate this way, our customers trust us to be able to deliver to their doorsteps products that meet the highest standards of integrity and security. We understand the real and significant threats that exist in this world, but we must also respect the industry's relationship of trust with our customers … We are concerned that our country's global technological leadership will be impaired. Moreover, the result could be a fragmented Internet, where the promise of the next Internet is never fully realized.The long-term effects on the tech industryFor a multinational company that strives to design and manufacture secure and stable networking equipment, these allegations could have detrimental consequences. "If the leaked documents are to be believed, then the claims are probably pretty legitimate," says John Kindervag, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. "I suspect that most professionals inside the security industry take these documents at face value and do believe that the TAO program did compromise some technology, with or without the tacit approval of vendors.""Since Cisco's CEO sent a letter to the president, I would assume these claims about equipment interception are true," says Ibrahim Baggili, Director of the University of New Haven's Cyber Forensics Research and Education group and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Digital Forensics Security and Law. "The purpose of such actions by the NSA could be to collect information, or to perform targeted collection of data and network traffic from organizations or individuals."believes the ramifications of the allegations will eventually apply to almost every technology vendor. "The idea that a company can do no evil is gone," he explains. "These programs and their revelations have been and will continue to be very harmful to the technology community overall." Although the claims are specific to Cisco, Kindervag believes the ramifications of the allegations will eventually apply to almost every technology vendor. "The idea that a company can do no evil is gone," he explains. "These programs and their revelations have been and will continue to be very harmful to the technology community overall."Fighting back...or giving in? Eight vendors outIn fact, last December eight technology vendors, including AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo, united to draft and send a letter to the president and members of Congress expressing that the US government's surveillance efforts were harmful. They urged the US to establish reforms to ensure government surveillance is "clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent oversight."Despite concerns, U.S. intelligence officials continue to defend surveillance procedures and claim all practices are focused on gathering intelligence against legitimate foreign threats.Surveillance as the new normalAs Greenwald's book continues to grow in popularity in the US and abroad, consumers cannot deny that surveillance is a widespread phenomenon."There was a sort of inevitability to this," says Kindervag. "It's only natural that the NSA was going to push the boundaries of acceptable behavior until they got disciplined. The digital world in general and the Internet specifically are very young in the scope of world history. We have not yet found the equilibrium between national security and privacy in the digital age."In addition, the government's actions can be argued as lawful. According to the Foreign Intelligence Act of 1978 (FISA), physical and electronic surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence information between foreign powers and agents of foreign power, including American citizens or permanent residents suspected of espionage or terrorism, within the US is permitted. FISA has undergone several amendments over the past several decades, most notably with foreign intelligence in 2008 when the director of national intelligence and the attorney general were authorized to jointly conduct warrentless electronic surveillance to foreigners abroad.The timeless conundrumOf course, striking a balance between privacy and data collection on behalf of national security remains a controversial issue in the US. Many worry that government surveillance will become commonplace and used against them, however national security is ubiquitously high priority. The solution? For Baggili, who has devoted his academic and professional career to studying cyber security and the law, the answer will stem from conducting more research. "As we continue to enter the age of big data, the situation will only worsen," he says. "These challenges need some serious multidisciplinary research in order to understand both the technical component, and the human and psychological components in both organizations and individuals."Or, perhaps simply more time needs to pass."A century from now, we will look back at the Snowden event and see it as a positive moment in history where balance began to be restored," predicts Kindervag. "There is still too much emotion inherent in the Snowden and NSA debacle right now."Stay tuned, however, history moves quickly.What are the top 10 data breaches of the past 12 months?

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Wi-FI to dominate Internet of Things landscape

Wi-Fi is what will make Internet of Things happen according to a Goldman Sachs research report written by Simona Jankowski."Just like wired access (copper and fiber) laid the foundation for the fixed Internet, and cellular access (3G and 4G) enabled the mobile Internet, we expect Wi-Fi to be the enabler of the Internet of Things," Jankowski stated.Wi-Fi uses is expected to be the dominant wireless access technology for IoT for a number of reasons.Cellular still essentialIt uses unlicensed spectrum (which means that it doesn't require monthly access fees) and usually draws less power in use or idling.In addition, transfer rates achieved by Wi-Fi are unmatched by 3G or 4G, and Wi-Fi is still the better option for indoors connectivity where 3G/4G is inexistent.However, for M2M applications that require always-on connectivity, 3G/4G is essential.The paper quotes another survey carried out by VDC Research which stated that 70% of organisations expect the internet of things to use Wi-Fi primarily.Check out our coverage of the Internet of Things.Via Investors.com

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BT says sorry for broadband snafu over weekend

BT customers have been hit by a mysterious outage that affected many of its 7 million broadband customers.It is unclear whether the issue was nationwide and if it was a standard downtime or something more serious. Oddly enough, it does appear that not all websites were "blocked", or down. The BBC reports that the issue was a random one with certain websites being affected.In a statement, BT said: "There were problems with our broadband service [….] but they were resolved," adding, "Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused".Still no updateThe company is still investigating the underlying causes of the outage and hasn't updated its BTCare tweet feed for the last 48 hours.BT has been flexing its muscles lately recruiting hundreds of engineers to fix broadband issues nationwide, trialling a new network for the Internet of Things and pledging to offer 100Gbps broadband to businesses.How Thatcher killed the UK's superfast broadband before it even existed

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This Dog Has No Idea What To Do After Receiving 100 Balls For Its Birthday (Video)

Dogs love playing fetch with their favorite chewed up tennis ball or brightly colored plastic toy; it’s their favorite pastime. But sometimes, too much of a good thing can be bad. For this dog’s birthday, he gets 100 balls thrown at him, seemingly to give him the opportunity to play fetch 100 times — a […]
This Dog Has No Idea What To Do After Receiving 100 Balls For Its Birthday (Video)

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This Sri Lankan Newspaper Repels Mosquitos While You Enjoy Reading

We have often heard how important it is to give back to community and today we are going to talk about one such example. A Sri Lankan national newspaper decided that it could do more than just write about dengue virus that is turning into a catastrophe in Sri Lanka. The result was that the […]

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The Cozy Room Is Your Personal Cubicle Where You Can Spend Some Quality Time Alone

Solitude is good for your health and spending some time alone goes a long way in your life. Even if we didn’t tell you that, we are sure there are times when you just want to put everything on hold and spend some time where you don’t have to worry about anything and you have […]

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Legend: This Guy Found A Way To Put His Pants On Without Even Using His Hands (Video)

When you get up in the morning, what’s the first thing you do? Perhaps you rub your eyes, perhaps you go to the bathroom or perhaps you brush your teeth. Perhaps you eat breakfast. Perhaps, eventually, you’ll put pants on — unless you’re not leaving your house, that is. To the epic tune of the […]
Legend: This Guy Found A Way To Put His Pants On Without Even Using His Hands (Video)

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The Real Reason We All Make Decisions That We Know Are Not In Our Best Interest

We’ve all heard that bad decisions often make for good stories, but have you ever really thought about why we make bad decisions? People often fail to make choices in their best interests. This goes against nearly everything we believe to be true; it even goes against the primary assumption of the free-market economy that “behavior […]
The Real Reason We All Make Decisions That We Know Are Not In Our Best Interest

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Erykah Badu Tried To Kiss A News Anchor During A Live TV Broadcast

You know what they say, you never know when Erykah Badu might show up wearing a huge hat and try to kiss you.










PIX11′s Mario Diaz was finishing up a live report Friday when Erykah Badu spotted him.




















Badu s...

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Hot Trailer: ‘The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby’

Ned Benson‘s directorial debut The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby received a 10-minute standing ovation at its Cannes premiere in May. The version that played was Them, the film that Benson cut to tell a straight narrative story after two versions, Him and Her, debuted in Toronto last fall. James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain play a married couple whose relationship disintegrates when tragedy intervenes. The Weinstein Co is releasing the combined version Stateside on September 26. Six weeks later, it will put out the two earlier takes. All told, there is expected to be a big awards-season push by TWC, and in particular for the performances of Chastain and McAvoy. Viola Davis, Bill Hader and William Hurt also star. Here’s the trailer:


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Pro-Privacy Blackphone Now Shipping

 The pro-privacy Blackphone, a hardened Android smartphone that focuses on making rigorous security features more accessible to a general phone user, has started shipping to its first wave of buyers. Blackphone is a partnership between Spanish mobile maker Geeksphone and security company Silent Circle. The phone, which uses a “security-oriented” Android build called… Read More

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Today Is The Last Day To Enter The PragueCrunch III Pitch-Off

 PragueCrunch III is already sold out and I’m getting ready to pick startups for our pitch-off next Thursday. That means you have less than 12 hours to submit your start-up to the fray. You’re going to want to be part of this. If we release more tickets, I’ll let you know in a post tomorrow or via my Twitter account. I’m not in charge of the venue so I don’t know… Read More

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Susa Ventures Raises A $25M Seed Fund To Back Data-Focused Startups

 Early-stage firm Susa Ventures says it has raised $25 million to fund “data-centric founders and businesses.” Susa has four operating partners — Eva Ho (previously vice president of marketing and operations at location data company Factual, and before that a senior product marketing manager at Google and YouTube), Leo Polovets (an early engineer at LinkedIn), Chad Byers… Read More

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ConnecTV Acquires TweetTV To Add Real-Time Analytics To Its Social TV Platform

 Both Twitter and Facebook are vying for pole position as the platform of choice for social TV engagement — the place where viewers go to quip about TV shows in real time – but there are movements among pure-play startups to build up their positions, too. In the latest of these, ConnecTV is buying TweetTV to add more analytics features to a network that already lets… Read More

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Withings’ Activité Is A New Analog Smart Watch That Also Works As A Fitness Tracker

Wearable tech is surely taking off nowadays and we are witnessing new and enhanced gadgets pertaining to the field. That is exactly why if you mention fitness tracker to anyone, especially the kind you can wear around your wrist, the immediate image that pops up is that of a ‘futuristic’ looking device wrapped around your […]

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DARPA To Develop A Wall That Can Be Instantly Deployed From A Metal Can In Seconds

We all know how DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is on the lookout for new and emerging technologies that it can incorporate into the defense of US. We have so far seen robotic suits, brain implants and what not. However, what most of you might not be aware of is the fact that DARPA […]

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38 People Who Perfectly Capture Just How Ridiculous Glastonbury Is

Is this real life?
















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Yui Mok/PA Wire/Pre...

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Atlantique, Keshet UK Developing ‘Crater Lake’ From ‘Gordin Cell’s Ron Leshem

Atlantique Productions, the French producer behind Transporter – The Series, is partnering with Keshet UK to develop eight-part drama series Crater Lake. Billed as a life-affirming, character-driven show about death, it was created by Ron Leshem who created Israeli series Gordin Cell and is exec producing its U.S. adaptation Allegiance. Leshem also wrote the novel Beaufort and co-wrote the 2007 big screen transfer which was nominated as Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. Keshet UK was established by Keshet International in 2012. The deal with Atlantique sees the latter, which also produces Borgia, make its first move to diversify its range of productions and work on high-end dramas for the international marketplace with independent producers from around the world. Atlantique CEO Olivier Bibas and creative director Patrick Nebout will act as executive producers on Crater Lake. For Keshet, exec producers are Keshet Media Group CEO, Avi Nir, KI CEO Alon Shtruzman and Keshet UK head of scripted, Sara Johnson.

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Anonymous Social Messaging Discovers That Location Matters

 Apparently secrets are better if you share them with those closest to you — geographically. As anonymous social networks proliferate, they’re increasingly turning to location-based features as a way to keep users coming back. For example, location-based private messaging app Yik Yak has raised $10 million on the back of its geographically targeted anonymous sharing service, even… Read More

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KelDoc Raises $1.4 Million To Make It Easier To Find A Doctor

 French startup KelDoc is raising $1.4 million (€1 million) from Alven Capital and business angels. KelDoc is what you could call a ZocDoc for Europe. But managing doctor appointments is a very regulated market, and KelDoc has a deep understanding on how this kind of service needs to be adapted to the French and European markets. At heart, KelDoc is a website and smartphone app to look and… Read More

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Google Ready to Launch Modular Smartphone in January 2015 for $50

What started as a concept last year and then a promise is quite closer to becoming a reality; modular phones are all set to be on sale by January 2015 as per Google. Smartphones have become such an important part of our daily lives that the conventional smartphones just don’t cut it anymore. This is […]

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Here’s How You Can Ace Every MCQ Test Like An Engineer

What makes us humans so predictable? Without going into the details of that answer, let’s thank God for that because being predictable translates into whatever we do isn’t random, especially the tests. This is where your eyes should be wide open with excitement and amazement. Yes it is true; this predictability can be called the fundamental […]

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Nestlé Starts Iron Man Project For Food

We have witnessed how some peculiar and unique technologies showcased in novels and movies have turned into reality over the past few years all thanks to the advancement made by science and technology and this particular post is also about one such gadget/technology. So, how many of you remember the Star Trek food replicator? Yes, […]

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Alfa Romeo rocks out with Harrison and Marshall

Alfa Romeo has teamed up with audio specialists Harrison and Marshall to produce a limited edition guitar and a one-off Mito sound machine. Harrison’s exclusive axe is inspired by Alfa Romeo’s design and heritage, incorporating the style, materials and technology of the famous Italian brand’s road cars. The ‘Alfa Romeo’ features carbonfibre composite on its [...]

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Kia Cerato S Premium added to enhanced range

The Kia Cerato S Premium has joined the local line-up, bolstering the brand’s small-car range with a well-equipped second-tier variant. The $24,590 Cerato S Premium automatic fills a hole between the entry-level $22,290 Cerato S auto and the previous mid-spec $28,490 Cerato Si auto. At $2300 more than the Cerato S on which it is [...]

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Hovercars a possibility for the future, says hoverbike maker Aerofex

The Californian company that launched a hoverbike last month is investigating the potential of applying its technology to a passenger car-sized vehicle. Aerofex founder and chief technical officer Mark De Roche told CarAdvice the same technology that allows its futuristic Aero-X to hover over any surface could theoretically be applied to a car. “It scales larger [...]

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31 Reasons Gary Busey Is A National Treasure And A Gift To The World

The actor/philosopher/ineffable cosmic force turned 70 on Sunday. Oh, Gary Busey, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.









Gary Busey is a family man.






Via chrisgentry.tumblr.com














He's the epitome of dental hygiene.






gifmovie.tumblr.com














He's a mover...





















A shaker...






Via fuckyeahdementia.tumblr.com




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Globo Buys SourceBits In Push For U.S. Mobile App Development Market

 Globo, an enterprise mobile messaging and device management and application development software developer traded on the London Stock Exchange’s small-cap AIM Market, has bought the mobile application development service Sourcebits.
Founded in 1997 as a content management company, Globo went public on the AIM in 2008 as it transitioned from content management into mobile device and… Read More

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Japanese E-Commerce Giant Rakuten Launches $100M Global Investment Fund

 Rakuten is eyeing companies beyond Japan with the launch of its new $100 million global investment fund, which will focus on startups in Israel, the U.S., and the Asia Pacific region. Read More

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Perion Buys Grow Mobile For Up To $42M To Build Out Its Marketing Business

 More consolidation afoot in the world of mobile ads. Perion, the publicly-listed mobile app services company that was the subject of a reverse takeover by Conduit last year, is today announcing an acquisition to further build out its marketing business: it’s buying the young (but profitable) ad aggregation platform Grow Mobile. Read More

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Audi RS6 Plus Avant: Leaked details of boosted high-performance wagon

As if 412kW of power and 700Nm wasn’t enough for the family wagon, the Audi RS6 Avant is reportedly set to see a power bump in the form of the Audi RS6 Plus model. Leaked information on an Audi dealer site in the UK states the new RS6 Plus will become the latest in a [...]

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Bobby Jindal Courts Religious Right With His Eye On 2016

“The groups that are more and more picked on in society are evangelical Christians,” Louisiana’s governor tells . Is the future of social conservatism in Baton Rouge?
















John Gara











BATON ROUGE — Walking the perimeter of the sitting room in the Louisiana Governor's Mansion, it is easy to forget that the palatial plantation-style house is home to a family of actual human beings. Paintings rest on carefully positioned easels, and well-fluffed couch cushions are placed just so on ornate, unsittable furniture. The sole sign of life: a pile of lesson books spread untidily across the top of a piano in the far corner of the room.

"We make them all play," explained Bobby Jindal, Louisiana's popsicle-stick-shaped governor, attributing the debris to his three young children. "They're not that happy about it, but they will play as long as we make them play. It's one of those things I think they'll appreciate later in life." Perched at a circular table in the sunlit office adjacent to the sitting room earlier this month, Jindal seemed to take some pride in the modest mess, noting that he is the first governor in decades to have little kids in the mansion. "You don't want them to feel like they're living in a museum."

Jindal has an encyclopedic knowledge of Louisiana's storied political history, and an acute sense of his own unique place in it. On this particular morning, he was caught up in a story about Jimmie Davis, the state's 47th governor, best known for writing the old country song, "You Are My Sunshine," and spending a lot of money to build the Governor's Mansion.
"It was about a million dollars, which was very controversial in '63, and he barely lived in it because he built it and then moved out," Jindal said. "But he built his personal home back there" — he gestured in the general direction of the backyard — "and he had a gate built into the fence so he could walk over and go swimming, because there was a swimming pool here at the mansion. The story is that the current governors would go back there and find him skinny-dipping in the pool."

"I don't know if that was true or not," he hastened to add. "That was before I got here. But he built the house so he felt entitled, I guess."
Entitlement was a common trait in the parade of good ol' boys that dominated Bayou State politics for more than a century. But Jindal, an Indian-American raised by demanding immigrant parents in a middle-class Baton Rouge suburb, stormed into office in 2008 on the strength of something different — a hard-earned resume, and a talent for convincing suspicious, tight-knit pockets of voters that he was one of them. Now, the most underrated prospect in the 2016 presidential field is plotting the charm offensive that could carry him to the White House. His target: the Religious Right.
While much of the Republican Party has written off the conservative Christian movement as a shrinking niche to be appeased but not feared, Jindal is working deliberately to consolidate their support and position himself as the election-year champion of values voters — building relationships with Evangelical power-brokers, surrounding himself with veterans of Rick Perry's 2012 campaign, and lacing his rhetoric with culture-war calls for religious freedom.

The strategy has begun to catch the attention of key figures on the Christian right.

Michael Farris, the founder of the evangelical Patrick Henry College and a champion of Christian home-schoolers — a key element of Iowa's conservative base — said Jindal's name is buzzing in activist circles.
"I think he's a top-tier candidate and he'll resonate a lot with that community," Farris said, comparing him to Mike Huckabee, the minister-cum-candidate who remains one of the brightest stars on the religious right.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and a longtime Jindal ally, praised him as one of the few prospective 2016 candidates with an unimpeachable record on social issues, and a personal life that exemplifies conservative religious values. As an example, Perkins noted that Jindal and his wife, Supriya, were the first couple in the country to enter into a "covenant marriage," a special sort of legal union designed by Perkins in Louisiana when he was a state lawmaker that makes divorce more difficult.
"His foundation [is] really centered on his Christian faith," Perkins said. "Talk is cheap, but the walk is where you find the worth of an individual. And he is walking."

Perkins told he is now informally advising Jindal on how to build grassroots support among the GOP's religious voters, and he envisions a groundswell of support among activists if he decides to run. (The governor has said he will make a decision about 2016 after the midterms.)

On paper, Jindal seems like an improbable candidate to marshall the Religious Right in the culture wars. He is an ethnic minority in a movement that is almost entirely white. He is a Rhodes Scholar who spent his early career managing federal bureaucrats and making a name for himself as a sharp-minded conservative policy wonk. And while he can be funny and warm in person — demonstrating a higher social IQ than many realize — his general demeanor is less pulpit-pounding preacher, and more well-prepped college debater, speaking rapidly and often bullet-pointing his thoughts out loud.

Perhaps most problematically, Jindal was raised Hindu, and became a Catholic in his late teens only after a complicated, and sometimes messy, conversion that he later detailed in a series of articles for an obscure religious journal. The most famous of these — at least in political circles — is a lengthy first-person essay about reluctantly taking part in a ritual during college that aimed to cast a dark spirit out of a love interest. The articles are nuanced, fascinating, and deeply human, revealing a level of self-awareness and sophistication about faith that is uncommon among aspiring politicians. But they don't add up to the sort of tidy, easy-to-sell narrative to which many conservative Christian voters have grown accustomed. For that, Jindal relies on the experts.

Two of his closest political advisers are Timmy Teepell, a Baton Rouge native and longtime aide to the governor who is deeply immersed in evangelical politics, and Curt Anderson, a veteran of presidential campaigns, including, most recently, Rick Perry's.

Anderson said if Jindal runs he won't pigeonhole himself as a social conservative, and pointed to the governor's expansive policy agenda, including a controversial education overhaul in Louisiana, and a detailed health care proposal. "Do I think he'll appeal to the evangelicals? Yes… But he doesn't fit in a tidy way into everybody's different groupings," Anderson said. "I would say he's really a kind of full-spectrum conservative, from economic issues to more social moral issues. He's a pretty robust, doctrinaire guy."

But privately, people in Jindal's inner circle view religious conservatives as a crucial piece of his 2016 coalition, and Anderson and Teepell have helped him refine his pitch to that community over the past year.

Speaking with , Jindal firmly rejected the notion, floated by many in his party, that the GOP must jettison its social agenda in order to win national elections. But like other savvy, high-profile Republicans, he believes conservatives should actively recast the culture wars as a fight for the freedom to live according to one's faith — not as a crusade to force a strict moral code on America.

"I gave a talk at Liberty University, where I told the graduates that they were entering a world more secular than the one their parents went into," said Jindal. "That, as believers, that was their opportunity to be a light in the world. I told them I don't think you should go out there and be victims and complain about it… But it just seems to me that increasingly the groups that are more and more picked on in society are evangelical Christians."

As examples, Jindal cited the backlash against Phil Robertson, the bearded patriarch on A&E's hit reality show Duck Dynasty, after he made crude comments about homosexuality in an interview with GQ last year. At the time, Jindal seized on the culture war flashpoint, and vigorously defended the Robertson family (who live in Louisiana) when the cable channel considered suspending the star. Since then, Jindal has repeatedly pointed to the episode as proof of growing intolerance toward conservative Christians.

"There's a lot of stuff on TV I find offensive, and I change the channel," Jindal said. "Now, I'm not saying as governor I want to tell A&E what they can and can't do. They're a private business, they've got a right to put whatever content they want on the air... I'm just saying as a culture, I think it's a very dangerous place if we go from being a society that was founded because of religious liberty, to a place where we become so intolerant of those who disagree with us that we try to either silence their views, or we try limit their views to where you can only have them for an hour on Sunday."

Some of this may sound like standard red meat for the Right — particularly when he punctuates it with a made-for-CPAC joke: "Britney Spears is still on TV but Phil Robertson's not! How does this make sense in our society?" But it actually represents a key shift in the terms of the GOP's social agenda: Jindal is, ostensibly, arguing not for a Christian nation, but a diverse and open-minded one. He is framing his defense of conservative evangelicals as a call for pluralism — not exactly a rhetorical trademark of the old Religious Right.

While critics will argue that this stance is disingenuous and cynical, Jindal believes it could resonate well beyond the Republican primaries. "My hope is that there may even be folks who disagree with me on the definition of marriage, or may disagree with me on some of the more traditional social issues, but will say it's important in American that we stand for religious liberty."

Jindal's vision of modern social conservatism contains other updates as well. Rather than moralizing about the pernicious evils of drug culture and the need to crack down on addicts, he has followed some of his Republican colleagues in adopting a softer — and, perhaps, more Christian — stance. He said he doesn't favor legalization, but, "I'm absolutely in favor of making sure that, especially [for] nonviolent offenders, we're providing drug treatment, rehabilitation, instead of just continuing to lock them up." He added, "The reality is that I think it's better for those individuals to get back as productive members of society."

Skeptics of Jindal's 2016 prospects question whether he could raise the money required to wage a credible primary campaign. But Anderson dismissed the naysayers, noting that Jindal was a successful fundraiser as the head of the Republican Governors Association. "Do I think he'll set the Mitt Romney, Barack Obama record? No. But the guy is not afraid to ask for the order," said Anderson. "He'll ask for money. I think he'll be ready for that."

The other commonly cited strike against Jindal's presidential ambitions is the lingering effect of his painfully awkward response to the president's State of the Union address in 2009. His stunted delivery and kindergarten-teacher intonation prompted an immediate pile-on by the pundit class and a flurry of memes comparing him to various cartoonish buffoons, like Kenneth, the wide-eyed, mouth-breathing paige on NBC's sitcom 30 Rock. More than five years later, Farris said he still hears activists talk about Jindal's bungled prime-time debut.

"That's a fair assessment," Farris said. "But for the people who are listening to him in the last couple years, they're saying, 'Wow he's gotten really good. I would rate him as a first-rate speaker now.'"

On a Friday night in early June, Jindal stepped onto a stage in Columbia, S.C. as the headliner for the state party's annual Silver Elephant Dinner. Looking out over a sea of seersuckers, he delivered a rat-a-tat litany of attacks on the Obama administration, accusing the president of adopting a "catch-and-release policy toward terrorists" — a reference to the Taliban prisoner swap that has riled conservatives — and excoriating the White House's approach to foreign policy.

His delivery was polished, but it wasn't until about halfway through the speech — the part when he accused Obama of trampling on Americans' First Amendment rights — that the audience really started to respond.

"It didn't stop with Hobby Lobby," Jindal declared. "This is an administration that has taken on religious liberties throughout our society… You may remember that this is a president who, when he was campaigning in California, accused the country of clinging to our guns and religion."

He paused, and then smirked as he delivered the punchline: "Now, I know that was supposed to be an insult, but as the governor of Louisiana, I'm proud to report to you that we've got plenty of guns and religion."

The crowd went wild.




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Everything You Need To Know About Glastonbury 2014

The rain was relentless, Metallica smashed it, Dolly Parton delighted everyone, and Arya Stark went out raving.









The BBC's Glastonbury weather forecast struck a note of caution in the run-up to the festival.






Via Twitter: @hannsellers














But that didn't deter 170,000 people from descending on Worthy Farm, geared up for what was certain to be the sunniest, most glorious Glastonbury ever!






Getty Images / Ian Gavan














Oh.






Via metro.co.uk














Oh dear.






Getty / Via Ian Gavan




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BET Spelled Lionel Richie's Name Wrong At The BET Awards

During his Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance, no less.











































giphy.com











LINK: Fashion at the 2014 BET Awards










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Watch Nicki Minaj's Flawlessly Shade-Filled BET Awards Speech

You can take the girl out of Queens, but you can’t take Queens out of the girl.









Nicki Minaj won the award for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist at Sunday's BET Awards, for the fifth year in a row. And then she gave this show-ending acceptance speech:






youtube.com














Nicki gave thanks for the opportunity to represent women in a male-driven culture, and celebrated herself for writing her own rhymes: "When you hear Nicki Minaj spit...Nicki Minaj wrote it."







vine.co











This is always very very emotional for me. Because this is my fifth year winning this award and I don't take it for granted, I really don't.

I thank god that I've been placed in a position to do something and represent women in a culture that is so male-driven. and I want you to know this — I want you to know that I have an album The Pink Print that's coming out before the year ends. That's not a plug but it's a plug. But my point is, what I want the world to know about Nicki Minaj is, that when you hear Nicki Minaj spit, Nicki Minaj wrote it.

No, no, no shade. No, no, no shade. I used to sit in the studio with Wayne and I would literally take sometimes three, four days to write a verse. And he was like, No, you can't be taking days to write no verse, you gotta write your verse right here in the studio. And that's why I love him till this day. Because he pushed me to push my pen, and I'm still one of the only emcees that's out here spitting metaphors and making you think. And I really don't even care if I get my credit or if I don't.

I don't look at myself as a female rapper, because I know what I do. And I thank my fans because they…

…They might cut me off. This is so big. At one time black people was getting blacked out on the TV now they own their own network. This is big. This is different…

…I just wanna say that, the other day, literally I didn't tell anyone this, I really thought I was about to die. Like I was saying my prayers to die. And I didn't even wanna call the ambulance because I thought well if I call the ambulance, it's gonna be on TMZ. And I would rather sit there and die…and it made me realize, I don't care what anybody gotta say. I'ma do me, I'ma do me. And I hope and pray that BET continues to honor authenticity. And that's all I'm gonna say about that. Stephen I love you. It is what it is. Young Money till the death of me.

















GAME.






BET




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Daily Picdump #1130

Continue to Daily Picdump #1129 >>>


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Q&A: ‘Whitey’s Joe Berlinger On Finding Great Docu Subjects From Mobsters To Metallica And The West Memphis Three

If all filmmaking is struggle, none struggle harder than the documentary director who: searches for truth and injustice; raises the money to expose it; fights to escape the common result of barely leaving a festival footprint before vanishing; and then starting all over. Joe Berlinger has fared better than most. An argument could be made he and ex-partner Bruce Sinofsky helped reassemble the band Metallica, and it’s indisputable they kept one member of the so-called West Memphis Three from being executed and the other two from dying in jail for the murder of three Arkansas children prosecution said was part of a satanic ritual, though it offered no physical evidence.
Berlinger’s gone solo as Magnolia this weekend released Whitey: United States Of America V. James J. Bulger. Hollywood loves the story of the ruthless Boston mob boss who used his station as protected FBI informant to build a criminal empire and get rid of rivals. Johnny Depp plays Bulger in an upcoming Warner Bros film, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are percolating another, and Jack Nicholson played a composite in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar winner The Departed. Berlinger takes an unexpected path into a familiar story. What if, as Bulger and his lawyers claim, he was not a rat, but a pawn to obscure ... Read More »

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Explosive Weekend For Michael Bay

Even by Michael Bay standards, the filmmaker finishes a pyrotechnic weekend that is a career high watermark for movies and TV. His Transformers: Age of Extinction crossed $100 million domestic on its opening weekend (a shade less than the $108 million done by Transformers 3), and passed $200 million international (biggest offshore opener this year) to generate $300 million in total ticket sales. Those who stayed home had to deal with Bay’s TNT drama The Last Ship, which aired tonight with hopes to build on a June 22 premiere of the post apocalyptic drama that totaled 5.3 million total viewers. Its 1.2 rating among the 18-49 demo in that debut episode made it the second rated drama debut in the past few weeks and the best cable result so far this summer. There are already expectations that Bay will do his fifth Transformers installment (he, Peter Jackson and James Cameron seem comfortable working in their respective billion dollar franchise sandboxes over and over), but I hear Bay might want to take a break and direct a smaller movie next, as he did with Pain & Gain. There is always the prospect of Bad Boys 3 kicking around. Bay overhauled the Transformers storyline with his Pain & Gain star Mark Wahlberg. Has Bay positioned himself and Wahlberg to drive the next few installments of the saga?

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The Numinous Veil Of Ignorance

 In watching the latest drama unfold over Facebook and its experimentation with users, I’m moved to argue that sometimes you can be too honest. For game makers especially sometimes it’s better for users not to know, for you to hint and inspire but never reveal the inner secrets. To preserve the numinous magic, it’s often better not to show the man behind the curtain. Read More

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The Morality Of A/B Testing

 We don’t use the “real” Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Google, Yahoo, or LinkedIn. We are almost all part of experiments they quietly run to see if different versions with little changes make us use more, visit more, click more, or buy more. By signing up for these services, we technically give consent to be treated like guinea pigs.
But this weekend, Facebook stirred up… Read More

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2015 Hyundai Sonata 1.6L Eco First Drive: Not the Hair Shirt You Expect

  Fuel economy is more important than ever in the mid-size family sedan segment. Every automaker is chasing elusive extra mpg in every model, and not just with hybrids. Witness this new Eco version of the 2015 Hyundai Sonata. A hybridized version of the new car will arrive next year—the outgoing Sonata hybrid will be […]

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2015 Hyundai Sonata 2.4L First Drive: Substantive Style

There is a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Alabama, yet most of the city’s populace has never seen anything that could be described as flashy roll off its assembly lines. But the stares are piercing as we drive a 2015 Sonata through the city. READ MORE ››

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2015 Hyundai Sonata Sport 2.0T Test: Dialing Back Flash, Amping Up the Chassis

Over its life span, the Hyundai Sonata has rarely made a powerful styling statement. (We’re not counting the powerfully ugly ones.) But the last Sonata stood as the looker in its set until it was eclipsed by its elegant Kia Optima stablemate and Ford’s new David Brown Fusion-Martin. For 2015, Hyundai has dialed back the radical in […]

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‘Tinder! The Musical’ Is Now A Thing Because Of Course It Is (Video)

Depending on who you ask, Tinder is either the best app ever made or just another sign that future generations are irreparably screwed. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle, but what can I say? Hyperbole sells. This video from Funny Or Die explores the many benefits (and pitfalls) of the revolutionary hook-up app […]
‘Tinder! The Musical’ Is Now A Thing Because Of Course It Is (Video)

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2015 Ford Focus ST diesel becomes brand’s most efficient performance car ever

The new Ford Focus ST diesel will become the Blue Oval’s most fuel efficient and lowest CO2 performance car ever when it launches overseas early next year. The ST diesel, which has been ruled out for introduction to the local market, was revealed at the weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed alongside the upgraded petrol-powered Ford Focus [...]

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Mercedes-Benz and Infiniti confirm Mexican small car production from 2017

Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler AG and the Renault-Nissan Alliance have confirmed reports that they will embark on a joint-venture to build next-generation Mercedes and Infiniti premium small cars in Mexico from 2017. The deal greatly expands the wide-ranging and cost-saving collaboration between the German and French-Japanese companies, which commenced in 2010 and saw each buy a [...]

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The car that slows down for speed cameras

Would you buy a car that automatically slows down for fixed speed cameras? That’s what you can get in South Korea with the new Hyundai Genesis‘s ‘Speed Trap Auto Deceleration’, which we sampled last week. Numerous other satellite navigation systems already warn drivers of fixed speed camera locations but Hyundai has taken this to a [...]

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Subaru Australia introduces capped-price servicing

Subaru Australia has launched a comprehensive capped-price servicing program to cover owners for the life of their vehicles. The capped-price servicing program will apply to the Japanese manufacturer’s entire new vehicle range from tomorrow (July 1) and will also retrospectively cover vehicles back to the 2006 model year. Unlike most rival programs that typically cover [...]

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Bedford Fuming Mad, Blames Ref For Fight Night 44 Loss

Johnny Bedford hasn’t had the best luck as of late inside the Octagon, and last...

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Gastelum On Beating Musoke, Weight Issues – Wants Mike Dolce Back

Hear from Kelvin Gastelum after his win over Nico Musoke at UFC Fight Night. Kelvin...

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QUICK TWITT | Pro’s React To Swanson vs. Stephens Main Event

Last night’s decision heavy UFC Fight Night 44 main card delivered some exciting moments of...

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Vitor Belfort Films Clay Guida Passionately Cornering Swanson From Last Night’s Stands

License or not, Clay Guida wasn’t going to go unheard during last night’s main event...

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Rousey: ‘McMann didn’t really want what came along with being champ’

With Ronda Rousey meeting up with Alexis Davis this Fourth of July weekend in Las...

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Sonnen Fails Second Drug Test, Positive for Four Banned Substances

The results from Chael Sonnen’s most recent NSAC drug test are finally in from earlier...

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Betting Odds: Edgar Sits At 10-1 Favorite Over Penn

On July 7th in Las Vegas, BJ Penn will make his return to the octagon...

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UFC Releases Statement On Chael Sonnen’s Second Failed Drug Test

During UFC Fight Night 44, news broke that now retired UFC fighter Chael Sonnen had...

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UFC Executives Discuss Sonnen Latest Failure & PED Problem in UFC

In this brief post-press conference interview, Dave Sholler and Marc Ratner explain what happened with...

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Specialty Box Office: ‘Begin Again’ Begins On High Note; ‘America,’ ‘Snowpiercer,’ ‘YSL’ Solid

It’s no way a shock that Transformers: Age Of Extinction performed spectacularly this weekend, both in the U.S. and overseas, but there are still discerning audiences out there who don’t toe the big-studio line when it comes to their movie-viewing decisions. Begin Again, another tuneful tale from the writer-director of Once, found a sliver of music-minded moviegoers to play along, grabbing the weekend’s highest PTA among newcomers. Starring Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo and Adam Levine, it grossed more than $148K for a respectable $29,665 average.
“I think that’s solid numbers. We view this exclusive opening as a preview for Wednesday’s [expansion],” said TWC’s Erik Lomis, president of theatrical distribution and home entertainment. The film drew a heavily female audience, with a 67-33 gender split, and a mix of art-house and commercial crowds. “I think it’s a date movie and will even out as it rolls across the country,”  Lomis said. “[Women] just loved the movie.” TWC will expand Begin Again to 175 theaters in the top 45 markets, then add 60 more markets and up to 500 theaters the following week. “We love (writer-director) John Carney and the cast. There’s no explosions ... Read More »

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Bart & Fleming: Is China Hollywood’s Future, Or Folly?

Peter Bart and Mike Fleming Jr. worked together for two decades at Daily Variety. In this weekly Sunday column, two old friends get together and grind their axes on the movie business.
Bart: Everyone I encounter in town this week seems fixated on Chinese takeout — only it’s finance, not food. Specifically, funding for films and theme parks. Here’s the catch: For every mogul who claims he’s made a ‘killer deal,’ I run into ten who say their deals imploded. “Once your deal closes with the Chinese, that’s when the real negotiations begin,” according to one veteran of the co-production process. Jeff Robinov and Ryan Kavanaugh may have announced megadeals, but will they get their money? On a smaller scale, look what just happened to Paramount on their Transformers: Age Of Extinction deal – a Chinese partner (the Pangu Group) changed their minds when they saw the film and it endangered the China release of the movie. Two weeks ago China abruptly scrapped a giant alliance between the world’s three largest container shipping companies, triggering confusion among Euro entities like Maersk as well as US lines.
Fleming: Pangu disagreed with how its Pangu Plaza property was displayed in Transformers, and used as pressure ... Read More »

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CEO Pay Emerges As This Year's Hot Button Issue

Investor discontent for executive compensation packages has caught many corporate boards off guard, particularly since stock prices are generally up, experts say.
















JaysonPhotography/JaysonPhotography











At the midway point of the year, the most hotly contested issue to emerge in proxy battles is one many companies weren't anticipating: CEO pay.

Over the last two months, disenchanted shareholders have used corporate annual meetings as a battlefield to wage war over executive compensation, despite the fact that the market was up more than 30% last year and shareholder returns were generally higher than expected.

"This year saw a pay revolt that no one expected," said Michael Pryce-Jones, senior government policy analyst at CtW Investment Group, a firm that represents unionized shareholders in proxy fights with companies. "I think a lot of companies went into this year not believing that pay was going to be an issue because the stock market was up. Most boards think it doesn't matter as long as the stock is performing, and a lot of people were thinking there wouldn't be high profile pay revolts this year."

But such fights have so far been rampant. Perhaps the most glaring among them was at casual dining chain Chipotle, where 77% of shareholders voted down its compensation plan, which would have granted its co-CEOs the opportunity to make up to $285 million over three years. The pay package plan was voted down even after Chipotle's stock has climbed from $376 per share to more than $600 per share in just the last year.

Other companies that faced compensation challenges from shareholders include Domino's Pizza, McDonald's, Nabors Industries, Wal-Mart, Starwood, Burger King, and Sensient Technologies, to name a few.

Pryce-Jones said one of the leading indicators that shareholders are seriously dissatisfied with executive compensation is the fact that typically quiet large institutional investors, namely public pension plans, have voiced their opposition in a number of these battles, among them Chipotle, McDonald's and Domino's.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the California State Teachers' Retirement System and the New York City Public Pension Funds all publicly voiced their discontent with these companies pay packages recently, a relatively uncommon practice.

"When CalSTRS and CalPERS go public with their issues," Pryce-Jones said, "I think that speaks to the extent of their concern."




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Google’s Dart Programming Language Is Coming To The Server

 A few days ago at its I/O developer conference, Google quietly announced that it is working on bringing its Dart programming language to App Engine soon.
This implementation will use the company’s recently launched managed virtual machines and the service’s custom runtime support. Because custom runtime support is still in private beta, however, the Dart team isn’t able to… Read More

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Extortionists Are Using Bitcoin To Steal Cash From Business Owners

 Extortionists are going completely anonymous thanks to social media and bitcoin. Brian Krebs just posted on a number of pizzerias that received anonymous letters asking for one bitcoin in order to keep the owners from receiving bad ratings on Yelp, the Better Business Bureau and the like as well as to keep the extortionists from “SWATing” – calling the police to report… Read More

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Google’s Principal Designer For Search And Maps Explains Material Design

 Google’s design work was center stage at I/O this year, from the keynote through sessions and things being demoed on the show floor. The changes run across Google’s range of devices and platforms, and embrace a new set of design principals grouped under the central concept of ‘Material Design.’ Design Evolved I spoke to Jon Wiley, Principal Designer of Search and Maps… Read More

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Inflame: Wear Wolves: internet commenters are howling about this week's Google Wear annoucements

Google finally released the first two Android Wear devices this week, with both the LG G Watch and Samsung's Gear Live popping up for pre-order shortly after the wearable version of Android was highlighted at the tech company's annual IO conference. Is the arrival of Wear hardware a massive revolution in wearable technology, as Google would have us believe? Or is it simply another avenue to see the same notifications we see on our phones, only on a smaller screen, with a smaller battery and less usable keyboard options?As the wave of 'first impressions' and vague reviews of the G Watch and Gear Live appeared online, there was a clear divide between the users and the observers. Those granted early access to the hardware seemed to love the wearable world, or were at least wary about criticising a new thing before it's had a chance to bed in. But those watching on from the sidelines are happy to sneer about the pointlessness of this race to the wrist. Unless we're talking about the Moto 360, in which case the 'take my money' memes were out in force."OK, Watch, tell me what the time is"On Cnet, the very first comment was of the extremely negative variety, with reader Madmaxde saying: "Oh, these are just too cool. I can imagine some exec, wearing a $200 watch with his/her $5000 Armani suit. The only people who will buy one of these are techies and those morons who always think they just have to have the latest craze. I still haven't seen a practical use for a watch that must be charged every day." If you skipped the rest of the comment, the "too cool" bit was ironic. In reply a little further down, reader Cloudmatt was bordering on the impressed but not quite ready to commit just yet, posting: "That's some slick stuff they showed off, still going to stick with my Citizen. They got me interested for the future though."Who watches the smartwatches? The Guardian focused on Samsung's return to the smartwatch scene for the third (or fourth or fifth?) time in the space of a year, a move that baffled commenter Zongamin, who scoffed: "Samsung on their 3rd attempt at a smart watch now - they really hate their customers don't they?"It wasn't popular with Blufog either, who said Samsung's effort is: "A Google watch so ugly it almost makes Google Glass look good."There's some good news for Google's Android Wear ambitions in the thread, though, as any talk of wearables online seems to turn to the as-yet unavailable Moto 360, or The Lovely Round One as it's known.Commenter PipandPK summarised most people's hopes for the 360 with: "If the Moto 360 releases with the watch face that won their design competition they will clean up. Finally a smart watch that looks useful and elegant - just hope they don't try to make it do too much and can get the battery life it needs." Whoever first invented the circle must be well pleased. Broken wristThere was no such enthusiasm on Engadget from reader Sere83, who doesn't get it at all, saying: "Is it just me or does anyone one else think these watches don't look particularly useful? A load of notifications and Google Now basically on your wrist. Seems a big hoo-ha over what's essentially not very much functionality at all." To which Qylix responded quite cleverly and perhaps with some small amount of Apple bias: "Those companies that are first to market very seldom have the imagination to dream up innovative products. Clearly no one has dreamt up what a smart watch SHOULD be. Hopefully Apple can come to the rescue yet again like they did for the MP3 player, smart phone, and tablet computer markets." Oolzie also made several good points a little further down the page, starting off with the contentious: "Don't kid yourself, this is more about giving you something to buy and giving Google another avenue from which to mine your life than it is about solving great problems."Which is perhaps a bit dramatic, but his analysis of Wear's awkward position in the marketplace was pretty much on the money for many, as he continued: "If it's not solving a real problem, making things better, then it's ultimately just a toy. Feeding me steps of a recipe to my wrist isn't solving anything." Abused not used Samsung's latest chunky smartwatch didn't impress over on The Verge, where reader BoringOldChelsea gave it a right kicking, saying: "I think it is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. If I saw someone wearing one of them I'd laugh at them. If you are going to make a wearable device it has to mould to your body, not sit, perched on top of your wrist like it's been stuck on with Blu-tac."And the practicalities were once again questioned by James-42, who thinks it'll just be another thing to impulsively look at 1,000 times a day instead of doing any work, suggesting: "If I still need to carry the phone around, these smart watches just don't make sense. I bet most people here are like me and work at a desk most of the day and so the phone is right there anyway. Cool idea, but not really useful for most people." Reader RP2011 thinks it's already over for the wrist-based, sci-fi dream, claiming: "This category is looking like a dead duck. Unfortunately the gadget is not very useful [not does it] have a 'must-have' feature. Doesn't look good either. What would be the motivation for anyone picking one up? Certainly not fashion. And certainly not function or a killer app. What's left?" Another way for Facebook to tell you it's someone you don't like's birthday? These commenters might not be wearable fans, but have they seen the latest smartwatch from Withings? We got a first look at the new, beautiful, Withings Activité.

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The super smooth act of dimming the lights with your phone is now affordable

U.S. electronics giant General Electric has announced the first truly affordable connected home light bulb range, which will go on sale this autumn.The sub-$15 (about £9, AU$16) GE Link light bulbs will allow users to use their home Wi-Fi connection to control lighting from the comfort of their favourite easy chair to anywhere in the world using the Wink app. Users will be able to set moods by dimming the lights with a quick toggle on the app, or save money if they realise they may have left lights on after they've left the house.Smart light bulbs are, of course, nothing new, but the affordability of the new GE Link options may sway homeowners into adopting them for the first time.Connected egg traysThe Link bulb is built in collaboration with Quirky, which has also helped GE bring connected egg trays, power strips and air conditioners to market. The Wink app will be available Stateside. from July 7 and will also help users control GE's smart air conditioner, the Aros.Customers in the U.S. will be able to buy the Link bulbs from the Home Depot this autumn. There's no news on whether GE plans to launch the product in other territories.Here's how you'll live in Apple's home of tomorrow

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What You'll Find On Your Favorite Disney Princesses' iPods

Who knew Sleeping Beauty was such an EDM-head?









Ariel would, naturally, be a total seapunk.



Because... duh.


Via tumblr.com














Loving herself some Unicorn Kid...






youtube.com














... an...

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Here's Bradley Cooper Trying To Blend In At Glastonbury

We’re sorry, Brad. You stand out just a little.









Oh, just Bradley Cooper AT GLASTONBURY.






Ed Stone / Rex / REX USA














Blending into the crowd.






Rex / REX USA














Or at least trying.







instagram.com














Watching Metallica unnoticed.






Samir Hussein/Redferns / Getty Images




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Why Brazil Is Actually Winning The Internet

In 2004, the same year Facebook launched at Harvard, Google launched a social network called Orkut that changed internet history — at least in Brazil.John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was one of the first of the web’s digerati to receive an invitation. Barlow was working at the time with Brazil’s minister of culture, musician Gilberto Gil, to expand the range of Brazilian music available to remix and share online, and he decided to give all 100 of his invites to Brazilian friends. Two years later, 11 million Brazilians were on Orkut — out of only 14 million internet users in the whole country. (By comparison, the U.S. had more than 10 times as many Americans online by then, but only 14% of them were using social networks.)“There were blogs and portals back then,” says Bia Granja, co-founder of YouPix, a website and festival dedicated to celebrating Brazilian web culture. “But when Orkut came, it pulled everyone in. There were people from rural parts of Brazil who didn’t have an official government ID card but had an Orkut profile. We needed this form of expression; it was the door of entry to the internet for 82% of Brazil’s population.”













Orkut in 2004.


Orkut.com




Ten years later, with their country more visible internationally than ever thanks to successful but polarizing World Cup and Olympics bids, Brazilians are arguably the most hyper-social people on the internet. They spend twice as much time using social media as the global average, and more time online than watching TV. Last year, they doubled the time they spent on Facebook, while global usage declined by 2%.Brazil is the fourth-largest mobile phone market in the world, with 1.4 cell phones for every citizen, and Brazilians spend more time on social media than email, web browsers, or video sharing. Half of Brazil’s internet population is under 30, and almost all of them use social media. Brazil is now the second-largest market for Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr other than the U.S. It took Facebook seven years to take the No. 1 spot from Orkut, which is still the social network of choice for 6 million Brazilians, or 1 in 20 Brazilians online. Last year, the Wall Street Journal declared Brazil the "Social Media Capital of the Universe."Brazil was culturally primed for such an online impact because, very generally speaking, Brazilians are an extraordinarily warm and friendly people. They are family-focused and social and like to do things en masse. Millions of Brazilians come to the beaches on New Year's to offer white flowers to the sea goddess Iemanja; millions gather outside to celebrate Carnaval each year; and recently millions have taken to the streets protesting billions of dollars of taxpayer money that have funded World Cup and Olympic infrastructure projects while millions still live in extreme poverty.“Brazil has always been the social model of the future,” says Barlow. “Everything refers to something else that you wouldn't know anything about if your aunt hadn't told your mother something a couple of years ago about something her lover heard. Brazil is an enormous inside joke, and the internet is a mass conversation. Brazil was the internet before the internet existed.”So then, what’s the cumulative effect of these billions of online social interactions in real life?
















Shutterstock




Mauricio Cid was one of the most popular Brazilians on Orkut until he got kicked off the site in 2008. Cid was publishing mostly humor content to more than a thousand Orkut fan communities reaching 5 million Brazilians — 20% of Brazil’s internet population at the time, making him one of Brazil’s first bloggers, albeit completely inside Orkut’s walls.By 2008, Orkut had become one of the 10 largest websites on the planet, but Google wasn’t paying much attention to what was happening among Orkut’s mostly Brazilian users at the time. Then Google tried to run ads on Orkut (aside user-generated content) and reports quickly surfaced of those ads being displayed next to pictures of naked children and abused animals. The government filed contempt charges against Google Brazil’s executives for refusing to turn over user data to the police. Globo, the largest media company in Latin America with a near-monopoly on TV, radio, and print mediums — but not online — decided to run a TV news report going inside alleged criminal activities on Orkut, and included Cid’s Michael Jackson fan page on the list of suspicious communities.













Mauricio Cid


Flickr: Lourenço Fabrino / Creative Commons / Via Flickr: luringa




“Most of the groups on the list were neo-Nazis and things like that,” Cid told me on a Skype call from São Paulo. “It made no sense. There was nothing criminal about my Michael Jackson community, but I was banned. So I decided to create a humor blog called Não Salvo [“Not Saved”] in 2008 so I could publish whatever I wanted, including a little ass and titties, without anyone censoring me.”Cid was living in Santos, a beachside city two hours outside of São Paulo at the time, working odd jobs at the morgue and fixing printers. “The morgue was horrible,” Cid says. "I would have taken pictures, but that was before cell phone cameras.” Then he got a job in São Paulo and started spending his four-hour bus commute publishing content to Não Salvo from his phone. Today Cid is one of Brazil’s biggest web celebrities. “It’s a testament to how much we love to share, even with backward technology.”Não Salvo’s site still looks like it was designed in the AOL era, with a Jesus marquee and a flaming computer mouse floating over clouds of digital detritus, despite drawing 27 million visitors a month. Visitors don’t just read on the site, they interact with it, and participate in the content creation. So better to call them participants — or fieis (“the faithful”), in Não Salvo lingo.On a forum called Desafio Aceito (“Challenge Accepted”), the fieis mobilize by the thousands and sometimes millions for challenges like crowdsourcing a porn screenplay and plotting practical jokes on gringos. In 2010 during the South Africa World Cup, they decided one of Globo’s broadcasters, Galvão, was annoying, so they launched a campaign called #CalaBocaGalvao — which translates to “Shut up, Galvão” in Portuguese.













A poster for the 'Cala Boca Galvão' hoax.







“We created a video with a narrator in English and everything, telling gringos that 'Cala Boca Galvão' meant to preserve an endangered species of birds in the Amazon,” Cid explains. The video showed how demand for feathers for Carnaval costumes was fueling a black market of bird trafficking and wiping out the endangered species, and urged viewers to save a bird’s life with a tweet. #CalaBocaGavao became a global top trending topic for 14 days and made it into the New York Times.Não Salvo is also not afraid to get into darker subject matter, but mostly with a humorous, prankster edge, posting the crappiest banners the fieis have spotted at protests that have engulfed Brazil since last June, alternating images of fans with tacky face paint and protest paraphernalia. Another Não Salvo thread called Peço Perdão Pelo Vacilo (“forgive me my trespasses”) gathers videos Brazilian police put on YouTube brutally humiliating everyday citizens by forcing them to read statements asking for forgiveness for minor crimes like taking a selfie on top of a police vehicle.If the internet refracts our own culture back to us, I asked Cid what he sees in the reflection of 27 million humor fans on Não Salvo. "The web is opening a space not just to show we have a voice online, but to show that we can unite, take down the government, express our opinions, and come together.”
















Photograph by Julie Ruvolo




Freedom of expression is a relatively new phenomenon for the current generation of Brazilians. Brazil was run by military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985; speech was repressed and regime opponents prosecuted and tortured. Brazil’s current president, Dilma Rousseff, was tortured herself by the military in 1970 for working with guerrilla groups opposing the dictatorship. Since Brazil returned to democratic rule in 1988, poverty has been halved, and combination of economic growth and socialist policies has lifted 28 million Brazilians out of extreme poverty and another 36 million into the middle class. But Brazil still ranks among the most unequal countries on the planet, and the richest 1% of the population takes in more household income than the poorest 50%.This inequality affects Brazil's internet culture. Internet access is now ubiquitous among the richest Brazilians, but only 1 in 3 households in the new middle class have access, and it drops to 6% among Brazil’s poorest citizens. In the face of such tenacious inequality, young Brazilians are watching their government pour $25 billion in taxpayer money to fund stadiums and infrastructure projects for this summer’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. They are the most connected generation and are also the only generation currently alive that hasn’t experienced the repression of living under the dictatorship.“When the dictatorship ended in 1985, we won the right to speak, but we didn’t win the right to be heard,” says Leonardo Eloi, a project director at Meu Rio (“My Rio”), a social mobilization platform that helps Brazilian youth in Rio de Janeiro organize around local issues they care about. “There’s a big difference between the two. So we’re creating a culture now for the government to hear its citizens.”













Meu Rio co-founders Miguel Lago and Alessandra Orofino


Renato Stocklet / NA LATA

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The Most Powerful Images Of World War I

The Great War was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo one hundred years ago today, on 28 June 1914. We take at look at some of the most arresting photos of the First World War. Contains graphic images.









...

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Startups And The Un-Banking Of America

 Historically, when looking for opportunity in the financial industry where technology can have the greatest impact — for investors and entrepreneurs — the best place to start has been with one of our oldest institutions: banks. However, while critical to our economy, banks are generally inefficient, have high fixed costs and don’t exactly elicit happy thoughts from the… Read More

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R.I.P. Meshach Taylor

Meshach Taylor, an actor who was beloved for his role in Designing Women, passed away last night in his home outside of Los Angeles after losing his battle with cancer. He was 67.
The death was confirmed by his agent of over a decade, Dede Binder of Defining Artists Agency, who said Taylor had been gravely ill over the past few days. He died with his wife, mother and his children around him. “He was one of the good ones who was well respected in our community and rightly so,” said Binder. “He was wonderful spirit full of life, and I had the honor of representing him. I know when people think of him, they smile.”
Taylor last starred in an episode of Criminal Minds on Jan. 21st of this year as a homeless veteran. He also on Dave’s World for five years and for three years on Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide. After the wildly popular turn on Designing Women for which he earned an Emmy nomination, he continued to work in both film and television, in everything from Mannequin to guest stars on such shows as Caroline in the City, The Drew Carey Show, Hannah Montana and Jessie. Prior to Designing Women, he worked opposite Dabney Coleman in Buffalo Bill.
He was also an activist and fought for the rights of those in the LBTG community and was a dedicated family man. He is survived by Bianca, his four children and his mother. ... Read More »

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Fighting For Hip-Hop In The Whitest City In America

Luck-One at the Blue Monk on March 1.


Yousef Hatlani / facesontheradio.com




It’s after midnight on a Wednesday night in April, and Rasheed Jamal, a member of the rap trio the Resistance, is talking to the crowd at Holocene, a Southeast Portland, Ore., club. “I know it’s late and we’ve all got work tomorrow, so I’m going to let you guys decide: Should we do one more song?”There are about 30 people left in the audience, and they shout for one more. “OK,” Jamal laughs. “Now when I say ‘love,’ you say ‘hip-hop’…”The message is a fitting cap for the show, a four-hour mash-up of local pop, rock, and rap acts, which is itself a call to action. Local record company Party Damage organized the night as a gesture of support for Portland’s hip-hop community and minority populations, who’ve been having trouble with the police bureau and fire marshal, reviving long-standing conversations about discrimination around town.Portland, despite its reputation as a hub of young, progressive creatives, is also a city with a remarkable lack of diversity; according to the 2010 U.S. Census, 76.1% of its population is white. The city’s recent rapid development has led to a feeling of further marginalization among non-white communities, and those frustrations are being expressed vocally within the local hip-hop scene. But while that community feels it’s being targeted and pushed out, the city’s cops feel their actions are being misunderstood. Who is right, and is it possible for a black community to have a thriving voice in the whitest major city in the country?Party Damage dreamed up this midweek party after another one, at an unassuming Portland jazz bar called The Blue Monk, was shut down. On March 1, three of the city’s most-loved rappers were set to perform there. The men on the lineup — party rapper Mikey Vegaz, self-proclaimed “King of the Northwest” Luck-One, and national freestyle champion Illmaculate — all in their twenties, have built up local cred after years of performing. Hyped around town as a showcase for The Heavyweights of local rap, the show sold out — but the unexpected arrival of the cops and fire marshal quickly shifted the tone, and spurred a citywide discussion of its treatment of the hip-hop community.The first pair of police officers arrived 20 minutes into the night’s opening set. According to organizer and promoter Bryce Trost, the cops asked that Mikey Vegaz (born Eddie Bynum Jr.) be pulled from the stage for questioning. When Trost refused, he says, the officers threatened to shut the show down. “[The police] were trying to provoke something,” Trost says. “But when they saw — surprise!— nothing bad was going on, they started looking around, saying, ‘Oh, well, you know, this place looks pretty crowded.’”The fire marshal was called to the scene to count heads, and over the course of another hour, a dozen additional officers, some members of the gang task force, arrived. Trost says the officers ignored his offer of an “accurate tally” from the box office attendant. Showgoers were ushered out; many were prevented from re-entering. Illmaculate, whose real name is Gregory Poe, took to the stage amidst the commotion, and announced that he would not be performing. Outside of the bar, located in the residential Belmont neighborhood, traffic was blocked by squad cars. No criminal activity had taken place.For Illmaculate, who’s been performing since he was 17, the “overt display of authority” was familiar. The night before the Blue Monk show, police had interfered with a Black History Month event featuring rap performances at North Portland warehouse venue Odyssey. His refusal to perform at Blue Monk, he says, was about “frustration.” That night, he expressed disappointment on Twitter: “I will not perform in this city as long as the blatant targeting of black culture and minorities congregating is acceptable common practice.”“The hope was to burst some bubbles,” says Casey Jarman, the co-founder of Party Damage Records, of the April Holocene show. He planned it in conjunction with an open letter in the Willamette Week in April, calling for Portland music fans to rally in support of the hip-hop scene. “Portland is a progressive but also really segregated city,” he says. “Not just racially, but culturally. I think that everyone involved with this show has expressed interest in breaking down those barriers and seeing what would happen.”At the party, the bar serves a rotating selection of alcoholic slushies. Most of those in attendance, in oversize sheet tops, high-waist jeans and vintage sweaters, would fit in easily in the background of a Portlandia sketch. Tucked discreetly between the bar and the permanent photo booth, representatives from the ACLU of Oregon are manning a table stocked with wallet-size pamphlets on citizens' rights.













LEFT: Cops speak with frustrated audience members outside of the Blue Monk on March 1. RIGHT: The now-shuttered Blue Monk space on Belmont Street.


Yousef Hatlani / facesontheradio.com ; Rose Lewis / audensmotel.blogspot.com




Three police reports about the Blue Monk show, filed on March 1 and March 2, provide different explanations of what happened. One claims that the first pair of police officers to arrive stopped by as a routine check-in, the kind that cops in the bureau’s Entertainment Division, which is in charge of monitoring the city’s bars and nightclubs, do all the time. The venue was overcrowded — Sgt. Eric Strohmeyer’s report says backup officers were called to clear 120 people from the bar. One of the reports also notes that police suspected gang activity at the show. Peter Simpson, a Portland Police Bureau public information officer, later told me that Mikey Vegaz is “known by the gang enforcement team” and has been “the subject of investigations.”But there’s a remarkable discrepancy between the way showgoers and police describe the night. “Apparently the officers received sort of hostile responses from people in the crowd, and one of the performers was inciting that by some words,” Sgt. Simpson said. The police reports cite “anti-police lyrics” like “All they want to do is hold us down and beat us on the ground.” (Likely, these are misheard lyrics from Luck-One’s “Sounds of My City II”: “Where the coppers only judge us / To show us they never loved us / They beat us up and they cuff us on the ground.”)
















Chris Ritter /




Meanwhile, the officers ascribe hostility to the audience and performers. Mac Smiff, who is rapper Luck-One’s brother and runs northwest hip-hop blog We Out Here, described the scene as “a police takeover” with officers blocking doors; Trost says it looked “like a murder scene.”Having lived most of his life in Portland, Smiff has witnessed the gentrification of the city’s neighborhoods. “The Blue Monk thing was so surprising,” he says over coffee in April. “The police had always kind of kept their scope downtown, but now they’re on the east side, and we’re like, wait, we can’t do hip-hop over here anymore? Are we gonna have to go all the way to Estacada [a small city 30 miles southeast of Portland] to do it? There’s a feeling of being pushed out, and the black community has already been there.”As Kiran Herbert outlined in Guernica magazine, 19th-century lawmakers were determined to keep Oregon white, ordering freed black people out of the state and making black migration into the state illegal. These laws were repealed by the 20th century, but real estate agents continued to deny housing to minorities, pushing black citizens to less desirable neighborhoods at the town’s northeastern edge.













Portland's St. Johns Bridge.


Flickr: atul666 / Creative Commons




Today, historically black neighborhoods like Alberta and Mississippi are gentrifying — their coffee shops and bookstores appear regularly on Portlandia. A significant number of Portland’s rappers, including Illmaculate, are coming out of St. Johns, a neighborhood on the city’s far-north outskirts that’s historically been one of the city’s most diverse, and poorest. But even St. Johns is changing. For 2012’s “Lost Our Soul,” Illmaculate wrote: “They putting newer structures up / That they build in a month [...] They want us to move out / Turn our buildings to dust.”As Portland’s economy has grown, a string of businesses serving Portland’s black community have closed. There was the popular restaurant and nightclub Greek Cusina, which shuttered in 2010 after run-ins with the fire marshal and city commissioner. Former owner Ted Papas would later claim the establishment was unfairly targeted for aggressive and unjustified code violations. The popular nightclub Fontaine Bleau had its liquor license suspended and ultimately closed its doors after a fatal on-site shooting in 2013; on May 27 of this year, owner Rodney DeWalt filed a suit against the city and the OLCC for their “campaign intended to thwart black-owned clubs or clubs that played hip-hop and catered to the Black community.” The Blue Monk itself closed in April 2014, though former owner Sheri Dietrich tells me the controversy surrounding the March show was not a factor.Chase Freeman, a promoter who booked hip-hop DJs at the now-defunct Beauty Bar, says police enforced dress codes at nightclubs, while the OLCC and fire marshal intimidated venue owners with threats of inspections. He says authorities don’t have a problem with hip-hop in itself, but with the congregation of black crowds. “They say they’re concerned about dangerous situations, but what they really mean is [situations with] a shit-ton of black people,” he says. “The police are not going to let [hip-hop] fly. It’s not how they want Portland to look.”Luck-One, one of the rappers booked for the March Blue Monk show, moved from Portland to New York in January, saying the city had become, for him, unwelcoming. “I personally am not interested in trying to make any more of a name in a city so racist the police are sent out to every rap show to terrorize concertgoers in an attempt to re-create the city in the image of a cable TV satire,” he says.
















Flickr: canadianveggie / Creative Commons




Hip-hop’s struggle to thrive in Portland isn’t a new one. Cops there have linked violence and hip-hop for years. In August 2006, four people were shot in a parking lot about a block from the Roseland Ballroom venue following a Keak da Sneak concert. The incident prompted then-Central Precinct Lieutenant Todd Wyatt to tell the Portland Mercury, “It’s not a coincidence that all these shootings happen after a rap concert. We don’t want to say that because we don’t want to be labeled as racist, but if you line up the shows, and line up the numbers, there’s a correlation.”When I meet with Simpson in his downtown office in April, he seems hesitant to connect rap shows with trouble as directly as Wyatt once did. When I ask if he believes the Entertainment Division watches rap events more closely than rock shows, he responds with a deep sigh. “Well unfortunately, it’s which came first, the chicken or the egg?” he says. “I mean, we have had hip-hop shows or events that have had tragic consequences.”He gestures to the Willamette River behind him and recounts a gang-related shooting that occurred in August 2013, while 300 people waited to board the Portland Spirit cruise for an after-party Simpson says followed a live hip-hop performance. Three men were injured, one critically. “Is it hip-hop’s fault?” Simpson asks. “Absolutely not. It’s the people that were going there, the small number of people as part of a larger group, that created that problem.”But a phrase like “small number of people,” while vague enough to deflect criticism, is broad enough to protect most police action. Like the possibility of overcrowding, suspicion of gang activity is a practically irrefutable justification for police entry into a bar or a show. But Mac Smiff and promoters Chase Freeman and Bryce Trost all insist that there are not gang members in their music community, and that many of the people on the gang task force’s list are there wrongfully, perhaps just for being born in the wrong neighborhood. In a city as small as Portland, a gang tie might actually just be running through overlapping social circles.
















Chris Ritter /




The performers, promoters, and officers I spoke to all agree that shows should be safe. But if police will treat hip-hop gatherings as dangerous until proven otherwise, Portland’s rappers hope at least that the system putting them on defense might become more transparent. Selling tickets and merch, they’re entrepreneurs, and they would like a fair shot at building their businesses.They’re not the only ones. The OLCC is notoriously stringent, and thriving in Portland as a late-night establishment is a feat, no matter what type of music you play. (Recently, Portland City Council announced it’s considering a special permit requirement for businesses open past 10 p.m.) But Trost, who has organized art shows, poetry slams, and concerts of all genres, says by far it’s the planning of a hip-hop event that requires jumping through the most hoops: from combing through the social media presence of artists he’s booking so he can answer cops’ questions on the night of show, to finding a venue that won’t drop out at the last moment. In the last six months, he says, he’s had to reschedule 14 shows.Police admit that poor communication has built tension between them and the hip-hop community. Cops showed up at the Blue Monk on March 1, Simpson says, because they had only minimal information about the event. And ultimately, he says, “we found we didn’t need to be there.” Without much of an explanation, though, Simpson understands why the Blue Monk crowd felt disrespected on the ground, and why talk of discrimination proliferated after. “This is truly a perception issue more than a reality issue,” he argues, before conceding: “We recognize, though, that perception is reality for people.”













Cool Nutz.


Connor Limbocker

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