The silent listening party is over for Vulfpeck. For about seven weeks, the Los Angeles-based groove band reaped payouts from streams of its album “Sleepify” on Spotify, even though the album’s 10 tracks — with names like “Zzz” and “Zzzzz” — didn’t contain any music. The group encouraged fans to stream the album repeatedly, piling up play counts — and the micro-payments that go with them — in order to fund an upcoming tour of free shows. …
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: OCTOBER 15TH- FROM HELL
This Day In History: October 15, 1888
During the autumn of 1888, a murderer was creeping through the streets and alleyways of London’s East End. His victims were invariably alcoholic prostitutes. He slit their throats prior to mutilating their bodies, and in at least three cases removed several of their internal organs.
As the murders stacked up, the similarities between the crimes led the public and the police to believe the crimes were probably being committed by the same person. Letters poured into the police, some with leads about the crimes, others purporting to be from the killer himself.
Naturally, the ones claiming to be from the murderer sparked the most interest. Most turned out to be useless, although a few warranted closer inspection. On September 25, one known as the “Dear Boss” letter that arrived at London’s Central News Agency was thought to be authentic. It was signed “Jack the Ripper,” a name so perfectly fitting (he’d been known as “Leather Apron” until then) that it stuck for all time. …
Life after Trump: Republicans brace for betrayal and civil war after 2016
At least three factions prepare to fight for the party, divided amid Donald Trump’s accusations of corruption and his appeals to fading demographics
Accusations of betrayal. Demagoguery and hatred. The bunker in Berlin. Comparisons with Adolf Hitler have been tempting throughout Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency – never more so than at its mad, destructive climax.
The Republican’s presidential bid appears to have become the campaign equivalent of the last days of the reich, when Germany’s leadership raged at bearers of bad news from the battlefield, ordered non-existent divisions to launch counteroffensives, and embraced a nihilistic plan to burn it all down and take everyone along.
The difference is, unlike then, there seems to be little awareness of impending defeat or understanding of how it came to be. Instead, attitudes are like those after the first world war when Germans on the far right coined a word for their myth of betrayal: Dolchstoßlegende.
This election is being rigged by the media pushing false and unsubstantiated charges, and outright lies, in order to elect Crooked Hillary!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 15, 2016
…
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: …
.@realDonaldTrump To be a sore loser, don't you actually have to lose first?
— Peter Serafinowicz (@serafinowicz) October 15, 2016
The Tax Code for the Ultra-Rich vs. the One for Everyone Else
It’s as though there’s a separate set of laws for people with extreme amounts of wealth.
The revelation of details from Donald Trump’s 1995 state tax returns created exactly the political firestorm that it merited. Before they came to light, the Republican presidential candidate’s flimsy excuses for not releasing his returns produced two lines of speculation: Either he wasn’t as rich as he claimed, or he wasn’t paying any taxes. Trump’s colossal $916 million loss in 1995 partially confirmed both theories, with opponents portraying him as a bumbling businessman who exploits tax loopholes to shift his losses onto ordinary taxpayers.
When it comes to tax policy, however, Trump’s tax returns are a distraction that crowds out more important issues. In The New York Times, the columnist James Stewart outlined how to prevent Trump’s particular form of tax avoidance: Shorten the period in which losses can be used to offset income, limit the deduction for depreciation, and so on. These are perfectly good solutions—to a minor issue. The poster child for the problems of the tax code isn’t Donald Trump; it’s Warren Buffett. …
10 Classic Fashion Trends That Seem Completely Bizarre Today
We do some strange things in pursuit of beauty. Women around the world get up early to stare in their mirrors, paint their faces, and pluck their eyebrows. We spend fortunes on fashionable clothes and do some absolutely destructive things to our bodies just to keep to a standard of beauty.
Over time, the concept of beauty has changed—a lot. The generations that came before us had their own ideas about what looked good, and some of those seem completely bizarre today.
10. Gluing A Unibrow On Your Head
In ancient Greece, there was nothing more unsightly than a woman with two clearly separated eyebrows on her head. If a woman wanted to exude sophistication and beauty, she needed a long, black, caterpillar-like line of hair stretching across her brow.
According to ancient Greeks, unibrows were the sexiest accessory that a woman could wear. Women dabbed black powder on the hair between their eyebrows to make it stand out and look as full as possible. …
HERE ARE THE ABSURD INSTRUCTIONS FOR FILMING DONALD TRUMP IN YOUR MOVIE
In 2010, Donald Trump agreed to do a cameo appearance in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
Trump has appeared in lots of movies before, but this was one of his first cameos since becoming an entertainment icon on the strength of The Apprentice. And Stone—with his own taste for controversial, even disastrous presidencies—was one of the splashier directors to have offered Trump a role, albeit a tiny one: In the scene, Michael Douglas’s character, Gordon Gekko, goes to the barbershop and finds himself sitting in a chair next to Trump, who is about to get his infamous mop trimmed.
The scene never made it into the final film, but it was an absolute ordeal to shoot—not least because Trump’s people sent the filmmakers a ridiculous memo containing hyperspecific demands for how their star could be shot.
The note, which we just got ahold of, arrived the same day as the Trump shoot.
“We received this email at 6:45 a.m. that morning, from somebody in his camp,” says Eric Kopeloff, the film’s producer. “Saying—you just gotta read it. I can’t paraphrase it.” …
Michelle Obama has dragged this US election out of the gutter
Donald Trump has sunk US politics in a grotesque mire of populism. But the first lady’s speech on respect for women captured the best of her country.
Michelle Obama may have done the seemingly impossible. She may just have rescued the US elections from the grotesque and demeaning mire into which they have descended. She did something even more remarkable, and just as badly needed. With the touch of a poet, her speech last night shamed the tat and the tawdry of populism and held out the possibility of something better. She lent her extraordinary ability to say what people are feeling to every English-speaking woman in the world.
Nominally, she spoke for Hillary Clinton at a run-of-the-mill political rally. In fact she made a passionate and clear-eyed appeal for decency and respect in public life. Clinton’s Republican rival Donald Trump did not get a single mention, but he was in every word of every sentence. It was one of the most sustained put-downs in modern democratic politics.
There have been many protests this week as Trump’s lewd bragging about sexually assaulting women finally registered in the Republican scale of shame. His campaign is floundering, at last. Obama’s contribution was not to add to the direct attacks on him. Instead, on behalf of American voters – women and girls, of course, but men and boys too – she gave a victim’s statement. …
10 Horrifying Recent Stories From The World Of Science
The approach of Halloween always gets us in the mood for scary stories. It takes us back to when we were children, huddled around a campfire or staring mesmerized at some forbidden movie, allowing ourselves to wonder if perhaps there were such things as ghosts, demons, and zombies.
But if ghost stories aren’t enough to raise goose bumps or make your blood run cold, allow the wonderful world of science to remind you that real life can be even stranger—and creepier—than fiction.
10. Space Madness
Much has been made of the need for humans to reach and even colonize Mars. President Obama recently announced that the government is working with private aerospace firms to make it a reality by the 2030s. But one study, in which lab mice were bombarded with the type of highly charged particles to which astronauts will be exposed in deep space, reached a troubling conclusion.
The exposure led to brain inflammation which resulted in dementia, loss of cognitive ability, and a deficit in “fear extinction”—a process by which fearful associations are minimized by the brain over time. The lack of fear extinction would lead to a state of constant anxiety …
Bill Maher Goes After Ken Bone: ‘Too Stupid to Pick Hillary Over President Pussy-Grabber’
The jolly man in the red sweater is no “folk hero,” claims the ‘Real Time’ host. He’s just an idiot.
Perhaps it was election fatigue or perhaps, amid the cacophony of sexual assault allegations, hacked emails, and ghosts of Clinton accusers past, the American people just needed a good ol’ fashioned pick-me-up. For whatever reason, the public made Ken Bone, an unassuming (and undecided) sweater-loving fella from the Midwest, a national folk hero.
He got the meme treatment, did the talk show rounds, and even inspired his own sexy Halloween costume. But the internet giveth, and the internet taketh away.
In the early hours Friday morning, Reddit sleuths happened upon Bone’s decidedly unwholesome posting history—including ogling the hacked nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, copping to felony insurance fraud, and arguing that the death of Trayvon Martin was mere justifiable homicide. And like that, he was no longer the new, portlier Ned Flanders, but just another man struggling to choose between a sexual predator and one of the most qualified candidates in U.S. history for the highest office in the land. …
Climate change: global deal reached to limit use of hydrofluorocarbons
Global deal on HFC greenhouse gases set to bring about ‘largest temperature reduction ever achieved by single agreement’
A global deal to limit the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in the battle to combat climate change is a “monumental step forward”, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has said.
The agreement, announced on Saturday morning after all-night negotiations in Kigali, Rwanda, caps and reduces the use of HFCs – a key contributor to greenhouse gases – in a gradual process beginning in 2019, with action by developed countries including the US, the world’s second worst polluter.
More than 100 developing countries, including China, the world’s top carbon dioxide emitter, will start taking action in 2024, sparking concern from some groups that the action would be implemented too slowly to make a difference. A small group of countries, including India, Pakistan and some Gulf states, also pushed for and secured a later start in 2028, saying their economies need more time to grow. That is three years earlier than India, the world’s third worst polluter, had first proposed. …
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: OCTOBER 15TH- A TALE OF TWO BROTHERS, HITLER’S RIGHT HAND MAN AND THE ONE WHO OPPOSED HIM
This Day In History: October 15, 1946
Hermann Göring was second only to Hitler in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Commander of the Luftwaffe, acting Prime Minister of Prussia, President of the Reichstag, and Hitler’s designated successor – Göring’s Nazi resume was almost unparalleled.
Born in Bavaria in 1893, Göring was the son of a professional soldier and governor in West Africa. He followed his father’s footsteps and joined the military in 1912. He served in the Luftwaffe during World War I, and took over the command of “The Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen’s old squadron. Although he won several awards for bravery and his numerous victories, Göring wasn’t popular with the other pilots, seemingly due to his arrogance.
After joining the fledgling Nazi party in 1922, Göring quickly became indispensable and was instrumental in the Nazi take-over of the German government. After Hitler became Chancellor, he appointed Göring as Prussian Minister of the Interior, Commissioner for Aviation, and Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Police and Gestapo. …
Google Now Tells You When Politicians Are Lying
We all now have another friend in the fight to surface the truth… Google News has launched a Fact Check feature designed to separate fact from fiction. The question is, does anyone actually care about the truth any more?
Politicians lie. A lot. If they’re not lying, they’re at least spinning the truth to fit their own agenda. Sadly, the media, which should be keeping this in check, does the exact same thing. Which is why the publication(s) you read determine what you take away from a story.
Facts become blurred. The truth is subverted. A biased narrative is born.
All Politicians Lie. Some Lie More Than Others. https://t.co/ssi7faZQMS
— Micaela Heck (@CaelaHeck) October 4, 2016
In an effort to help you cut through the crap, Google News has added a Fact Check feature. This works in the same way as the “Opinion,” “In-Depth,” and “Highly Cited” tags you see assigned to stories appearing on Google News.
So, alongside the biased reporting of a story, you’ll find a link to a version which sticks to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. …
Freed From Gag Order, Google Reveals It Received Secret FBI Subpoena
Google revealed Wednesday it had been released from an FBI gag order that came with a secret demand for its customers’ personal information.
The FBI secret subpoena, known as a national security letter, does not require a court approval. Investigators simply need to clear a low internal bar demonstrating that the information is “relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”
The national security letter issued to Google was mentioned without fanfare in Google’s latest bi-annual transparency report, which includes information on government requests for data the company received from around the world in the first half of 2016.
Google received the secret subpoena in first half of 2015, according to the report.
An accompanying blog post titled “Building on Surveillance Reform,” also identified new countries that made requests — Algeria, Belarus, and Saudi Arabia among them — and reveals that Google saw an increase in requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. …
The Complicated Realities Of Living With A Quicksand Fetish
In 1932, Tarzan The Ape Man introduced the movie-going public to the concept of drowning movie extras in quicksand …
“Don’t worry! He’s non-union.”
… and to everybody’s surprise, we started masturbating. Quicksand became something of a fetish, though mostly unacknowledged: The next few decades featured endless depictions of people, mostly young women, being slowly sucked down to their demise. Peak Quicksand arrived in the 1960s, with one in 35 Hollywood films featuring a scene like this:
Pictured (Submerged): actor, creativity.
It’s impossible to overstate how pervasive the ‘quicksand’ meme was. Before the Apollo 11 landing, there was widespread fear that the moon’s dust might act like “quicksand.” David Bowie wrote a song called “Quicksand” about Hitler. Quicksand was everywhere, which was bad news for inattentive young women on safari, but great news for thousands of Americans like Carl: A man with a quicksand fetish. …
Turning Detroit’s Abandoned Homes Into Greenhouses
A new kind of neighborhood regrowth
When Steven Mankouche first saw the house at 3347 Burnside Street in Detroit, in 2013, it was buckling and scarred with burn marks. An artist named Andy Malone, who lived nearby, had just purchased the lot for $500 and was hoping to find some way to bring it back to life. Mankouche, an architect, and his partner, Abigail Murray, a ceramicist, floated a proposal to do just that, by commandeering the house’s foundation and repurposing it as a sort of plant nursery.
The following year, a team set to work dismantling the empty house, and in 2015, a new frame went up. By the time I visited, in June of this year, a new exterior had taken shape, with a fluted-plastic roof and wood siding. Like the old walls, the siding was charred, but deliberately so, via shou sugi ban, a Japanese technique that singes wood to render it resistant to rot. Despite summer’s heat and humidity, the interior of the structure was temperate. Come winter, Mankouche told me, “it will be hot enough for plants, but not for people.” …
That Time the Statue of Liberty Almost Got a Glowing Wrist Watch
The copper goddess is an artistic masterpiece—but also a longstanding symbol of technological progress.
A photomechanical print of the Statue of Liberty, produced in 1905.
The Lazarus brothers had an idea.
It was 1926, and the trio of watchmakers—Benjamin, Oscar, and S. Ralph Lazarus—had opened a shop on Beekman Street, in Lower Manhattan. Their business was a short walk from the Battery, where they would have been able to stand on the South shoreline of the island and gaze at the Statue of Liberty across the harbor.
The Statue of Liberty was beautiful, the brothers conceded, but didn’t such a goddess deserve a bit of bling? They offered to make her a giant, illuminated wristwatch—you know, a little something she could show off on her upraised, torch-toting arm.
Officials with the War Department, which was then responsible for the statue’s oversight, told the press at the time that they had genuinely considered the proposal, but ultimately they decided against it.
The primary concern wasn’t that using Lady Liberty as an implicit vehicle for advertising might somehow tarnish her image, but that such a technological display would amount to a disorienting mashup of “so modern an ornament as a wristwatch upon the classically robed figure,” as one official put it, according to an obituary for one of the brothers published decades later. This concern is understandable: In today’s terms, it might be like replacing the tablet in the statue’s left hand with a colossal iPad. …
10 Historical Clowns That Helped Make Clowns Terrifying
It’s no secret that clowns are absolutely terrifying. Even people who might not admit to being outright afraid of them usually concede that there is something unsettling about them, no matter what form they take. A look at history’s most important clowns shows us that there has always been two sides to this particular figure.
10. The White Fool
Many Native American tribes had their own types of clowns. The “white fool“—or white crazy man—of the Arapaho isn’t just terrifying in hindsight. He was feared by his own people.
He was called the white fool because he painted himself in white clay, and he was said to have access to a special sort of medicinal magic. That made him powerful, and it was also understood that the white fool enjoyed complete and absolute sexual freedom during ceremonies. That meant anything went with anyone he wanted, and he was one of the most dreaded figures in ritual. …
Are Aliens Trying to Contact You? Use This Handy Scale
The pattern showed up in old telescope data: Weird variations in the light patterns of about 230 stars. The astronomers—a pair of Canadians—published their analysis, along with what they believed was the culprit: Aliens.
SETI researchers quickly countered that the patterns were probably just artifacts from analyzing the data, and the Breakthrough Listen project published a response pointing out several flaws.
Caveats aside, the Breakthrough Listen rebuke also assigned the finding a number: 1. According to the Rio scale—used by SETI researchers to assess the likelihood that a suspected alien signal actually came from ETs—that means the finding is “insignificant.” That’s one above 0 (“no importance”), and nine below a perfect 10 (“extraordinary”). Not quite a scientific tool, the scale’s main purpose is to inform the public. Which is important for SETI, a field constantly guarding its scientific cred—while talking about aliens. And the scale isn’t perfect, but SETI scientists are now working on revamping it and using it in earnest. …
WikiLeaks Release Emails Claiming The Pope Knows Aliens Exist And A Space War Is Imminent
As soon as I see the words “leaked” and “email” in the same sentence, I immediately run for cover. Nothing good has ever come from rifling through somebody else’s private correspondence – and this story is no different. Chuck a few notable conspiracy theories into the mix, and you’ve got a story worthy of every front page across the world.
WikiLeaks have released an email from ex-astronaut Edgar Mitchell to politician John Podesta which makes some pretty outlandish claims. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, I’m going to start talking about aliens…
THIS DAY IN HISTORY: OCTOBER 15TH- MATA HARI EXECUTED
This Day In History: October 15, 1917
On this day in history, 1917, famed femme fatale exotic dancer and convicted spy, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod, a.k.a. Mata Hari, was executed.
Mata Hari first showed up in Paris in 1905. In need of money after having recently left her abusive husband, she began performing exotic Asian dances, for which she quickly gained a following. It wasn’t long before she was taking her act all over Europe, telling the tale of her birth in an Indian temple and how a sacred priestess taught her to dance and named her “Mata Hari,” which in Malay means “eye of the day” or, less literally, “sun”. So, not only could the girl dance, she could lay it on thick.
In reality, she picked up much of her relatively superficial knowledge of eastern dance from her mother as well as later from a short-lived marriage to the aforementioned abusive man in the Dutch colonial army. Whether she was the real McCoy or not, she was packing them in all over Europe owing to the fact that her show consisted of a very elaborate and sensual strip tease. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Oops…
FINALLY . . .
THAT TIME A BAND MADE OVER $20,000 ON A TOTALLY SILENT ALBUM ON SPOTIFY
Silence is golden and in 2014 a little known American funk band called Vulfpeck took this to its logical extreme by releasing an entirely silent album on the popular music streaming service Spotify. This ultimately resulted in the band earning a not unimpressive sum of just over $20,000 from the album- their highest earning yet on the service- at which point Spotify removed it. This is the story of Sleepify.
According to Vulfpeck’s front man and keyboardist Jack Stratton, the genesis for Sleepify was a conversation he had with famed music producer Ron Fair. Stratton notes that he was especially intrigued when he learned that one of Fair’s most popular songs, a cover of “Lady Marmalade” he produced for the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, could only legally be obtained at the time if a person purchased the film’s full soundtrack. …