from Entertainment Tonight

William Shatner Reacts to Prince William’s Disapproval of Space Race

By Paige Gawley‍

William Shatner is responding to Prince William‘s criticism of space travel. ET’s Nischelle Turner spoke with the 90-year-old actor on Thursday, one day after he traveled to space, and Shatner was quick to defend his journey, and space travel as a whole.

“He’s a lovely Englishman. He’s going to be king of England one day,” Shatner told ET of the Duke of Cambridge. “He’s a lovely, gentle, educated man, but he’s got the wrong idea.”

Shatner, best known for playing Captain Kirk on Star Trek, went to space with Blue Origin, the company founded by Jeff Bezos, as one of four passengers on board the New Shepard NS-18 ship.

Though the duke didn’t mention Bezos by name, he told BBC, “We need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live.” 

[ click to continue reading at ET ]

from Vice

Grimes Wants to Rebound from Elon Musk With ‘Lesbian Space Commune’

Elon Musk and Grimes announced they were “semi-separated” last week—and Grimes has plans for her next move.

By Samantha Cole

Everyone deserves a little rebound moment after getting out of a long term relationship. Grimes, the electronic artist who spent three years dating SpaceX founder Elon Musk, announced that her post-breakup plan involves settling on one of Jupiter’s moons to establish a “lesbian space commune.” 

Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, sat in the other room while Musk broke the news about their “semi-” separation last week to Hollywood gossip newspaper Page Six.  

“I’ll be colonizing Europa separately from Elon for the lesbian space commune,” she wrote in an email today to Page Six. In July, NASA awarded Musk’s rocket ship company SpaceX a $178 million launch services contract for its mission to Europa. 

[ click to continue reading at Vice ]

from The Daily Beast

New Zealand Cops Arrest Men Entering Locked-Down City With ‘Large Amounts’ of Illicit KFC

by Jamie Ross

Two men have been arrested in New Zealand for allegedly attempting to bring a “large amount” of illicit KFC into Auckland, where a lockdown has forced all fast-food outlets to shut their doors. According to The Guardian, the men were attempting to speed away with a trunk full of chicken and coleslaw when they were pulled over by police. Cops said they found at least three buckets of chicken, 10 tubs of coleslaw, and a big stash of fries on the side. Police also found $100,000 in cash and a number of empty ounce bags. Cops posted a photo of the delicious evidence, and a spokesperson said: “The vehicle was searched and police located the cash, alongside empty ounce bags and a large amount of takeaways.” The Guardian reports that the men are expected in court for breaching COVID rules and could face prison for up to six months or a fine of up to $4,000.

[ click to continue reading at TDB ]

from Fox 5 NY

Walmart worker resigns over store loudspeakers: ‘F–k this job’

By FOX 5 NY Staff

NEW YORK – A Walmart worker quit in a profanity-laced tirade over the Louisiana store’s loudspeakers.

Beth McGrath’s posted the video of her resignation on Facebook.

“Attention Walmart shoppers and associates, my name is Beth from electronics,” Beth McGrath said over the store’s PA system.  “I’ve been working at Walmart for almost five years and I can say that everyone here is overworked and underpaid.”

In a Facebook video she posted of the stunt, McGrath said, “The attendance policy is bulls–t. We’re treated from management and customers poorly every day.  Whenever we have a problem with it, we’re told that we’re replaceable.”

“I’m tired of the constant gaslighting,” McGrath went on to say. “This company treats their elderly associates like s–t. To Jarred, our store manager, you’re a pervert. Greta and Kathy, shame on y’all for treating our associates the way you do. I hope you don’t speak to your families the way you speak to us.”

She ended the 1:11 video with “F–k management and f–k this job. I quit.”

She posted the video on Facebook with the comment, “On to better things.”

Thousands of people have responded to her post.  McGrath posted a follow-up video thanking everyone who had commented, liked, and shared the post.

[ click to continue reading at Fox 5 NY ]

from The US Sun

Scorned wife raids ex-husband’s cryogenics lab stealing frozen brains of people who hoped to be brought back to life

by Will Stewart

Valeria Udalova, 59, and staff from her company grabbed the remains of people who paid thousands of pounds hoping they could be resurrected.

Some of the corpses were from Britain and the US and were stored in Valeria’s ex-husband Danila Medvedev, 41, lab in the Moscow region of Russia.

The lab is Russia’s leading cryo-storage facility, say reports.

They drained liquid nitrogen from giant dewar flasks containing frozen bodies and grabbed these and some detached human brains, then loaded them on trucks. 

Police were called and intercepted the macabre cargo of human remains preserved by “Frankenstein” technology offering humans the chance to “come back to life” in future.

But Medvedev told RTVi: “The police did not catch Valeria. 

“She left, taking someone’s brain from the cryo-storage. 

[ click to continue reading at The Sun ]

from Kentucky.com

Racehorse bucks jockey, escapes Ellis Park, takes a run in traffic

BY KARLA WARD

A racehorse bucked its rider and escaped Ellis Park Saturday afternoon, taking a run down a major highway before being captured, media outlets reported.

Video posted on Twitter showed the #4 horse racing alongside traffic on the shoulder of the road. Another video, shared on Facebook by Cullen Stanley, showed the horse running toward vehicles that appeared to be stopped on a four-lane highway.

“Horse running at me full speed on I-69 today,” he wrote. “No idea how it started or ended. Odd times we live in.”

[ click to continue reading at Kentucky.com ]

from The U.S. Sun

Can masturbating REALLY boost your immune system and fight Covid?

by Vanessa Chalmers

WITH a deadly virus circulating the past year and a half, many people have been wondering how they can boost their immunity.

Masturbating is sometimes touted as a way to give the immune system a kickstart.

When Covid first started causing chaos in the Western world in March 2020, Google searches for “can masurbation boost immunity” went wild as people searched for ways to protect themselves.

Unfortunately, touching oneself will not be the difference between catching Covid and not, as there are many factors that influence a person’s risk of getting the disease.

But Dr Jennifer Landa, a specialist in hormone therapy, suggests that indulging in some self-love might be able to strengthen your body’s natural defence forces.

“Masturbation can produce the right environment for a strengthened immune system,” she said, according to Men’s Health.

[ click to continue reading at The U.S. Sun ]

from Yahoo! News

Woman with only known recording of J.D. Salinger’s voice to have tape burned

by Brendan Morrow

The potentially last chance to hear J.D. Salinger’s voice on tape is set to go up in smoke, according to the woman who recorded him.

Betty Eppes is in possession of the “only known recording” of author J.D. Salinger’s voice, but she is promising to never release it and has even updated her will to say it will “be placed, along with her body, in the crematorium,” Bloomberg reports.

Eppes was a reporter for the Baton Rouge Advocate in 1980 when she managed to land an interview with the famously reclusive Catcher in the Rye author, who at that point hadn’t given one in nearly three decades. But as Bloomberg explains, Eppes described herself to him as a novelist, not a journalist, and she didn’t tell him she would be taping their conversation using a recorder she had hidden in her sleeve.

[ click to continue reading at Yahoo! ]

from The Sun

LAX ‘Jet Pack guy’ spotted AGAIN flying 15 miles from Los Angeles airport at 5,000 feet as FAA and FBI investigates

by Catherina Gioino

A MAN on a possible jet pack was spotted flying 15 miles from Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday – nearly a year since a spate of previous sightings sparked panic.

The man – who has been dubbed “jet pack guy” – was seen by a Boeing 747 pilot looking similar to Marvel action star Iron Man as he soared at 5,000ft.

“A Boeing 747 pilot reported seeing an object that might have resembled a jet pack 15 miles east of LAX at 5,000ft altitude,” the Federal Aviation Administration told CBS.

“Out of an abundance of caution, air traffic controllers alerted other pilots in the vicinity.”

[ click to continue reading at The Sun ]

from The Observer

The Louvre Is Cracking Down on Pornhub for Turning Classic Art Into Explicit Content

By Helen Holmes

Pornhub, one of the most highly visited adult websites in the United States, is reportedly facing legal action from the Louvre museum in Paris and the Uffizi in Florence after debuting a new interactive website and app, “Show Me the Nudes,” that features porn actors re-envisioning classic works of art as jumping off points for sexually explicit content. Pornography is famously difficult to describe, but it could certainly be argued that a clear continuum exists between unclothed Titian muses and 21st century graphic imagery. However, the aforementioned museums are initiating legal action against Pornhub for rights infringements and pushing for the website to take down the content.

“No one has granted authorizations for the operation or use of the art” a spokesperson for the Uffizi told The Daily Beast. “In Italy, the cultural heritage code provides that in order to use images of a museum, compressed works for commercial purposes, it is necessary to have the permission, which regulates the methods and sets the relative fee to be paid. All this obviously if the museum grants the authorization which, for example, would hardly have been issued in this case.” Some of the works featured on the Pornhub website from the Uffizi Gallery include Bacchus by Caravaggio, Spring by Botticelli and Angelica hides from Ruggiero by Giovanni Bilivert.

[ click to continue reading at Observer ]

from The New Yorker

The Myth of the Cast-Iron Pan

By Jiji Lee and Laura Mishkin

Birth

A cast-iron pan is forged in the flames of a volcano, by the mighty god Hephaestus. When the pan is the color of obsidian, and its weight equals that of a mountain, it is carefully placed in a cardboard box, and is ready for shipping and handling.

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker ]

from The New York Post

Roger Waters turns down ‘huge money’ for Facebook ad: ‘No f–kin’ way’

By Rob Bailey-Millado

Roger Waters has revealed that Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg offered him big bucks to use Pink Floyd’s classic 1979 anthem “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” in an Instagram ad.

However, the co-founding member of the iconic rock band turned the “little p–k” down flat — with a cantankerously foulmouthed touch.

“It arrived this morning, with an offer for a huge, huge amount of money,” the 77-year-old bassist and composer said at a recent pro-Julian Assange event, Rolling Stone reported. “And the answer is, ‘F–k you. No f–in’ way.’”

He continued: “I only mention that because this is an insidious movement of them to take over absolutely everything. I will not be a party to this bulls–t, Zuckerberg.”

[ click to continue reading at NYP ]

from HypeBeast

Italian Artist Salvatore Garau Has Just Sold an Invisible Sculpture for $18,000 USD

Made from “air and spirit.”

By Ambrose Leung

Italian artist Salvatore Garau has just sold an invisible sculpture for $18,000 USD. The Io Sono (I am) sculpture, as the artist explains, exists but just not in material form, and is actually more like a “vacuum.”

The 67-year-old went on to elaborate that, “the vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that ‘nothing’ has a weight. Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.” Much like how we “shape a god we’ve never seen.”

The “sculpture” is intended to be displayed in a 5×5-foot square and must be displayed in a private space free from obstructions where lighting and climate control are not required. Reiterating that even if you can’t see it, it does exist, Garau included a certificate of authentication to the purchaser.

[ click to continue reading at HYPEBEAST ]

from VICE

‘Fuck This Court’: We Obtained Larry Flynt’s FBI File and It’s Pretty Wild

The 322-page file contains a litany of events from John DeLorean’s cocaine bust to an alleged effort by Flynt to blow himself up in front of the Supreme Court.

By Irving Alpert

When Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt died on Feb. 10 at the age of 78, it signaled the end of an era where a misogynistic smut peddler could be viewed as a kind of antihero.

It’s hard to laud someone who built his empire by unabashedly treating women like pieces of meat, but as a First Amendment warrior, Flynt won important legal victories while sticking his thumb in the eye of the powers that be.

Over the decades, Flynt took on America’s morality police or anyone he felt to be hypocritical on matters of sex, engaging in what the Washington Post once referred to as “Dirt Bag Journalism.” This involved offering millions to anyone who could prove an extramarital affair with a high-ranking government official, such as in 1998, when he took down then-House speaker designate and staunch Clinton impeachment backer Bob Livingston. In 2017, Flynt offered $10 million for information leading to Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. 

Many know Flynt best from the Oscar-winning 1996 Milos Forman film “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” in which he was portrayed as a rakish rogue by Woody Harrelson. The movie went a long way toward softening Flynt’s image as a tawdry yet charismatic freedom fighter, while sanding off the more grotesque aspects of his personality.  

To the FBI, he was a person of interest.

[ click to continue reading at VICE ]

from VICE

People’s Expensive NFTs Keep Vanishing. This Is Why

“There was no history of my ever purchasing it, or ever owning it,” said one confused NFT buyer. “Now there’s nothing. My money’s gone.”

By Ben Munster

Last month, Tom Kuennen, a property manager from Ontario, coughed up $500 worth of cryptocurrency for a JPEG of an Elon Musk-themed “Moon Ticket” from DarpaLabs, an anonymous digital art collective. He purchased it through the marketplace OpenSea, one of the largest vendors of so-called non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, in the hopes of reselling it for a profit. 

“It’s like a casino,” he said in an interview. “If it goes up 100 times you resell it, if it doesn’t, well, you don’t tell anyone.”

He never got the chance to find out. A week later, he opened up his digital “wallet,” where the artwork would supposedly be available, and was faced with an ominous banner reading, “This page has gone off grid. We’ve got a 404 error and explored deep and wide, but we can’t find the page you’re looking for.” 

[ click to continue reading at VICE ]

from The Daily Star

Bloke has his penis held to ransom by hackers who took control of digital chastity belt

Qiui, the company which makes the Cellmate cage, says it believes that a true chastity experience is one that ‘does not allow the wearer to have any control over’

By Joshua Smith

A man had his penis held to ransom for more than £700 after hackers locked a digital chastity belt he was wearing.

Sam Summers had been wearing a Qiui Cellmate chastity cage, which connects to the internet, when he received a strange message on the product’s app on his phone.

Someone said they had taken control of the chastity belt and that they wanted around $1,000 (£729) in Bitcoin to give him back control of the device.

“Initially, I thought it was my partner doing that. It sounds silly, but I got a bit excited by it,” Sam Summers told VICE.

But when Same called his partner and told her their safe word, he was shocked to find out it wasn’t her.

That’s when he realised, to his utter horror, that he had been hacked.

His penis was locked in the cage, and he had no way to get it out because the belt has no manual override.

“Oh, s**t, it’s real,” Sam said. “I started looking at the thing.

“There’s no manual override at all. It’s a chastity belt, I guess it kind of shouldn’t have an override.

[ click to continue reading at The Daily Star ]

from AP

Berlin man caught directing flight traffic with radio

BERLIN (AP) — A man has been arrested in Berlin on allegations he made radio contact with air traffic, including police helicopters, and gave fake flight orders while impersonating an aviation official, German police said Friday.

The 32-year-old, whose identity wasn’t released in line with German privacy laws, was arrested Thursday night in the capital’s eastern Koepenick district, police said. 

Police were able to swoop in on his apartment after he made contact with a police helicopter that was dispatched to the neighborhood in the hope of flushing him out.

During a search of his home, police found two radios that transmitted on the frequencies needed to make contact with aircraft.

[ click to continue reading at AP ]

from WIRED

He Made a Viral Bernie Meme Site. Now He Has to Keep It Going

Nick Sawhney’s “Bernie Sits” puts Sanders anywhere on Google Street View. 

by BRIAN BARRETT

BY 9 PM ET last night, Nick Sawhney knew he was in trouble. 

Just a half hour earlier, still steeped in the afterglow of Joe Biden’s inauguration, Sawhney had pushed live a website that lets you put a viral image of Bernie Sanders—seated, mittened, alone—atop any Google Street View image. The meme had already reached a fever pitch, with the Photoshop faithful placing the senator from Vermont in everything from Mortal Kombat to Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. But Sawhney’s creation, born out of a group chat with friends, added layers of personalization, ease of use, and absurdity; because it fixes Sanders in the same coordinates regardless of his location, he occasionally looks as though he’s floating, or sitting on a car, or in an otherwise unlikely orientation.

The site gained traction on Twitter slowly at first; friends retweeting, then friends of friends. A few verified accounts joined in. And then, as wonderful and perfectly timed internet creations do, it snowballed.

[ click to continue reading at WIRED ]

from The Drive

Video Taken By Pilots Of What Could Be The Elusive Los Angeles Jet Pack Guy Emerges (Updated)

Flight school pilots were on a training flight off the coast when they were surprised to see what appeared to be a guy in a jet pack whizzing by.

BY TYLER ROGOWAY

When it comes to weird stories that keep getting weirder, the elusive “Jet Pack Guy” of Los Angeles pretty much takes the cake. After multiple reported sightings from airline pilots on more than one occasion of a guy in a jet pack flying around at thousands of feet near Los Angeles International Airport—some of the most congested airspace on earth—as well as ongoing FAA and FBI investigations into the matter, we now have credible video of what seems to be the flying object in question.

The footage doesn’t come to us from some random Reddit board or YouTube channel, either. It was taken during an instructional flight from Sling Pilot Academy in the training area off Palos Verdes. We reached out to the flight school, which is based out of Zamperini Field, in Torrance, California for additional details.

[ click to continue reading at The Drive ]

from WIRED

The WIRED Guide to Memes

Everything you ever wanted to know about Nyan Cat, Doge, and the art of the Rickroll.

by ANGELA WATERCUTTER & EMMA GREY ELLIS

MEMES AND THE internet—they’re made for each other. Not because they’re digital visual communication (though of course, they are that), but because they are the product of a hive mind. They are the shorthand of a hyper-connected group thinking in unison. And, friends, the web hive mind is a weird (often funny, sometimes dangerous) place. 

The term “meme” comes from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. For Dawkins, cultural ideas were no different than genes—concepts that had to spread themselves from brain to brain as quickly as they could, replicating and mutating as they went. He called those artifacts memes, bits of cultural DNA that encoded society’s shared experiences while also constantly evolving.

But Dawkins coined the term in 1976, in his book The Selfish Gene, long before the modern internet, before memes morphed into what they are now. Back then, Dawkins was talking about passing along culture—song melodies, art styles, whatever. Today, denizens of the internet think of memes as jokes passed across social media in the form of image macros (those pictures of babies or cats or whatever with bold black-and-white words on them), hashtags (the thing you amended to what you just wrote on Twitter), GIFs (usually of a celebrity, reality star, or drag queen reacting to what you just wrote on Twitter), or videos (that Rick Astley video people used to send you).

[ click to continue reading at WIRED ]

from VICE

The Untold Story of Wood, the Well-Endowed Man From Those Coronavirus Texts

Through interviews with his loved ones, we dug deeper into the fascinating life of Wardy Joubert III, the real man behind the memes.

By Alex Zaragoza

Last week, I went down a rabbit hole in pursuit of a story: the proliferation of prank texts that appear to provide breaking news links on the COVID-19 pandemic, only to open up to a photo of a beefy, naked Black man with a massive penis. I set out to find the well-endowed man to talk to him about his cult status during this time of crisis, only to find out he was a guy named Wood who had died several years ago.

Emails, DMs, and endless memes poured in from people who had read the story and wanted to know more about the now-fabled Wood. A few even asked about donating to Wood’s family. Like many of them, I felt unsatisfied with the story; it just didn’t feel like a closed case.

All I really knew about this man was that he had done a jerk-off video at some point in his life, and that he had died. It seemed unfair to tie a bow on a person’s legacy based on just two things from his years on earth. I’d hate to think that one day, when I’m gone, the only thing people might know about me is that I once fell on a cactus while drunk off Bud Light. So I set off to find out even more about who he was as a person beyond his large penis and meme infamy, and I did. This is the untold story of Wood, or, rather, Wardy Joubert III.

[ click to continue reading at VICE ]

from artnet

A Mysterious Steel Monolith Was Discovered in the Utah Desert. Is It a Work of Art—or the Work of Aliens?

Theories about who or what is behind the object have started circulating online.

Cue Also sprach Zarathustra. 

A mysterious steel monolith has been discovered deep in the red rock canyons of southern Utah. And no one seems to know who—or what—is behind it.

Officers from the Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS) eyed the object from a helicopter last week while counting bighorn sheep in the area. The spotters were quick to posit two theories about the polished steel block: it’s either a work of art, or the work of aliens. 

“I’m assuming it’s some new-wave artist or something or, you know, somebody that was a big ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ fan,” Bret Hutchings, the helicopter pilot, told the Utah news outlet KSL 5 News. 

[ click to continue reading at artnet ]

from Vulture

Our ‘Lost’ Weekend With Van Halen

A couple college dudes won an MTV contest to tour with Van Halen. Then all hell broke loose.

By Chris Lee

On an overcast morning in the spring of 1984, Kurt Jefferis and Tom Winnick, a couple of college-age bros of no particular renown, departed the world of normalcy in a stretch limousine to embark on a rock-and-roll fantasy. Their destination: Detroit. More accurately: oblivion. Jefferis, a 20-year-old department-store stock clerk, had bested more than a million other competitors to win the MTV contest “Lost Weekend With Van Halen.” He and his plus-one, Winnick, a childhood buddy, would in a matter of hours find themselves backstage with the legendarily hard-partying Atomic Punks on a two-day bender that ticked every box of rock debauchery synonymous with the Big Hair era. “You’ll have no idea where you are,” Van Halen’s vainglorious front man, David Lee Roth, said in a promo for the contest. “You’ll have no idea where you’re going and probably no memory of it after you go.”

That turned out to be partially true. As Jefferis and Winnick tell it now, nearly 40 years later, in the weeks following Hall of Fame guitar virtuoso Eddie Van Halen’s death, certain elements from the Weekend remain fixed points in their lives — the private jets, the Champagne and lobster, the cocaine, the onstage chugs of Jack Daniel’s, a woman named Tammy — while other details have been lost to the fog of time. The contest becamesomething of Van Halen folklore in the intervening years; it was the subject of a short film, Lost Weekend, which screened in competition at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, as well as a dedicated chapter (subtitled “MTV and Van Halen Team Up to Nearly Kill a Super-Fan”) in the 2011 book I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution. The events surrounding the contest unfolded just as Van Halen was first ascending the heights of multiplatinum superstardom but only months before Roth would quit the quartet for a solo career. What took place in front of MTV’s cameras served as a primitive precursor to reality television: loosely scripted situational intrigue that wound up far beyond anyone’s control.

[ click to continue reading at Vulture ]