F†ck yeah, you fargin’ iceholes!

from The Independent

People who are really good at swearing have an important advantage

by Ashley Cowburn

Can swearing be good for you?

Those who are liberal in their use of swear words are not the lazy and uneducated individuals they are often made out to be, a new study claims.

In fact, a well-stocked vocabulary of swear words is actually a healthy indicator of other verbal abilities.

Writing in the Language Sciences journal, US-based psychologists Kristin Jay and Timothy Jay, dismiss the long-held belief that swearing is a sign of inarticulateness.

Working with the “poverty of vocabulary” concept (the assumption that people swear because they lack the intellectual capacity to find another way to express themselves) their experiment aimed to find out whether those more fluent in the art of swearing are less fluent in other forms of vocabulary.

[ click to continue f†king reading at The Independent ]

The Da Vinci Dupe

from The Daily Mail

Is there a SECOND Mona Lisa? Experts examine claims a version of the da Vinci masterpiece is held in a private Russian collection

By ISABEL HUNTER FOR MAILONLINE

Andrew Graham-Dixon presented a BBC2 documentary exploring the secrets behind the famous smileTechnology: Optical and forensic tools are being used to peel back the truth behind one the world’s most famous paintings

Art experts are examining a painting held in a private collection in St Petersburg they believe might be a second version of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

And leading Mona Lisa scholars say the similarities in colours, which are being examined using infra-red technology, hold the key to determining if the Russian painting is in fact another da Vinci.

‘There are many indicators pointing to the Tuscan artistic genius,’ research coordinator Silvano Vinceti told ANSA.

‘But of course it’s only a hypothesis.’

There are numerous theories that da Vinci painted more than one version and there are conflicting dates about when the painting was commissioned and finished.

[ click to continue reading at The Daily Mail ]

Joplin’s Porsche

from The New York Daily News

Janis Joplin’s Porsche 356 sells for record $1.76 million at New York auction

BY 

Pulling in $1.76 million at the "Driven by Disruption" sale, the Porsche thoroughly surpassed predictions but was dwarfed by a 1972 Lamborghini Miura which sold for $2.42 million.SOTHEBY’S

Pulling in $1.76 million at the “Driven by Disruption” sale, the Porsche thoroughly surpassed predictions but was dwarfed by a 1972 Lamborghini Miura which sold for $2.42 million.

At the RM Sotheby’s “Driven By Disruption” auction in Manhattan, a 1964 Porsche 356 C 1600 SC Cabriolet that was owned and customized by Janis Joplin sold for $1.76 million. As previously reported, the coupe was estimated to sell for roughly $500,000 but with seven bidders competing far surpassed those expectations.

The staggering sale price sets a benchmark as the highest price ever paid for a Porsche 356 at public auction. Pearl, as Joplin was often called, bought the German auto at a used car lot in 1968.

[ click to continue reading at NYDailyNews.com ]

Cult Easton Ellis

from The New York Times

Bret Easton Ellis on Living in the Cult of Likability

By 

BRET EASTON ELLIS by Jeff Burton

This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead.

Turning Point: Uber becomes one of the world’s most valuable start-ups.

On a recent episode of the television series “South Park,” the character Cartman and other townspeople who are enthralled with Yelp, the app that lets customers rate and review restaurants, remind maître d’s and waiters that they will be posting reviews of their meals. These “Yelpers” threaten to give the eateries only one star out of five if they don’t please them and do exactly as they say. The restaurants feel that they have no choice but to comply with the Yelpers, who take advantage of their power by asking for free dishes and making suggestions on improving the lighting. The restaurant employees tolerate all this with increasing frustration and anger — at one point Yelp reviewers are even compared to the Islamic State group — before both parties finally arrive at a truce. Yet unknown to the Yelpers, the restaurants decide to get their revenge by contaminating the Yelpers’ plates with every bodily fluid imaginable.

The point of the episode is that today everyone thinks that they’re a professional critic (“Everyone relies on my Yelp reviews!”), even if they have no idea what they’re talking about. But it’s also a bleak commentary on what has become known as the “reputation economy.” In depicting the restaurants’ getting their revenge on the Yelpers, the episode touches on the fact that services today are also rating us, which raises a question: How will we deal with the way we present ourselves online and in social media, and how do individuals brand themselves in what is a widening corporate culture?

The idea that everybody thinks they’re specialists with voices that deserve to be heard has actually made everyone’s voice less meaningful. All we’re doing is setting ourselves up to be sold to — to be branded, targeted and data-mined. But this is the logical endgame of the democratization of culture and the dreaded cult of inclusivity, which insists that all of us must exist under the same umbrella of corporate regulation — a mandate that dictates how we should express ourselves and behave.

Most people of a certain age probably noticed this when they joined their first corporation, Facebook, which has its own rules regarding expressions of opinion and sexuality. Facebook encouraged users to “like” things, and because it was a platform where many people branded themselves on the social Web for the first time, the impulse was to follow the Facebook dictum and present an idealized portrait of their lives — a nicer, friendlier, duller self. And it was this burgeoning of the likability cult and the dreaded notion of “relatability” that ultimately reduced everyone to a kind of neutered clockwork orange, enslaved to the corporate status quo. To be accepted we have to follow an upbeat morality code where everything must be liked and everybody’s voice respected, and any person who has a negative opinion — a dislike — will be shut out of the conversation. Anyone who resists such groupthink is ruthlessly shamed. Absurd doses of invective are hurled at the supposed troll to the point that the original “offense” often seems negligible by comparison.

[ click to continue reading at The New York Times ]

AMERICAN GOTHIC Catches Ketch & Chitin

from The Slanted

Justin Chatwin and Megan Ketch join American Gothic Cast

by Sarah Fox

American Gothic cast

CBS confirmed today that Justin Chatwin and Megan Ketch have both signed onto the cast of AMERICAN GOTHIC, a new one-hour murder mystery series from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and CBS Television Studios. The new series is set to hit the network in summer 2016.

Currently, Chatwin is shooting the feature film “CHIPs.” Prior to that, he completed the independent films “The Scent of Rain & Lightning” and the comedy “Unleashed.” Chatwin’s television credits include roles in “Shameless” and “Orphan Black,” as well as guest appearances on numerous series, including “Weeds” and “Lost.”

Ketch is best known to television audiences for her recurring roles in the series “Under the Dome,” THE GOOD WIFE and BLUE BLOODS, on the Network, and “Jane the Virgin.” In 2014, she appeared in the feature film “The Big Wedding.”

AMERICAN GOTHIC is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Amblin Television. Corinne Brinkerhoff (THE GOOD WIFE, “Jane the Virgin”), Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank (“The Americans,” “Under the Dome,” “Extant”), James Frey and Todd Cohen serve as executive producers. The series will be distributed domestically by CBS Television Distribution and worldwide by CBS Studios International.

[ click to read full article at The Slanted ]

The Last Defender

from The New York Daily News

Last-ever Land Rover Defender rolls of the production line in the U.K.

BY 

The Defender is credited as the first true SUV, starting all the way back in 1948 with the Series I Land Rover.The Defender is credited as the first true SUV, starting all the way back in 1948 with the Series I Land Rover.

America may have the Wrangler, but the rest of the world knows the Land Rover Defender as the original SUV.

After 67 years since the introduction of the 1948 Land Rover Series I, one of the world’s most iconic vehicles is finally closing the curtains. With the Defender 2,000,000, Land Rover is saying goodbye to what many credit as the world’s first true SUV, and one of their most ubiquitous vehicles in the U.K.

Driven and owned by everyone from 007 and Steve McQueen to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Sir Winston Churchill, almost every influential British figure of the last half century and more have experience with the iconic ‘ute. The final Defender, hand-built with help from brand ambassadors like Bear Grylls and members of the British Red Cross, will be auctioned off by Bonhams, and all proceeds will go to Land Rover’s charitable partners like the Red Cross and Born Free Foundation.

[ click to continue reading at NYDN ]

Man’s Earliest Architecture Plans

from The Independent

Prehistoric rock carvings ‘were humanity’s earliest architectural plans’

Researchers say 14,000-year-old carvings by ‘Paleolithic Picasso’ depict a campsite built by early hunter-gatherers

by Cahal Milmo | Chief Reporter | @cahalmilmo

A digital reconstruction of the Moli del Salt campsite built by hunter-gatherersA reconstruction of the Moli del Salt campsite built by hunter-gatherers

On a Spanish river bank 14,000 years ago, someone carved seven semi-circular shapes on a rock. Whether the artist realised the significance of the work is unknown – but, according to archaeologists, the resulting doodle could well be humanity’s first architectural drawing.

Researchers have put forward evidence that the granite slab discovered on a prehistoric site near Barcelona carries a depiction of a campsite built by early hunter-gatherers as they roamed the Iberian peninsula in search of prey.

If the picture is of semi-circular huts, it is likely to have been the work of a Paleolithic rule-breaker who shook up the artistic orthodoxy of the day in much the same way as that other, much later Spanish iconoclast, Pablo Picasso.

[ click to continue reading at The Independent ]

Lexi & The Sig Alph’s

from LittleThings

Frat Brothers Brighten Hospital Room For Brave Little Girl

by Barbara Diamond

Twelve-year-old Lexi Brown has cancer, and she recently spent some time at the Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA in California. Her hospital room faced one of the massive frat houses on UCLA’s fraternity row. To pass the time and have a little fun, Lexi and her mom put a sign in the window asking for a pizza delivery, not thinking it would lead to something so incredible.

The members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house heard about the sign, so they walked across the street. Not only did they bring pizza, but they also brought a bouquet of roses, and a guitar. Here was a bunch of 20-something frat guys, taking time out of their day to play music for a sick little girl. Lexi’s mom, Lisa, was touched to tears.

The surprises didn’t end there. Lexi struck up a friendship with the SAE fraternity. The guys arranged for all sorts of exciting visits for Lexi, from the UCLA football team to women’s tennis players. But Lexi’s newfound popularity didn’t stop the frat brothers from continuing to show up at her hospital bed — to play cards, to bring her a stuffed animal, or to simply sit and talk.

But one night came the clincher. Lexi and her parents peeked out the hospital window and made a stunning discovery.

Wait until you see what the SAE brothers did to their fraternity house directly across the street…

[ click to continue reading at LittleThings.com ]

To the Moon, Alexi!

from Yahoo! News

Russia Is Planning To Build A Permanent Manned Base On The Moon

by Rob Waugh

GettyGetty

Russia’s space agency is planning to build a manned moon base – launching modules into space on six separate rockets.

Russia plans to launch a lunar probe in 2024 which will scout possible locations – before landing a man on the moon in 2030.

Construction of the Luna 25 lander has already begun, the official state news agency Tass has reported.

Once the components are in place, assembly of the moon base will continue over ten years.

Moscow has previously said that it envisages the base being permanent.

Last year, deputy premier Dmitry Rogozin said: ‘We are coming to the moon forever.’

[ click to continue reading at Yahoo! News UK ]

Trujillo On Jaco

from PASTE

Robert Trujillo on Punk-Jazz Bassist Jaco Pastorius

By Bill Milkowski

It was six years ago that Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo began the long journey that has finally come to fruition with the recent release of JACO, his acclaimed documentary on the life and times of the hugely influential electric bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius, who redefined his instrument in the 1970s with the premier fusion band Weather Report. Along the way Trujillo, who has been a member of Metallica since 2003, navigated countless roadblocks while investing his own money into this project which was clearly a labor of love for him. “Jaco was my hero growing up,” he explained. “Hearing him for the first time was like hearing Eddie Van Halen doing ‘Eruption’ for the first time: You thought, ‘What instrument is that?’ I loved jazz fusion and branched out from there. But Jaco had an edge that far exceeded his jazz persona. He was funk, he was rock, he was soul. And his whole attitude was punk.”

Fittingly, Pastorius titled one of his ‘70s opuses “Punk Jazz” (from Weather Report’s 1978 album, Mr. Gone). But it was more than just the mind-blowing sound of Jaco’s ground-breaking approach to the bass that appealed to a young Trujillo and his crew of self-described ‘skateboard rats’ who caught Weather Report in concert at the Santa Monica Civic Center in 1979. As he explains, “Here was Jaco on stage with his shirt off, long hair, a headband. So in many ways he was just like me and my wild surfing and skateboarding friends from Venice Beach. He was punk! And to see this guy performing live, sliding around with the baby powder sprinkled on stage, sliding into his bass on stage like he was sliding into home plate in a baseball game, leaping off his Acoustic 360 amp. I had just never seen that kind of energy and passion before, and that stuck with me.”

[ click to continue reading at PASTE ]

Bloody Gutsy Oscar

from The Hollywood Reporter

‘The Revenant’ and ‘The Hateful Eight’: How Much Blood and Guts Will Oscar Voters Endure?

by Stephen Galloway

Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

Leonardo DiCaprio’s epic (featuring a brutal, gory assault by a bear) and Quentin Tarantino’s latest are set to test audience’s appetites for filmmaking as violent as it is visionary.

A frontiersman is impaled through the head by an arrow. A bear rips the flesh off Leonardo DiCaprio’s back. And then DiCaprio dives off a cliff on a horse, eviscerates the dead beast and scoops out the guts so that he can take shelter in its carcass.

Think these scenes from Alejandro G. Inarritu’s The Revenant (about a 19th century frontiersman who endures appalling conditions as he tracks down the fellow who has betrayed him) might be a bit much for the faint of heart? The Fox and Regency film isn’t alone in stretching voters’ appetite for gore. In Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, a bullet blasts a man’s head to pieces, while a woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) gets slapped around so much that it isn’t quite clear if all her teeth remain.

These two major movies will attempt to out-do each other in the brutality stakes this awards season — and just how willing Oscar voters are to tolerate their extremes may go a long way toward determining whether they emerge as frontrunners in this year’s extraordinarily heated competition.

[ click to continue reading at THR ]

“Decorated with two eyes, which are surrounded by cloud-and-thunder patterns”

from artnet

Mysterious Ancient Board Game Discovered in 2,300-Year-Old Tomb in China

The 14-face die found in the 2,300-year-old Chinese tomb.<br>Photo: Chinese Cultural Relics via Live Science.A group of archaeologists in China have unearthed pieces from a mysterious ancient board game that was last played around 1,500 years ago.

A 14-face die made of animal tooth, 21 rectangular game pieces with numbers painted on them, and a broken tile from a board game were found in a 2,300-year-old tomb in Qingzhou City, according to Live Science.

Other recent archaeological discoveries include a cave full of game pieces that has been dubbed North America’s first casino, and an ancient tablet that has been compared to an iPad.

When reconstructed, the tile turned out to be “decorated with two eyes, which are surrounded by cloud-and-thunder patterns,” a report published in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics claimed. The die comprises the numbers 1 through 6, each appearing twice on 12 of the faces in a form of ancient Chinese writing known as “seal script.” Two of the faces were left blank.

[ click to continue reading at artnet ]

Five extra-galactic unidentified radio signals…

from The Sunday Express

Did scientists just pick up the first intelligent radio waves from a distant ALIEN planet?

By JON AUSTIN

Parkes Telescope alien contact radio signalCSIRO / The Parkes Observatory in Australia picked up the signals

The “fast radio bursts” included one “double signal” never heard before and have left astronomers buzzing with excitement over the possibility of it being a message with alien origins.

Only 11 of the unidentified transient radio pulses have been recorded before around the world.

And it is the curious new double blast – which was accompanied by four “singles” – which has baffled astronomers analysing data from the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia.

Emily Petroff from Swinburne University, in Melbourne, one of the team who discovered the signals, believes the origin could be more remarkable than anything recorded before.

She tweeted: “We have no idea what’s going on, but we know it’s definitely something cool.”

[ click to continue reading at The Sunday Express ]

All-female Fight Club in Berlin

from The Daily Mail

Inside the all-FEMALE fight club: The secret Berlin group where women go topless to take part in no-holds-barred bouts that leave them bruised and bleeding

By PHOEBE JACKSON-EDWARDS

The women often fight topless, like male fighters would usually, with one combatant showing off bruises and marks from being raked by her opponents' fingersThe women often fight topless, like male fighters would usually, with one combatant showing off bruises and marks from being raked by her opponents’ fingers

There are no rules in the all-female fight club, just grit and determination as women of all sizes and shapes pit themselves against each other in the ring.

Photographer Katarzyna Mazur has captured the East Berlin-based club in a series of no-holds barred portraits of the women, often battered and bruised, taking each other on in fighting gear or topless.

The private club has no official guidelines and does not have one particular fighting style and shows women – who are practising their sport unpaid, for the sheer challenge of combat – throwing off the preconceived notions about their gender to compete as equals.

The club was started in 2010 by female fighters Anna Konda and Red Devil, from Russia, as a place for women to come and fight.

Anna was very slim when she was younger, but is now much ‘bigger’ she told Vice UK but she said she could not keep her trim figure forever.

She said about her wrestling: ‘I don’t enjoy the pain of others. I enjoy my own power and having control.

‘I guess sometimes this can amount to the same thing for my prey.

[ click to continue reading at The Daily Mail ]

Tripcoding Goes Mainstream

from The Telegraph

Silicon Valley professionals are taking LSD at work to increase productivity

An increasing number of twenty-somethings are reportedly ‘micro-dosing’ on psychedelic drugs – and they say it’s making them better workers

By 

LSD tabsLSD has been described as ‘a healthy alternative to Adderall’ Photo: Alamy

It seems unlikely, but that’s apparently what some Silicon Valley professionals have been doing – and reporting great results.

According to Rolling Stone, a growing number of people are experimenting with “microdoses” of psychedelics to help them work.

A microdose of LSD is around 10-15 micrograms, approximately a tenth of a “normal” dose.

At that dosage, Rolling Stone describes the drug’s effects as “subperceptual”: ” ‘Enough, says Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, ‘to feel a little bit of energy lift, a little bit of insight, but not so much that you are tripping.’”

[ click to continue reading at The Telegraph ]

Anon Takes Point

from The New York Times

Anonymous Hackers Fight ISIS but Reactions Are Mixed

By 

Reuters

People from various hacking collectives have tried for several months to block social media accounts that spread propaganda and attempt to recruit fighters for the Islamic State, but those campaigns gained a new energy on Twitter after the Paris attacks.

Hashtags like #OpParis and #OpISIS have allowed the public to see the inner workings of those efforts, which seem to get results. The best-known group involved, the shadowy collective Anonymous, has claimed to have helped take down as many as 20,000 Twitter accounts since the attacks.

On Twitter and on the website PastebinAnonymous has issued a rallying cry.

The group also has an extensive how-to list for anyone interested in taking ISIS offline. Those tactics include posting the names of thousands of questionable accounts and deploying a tool that searches certain keywords on social media and uses a bot to report inappropriate behavior to Twitter.

[ click to read full article at NYTimes.com ]

Paris aime toujours Hemingway

from FRANCE 24

Sales of Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast’ surge after Paris attacks

by Rachel HOLMAN

© Patrick Kovarik, AFP

In the wake of the November 13 Paris attacks, Ernest Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast” has become a symbol of life in the French capital, climbing to the top of bestseller lists as it flies off the shelves of bookstores across France.

Published posthumously in 1964, “A Moveable Feast” is a memoir of Hemingway’s experiences living in Paris during the 1920s.

In the shocked aftermath of the November 13 attacks, which killed 130 people, copies of the book have been placed among the flowers and candles at makeshift memorials across the city.

The book’s sudden revival has been partly attributed to a woman known as “Grandma” Danielle, who evoked the tome during an interview with France’s BFM TV at a memorial outside of the Bataclan concert hall days after the attacks.

“It’s very important to bring flowers to our dead, it’s very important to read Hemingway’s book ‘A Moveable Feast’ over and over again,” said the woman who was only identified by her first name. “We are an ancient civilisation and we will uphold our values. We will fraternise with the 5 million Muslims who practise their religion freely and peacefully and we will fight against the 10,000 barbarians who kill, in the so-called name of Allah.”

Since then, “A Moveable Feast” (translated to “Paris est une fête”) has surged to the top of French retailer FNAC and Amazon France’s bestseller lists.

[ click to continue reading at FRANCE 24 ]

Final Chapter of Pepsi Challenge: World-record 121 cars dancing in UAE desert for ‘Black Knight Decoded’

from Emirates 24|7 News

121 cars dancing in UAE desert: ‘Black Knight Decoded’ for world record

Final chapter of Pepsi Challenge brings UAE into picture

In the newest chapter of the Pepsi Challenge, Pepsi has released Black Knight Decoded, an epic short film by Pepsi in collaboration with Levity Entertainment Group (LEG) and UrtheCast, the ultra High-Definition video system located aboard the International Space Station, incorporating the world’s largest synchronised car dance, shot in the UAE desert from space.

The short film, which fuses scenes shot from space from 11 countries around the world, includes footage of 121 cars dancing in the UAE’s desert before forming a peace sign, which measures over 80 meters in diameter. The activation, which broke the Guinness World Record for the largest synchronized car dance in the world, was overseen by the renowned UK-based graffiti artist, INSA.

Set to an original track, ‘Miracles’, from Usher, the action-packed adventure film has a star-studded cast and a host of creative talent including Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo, SAG Award winner Freida Pinto, Emmy Award winning director Jabbar Raisani, bestselling author James Frey.

Black Knight Decoded tells a powerful story about a father (Oyelowo), his daughter (Layla Crawford) and co-conspirator (Pinto) on their quest to decode radio signals transmitted from the Black Knight satellite where they rely on support from communities around the world to come together to communicate universal messages of hope, unity and peace.

[ click to read complete article at Emirates 24|7 News ]

Pepsi Empire

from Bloomberg

How Pepsi Got Its Very Own Empire Story Arc

An exclusive look at the brand’s latest product placement.

by 

Photographer: Andrew Hetherington for Bloomberg Businessweek

The biggest guest star to appear on the second season of Fox’s hit hip-hop drama, Empire, isn’t an actor, a musician, or even a politician doing a cameo. It’s a cola.

Nov. 18 marked the beginning of a three-episode storyline for Pepsi, the brand and the beverage. In the first episode, Jamal Lyon, middle son of fictional entertainment mogul Lucious Lyon, is trying to shore up his status as a full-blown pop star and takes a meeting with Pepsi executives to discuss becoming the face of the brand; he generates a fresh new track (created in real life by producer Swizz Beatz) to impress the team; Pepsi loves it. In the second episode, Jamal films his Pepsi commercial, which is directed by Lee Daniels, the Oscar-nominee behind PreciousThe Butler, and—oh, yeah—Empire.

The narrative culminates with the debut of Jamal’s Pepsi commercial on Dec. 2, right before Empire goes on a three-month hiatus. On the show, the spot will air at a press conference; when the ad is shown to the assembled characters, Fox will go to commercial—and show the same ad in reality. “You have a real brand anointing a fictional artist in a commercial directed by the creator of the series appearing as himself,” says Steven Melnick, a senior vice president for 20th Century Fox Television, the studio that makes Empire. “It’s very meta.”

[ click to continue reading at Bloomberg ]

David Oyelowo, Freida Pinto, Jabbar Raisani, James Frey, Usher: BLACK KNIGHT DECODED

from TASS

Oyelowo, Pinto, Raisani, Frey And Usher Come Together For New Short Film

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/. Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo, SAG Award winner Freida Pinto, Emmy Award winning director Jabbar Raisani, bestselling author James Frey, Grammy Award winning entertainer Usher and a host of creative talent have come together to create Black Knight Decoded, an action-packed, first-of-its-kind short film produced by Levity Entertainment Group (LEG) and Pepsi. The film features footage shot from space utilizing UrtheCast‘s ultra High-Definition video system located aboard the International Space Station. Black Knight Decoded will be available November 17, 2015 on YouTube.com/Pepsi.

Black Knight Decoded imagines a rich fictional narrative around what some people believe is a very real entity, the Black Knight satellite. The film, which features an original track, “Miracles,” from Usher, tells a powerful story of a father (Oyelowo), his daughter (Layla Crawford) and co-conspirator (Pinto) on their quest to decode radio signals transmitted from the Black Knight satellite. As they struggle to respond before the government shuts down their mission, the group rely on support from communities around the world to come together to communicate universal messages of hope, unity and peace. Those communities across Australia, China, the Czech Republic, India, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Russia, United Arab Emirates, the United States and Vietnam were filmed from cameras on the ground as well as UrtheCast’s cameras aboard the International Space Station.

Black Knight Decoded is an ambitious project that marries an all-star cast, innovative use of the UrtheCast technology and unprecedented consumer participation,” said Kristin Patrick, senior vice president of Global Brand Development, PepsiCo Global Beverage Group. “The result is an inspiring, one-of-a-kind film that was truly co-created with top notch creative film talent and consumers from around the world.”

View Black Knight Decoded and learn more at YouTube.com/Pepsi and follow along on social media using #BlackKnightDecoded.

[ click to continue reading at TASS.ru ]

“Vive la musique, vive la liberté, vive la France, and vive EODM”

from SPIN

Eagles of Death Metal Share Statement Following Paris Terror Attacks

“Vive la musique, vive la liberté, vive la France, and vive EODM”

by James Grebey

Four days after armed terrorists opened fire in a crowded concert venue during their Paris concert, Eagles of Death Metal have shared a statement about the tragic events of last Friday night.

“While the band is now home safe, we are horrified and still trying to come to terms with what happened in France,” they wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. “Our thoughts are first and foremost with our brother, Nick Alexander, our record company comrades Thomas AyadMarie Mosser, and Manu Perez, and all the friends and fan’s whose lives were taken in Paris, as well as their friends, families, and loved ones.”

[ click to continue reading at SPIN ]

This Dude Cooked and Ate the Genitals of the Man Who Raped His Deflowered Bride

from The New York Post

Groom discovers bride isn’t a virgin, eats genitals of her rapist

By Associated Press

Groom discovers bride isn't a virgin, eats genitals of her rapistMurder suspects Rudi Efendi (left) and his wife, Nuriah Photo: Getty Images

LAMPUNG, Indonesia — Two Indonesian newlyweds have been arrested on accusations they plotted to kill a man the woman said had raped her a week before her marriage, and police said Tuesday the couple ate the victim’s genitals after the man was killed.

Sulistyaningsih, who uses one name, said police found the victim’s body in a burnt minivan Oct. 4.

The couple had married in September and the husband found on the wedding night that his wife was no longer a virgin. She then said she had been raped one week before the marriage.

Police said Effendi, 30, asked his 20-year-old wife to arrange a meeting with the man she accused of raping her. Effendi stabbed the man to death and cut off his genitals before setting ablaze the car.

Effendi said he fried the severed genitals and ate them to cure his heartache over the rape.

[ click to read complete article at NYPost.com ]

Floyd Mayweather Defends (read, “Has secret crush on…”) Ronda Rousey Against The Trolls

from E!

Floyd Mayweather Defends Ronda Rousey From Backlash After Surprising UFC Loss: “Everything Happens for a Reason”

by SAMANTHA SCHNURR

Ronda Rousey, Floyd Mayweather, ESPY AwardsRex/REX USA; Getty Images

From one former champion to another, Floyd Mayweather has a few supportive words for Ronda Rousey

After suffering the first loss of her career during an Ultimate Fighting Championship match against Holly Holm on Nov. 15, the 28-year-old Olympic medalist faced immediate backlash from all angles and became the focus of Internet shame because of the shocking upset.

When rapper 50 Cent posted an unflattering photoshopped Instagram picture of Rousey knocked out in the arms of iconic boxing character Rocky Balboa, he generated speculation that Mayweather also wanted to poke fun at Rousey’s loss by claiming the athlete asked him to post it.

“LMAO FLOYD TOLD ME TO POST THIS, he want me to do the dirty work,” the rapper wrote of the photograph.

However, Mayweather, who also faced off in a similar “fight of the century” this year, put an end to the gossip when he spoke out publicly Monday.

“That’s not true at all. I haven’t really spoke to anyone about the Ronda Rousey situation, just to set the record straight,” he told Fight Hype. “I don’t have anything against MMA fighters. It’s just like boxing; you win some, you lose some. A true champion can take a loss and bounce back.”

[ click to continue reading at E! ]

Apocalypse Wagner

from Nautilus

How I Tried to Transplant the Musical Heart of Apocalypse Now

Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch describes the surprising idiosyncrasies of film scoring.

BY WALTER MURCH

In 1979, sometime during the barely controlled chaos of the last months of finishing Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, someone in legal affairs had the presence of mind to ask if we had secured the rights to use the 1965 Georg Solti recording of the “Ride of the Valkyries,” the music which accompanied Colonel Kilgore’s attack on the Vietnamese village of Vin Drin Dop, otherwise known as Charlie’s Point.

The idea of blasting music from Wagner’s opera Die Walküre as a form of PsyWarOp (Psychological Warfare Operations) to terrify the Vietnamese had originated deep in the neuronal labyrinth of John Milius’s mind in 1969, when he was writing the original screenplay for Apocalypse Now.

“That Valkyrie scene came from a vision I had of the exhilaration of war—right alongside the terror and the horror and the fear of being snuffed out. The glory of it!” John told Lawrence Weschler in a 2005 Harper’s article. “Nowadays—unlike during the Victorian era when the glory was all that got discussed—nowadays it’s the horror that always gets talked about. And either one by itself, of course, is a ridiculous half-statement.”

The “Ride of the Valkyries” was so deeply associated with the attack on Charlie’s Point, and had been for so long—from birth, so to speak—that we who were working on the film, editing the picture and mixing the sound, could barely conceive of separating the two. How that particular Solti recording came to be chosen, I never found out—the decision predated my joining the film—but there is a general consensus in musical circles that Solti’s interpretation, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, has never been surpassed.

So it came as an existential shock when Decca, the record company in question, said firmly: No.

There was so little time left that we were constrained to move forward along three fronts, hoping that at least one would pay off: 1) to continue to petition Decca; 2) to make arrangements to record the “Valkyries” with the San Francisco Symphony, trying to duplicate Solti’s dynamics and meter; and 3) to comb through all the existing recordings with the hope of finding one that was close to Solti’s interpretation and available to use in the film.

The last of these approaches fell to me, since I was responsible for the sound design of the film as a whole, as well as being, at that time, the picture editor for this section of the film.

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