When social media educator Sean Smith started a Facebook page dedicated to criticizing vigilante pedophile hunting in Canada, he knew he was making himself a target.
But Smith, who lives on Vancouver Island and runs the Facebook page The Truth About Creep Catchers, told VICE he didn't realize how extreme the Creep Catchers' backlash would be. In December 2016, Ryan Laforge, president of Surrey Creep Catchers, shared a Facebook live video in which Smith outlined his concerns about the vigilante movement.
"I can't even take this goof seriously," Laforge wrote. "Anyways let this pedo run his mouth it helps us anyone that follows or supports this guy is a creep so we know who to watch out for."
"The suggestion was right there, that I'm a pedophile," said Smith, alleging that Laforge also posted memes of him on Facebook that said "I love the smell.... of kids in the morning."
Smith's suit, dated March 16, accuses Laforge and 20 of his followers (listed as John and Jane Does) of calling Smith a pedophile, threatening to "blast" him, and of posting a photo of Smith's mother.
VICE has reached out to Laforge via Facebook. The messages have been read, but he has not responded.
However, Laforge told CKNW, "I never once called him a pedophile. I said he looks like one." As for the lawsuit itself, he said, "bring it on." He has 21 days to file an official response.
On Facebook, under the alias Dustin Ramdharee, Laforge wrote "Sean smith is now sueing me :)... Thought you had a crush on me !??! I'm suing Sean smith for harassment fuck it," including the hashtags "#fuckseansmith" and "#fuckyousueme."
But last night he wrote a post advising his followers not to engage in trolling. "Let's not stoop to their level."
Smith is seeking financial damages, a court order preventing future defamatory posts, and an injunction ordering Laforge to publicly declare Smith's innocence.
Smith, who frequently consults with parents, teachers, and kids on how to use social media, and is also an air cadets instructor, told VICE being labelled a "pedophile" has serious implications for his livelihood.
"If you're a parent and happen to see this post come out and hear that I'm coming to your school to teach your kids, what's your reaction going to be?" he said.
Smith believes the lawsuits have already had a cooling effect on creep catching.
"There has been a really big slowdown in BC, almost full stop," he said. "We're starting to see false accounts disappear, comments disappear."
But Surrey Creep Catchers still have more than 16,000 followers online.
Smith explained that, in part, he hopes his lawsuit inspires others who've been falsely accused by Creep Catchers to come forward.
Researchers from ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and the National University of Singapore built an algorithm that culls patterns from social media posts to divine whether a user is married or single. It has a success rate of 86 percent. It also identified Trump as single. Yet we all know Trump is married, courtesy of memes of a sad-looking woman trailing after him at events.
People have latched onto the error. The algorithm is cool, but most of the reason it's getting this much attention is the Trump thing, which isn't really its larger point; Trump isn't mentioned in the paper the researchers published. Plus, its 86-percent success rate is partly a result of its combined use of Twitter, Instagram, and Foursquare simultaneously, and the Trump-specific analysis used Twitter alone (though that still included multimedia).
These days, there are a whole lot of ways to be dead.
You can be planted as a tree, or turned into jewelry. You can have your likeness cast as one of these incredibly creepy 3D busts. If you created something people actually give a shit about, you could choose to be made into your own product, like Frisbee creator Walter Morrison or Fred Bauer, inventor of the Pringles can. You can be put into a helium balloon and sent into the atmosphere. You can even be shot into space, FFS.
Driven by factors like cost, religious affiliation, and desire for personalization, more and more people are moving away from traditional burial and toward cremation (in North America, cremation rates have doubled since 2000, and by 2019, 75 percent of Canadians are expected to make use of the option), and as a result, the range of post-cremation options has become broader than it's ever been before.
But don't take our word for it. Collected below are stories from people who have chosen to say goodbye in a multitude of interesting ways, having their ashes placed in everything from teddy bears to shotgun shells, to what sounds like the world's least appetizing cup of tea.
Because while there's no debating it's an interesting time to be alive, it's actually a pretty interesting time to be dead, too.
'I just wanted to get rid of the thing'
My grandmother passed away when I was around 14 or 15, and she'd made her own arrangements beforehand. She wanted to be cremated, and she'd chosen an urn, but when my family received it, it looked like this hideous, marble toaster. And we thought: "Oh, God. What do we do with this?"
We respected our Grandmother and loved her, but she was a very difficult woman. We weren't going to put it up on the mantelpiece or something. We sprinkled her ashes on the rose bushes in the back garden (those bushes promptly died the following spring), and then this ugly urn that none of us liked got put in the garage. And then Christmastime rolled around, and I had to go to this party where you play that stupid game where you can steal people's gifts for a few rounds. And then you get stuck with whatever at the end. Money was always tight when I was a teenager, and having a morbid sense of humour, I thought: "Oh, dude. I'll totally bring this."
People spent the entire evening trying to figure out what it was. "Oh, maybe it's a doorstop." And I didn't say a word. I knew no one was going to touch it if they knew the truth. But I just wanted to get rid of the thing. And of course, at the end, when somebody finally ended up with it, then I told them what it was, and they were—justifiably—totally appalled. And that's how we got rid of Grandma's urn.
— Sylvia, 29*
Photo via Flickr user 29647084@N06
Tea for two
When I was younger, my grandfather passed away, and in accordance with his wishes, we undertook a Buddhist ritual where we soaked his ashes in blessed water, and chanted prayers in Sanskrit. After soaking his ashes we all made a promise to be better humans and drank the tea. It tasted about how you would expect: musky and chalky, kind of like someone had put cigarette ashes in your water.
—Chanthy, 26
'She wasn't really an urn type of person'
My Mom passed away three months ago from ovarian cancer. I was six weeks pregnant when we found out, and three months later, she was gone. She wasn't really an urn type person—it wasn't her to be stuck in a stuffy, old thing like that—and I was searching on the internet, just to see what's out there, and I came across CamiBear [a site that puts the ashes into a personalized teddy bear], and I thought: "Oh, that's Mom all over." She'd always loved cute little things. Teddies and stuff like that. I'm 41, and my Mom still used to buy me teddies all the time—basically right up until she got sick. So it was just perfect.
He sits at the top of my bed right now (I don't know why, but I refer to him as a he), but when the baby gets here, I'll probably put him in the crib. She wanted a grandbaby so much. And so being able to keep the baby close to the teddy—it's huge. Sometimes you just need your Mum, and now you have a teddy to cuddle with when you need it.
—Gillian, 41
Shots fired
Last November, a bunch of us loaded a good friend's ashes into shotgun shells and shot them over the range at the local gun club. He had always been a very avid shooter, and on weekends, he participated in Cowboy Action Shooting [competitions involving rifles and handguns, where competitors dress in old-time cowboy attire]. He mentored a lot of shooters, too—probably for 30 or 40 years.
Photo via Flickr user formatc1
And when he passed away, we had a celebration of life at the Silverton Trap and Skeet Club, and there were about 30 of us there with shotguns. And somebody had loaded his ashes into the shotgun shells. We each got two shells, and stood in a line, and progressed from one end to the other, each of us firing a shot, and then when we get to the end, we went back the other way. We each fired two shells filled with his ashes, and that way, we were able to spread him over the range.
I'm not exactly sure whose idea it was, but I suspect he had something to do with it.
—Bob, 71
Road trip
I took my Mom's ashes from Vancouver to Quebec in a Louis Vuitton tote bag.
I'd learned a few years before that human cremains are considered a biohazard (we'd been stopped by security while transporting a friend's mother in her carry-on bag), and so rather than go through all the paperwork, I decided to rent a car and drive there. I packed the large red wooden box containing Mom's ashes into her bag, put the bag in the passenger seat, and off I went. In some ways, it was very cathartic. I picked up a friend of mine in Regina, and after a few days, he finally asked what was in the box I was hauling to and from the car each day (at this point she was riding in the back seat).
When I said "Oh, that's Mom," he looked pale. When I asked if he'd prefer I put her in the trunk, he looked even paler. "I don't think she'll mind either way," I told him. "She's travelling in Louis, and she seems happy." I put her into the trunk at the next rest stop. My friend and I parted ways in Toronto, and Mom and I continued on to Quebec. I think she was glad to get her seat back.
—Tara, 32
Lebowski'd
When I was a kid, a pretty standard ash-spreading ceremony went sideways when my grandmother poured my grandfather all over my brother.
She was emptying the ashes off the back of a boat, and my brother was helping her stand back there without falling in. It might have been that she lacked the motor skills to actually aim her pour, or it might have been that the boat turned into the wind which was now blowing directly back into the boat (likely it was both), but either way, my brother was covered from head to toe with a third of the ashes and was a uniform tone of beige. It was like that moment in The Big Lebowski. I'm sure I fabricated the memory of my brother coughing out a big cloud of grandpa, like in a cartoon or movie, but it amuses me nonetheless. The whole thing took an uncomfortably long time to unfold, and everybody on the boat except grandma was well aware of what was happening and we were all laughing and crying equally.
Afterward, I asked the boat captain if I could use the hose to wash the rest of grandpa off the deck. I guess it wasn't intentional, but all over a living person is still a pretty weird place to put a dead person.
The year 2010 seems a long time ago now, but it was then that Claude Sammut, a computer science and engineering professor in Australia, made the bold claim that 2050 would be the year that robot footballers would supercede the abilities of mere humans. It's safe to say that, since then, the fears over job automation that keep supermarket checkout workers lying awake at night have not done the same for Lionel Messi. Or, for that matter, Steve Sidwell. Aside from the slightly wacky nature of the claim, there's another problem – who would pay to watch robot footballers? It would be quite easy to develop a robot that could beat the world's best at snooker or darts, but who would be watching?
There is one sport, however, where that doesn't matter, because it would be difficult to detect whether the player was a human or a robot at all. It is a mind sport where the level of money involved is vast, and only peripherally linked to the amount of people watching. It is, of course, poker, and the start of the year saw one of the most significant developments in the game and artificial intelligence.
Everybody's heard of Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov, but chess is a game of complete knowledge, where everything is known and there are clear mathematical lines to follow. Poker is the complete opposite – a game of limited knowledge, bluffs, pattern recognition and psychology, where the mathematics and logic involved are there to be wilfully manipulated. It should have been considered a far more earth-shattering moment, then, when a poker AI, Libratus, soundly and comprehensively defeated a selection of the world's best players in a lengthy series of heads-up, one-on-one games.
As you may remember, social media went wild after photos of Ivanka Trump eyeing Justin Trudeau during a meeting at the White House surfaced. Now it seems that the first daughter and the objectively handsome Canadian prime minister are spending some more time together—she recently attended a Broadway musical in the country as Trudeau's special guest.
After getting word about the political pair's evening at the theater, VICELAND's Desus and Mero dissected their "budding" relationship, sharing commentary about what they believe went down between #Trumpdeau.
You can watch this week's episodes of Desus & Merofor free online now, and make sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.
Welcome back to Restaurant Confessionals , where we talk to the unheard voices of the restaurant industry from both the front- and back-of-house about what really goes on behind the scenes at your favourite establishments.
I'm a food artist and chef. I do food consultancy, food installations, and catering for parties—a lot of VIP and erotic parties. I love to play with food.
When I first moved to New York, I signed up on a website called Kitchensurfing, where people hire you to come cook in their homes. There was this one guy who was my first and only customer, and he was well known for throwing these big parties in the underground scene in Brooklyn. At first, he would just hire me to come over and cook at his own little personal parties at home. He didn't know that I was a famous chef back home—nobody at that time knew who I was—which is why I was so cheap at that time. Then he found out who I was and what I could do, so he started to invite me to do these huge parties, and I would cater the VIP room. In one of the VIP rooms I met another girl who throws burlesque parties, and she liked my work so she started to get me to do those parties. One thing led to another, and eventually I started catering a lot of what I'll call "erotic parties."
For most people, the things I have seen would be really crazy, but because I have so seen so many crazy things all around the world, I'm used to it: There are a lot of naked people flying, fire dancing, and a lot of sexuality.
I will say there was one thing I saw recently that blew my mind. I did a New Year's event at a spa, and there was this tantric massage workshop where there was a sex instructor and he instructed us—literally—how to do a tantric vagina massage. I'd been to Thailand and learned these things, so I thought, "What's going to be new?" But he was so detailed and instructive, by only touching this naked girl on the exterior, she was getting off for 45 straight minutes, so this for me was the craziest thing I have seen at a party I catered. I learned a lot about my body. I wish all of humanity had the chance to see this.
In the summer of 2015 Daniel Boria took to the sky—under his ass, a lawnchair, over his head, a bunch of weather balloons.
While in the air, the 27-year-old flew high over his hometown as the crowds revelled in the ongoing Calgary Stampede. Some errant wind blew him off course, at which point Boria left his lawnchair and hurtled towards the earth before pulling the cord on his parachute. He was arrested upon landing.
"Being in the air was incredible. I was looking up at the balloons and one would blow up and the whole chair would shake," Boria told VICE at the time. "I would look down and my feet were dangling off the side. It was the same view as you would see from your window when you're in a 747, but I was looking around, and I was just on a lawn chair above the clouds."
Boria had attempted the real-life variation on the computer-animated movie Up as a marketing stunt for his cleaning company. (Yes, you read that correctly.) At the time Boria said that they "wanted to be as loud as possible without having a big bloated advertising budget like the other companies that we're competing with."
Now though, it's time for Boria to pay the piper. This week, Boria was handed a $25,000 fine, after pleading guilty in December to dangerous operation of an aircraft. The fine, along with the $13,000 he told VICE he spent on balloons, means the stunt has cost him about $38,000 (there's no word on how much he paid for the Canadian Tire lawnchair).
The CBC reported that during the sentencing Judge Bruce Fraser called Boria's stunt "dumb and dangerous" and "unconscionably stupid" and said there was "no precedent" for a stunt like this. The man who now calls himself the "Balloonatic" had a little bit of a different take on the whole situation.
"Why climb the highest mountain?" he asked outside the courthouse. "Why 85 years ago fly the Atlantic? Why do the [Edmonton] Oilers play the [Calgary] Flames? I chose to fly a chair; not because it is easy but because it is hard. Because that goal served to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills."
According to the CBC, Boria pointed out the ridiculousness of being questioned for flying with balloons. He said that he has no regrets about the flight, adding that no one "charged the Wright Brothers."
However, while Boria was in the air he was a flight hazard. Six planes took off from the Calgary airport during the stunt. Boria will be fined $5,000 by the court and will pay $20,000 to a charity of his choice.
A Twitter user has been charged with allegedly sending a tweet containing an animated GIF to a reporter, which caused him to have a seizure.
On December 15 of last year, Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald (pictured above), who suffers from epilepsy, clicked on a tweet. By doing so, Eichenwald triggered a strobing image that read "You deserve a seizure for your post," which in turn triggered an immediate seizure in Eichenwald.
Now, as first reported by the New York Times, the FBI have arrested John Rayne Rivello, 29, and charged him in relation to Eichenwald's seizure. Rivello was arrested at his Maryland home, and has been charged with criminal cyberstalking with the intent to kill or cause bodily harm.
Rivello allegedly posted the image through a Twitter account by the name @jew_goldstein. The tweet was apparently sent to Eichenwald because of his staunch and vocal opposition of Donald Trump—Eichenwald was hit with it shortly after he had finished an appearance on Tucker Carlson Fox News show where he pulled out a massive binder with the title "Tucker Carlsons Falsehoods" and argued with the host.
After the seizure, Eichenwald's wife took over his Twitter account to say that the tweet caused the seizure and that police were contacted—both Eichenwald and his wife were roundly mocked for this post.
In a press release issued by the Department of Justice, it shows that further investigation of Rivello alleges that he had DM conversation with other users saying that "I hope this sends him into a seizure," "spammed this at him, let's see if he dies," and "I know he has epilepsy." The affidavit also showed that Rivello had researched epilepsy and had a screenshot of Eichenwald's Wikipedia page with his date of death edited to the day after he was triggered by the tweet.
If Rivello is found guilty of the charges he can face up to ten years in prison.
Bitcoin just can't catch a break. Last Friday, the virtual currency community's hopes were dashed when the Securities and Exchange Commission denied an application to approve a bitcoin investment fund. Bitcoin quickly recovered its value, but just a week later, it looks like another potential disaster is on the horizon.
After two years of debate and acrimony, bitcoin might finally be about to implement a code change that would split the currency in two, with meaningful investments on both sides. This possibility has been a nightmare for many who support the status quo, and on Friday a group of major bitcoin exchanges—which in many ways make up the foundation of bitcoin's economy, since that's where coins are bought and sold—released their contingency plan.
An open letter signed by 18 bitcoin exchanges including some large players lays it out: If bitcoin is split into two, these exchanges will trade both versions as separate currencies. But there's a catch. The exchanges state that they'll only support the newer version if it can safely avoid issues that have plagued splits in other virtual currencies.
"While a contentious forking event may be inevitable, and may ultimately provide a path forward for on-chain capacity increases, we have an obligation to our customers to provide a clear and consistent plan to minimize potential confusion surrounding such an event," the open letter states.
The issue at hand is increasing the capacity, and size, of the "blocks" of bitcoin transactions that get uploaded to the blockchain. Right now, these blocks are almost uniformly full of transaction information, limiting the number of transactions that can go through the bitcoin network in a reasonable amount of time. For people who want bigger blocks, the argument is that if bitcoin is ever going to be used by people around the world instead of just a niche community of enthusiasts, it needs to be fast.
Like many Americans, I spent my St. Patrick's Day celebrating my Irish heritage by getting embarrassingly drunk in public. Unlike the rest of you, I abstained from the usual Irish pub bar crawl circuit and instead spent the holiday exclusively at the alcohol-serving 24-hour Taco Bell Cantina in Las Vegas.
Why choose this location for my holiday revelry? Two reasons: One, I've wanted an excuse to go there since it opened last fall. News and social media posts about the location made it seem like some sort of nightclub and, as a Taco Bell diehard who occasionally enjoys a bit of nightlife, this could very well be my pilgrimage to Mecca. Two, why the hell not?
In my Uber Pool over to the two-story flagship in the middle of the Vegas strip, both the driver and other passengers remarked on how excited they were for me after I shared my plans for the evening. None had been before but had all heard the legends on social media, and were all kelly green with envy that I'd be spending my St. Patty's there.
Once at the location, I quickly assessed that this "Taco Bell club" I'd been hearing about for months was definitely not a club. It felt much like a regular Taco Bell, but with a DJ. Still, a fun, thumping EDM mix was blaring from the speakers and the crowd seemed pretty spirited for so early in the evening so I pushed aside all the preconceived notions I had about the place, got in line to order, and started my night.
My first drink was a Mountain Dew Baja Blast Freeze with tequila in it. It's supremely validating to see a concoction you've been whipping up at home for years make it to the big time with corporate's blessing. Because I planned on having a few of these over the course of the night, I splashed out extra to get it in an obnoxiously large plastic cyclone souvenir thing for the sake of refillability.
I explored the premises and mentally mapped out what was to be my domain for the remainder of the night. It didn't take long. The first floor was an outdoor patio area and an open-floor ordering and waiting space with some merch racks. The second floor had a seating area, the DJ, and restroom.
I spoke with the DJ and learned his name was Tony Sinatra and he'd been DJing for 18 years before winding up at Taco Bell. He seemed pretty happy with the freedom he was given, noting that as long as he kept profanity out of the music, he pretty much had carte blanche to do what he wanted.
"You play to the crowd and time of night," said Sinatra. "I find some fun remixes so it's not too Top 40. And trap usually gets everyone going."
I finished my Freeze in worryingly short time and made my way back downstairs for a refill and some food. The cashier informed me that my assumption about refills was incorrect and I'd have to purchase another dumb plastic tube cup if I wanted another large Freeze. Fucking the environment, I threw away my souvenir cup and ordered a lemonade and blue raspberry Freeze with tequila.
Cheesy Bacon Jalapeño Dippers were also ordered so I wouldn't be drinking all night on an empty stomach. The dippers were part of the location's exclusive "shareables" menu section. As I was alone, I did not share mine, but had I been with company I still wouldn't have shared because I am a gluttonous American and portions are a made up construct anyway.
Now with a little liquid courage in me, I began chatting up guests to see why they, like I, were spending their St. Patty's in a fast food chain.
"We take an annual trip to Vegas each St. Patty's," said a representative from a bachelorette party visiting from Sacramento. "This place has been all over social media. We had to check it out."
"We're not spending it here. We're just eating, bro," said Antoine, a friendly guy visiting from San Diego who was dancing around the patio.
I flagged down the store's manager, Darren, to see if he'd answer a few questions for me about the place. Darren told me that the place gets pretty wild in the wee hours after the clubs shut down. He also told me about their plan to start offering $600 wedding packages. Couples would exchange vows in front of the light-up bells on the second floor. I never got an answer as to whether or not the company would be getting their hot sauce packet mascot certified as a justice of the peace for these events.
Now a few hours into the night and during a lull where everyone was presumably out at their actual plans for the night, I was scrounging for things to hold my attention. I frantically paced the building. I noticed a table with a reclaimed wood surface that said "In a previous life, I held up the floors of a legendary department store that was built in 1888 in San Antonio, Texas." The legend must not be that great, however, because when I asked Darren for more info about the department store, all he seemed to know was that it was based in San Antonio and built in 1888. This was the most interesting thing I could find in the restaurant.
I was beginning to think that, in spite of the social media hype, maybe a Taco Bell that's also a club might not actually be all that fun a place to spend an entire night.
I ordered another Freeze. I planned to only order from the same cashier for the rest of the night and try to build some sort of rapport as the night was starting to get a bit lonely. Vegas isn't exactly a town meant for solo missions. I told her dealer's choice and she gave me a margarita and cherry Freeze. It tasted better than it sounds.
I ordered a green beer and a taco just as a rambunctious crew entered. I enjoyed those while watching the boys rain singles down on the crowd from the second floor. They ran out of ones and switched to throwing napkins off the mezzanine, which Darren seemed none-too-pleased with. Everyone (except me and Darren) seemed to be having a good time with their friends.
Near midnight, my boredom and loneliness were at their zeniths and my phone battery was dwindling. The luck baked into the Irish part of my DNA really came through, however, as I was greeted with an "UBER GUY!" from across the floor. The people from my ride over had decided to come try the Cantina out for themselves and check in on me.
Fully drunk by this point, I was beyond elated to see the couple, Holly and Michael, who might as well have been my best friends in the world at that moment. We shot the shit while they waited for their order and I did my best to not come off like a crazy person, despite their being fully aware that I'd just spent all night in a Taco Bell.
I left a little bit later once being drunk and with company was no longer fun, hopping in the Uber back to my hotel right as my phone died. Would I return to the Taco Bell club that isn't actually a club? Sure, someday. But probably with some people and for like, five less hours.
This week in celebrity feuds, Coachella is suing the retailer Urban Outfitters and its subsidiary, Free People, for using the festival's trademarked name to sell their hippie-inflected clothing lines. In a complaint filed in a US District Court, Coachella alleges that the retailers are "trading on the goodwill and fame" of the festival.
After noting extensively how great their music show in the desert is—"An Internet search using the Google search engine for the term 'Coachella music festival' provided over 1 million hits," the lawsuit boasts—Coachella's lawsuit takes issue with Urban Outfitter's marketing tactics. Free People, according to the complaint, sells a lacy shirt called "Coachella Valley Tunic," among other items using the Coachella name.
"Coachella is about more than just music," the lawsuit goes on to allege. In the past few years, the festival has also started licensing its name to clothing and jewelry retailers like H&M and Pandora. Urban Outfitter's marketing, the complaint says, is likely to cause "dilution by blurring or dilution by tarnishment" of the Coachella brand. This would be a shame, since "the Coachella Marks have for many years enjoyed unquestionable fame as a result of the favorable general public acceptance and recognition," the lawsuit states.
Screenshot via court documents. Petty markup is the suit's own.
Other than the risk to the quality of their brand, Coachella doesn't like that Urban Outfitters and Free People are trying to sell to the same people they're trying to sell to. "Defendants' apparel is directly targeting the same consumers who purchase Plaintiffs' goods and/or its licensees and sponsors' goods," the suit states. It also accuses the company of wrongly using the word "Coachella" in its website metatags to filter search results for festival wear.
Nelly Furtado's left boob is peeking out of her gaping black blouse, but she's too busy discussing her love for Ani DiFranco to realize. She's squirming in the seat of an aqua-and-burnt-orange striped booth in a set for a 1970s-themed diner inside New York's YouTube Studio, where famous vloggers shoot their videos. I'm trying not to stare as she twiddles her Longhorn ring and plunges her hands in and out of the pockets of her inside-out shearling coat.
"Look!" Furtado demands. She shows me the inside of her ochre-colored coat, flashing a sheer black bra in the process. "You can wear it two ways! It's literally reversible." She's wholly amused despite her obliviousness, opening and closing her jacket again and again over her breast. She's laughing. I'm laughing. Her left boob is still out. She spells out the clothing brand for me: "D-R-O-M-E. Drome. That's so rad," she says, slumping back into the booth and finally noticing that her left boob is half-exposed. She doesn't seem phased. Why would she be? This is the woman who gyrated in music videos, wearing everything from low-rise jeans and a cropped sheer blouse in "Promiscuous" to a tiny white wife beater in "Maneater."
Except the Furtado seated across from me is not the same mid-2000s Furtado whose abs were envied by teenage girls and whose music was the soundtrack for teens making out in cars. Between her short jet-black hair and fake eyelashes, Furtado still drips sex appeal, but she also exudes a maturity and sensibility she hadn't yet acquired while recording 2000's Whoa, Nelly! or 2006's hit album Loose. This month, she's putting her emotional development on full display with The Ride, her sixth studio album, which she considers her first album in years that she recorded as an artist instead of as "someone wearing a business hat."
The 22-year-old Canadian man charged for his alleged role in a massive Yahoo hack claims he's innocent and will fight extradition charges to the U.S., his attorney said on Friday after his first appearance in an Ontario court.
Karim Baratov, who was born in Kazakhstan, was arrested at his home in Hamilton on Tuesday as U.S. officials also indicted two Russian intelligence officers and Alexsay Belan, a Latvian hacker who was added to the FBI's most wanted list in 2013. All face computer hacking, espionage, and other criminal charges related to the unprecedented data breach of more than 500 million Yahoo user accounts. The two Russians and Belan are believed to be living as fugitives in Russia.
Baratov appeared in Hamilton bail court video link wearing an orange jumpsuit. His hearing is scheduled for April 5, ahead of what's expected to be a lengthy extradition battle.
"The social media and USA have made great efforts to distort the truth of who Karim Baratov is, and as has already been stated, we consider to be a political scapegoat!" Baratov's lawyer, Amedeo DiCarlo, wrote in a statement sent to reporters. "He is a smart and successful 22-year-old who is caught up in a cyber media frenzy full of unfounded allegations. We are more than confident the public will have all the answers they need."
For the past two years, Tyra Banks has seemed adrift. In 2014, she was sued by former America's Next Top Model contestant Angelea Preston for breach of contract and labor law violations. A year later, a Broadly investigation questioned the dubious business practices of Tyra Beauty, a multi-level marketing scheme that encourages women to sign up to sell her cosmetics. (The lawsuit is still ongoing, and Banks later told New York magazine, "A lot of that stuff people write is a lie.") She quit her most recent TV venture—hosting a 2015 panel talk show called FABLife—after only two months on the job, so when she announced two days ago that she would return to ANTM, the show that made her a TV star, her fans rejoiced. They mostly celebrated on social media with GIFs and clips from her syndicated talk show, The Tyra Banks Show, that ran from 2005 to 2010.
Many of the talk program's most memorable moments took place a decade ago in 2007, the pop culture year where Bush doomed the economy and Britney tanked her career, and celebrity fans are nostalgic for a show whose host was less obsessed with branding and more interested in being honest, no matter how absurd that made her appear.
"It was absolutely ridiculous, and the only thing Tyra loves more than herself is doing the absolute most every chance she gets," says the blogger who runs the popular Tumblr Pop Culture Died in 2009.
Where Williams's show is 80 percent pop culture and 20 percent lifestyle interests, Banks' talk program was split between stunts, Jerry Springer-lite specials, and celebrity interviews. She landed several huge pop culture interviews. Kim Kardashian discussed her sex tape with Banks in one of her earliest interviews. When Lauren Conrad visited the show to deny rumors that she too had shot a sex tape, Banks started the interview by holding up a paper mask of Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag and saying, "Spencer and Heidi have started a rumor about you."
Banks's one-hour confrontation with Naomi Campbell about their rivalry has topped all her scoops. She interviews Campbell without a studio audience ("It has to be just me and Naomi alone") and screams, "You called me the 'B' word!" Banks sounds over the top, but she also raises important issues about the modeling world. She and Campbell were the world's lone black supermodels in a world of blonde stick figures, and they discuss how the fashion industry pitted them against each other because they were taught to believe the industry could only handle one black model.
The baby-faced prince is one step closer to his throne seated in the centre of Edmonton's legislature.
For those of you not in the know, the former Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has, after a successful career in federal politics, turned his eyes towards his home province. In 2016, Kenney announced that he would be running for the leadership of Alberta's Progressive Conservative's—the once mighty ruling party in Alberta that was laid low to third place in the 2015 election—on a platform to "Unite the Right."
To pull this off Kenney would have to walk a tightrope of winning the leadership of the PCs and convincing the Wildrose (Alberta's second place province) to join his ranks. The race that Kenney ran was, in some minds, dirty and some implied that he had brought Trump-style politics to Alberta (something he has repeatedly denounced.) Last night, Kenney pulled off the first, and perhaps trickiest, stage in his five point plan.
A meme Kenney posted after he won the PC leadership race. Photo via Facebook
Kenney won the PC leadership in a landslide—he smashed his opponents, winning 1,113 of 1,476 votes cast. Still, though, the night was not all peaches and cream for everyone involved, the night before a former campaign organizer, Alan Hallman, was charged with assault at the convention—but K-dawg wasn't going to let that dampen his victory.
"It's springtime in Alberta," announced Kenney upon hearing the news.
"This result sends a message to our fellow Albertans who are struggling, to those 200,000 Albertans who are looking for work, we are going to ensure there is a government on your side."
Following this initial success, Kenney now needs to convince the Wildrose to join his team. Several high profile Wildrose members, including Canada's smarmiest politician, have already kissed the ring of the former "minister of curry in a hurry," and Brian Jean (the Wildrose leader) has said he's open to talking to Kenney. Jean has said that any new party that is formed by a united right in Alberta would be under a Wildrose framework.
"Wildrose has its dancing shoes on when it comes to creating a single, principled, consolidated, conservative movement," Jean wrote in a statement congratulating Kenney on his win. "I hope to meet with Jason on Monday and share with him more about the direction I have heard from our members."
Earlier in the night, fellow leadership candidate Richard Starke, who received 323 of the votes, lamented that Kenney's victory spelled the death of the progressive aspect of the Progressive Conservatives and that a merger like this may alienate minorities and women from the party—Starke also announced that he would support Kenney as the leader.
Kenney during his Alberta-wide tour in the lead up to the PC leadership race. Photo via Facebook
One thing that the right shares in Alberta is a, shall we say, dislike of current sitting premier Rachel Notley of the NDP party—a sentiment that Kenney has masterfully harnessed. Notley, who has brought in numerous legislation that has been decried by Alberta's right is going to have her hands full in 2019. Kenney said that he will repeal pretty much all of Notley's accomplishments if his united conservative party is elected. In his speech, Kenny declared that "today is the beginning of the end of this disastrous socialist government," and went on to call the NDP "tax-hiking, job-killing, debt-loving, mean-spirited, [and] incompetent."
Meanwhile, the NDP attempted to reach out to the so-called "progressives" in the PC party who may have been scared off by Jason Kenney. Indeed, a PC MLA, Sandra Jansen, crossed the floor to the NDP because of the rhetoric brought about by the leadership race.
Jason Kenney is a one man disrupter—the 48-year-old has, single-handedly, managed to turn Albertan provincial politics on its head. Say what you will about Kenney but, Jesus, he is good at the ol' politicking thing.
Notley and her left-wing backers better prepare for a fight, because Kenney has harnessed the winds of Alberta tradition and, in 2019, those gales may be powerful enough to shift Alberta back to the right.
This story was originally published in Danish on MUNCHIES DK.
We recently published a story about a restaurant in the Netherlands that only has one employee. But we soon learned that the Netherlands isn't the only place in the world with such an establishment. In Copenhagen, another one-employee restaurant has started up.
"Instead of working for people who don't appreciate my work, I'd rather have my own place where I can just be myself," says Thomas. "You get rid of all the BS, but I do occasionally miss someone to chat with." Njordvest can only accommodate eight guests, and on his homepage, Thomas describes the place as "probably Denmark's smallest restaurant". Sure, you can find a hot dog stand or three out there with fewer square feet and with only one employee, but this is a full-service restaurant with a really tiny kitchen.
The Njordvest Restaurant. Stickers from the previous restaurant that Thomas shared with a friend before he went solo are still up. All photos by Amanda Cooper.
The Njordvest Restaurant. Stickers from the previous restaurant that Thomas shared with a friend before he went solo are still up. All photos by Amanda Cooper.
That's why there's a system for everything, and Thomas will have to make do with the kind of cookware most people use at home—there is no room for industrial machinery. He has a small Sousvide vacuum packer and a KitchenAid-mixer, and instead of a heating cabinet, he has installed an extra oven that he bought at Ikea.
Thomas polishes the glasses, sets the tables, does the cleaning, washes the dishes, and kneads the dough so that it is ready to be baked before the service starts at 6 PM. The food needs to be chopped, placed in trays, and prepared, so that the food can leave the kitchen within just a few minutes. When the guests are gone, he washes the dishes before he goes home at 11 PM. He saves the glasses for the next day.
According to a new interview with One Direction's Liam Payne in Rollacoaster, Trump once kicked the British boyband out of one of his New York hotels after the band refused to meet one of his daughters.
"Trump actually kicked us out of his hotel once," Payne recalls. "You wouldn't believe it. It was about (meeting) his daughter. He phoned up our manager and we were asleep. He said 'well, wake them up' and I was like 'no' and then he wouldn't let us use the underground garage. Obviously in New York we can't really go outside. New York is ruthless for us. So he was like, 'OK, then I don't want you in my hotel.' So we had to leave."
Donald Trump's streak of allegedly stiffing people on payment has apparently has made its way north, at least according to one construction company.
Last week, Urban One Construction Management, Inc., a construction company in Vancouver, filed a suit against Trump Tower developer Holborn Developments for allegedly failing to pay their company around $700,00 for work done on the tower.
According to Urban One owner Alan Beron, this is the first time Urban One has ever had to sue any company.
""Unfortunately, in this exceptional circumstance, litigation is our only option," Beron told Vancouver Business. "Prior to filing of this lawsuit, Urban One worked hard to negotiate a settlement with Holborn Developments (West Georgia) Ltd., the developer of Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver. Unfortunately, the negotiations were unsuccessful."
The suit comes after Holborn Developments filed one against Urban One for, essentially, alleging shoddy work and a failure to meet contract agreements on the construction of the tower. Urban One states that the work Holburn is alluding too is a result of the company's lack of payment. None of these claims have been proven in court
Urban One is now the fourth company to sue to the tower—it has joined the ranks of Erwin Construction Corp, West Georgia Holdings, Nova Stone, Inc., and Catcan Holdings, Inc. who have all filed lawsuits recently against the developers.
Trump's spawn, Eric and Don Jr., were on scene in February for the launch of the tower and were met with protests. On the day of the launch, the tower erroneously tweeted it was the first tower built in Vancouver in six years (it wasn't) and stated the tower had 69 stories (it doesn't).
March 18, 1965 was an ordinary Thursday for the majority of people located on planet Earth. But for 30-year-old cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, one of two people who happened to be off-world at the time, it was all about making history and cheating death.
Exactly 52 years ago this Saturday, Leonov and mission commander Pavel Belyayev blasted into space aboard the Soviet spacecraft Voskhod ("Sunrise") 2. Several crews, both Russian and American, had already orbited Earth, so Voskhod 2 had been tasked with pushing the boundaries of human spaceflight to the next level—a spacewalk, or EVA (extravehicular activity). His audacious mission has since been commemorated with books, stamps, pop culture homages, and an upcoming feature-length film.
Schematic of Voskhod 2. Image: Reubenbarton
About ninety minutes after lift-off, Leonov made his way into the ship's Volga inflatable airlock, secured a 5.35-meter (17.6 foot) tether around his torso, opened the hatch, and ventured out into the unknown with only a spacesuit to protect him. It was the first time any human had left the safety of a spacecraft and free-floated in orbit. A Volga-mounted camera that Leonov had set up on his way out captured the extraordinary moment.
A second camera attached to Leonov's chest did not fare so well, because Leonov's spacesuit unexpectedly puffed up in response to the atmospheric pressure shift. As a result, he was unable to reach the shutter switch on his thigh (though this didn't prevent later artistic renditions of the event from depicting him in an idealized cameraman pose).
Leonov apparently didn't worry much about his inflating spacesuit, becoming enraptured instead with his unobstructed view of Earth. He described the feeling as "like a seagull with its wings outstretched, soaring high above the Earth," in the book Two Sides of the Moon, co-written with American astronaut David Scott, the seventh man to walk on the lunar surface.
As someone who learned about fighting from martial arts and learned about hockey from a pair of pacifistic parents who worshipped finesse players and tolerated only the cleanest of hits, I've spent most of my life struggling to understand hockey fights.
Where they belong in the greater context of sports is baffling at best. To invoke Mike Myer's old Coffee Talk skits, they're neither hockey nor fight. They happen on ice in hockey skates, but they're not officially part of the game. They involve moves that can be used in actual fights, but they're not sanctioned bouts. But then they're not street fights, either. They exist somewhere in between the real world and the sporting one, somewhere on the periphery of both the sport they happen in and the sport they sort of mimic.
Beyond their place, I've also struggling to understand what makes them satisfying. The way I was raised leaves me seeing fights as a blight on the sacred sport of hockey. A boorish way to rope in unsophisticated fans and cater to the lowest common denominator who will never appreciate the finer, more important parts of the game like, say, the geometrical genius with which Jacques Plante guarded his crease.
The fight fan in me just finds them silly. Although a number of hockey players include martial arts in their cross-training now, adding lessons in Muay Thai to improve their balance on skates or MMA to keep their reflexes sharp, few manage to display anything in the way of halfway decent technique. The punches are mostly ill-timed and flailing. The footwork is about as good as you can expect for any form of combat executed almost literally on knife edges on a slippery surface. The gripping of hockey sweaters sometimes lends a nice one-stripe white belt Jiu-Jitsu charm to the proceedings, but anyone with any expectations of method or skill is bound to be disappointed.
My husband, a lifelong goalie with a vengeful streak, has spent years trying to convince me that I'm not watching the fights properly, that they're part of a complex psychological game. Because he's probably the closest thing that rec hockey will ever have to Sun Tzu, I'm inclined to trust his vision on this matter. I just can't manage to share it when I actually watch games.
Photo by Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports
While I don't find hockey fights entertaining, though, I am developing a taste for entertainment about fighting in hockey. And it's through that kind of storytelling that I'm starting to be able to appreciate the parallels between the hockey enforcer and the martial artist.
Slap Shot might have treated the on-ice hijinks of the Hanson Brothers as a sideshow to exploit 40 years ago, but its cinematic heirs like Goon (and Goon: Last of the Enforcers, which comes out in theaters today) treat its fights and its fighters as a more central part of both the game and the film. When bouncer Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is plucked out of bar and placed on a minor league team in Goon, he faces a lot of the same challenges, life lessons and philosophical issues that you'd find in a Rocky or a Karate Kid. It might be more comic and crass in a Fubar-esque way – a hoser's hero journey, if you will—but it's still a movie about discipline, glory, fighting for yourself and your loved ones, and having the discipline and the skill to face down your enemy in the heat of a battle.
