"I had 120 animals," Amina Abdul Hussein, a mother of three tells me as we sit inside her ragged cloth tent in Maxamad Mooge camp, temporarily shielded from the midday glare of the sun. "But the drought killed all of them."
Dozens of unofficial camps like this are scattered across the outskirts of Hargeisa, the capital of the self-declared independent state of Somaliland in East Africa. The UNHCR reports that nearly 40,000 people have already been forced out of their native rural villages by drought in the last three months. Trigged by El Niño, the drought has been worsened by climate change, according to a new study published by the American Meteorological Society.
Livestock production is the backbone of Somaliland's economy and represents an important component of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), with around 65 percent of the population practicing some form of pastoralism. With no livestock and insufficient support from the international community and the government of Somaliland, tens of thousands have been forced to abandon their agricultural way of life and come to the city.
A few weeks ago, Mic Fok got a weird email. The person writing it claimed they'd been playing Overwatch on a PlayStation Network account for more than six months, but the password had changed recently. But why would Fok know anything about this random dude's account? As it turns out, they'd "purchased" Fok's account through a website called PSN Games, one of many businesses trafficking in the selling of cheap games by sketchy means.
The individual who bought Fok's account was an Overwatch fan named Bennett Eglinton. "Hello I purchased overwatch from psngames.org and this email was used as the account info," reads an email from Eglinton, sent in early March. "However the password I was given for the PlayStation Network sign in no longer works. Did you happen to change it? Can I get the new info."
Taken aback, Fok pressed Eglinton for more information, and informed him he probably got scammed; Fok was still using this account. After Eglinton was able to produce Fok's old (and legitimate) password, he stopped responding to the emails. That's when he contacted me, and put me in touch with Eglinton, who passed along the PSN Games confirmation email with Fok's password.
At Trump Grill, one of the Trump-branded restaurants inside Trump Tower, the entrees include a $34 filet mignon, a $22 Platinum Label burger and a $21 Mar-A-Lago club sandwich. At Trump restaurant in Kobani, Syria, the menu includes falafel sandwiches and...falafel sandwiches.
Yes, Waleed Shekhi, a well-meaning (or possibly misguided) Syrian Kurdish man, named his restaurant after the 45th President, in the hopes that the Trump name will help his business. He told a Kurdish news outlet that he wanted to express his gratitude to the United States for helping the Kurds in their ongoing fight against ISIS.
"He is the leader of the United States, the greatest country in the world," Shekhi told ARA News. "We Kurds love the United States, so we love Donald Trump. That's why I named my restaurant after him."
Shekhi told Kurdistan24 that the restaurant was just one of many jobs he had held in the past couple of years as he—and the city itself—try to piece themselves back together after years of conflict. He opened Trump almost exactly two years after the People's Protection Units (YPG), the Free Syrian Army, Peshmerga soldiers and some U.S. led-airstrikes joined forces to liberate Kobani from ISIS rule. (The U.S. Air Force has a recently expanded air base close to Kobani, which is in northern Syria, near the Turkish border).
On Saturday, The Shadow Brokers, a hacker or group of hackers that has previously dumped NSA hacking tools, released more alleged exploits. The group published a password for an encrypted cache of files they distributed last year.
"Be considering this our form of protest," the group wrote in a rambling, politically loaded rant published on Medium.
That fund-raising effort was ultimately unsuccessful, and The Shadow Brokers claimed they were calling the whole thing off in January. But now, anyone can unlock the auction data dump. (Motherboard confirmed that the password did indeed decrypt the original auction file).
A selection of the files in the cache.
According to the researcher known as x0rz, the cache includes an exploit for Solaris, a Unix based operating system.
The Shadow Brokers' posts have clearly become more political since the group first emerged. This time, they pointed specifically to President Trump.
Aside from being "a total scam!" and "very dishonest!," fake news has become a major problem for the watering holes of the internet. Social media platforms and search engines are susceptible to misinformation because, by principle, they're largely unregulated.
After taking heat for helping spread a bunch of bullshit all around the web during the election, Facebook launched an offensive against fake news on Thursday—and now Google is joining the fight, Bloombergreports.
The tech giant unveiled a new feature Friday appending fact checks to the bottom of search results, helping users sort what's true from what's not in a matter of seconds. Just type in a few key words—"Trump Iraq War," for example—and a line will pop up under the results letting you know if the info you're looking for ("Trump opposed the Iraq War from the get-go") is true, mostly true, mostly false, or total bullshit. Plus, you can check out the source of the fact check and see what evidence it's using with a single click.
Screengrab via Google
Google tapped prominent fact-checking organizations like Politifact and Snopes for help with the new feature, and it's allowing publishers—like the the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal—to apply to become fact-checkers, too. The search engine won't be hiring an in-house team, however, and it won't be paying the companies doing the fact-checking.
"These fact checks are not Google's and are presented so people can make more informed judgments," Google wrote in a press release. "Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it's still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree."
Meanwhile, we're rolling out a weekly guide to the best (er, worst?) fake news floating around the internet, soaking up a bunch of lies so you don't have to.
Nominated by Donald Trump in January, judge Neil Gorsuch is being positioned to become the ninth Supreme Court Justice. However, he has some serious opposition – not least from Democrats appalled that Merrick Garland, Barack Obama's more moderate nominee, was never even given a hearing. While Gorsuch might be incredibly qualified (he has degrees from Columbia and Harvard, plus a PhD from Oxford) he also adheres to the extreme and increasingly popular conservative doctrine of "textualism" when implementing the law. If he makes it onto the Supreme Court bench, which is highly likely given that the Republicans have stated they will bypass any Democratic filibustering with a simple majority loophole, he will replace the now deceased Antonin Scalia, another man who defined his practise as textualism, so called because it involves taking the text of the constitution at its literal meaning, rather than interpreting it for the problems of, say, civil rights and internet privacy, that the founding fathers never could have foreseen.
Textualism isn't just big among conservative supreme justices, though; it's part of a global ideology of understanding everything to the letter, which I am going to call literalism. Literalism is the dictionary definition argument, which refuses social or cultural context. It's the legal position of people who are enraged by "special privileges" for minorities while ignoring the extreme economic and social disadvantages they already face. The political attitude of people who don't agree extra effort is needed to ensure women and PoC are present in boardrooms despite them having been structurally excluded for centuries. It's the outlook of people with absolute faith in the market to regulate itself and absolute faith in society to organise itself fairly. Why are there so many more black men in prison? They must commit more crime. End of story.
There are gaping flaws in the literalist's obsessive logic. While they will smugly use a dictionary to define things like feminism or racism, they refuse to acknowledge any contextual ramifications or bias within the dictionary itself. This goes for the judicial system, policing, housing, welfare and employment as well. Literalists are not interested in why something has come to be defined as it has or how that definition may have dated; they aren't interested in the meaning and meaninglessness of words or the structures of power and class present in language. They conform to the ideological equivalent of "computer says no". When you apply this kind of fundamentalist textualism to law, as Gorsuch does and Scalia did before him, you're essentially preaching the Constitution as gospel. Along with a growing number of conservative Americans, this behaviour symbolises the desire to rigorously control what is perceived as an increasingly chaotic society. Gorsuch's method is a "No Running in the hallway" "but I was being chased by a shooter with a gun" "No Running in the hallway" kind of enforcement, which relies on the total submission to a set of rules as opposed to their constructive or critical application.
Earlier in his career, Gorsuch ruled on the highly publicised case of a trucker being forced to decide between freezing to death in his vehicle or leaving to find shelter. After doing everything he could to try and get help, the driver eventually left, and was fired. He challenged the ruling and won after seven judges heard his case. Gorsuch was the only judge on the case to rule against the driver. When challenged on his decision by a superior, he unashamedly argued the factual tenets of the law without sense or empathy. It's infuriating to behold.
"He uses literalism as a way of immediately proving themselves right about anything by finding it written down somewhere, and in the process exposing anyone who doesn't agree as a 'moron' or an 'idiot'."
Over on our fair isle, things are not wildly different. Brexit rhetoric convinced huge swathes of people that by leaving the EU they were claiming back "sovereignty" for the UK, which has resulted in the recent triggering of Article 50. Sovereignty – though it sounds cool, like claiming back a sort of Union Jack tin of shortbread that had been nicked by Poland – in fact ended up to just be a word meaning absolutely nothing. Sovereignty for the people of an independent United Kingdom basically means Sports Direct-style workers' rights, EU regulations without a seat at the table and the sinking realisation that America really does not have to give us a smashing-great trade deal despite that deeply dubious special relationship.
Insufferable talking heads like Paul Joseph Watson use literalism as a way of immediately proving themselves right about anything by finding it written down somewhere, or proven by any poll whatsoever, and in the process exposing anyone who doesn't agree as a "moron" or an "idiot". It's this obsession with reducing everything down to the sum of its parts which permits him to dismiss the entirety of modern art as "stupid".
The right as a wider movement revels in the idea that "rape culture" must be a myth because rape is a crime, or that the wage gap is a myth because it doesn't take into account the fact that women are in fewer top-level jobs as men, as if that somehow made it OK. This literalism is moronic, yet it positions itself a pseudo-intellectualism in which Butler and Foucault apparently never existed.
So why this newfound admiration for "common sense" politics? Probably because "sense" – as an entrenched establishment ideology – is less common than ever, and that frightens conservatives. As digital media splinters the mainstream partisan/conservative media's control over current affairs, the Good American narrative is under threat. In response, a new pepped-up alt-right point aghast towards the chaotic unpredictability of the internet and shriek that it's eliminating rationality on a global scale. Outlets like Rebel Media and Breitbart spring up promising to tell the truth, clear the bullshit, drain the swamp. They shout fake news and cry "ideology" at every turn. They miss the point.
In an article for the New Inquiry, Trevor Paglen writes that "ideology's ultimate trick has always been to present itself as objective truth, to present historical conditions as eternal, and to present political formations as natural". Literalists buy into this truth absolutely. They believe that society can only function in the most rudimentary, mechanical sense, or else it will descend into violent disorder. Chaos taps at their windows and nips at their shoelaces. But the literalist's pragmatism is ideology extreme; it's a philosophy which hands all power to the capricious open market. Their arguments for rationality are in fact demands for absolute chaos. What they're doing, without realising, is fundamentally undermining their own fundamentalism. I wonder what the dictionary definition of that is.
Mick Rock is The Man Who Shot the Seventies, but he doesn't like the term—and he doesn't much like being called an icon, either. "All that means is I'm getting old," he tells me on a phone call from his home in Manhattan. But these things tend to stick: His photographs have captured and defined music for the past forty years, including David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust phase and Lou Reed's post-Velvets career. Rock's photos adorn the covers of Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power and Queen's Queen II, and he was there when the glam scene that he'd shot in such ecstasy started to harden and debase itself, as well as when Motley Crue signalled their own turn from underground sex clubs to coke-fueled strip joints. Recently, he's shot Father John Misty, Janelle Monáe, and Karen O. Whether you knew it or not, you've seen his work.
SHOT! the Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock, Barney Clay's documentary on the London-born photographer produced by VICE Films, takes on Rock's career chronologically—London to New York, glam to punk, decadence to addiction to eventual recovery—but continually circles back to Rock's near-death experience in 1996, when a bout with cocaine left him sputtering and in need of a quadruple heart bypass surgery. He loved cocaine so much that he shot a series of still-life photographs in the early 80s with the drug as his subject; the photos are quite beautiful, but nobody can keep that lifestyle up.
Sun worship is a popular theme in human history, for good reason. Our local yellow dwarf star is the head of our solar family, the most influential body in our cosmic vicinity, and the midwife of all life on Earth. It's the biggest cheese for light years around, and it's earned its share of reverence.
Yet our Sun remains one of the most unexplored bodies in the solar system. After all, it is tough to study a massive fusion reactor that will burn out your retinas if you even look at it the wrong way, let alone send a spacecraft to brave the inferno up close.
Enter: Solar Probe Plus (SPP), a NASA mission in development at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. This robotic explorer will venture closer to the Sun than any other probe before it, flying through its corona—the searing atmosphere surrounding the star—for the first time in history. It will brave both fiery and freezing temperatures, travel faster than anything ever made by humans, and deliver the most intimate glimpse of our star—and the forceful solar wind it emits—in spaceflight history.
"After six long years, can the Ministry of Admissions keep us safe?"
That newspaper headline greets you at the beginning of Lucas Pope's Papers, Please. The borders of the fictional post-Soviet autocracy Arstotzka are opened for the first time in years, and you are one of the everyday citizens tasked with securing your nation's borders. Every day, there are new rules limiting who you can allow into the country. You will deny far more people than you admit.
Papers, Please's relevance has only grown in the four years since its release. We are more than two months removed from Donald Trump's first attempt to implement his Muslim Ban—an executive order barring immigrant and refugee status to residents of seven Muslim majority nations. The ban is dying in the courts, but the situation for many immigrants in America is still a nightmare.
Papers, Please is an honest examination of the practical limits of resistance for anyone working in immigration and a demonstration of how oppressive states use bureaucracy to obscure their abuses. The increasingly complex rules for who you admit to Arstotzka don't just exist to arbitrarily increase the game's difficulty.
All Papers, Please screenshots courtesy of 3909
It's a bureaucracy suffocating you under an avalanche of regulations, guidelines, and checklists so you don't have time to think about the "why" of what you're doing. The legalistic framework surrounding every aspect of your life and job serves to separate you from your own morality, replacing it with a series of rules and regulations. You may have been assigned a job without consent, you may have to screen refugees and immigrants according to nonsense criteria, and your family can be forcibly relocated at any time… but it's all legal. And if you have a moral problem with any of those laws, confronting them makes you a criminal.
A state that requires self-immolation in the act of genuine resistance is a state designed to enforce compliance. Part of Papers, Please's power is that it doesn't offer you a heroic path out of your dilemma. There are no good options: you're either enforcing these rules and therefore you become part of the problem, or you are doing what you can to subvert those rules, and in doing so, you put your life and the life of your family at risk. All for seemingly meaningless results, since you have so little agency as an inspector that any commonplace acts of defiance seem futile.
One person has died and five more have been hospitalized in Toronto after reportedly consuming MDMA.
According to Toronto's City News, police responded to a call at Uniun Nightclub around 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning after a 24-year-old woman collapsed after reportedly taking MDMA. The woman was later taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Another woman also reportedly collapsed at the same location and was taken to the hospital in serious condition. Another incident was also reported at the nightclub, but details of the incident remain unknown.
According to City News, police also responded to a medical complaint at Rebel Nightclub later that morning around 1:30 a.m. According to reports, two men and one woman collapsed at the nightclub and were taken to the hospital.
Dating with a mental illness can really fucking suck. Stigmas abound, and often make otherwise promising prospects turn cold.
Guy A. Boysen, associate professor of psychology at McKendree University, recently analyzed two studies that, sadly, bear these stigmas out. In the first one, participants rated people with mental illnesses like depression and schizophrenia as having less short and long-term relationship promise than average. In the second study, participants assessed people's physical attractiveness based solely on personal ads that mentioned their disorders. Across the board, mentally ill people were, once again, seen as below-average prospects when it came to building a long-term relationship.
We talked to a handful of young singles about what it's like to date with a mental illness, and the challenges they're still up against.
Matt, 23, Manhattan, NY
"I've always had generalized anxiety and hypochondria. I'd go to the doctor a million times in middle school, and be like, "I have a brain tumor!" In college, I started having panic attacks. After college, I was like, "All right, I need medication." So now I'm on Lexapro and Ativan as needed."
Can you give me an example of when you've felt judged? I was on a random Tinder date or something, and we were out to dinner. I usually take Lexapro around that time, and when I took it, he asked what it was. I said, "Oh, it's just Lexapro," and I could immediately tell he sort of shut down when I said that. It was clear he didn't have any education on mental health stuff. We never followed up, but I didn't wanna go on another date with that person, anyway.
How has your dating life evolved since then? I've noticed a big, big change in who I will trust or even go on a date with. I feel like if I even get a slight vibe from someone where they don't really get mental health issues or understand medication, then they're out—it's just not gonna work. And my Lexapro affects my libido sometimes. So I'll try to take my Lexapro at night after my current partner and I have had sex. It's been a tough thing—he's totally understanding, but I don't think he can relate because he hasn't been on meds that affect his sex drive.
Dozens of people line up along Spadina Avenue in downtown Toronto outside of a semi-operational fish market. It's clear that nobody is here to haul dead creatures, as no one would ever sully the shoes they were wearing by subjecting them to hard labour.
Sneakerheads have lined up for Nike's "Sneakeasy" event, which was to culminate with the unveiling of the Nike Air VaporMax at midnight. It's an invite-only event, mostly populated by artists, media, celebrities, and athletes, but a select number of tickets were released to the public (which were reportedly being resold surreptitiously for up to $500). People were not paying $500 for the chance to buy the shoes first. They were paying $500 for a chance to see the shoes first.
Mistakenly, I gave everyone in line that opportunity for free. Event organizers encouraged attendees to "wear their favourite Air Max," and since the advance pair of VaporMax were still in my living room as I was getting ready, I put those on.
At some point in a middle of a conversation, a sneakerhead notices. "Hey, he's got the VaporMax on right there!"
Suddenly there's a small congregation around me asking me questions about the shoe. As a runner, I begin to describe their performance as, you know, a running shoe.
"It's really spongy when it hits the ground, but the shoe itself fits very similar to a track spike. It will take some getting used to, but it could definitely be a great shoe for speedwork," I answer.
Nobody is really concerned with its functional performance, though. The people in line may run, they may not, but they're sure not here to find the shoe they'll be training in for this spring's 10K. They just want the visual—to see how cool the transparent gel sole looks.
The new VaporMax shoe, via Nike
Thirty years ago, Nike revolutionized the running shoe with its launch of the Air Max 1, also known as the Air Max 87. Though Air technology had been implemented in previous shoes, this was the first time the air pockets were not only enlarged, but made visible through a partially transparent sole. Tinker Hatfield's design was mindblowing, an entirely backwards approach to the design of a shoe, building it from the bottom up and presenting it from the inside out.
Last Tuesday, a man police are identifying as Joseph Jakubowski walked into a Wisconsin post office and bought a stamp for an envelope addressed to Donald Trump. As a buddy filmed him, the 32-year-old bearded guy with sandy brown hair stuck a 161-page manifesto railing against government, law enforcement officials, and religion into a mailbox in the parking lot.
"Revolution," he said. "It's time for change. Game time. Fuck the system."
For almost a week now, local and federal police have been looking for Jakubowski with increased urgency. They say he broke into and stole more than a dozen guns from a place (rather appropriately) called Armageddon Gun Shop, and then lit his car on fire, which suggests that Jakubowski—who's spent much of his life in House Speaker Paul Ryan's hometown of Janesville—may still be in the area.
Janesville public schools were closed on Friday, which is also when cops held a press conference alongside a member of the Secret Service. They alleged that Jakubowski has purchased a bullet proof vest and a helmet, and also threatened schools in his manifesto. That document, which is not available to the public, was apparently not partisan so much as broadly angry at the government and the people who run it.
"So there's really nothing specific where he's saying, 'I was wronged in this way' or 'I was wronged in that way,'" Rock County Sheriff Robert Spoden said. "It's just an overview that he feels that the government, and law enforcement in particular, are acting as terrorists and are enslaving the people and creating this environment that he finds unacceptable."
An FBI representative who spoke at the same Friday press conference declined the opportunity to identify Jakubowski a terrorist.
On Sunday, Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, canceled services after a suspicious man was said to have come by asking questions—though police do not believe it was Jakubowski, according to NBC News. Still, some authorities and religious figures in the area remained especially concerned that he might target practitioners. And on Monday, schools across the state put out a warning about the suspect, citing his alleged plan to "unleash the stolen weapons" in the manifesto.
Jakubowski has a long and storied criminal record. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to taking a cop's gun, according to Rock County court records. That same year, he was arrested for allegedly breaking a non-contact order after a domestic violent spat and for disorderly conduct, although those charges were eventually dismissed. He also has two battery charges––one of which he pleaded no contest to and another that was dismissed––as well as an epic amount of felony traffic infractions under his belt.
Meanwhile, the key to the case might be the unidentified man who filmed the post office video. "It's D Day," we hear him say from behind the camera. "Today is the day. So remember this face."
Police say that second man is a person of interest in the case who's been brought in for questioning multiple times thus far, though it's unclear whether he's been unable or unwilling to reveal where Jakubowski is—or what he might be planning.
"We're going to constantly revisit that individual and see if they can think of something else that may have been forgotten and what was the motive and some of those type of things," Spoden said Sunday.
The man behind Jian Ghomeshi's comeback—The Ideation Project—says people should "let the art speak for the art."
Ron Hartenbaum, a manager at New York City-based WYD Media Management, the company that is heading up Ghomeshi's new series of online videos, told VICE he's hoping the Ideation Project will spark public dialogue about the topics it covers.
"My comment on Jian's past is that it's his past. It is in the past. I reacted to creative content that I heard, which now others are hearing in a more finished and polished sense."
Last March Ghomeshi was acquitted of four counts of sexual assault in a trial involving three female complainants; in a separate matter, involving the alleged sexual assault of his former CBC colleague Kathryn Borel, he agreed to sign a peace bond and apologize in exchange for having the charge withdrawn.
Screenshot via The Ideation Project
On Monday, the disgraced former CBC host, who is verified on Twitter despite having only 342 followers, tweeted, "Hi. For those interested, here is something I've been working on... http://TheIdeationProject.com."
The project is described on its website as "a new media creative project that features all original words, music, recording and production. The content covers a variety of topics from politics to philosophy to pop culture and the human condition."
The first track, called "Exiles," features a recording of Ghomeshi doing a six-minute spoken word poem about the concept of xenophobia and being exiled. The words are set to "original music" by Ghomeshi and black-and-white images of what appear to be a racially diverse group of people.
"Do all lives still matter?" Ghomeshi asks.
"Can anyone really get on a high horse about how their country is somehow immune? There's no place in the world now devoid of some folks singing this tune."
It's unclear if the title "Exiles" is meant to be a nod to Ghomeshi's fall from grace, but at one point he says, "If it can happen to your neighbour down the street it can happen to you." All of the tracks will follow a similar format, according to Hartenbaum.
Upon hearing of Ghomeshi's attempted comeback, many people expressed outrage.
Linda Redgrave, a complainant at Ghomeshi's sex assault trial who said he punched her in the head, told VICE Ghomeshi's return is triggering.
"The legal process does not guarantee you will not see or hear from (people who have reported) again. The legal system does not address trauma and its effects such as fear or possible re-traumatization."
She also thinks Ghomeshi may have been trying to evoke sympathy for himself in his first track.
"Our struggles are being trivialized by his resurgence and the content which speaks to exile. Poor Jian. He speaks of exile in many scenarios, but it feels that the overall theme of exile and NOWHERIANS is him speaking about himself," she said, noting that today is also the day Coming Forward, her organization dedicated to helping sex assault survivors through the legal system, was registered as a non-profit.
Reached by VICE, Borel and Lucy Decoutere, a complainant at Ghomeshi's sex assault trial, declined to comment. However, Borel tweeted, "whoa if you listen to ghomeshi's new podcast backwards it's the entire proof of concept for the pepsi resistance commercial."
A spokeswoman from Ghomeshi's PR firm Reputation.ca told VICE Ghomeshi isn't commenting on the backlash.
"I think right now he's just focusing on working on the project and letting it speak for itself," she said, noting that he was unavailable for an interview because he is currently in New York recording another track at a studio there.
Julie Lalonde, an advocate with Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres, told VICE she's not surprised by Ghomeshi's attempt to restart his career because he's an "egomaniac."
"There's no way this guy is going to go quietly into the night," she said.
But she pointed out that every time his name and face make headlines again, it re-traumatizes the people he is accused of abusing.
Lalonde said just because Ghomeshi wasn't convicted of a crime, it doesn't mean he deserves to have a platform. She said the public should boycott and girlcott companies like WYD Media Management, and anyone who shows support for him and his work in the future.
"I think we have to use consumer power to make sure it's not viable to make him an entertainer."
That approach seems to have already worked. Art19, the company whose media player Ghomeshi's project was being hosted on this morning, told VICE it suspended The Ideation Project after receiving complaints today and that the show has been moved to SoundCloud.
According to its website, WYD Media Management works with a range of political commentators, including David Webb, a founding member of the National Tea Party Federation.
Hartenbaum, who describes himself as project manager of Ghomeshi's new show, said people have the right to ignore Ghomeshi's show if they see fit but "he is an artist, he has the right to create and he has the right to share."
He also said he's opposed to boycotting.
"I think at the end of the day that hurts the ability for people to discuss different points of view."
Asked if Ghomeshi, who did not testify at his trial, would ever address the many allegations of abuse against him, Hartenbaum said, "that's a question for Jian."
San Bernardino, California, was rocked by gun violence once again on Monday morning, when a man and a woman were killed and two elementary school students hospitalized in an apparent murder-suicide. The crime scene in this case was a classroom at North Park Elementary, and the incident was quickly suspected by local officials to be the product of a domestic dispute. As Tom Winter of NBC News tweeted, law enforcement believe the shooting was a "domestic violence incident" targeting the adult victim—apparently a female teacher. Maria Garcia, spokesperson for San Bernardino's school district, told the local NBC affiliate in an on-air interview, "We believe the teacher knew who the shooter was." For his part, San Bernardino Police Lt. Michael Madden told reporters on Monday that the assailant was male.
Meanwhile, the hospitalized students were said to be in critical condition, but as of this writing, their identities and whereabouts had not been made public.
According to the Associated Press, the scene near the school was chaotic in the immediate aftermath of the violence. Parents tried in vain to learn what happened, expressing frustration that they couldn't verify that their kids were OK, since they typically didn't have mobile phones. By early afternoon local time, police suggested there was no longer any threat to public safety. But confusion persisted, as students at the school were initially said to be getting bussed to nearby California State University-San Bernardino. Police also told parents, however, to wait at El Cajon High School, where their identities were being verified, according to the LA Times.
This shooting occurred about eight miles North of the Inland Regional Center, where 14 people were shot to death and 22 were injured in a terrorist attack 16 months ago. In recent months, the murder rate in San Bernardino, the 100th largest city in the United States, has actually surpassed past Chicago's on a per capita basis. The city saw a major uptick in violence last year, with 63 murders, a 50 percent increase compared to with average of the five prior years.
Recently, New York Magazine reported that a 2016 study of two nationally representative groups of single Americans found 20% of respondents practiced some form of non-monogamy in their lifetime. YouGov found 31% of women and 38% of men surveyed said their ideal relationship would involve multiple partners at some point. Now, television is ready to explore what it's like to date—and even marry—outside the bounds of traditional monogamy.
Though this has popped up in a few television shows —Broad City's Ilana is vocal about open relationships, and No Tomorrow's Xavier explicitly brings up "ethical non-monogamy"—there are two recent series that are tackling the subject head-on. The web series Unicornland follows Annie (Laura Ramadei), a newly-divorced woman who explores her sexuality by dating couples. You Me Her, TV's "first polyromantic comedy" on Audience Network, is about a thirtysomething couple (Greg Poehler and Rachel Blanchard) who both fall in love with a grad student, grappling with what happens when polyamory comes out of the shadows and into the suburbs.
A few years ago, if Americans wanted to explore this interest on television, the options were limited. The choices included Big Love, its reality show alter-ego Sister Wives, and the kinds of documentaries that, as You Me Her creator John Scott Shepherd explained in a phone interview, made their subjects seem like "fringe members of the sexual society."
Unlike either the subjects of said documentaries, Jack and Emma are squarely within the mainstream of their community, with respective high-powered jobs as an architect and Assistant Dean at a private school. Underneath, however, they're struggling to have a baby, dealing with a sex life so lukewarm that they even lie to their fertility counselor about how frequently they sleep together.
Jack's brother suggests that he fix their problem with an escort, which leads him to meet Izzy (Priscilla Faia); Jack confesses everything to Emma immediately after, who, like any scorned woman, decides to arrange her own date with Izzy, at the least to confront her. Instead, Emma becomes deeply enthralled, which sets the stage for the three of them to explore a business arrangement and, as the series goes on, a relationship.
At first, You Me Her seems like a clichéd and relaxing break from reality; the protagonists are affluent and white, the couple's first stabs at threesomes proceed in a blur of musical montages, and there are numerous romantic-comedy tropes (including an airport chase scene). Creator John Scott Shepherd, however, is intent on puncturing those beautiful surfaces. The series really gets interesting when the music stops and Jack, Emma, and Izzy are forced to contend with whether their relationship is a real three-way commitment, or a way for each of them to avoid their individual and collective fears: of growing up, starting a family, and possibly having to live with making wrong decisions.
You Me Her is committed to showing the honest frustrations and realities about this non-traditional relationship. Izzy's concerns over whether she's an equal partner or just a plaything in Jack and Emma's marriage are entirely understandable, but it never seems to occur to her that perhaps it might be not only awkward, but life-changing, for the couple to welcome her openly into their lives. On the other hand, it also doesn't seem to occur to Jack and Emma that their desire to hide this relationship may be robbing Izzy of her own twenties.
That tension, according to Shepherd, was by design. He wanted to explore what would happen "if you dropped this pretend toad into the real garden where there are real stakes. Where people have real jobs, and real friends, and real communities...to do something that's off the beaten path, or different than what the rest of their tribe is doing. What would that look like in the real world?"
Unicornland's tensions, by contrast, are more internal. The title isn't a nod to the magical creature, but to the moniker given to a single person who has sex with couples. The series follows Annie, freshly divorced and exploring the sexuality she stifled during her marriage. Each short episode is centered around a date (or club encounter, or sex party) with a different couple, each couple and each situation a stepping stone for Annie on her sexual and emotional journey.
Unicorns may be rare, but Annie's adventures are all too relatable. She's awkward and tentative at first, rushing to the bathroom at the beginning of the series' first date and psyching herself up on the mirror: "You're beautiful. They're attracted to you. You're a young, grown up women. You can do this." It's not clear whether she's getting ready for a date or to ask her boss for a raise, but who among us hasn't interrupted a flagging date with a mirror pep-talk?
Web series only have so much space, and it's tempting to wonder what the episodes would look like with more recurring characters, more room for emotional stakes and more time to let the stories play out further. It's fascinating to follow Annie's journey, but, possibly because of the short episodes, it sometimes feels like each moment of growth happens so quickly.
Still, the couples are diverse and it's a pleasure to watch Annie's comfort level increase as the series goes on. In the first couple of episodes she seems eager to please, to achieve like she's gunning for an A in dating. With time, her confidence builds: she heads to a club bathroom with a couple she's picked up on a dance floor or spends a lazy afternoon in bed with a college friend and her girlfriend. She finally has agency, and it's a cathartic viewing experience.
As creator Lucy Gillespie put it in a phone interview, "In the beginning especially, what Annie's doing is really just fucking around. As she continues, I think that anybody who does something for long enough is gonna look into what that is. If you play the piano long enough, you might start to think about music theory."
Both series creators report positive feedback from their non-monogamous viewers. Gillespie says, "We've been showered with support and love. The only negative stuff that I've heard is that it's another woman dating couples, but again, the series is sort of about my experience. As a creator, you get to choose what the series is about, so sorry, buddy. Write your own series."
Shepherd has even heard from poly recappers who review every episode. They seem to like it because "it's not a show about threesomes. It's a show about a romantic relationship between three people." Poly viewers appreciate that, as Shepherd continued, "they're not portrayed as sexually obsessed, or deviant ... They really respond to that. That makes me feel good."
On Sunday, when a United passenger was violently dragged off an overbooked flight by Chicago police, the brutality of the video shocked the internet. The 69-year-old victim was reportedly a doctor who needed to stay on the flight in order to see patients the next morning; nevertheless he was picked out by the airline to be removed after no one on board volunteered to give up their seat in exchange for an $800 voucher. Since the video of the assault went viral, United issued a rather flaccid apology, with its CEO issuing a statement calling the event "upsetting" and saying, "I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers."
If this was an especially brutal instance of an airline mistreating a paying customer, it was also a reminder of the everyday absurdity of how air travel works. Overbooking—selling more tickets than there actual seats—is common and only accepted because most of the time someone is happy to take money in exchange for a later flight. If you fly economy, like most of us, leg room is nonexistent, it's expensive to check your bag (but can also cost you money to bring your luggage on board), and airport security is intrusive and time-consuming. Buying a ticket is an insanely opaque process, and prices change base on the day of the week you book a flight. And none of this is getting better.
What happened to the doctor on United Express Flight 3411 ostensibly feels especially alarming because it could so easily happen to you—who among us has not been an overbooked flight that didn't allow everyone who had purchased a ticket their rightful seat? But if air travel can seem like it wasn't designed for humans, you can thank the United States government for that.
Though the country has centuries-old antitrust laws to prevent companies from becoming monopolies who can control pricing in unfair ways, airlines have basically done so anyways. In the last ten years, the nine biggest airlines in the United States have consolidated into four. The major players today—United, American, Delta and, Southwest—have many common shareholders. Five of the seven largest institutional United shareholders are also the largest shareholders of Delta and Southwest, a 2015 study found. Though some people have called for a boycott of United, an obviously worthy cause, it's difficult to make sure your money doesn't find its way into the pockets of United's owners.
The Barack Obama administration knew this consolidation was a problem approved two of the major mergers over the past decade that has undoubtedly harmed consumers. Perhaps an attempt to correct course after approving two major mergers, in 2013, the Department of Justice filed a suit to stop American Airlines and US Airways from merging—until government officials suddenly changed their minds. According to a blockbuster Pro Publica report from October:
The Justice Department's abrupt reversal came after the airlines tapped former Obama administration officials and other well-connected Democrats to launch an intense lobbying campaign, the full extent of which has never been reported. They used their pull in the administration, including at the White House, and with a high-level friend at the Justice Department, going over the heads of staff prosecutors. And just days after the suit was announced, the airlines turned to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's first White House chief of staff, to help push back against the Justice Department.
The airlines have been getting what they want for four decades. In 1978, Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act, which radically altered air travel in the United States. The bill effectively disbanded the Civil Aeronautics Board, a group that regulated airlines as if they were government entities, in charge of deciding routes and fares for all companies. (Before 1978, these carriers just competed on service, as ticket prices were set by the government.) Deregulating airlines did help consumers by making it way, way cheaper to fly, making traveling long distances more accessible to middle- and low-income Americans. The inevitable downside is that the bill also prohibits states from regulating the "price, route or service of an air carrier," which is why there are no laws protecting consumers from the current oligopoly of airlines.
What damage does this do? According to a Department of Justice complaint cited by ProPublica, a lack of competition allows major airlines to raise fees, limit services like meals, and eliminate some routes. United's treatment of the passenger, and its resulting mishandling of the PR nightmare, were appalling. But the larger issue is that airlines have too much power. In the short term, boycott United, yes. For the long term, however, have you considered socialism?
On Monday, the awards for the 101st Pulitzer Prize contest were announced, celebrating the best in journalism, art, and literature over the past year. Pulitzer Prize administrator Mike Pride revealed the recipients at a ceremony in New York and named author Colson Whitehead and Washington Post journalist David Fahrenthold among the winners.
Whitehead took home the fiction award for The Underground Railroad, his widely popular novel about a young slave named Cora who decides to escape her Georgia plantation using an actual underground railroad made up of a vast train network. The book has already made its way onto Oprah's Book Club, sold more than 85,000 copies, and is slotted to become an adapted miniseries for Amazon helmed by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. Colson had an appropriate reaction to the literary honor, tweeting Monday:
The awards for journalism went out to some of the biggest scoops in the past year. Fahrenthold, the Washington Post reporter who broke the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape story, won the award for national reporting for his focus on Trump's charitable history. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy, and the Miami Herald received the award for explanatory reporting for working together to uncover the Panama Papers story and explain the complex offshore tax havens. The East Bay Times was also honored for its breaking news reporting in the aftermath of the horrific Ghost Ship fire in San Francisco.
"In recent years the focus has been on the decline of newspapers large and small," Pride said Monday. "Yet the work that wins Pulitzer prizes reminds us that we are not in a period of decline in journalism. Rather we are in the midst of a revolution."
Check out all the winners for the 21 awards below.
Sometimes life just smacks you right in the goddamn face when you aren't expecting it.
You can be getting out of your buddy Gerry's truck after a nice time in the ol' diner, about to head into your hotel for the night, and BOOM—a good-for-nothin' deer just dummies you out of nowhere.
That's exactly what happened to Cary McCook at the start of the April, outside of the Stork's Nest Inn in Smithers, BC. McCook, a rapper and environmental management representative at the Kwadacha First Nation, was getting out of his buddy's truck. At the same time a deer, which was being chased by a dog, noticed McCook was in his way and decided the best action, in this moment, would be bodying the living hell out of him.
"Holy F just got hit by a deer and ran over in front of my hotel!! Still see the deer fur on my arm," he wrote on Facebook.
"I'm laughing my ass off, still can't believe it," reads a follow up. "I just keep watching myself get body checked by Bambi!"
After taking his lumps from the deer, McCook said that his shoulder was a little sore but mostly he was fine. The incident happened on April 1, which means that everyone he told thought he was pulling their leg. So, to remedy that, McCook did as any of us would and got the video from the hotel and put it online.
Once up, the video quickly went viral because, you know, it's a video of a dude getting annihilated by a deer.
