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The Poet Who Was Martha's Vineyard's Best-Kept Secret

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Peggy Freydberg may have been Martha's Vineyard's best-kept secret, but that's about to change. An elegant, beautiful and humble woman, Freydberg began writing poetry when she was 90. She died in March at 107, just weeks before "Poems from the Pond: 107 Years of Words and Wisdom, The Writings of Peggy Freydberg" came to print. But your first question still may be "Who?"


The book's editor is Laurie David, producer of the Academy Award-winning An Inconvenient Truth who, more recently, teamed up with Katie Couric to produce Fed Up, a film about the causes of obesity in the United States. 


We caught up with David recently to talk about the Freydberg book.


Huff/Post: How did you meet Peggy and how did the book come about?


David: Last fall, I became an empty nester -- both my daughters are in college -- which meant that I could spend more time on Martha's Vineyard and get a little more invested in the community there. I heard about a reading by some mysterious iconic poet -- a local legend -- that was going to be in someone's studio. Basically, I invited myself to that and went alone. I didn't know anyone there -- about 30 people, all crammed in this studio.


Anyway, Peggy was there; people were reading her poems to her. She was 106. To be honest, my jaw dropped open. I couldn't believe how relatable and beautiful the poetry was. So accessible. She wrote about aging and her life so honestly.  I was the last one to leave.


Peggy, sitting there at age 106, was elegant and charming. Her hair was done, her mind completely there. She told stories and had the room enraptured. She was born in 1908 and had lived through all the world wars. She came of age at a time when women were supposed to be seen and not heard. And she was so incredibly beautiful, even though she fought being defined by her beauty.


I asked to meet Peggy and felt like I had met Emily Dickinson at the end of her life except that no one knew her or had read her poems. I called Nancy Aronie the next day -- we had been in her studio -- and asked her to take a walk on the beach with me. I told her we just had to publish a book of Peggy's poems. Now Peggy -- always humble -- couldn't believe I was interested in her work. In the process, I would go and spend an hour with her -- that's about as long as she could manage. I loved being in her company. She had so much to share.


 


Excerpt from "Preparing Oneself For Dying:"


In shaded rooms,


on yellow pads,


I hide myself from sun


to settle my affairs:


"The Steuben heard of glass, though chipped,


will go to Bet, who never scolds imperfect hearts.


"The primitive I painted years ago,


while sitting in a field behind the house,


will go to Joceluyn, who understands it was


the first day of my life I saw what I was looking at."


 H/P: How would you describe Peggy's poems?


DAVID: Well, here's what Billy Collins, two-term Poet Laureate of the United States -- and Peggy's favorite poet -- said about it: "Reading these poems made me feel like I was being let in on a secret, a secret I'm dying to whisper to lots of other people." The quote appears on the book's back cover.


You write for yourself, but writing needs to be received. And I think with Peggy's work, you will hear the message even if you aren't a poetry fan. No one else is talking about aging with this kind of honesty.


Excerpt from "Appointment With A Gerontologist:"


I am shown to an examining room,


and told to take my clothes off,


and to put on a a paper gown ("gown?")


"The Doctor will be with you shortly."


I hear her push-button, rushed, and ushering voice.


Shivering,


I put the skimpy, stiff kimono on --


white is the coldest color --


like a child's drawing of a paper doll dress.


How absurd it must look


on an old body best kept secret.


 


H/P: How did she see aging?


DAVID: She began writing poems when she was 90 -- and she wrote a lifetime's worth of beautiful poems. She proved that creativity has no age limit, which in itself is a powerful message. She redefined what beauty is. We all should. Look at her face when she was 106 and it says "This is beauty." She died of old age. She fell at Christmas time and broke a hip. She was ready to go after that. 


 


Excerpt from Transformation:


And if this very wise old woman


seems beautiful,


(as some say aging faces often are),


it may be so,


for she is still a striking sight,


with hair as white as swans on water,


and with grey eyes, steely brave,


daring you to see


old flesh in all its shame,


and willing you to know


it must be borne.


But do not tell her


that her face is beautiful.


For she will answer,


with her eyes,


that she knows what she is,


at last,


and it is not her face


has made her so.


 


HP: Did Peggy face loneliness as she aged?


DAVID: She was surrounded by her son and daughter and her granddaughter Tamara, who helped a great deal with this book. She was something of a living legend here on Martha's Vineyard and lived in a house she adored. She had so many friends and admirers. 


Excerpt from "The Dance:"


An old woman,


in a long, loose dress that covers imperfections,


is sitting in a row of empty chairs reserved for wallflowers,


hoping, though she fears it may not happen,


that an old man,


someone she has never known,


will come along, 


and stop before her chair,


and bow,


and take her hand in both of his,


asking for the last dance.


 


H/P: She was married twice, right? And she and her second husband, to whom she was wed for 47 years, were inseparable. Is that relationship in the book?


DAVID: Yes, and so is her great insecurity about his love. Her second husband was a bit of a withholder. She was never completely confident that he loved her. 


 


H/P: There is a lot of Peggy's life story in this collection.


DAVID: Yes. In Birthday Party, she talks about ritualizing her birthday with friends.


Excerpt: 


And when I bent to blow the candles out, 


I did not need to make a wish for something better.


Instead,


with one great whoosh of liberation,


I blew away the ninety years of little lies.


And then I cut the cake,


and passed it,


saying thank you.


 


H/P: What was your favorite poem?


DAVID: Ah, so many. I would say "Making Sure," about losing a little hair comb. When she had this hair comb in place, she always felt ready to go forward. Then in a wind storm, she loses it. Two years later, she continues to search for it.


Excerpt from "Making Sure:"


Two years have passed.


And every time I walk along the driveway of the Tisbury Printer,


(where I always thought I must have lost the comb),


I look down with hope that never loses freshness.


thinking I will see it -- rusted now,


down in the deep, green grass.


The search goes on.


I cannot keep myself from searching,


Although I have,


at last,


begun to wonder


just what it is I'm looking for.


 


 


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The Best Kind Of Supper Club Wonders What We'll Eat On Mars

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It's a question at least one person applying to hop on board Mars One -- the curious project that aims to send a permanent human colony to the Red Planet by 2027 -- must have asked. I repeat: will there be pizza on Mars? Because if you're contemplating a one-way ticket to Mars, I'd imagine you've spent some time pondering the culinary possibilities of a dusty, uninhabited planet.


Well, thanks to artists Heidi Neilson and Douglas Paulson, the answer is: pizza is possible. 


Neilson and Paulson are the minds behind "The Menu for Mars Kitchen," an art show that was on view at Pierogi Gallery's Boiler space in Brooklyn, New York, earlier this summer. The two created their very own Mars Supper Club aimed at figuring out a menu of meals that could plausibly be cooked and consumed on a planet with no naturally occurring liquid water. Together they built a kitchen and held workshops with expert guests, testing off-Earth cultivation of edible plants and the murkiness of food preservation. The dishes they created in the Boiler space became protoypes for a menu they're actually sending to NASA.



Now that the show has closed, Neilson and Paulson might be our foremost authority on Martian cooking outside of the space agency. They graciously agreed to chat via email about their Mars-feasible dishes and the future of interplanetary supper clubs.



How did a "supper club" become your experimental template for imagining the future? What exactly inspired this project?


Each month we went to a restaurant that serves food from a country with an active space program. New York City is full of amazing restaurants with cuisines from around the world, and people from around the world who have adapted their food cultures to their new location with different resources and different audiences. We wanted to think about how the world’s food might migrate to Mars not just [for] an Americana palate. For example -- Ethiopian food would be a good choice for cooking on Mars. It includes lots of grains that are good at filling you up, and don’t necessary require significant amounts of water to grow.





Each supper club outing we would invite a guest with relevant expertise to consider how an aspect of food or agriculture would or wouldn’t work on Mars. We spoke with astrophysicists, gardeners, composters, nutritionists, etc., and would also look at the menu of the restaurants we visited to see what kinds of foods would be Mars-feasible.





Who were these experts, and what were some of the most pressing needs you had to accommodate?


Mars is quite far and quite physically different from Earth, and so some pressing needs were figuring out how to deal with foods with a very long shelf life (five years optimally), figuring out how the food would actually be cooked within a pressurized environment with potentially different gas mixture (no flames), and how the food might taste and feel on Mars -- it will likely smell like peroxide and it will be hard to avoid dust in it. A big need also is psychological. Food will be a really important outlet to break up boredom and hopefully offer a respite from a possibly bleak existence on Mars.



Arlin Crotts, an astrophysicist who has researched living on the moon, helped us out in imagining the flavor and smells of Mars. Gil Lopez, a community garden activist, presented ways of growing and eating fungus and insects, such as crickets and mealworms, as a way of introducing fresh food. Ann Nunziata, a certified Natural Foods Chef at NYC’s Natural Gourmet Institute, came and spoke with us about food energetics -- the holistic study of how food is prepared -- and how it might apply to Mars.



What are some of the Mars-feasible dishes you came up with? Do you have a favorite "recipe"?




The Menu For Mars Kitchen included a pantry of Mars-feasible ingredients and a greenhouse of edible weeds. We’ve imagined that the Kitchen represents the first year (or more) on Mars. We think the first people will arrive to food that will have been sent there ahead of them -- so our pantry is all dried, powdered, or thermo-stabilized foods. We included many familiar basics: lentils, chickpeas, other grains and dried spices. And some unusual ones: powdered cheeses, cricket flour, powdered plant protein, powdered butter.






The greenhouse featured edible weeds because they’re survivors. Unlike say, tomatoes, weeds can adapt quickly and can grow in harsh conditions or with very little water, so they would be a much better choice to take to Mars. We also had a cricket farm of about 1,000 crickets -- which would be more realistic sources of protein than livestock.




It was always interesting when people would try to make something they make often at home, but make it in a Mars-feasible way. One that turned out in a really strange way was an cheese omelette -- made with powdered egg and powdered cheese -- it turned into something that looked like and had the consistency of a small off-yellow pancake, but was actually pretty good. The variation on Burmese fermented tea leaf salad was great.


Given that many of the recipes looked similar -- grains with a variety of raisins or chili peppers or other dried seasonings -- it was also nice when dishes were really sculptural. One chef made a microwaved green tea cake that looked great -- though it wasn’t super tasty. (Editor's note: Heidi liked it).


I made several pizzas using my mom’s recipe and they turned out pretty normal -- though the powdered cheese turned kind of black in the oven. After a month of tasting these foods, I found that I really craved fresh fruits and vegetables -- even though I was only eating at the Mars Kitchen a meal or two a day for several days a week.







The exhibition description mentioned that "a summary of findings will be sent to NASA to augment their preparations for colonizing Mars." Has this happened? 




The exhibition ended and we’re compiling our report for NASA now. This will consist of the recipes we’ve collected, photos of the food, process and participants and actual test recipe samples.




Do you have future plans for the project? Will we be seeing more interplanetary Supper Clubs?




We’ve been excited by the good response in both the Supper Club and the Kitchen -- and there’s clearly a lot of interest out there for more. One of the things that’s really been wonderful about the project is that it brings together a lot of people with different interest and areas of expertise, and interesting people have been coming out of the woodwork and expanding the horizons of the project. So we’re thinking now about how the experiment could grow to include what we’ve done in the Kitchen, and involving new participants.




Beyond NASA, what are you hoping everyday audiences take away from this project?




In our studies over the last year we were really impressed with how great we have it here on Earth. Along with fresh food and seasonal specialties, we can go outside without a spacesuit and feel the sun and breeze. We’re hoping people will take away such an appreciation of our home planet. The first people on Mars will possibly never go outside again, and preparing Mars -- or a tiny piece of it -- to be sustainably inhabitable will be an extremely significant amount of time and work.






















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Looking For Intimacy In The Digital Age, An Artist Recreates Your Sexy Selfies

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You pose, you find a flattering angle, you snap a selfie, you send it to your beau, they check it out and 30 seconds later the image dissolves into the ether.


We use Snapchat operating under this basic assumption of impermanence, but actually our dematerialized pics, whether sexy, silly or tame, are more than likely sitting on a server somewhere and accessible by third-party apps. Rather than stored under a loved one’s bed, our intimate images are unwilling residents of a sort of digital graveyard filled with deleted statuses, tweets and pixels. 


Technology has long played a third party to close personal relationships. Photographer Evan Baden began chronicling its role years before the reign of apps. In 2008, he started a project inspired by the Motorola Razr-spurred sexting craze about how constant self-chronicling influences the way we approach our sexuality.


Though he was initially interested in how technology influences the way we communicate more broadly, he stumbled upon a site that led him to hone his project specifically on sexuality. In the early aughts, sellyoursextape.com proliferated as a page that would give viewers inside access to couples’ intimate relationships. Baden found that the effect of performing for a video you knew would be viewed by thousands made the camera -- and therefore the audience -- an important participant in the act of sex. Couples often assumed poses they thought would be appealing rather than interacting with each other.


So, Baden set off to recreate this effect in a photography project, “Technically Intimate,” for which he scrounged up found sexts online and recreated them using models who volunteered on Craigslist and elsewhere.


“The process of finding models this way was important to me because I wanted the subject in my images to appear as ‘real’ as possible,” Baden told The Huffington Post. “I also enjoy photographing people that are not usually in front of a camera (at least professionally) because they carry an awkwardness of not really knowing how to pose, some of the same awkwardness that was in the found images I used.”


The awkwardness he’s referring to comes from the rigidity of the models’ poses. Rather than expressing an interior confidence or desire, they are reenacting scenes and poses that they’ve seen elsewhere. A girl kneels on her knees, legs apart, and holds her phone out and up, angled down. 


“There’s not much originality in the self-shot images that pervade the Internet, and many of those poses tend to mimic professional pornography or hyper-sexual modeling,” Baden said. “I don’t think that photos taken in this manner are able to carry an intimacy. They are for sexual pleasure, nothing more.”


Baden adds that he feels disconnected from the generation raised on portable devices, developing communities online. While he concedes that digital communication has its benefits -- he and his wife are often separated for long periods of time due to travel and gladly stay in touch in any way possible -- he says “no amount of technology is enough to equal seeing each other face-to-face again.”


“I believe that people of the digital-native generation seem to be of the impression that the sending of sexual images denotes an act of intimacy," he says. "Whereas I find that when an image is sent, any emotional meaning that may have existed between the sender and receiver is severed, and the sender merely becomes a pornographic body (usually headless) for the receiver to consume at their leisure and in perpetuity."


But, Baden’s project isn’t entirely cynical. Though the focal point of each of his pictures is always a mannequin-like girl or boy posed purely to please, he leaves space in the frame to show the messy, realistic rooms where selfies are taken.


“The found images usually contained a fairly interchangeable body posed in a fairly interchangeable way, yet the rooms were wholly unique. They said something more about the person that was pictured.”


Varsity banners, Audrey Hepburn posters, mismatched throw pillows and framed snapshots of friends clutter and fill the spaces, revealing a true -- and yes, intimate -- look at the inner lives of the subjects.


Check out Evan Baden's "Technically Intimate" series and visit his site.



Also on HuffPost:


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Parents Around The World Celebrate #BumpDay With Beautiful Maternity Photos

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Yesterday marked the first annual #BumpDay -- an occasion to raise awareness about maternal and infant health around the world.


What to Expect When You're Expecting author Heidi Murkoff teamed up with WhatToExpect.com, International Medical Corps, 1,000 Days, and the United Nations Foundation to establish this awareness day, she explains in a blog post about the initiative


"Big bumps, little bumps, high bumps, low bumps, pierced bumps, tattooed bumps, covered bumps, bare bumps. Bumps of every shape, size, and color -- each, like the baby inside, one of a kind," she writes, inviting anyone and everyone to post a photo of "your bump or a bump you love" on their social media accounts with the hashtag #BumpDay.


On July 22, over 49,000 Instagram users did just that. Here's a small sample of the many #BumpDay images that helped bring maternal and infant health to the forefront of the public consciousness.




A photo posted by @genn_coco on




A photo posted by Rachel Unrau (@rachelun88) on




A photo posted by NuNu (@beautyitis_29) on




A photo posted by karmenkiiz (@karmenkiiz) on




A photo posted by Kelli Fisher (@smilesmcgee) on







A photo posted by Charlotte Don (@donnehhh) on




A photo posted by Karuzi (@karuzi_m) on




A photo posted by @bexxy250 on




A photo posted by sewinlove (@sewinlove) on





A photo posted by Marina Oros (@marinaoros) on




A photo posted by @lezbveganmoms on




A photo posted by @giovannamuscariello on






A photo posted by Jayden (@_blow.me_) on




A photo posted by Mikaela (@melfalan) on




A photo posted by chEn chEn (@ruthcel14) on












A photo posted by maylisah (@maylisah) on



 


Also on HuffPost:


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Amazon's Book Size Scale Ensures You Can Fit Your New Book In Your Favorite Purse

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Raise your hand if you’ve had this problem: You just ordered an adorable-looking new book online, but when it arrives, it’s not at all the size you expected! It won’t slide comfortably in the slot you’d designated on your little bookshelf, yet it’s too small to function as a coffee table book. Worst of all, it won’t fit in your new Kate Spade purse!



I’m seeing a lot of hands. The situation is dire. 


But wait, what’s that gentle breeze from above? It’s a friendly Amazon drone delivering the good news that they’re now providing a way to avoid this conundrum, aside from, you know, buying your books at brick-and-mortar establishments, where you can try out slipping them into your bag for yourself. (NB: Remember to take the book out and pay for it before leaving the store.) 


Amazon’s new widget allows you to ascertain the height of a book before paying to have it shipped to you, without the fear of accidental theft. The feature shows the book cover image held in the hands of a human outline -- presumably a human of average size -- while showing the book’s height in inches alongside it.


Keen-eyed tweeters have been commenting wryly on this feature since at least March 2015, but it’s time for this useful graphic to be more widely discussed.








The tool replicates part of the in-person shopping experience that the online shopping titan hadn't captured before: The moment when you stand calmly, holding the book against your ribcage with your palms, to see whether it feels just right. Also, the ability to easily assess the relative size of the book as an object. It's just another way to make sure you don't end up with the same problem as the woman who bought a dining room table on eBay and found out later that it was doll-sized. Sort of.


Meanwhile, some are wondering openly whether the size of a book even matters. Do people really care as much as Amazon seems to think? As of press time, Amazon had not responded to our query about why this tool was created.





Some readers do heedlessly purchase books regardless of height and heft, attracted to the content rather than the packaging. Even when it comes to size, tastes vary -- some might relish the comforting size of large, impressive tomes while others enjoy the feather weight of a tiny paperback. Listen, whatever does it for you!


If you want to accessorize properly, however, it's important to keep in mind that books are there to accentuate your personal style, not to distract from it. Amazon already makes it easy to buy only books with white covers, for example, so it's a natural next step to make sure we can only buy books that slide easily into our cutest handbags or that will exactly match the heights of all our other books. Unbroken, clean lines on your bookshelf, as in your wardrobe, are a winning look.



Amazon's book size graphic has just one glaring problem: It measures the books against a humanoid stand-in, rather than you, the future holder of those books. Why not update this tool to allow users to upload full body shots to see how Fifty Shades of Grey would look cradled in our own hands? Get on this, Amazon. The people are waiting.


 Related on HuffPost:


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Conservatives Do Not Like Artist's Pornographic Mandalas, No One Is Surprised

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One thing conservative politicians tend not to like is explicit artwork. One thing they really do not like is explicit artwork that evokes sacred or religious symbols. You know, like Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" or Chris Ofili's "The Holy Virgin Mary." 



The latest artist to ruffle feathers with her cocktail of the sacred and profane is artist Rosalie Maheux. The Toronto-based artist is feeling the heat over her "Sacred Circles" series, a collection of kaleidoscopic mandalas that, upon closer examination, are made from chopped up pornographic images. 




The hybrid images invite the viewer to meditate on the opposing images of spiritual wholeness and sexual objectification. "My use of pornographic imagery in the creation of these detailed patterns is meant to clash with the original meaning of the sacred circle, and create an experience between attraction and repulsion," the artist explained to The Huffington Post.


However, when the works were displayed in the lobby of a Toronto government office building as part of a John B. Aird Gallery exhibition, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party was more repulsed than attracted. 


Progressive Conservative critic Laurie Scott, in particular, was not pleased with Maheux's appropriation of explicit imagery, even if said imagery was used as a critique. "Regardless of the aims or intent of the artist, Ontarians expect their government to lead by example in combating the sexual objectification of women," Scott said in a statement. "The fact that a publicly housed gallery has been allowed to not only display but to sell images of this nature is very worrisome." 


Maheux explained she was "distressed" by Scott's criticism, as well as the way Scott's perspective quickly circulated through Canadian media without providing Maheux's perspective. "What was most shocking about Scott's reaction," she noted, "was her claim that she does not care about the artist’s intentions in this case. Now, I do not believe that an artist should exist beyond criticism, but what a thing to say about a conceptual artwork that is obviously doing something more with its source imagery!" 


Maheux's work constitutes a social critique of mainstream culture's incessant sexualization of women. In the artist's words: "If I am unnerved or upset or intrigued by the ways in which women are represented in certain fields of culture, is it not my right as a woman artist to appropriate this imagery, reconfigure it on my own terms, and offer it back as something transformed?"



This is far from the first time a conservative politician has chosen to ignore the conceptual implications of a triggering artwork due to its graphic or irreverent content. Of course, for Maheux, the explicit nature of her imagery is central to its message, "as its elements draw our attention to our stake in the politics of looking, voyeurism, sexual degradation, sexism, sexuality and so on."


"If the irony of my work is the way in which it conceals controversial and thought-provoking imagery within the divine or meditative form of the sacred circle, then the irony of the Conservative reaction to the piece is that this imagery has sent them into a puritanical frenzy, unable and unwilling to think about the work. I fear that some people stopped thinking as soon as they became aware of imagery that challenged their norms and standards. Such a restrictive attitude is a bit scary, especially when harmful images of women circulate throughout society."


Despite the backlash, John B. Aird Gallery is sticking by Maheux's work. And since the government building is technically a public space operated by an independent board of directors, it looks like the nudie mandalas are here to stay. 


Another day, another artist pissing off conservative politicians. It's all part of the job! 



Also on HuffPost:


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The Pedestal Problem

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mid

We celebrate megastars with a collective fandom that verges on idol worship. You could post a photo of Beyoncé, for example, showing up at an awards show (or eating a cupcake or taxidermy-ing a frog) with simply the word "Flawless" and instantly get favorites and likes. "Yaaas queen!" your followers might respond. "She's SO brilliant!"



There's this magical unity in that sense of community. In an Internet that is filled with trolls and sites that have subsections dedicated to hate, it's a wonderful feeling to gather 'round and celebrate the beloved stuff. It's almost the exact opposite of the Outrage Machine. We occasionally trade in the angry catharsis for a massive feel-good slumber party, where we all virtually braid each other's hair and strangers tell us they think we're really, really pretty.


And yet, as positive as that feeling can be, there is something going on with the stars we hoist up to the mantle.


Consider Amy Schumer, our most recent "queen" and "imaginary best friend," near-simultaneously put on the pedestal and violently shoved off of it. As soon as the crowd started cheering loud enough, there was criticism that she was racist and not feminist enough (and, apparently, not respectful-of-Lucasfilm enough). There's already a cycle of celebrating her then dragging her, as if she's in some sort of sick eternal washer-dryer of public opinion.


There is a nuanced discussion to be had about the recent Schumer backlash. And, to be clear, this is not a covert defense of Taylor Swift -- that Nicki Minaj tweet on Tuesday was some white feminist bull s**t. Still, something strange is going on when we automatically expect all of our (mostly female) idols to be not just awesome at whatever they are famous for, but to also be progressive icons and thought leaders. When did we start treating our stars as ideas? (Note that, duh, obviously, everything is terrible and of course male stars are not held up to the same standards.) 



This is certainly a mode of modern fandom. With the limited access, pre-tabloid culture, it was impossible to enact or even discuss these expectations with as much intensity and regularity. But social media has risen up as a sort of panopticon, watching (and generating think pieces about) every element of celebrities' existence.


It's at least strange that we now ask pop stars (or comedians or actresses or whatever) to fill a set of roles that it used to take a politician, religious leader, author, activist, expert, scientist, Nobel-prize winner and vegan chef to satisfy. This is a phenomenon that is clear not just in the realm of (often-valid) social justice shaming. It extends to everything we expect stars to represent. 


Jennifer Lawrence was accused of body-shaming because she talked about food too much. Mindy Kaling has been repeatedly accused of race blindness, despite being a prominent woman of color. Even the arguably flawless Beyoncé is criticized outside the realm of what we should expect from her as an artist. Her public endorsement of feminism is not enough, she has become a centerpiece for discussing sex positivity and intersectionality, a figurehead for the dialogue around the modern state of womanhood.


Across all levels of celebrity, it's very much OK for people to ask public figures to NOT say and do awful things. It's a different thing when a certain stratosphere of fame comes with the requirement of actively being amazing at articulating social justice issues. When we ask stars to weigh in on feminism or the confederate flag, we force them to take a stance. If they say they'd rather talk about their work, they are seen as weak or even bigoted. We demand them to be absolute champions and threaten to eviscerate them the moment they fail to be Nelson Mandela-level heroes.


Stars shouldn't be beyond reproach, but we expect way too much of them and maybe need to consider outsourcing our role models beyond the red carpet. Art is not an automatic extension of activism. If someone is good at singing or dancing or dressing up and pretending to be another human being for 90 minutes, that's really great. It doesn't mean they're going to be able to save us from the white supremacist patriarchy.


Middlebrow is a recap of the week in entertainment, celebrity and television news that provides a comprehensive look at the state of pop culture. From the rock bottom to highfalutin, Middlebrow is your accessible guidebook to the world of entertainment. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here


Follow Lauren Duca on Twitter: @laurenduca.

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The Graceful Ending Of 'Tangerine' Has Special Significance Off-Camera

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After about 80 minutes of the wild foot chase that forms the central plot of "Tangerine," the kinetic comedy slows down for a thoughtful meditation on its eccentric politics. As a result, the film concludes with one of the year's most special scenes -- one that unassumingly crystallizes the lifelong struggles wrought upon our two protagonists. The moment is at once melancholy and optimistic, and it easily one of pop culture's most dynamic insights into the lives of transgender characters.  


If you haven't seen "Tangerine," know that you are making a mistake and that this post contains spoilers about the ending. If you're fortunate enough to have caught Sean Baker's acclaimed gem, which was shot on iPhone 5's for about $100,000 and saw a rapturous premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival, recall that a stranger in a passing car drenches Sin-Dee with a bottle of urine right after she learns that Alexandra slept with her pimp boyfriend. Sin-Dee storms away, but Alexandra pulls her into a nearby laundromat, tosses Sin-Dee's clothes into a washing machine, removes her own wig and lends it to her vulnerable best friend so she will feel less exposed. For what is ultimately an empowering finale and testament to the power of friendship in the face of adversity, the scene is daringly quiet. 


To a transgender woman, a wig is sacred. Its removal, particularly in public, recalls a time in life when she wasn't able to inhabit her body on her own terms. In the case of "Tangerine," the gesture is the ultimate mark of loyalty, as well as Alexandra's tacit atonement for her transgression. But for Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez -- the trans actresses who portrayed Alexandra and Sin-Dee, respectively, and consulted Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch on the script -- it was tough to swallow. So much so, in fact, that Taylor and Rodriguez requested a closed set, not wanting any friends or spectators to witness the moment. Crew members stood in the parking lot outside the laundromat to ensure no one could see inside the building. 


"They loved it and at the same time they hated it because it truly was a moment in which they’re completely stripped naked. In taking off their wigs, they were completely naked," Baker told The Huffington Post. "And I knew that, and that’s why the scene was written, because it was about the degree that one friend would go to for another friend."


Baker said the actresses, after reading the script, told him they "love" the scene and "understand" its purpose. Still, they needed to psych themselves up to depict the hardships it implicated, with which they were all too familiar. The director compared the experience to shooting a sex scene in terms of how exposed it made Taylor and Rodriguez feel. Not wanting to put them through multiple takes, Baker was relieved when the actresses "nailed it" on the first try.


"I don’t get emotional on my own sets, but that was the one time in my entire career I started to tear up behind the camera," Baker said. "Both of them were so incredibly brave at that moment, and I just hugged them afterward and said, 'Thank you so much, I know that was very difficult to shoot, but I really feel that we got something special there.'"


Baker was right. Not only is it a heartfelt denouement for a movie that at times adopts the tone of a rollicking buddy comedy, but it will do as much to subtly inform audiences of the sensitivities of the transgender experience as anything else we've seen in entertainment yet.


For her part, Taylor would likely agree -- but with a twist. We didn't get a chance to ask her about the scene at the film's New York press day a few weeks ago, but in joking about the types of roles she'd like to play, Taylor suggested a serial-killer flick. And it turns out there may be another way to transmit empowerment through the removal of her tresses: "I want to live through the whole movie, my wig just falls off," she said. 


"Tangerine" is now playing in select theaters. Read more about the film.


 


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This Is What It's Like To Free Dive With Whales

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When filmmaker and photographer Michaela Skovranova and her family moved from Slovakia to Sydney, they jumped into the big blue sea and never looked back.


"We could all look at the endless ocean every single day," she said in an interview for Instagram's blog, where her amazing underwater photos were recently featured.


"One early morning during a swim, I could hear soft clicks of a dolphin and suddenly she appeared right beneath me. She looked at me with the most curious eye -- and just as quickly she was gone," Skovranova said. "I was left breathless, and from then on I wanted to feel that every single day -- and perhaps let other people feel that, too, through my work."



Skovranova, 27, has amassed nearly 30,000 followers since she started sharing her oceanic explorations on Instagram in December. In an email to The Huffington Post, she said she free dives with a fixed lens camera or sometimes just her phone.


"It's very much a stream of consciousness approach," she said.


When she's in the water, with the ocean doing pretty much whatever it wants to, Skovranova said she feels less in control of her body and the environment, which allows her to focus on taking in all the glorious nature.


Lucky for us, her photographs let us take it in, too:










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New Dr. Seuss Book To Be Published Next Week

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Don't fret!


What Pet Should I Get? is nearly here.


(But not just yet.)


The new Dr. Seuss Book, the first since famed author Theodor "Ted" Geisel died in 1991, is set to be released on July 28. An advance copy of the book, reviewed in rhyme Sunday by The New York Times, presents a characteristically whimsical work, centered on two children struggling to decide what pet to take home from the store.



A promo on the Penguin Random House website touts:



What happens when a brother and sister visit a pet store to pick a pet? Naturally, they can’t choose just one! The tale captures a classic childhood moment -- choosing a pet -- and uses it to illuminate a life lesson: that it is hard to make up your mind, but sometimes you just have to do it! 




The publisher first announced the book in February, revealing Geisel's widow, Audrey, had approached the company with the manuscript in 2013. The book itself is to have been written in the late 1950s or early 1960s, based on its original artwork.



"While undeniably special, it is not surprising to me that we found this because Ted always worked on multiple projects and started new things all the time -- he was constantly writing and drawing and coming up with ideas for new stories,”Audrey Geisel said in a release at the time. “It is especially heartwarming for me as this year also marks twenty-five years since the publication of the last book of Ted’s career, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!"


 

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White People, I Hate Talking About Race As Much As You Do

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What's it like to be white?


It's one of several questions that MTV's new documentary "White People," seeks to answer -- What does it fees like to be young and white in America? How do white people feel about their own race? How can they become more comfortable with speaking frankly and openly about race in America, not only as it applies to people of color, but as it applies to them?


The realization of my blackness came early on.


I was 5, and a little girl at daycare (who was Filipino) told me that she didn't want to play Barbie with me because my "dirty skin" would rub off on her white dolls. More than pain, I felt confusion,  and then, gradually, a slow dawning of realization that my dark brown skin made me different from her, different from the dolls and, somehow, this was a bad thing.




In the years since, I've had numerous realizations like these -- big and small moments that have shaped what being black means to me -- how it affects the way I see romantic partners, friends, coworkers. How it affects the way I see myself.


 




I think about my blackness, for better or worse, every single day. And it's exhausting.

 


I think about my blackness, for better or worse, every single day. And it's exhausting. 


"We talk about race in this country a lot," host Jose Antonio Vargas says in the documentary, "But we don't include you [white people] in the conversation. It's only us."


This is a striking and profound idea, and one that in 40 minutes or so the doc explores, though not in depth. The film won't solve racism, or quell the racial tensions currently plaguing the country with stories like Sandra Bland's death, but it starts a vital conversation that is rarely had. 


 




White people are victims of racism too.

 


I welcome this conversation wholeheartedly. I welcome white people into the mix. I'm sick of talking about race, talking at you, and getting called out for "playing the victim." White people are victims of racism too. They are not oppressed or at a racial disadvantage the way people of color are, but we're all suffering from the divisions and miscommunication that racism creates. I don't want white people to talk over me, dismiss my experiences, or derail conversations about race but I do want them to engage.


So as a black person, watching the documentary, there was something strangely cathartic, gratifying, about watching white people talk about being white. It's cathartic because it dismantles the idea that whiteness is a kind of default race, and that black people and minorities are just "obsessed" with race and are the only ones who have anything to say about it.


I've always had a certain frustration in talking to some white people about race, because I feel as though there's always either an acute fear from them of saying the wrong thing and being called racist, a need to overcompensate by shitting on other white people (as if they're not complicit in the racist power structure as well), or a desire to prove they're as much "victims" as we are. 


There's a moment in the documentary where Lucas, a white man who teaches a college workshop on white privilege, confronts his ultra-conservative stepdad Mark about making him feel scared to talk about white privilege and his progressive beliefs on race.


"You can't just slam [the concept of white privilege] into me and say 'you're a jerk,'" the stepdad replies, "And I don't want to be ashamed that I'm white."


It's frustrating, but fascinating to think that some white people feel that recognizing their privilege -- or recognizing that racism exists and somehow benefits them -- means having to be ashamed of being white. But it's not surprising. 


I have close white friends who I know, probably, at one point in their lives have said or done something that might have offended me as a black woman (singing all the words to "N****s In Paris" for one). I'm a straight person who views herself as an ally to the LGBTQ community, but I can think of several times that I've said or done things that I'm ashamed of, that I know my friends in the community would be disappointed. But ignoring that part of me and not talking about it frankly does no one any good -- most of all myself. 



 


So much of our racial conversation hovers around this idea of shame. It's shame, and fear, that hinders us. As a black person, contrary to popular belief, I don't love to talk or even write about race. I do it because I feel I have a responsibility to do so, but it's exhausting.


And, at times, it's  just as terrifying for me as it is for white people. My experiences make me passionate about race, but there's always the fear when talking to white people, even some of my closest friends, that if I become too frank I might alienate them or make them feel uncomfortable.


I've been socialized to protect white people from having to talk too deeply about race, and conversely white people have been socialized to feel as though they don't have to (or shouldn't) talk about it all. But we need to push through. 


This is never going to be an easy conversation. But it doesn't have to be. 


 


Also on The Huffington Post: 


 


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Images Of Obama Are Everywhere Across Africa Ahead Of Visit

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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — Barack Obama, the United States' first African-American president, has captured the imagination of people across the continent where his face shows up on billboards, backpacks, T-shirts and restaurants.


This week Obama will be visiting Kenya, where his father was born, for a summit on entrepreneurship before heading to Ethiopia to address leaders at the African Union headquarters. Wherever he goes, large crowds are expected to gather and cheer him.


With his African ancestry, locals have been quick to claim the president as one of their own and his name turns up in surprising places, such as emblazoned across mobile phones in Bujumbura, Burundi.



In the Kenyan town where his step-grandmother still lives, near Lake Victoria, the local high school has been named "Senator Obama," a legacy of his visit there in 2006 before he became president.


At the seaside in Conakry, Guinea in West Africa, a thatched hut boasts to be the Obama restaurant. Not to be outdone, Accra, the capital of Ghana, has a hotel restaurant named for the president.


In perhaps one of the greatest honors Africa can bestow, Obama's picture is side by side with that of former South African president and renowned activist Nelson Mandela outside a Pretoria clinic where the South African leader was treated.


Photos below show images of the U.S. President across African countries:


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Dad Turns His Kids Into Cartoons With Awesome #BreakfastMugshots

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Superheroes have breakfast at this house.


... Well, sort of. 


Lance Curran, a father of two from Chicago has a quirky Sunday tradition. He lines up his comic book and cartoon-themed mugs with his kids' faces at breakfast time and snaps a picture. The result? A photo that looks like a cartoon character is eating breakfast.



A photo posted by Lance Curran (@wearecareful) on



 


The dad, a self-proclaimed "comic book nerd," shares the photos on Instagram with the hashtag #breakfastmugshot. Though the fun started more than two years ago, the silly pictures only recently generated buzz. In addition to going viral on Reddit with more than 4100 upvotes, the photos were also covered by various media outlets.


 



A photo posted by Lance Curran (@wearecareful) on



 


 Curran told The Huffington Post that the attention has been pretty cool -- especially for his kids. 


"It's been crazy," the creative father said. "[The kids] being able to see themselves on the news -- that blew their little minds and they were super stoked and excited about it." 



A photo posted by Lance Curran (@wearecareful) on



 


The whole tradition began by chance, the dad told HuffPost. During breakfast one morning, Curran happened to notice that his Joker mug lined up with his son's head. After he posted a photo of the funny scene on Instagram, he saw that the picture quickly became one of his most popular on the app and began sharing those types of pictures more regularly. Curran, who, in addition to co-owning a brewery in Chicago, also works for online community and e-commerce site Threadless, was later inspired by his coworkers at the site to create a hashtag for it and thus the #BreakfastMugshot was born. He's since taken "mugshots" of Batman, The Hulk, and Spider-Man among other characters. 



A photo posted by Lance Curran (@wearecareful) on



 After seeing Curran's photos, others on the Internet have even begun to post #BreakfastMugshots of their own. The father told HuffPost that he plans to continue the ritual for the foreseeable future, and with the photos' popularity he joked that there's some pressure to buy more mugs.  


 


 Check out more of Curran's #BreakfastMugshots below. 






A photo posted by Lance Curran (@wearecareful) on







A photo posted by Lance Curran (@wearecareful) on




A photo posted by Lance Curran (@wearecareful) on



 


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New York Artist Sculpts Sandcastles That Would Make M.C. Escher Proud

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When it comes to sandcastle construction, most people focus on the basics -- a motte, a bailey, maybe a keep and a moat. New York artist Calvin Seibert, on the other hand, has bigger ideas.


Inspired by the brutalist buildings of Marcel Breuer and the neofuturist designs of Eero Saarinen, Seibert creates impossible structures marked by sharp geometry and tessellated patterns. His striking sandcastles would be more at home in a survey of architectural feats than on the shores of an American beach.


Seibert forms his shapes by hand, using an assortment of rectangular plexi trowels he makes himself, packing and trimming until his designs take on their sharp edges. At 57 years old, he's been working in the sand for five decades, he says, transitioning from the sand pile constructions of his childhood trips to Colorado to his adult artworks on the beaches of New York, Hawaii, California and Texas. 



"I suppose what drew me into playing/working with sand is how quickly a shape can be formed," he explained to The Huffington Post. "While I may spend eight or 10 hours on a single castle, the final results, both in size and complexity, would not be easily achieved in any other sculptural medium."


"And its free: no trip to the lumber yard or art supply store."


He describes sandcastle construction as a test, with nature and time working against the creator. "I rarely start with a plan, just a vague notion of trying to do something different each time," he says. "Once I begin building and forms take shape I can start to see where things are going and either follow that road or attempt to contradict it with something unexpected. "


In his mind, his castles are more mashups of influences and ideas than anything else; part fishing village homes, part modernist sculptures. When his mashups are successful, he describes them as unconfined and unfinished.  "They become organic machines that might grow and expand," he added. "I am always adding just one more bit and if time allowed I wouldn't stop."


For more on his work, check out his Flickr page.



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These Sea Sapphires Can 'Disappear' Before Your Eyes, And Scientists Finally Know How

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Sea sapphires live by a "now you see 'em, now you don't" mantra. But when they do make an appearance, they're the crown jewel of the undersea world.


The iridescent creatures -- scientifically known as Sapphirina copepods -- can appear in hues ranging from fluorescent blue, like the little guy above, to bright gold. Researchers have long wondered how the copepods pull off the Houdini act, in which they go from bright, leaf-shaped swimmers one moment before a quick turn renders them nearly invisible.


But members of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have finally discovered the secret: "alternating layers of hexagonal-shaped guanine crystals and cytoplasm," according to a study they published last month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.


In layman's terms, this means the copepods have honeycomb-shaped layers of fluid-filled "crystals," which also contribute to the sheen seen on fish scales. When the sea sapphires move, the angle of light produces a colorful reflective effect, with different-sized crystal layers in different species resulting in a variety of hues.


As New Scientist notes, the sea sapphire in the video above seems to disappear when it tilts to an angle of 45 degrees away from the sun. This causes the reflected light to "slip into the ultraviolet spectrum," which is invisible to humans.


The researchers who conducted the study did not respond to a request for comment. 


Another surprising find? Only males display the unusual effect -- female sea sapphires are exclusively translucent, meaning they're rarely, if ever, visible to the human eye.


“An intriguing question that still remains is whether the differences in color are genetic and each male is born with a defined color, or whether they can control the reflected color,” Lia Addadi, a co-author of the study, told New Scientist. 


Wired UK notes that the application of the discovery could aid biomimicry research, including the pursuit of the elusive invisibility cloak.


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Dear Marvel, George R.R. Martin Is Tired Of Your Villains

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George R.R. Martin is a proud Marvel fanboy, as he admits in his most recent post on his "Not a Blog" LiveJournal. And while the Song of Ice and Fire author initially had his doubts about Paul Rudd's "Ant-Man," he was pretty pleased with the film, writing that it was "right up there" with some of the studio's best. There's one thing, though, Martin doesn't like about Marvel's movies.


In his post about "Ant-Man" from Tuesday, Martin wrote that one of his "quibbles" with the Marvel franchise is its villains. "I am tired of this Marvel movie trope where the bad guy has the same powers as the hero," Martin wrote, citing examples of the Hulk vs. Abomination and Spider-Man vs. Venom. "I want more films where the hero and the villain have wildly different powers," Martin wrote. "That makes the action much more interesting."


If anyone knows bad guys, it's Martin, who has created a fair share of despicable and evil characters in his book series alone. (Think Joffrey and Ramsay.) Maybe Marvel should commission Martin to pen one of their superhero films.


For the full post, head to Not a Blog.



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Mom With Stage 4 Cancer Writes Letters To Her Daughter For Future Milestones

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Wisconsin mom Heather McManamy won't let a terminal cancer diagnosis keep her from being part of her 4-year-old daughter's future. 


The 35-year-old is writing letters for her little girl Brianna to read when she reaches major life milestones like her first lost tooth, first breakup, wedding day, 30th birthday and first baby of her own -- as well as smaller moments, like when she has a bad day or just needs some random encouragement.


"I want her to always know that I did everything I could possibly do to be here," McManamy told WMTV, adding that she doesn't mind if Brianna doesn't read all the letters because it becomes too painful for her. “Everyone mourns differently,” she said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “But, if there is some way that I can provide comfort, I want it to be there. That brings me comfort and peace of mind beyond words.”



McManamy during her interview with WMTV


Two years after she was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer, McManamy now has stage 4 cancer that has metastasized to her bones and liver. "Once you're stage 4 there is no cure," she told WMTV.


So far, the mom has written over 40 cards -- a number that is both an accomplishment and source of grief. "It was difficult once I was done, just looking at this pile that's a physical representation of everything I’m going to miss," she told WPXI.



McManamy going through her letters with WMTV


For now, she's focused on living life to the fullest.“While treatment options are dwindling, I’m still here,” she told BuzzFeed. Back in September, McManamy set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for medical bills, family expenses while she can't work, funeral costs, and even college tuition for Brianna -- anything to help ease their financial burden as the mom spends her remaining time with her husband and daughter. 


As for the little girl's future, the mom told ABC, "I just want her to find her happiness. Life it short. If she’s true to herself, everything will be OK.”


A beautiful message from a heartbreaking story. 


 


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China's Web Junkies: Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?

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While the global conversation about the Internet and China tends to focus on censorship, hacking and the Great Firewall, many Chinese parents are worried about a far different problem: addiction.


That’s because thousands if not millions of Chinese parents have watched their children get sucked into a vortex of gaming marathons and endless chat room conversations. Gamers -- most of them young men -- sometimes spend days or even weeks at Internet cafes, subsisting on minimum sleep. Some teens have even committed suicide and killed in the name of gaming. One Chinese expert has estimated the number of Internet addicts in the country at 24 million.







"A hundred years ago we had opium dens," Tao Hongkai, a sociologist who writes on Internet addiction, told The Los Angeles Times. "Now we have these [cafes], which are the equivalent of spiritual opium." 


In response to this trend, China has been making concerted and controversial efforts to stem the tide. Several years ago, China became the first country to classify excessive attachment to the Internet -- electronic heroin, as one expert called it -- as a clinical addiction. (Many health experts in the U.S. have disputed the classification, while still noting there can be real issues with screen obsession.) 


But if there’s one public health hazard greater than excessive Internet use in China, it just might be the draconian response of health officials.


Internet detox boot camps have sprung up around the country, using a combination of therapy and intense physical training to yank kids out of the digital world and back to the real one. But in this emerging field, reports of abuse and even deaths have shocked parents and raised questions about which is worse: the disease of the cure? 


Two Israeli filmmakers set out to explore that question and the nature of interpersonal relationships in the digital age in the documentary "Web Junkie," currently available for streaming on PBS’ POV. 




The documentary goes behind the scenes at one of China’s first Internet addiction boot camps, looking at the lives of teens who chose binge gaming over their friends, schoolwork and even families. In the film, some of the young men brag about spending 300 hours playing World of Warcraft, with the only breaks coming in the form of short naps at their computer.


“They drop out of school, they lose touch with friends, they lose interpersonal communication skills, they stop working,” "Web Junkie" director Hilla Medalia told The Huffington Post. “They’re online day and night, and in extreme cases they use diapers.”


Tracking the teenagers during their time at the Daxing Boot Camp outside of Beijing, the filmmakers heard teens express that they were disillusioned with the world around them. “Reality is too fake,” remarked one young man, even while fellow patients laughed at him for forming an emotional bond with someone he met online.


“We’re always connected, but we’re much more alone,” said Medalia. “We’ve created this new solitude.”


The filmmakers didn’t witness outright physical abuse at the Daxing facility, but the same can’t be said for Internet camps in other parts of China. Wired reported in 2010 that at a military-style camp in southern China, a teenage boy was beaten to death less than 24 hours after entering the camp when he couldn’t continue running around a track.



The Beijing News reports that a couple had to return to a camp in the city of Zhengzhou to pick up their daughter's body after she died from being "repeatedly dropped." When they were there, they were bombarded with phone numbers from fellow campers desperate for their parents to come and rescue them. Students in several camps have hung “SOS” signs outside of windows when outsiders appear.


Parents say they followed up on advertisements about the camps out of desperation while watching their children plunge deeper and deeper into the online world. "Web Junkie" reveals that many children are booked involuntarily, taken to the boot camps after being drugged or tricked.


The shocking stories of physical abuse have led to crackdowns on unauthorized facilities -- some of which are run for profit by those with no medical background. It has also started a national conversation about how to treat children excessively attached to Internet gaming.


Many Chinese and international experts advocate traditional talk therapy, or even innocuous hobbies such as raising puppies or horses. Psychologist Kimberly Young, a frequently cited expert on Internet addiction, recommends softer approaches such as family therapy and support groups.


But Tao Ran, the founder of the Daxing Camp, says he sees similar biological and behavioral patterns in Internet and heroin addicts. Medalia said the Daxing Camp claims it has cured around 70 percent of Internet addicts at its facility, but it's not possible to independently verify that number.  



The directors of "Web Junkie," Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia, also hoped to bring the conversation beyond China, examining how the increasingly blurred lines between the digital and physical realities are reshaping relationships as we know them.


Internet addiction is a "universal issue that is becoming progressively all encompassing as the boundaries between the real and the virtual become increasingly blurred," Shlam and Medalia wrote in a filmmaker statement for PBS’ POV. "Through this process, we could not help but feel that something is lost in the physical, ‘real,’ everyday lives of those living in the Western world. This phenomenon, these feelings are what inspired us to take this journey."

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Here's When The 'Jurassic World' Sequel Will Come Out

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The "Jurassic World" sequel now has a release date.


Universal Pictures will unleash another set of dinos on June 22, 2018. The untitled sequel will also feature the return of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, so you can count on more running-in-heels-from-pterodactyls two summers from now.


This week, "Jurassic World" surpassed "The Avengers" to become the third highest-grossing movie of all time. The film has brought in $1.52 billion worldwide, ranking just below "Avatar" at $2.79 billion, and "Titanic" at $2.18 billion. The film also had the largest opening weekend in history. Just wait for the sequel to crush those records.



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What Your Favorite Songs Can Tell You About The Way Your Brain Works

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 Why do you love certain types of music and hate others? It may come down to the way your brain processes information. 


Psychologists already know that music preferences are linked to personality, but a new study finds that your taste in music is also associated with the way you think.


The University of Cambridge study, which was published Wednesday in the online journal PLOS One, found that people who are high in empathy prefer "mellow" music -- including R&B/soul, adult contemporary and soft rock -- while those with more analytical minds tend to prefer more "intense" music -- such as punk, heavy metal and hard rock.


Taylor Swift or AC/DC? 


For the study, U.K. researchers recruited over 4,000 participants using a Facebook app. The participants filled out personality questionnaires, and then were asked to listen to and rate 50 different songs from a variety of genres. 


The researchers found that empathetic individuals ("empathizers") tended to prefer more emotionally driven music, while analytic minds ("systemizers") gravitated toward music with greater sonic complexity. 


"Empathizers, who have a drive to understand the thoughts and feelings of others, preferred music ... which featured low energy, negative emotions (such as sadness) and emotional depth," David Greenberg, a Ph.D. candidate at Cambridge and the study's lead author, told The Huffington Post in an email. "On the other hand, systemizers, who have a drive to understand and analyze the patterns that underpin the world, preferred music ... which not only features high energy and positive emotions."


Why? The researchers hypothesize that people seek out music that reflects and reinforces their own mental states.


"People’s musical choices seem to be a mirror of who they are," Greenberg said.  


How it could help 


A next step for the research would be to determine whether music with emotional depth can actually increase empathy. 


If so, therapies using music to boost empathy could be devised. In particular, these could help individuals with autism, who often rank below average in empathy but have heightened levels of systemizing.


"Findings from this line of research can be applied to music therapies, clinical interventions, and even computer-based interactive programs designed to teach emotions and mental states via music to individuals on the autistic spectrum," the study's authors write


Or the results might just be used to optimize your Spotify "discover" recommendations. 


"Not only can these findings be useful for clinicians in various therapeutic [settings]," Greenberg added, "but it can also be useful for the music industry and for music recommendation platforms such as Pandora and Apple Music." 

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