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A Photographer’s Intimate Portrait Of One Of Italy’s Oldest Crime Syndicates

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ATHENS -- The Camorra is one of the largest crime syndicates active in the Italian Campania region and its capital city, Naples. It is one of Italy's oldest and largest criminal organizations, dating back to at least the 16th century.


The origins of the Camorra are not entirely clear, but the first official use of the word is documented in 1735, when a royal decree authorized the establishment of eight gambling houses in Naples. The word is a combination of the Italian word for “boss” (cappo) and a game that was played on the streets of Naples, “morra.”


The Camorra became widely known through the book “Gomorra” by Roberto Saviano, that describes the relentless war between Camorra clans, the cocaine trade, the waste disposal business and the shiny “fake” dresses of the fashion industry. While the Sicilian Mafia is structured more like a pyramid, the Camorra is organized horizontally, with clans acting independently and feuding constantly.


The mafia is still a lucrative “business” in Italy. According to the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, the different mafia organizations -- the Camorra, Cosa Nostra, Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita -- reap in more than 150 billion dollars annually.



Another Naples resident who has studied the Camorra is photographer Roberto Salomone. He recently spoke with HuffPost Greece about his experiences working as a photographer in Naples.


Why did you become a photojournalist?


I wanted to become a photojournalist from an early age; when I was in high school. Sometimes I’d skip school and I’d walk the streets of Naples taking pictures. Then I went to Rome and studied photography for three years at the Istituto Europeo di Design. I graduated in 2006.



 


What topics do you like to photograph?


I mainly photograph stories with a strong social theme. If I had to choose my favorite photographic project right now, in addition to the Camorra project, it would be the refugee crisis. I’ll be heading to Calais, Serbia and the Greek-Macedonian border in the next few weeks. It is something I want and have to document. It's important to be able to give next generations the opportunity to understand how the world changes.



Tell us a little bit about the Camorra. 


The Camorra is something that I, as a Neapolitan, feel everyday. Currently, it is absolutely impossible to beat it, as it is fully integrated within the Neapolitan and Italian society.


That’s the true power of the Camorra, the ability to hide in silence and affect everyday life.


After several years of investigating, the authorities managed to arrest two of the most important fugitives, Antonio Iovine and Michele Zagaria, godfathers of dei Casalesi.Today, the organization is “headless.” This results in chaos, as the “little Camorra soldiers” kill each other in the middle of crowded city streets. At this moment there is a “war” raging among rival gangs over control of the pharmaceuticals market. Many young people are armed and ready to kill.


 



That's the true power of the Camorra, the ability to hide in silence and affect everyday life.



 


Naples is one of the reasons I became a photojournalist -- there are stories around every corner. Every face has its own special story. You have to explore the city to understand it. I am so grateful to this city because it taught me so much about going into the deep, in my eyes it's a great school.


You have photographed refugees both in Italy’s Lampedusa and on the Greek island of Lesbos. How did you feel about the crisis?


This crisis will change the world geopolitically. Things have changed since I was in Lampedusa five years ago.


We underestimated the problem and we are paying the consequences now. It is imperative that we save the people trying to flee from wars, dictatorships and famines. The notion of borders has changed in the past few months.


In Lampedusa, a few years ago and in Lesbos a few weeks ago, we saw something which we were not used to seeing: I saw the most primal joy, the joy of having managed to survive. And this is the most powerful thing one can see. Greece and Italy are the two “uncontrolled” doors for the refugees.



Naples is one of the reasons I became a photojournalist -- there are stories around every corner.



Have you ever met Roberto Saviano? What is your opinion of him?


I have never met Saviano face to face. He has been photographed occasionally. Italy should thank Saviano, because through “Gomorra,” the issue of the Camorra became known in the homes of millions of Italians.


The way Italians reacted to it was strange. As if no one had heard of the Camorra before his book. On the other hand, it became one of our most exportable products.


There were television crews from all around the world, who wanted to go to the Naples suburb of  Scampia and see the Vele, the large urban housing projects where some scenes of “Gomorra” were filmed. Naples became Camorra land. I am not saying the Camorra doesn't exist in Naples, but it is a huge mistake to connect the city with the Camorra.


Take a look at Roberto Salomone's stunning  photos of the Camorra below. 


 



























This story originally appeared on HuffPost Greece. It was translated into English and edited. 


 





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Out Magazine's OUT 100 List Features Caitlyn Jenner, Robbie Rogers And More

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As 2015 winds to a close, Caitlyn Jenner can add "Newsmaker of the Year" to her ever-growing list of accomplishments. 


The 66-year-old Olympic champion, who came out as transgender in an April interview with Diane Sawyer, nabbed that prestigious title on Out magazine's OUT 100 list for 205. Meanwhile, "Portlandia" creator and star Carrie Brownstein was honored as "Artist of the Year," and British singer-songwriter Olly Alexander is the "Breakout of the Year."


Jenner told the magazine that she's "terribly excited about the future" after what's turned out to be a banner year. 


“I want to be excited about life always. For the longest time, I was not. I isolated myself from the world. I never felt like I fit in anywhere,” Jenner told the magazine. “Today that’s all changed.” 


Each year Out magazine chooses 100 of the most compelling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the world to create its OUT 100 list. Honorees are chosen from all walks of life, and include actors, writers, politicians, activists, sports figures and artists, among others. 


Also featured on the 2015 list are U.S. soccer star Robbie Rogers, "Looking" actor Russell Tovey and "Cosby Show" icon Raven-Symoné.  Check out the full OUT 100 here, and check out a selection of the list below. 


Congrats to the honorees! 


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There's A Virtuoso At The White House And The Work She's Doing Is Fascinating

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Sophia is a project to collect life lessons from interesting people. Subscribe to get our updates directly via Facebook or email, or share your own wisdom.


A decade ago, Glamour magazine declared Maya Shankar one of the country's 10 most impressive women in college. Asked at the time to name her dream job, Shankar said, "Science adviser to the President."


You can guess how this story ends. How it begins is more unexpected.


The daughter of Indian immigrants, Shankar was a gifted young violinist, accepted by the Juilliard School of Music at age 9 and later selected for private instruction by violin master Itzhak Perlman. In her early teens, she was performing internationally and playing concertos on NPR; a promising musical career stretched ahead.


Stunningly, by age 15, it was over. While practicing a challenging piece, "I heard something pop, and it was painful," she recalled. "And that was it." She continued training for over a year despite a severe hand injury. Eventually she needed a cast, and "finally [doctors] told me that I basically had to stop playing completely."


Shankar describes the sullen summer after her musical dreams were smashed. While cleaning her parents' basement, she came across a book on language development that sparked a new passion: cognitive science, the study of the mind. It became the focus of her undergraduate studies at Yale, then her Ph.D. at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and finally a post-doctoral program at Stanford.


Today, Shankar is Senior Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She and her colleagues have formed a new team that leverages the latest social and behavioral science to make federal programs simpler and more effective. How does that work in practice? Here's one example from a New York Times report earlier this year:



The federal government found a clever way to make a little extra money last summer.


 


Some vendors who provide federal agencies with goods and services as varied as paper clips and translators were given a slightly different version of the form used to report rebates they owe the government.


 


The only difference: The signature box was at the beginning of the form rather than the end. The result: a rash of honesty. Companies using the new form acknowledged they owed an extra $1.59 million in rebates during the three-month experiment, apparently because promising to be truthful at the outset actually caused them to answer more truthfully.



In a conversation with HuffPost, Shankar discussed the latest developments in her work at the White House as well as the her musical career, her exemplary education, and the lessons she's learned along the way. 



What are some recent notable examples of behavioral science improving policy?


Two examples come to mind. The first is the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which President Bush signed into law and which codified the practice of automatically enrolling workers into retirement savings plans.


That insight of automatic enrollment was based on behavioral economic research showing that switching from an opt-in to an opt-out enrollment system can dramatically increase participation rates.


Since the implementation of this policy, automatic enrollment coupled with automatic escalation of savings have led to billions of dollars in additional savings by Americans. It's really had a profound impact.


Another example: research showed that a complex application form for federal student aid posed far more than just a hassle for students. In some cases, it led students to not fill out the form, or to delay or forgo going to college altogether.


This is really remarkable, right? A complex form can make the difference between a kid going to college or not. But that same study demonstrated that streamlining the process of applying by pre-populating the form with families' existing tax return data, and providing families with application assistance, significantly boosted college enrollment rates.


Obviously, those sorts of insights had great application for policy, and President Obama in September articulated steps that the administration is taking to simplify the form, which benefits millions of students.


The overall message here is that it's really important that we're designing these programs and policies with Americans in mind. They're going to be best served when government programs are easy to access, and when program information and choices are presented clearly.


What behavioral science teaches us is that when programs aren't designed in this way, there are disproportionate consequences. It can mean a kid going to college or not, it could mean someone saving or not—and the federal government is now working to make sure that when we're designing these policies, we're taking that perspective in to account.


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Above: Another example of behavioral science in action. Sending low-income, college-accepted high school graduates text message reminders like the one above to complete required forms led 8.6 percent more students to successfully enroll in college, the SBST found.


The Social and Behavioral Sciences Team has been in place for a little over a year now. What do you know today that you didn't know as this was getting started?


I was a post-doc at Stanford studying cognitive neuroscience and psychology. I joined the White House in 2013; my boss Tom Kalil recruited me to join the Office of Science and Technology Policy.


He's incredible and really entrepreneurial, has all these really innovative ideas. He asked me what I wanted to accomplish while I was at the White House and I pitched the idea of creating a dedicated team of behavioral science experts that could help federal agencies improve their programs using the research that we have about behavior.


When I started on this mission, I didn't have a budget, I didn't have a mandate to build a team of this kind. In some ways, that's the most exciting endeavor that you can embark upon, because you know at the end of the day that the enterprise is only going to succeed if people are seeing the inherent value in what you're proposing, and if you've successfully inspired your colleagues to adopt these different approaches.


So I looked for support and collaborators and resources, whoever I could find within the government. I remember when I first joined, going from federal agency to federal agency, extolling the virtues of behavioral science, pointing to success stories in agencies, and building out projects with agencies that could serve as proof points—quick wins that demonstrated the value of adopting this approach.


With time, the agencies began to see firsthand the benefits of using behavioral insights. These wins ultimately gave us the leverage we needed to formally establish a cross-agency team and recruit some amazing behavioral scientists in the government.


It's just been a totally thrilling experience, because now, a year-plus later, thanks to the hard work of my teammates and colleagues, we now have a team of over 15 behavioral science experts in government. We have over a dozen completed projects with agencies. And most importantly, we have an executive order that institutionalizes the team and issues a directive to agencies to integrate behavioral science in to their programs.


So it's an extremely exciting, dynamic environment to work in. I hope that more young people will take the opportunity to join the federal government and become public servants, because ideas can really flourish right from the ground up in our environment.


In your team's first annual report, you mention that a priority for the year ahead is empowering students through "learning and belonging mindsets." Can you explain?


Research shows that when you teach kids that their brains and their abilities are like muscles that can grow with hard work and perseverance, as compared more fixed traits like eye color, you see much better outcomes in school. Perhaps even more importantly, you see greater resilience; if they don't do well at something, they ascribe it not to an inability to actually do that thing in the first place, but maybe not working hard enough or trying enough.


So very brief interventions that teach students this lesson can have a really profound impact on how students engage with their education system, and on their achievement. Over the past few years we've organized a series of meetings with academic researchers, the philanthropic community, school districts, practitioners and the like to figure out what a research roadmap looks like. We want to understand what pressing questions in this field exist and invest in research to answer them, and also figure out how to scale what we do know so it can reach more students across the country.


Earlier this year at the White House Science Fair, researchers announced the largest study ever of learning mindsets that's going to take place at over 100 high schools nationwide. So we're continuing to build an evidence-based pool for the efficacy of approaches. At this point, we just want to keep refining the interventions and making sure that they reach every student who could benefit from them.





Above: Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck's foundational book on learning mindsets. Research published this year by Dweck and others found that "brief web-based interventions with high school students can produce big results in their schoolwork."


Another priority area mentioned in the report is promoting the use of evidence in federal policymaking. 


From day one, President Obama has been fully committed to using the best evidence that we have to inform how we design policies and programs. And this effort, the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, is part of a much broader administration wide effort to leverage evidence-based approaches.


In our case, we're working on ensuring that what we know from scientific research about decision-making, and how people follow through on decisions, and how they engage with programs, and respond to them, are integrated into how we are designing policies and programs.


That translation doesn't happen automatically or overnight. It requires a dedicated effort to ensure that we're leveraging the best research. We definitely see ourselves as part of a much broader overall push for using evidence-based approaches and making the government more people-friendly and user-centered.



I want to ask a bit about your own background. Is there anything your parents did for you that many parents don't do that had a substantial impact on your life?


From a very young age, my mom instilled in me the importance of being proactive, and seeking out opportunities and resources to achieve your goals, because very few opportunities in life just land in your lap.


She moved to the U.S. when she was 21, from south India, and she didn't know a single soul in this country, including her newlywed husband, who she had just met 21 days prior. And yet, in spite of all that, she made an incredible life for her family, my three siblings and me, and it was because she was so bold. She's just a total go-getter in all respects.


I think this trait manifested in a lot of ways. She works at Yale University in their international office, and has been an incredible advocate for international research scholars and students in the Yale community.


Then, on a personal level, I've witnessed the skill of hers firsthand in my own violin career. My mom had no experience with Western classical music when she came to this country. Interestingly, she was actually a very talented Indian classical music singer.


But once she discovered that I had an affinity for playing the violin, she instantly became like a sponge, soaking up every bit of information she could from our community, about the violin teachers in the area, concerts that I could perform at, groups that I could join and the like. 


I've fought to cultivate this proactive spirit over the years. And those traits have been very valuable for me in my job at the White House.


My dad's a physics professor at Yale, and he always gave me so much perspective growing up. He was constantly reminding me of what really mattered, and the importance of not sweating the small stuff.


He also emphasized the importance of not taking yourself too seriously. He's by a mile the funniest person that I've ever met in my life. And he has successfully made me laugh during even the most difficult times, and I think it's just been powerful for me to see just how much humor can help you get through a lot of stuff in life.





You mentioned your violin practice. I'm curious, looking back, how you've come to think about your hand injury. It's hard to imagine that you consider it in positive terms, but of course it's allowed other aspects of your life to blossom. 


I wouldn't change anything. If anything, it led me to my current job at the White House, which has been the most gratifying, rewarding experience of my entire life. It's an honor to serve our president, and to impact people in positive ways at such scale, so if it only led me here, it would be reason to not want to change the past.


If there's one thing that I could have done differently during my musical life, it would have been to not take it for granted. It's really easy to take something for granted until you lose your ability to do that thing. 


I wish that I had taken a step back from the intensity of the very competitive violin world at the time. I think I could have cultivated a stronger emotional relationship with my instrument, and just relished the joy of producing music on such a beautiful instrument.


Seven years after the injury, things had healed and I had this fluke experience—I was invited to perform with [celebrated violinist and conductor] Joshua Bell in South Africa. Because I hadn't played in those seven years, I had lost a considerable amount of the technique that I had worked to develop as a youngster. And yet, that performance was more emotionally satisfying that any concert I had given when I was younger.


I actually needed that time to grow and mature in order to fully appreciate the violin, and be able to express myself through my music.





You've had some excellent teacher-mentors and I wonder what lessons have stuck with you. What was it like being a a private student of Itzhak Perlman? 


It's interesting, you would think that the most meaningful parts of studying with Mr. Perlman would be the actual violin lessons. In fact, it came from the conversations that we had in passing, or at dinners at his home in New York. He's incredibly wise.


We were a really small group, there were about five of us that he taught during that time who were pre-college. The violin world is a very competitive one and it really values young talent. I started to play the violin at the age of six, and remarkably that was actually quite late relative to my peers, many of whom had begun their studies at the age of two or three and were practicing hours and hours every day. 


So I started a little bit later, and also I just didn't feel like practicing all the time when I was a kid. I loved so many other activities, I played soccer, I loved hanging out with my friends, doing art projects. I was always afraid I was a little bit behind.


But I remember Mr. Perlman telling us one night that when he was younger, he also felt a little bit behind at times. He said, everyone has their own internal clock, there is no rush in development, and every person will blossom musically at different times.


Hearing that sentiment from him, the best violinist of our time, made all the difference to me, and felt really, deeply empowering. My goal now was to focus on becoming a good musician. The timing didn't matter anymore.





The other teacher that's had an enormous influence on me is my undergraduate advisor Laurie Santos, who's a psychology professor at Yale. She took me under her wing from the time that I was a freshman. I really wanted to work in this lab that she ran where you ran experiments on monkeys, and she took a chance on me and let me in to the class.


Over the years she has shown me by example just how valuable it can be to have a role model whose life you admire and whose good choices you hope to emulate. She's been an invaluable friend to me over the past decade, and is also just a really cool person. I'd be happy if I could be even half the mentor that she's been to me.





What are some books that have had a profound impact on your intellectual development?


The summer before I left for college, I was feeling a bit despondent, as you can imagine, because I had just found out that I could no longer play the violin. I was supposed to be in China, performing with my peers at a festival.


I was at home in Connecticut, I was helping my parents clean their basement, and I stumbled upon a book called "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker. I was just immediately gripped. It was just fascinating to learn about our brain and its language machinery, its ability to parse and make sense of an incoming flurry of confusing, disorganized linguistic inputs that we receive in childhood, sometimes in multiple languages.


Imagine yourself as a three year old: You were never formally taught language, you just hear lots of stuff—and your brain makes sense of it. I became fascinated by the mind, and ended up having a huge appreciation for pop-science books, because they can be incredibly effective at introducing a topic at a high level and creating an appetite for learning more and really diving in.


Also, Pinker's book showed me I could be really passionate and excited about things other than music, other than playing the violin. It's probably the single biggest reason that I ended up becoming a cognitive science major.





There are some more recent books that have really informed my work. For example, "The 160 Character Solution" by Ben Castleman talks about innovative approaches that we can use in behavioral science to help promote better educational outcomes. Dick Thaler's memoir "Misbehaving" is about the history of behavioral economics and how it developed in to the rich field that it is today.


 


What would you recommend to a classical music novice who wants to develop a better appreciation for it? 


That pop hit on the radio can get into your head almost instantly, sometimes against your will, and it just stays there. But classical music requires a much greater initial investment; you have to familiarize yourself with it, to listen many times before you truly develop that deep appreciation for any given piece.


My recommendation would be to start with one of the classics, whether it's Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or Beethoven's Violin Concerto, or Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto. Sit down with one of those pieces and just will your way through it, if that's what it takes at first, and on the fifth or sixth listen, you'll really start to appreciate—first of all, there's a familiarity, but also, you just really start to appreciate just how beautiful it is.





Obviously we're seeing the phasing out of classical music from culture in many ways, definitely in the teenage generation. There's an NPR show called From the Top which features young musicians. I performed on it a few times when I was younger, and you not only hear young people perform, but you also hear from them directly, about their lives and their hobbies and what makes them interested in classical music.


It's a very relatable show, at least if you're a young person, because you're hearing from your peers about why it is that they started to play their instrument and what tactics it took to get there.


Have you had any recent realizations about living a more fulfilling life, a more satisfying life?


Definitely, especially in the last few years: gratitude is key. I make it a point to recognize, in my daily life, all that I have to be grateful for. Of course, the obvious things, my health, my family, the friendships that I've built over the years, but also, as I mentioned earlier, the incredible mentors that I've had throughout the course of my life, without whom I would not have gotten to explore my passions and realize some of my goals.


Taking that moment in the day, or taking that moment once a week, just to take a step back and reflect on the things that you feel grateful for, the people that you feel grateful for, has led to a much more fulfilling existence for me.


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Transcript services provided by Tigerfish; now offering transcriptions in two-hours guaranteed. Interview text has been edited and condensed.




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'Fallout 4' Is Too Stupid To Be Game Of The Year

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It's impossible to kill your pet dog in "Fallout 4." Oddly, that's a problem.


Hear us out.


The latest game in the popular post-apocalyptic series launches Tuesday, and critics are predictably hailing it as a triumph. Tech Insider's Ben Gilbert says, "It's easily one of the best games released this year, if not in the last several years or more."


The praise isn't surprising -- much of the "Fallout" series has been rapturously received since the first game's debut in 1997 -- but it is disappointing. "Fallout 4" isn't a bad game, but there's no reason to hail it as the best this year -- in fact, there's plenty of reason not to.


And a lot of that has to do with your pet dog's invincibility.



"Fallout 4," like other games in the series, is an open-world roleplaying game tinged with shooter elements. For the buzzword-averse, that basically means you create a character at the start of the game -- designing his or her face and physique down to the thickness of moles -- and then navigate a sprawling universe. There's a core storyline about retrieving your kidnapped child, but you can also spend your time wandering around or engaging in other plotlines and missions.


The formula is much the same as it was in "Fallout 3" and "Fallout: New Vegas," as well as titles like "Skyrim," also from "Fallout" publisher Bethesda Softworks.




The gameplay needs in 'Fallout 4' -- not to mention its glitches -- are at odds with its desire to deliver a cohesive world.


The idea is that you're supposed to feel like you're part of a living, breathing world, free to make a variety of important decisions about life and death and whether that mutated cockroach meat is safe to eat. In a sense, all of this executed properly could be the perfect showcase of what video games are capable of being in 2015: experiences that transport you in a fundamentally different and perhaps more immersive way than film, television, graphic novels and the like.


The problem is that, as ever, the gameplay needs in "Fallout 4" -- not to mention its glitches -- are at odds with its desire to deliver a cohesive world. You can and will mow down "wild mongrels" and gigantic, irradiated bugs -- then, you'll acquire a pet dog that's seemingly impervious to bullets. If you happen to unload an entire clip of ammunition into the dog from your automatic rifle (accidentally, of course), the animal just stands there and doesn't die, despite the fact that it sprays blood after every shot.


In fairness, if the dog gets in the way of an absurd amount of carnage, it will eventually become injured and whimper a bit. But swing a baseball bat once at an evil human "raider" and you may just rip his arm clean off. It's ridiculous.



Obviously there's no reason to kill your pet dog. It's cute! Its name is "Dogmeat." It helps you retrieve items in the game world and defends you against creepy crawlies. You certainly should not attempt to maim the poor thing. (Please believe that our reasons for doing so were, uh, journalistic.) And yet, the game is practically inviting you to plug a bullet into it -- just to see. You can interact with and kill basically everything else. Why not Dogmeat?


Apparently the pup's invulnerability is a design choice, touted months ago by the game's director. That's an odd choice for a series so specific in its realness that it lets you become addicted to alcohol and tweak the opacity of your "cheek blemishes" during character creation. 




'Fallout 4' is unable to be enchanting.


Listen, we don't really care about killing Dogmeat, but the pooch is the most obvious symptom of a major problem in the game. How can you become immersed in a world that isn't governed by consistent logic?


"Fallout 4" is often fun enough -- there's a certain addictive quality to exploring a vast world, reaching far-off destinations, saying the right thing to a skeptical character or sneaking around a band of marauding mutants. But "Fallout 4" is unable to be enchanting. An opening scene in your character's home becomes the very definition of stupidity if you go even a bit off the rails: Your spouse is talking to you while you're bumbling into furniture and prompting your character to give expository voiceover about the sugary cereal on the table. 


But "Fallout" players expect that they should be able to investigate the cereal box. The more responsible role-players -- those as likely to play "Fallout 4" as they are "Dungeons and Dragons" -- would probably patiently listen to their spouse, wait for a quiet moment and then press "X" on the Sugar Bombs. Video games, though, are about action, and the player can't be blamed for taking action -- even if it produces awkward, chuckle-worthy moments in the game world.


Sure, sometimes the action is slow, as in the quiet progression in "Passage," but games are uniformly about input and output. Press a button and Mario jumps; press "left" and Pac-Man turns. 


"Fallout 4," like its predecessors, misses that in its rush to be a video game that is more about a living world. In doing so, it proves both how far games have come as aesthetic objects and how clunky the medium can be when it tries to accomplish everything. 


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See Who Got Married This Weekend!

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Wedding season may be winding down, but that didn't stop our readers who tied the knot this weekend from going all-out with their celebrations. 


Check out some of the lovely photos from their big days below: 



If you go to a wedding or get married yourself, hashtag your photos #HPrealweddings or e-mail one to us afterwards so we can feature it on the site!


For photos from other real weddings in 2015, check out the slideshow below:


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Hand-Painted Daguerreotypes From The 1850s Capture The Color Of Nudity

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Warning: This post contains nudity and lots of it.



Stare at a color image from the mid-19th century, and you'll likely notice a few subtle differences between the vibrant photos of now and the eerie daguerreotypes of then.


That's largely due to the fact that in the 1850s, to color a photograph required mastering the delicate technique of hand-painting. There were no color printers, not even Kodachrome film; photographers had to hand-color their black-and-white images by adding pigment themselves. 


Daguerreotypy, the process of capturing an image on light-sensitive silver-plated copper, is one of the earliest photographic processes introduced by Louis Daguerre to the public in 1839. Experts often attribute the first hand-painted photograph to Johann Baptist Isenring, a Swiss artist who heated a mixture of gum arabic and pigments atop his early photos. In the 1940s, Isenring and his contemporaries would use a paintbrush to apply the pigment to the various areas of a daguerreotype they wished to color, sometimes dusting the mixture through carefully crafted cutouts. Similar techniques became popular in England and France around the same time. In Japan, artists already skilled in watercolor and woodblock printing employed a comparable practice, applying oil paint to the exposed emulsion of photos. 


Until the 1950s, when color film became available to professional and amateur photographers alike, the art of hand-painting persisted. Thumb (or scroll) through an archive like the Library of Congress, and you'll likely find remnants of the age of hand-painting. Unlike the sharp contrast of reds, blues and yellows in 21st century digital prints, the hues of hand-colored images lack fine delineation. Violet, pink and turquoise battle the preexisting monochrome outlines, hovering above the initial image like a ghost. The results blend the best of two worlds -- painting and photography -- in an art form almost forgotten to today's tech-savvy artists.


Despite its dwindling popularity, we can still celebrate the undeniable beauty of Isenring's practice thanks to a reserve of hand-painted (and notably erotic) photos in Getty's archives, courtesy of Galerie Bilderwelt. Below is a sample of hand-painted daguerreotypes, created by an unknown artist in the 1850s, that showcase early artists' attempts to illustrate the color of the human body -- the female body to be more precise. 



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Is Michel Houellebecq The French Jonathan Franzen?

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I have a small confession to make: I have never read the books of Karl Ove Knausgaard.


I’d be embarrassed to admit this, save that Knausgaard makes a similar confession in his recent review of Michel Houellebecq’s controversial novel Submission. The piece, published in The New York Times Book Review, documents all the Houellebecq he’s failed to read.


Fortunately, we learn, Knausgaard takes it upon himself to remedy this, settling down with a cigarette to read a copy of the new Houellebecq, which has been mailed to him. He’s also unfamiliar with author J.K. Huysmans, whose writings form a thematic foundation for Submission. He reads Huysmans’ best-known novel while sipping at a cup of coffee on the sidelines of his daughter’s gymnastics practice.


Halfway through this navel-gazing review, becoming bored and irritated, I began to remember why I’d steered clear of Knausgaard. Yet, Knausgaard seems the perfect person to review Houellebecq’s Submission, a book, like his own My Struggle saga, that revolves around the details of a particular white man’s ennui. Houellebecq, like Knausgaard, has achieved international renown, despite many critics suggesting their actual writing is artless and awkward, by delving into the problem of the disaffected middle-aged man.


Several critics have drawn attention to a still more notable doppelgänger of Houellebecq: Jonathan Franzen, whose Purity was published in the U.S. just over a month before Submission, also to muffled accusations of misanthropy, misogyny and mediocrity. These international literary superstars, all white men of a similar age and literary status, seem to only solidify their prestige, even as questions are raised about their problematic themes and unexceptional prose technique.


Why is the literary establishment so determined to preserve the mythology behind these men, our great white male novelists?



In just one slim volume, Submission tells the story of the mid-life crisis of François, a Huysmans scholar at a Parisian university, set against the backdrop of a near-future in which an Islamic party rises to power during the 2022 elections. We catch glimpses of unrest -- explosions in Paris, a gas station left silent and empty save for three dead bodies -- but mostly are treated to extensive disquisitions on French politics, Islam, and how the meeting of these two might affect François.


François had been comfortable, if less than happy, for years, making a steady living as an instructor, eating Indian TV dinners, and having a long string of affairs with beautiful students starstruck by his intellectual success. With the Islamic party determined to control French education, he's offered a large pension to resign from the university decades early -- unless he's willing to convert to Islam. If he does, his potential superiors hint, there will be benefits. Arranged marriage to a small harem of desirable women? Yes, those sorts of benefits. 


Meanwhile, the Islamic party in power offers huge subsidies to women if they leave the workforce, and so they do, en masse. Women give up wearing sexy clothes (voluntarily or not, Houellebecq doesn’t much care why) and polygamy becomes the de facto family structure. Though the polygamous marriages are arranged through the Islamic bureaucracy, there's no hint of pushback from the women involved.


Published on the same day as the terrorist attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and a Charlie Hebdo cover featuring a caricature of Houellebecq himself, Submission hinted at a bigotry that juxtaposed all-too-conveniently with the Islamic motivation of the terrorists. Months before it would be published in the U.S., Submission was all over the American news. The French prime minister denounced it, declaring “France isn’t Michel Houellebecq. It isn’t intolerance, hate, fear.”


With the American publication of Houellebecq’s already-notorious novel, translated by Paris Review editor Lorin Stein, the unsettling specter of the firestorm surrounding its original French release has been raised again. Now, it seems most English and American critics are happy to absolve the author -- not just of Islamophobia, but of misogyny and small-mindedness, even as close reading reveals that Houellebecq’s Muslims are ciphers in headscarves, silver-tongued politicians off-screen, or exotic, sloe-eyed teenagers on-screen. The women in the novel rank as no more than pawns to be moved into the position most productive for the society’s men.


But wait, critics insisted. He’s kidding.



“Houellebecq is, simply, a satirist,” wrote Adam Gopnik in his January review of Submission for The New Yorker. “He likes to take what’s happening now and imagine what would happen if it kept on happening. That’s what satirists do.”


Putting aside whether Gopnik has accurately defined satire here or, as it seems, invented a new connotation for it, he is far from alone in characterizing Houellebecq’s new novel as satire. Alex Preston at The Guardian did. Shane Croucher at The International Business Times did. Calum Marsh at The New Republic did. Michael Magras at The San Francisco Chronicle did. Heller McAlpin at NPR, though otherwise deeply critical of the novel, did. Karl Ove Knausgaard did.


One important person, however, would not describe Submission as a satire: Houellebecq himself.


“No,” he told Sylvain Bourmeau, in an often-combative pre-publication interview for The Paris Review, when asked whether the book is satirical. “Maybe a small part of the book satirizes political journalists -- politicians a little bit, too, to be honest. But the main characters are not satirical.”


What's more, Houellebecq insists, “You can’t really describe this book as a pessimistic prediction. At the end of the day, things don’t go all that badly, really,” he says. “Not so badly for the men, but for the women …” rejoins Bourmeau. “Yes, that’s a whole other problem,” concedes Houellebecq.


But not, frankly, one he’s particularly interested in. “I feel, rather, that we can make arrangements,” he says of possible Islamic rule. “The feminists will not be able to, if we’re being completely honest. But I and lots of other people will.”


Submission's portrayal of Islam might not be intentionally unfriendly to the religion, but it is deeply stereotypical. Houellebecq has said in interviews that he’s read the Quran, but reading a religious text isn’t sufficient to understand the realities of how millions of Muslim people live their faith, especially European Muslims. Pressure for women to exit the workplace, cut short their educations and enter polygamous marriages at young ages will seem like a clear step backward to many -- includingmany Muslims, though Houellebecq doesn’t seem aware of the possibility of ideological conflict within Islam. The religion is not immune to the same human desire for equal rights that promoted feminism in Christian and secular societies. 


In France, this incuriosity about how Muslims live, their culture and their beliefs has only fostered suspicion and fear between the consistently marginalized Islamic population and the rest of the country. For evidence, just look back again at Submission’s publication date, and the horrific Charlie Hebdo shootings carried out that day by two brothers, bearing assault weapons, who claimed adherence to an Islamic terrorist group.


Long-simmering tensions between French nativists and the burgeoning Muslim population boiled over. France suffered an outbreak of anti-Muslim attacks following the Charlie Hebdo shootings, but such crimes were already on the rise. White French citizens are clearly in something of a panic: estimates suggest around 7.5 percent of the population is now Muslim, with over 10 percent projected by 2030, but surveys have suggested many French believe the Muslim population is significantly higher, closer to a third of the country.



Submission's portrayal of Islam might not be intentionally unfriendly to the religion, but it is deeply stereotypical.



 


Despite all evidence to the contrary, many mainstream critics seem uncomfortable acknowledging Submission as a sincerely reactionary novel.


“There is no doubt that Houellebecq wants us to see the collapse of modern Europe and the rise of a Muslim one as a tragedy,” says Mark Lilla in The New York Review of Books. A bit defensive, if not counterfactual, given that the author himself has expressed doubt as to this intention.


Pointing out the protagonist’s anti-feminist views -- François thinks women should never have been allowed into the workplace or voting booth -- Calum Marsh writes, in The New Republic, “The Muslim Brotherhood agrees. Houellebecq, one would like to think, does not.”


It’s a telling choice of words -- “would like to think” -- a tacit admission that this reading has more to do with the reviewer preferring to avoid wearisome arguments about women’s rights than with Houellebecq’s successful execution of a sharp satire. “Feminists aren't going to like Submission,” wrote Iain MacWhirter, as if the narrow-mindedness quite possibly lies with those uptight women who resent their oppression. Again and again, reviewers (mostly male) brush aside Houellebecq’s misogyny as tiresome, no more than expected, or (optimistically) a tool to puncture the archetype of the libidinous entitled male. “His thoughts on such subjects as lesbians and ‘vaginal dryness’ invite a rolled eye rather than a yawp of moral outrage,” sighs Marsh.


Ah, misogyny: how dull.



Houellebecq’s needling of female critics strikes a familiar note, one American audiences were treated to quite recently.


“There’s a certain degree of glee in putting that stuff in the book,” Jonathan Franzen told The Guardian in reference to a shrill feminist character in his latest novel, Purity, which he expected to infuriate women readers.


The most aggressively chauvinistic portion of the novel -- the only one narrated in first person -- tells the harrowing tale of Tom Aberant’s first marriage. An old-school journalist, stand-up guy and apparent authorial surrogate, Tom strives to be the perfect egalitarian husband but is relentlessly abused by his wife, Anabel, a controlling, judgmental feminist.


Laura Miller, a friend of Franzen’s as well as a respected literary critic, reacted as if personally offended by critiques of Purity as misogynistic, writing in her review of the novel that attacks on this section failed to account for his ironic humor and his fascination with the specifics of his characters’ psyches. “This part of the novel has, obtusely, been interpreted by some readers as a rebuke to feminism, although Anabel isn’t any more representative of feminists than she is of vegans or, for that matter, female characters in Franzen novels,” she writes.


Yet it’s Franzen who chose to suggest that Anabel is a targeted jab at feminists in his Guardian interview. “I know that if you are hostile, you will find ammunition,” he told Emma Brocke. “So why not just let it all rip and: have fun with that, guys.”


By daring the critics to notice this provocative gesture, Franzen seems to have inoculated himself against it. Most major reviews have ignored or explained away this aspect of Purity, seeing in it instead a “fleet-footed ... intimate novel,” a “piercingly brilliant” examination of how we live now. In his Purity-focused afterword to the literary biography Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage, Philip Weinstein addresses his omission more directly: “Let us leave aside,” he writes simply, “the casually sexist language that Franzen began to draw on in Freedom and deploys more uninhibitedly here.”


Feminist critiques of hateful gendered language, it seems, are a mere distraction.


Gliding over the problematic language and characterization in Purity allows critics to elide the thrust of Franzen’s irony. “One of the running jokes in the Tom and Anabel section is that he’s really trying to not be male,” Franzen says. So… what does that joke actually say? The point of this vicious satire is that all of Tom’s efforts to do the right thing are doomed from go; he’s trying to pacify a woman -- a feminist -- who will always find a way to villainize him for his essential male identity. If Tom is pathetic, it’s because he tries to cater to Anabel’s irrational feminism, when he should be, as Franzen himself is, thumbing his nose at these demands.


Franzen’s wit, and his scathing pen, don’t work to undermine still-oppressive perceptions of women, but to flick ungracious feminists on the nose for daring to question his methods. In the Guardian interview, he complains, “I’m not a sexist. I am not somebody who goes around saying men are superior, or that male writers are superior… a villain is needed. It’s like there’s no way to make myself not male.”


Constructing an elaborate subplot in order to chastise his critics: It’s not the best look for the most successful and admired literary novelist working today, nor does it make for a particularly insightful piece of work, at least outside of the context of a therapy session.



 


Houellebecq, at least, cares too little for the opinions of women to be troubled by his critics. The subjugation of women in Submission seems to derive less from petulance, as with Franzen, than from untroubled disdain.


In François’s eyes, and seemingly in Houellebecq’s, the institution of Islamic patriarchy, complete with polygamy and restrictions on women's behavior, actually benefits the ladies, if they only have the right attitude. “Under an Islamic regime, women -- at least the ones pretty enough to attract a husband -- were able to remain children nearly their entire lives,” ponders François -- a man who, by the way, is drawing an enormous pension to spend the rest of his life at home, feeding himself TV dinners reheated in the microwave, an appliance without which he’d likely starve.


In Houellebecq’s Islamicized society, men are deemed adults by virtue of their access to income, while women, restricted to the unpaid domestic work of keeping those men fed, clothed and sexually satisfied, are mere children. Meanwhile, the women who aren’t “pretty enough to attract a husband” vanish into a hypothetical ether --François couldn’t care less about women who aren’t his potential wives, and therefore Houellebecq doesn’t either. (Or perhaps it’s the other way around.)


The only happily married couple we’re shown in Submission is François’ colleague, Marie-Françoise Tanneur, and her husband, Alain, who works for the French intelligence agency. Marie-Françoise, far from representing the values of feminism, earns her happiness by being a demure wife. When François visits the couple, his accomplished former coworker cooks an epicurean, multi-course meal and serves it to the two men while they relax and discuss the political situation over port. “[S]he was thriving,” François observes. “To see her bustling around the kitchen in an apron … it was hard to believe that just days ago she’d been leading a doctoral seminar on the altogether unusual circumstances surrounding Balzac’s corrections to the proofs of Béatrix.”


Critics often take for granted that Houellebecq’s droll deadpan and Franzen’s sly wit imply that each questionable point in their novels is meant satirically. But even were Houellebecq, as so many critics suggest, being less than candid in his writing and to interviewers -- “Houellebecq often seems to be playing a parody of himself,” wrote The New York Times -- this ought not to remove any accountability from him as a writer.


There’s something grotesque about the kind of game some critics suggest Houellebecq is playing with women by penning such an overtly misogynistic speculative fiction. Wouldn’t it be funny, he seems to ask, if you lost all your rights and independence?If you were given to an old man as a submissive sexual plaything in your mid-teens? For me, he points out impishly, it wouldn’t be so bad if that happened! This is neither a very interesting point -- on the contrary, it’s rather obvious that entitled men would relish a return to a rigid patriarchy that would provide them multiple teenage brides -- nor is it as amusing as he apparently thinks it is.



There’s something grotesque about the kind of game critics suggest Houellebecq is playing with women. Wouldn’t it be funny, he seems to ask, if you lost all your rights and independence?



 


Despite their superficial similarities -- the pleasure taken in taunting feminists, the self-deprecating humor masking navel-gazing conservatism, the inflated critical reactions -- Houellebecq is far more dangerous than Franzen. The latter’s pet grievances with society are niche (housecats are destroying bird populations), personal (feminists aren’t grateful enough to me) or as ineffectual as an old man yelling at a cloud (the Internet is the new fascist state).


Houellebecq’s blinkered portrayal of Islam comes at a time when France actually is roiled with upheaval in part stemming from the stark divide between French nativists and French Muslims. Submission, far from providing new insight, paints a hyper-conservative model-minority portrait of the little-understood, oft-scapegoated community within the nation’s borders. The novel, despite the stream of plaudits for its satirical subtlety, accomplishes the same thing as an outright tract declaring that Islam is a pre-Enlightenment, patriarchal religion and, while he's at it, that women’s rights are disposable.


Houellebecq himself argues that novels don’t change the world, insisting to The Paris Review, “I claim utter irresponsibility.” It’s hard to argue with the influence felt by essays such as "The Communist Manifesto," but what ofUncle Tom’s Cabin or Charles Dickens’ novels? Anyone who’s heard a Republican congressman wax rapturous about Ayn Rand’s fiction might suspect entire political systems would be improved had she never published Atlas Shrugged.


Many of the reviews of Submission show subtle signs of even Houellebecq’s influence, at the very least in how apologetic most critics seem in even introducing the question of feminism. I know, it’s silly to even bring this up, they seem to say, as they cautiously point out that Houellebecq is a raging misogynist. Much like Franzen’s mainstream critics, they betray a fear of seeming overly earnest, missing the joke this great novelist was making and revealing themselves to be fools in the service of militant feminists -- the sad fate of Purity’s Tom, who emasculated himself in hopes of impressing Anabel.


It’s a fear no female novelist seems to benefit from, a fear that seems to lead critics to contort reality to suit the narrative of the great white male novelist. And as Houellebecq's troubling work suggests, it can be damaging. We're tempted to silence or downplay the concerns of marginalized groups in order to protect the halo of greatness around a figure who fits our conception of an "important" writer, though the very reputation of such a writer makes their problematic ideas all the more influential, and the need to refute them all the more urgent.


These golden idols quickly grow too mystical to topple. It’s easier to set aside or explain away the misogyny endemic to Purity and Submission than to reckon with the fact that we’ve elevated profoundly flawed men to the level of literary gods. Until we’re comfortable directly confronting the unpleasant messages of such entitled, downwardly punching comedy, the joke will continue, as always, to be on the rest of us mere humans.


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Reading Like A Tomboy: Looking For Myself In Literature

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This fall I’m embarking on my first-ever “Write Like a Girl” Workshop, working with students aged 10 to 14 to determine what exactly “being a girl” means and helping them bring their myriad experiences, hopes, dreams, and frustrations into their writing. I’m hoping to teach the next generation of of quirky, out-of-place kids that they can “girl” however they want -- there’s no canon worth bothering about. We’ll read Ophelia Speaks and Body Outlaws and I Am Malala and talk about street harassment and dress codes and Beyoncé.


I also teach college writing classes with an emphasis on representation, giving my freshmen a chance to seek out and examine books, films, and TV shows that portray people just like them -- or don’t. I try to hasten them toward the important realization that if they don’t see themselves represented, if they grew up being asked to identify with characters with whom they had nothing in common, it is not a shortcoming on their part. Movements like DiversifyYA, the influence of Shonda Rhimes in television, and the debut of comic book superheroes like Ms. Marvel all help me make the case that people representing themselves and those like them is the best way to achieve more diversity in what we read and watch and hear. I have no gift for writing fiction, but I do know how to lead these girls and young women on a search for themselves on the page. I’ve been on this mission for years, because when I was a kid, I had no idea where I fit.

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12 Pieces Of Poignant Wisdom From 2015's Glamour Women Of The Year

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You know you're going to have a great night when the term "sausage fest" gets dropped at Carnegie Hall within the first 10 minutes of an event. That's what Glamour's editor-in-chief called Congress during the (decidedly not sausage-heavy) 2015 Glamour Women of the Year Awards, where she recognized women who are making strides in their respective fields despite a persistent gender imbalance in many of them.


The inspiring evening, which marked 25 years of Glamour Women of the Year and was hosted by Amy Schumer, honored women like Reese Witherspoon, Caitlyn Jenner, Misty Copeland, the U.S. women's soccer team, Victoria Beckham and the survivors of the Charleston massacre. Each of the honorees was introduced by an icon -- the likes of Viola Davis, Jared Leto, Selena Gomez, Goldie Hawn and Lupita Nyong'o -- and had a short film made about her, directed by, duh, a woman.


There were moments that brought the audience to tears (the women of Charleston spoke about losing their loved ones, Jennifer Hudson sang), moments when we remembered just how incredible young women are (each time someone inspiring came onstage, the youngest audience members cheered the loudest), and times when we simply couldn't believe we were sharing the same air space as Madeleine Albright, who was wearing her "breaking the glass ceiling" brooch. 


Here are 12 lessons from the 25th Glamour Women of the Year Awards:


1. Women owe everything to those who came before us.Prima ballerina Misty Copeland, the first black woman to become a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, said it perfectly when she was thanking her mentors and those who blazed trails before her: "I wouldn't be here without all the incredible strong women whose shoulders I've stood on."


2. Forgiveness is more powerful than hatred could ever be. The women of Charleston, two survivors of the June 2015 shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and three other women who lost family members in the massacre, got a standing ovation from the audience. And their message of love was heard loud and clear: "Guess what y'all? Forgiveness is power," said Nadine Collier, who lost her mother in the shooting. If these women have anything to do with it, hate won't win in any community.



3. "Inspiration is the greatest gift women can give other women." The U.S. Women's Soccer Team knows a thing -- 0r 30 -- about being inspirational. In July, the team won the 2015 World Cup, making it the first U.S. victory since 1999. Playing like a girl never looked so good.


4. Every woman deserves to have control over her own body. Even if some politicians disagree, the beauty of living in a country like the United States is that women have the right to make decisions about their reproductive health. As Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards said: "No mother in the world wants her daughter to have fewer rights than she did...So it's up to us to help younger girls... so they will be able to control their bodies and lives and futures."


5. Tell your story. It might make all the difference for someone else. Reflecting on her most recent and transformative year, Caitlyn Jenner said: "Maybe this is why God put me on this earth, to tell my story, to be authentic about who I am and in doing so, maybe make a difference in this world."



6. Don't bother with men who refuse to acknowledge women. Late-night host and feminist ally Seth Meyers had some advice for young women: "Don't waste a second of your time on any man who doesn't want your input or advice." Pretty solid, if you ask us. 


7. Mothers are magical and inspiring creatures. Let's give credit where credit is due to the amazing women who raise amazing women. "Thanks to all the mothers who encourage their daughters to do whatever it is they want to do," said Richards, reflecting on her own mother, former Texas governor Ann Richards. 


8. Girls can -- and should -- excel in STEM fields just as well as any boy. "Do everything you can to be the best in science math and engineering," said Elizabeth Holmes, the world's youngest self-made billionaire and founder of Theranos, to the young women in the audience. "Build the stereotype that we can be the best in these fields."


9. When women lift each other up, everyone wins. "The success of every woman should be an inspiration to the rest," said Serena Williams. Preach.



10. Gun violence is a national epidemic in the United States. Let's do something about it. Amy Schumer discussed legislation she and Sen. Chuck Schumer have been advocating for, which calls for stricter background checks for gun owners. "If you've been convicted of domestic violence or you are severely mentally ill, I don't think you should be able to get a gun," she said. "It seems pretty simple."


11. Diversity cannot be an afterthought. It must be built into everything we do. "Diversity in race and gender is not a trend," said supermodel Iman. "It's a movement."


12. Ambition is not a dirty word.Reese Witherspoon's powerful speech about female ambition made that crystal clear. "[Ambition] is believing in yourself and your abilities," she said. "What would happen if we were all brave enough to be a little bit more ambitious? I think the world would change." Amen to that. 



 


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Crayola Launches Adult Coloring Books To Transport You Back To Childhood

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Crayola is finally hopping on the adult coloring bandwagon.


“Color Escapes” is a series of coloring kits targeted at adults, featuring colored pencils, fine-tipped markers and coloring pages filled with intricate designs by artist Claudia Nice. The company launched Color Escapes in September, but the media started widely reporting on the coloring books this week.



A photo posted by Crayola (@crayola) on




Psychologists say coloring can have real benefits for adults, lowering stress levels and taking frazzled folks back to simpler days, when their biggest worry was what to eat for snack time (OK, for some of us, that’s still our top concern).


"Recent studies show that stressed out, digitally overloaded adults want in on the fun, too," Kim Rompilla, Director of Platform Marketing, said in a statement.


When Crayola first introduced the kits, they specified they were only available for a “limited time,” but a Crayola spokeswoman told The Huffington Post that they will be available for the foreseeable future. 


H/T Gizmodo



 This story has been updated to include comments from Crayola.


Contact the author at Hilary.Hanson@huffingtonpost.com.


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Magica Sexualis: Your Quick And Dirty Guide To The Erotic Occult

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Warning: This article contains explicit content and may not be appropriate for work environments.



"This testimony we teach: that the sacred law of love regulates not only the earth, but the entire universe."


So wrote doctor, spiritualist and occultist Paschal Beverly Randolph in his 19th century text Magica Sexualis. Also a trance medium, women's rights advocate, abolitionist and author of over 50 texts, Randolph, known to his followers as PBR, was the Western progenitor of what's now known as "sexual magick," which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. 


This underground realm of the erotic occult is the subject of a current exhibition at Stephen Romano Gallery, combining contemporary, ancient, outsider, vintage and visionary artworks that explore that dark and shadowy space between the bedroom and the cosmos. If you've ever suspected that a good orgasm may be the key to unlocking the dark secrets of the universe, read on. 



To put it simply, sexual magick is founded on the belief that divinity is everywhere, including inside each and every person on this earth. Men and women are, in PBR's terminology, "a radical soul-sexive series of energies." As such, the easiest way for us humans to channel the all powerful force of the deity within is through getting it on. 


PBR's theory asserts that all living beings in the universe are governed by oppositional forces, positive and negative, which are attracted to each other by an inexplicable power. Some examples are good and bad, life and death, idea and action. In the material plane, man and woman represent the positive and negative magnetic poles, respectively; conversely, in the mental plane, woman represents the positive pole and man the negative.


Make of that what you will, but, as PBR sees it: "In the science of the mysteries that we teach, just as in nature, the female attracts the male, so we can attract to ourselves the desired form by creating the negative in order to attract the contrary, the positive! This is the principle basis of all magic, no law is superior to it; and it permits us to accomplish operations in two fashions: intellectually, it is spoken calmly, without emotion, and sensually, it is spoken in love."



Another key figure of Western sexual magick was Ida Craddock, a sex counselor with a mystical bent. She authored sex manuals and other texts, exploring the nexus of the sexual body and the incorporeal beyond. "It has been my high privilege to have some practical experience as the earthly wife of an angel from the unseen world," Craddock writes in her paper "Heavenly Bridegrooms." Not too surprisingly, the convictions elaborated in her texts were not well received in the 19th century, especially coming from an unwed woman claiming to be married to a spirit.


Soon Craddock, who was recommended for admission as one of the first undergraduate woman students at the University of Pennsylvania (though she was later denied admission by the university's committee of Trustees), was bombarded with accusations of criminal behavior and lunacy. As she herself put it: "Suffice it to say that, while my non-occultist readers who did not know me personally pooh-poohed the idea of a spirit husband, and declared that I must surely speak from an illicit experience, my non-occultist friends, who knew my habits of life from day to day, could find no explanation for the essay but that I must have gone crazy; and two physicians made efforts to have me incarcerated as insane."


At 45 years old, before the start of a five-year sentence in prison, Craddock ended her own life, slashing her wrists in her apartment. 



One of Craddock's ardent devotees was famed magician and occultist Aleister Crowley, who recognized through her texts that she seemed "to have had access to certain most concealed sanctuaries." As Crowley wrote in a review of Heavenly Bridegrooms: "She has put down statements in plain English which are positively staggering. This book is of incalculable value to every student of occult matters. No Magick library is complete without it."


Crowley was born to a highly puritanical British family, against whom he rebelled at a young age. Publicly indulging in taboo vices like masturbation, drugs, and fleshly excess of all kinds, Crowley also developed an interest in pagan religions and the occult, aligning Western tradition with Buddhist elements and Hindu Tantra. 



"The sexual act is a sacrament of Will, To profane it is the great offense," Crowley wrote in The Law is for All. "All true expression of it is lawful; all suppression or distortion of it is contrary to the Law of liberty." 


Creating a pastiche of Western and Eastern modes of limitless transgression, Crowley forged a path to power based on all kinds of ecstatic misbehaviors. "I say today: to hell with Christianity, Rationalism, Buddhism all the lumber of the centuries. I bring you a positive and primaeval fact, Magic by name: and with this I will build me a new Heaven and a new Earth.  I want none of your faint approval or faint dispraise; I want blasphemy, murder, rape, revolution, anything, bad or good but strong."



Crowley's ideas eventually inspired the work of Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel, an artist and countercultural icon now known as Cameron the Witch Woman. Turning herself into a work of art, Cameron combined elements of occultism, Kabbalah, Surrealism, beat poetry, medieval manuscripts, feminism and astrology to create a practice all her own. Along with her husband Jack Parsons, who believed her to be a goddess in human form, Cameron engaged in all sorts of sexual rituals gleaned from Crowley's teachings. They even invited buddy L. Ron Hubbard to chant and invoke spirits while they made love.


After her husband died, Cameron channeled her energy into mystical artworks that coupled eternal dark forces with the countercultural aura of the 1960s. "Her hallucinated vision, at the edge of surrealism and psychedelia embodies an aspect of modernity that deeply doubts and defies cartesian logic at a moment in history when these values have shown their own limitations," explained MOCA Director Philippe Vergne. "Her work demonstrates that the space in the mind is without limit."



Cameron is one of the most well-known visual artists to incorporate elements of sex magick into her work. In the years since, countless artists including Rithika Merchant, Joseph McVetty and Darcilio Lima have contributed to the ever-expanding compendium of the erotic occult. 


Brooklyn-based Lori Nelson's paintings riff off religious fanaticism, replacing traditionally revered deities with monsters and creatures of a freakier variety. "This is the sort art that fascinated me as a Mormon child growing up in a religious -- and somewhat artless -- household," the artist said. "I would find the reproductions of devotional art and photography in the family Bible and other religious texts, and gaze into them, falling into them hard. Such beauties! These wonderful children were appealing to me for their purity while all the time also being shame-inducing because I knew I would never believe so fully and gorgeously."



In "Venus de Mardi Gras," Canadian artist Shonagh Adelman applies colored glass and acrylic crystals to canvas, dragging the ancient storytelling tradition of the animal-human-hybrid into the contemporary age. In the artist's words: "A far cry from the wild kingdom, these quasi-beasts only vaguely resemble their animal counterparts. Anthropomorphized stuffed animal toys crystalized into vanity portraits engender a grisly beauty."


To learn more about the beautifully NFSW world of the erotic occult, you'll have to visit Stephen Romano Gallery in New York in person, or find a secret society in your local vicinity. The exhibition runs until December 15, 2015, and you can see a preview of the works below. Be careful out there kids, sex magick is no joke.



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Every Woman Should Read Reese Witherspoon's Stunning Speech About Ambition

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At the Nov. 9 Glamour Women of the Year Awards, Reese Witherspoon made one thing very clear: female ambition is not a trait to fear. Instead, we should wholeheartedly embrace it.


The 39-year-old actress made an impassioned speech at Carnegie Hall, urging women and men to see women's ambitions -- and stories -- as things worth recognizing, highlighting and elevating. "I believe ambition is not a dirty word," said Witherspoon to a packed house at Carnegie Hall. "It's believing in yourself and your abilities."




Witherspoon said that she discovered her ambitiousness at age 14. She also learned that for women, being ambitious is often seen as something inherently negative. Last night, the actress sought to challenge that bullsh*t assumption:



I want everybody to close their eyes and think of a dirty word, like a really dirty word. Now open your eyes. Was any of your words ambition? I didn’t think so. See, I just kind of started wondering lately why female ambition is a trait that people are so afraid of. Why do people have prejudiced opinions about women who accomplish things? Why is that perceived as a negative?



Throughout her career, Witherspoon has played fabulously interesting, complicated characters. Her roles in movies like "Election," "Cruel Intentions" and "Legally Blonde," made her a bonafide star. But she didn't just want to act, slotting herself into roles Hollywood deemed "acceptable" for ladies -- wife, girlfriend, mother, grandmother -- or trying desperately to find a studio developing the kind of characters she liked to play. After asking studios what projects they were developing with female leads and being "met with nothing, blank stares, excessive blinking, uncomfortable shifting," Witherspoon grew increasingly frustrated.


"I dread reading scripts that have no women involved in their creation because inevitably I get to that part where the girl turns to the guy, and she says, 'What do we do now?!,'" the actress said.


"Do you know any woman in any crisis situation who has absolutely no idea what to do?"


She wanted to produce films that really told women's stories in an authentic way. So in 2012 she founded her production company, Pacific Standard, which operates under the idea that "films with women at the center are not a side project."


And lo and behold, three years in, the company has produced such hits as "Wild" and "Gone Girl," both of which were not only commercially successful, but garnered Academy Award nominations for its female stars in acting categories.


"Like Elle Woods," Witherspoon said, "I do not like to be underestimated."


She ended her speech with a call to arms, urging women everywhere to own their ambitions and abilities:



What is it in life that you think you can’t accomplish? Or what is it that people have said that you cannot do? Wouldn’t it feel really good to prove them all wrong? Because I believe ambition is not a dirty word. It’s just believing in yourself and your abilities. Imagine this: What would happen if we were all brave enough to be a little bit more ambitious? I think the world would change.



Let's go change the world, one ambitious woman at a time.


Read the full transcript of Witherspoon's speech (via Glamour), below:



I can’t thank Glamour magazine enough and Conde Nast and Cindi for asking me to be here. You just made this night so amazing. These incredible, inspiring women are doing so many things to change how we perceive women, and I hope Amy Schumer and all the other nominees that when you consider making your biopic, you’ll give me the rights first, which would be great. Although Amy, I’ll have to play your grandmother in the movie (by Hollywood standards), and you’ll probably have to play your own mother.


 


I’m so excited that so many young women are here tonight. This all started for me when I was a little girl. I was 14 years old when I learned that I love acting, and I still do. Acting allows me to slip into the skin of all kinds of different women, and not in a creepy "Silence of the Lambs" way…but in a way that lets me explore the full spectrum of humanity. Every woman I've ever played is passionate and strong and flawed, except for Tracy Flick. She’s 100 percent perfect, but she made me say that. But I also learned at 14 years old that I was ambitious. Really ambitious. Did I say that out loud? Let’s talk about ambition.


 


I want everybody to close their eyes and think of a dirty word, like a really dirty word. Now open your eyes. Was any of your words ambition? I didn’t think so. See, I just kind of started wondering lately why female ambition is a trait that people are so afraid of. Why do people have prejudiced opinions about women who accomplish things? Why is that perceived as a negative? In a study by Georgetown University in 2005, a group of professors asked candidates to evaluate male ambition vs. female ambition in politicians. Respondents were less likely to vote for power-seeking women than power-seeking men. They also perceived ambitious women as looking out for themselves. They even reported ambitious women as provoking feelings of disgust.


 


Now, in my life I have always found more comfort in being the underdog. Whether people thought I couldn't do something or they said it was impossible, I always rose to the challenge. I enjoyed reaching for the impossible. I remember when I was 18 years old and applying to colleges, I had this male college counselor, and he said, "Don’t even bother applying to Stanford, sweetie. Your SAT scores aren’t good enough." But I did it anyway, and I got in. (But it wasn’t because of my SAT scores!)


 


When I got into the film business, I was doing dramas, and casting directors didn’t know if I could be funny. So I did a comedy, "Legally Blonde," and then my entire career I was pigeonholed. I did comedies, they didn’t think I was serious. I did dramas, they didn’t think I was funny. And I got older and they didn’t think I could still be viable. So about three years ago, I found myself very curious about the state of the movie business. I really wondered how the digital evolution was affecting the landscape of filmmaking and specifically why studios were making fewer and fewer movies. So I started asking questions, and I decided to meet with the heads of each of the different movie studios that I had been friends with for years and I had made many movies with them. Each of the meetings started with something very casual like, "How are your kids?" and "Wow, has it really been that long since 'Walk the Line'?" At the end of the meeting, I sort of casually brought up, “So, how many movies are in development with a female lead?” And by lead, I don’t mean wife of the lead or the girlfriend of the lead. The lead, the hero of the story. I was met with nothing, blank stares, excessive blinking, uncomfortable shifting. No one wanted to answer the question because the fact was the studios weren’t developing anything starring a woman. The only studio that was was turning a man’s role into a woman’s role. And the studio heads didn’t apologize. They don’t have to apologize. They are interested in profits -- and after all, they run subsidiary companies of giant corporations.


 


But I was flabbergasted. This was 2012, and it made no sense to me. Where was our Sally Field in "Norma Rae" or Sigourney Weaver in "Alien" or Goldie Hawn in, you name it, any Goldie Hawn movie: "Overboard," "Wildcats," "Private Benjamin"? These women shaped my idea of what it meant to be a woman of strength and character and humor in this world. And my beautiful, intelligent daughter, who is 16 years old now, would not grow up idolizing that same group of women. Instead, she’d be forced to watch a chorus of talented, accomplished women Saran wrapped into tight leather pants, tottering along on very cute, but completely impractical, shoes turn to a male lead and ask breathlessly, “What do we do now?!” Seriously, I’m not kidding. Go back and watch any movie, and you’ll see this line over and over. I love to ask questions, but it’s my most hated question.


 


I dread reading scripts that have no women involved in their creation because inevitably I get to that part where the girl turns to the guy, and she says, "What do we do now?!" Do you know any woman in any crisis situation who has absolutely no idea what to do? I mean, don’t they tell people in crisis, even children, "If you're in trouble, talk to a woman." It’s ridiculous that a woman wouldn’t know what to do.


 


So, anyway, after going to these studios and telling people about how there’s barely any female leads in films and the industry’s in crisis, people were aghast. "That’s horrible," they said. And then they changed the subject and moved on with their dinner and moved on with their lives. But I could not change the subject. I couldn’t turn to some man and say, "What do we do now?" This is my life.


 


I’ve made movies all my life, for 25 years, since I was 14 years old. It was time to turn to myself and say, "OK, Reese, what are we going to do now?" The answer was very clear. My mother, who is here tonight, a very strong, smart Southern woman, said to me, "If you want something done, honey, do it yourself."


 


So, I started my own production company, Pacific Standard Films, with the mission to tell stories about women. And I was nervous, y’all. I was spending my own money, which everyone in the movie business always tells you, "Don't spend your own money on anything." I was warned that on the crazy chance Pacific Standard would acquire any good scripts we would never make it past our first few years in business because there just wasn’t a market for buying female-driven material. But like Elle Woods, I do not like to be underestimated.


 


I’m a very avid reader. In fact, I’m a complete book nerd. So is my producing partner, so we tore through tons of manuscripts and read so many things before they were published, but we could only find two pieces of material that we thought were right. We optioned them with our own money, and we prayed that they would work. Both had strong, complicated, fascinating women at the center and both were written by women. And lo and behold, both books hit number one on the New York Times bestsellers list. One is called "Gone Girl" and the second is called "Wild." So we made those two films last year, and those two films rose to over half a billion dollars world wide and we got three Academy Award nominations for women in acting performances. So that is year one. Against the odds, Pacific Standard has had a year two and year three. We bought five more bestselling books. Next year, we’re going to make two of those, "Big Little Lies" and "Luckiest Girl Alive," into films. We have over 25 films in development and three television shows, and they all have female leads of different ages and different races and different jobs. Some are astronauts, some are soldiers, some are scientists, one is even a Supreme Court justice. They’re not just good or bad; they’re bold and hunted and dangerous and triumphant like the real women we meet every single day of our lives. But our company isn’t just thriving because it feels like a good thing to do. It’s thriving because female-driven films work. This year alone, "Trainwreck" with Amy Schumer, Melissa McCarthy's "Spy," "Pitch Perfect 2," "Cinderella," the "Hunger Games" franchise, those made over 2.2 billion dollars world wide. Films with women at the center are not a public service project, they are a big time, bottom line-enhancing, money-making commodity.


 


I think we are in a culture crisis in every field. In every industry, women are underrepresented and underpaid in leadership positions. Under 5 percent of CEOS of fortune 500 companies are women. Only 19 percent of Congress is women. No wonder we don’t have the health care we deserve or paid family leave or public access to early childhood education. That really worries me. How can we expect legislation or our needs to be served if we don't have equal representation? So here’s my hope: If you’re in politics, media, the tech industry, or working as an entrepreneur or a teacher or a construction worker or a caregiver, you know the problems we are all facing. I urge each one of you to ask yourselves: What do we do now? That’s a big question. What is it in life that you think you can’t accomplish? Or what is it that people have said that you cannot do? Wouldn’t it feel really good to prove them all wrong? Because I believe ambition is not a dirty word. It’s just believing in yourself and your abilities. Imagine this: What would happen if we were all brave enough to be a little bit more ambitious? I think the world would change. 



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Clarissa From 'Clarissa Explains It All' Is All Grown Up In New Book

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Ah, the '90s. Things were so much simpler then! High fashion meant throwing on a jean jacket and a scrunchie, and happiness meant airing your woes to the tiny pet alligator you kept in a sandbox in your bedroom. At least that was the case for Clarissa Darling, the 15-year-old heroine of “Clarissa Explains It All.”


Aside from pulling off the ideal side ponytail and yukking it up with her neighbor Sam, who swung by her room via ladder, Clarissa enjoyed narrating the travails of high school to a rapt audience of young Nickelodeon lovers.


The poster for the show is a nod to its message: Melissa Joan Hart shrugs nonchalantly, as if to say, “Growing up is weird! What can you do?” Over five seasons, the plot of the show followed suit. In each episode, Clarissa handled everything from getting a training bra to publishing articles in the school paper with savvy and wit.



“Clarissa Explains It All” ended when Clarissa finished high school. But the show’s creator, Mitchell Kriegman, has recently released a book imagining Clarissa’s life as a 20-something. In Things I Can’t Explain, the plucky heroine becomes a bit of a downtrodden young adult.


The book opens with a heartsick and unemployed Clarissa searching for a decent job and good coffee on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Once wide-eyed and enamored with New York City’s many faces and miraculous subway system, she’s become a little jaded. Not that she’s to blame; she moved to New York to work for a newspaper that later folded, and is now a self-proclaimed, “aspiring, highly trained journalist -- whatever that means in the age of BuzzFeed.”


When she’s not getting in quips about the state of media, 20-something Clarissa surveys the “micro-relationships” she has with her fellow residents, like the grumpy bus driver and the friendly coffee shop attendant. She also reflects on her failed relationship with Sam, aforementioned ladder-toter. “We friend-zoned each other pretty permanently,” she says. (Note the qualifier.) But Clarissa’s got a penchant for finding the silver lining. “Maybe next time I’ll go for someone in finance,” she says.


Yikes. How the self-possessed heroines have fallen. It’s a little bit icky reading a plot that casts a once-subversive female voice in popular culture as a stereotype. When news of Things I Can’t Explain broke two years ago, Entertainment Weekly predicted it might be a rad fusing of “Clarissa Explains It All” and “Girls,” but, sadly, an attempt to apply a one-size-fits all narrative to an adult woman rather than a girl going through puberty has off-putting results.


Which isn’t to say Things I Can’t Explain doesn’t have redeeming qualities. Like any true fanfic, it has a few R-rated scenes, including one between Clarissa and Sam. After a racy excerpt, Cosmopolitan noted: “Nickelodeon, it’s not.” 





 


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The New Generation Of Agony Aunts Transforming The Advice Column

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Slate has a mobile app that has graced my iPhone for years. It ensures I have at least a little fresh reading when I’m stuck in a waiting room or on the subway, and besides, I love Slate’s contrarian takes. But three times a week -- Monday, Tuesday and Thursday -- there’s just one column I’m refreshing the app feed over and over again hoping to see: Dear Prudence.


I didn't always agree with Prudie's advice, dispensed by writer Emily Yoffe. Sometimes Yoffe actually drove me (and many other readers) batty with her quickness to suggest frequent tipplers may be abusing alcohol, or with her skepticism toward readers who reported being sexually assaulted while under the influence. Her tips were often on the money, though, and I loved her letter selection and her no-nonsense tone. 


On Monday, Slate's editor-in-chief Julia Turner announced that Yoffe was stepping down as Prudie, and would be replaced by Mallory Ortberg, cofounder of The Toast and minor Internet celebrity. It's a bold move for a fairly traditional advice column at a mainstream web magazine: Ortberg has a youthful, distinctive voice and has mastered the Internet version of sardonic deadpan, which she employed to hilarious effect in her book Texts from Jane Eyre, imagining what famous literary couples would text to each other. 


Yoffe herself, in her time as Prudie, has played with the conventional boundaries of advice columns. She would drop significant revelations about her personal life, when relevant -- every devoted reader knows the story of her husband’s first wife, who died young -- and didn’t hesitate to sometimes take strong, seemingly contrarian positions in her advice. She wrote for Slate outside of her column, sometimes on controversial topics like rape in college. But her free-wheeling replacement still promises to be a big step away from convention.


"I think there will be some continuity, because of Mallory’s deep regard for Emily’s work in the role," Turner wrote in an email on Monday. "She is a close reader of the column ... so it seemed natural to reach out to her." Still, Ortberg’s own website, The Toast, exemplifies a willingness to experiment with media conventions that suggest a far bigger shift for the column. She writes about narrative tropes in classic literature through hysterically funny listicles, or critiques a TV show by spinning out increasingly insane episode premises. She has a whole series of art history posts in which she imagines subtitled conversations between the subjects. When her new position was announced Monday, her Twitter reaction was exuberantly unpunctuated.


One thing's certain: It's hard to imagine such a fresh, identifiable young voice would have been handed the keys to an established advice column in years past. How did we get here?






In 1991, Dan Savage gave a bit of casual advice to Tim Keck, cofounder of The Onion, who was about to launch the alt-weekly The Stranger in Seattle: “Make sure your paper has an advice column -- everybody claims to hate 'em, but everybody seems to read 'em.” The massive success of the column he ended up writing for The Stranger, Savage Love, lends support to this truism.


I’m just one anecdotal example of this: I know advice columns are typically lowbrow, gossipy features with a less-than-intellectual image. As a member of the media, I didn’t feel proud admitting that I looked forward to my Dear Prudence interludes. But I voted with my page views, as do so many readers, which is why advice columns continue to proliferate and mutate to fit the zeitgeist.


This proliferation has gone on, now, for centuries. The publication believed to have invented the modern advice column, The Athenian Mercury, may be just a bit before your time: It was published in the 1690s. But by the 20th century, syndicated columns in newspapers and features in ladies' magazines dominated the genre, dispensing succinct, practical solutions to social and personal problems across the U.S. 


In England, these columnists became known as "agony aunts," and the cozy, cookie-cutter image of a motherly, upper-middle-class white lady was typically used to emphasize this unthreatening image -- the nurturing woman you'd take your problems to for proper but sympathetic guidance. (There have been male columnists, and non-white ones, but they've generally been confined to niches; most men in the genre, for example, give advice on specific topics, like ethics, rather than more tender personal matters.)  


Ann Landers and Dear Abby, written by sisters Eppie Lederer and Pauline Phillips (née Friedman), perfected this approach. The pair doled out dueling advice, both drawn from a traditional, family-minded set of values, and delivered with incisive brevity.


"Don't make any hasty decisions," Lederer told a recent divorcée who'd met a new man. "The best way to deal with it is to say nothing," Phillips wrote to a woman too embarrassed to face her boyfriend's father after he walked in on a private moment.


Most answers were dispensed in a couple blunt sentences, with naught more than a corny joke to sweeten the pill. 



Readers continued to avidly devour these columns, even when it was the same bland PB&J they'd been fed for years. But when Dan Savage kicked off Savage Love in 1991 -- a column he originally pitched as Dear Faggot, which he did in fact use as a salutation to advice-seekers for years -- it was far more than a Dear Abby for the indie media crowd, or a Miss Manners with an LGBT focus. It was creative, brash, sometimes offensive, but always thought-provoking.


Savage himself was an avid fan of advice columns, but before him, the genre was stuck in a fairly consistent rut for generations. Columns were generally reassigned to new writers or ghostwriters when the original writers died or retired, instead of being given a new image and voice. Savage Love broke new ground, taking a new irreverent tone and opening the field to all sorts of new subject areas. Readers could ask about the finer points of exchanging oral sex, or complain that they were no longer attracted to a spouse who’d gained weight, without being castigated or dismissed. He and his readers coined terms like “pegging” and “santorum” (Google it). He brought the rather fusty tradition of advice dispensation to a world of free-wheeling sexuality and queer relationships, which had long been ignored or handled awkwardly by agony aunts.


Savage Love heralded a new generation of agony aunts -- the cool aunts. Savage was really less like an aunt and more like your popular, funny older cousin who gave you his full attention every now and then. And as web media blossomed, so did other cool aunts. 


Probably the most influential modern agony aunt, aside from Savage, is none other than Cheryl Strayed, who wrote a column called Dear Sugar for The Rumpus starting in 2010. Ruth Franklin of The New Republic deemed her "the ultimate advice columnist for the Internet age," arguing that Strayed -- then writing the column anonymously -- was "remaking the genre."


In a Reddit AMA, Ask Polly's Heather Havrilesky credited Strayed with "populariz[ing] the extremely thoughtful, beautifully written advice column/personal essay format," of which Havrilesky is now, perhaps, the reigning practitioner. Strayed wasn't afraid to tell a reader, "You are a fucking amazing person," after sharing a painful memory from her own past. "I think she showed a lot of us what was possible with Dear Sugar," Havrilesky wrote. 


Within the past decade, these columns have multiplied. There's Captain Awkward, which dispenses nerdy, feminist-friendly advice from an eponymous website. Havrilesky’s Ask Polly launched on The Awl in 2012, but it wasn’t her first venture into the field; she wrote an advice column for Suck.com in 2001 and answered questions at her own website for years. Andrew W.K., in addition to his rock career, writes an advice column for The Village Voice (after having written one for a Japanese magazine for nearly a decade). Gawker Media offered Pot Psychology, which launched in 2007, an advice video series in which the two advisors, Tracie Egan Morrissey and Rich Juzwiak, got stoned together before answering queries.



For those of us who’d grown up on syndicated newspaper fare (I’d been a devoted reader of Ann Landers, whose column appeared in my local paper in Indiana), these new columns were fascinating -- all the human interest, but without the adherence to conventionalities and brief word counts. These were agony aunts willing to unpack your quarter-life crisis with you, or to direct you how to tell your new fling about your sexual fantasies, or to flout the accepted wisdom of hoary etiquette and social expectations. Each column had its own flavor, its own personality.


Havrilesky’s Ask Polly, which now appears on NYMag’s The Cut, is both a particularly idiosyncratic and a particularly successful example of the cool agony aunt. She answers just one question a week, in long, capslock-studded, instinctual prose, pouring in doses of empathy, comparisons to her own misguided youth, paeans to her husband, and real talk about her familial dysfunctions.


Though there are hints of Dear Sugar in Polly's unrestrained verbosity and enthusiasm, it's the individual personality that defines the column. “I’m very influenced by other writers in my other work,” Havrilesky said in an email Monday. “But when it comes to writing advice, I really follow my own instincts. I’m not trying to create something that’s perfect or stylistically awe-inspiring. I’m just trying to find a vivid way to unlock some kind of answer or epiphany for the reader. I want every single column to make the reader say HELL YES, I CAN DO THIS.”


In a field that was long so rigid as advice-dispensing -- Ann Landers, Dear Abby, Miss Manners, Emily Post et al generally followed fairly unvaried formats and lines of response -- this honest, personal approach blasts open what the genre can do, and shifts our understanding of what it can be.


"People in the beginning really complained about how long-winded [Havrilesky] was," Stella Bugbee, editor of The Cut, said over the phone. As a reader, I also noticed comments taking issue with her frequent comparisons of readers' problems to her own life experiences. "My feeling was Heather and Polly were basically perfect, and I wasn’t going to trim any of it." Now, with Ask Polly firmly ensconced at The Cut, Bugbee said, "I think people have caught on to her unique cadence." The column is, she pointed out, one of their most consistently popular features.


Havrilesky's open, raw approach also capitalizes on the clearly insatiable hunger readers possess for personal essays, without subjecting writers to the same emotional and professional wringer that can follow with standalone pieces offering up the minutiae of their lives. Instead, we get the scandalous details of anonymous readers, then a response, tinged with personal anecdotes and the casual tone of a close friend, which weds the TMI appeal with the appeal of familiarity.


The semi-confessional nature of these responses also allows room for more nuanced, self-care-focused advice, in which your struggle with getting over an ex isn't reduced to "just move on" but acknowledged for the thorny, complicated emotional quagmire it is. It's more like unpacking a break-up with your snarky but caring BFF, while traditional columns can sometimes feel more like listening to your grandma sniffing over inappropriate seating arrangements at your cousin's wedding. 


This human note is essential, said Bugbee, who'd experimented with various advice columns, including one called "Ask Google," at The Cut before bringing Ask Polly on board. "What I learned through that process was that people just want really good advice," she said. "They don’t want a gimmick."


Turner agreed that while the essential content of advice columns -- sincere insight about common real-world problems -- won't change, writers need to offer something unique to keep the form exciting. “The best advice columns are made by the quality of their prose -- it takes skill to keep all those misbehaving in-laws, pets and bosses fresh and fascinating week after week,” she said. How Ortberg will change the Prudie game remains to be seen, though her body of work suggests her column will be unlike any we've seen before.


Havrilesky, for her part, thinks the revolution is just beginning. “Advice columns are the new TV recaps,” she said. “Soon, everyone will be writing them! ... And as with recaps, some will be amazing and smart and funny and others will be bland and dull and worthless.” Though she doesn't read many advice columns, she's eager to see what Ortberg will do at Slate. 


Does she have any advice for a first-time advice-giver? “My only advice to Mallory is this: Don’t take anyone else’s advice. Do this your way, period the end,” Havrilesky emphasized. “THEY DON’T KNOW, MALLORY. YOU’RE THE ONE WHO KNOWS.” To clarify, she added, “That’s not my advice to any other advice columnist, mind you. That’s just my advice to Mallory. But see, Mallory already knows all of that.”


In other words, kids, don't try to write an advice column at home. But more importantly, Havrilesky's words show how far the advice media has evolved. These days, knowing and fighting for your own voice, in all its crazy and quirky glory, might be the best and most important qualification to be an advice columnist to begin with.


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What Neil Gaiman Does When He Doesn't Know What To Write

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Every writer has been there: Staring down a blank page, struggling to write anything that feels right, cursing writer's block for impeding progress. But according to author Neil Gaiman, writer's block does not exist.


"I don't really believe in writer's block, but I absolutely believe in getting stuck," Gaiman told HuffPost Live on Monday. "The difference is one is imposed on you by the gods, and one is your own damn fault."


When Gaiman dropped by HuffPost Live to discuss his latest work, The Sandman: Overture, he explained the inherent falsehood in blaming writer's block when you're feeling uninspired.


"If you turn around and go, 'I am blocked,' this is just something writers say because we're really clever. It sounds like it has nothing to do with you: 'I would love to write today, but I am blocked. The gods have done it to me,'" he said. "And it's not true. Cellists don't have cellist block. Gardeners don't have gardener's block. TV hosts do not have have TV host block. But writers have claimed all the blocks, and we think it's a real thing."


But Gaiman said he is quite familiar with feeling stuck, and he shared his strategy for getting through it.


Anytime a writer is stuck, he explained, there are "dozens of things that could have gone wrong." It could be a wrong choice in an earlier chapter, or perhaps the story needs to dive deeper before it can move ahead. Gaiman's solution is to always keep a separate project on the back burner that can give him a break from the material troubling him.


"I always like to have another story, another introduction, another work, and I'll just go and work on that, while somewhere in the back of my mind I'm churning over why I'm stuck and what went wrong and figuring out how to go forward," he said.


Watch Gaiman share his tips in the video above, and click here for his full HuffPost Live conversation.


Want more HuffPost Live? Stream us anytime on Go90, Verizon's mobile social entertainment network, and listen to our best interviews on iTunes.


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See A New Trailer For Best Picture Contender 'Spotlight'

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After glowing reviews and an impressive box-office showing during its first weekend in limited release, "Spotlight" has all but locked up a Best Picture nomination. Days before it expands to additional theaters, The Huffington Post has an exclusive new trailer that Open Road Films will promote on TV starting this weekend.


Exploring the titular Boston Globe team's 2002 investigation into Catholic priests' child sex-abuse allegations, "Spotlight" stars Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery and Liev Schreiber.





 


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You Can Watch Shia LaBeouf Binge-Watch All His Own Movies

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Shia LaBeouf is at it again. 


The police aren't involved this time. (His lawyers and agents must be grateful for that, at least.) But it's almost as weird as his infamous outburst at a June 2014 performance of "Cabaret." LaBeouf has parked himself in a seat at New York arthouse cinema Angelika Film Center to watch all of his own movies in reverse chronological order, a feat that will take nearly three days. He's allowing anyone else to join him in the theater for free. USA Today reported that one other person joined him a few minutes after he started the screening, but many more have filed in since then. 


Anyone who can't make it to downtown Manhattan can watch LaBeouf watch himself online, though the website has been unresponsive since news of the gambit started to break. 


A Gothamist reader tweeted out the schedule of the screenings: 






LaBeouf is putting on this project, which he's calling #ALLMYMOVIES, with his "art collective" LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner. The other two members of the group are Finnish artist Nastja Säde Rönkkö and British artist Luke Turner. According to their website, the group has previously staged eight other performances, including the memorable #IAMSORRY, in which LaBeouf sat in an LA art gallery with a paper bag over his head. 


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Scrotum-Nailing Artist Sets Fire To Russian Security Service Doors

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Provocative Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky took a canister of gas to the headquarters of Russia's FSB security service in Moscow on Monday, doused the large wooden doors in fuel and set them alight. He then stood in front of the flames posing for photos until a policeman arrested him.


The latest performance piece of the radical artist, entitled "Threat," was intended as a protest against surveillance tactics of the FSB.


"The threat of inevitable reprisal hangs over everyone who can be tracked with devices," Pavlensky said in a statement, according to Reuters.


The organization is the successor to the KGB spy agency of the Soviet Union, though it has different powers and does not oversee foreign spies like its predecessor. The FSB, which Russian President Vladimir Putin led for a period in the 1990s, operates out of a massive historic building, known as the Lubyanka, which has traditionally housed the nation's security and spy agencies. 





This is not the first time that Pavlensky, whose previous pieces have usually involved some degree of self-harm and nudity, has made headlines with his extreme artistic endeavors. In the winter of 2013, he disrobed in the middle of Moscow's Red Square, sat on the ground and nailed his scrotum to the cold stones below. 


That piece was called "Fixation," and was meant to draw attention to the apathy of the Russian public toward the nation's politics. He was charged with hooliganism soon after the performance. 


Earlier works included sewing his lips shut to protest the detention of radical punk band Pussy Riot and rolling himself up in barbed wire while naked to oppose limits on civil liberties in the nation. In the piece "Separation," a nude Pavlenksy sliced his ear off on the roof of a psychiatric hospital to demonstrate against using psychiatric assessments to detain and discredit dissidents.



As each of his acts garnered international attention, Pavlensky built up a reputation as a controversial voice in the Russian art scene. His anti-authority work has also resulted in legal trouble, however, and he is currently on trial for vandalism, related to a 2014 pro-Ukrainian revolution protest piece.


Pavlensky could serve up to three years in prison if convicted, but the ongoing legal action didn't deter him from targeting the headquarters of the national security service for Monday's display.


No formal charges have yet been laid against Pavlensky for lighting the Lubyanka on fire, though Russian law enforcement sources told Reuters that he could face petty hooliganism charges. 


While Pavlensky's "Threat" is more than a harmless act of free expression, Russia's government has cracked down on more benign artistic displays that have challenged state authority in recent years.


In 2013, police seized artwork and shut down a gallery after it exhibited a painting depicting Vladimir Putin in women's lingerie. The artist fled the country in fear.


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Kenya Slum Sitting On Valuable Art Gets Help Auctioning Off Pieces

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In this case, an aid group hopes taking from the poor -- and giving to the poor -- could be an effective way to help the biggest slum in Africa.


In Kibera, Kenya, which until recently had no access to clean water, there are few toilets and no hospitals or clinics. But there’s a vast amount of valuable street art that could bring in a significant amount of funds to the impoverished area. 


Back in 2009, famed street artist JR painted murals of local women’s eyes and faces on rooftops in Kibera as part of his “Women Are Heroes” series. The struggling residents were receptive to the project since JR used water-resistant materials that would help protect their homes.



Since then, though, many of the pieces have deteriorated. But while those that haven’t continue to increase in value, the pieces are at risk for getting stolen or crumbling in the heat.


That’s why WaterisLife, which provides clean water, sanitation and hygiene programs, decided to take the intact murals, auction them off and use those funds to improve water and sanitation in Kibera.


Deutsch Inc. came up with the concept about two years ago, and WaterisLife used its connections on the ground to open the residents up to the idea.


The advertising agency reached out to JR twice about the campaign, but he declined to participate, Frank Cartagena, creative director at Deutsch NY, told The Huffington Post.



WaterisLife worked with a local security team to engage with residents who had the murals painted on their dwellings. Many were unaware of the paintings' value, but were willing to give them up when the organization offered to replace the murals with new corrugated metal rooftops.


“It’s like it’s raining inside my house," one resident told Deutsch of how the mural failed to provide enough coverage.


The campaign removed two pieces at first from the slum. The group recently went back and got four more.


The goal is to sell 10 pieces altogether, valued at $400,000. So far, once piece has sold for $10,000, Cartagena told HuffPost.


The funds will be used for a number of infrastructure programs, including installing a 5,000-gallon-per-day water filter, building a community hand-washing station and repairing hand-washing outlets for 4,000 school children, among other initiatives.



While the organizers behind the campaign certainly ramped up the drama behind executing the "heist," the executives pointed out that it was really the efficiency of the operation that sold them. 


“Most charity advertisements have to ask people for donations. We didn't," Cartagena and Sam Shepard, both creative directors at Deutsch, said in a press release. “We simply saw something of value that would have otherwise gone to waste and used it to make a direct impact for the people of Kibera.”


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36 Hilarious, Strange And Totally Delightful Quotes From Kids

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Parents know that kids say some pretty original things -- from hilarious turns of phrase to surprising nuggets of wisdom.


That's why many moms and dads document their children's standout quotes with the app LittleHoots. They now also have the opportunity to purchase adorable magnet and book keepsakes.


Mom and LittleHoots creator Lacey Ellis shared some delightful samples from the past month. Here are 39 hilarious, wise and strange kids have said. 



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