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Nearly All Bodies Identified In Oakland Warehouse Fire

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Responders to last week’s warehouse fire in Oakland, California, have identified nearly all recovered bodies and do not anticipate the death toll to rise, officials said Tuesday morning.


Officials have identified 26 of the 36 bodies recovered in the fire that broke out during an electronic dance party around 11:30 p.m. on Friday, Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Tya Modeste said. Nine more bodies have been “tentatively identified” and one victim remains unidentified.


The city has publicly identified 17 of the victims


The debris removal process is about 85 percent complete, fire officials said Tuesday. They don’t anticipate finding more bodies.


“We do still have people reported as missing,” Modeste said. Her office is continuing to reconcile the list of tentatively identified victims with those still missing.


The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Bureau has completed at least 22 autopsies and notified the embassies of three victims visiting from Finland, Korea and Guatemala. 



While the cause of the fire remains unknown, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley has activated a criminal investigation team to determine whether there is any criminal liability attached to fire, and if so, against whom.


“Several people have already been interviewed,” she confirmed. “[W]e have a very big team that’s working on it full time.”


Past tenants of the warehouse, which was not zoned for events or residential use but was housing several artists full-time, have pointed to the myriad fire safety issues present on the site. “Ghost Ship,” as occupants called it, had no sprinkler system and was cluttered with accidents waiting to happen: exposed electrical wires covering the stairs, propane tanks heating showers, and rotating residents who brought in “jerry-rigged generators, hot plates and space heaters,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported. 



Those with ties to the tragedy are pressing for explanations about why the city, the warehouse’s owner and the leaseholder allowed those conditions to persist. While city building inspectors responded to complaints of trash piling up outside the warehouse last month, they were unable to gain access to the interior and had not yet returned for a follow-up attempt.  


Artists and activists have also pressed Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf to address how the lack of affordable housing options may be forcing low-income residents to seek out unsanctioned ― and often unsafe ― living conditions like Ghost Ship. 


“In the days and weeks ahead, we are going to have many conversations about what we have learned from this incident, what in fact happened in this incident and how do we move forward as a city with the experience that we’ve just had,” she said.


“The issue that many American cities have ― communities that once were full of industrial blue-collar jobs that are now transitioning to other uses ― this is one we are going to be grappling with in the days ahead,” she continued. 


Hayley Miller contributed reporting. 


This article has been updated with information from Tuesday morning’s press conference.



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George R. R. Martin Hints At Grim Ending For 'A Song Of Ice And Fire' Series

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George R. R. Martin has promised to spend much of 2017 finishing the sixth installment of his A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter. But don’t expect him to come up with a tidy, happy ending by the last page of the seventh book, A Dream of Spring.


“I’m not going to tell you how I’m going to end my book, but I suspect the overall flavor is going to be as much bittersweet as it is happy,” the author said during an hour-long question-and-answer session that Penguin House streamed live on YouTube from Guadalajara, Mexico.


The ending may also be quite long. Martin praised how lengthy the denouement of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series at the talk this month, saying he appreciates it more with each rereading. 


Later, he gave a few other hints about what to expect in the next book in the series that inspired HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”


“There are a lot of dark chapters right now in the book that I’m writing,” he said. “I’ve been telling you for 20 years that winter was coming. And winter is the time when things die, and, you know, cold and ice and darkness fills the world. So this is not going to be the happy, feel-good book that people may be hoping for. Some of the characters end in very dark places.”


“In any story, the classic structure is, ‘things get worse before they get better,’” Martin continued, “and things are getting worse for a lot of people.” 


As for when we can expect the sixth book, Martin explained how he hopes his pace will pick up exponentially. “I’m hoping at some point ... I will see the finish line, and the work will go much faster,” he said.


Martin was peppered with wide-ranging questions related to his books on stage. The author stated again that he is in talks with HBO regarding “other shows.” He suggested that perhaps a slightly smaller Westeros universe (”The Five Kingdoms of Westeros”) would have been more manageable. And he said Tyrion probably would make a good leader in 2016. (“The recent American election could have turned out very differently if Hillary Clinton had dragons,” he joked.)


Asked how he writes female characters, which have been praised for their depth, Martin repeated a line oft-quoted by fans looking to prove their beloved series is medieval in setting only.


“I start from the basic presumption that women are people and that they have the same basic humanity as men. We want the same things. We want love. We want respect. We want to succeed in the world,” Martin said, prompting applause.


Watch the whole chat above. 

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The 18 Best Fiction Books Of 2016

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Each year, when best-of lists start popping up all over promptly on Dec. 1, it feels too soon. Really? We’re saying goodbye to the year already? It’s barely 11/12ths over! 


For 2016, many have been wishing it gone for some time already. It will have taken with it Prince, David Bowie, Gene Wilder, Alan Rickman, and the dream of a first female president of the United States (for the foreseeable future). 


But let’s look back on the good ― nay, the transcendent. This year may not have been the all-time greatest, but there was some all-time great literature published since we wrapped up 2015. Subtle, shimmering short fiction; sprawling family sagas; searing portraits of social trauma: 2016 had it all.


Though we read many wonderful works of fiction this year, these 18 novels and collections were particularly outstanding:


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‘Fight Club’ Author Reflects On Violence And Masculinity, 20 Years Later

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“We’re the middle children of history,” a blond man preaches. He’s slick, and leathery. “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” 


He goes on about the squandering of great potential, about working hard and not earning his due. He advocates not progress but a return to roots, not acknowledging the dry and cracked foundation he’s upholding.


His face is on posters in college dorm rooms countrywide, and emblazoned on the hearts of young men: Tyler Durden, the ne’er-do-well alter ego of the narrator of Fight Club, which turned 20 earlier this year.


It’s a book about consumerism, and an expressive, violent response to the cold fact of it. It’s also a book about toxic masculinity, even if its author never deigns to expressly critique or uphold controlled violence. Chuck Palahniuk describes the story as one about the triumph of the individual, a bold questioning of authority. But what does that message mean today, in a political climate where such beliefs could determine voting patterns that prize burning down over building up?


Earlier this year, Palahniuk issued Fight Club 2, a comic book that follows its narrator, Sebastian, as he unknowingly stops taking his medication and is re-introduced to Tyler Durden, the nihilistic devil on his shoulder. Below, Palahniuk talks about the medium of comics and makes an uncomfortable comparison between Tyler Durden and Donald Trump.



When and why did you decide to write a sequel to Fight Club?


I decided about two years ago, when the thriller writer Chelsea Cain invited me to dinner, and ambushed me by inviting Brian Michael Bendis and Matt Fraction, all of whom are comic legends at this point. The gang proceeded to convince me to write a comic. 


So it was originally conceived of in that medium.  


Yeah. I kind of knew that in trying a new storytelling form, it would be smarter to stay with characters that my readership was already familiar with.


What were some of the challenges of comic book writing? 


All my friends said that, for two years, they had never seen me happier. It was so much fun. Working with groups of people, working in meetings, working with the artists and the colorists and my editor at Dark Horse, all of whom are just brilliant at what they do. And getting to be the student again, getting to be the dumbest one in the room was a fantastic vacation for me for two years.


What does the message of Fight Club mean to you today, in our current political climate?


The central message of Fight Club was always about the empowerment of the individual through small, escalating challenges. And so I see that happening on both the right and the left. The left is discovering its power through doing battle with its institutions, in academia and otherwise. On the right I see people doing battle in their own way, against institutions that they see as the authority. In a way, it’s like everyone rebelling against dad, and discovering their own power by killing the father, as the Buddhists would say. Eventually you have to kill your father and kill your teacher. 


I read in another interview, someone asked you what Tyler Durden would think of Trump, and you compared the two.  


The whole blond at a podium thing was too close. It spooked me.



Would you say Fight Club is more of a critique of violent masculinity, a celebration of it, or both?


Boy. I wouldn’t say it’s a critique. I think that because it’s consensual, it’s OK. It’s a mutually agreed-upon thing which people can discover their ability to sustain violence or survive violence as well as their ability to inflict it. So, in a way, it’s kind of a mutually agreed-upon therapy. I don’t see it as condoning violence ― because in the story it is consensual ― or as ridiculing it, because in this case it does have a use. 


Like the argument that sports are a safe outlet for violence.


And also about Michel Foucault’s obsession with S&M. The really structured, ritualistic, consensual world of S&M is a way of discovering your ability to endure pain or to inflict pain. 


But then of course in the original book Tyler Durden’s violence goes beyond the confines of the club. The difference between the book’s intention and how fans perceive him is interesting. Would you say that fans who celebrate him or celebrate anarchy are misinterpreting the intention of the story?


No, not really. Because they are kind of recognizing the phase where they discover their personal power through acting out against the world.


You insert yourself as a character into Fight Club 2, trying to stop Tyler Durden. Why do you, as an author, want to insert yourself in that way?


To kind of demonstrate a futile attempt to insist I could still control the story, which is really out of my hands now. In a way it’s also Roland Barthes’ idea about the death of the author. That the author can only control things up to a certain point, and the author doesn’t really matter once the reader has read the story. The reader brings so much to the story that the author’s kind of automatically excluded.


I think any kind of a creative person is creating a kind of baby that they will leave on the doorstep of the reader. They want the reader to adopt that baby and to raise that baby as their own. Because that’s how your work goes on into the future. 


Fight Club 3 is on its way. What can we expect?


I really pulled a lot of punches with Fight Club 2. It’s a child in peril, which is a pretty standard plot device that I would never have used except in this new form, and I felt I should maintain certain standards of conventionality, for fear of losing people completely. New form, too wild a story, might’ve been a recipe for exhausting people. 


But in Fight Club 3, now that I understand the many ways in which Cameron Stewart saved me, I can write a really, really wild story, and I think still keep the reader on board. So, all of the things I didn’t do in Fight Club 2 because I was afraid they were too much, I did in Fight Club 3, because now I have, I think, my readers are more comfortable with the graphic novel form. 


Do you think you’ll continue with comic book writing?


I think it depends on the nature of the story. In every medium, you have to play to the strengths of that medium. There are some things I want to write that are still too outlandish to be depicted in even comics. Those are the things that I’ll put in short stories or novels. There are still things that are too outlandish to be made into movies, but those will be in comics instead. If things are rendered literally enough to be made into a film, they cross a line, they alienate the viewer.


For example, the dying children soldiers in Fight Club 2. In comic form they work, because they can be made a little comic, easier to be with, a little unreality to them. You could not use those in a movie. Once they’re literal enough to be filmed, they’d be heartbreaking.



Hit Backspace for a regular dose of pop culture nostalgia.


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The Hushed Fantasies Of Rabuhos, Or Japanese Sex Hotels

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Rabuhos ― or love hotels ― sprinkled throughout Japan’s cities and small villages alike, serve a simple purpose: offering couples a space to have sex. Often adorned with mirrored ceilings, rock-walled jacuzzis, and other campy displays of desire, the spaces serve as destinations for unbridled eroticism in a country where societal norms can inhibit such encounters. 


In 2015, Vice published an article called “Why Aren’t the Japanese Fucking?” which explored the “celibacy syndrome” afflicting Japanese youth. The piece explored some of the interrelated factors contributing to the documented decline in sexual contact in Japan ― including rising housing prices, pressuring 20- and 30-somethings to live with their parents; overpopulation, preventing any semblance of privacy; gender inequality; and predominate social norms privileging modesty and chastity



For many couples, these love hotels offer what the real world lacks: seclusion, lack of judgment or societal shame, and the kitschy accoutrements of authentic romantic fantasy. The first such establishment emerged in the 1960s, when privacy first became a prevalent issue. There are now approximately 37,000 rabuhos throughout the country. 


Belgian photographer Zaza Bertrand was intrigued by these spaces, at once rooted in reality and make-believe, characterized by both intimacy and alienation. She documented the surreal spaces for a series called “Japanese Whispers.”


“It really struck me that these places are everywhere,” Bertrand explained to The Huffington Post. “It is a huge industry and all kinds of people use them. Yet everything is very private and kept secret.” As Bertrand elaborated, there are carefully concealed parking spots so visitors’ license plates won’t be visible to the outside world. Also, the entire hotel is automated, so there are no personnel on the premises, taking the concept of privacy to an almost surreal degree. 



To find her subjects, Bertrand posted ads on the internet. “I randomly looked for couples to portray in a hotel of their choice,” she explained to The Guardian. “A man and his wife, an extramarital couple, call girls, swingers, young people with no other place to go to ... Everybody finds their way to the love hotels.”


Bertrand offered to fund a couple’s stay in exchange for photographing what unfolded during it. However, Bertrand wasn’t interested in the act of sex itself, but rather the choreography leading up to it, the tension-laden intricacies that invade a room specifically ordained for making love. 


“The experience was entirely between my models and me,” Bertrand continued. “After arriving at the hotel lobby, we selected one of the rooms on a screen together and took the elevator up. What happened next was entirely depending on the vibe I had with my models. Every shoot was very different. Never was anything planned or set up up front.”



The resulting images combine genuine passion with glaringly unnatural settings ― made all the more abnormal by the presence of a photographer documenting the scene. Bertrand’s photos capture couples creeping toward the act of intimacy, their gestures palpably a bit off-key.


Stylistically, Bernard’s photos vacillate between documentary and fictional styles, an aesthetic that mirrors the worlds they depict. A statement from the artist compares the work to famed erotic Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, though Bernard’s images murmur while Araki’s moan. 


Bernard documents the salacious spaces that, due to the bizarre circumstances of their existence, often feel more sentimental than sleazy. Unlike an American motel, which often serves as the site of illicit sexual encounters, these Japanese hotels reflect a reality that suggests nearly any form of intimate contact is somewhat out of everyday reach. The uneasy yet enchanting images seem to depict something between a wet dream and film set, with real people plopped into the erotic mirage.



The photography book Japanese Whispers is published by Art Paper Editions. An exhibition of the photos is currently on view at the Riot gallery in Ghent as well as IBASHO Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. 

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2016's Holiday Ads Will Make You Laugh, Cry And Everything In Between

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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!


The approaching holidays mean an onslaught of festive television commercials, ranging from the heartwarming and thought-provoking to the comedic and downright sappy.


Here are some of the biggest hits we’ve seen so far from around the world this year:



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‘Hamilton’ Star Rory O’Malley Shares A Sweet Coming-Of-Age Tale

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Rory O’Malley might never have stepped foot on a stage if it hadn’t been for his… basement.


As a child, the Tony-nominated actor-singer struggled to fit in at school, and sought refuge in the subterranean rec room of his Cleveland, Ohio home. It was there he discovered the performing arts as a mode of self-expression, creating a “magical world” of his own filled with “musicals, Disney and Bette Midler.”


These days, O’Malley is a formidable presence on Broadway, spurring laughs from sold-out crowds in his current role as King George III in “Hamilton.” Still, the 35-year-old hasn’t forgotten about his basement days, and will soon return below stairs – metaphorically, at least. On Dec. 11 and 12, he’ll take the stage of New York’s Feinstein’s/54 Below for an all-new musical show he describes as a celebration of “the campiness that saved my life,” appropriately titled “Out of the Basement.”


Featuring musical direction by Grammy and Tony winner Stephen Oremus, “Out of the Basement” offers O’Malley’s signature wit in abundance, with songs from “Beauty and the Beast,” “Sister Act” and “Beaches.” If there’s a message, it’s “that you can be fabulous as a pudgy, pasty-white gay kid in the Midwest, and be anything that you want,” he told The Huffington Post. 



O’Malley, who originated the role of Elder McKinley in 2011’s “The Book of Mormon,” hopes fans will also come away from “Out of the Basement” with an understanding of the vulnerability that lies beneath his showman’s veneer. Hence, he’ll nod to deep, personal challenges, like the circumstances that prompted him to quit drinking a decade ago, in tunes by Rufus Wainwright and David Bowie, among other artists. “For a moment, my life could’ve gone in a really different direction,” he said, “and once again, theater saved me. It’s kind of a miracle.”


O’Malley, who co-founded the marriage equality non-profit Broadway Impact in 2009, will donate proceeds from both of his shows to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which supports HIV/AIDS-related causes across the U.S. His “Hamilton” role, he said, has “given me a platform to have a voice,” which, in turn, reaffirms his interest in reaching out to LGBTQ kids who may be struggling to come to terms with their identities.


“I feel very strongly that there are kids out there making the same kinds of safe spaces and creative outlets that are carrying them through a lot as I did,” he told HuffPost. “I want to reach out to them since I have this platform, and say, ‘That’s where I was, too.’”


Before O’Malley makes his “Out of the Basement” debut, HuffPost asked him to share what it takes to embody King George III eight times a week in “Hamilton.” He responded with 13 behind-the-scenes snapshots that make us feel lucky to be alive at a time when musical theater is making history. (You can also follow more of O’Malley’s adventures on Instagram here). 


Check out O’Malley’s action-filled “Hamilton” day below. For more information on “Out of the Basement,” head here


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Adult Swim Cuts Ties With Controversial 'Alt-Right'-Affiliated Show, 'Million Dollar Extreme'

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Facing mounting pressure inside and out, Adult Swim has decided to cut ties with the controversial new show “Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace,” the late-night network confirmed to The Huffington Post on Tuesday morning. 


“Million Dollar Extreme” quickly became a headache for the network after its premiere in August, due to its close ties to the white nationalist movement known as the “Alt-Right.” At the show’s core was Sam Hyde, a 31-year-old man with a penchant for anti-humor, racism and homophobia. As BuzzFeed reported, Hyde was the kind of man who would refer to Lena Dunham as a “fat pig,” complain about “seeing burkas in video games” on Twitter, and call someone in front of him a “hipster faggot,” as he did in a 2013 video he uploaded titled “Privileged White Male Triggers Oppressed Victims, Ban This Video Now and Block Him.”










“Million Dollar Extreme” knowingly nodded at its far-right audience with its sarcastic tagline, “Celebrate Diversity Every Friday at 12:15A ET.” It employed blackface and laughed about men tripping women into glass tables because they found them unattractive. Its fans gleefully laughed on Reddit about what they believed to be a reference to David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard. The Adult Swim standards department even had to ask that swastikas found hidden in the show be removed, according to a BuzzFeed source.


The controversy only grew louder in November, when former “Eagleheart” star Brett Gelman cited the show as one of the reasons he had decided to no longer work with Adult Swim. “I’m all for free speech, and I don’t need my viewpoint to be the only viewpoint. [But] I am not for something that mobilizes propaganda,” he told HuffPost.


Around that same time, Kim Manning, the network’s senior director of programming, admitted on Twitter that the show had been a source of “HOT, HOT debate” at the Adult Swim office, which she said leans “extreme left.” But, she asserted, “Million Dollar Extreme” “was about letting a different point of view, a voice that was upending things in a crazy, new, way, have a shot.”


But what came with that “shot” started to overwhelm the network. That same month, BuzzFeed reported that a group of Adult Swim actors, directors, writers and producers had started “gathering a long list of complaints” to try and convince Mike Lazzo, who effectively runs the network, to cancel “Million Dollar Extreme,” despite relatively high ratings for a show that ran on Saturdays at 12:15 a.m.


Upon hearing the news on Tuesday, Hyde called on his fans to “put pressure on Turner” to bring the show back. 






UPDATE ― Tuesday, 1:47 p.m.: Hyde appears to have deleted the tweet referenced at the bottom of this post. 

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28 Teeny Tiny Gifts That Prove Good Things Come In Small Packages

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Everything is cuter when it’s miniature. Just look at Tiny Hamster and his baby burritos and mini Thanksgiving feasts!  


With that in mind, below we’ve gathered up 28 delightfully small gifts for your miniature-loving friend. (Or yourself. Hey, you deserve a little somethin’ somethin’ this year, too.)  




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Oakland Warehouse Manager Has Meltdown During Live TV Interview About Fatal Fire

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The manager of the Oakland, California, warehouse known as Ghost Ship grew visibly upset on live TV on Tuesday morning, as he repeatedly refused to answer questions about the fire that destroyed the building and killed at least 36 people this past weekend.


“I’m not going to answer these questions on this level,” Derick Ion Almena told “Today” show hosts Matt Lauer and Tamron Hall when asked whom the families of the victims should hold responsible. “I would rather get on the floor and be trampled by the parents. I’d rather let them tear at my flesh than answer these ridiculous questions.”


Almena rented living space to artists in Ghost Ship, although the warehouse was not coded for residential use. Several tenants told The Associated Press that they had complained about hazardous living conditions but that Almena did nothing to address them.


When pressed by Lauer about those prior complaints, Almena dodged the question, instead rambling on about his dream of an artistic community.


“I laid my body down there every night. We laid our bodies down there. We put our children to bed there every night,” he said. “We made music. We created art.”



Hall attempted to ask about former tenant Shelley Mack, who has accused Almena of profiting off living spaces he knew were unsafe. But Almena interrupted.


“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about me. I don’t want to talk about profiting,” he said loudly. “This is not profit. This is loss. This is a mass grave.”


Lauer ended the five-minute interview as Almena refused again to discuss his own possible accountability for what happened.


“I am so sorry. I’m incredibly sorry,” he said. “What do you want me to say? I’m not going to answer these questions.”


It’s not just tenants who have complained about Almena. In 2015, event organizer Philippe Lewis filed for a restraining order against him after a verbal dispute allegedly descended into physical violence. According to NBC Bay Area, Lewis had rented the warehouse for a New Year’s Eve concert. Following the event, he said that he and another organizer were assaulted by Almena over cleanup costs.


Rescue workers continued to search for bodies and remove debris from the ruins of the warehouse on Tuesday. At least 35 of 36 victims have been identified or “tentatively identified” by officials.


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These GIF'd Moments Of 2016 Show How The Election Took Over Pop Culture

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2016 was a pretty awful year. (Let’s not dwell on it.)


But we can’t forget about all those moments that made us smile, like when Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar and Hillary Clinton freaked out over balloons. Ah, the good ol’ times. 


Giphy compiled a list of GIFs that represent the top 12 moments in pop culture of 2016, and they’ll be sure to delight: 


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Fiona Apple Is Here With An Anti-Trump Christmas Anthem

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In our darkest days, it’s comforting to know that Fiona Apple is just as willing to call everybody on their bulls**t as she was onstage at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.


The “Criminal” singer has blessed us all with a parody cover of Nat King Cole’s “Christmas Song” to express how she really feels about president-elect Donald Trump


(Spoiler alert — the last line is: “Donald Trump, f**k you.”) 


“Trump’s nuts roasting on an open fire,” Apple sings to the tune of the Christmas classic. “As he keeps nipping at his foes / You’ll cry creepy uncle / Every time he arrives / or he keeps clawing at your clothes.”


“Everybody knows some money and entitlement,” she continues. “Can help to make the season white / Mothers of color with their kids out of sight / will find it hard to sleep at night.”


Thankfully, Apple uploaded a video of herself singing the anti-Trump anthem a capella, which, TBQH, might be the best gift anyone’s getting this year. 





Listen to the song and read the full lyrics below. 



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Architects Want To Hide Trump Tower Logo With A Bunch Of Flying Gold Pigs

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President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t even been inaugurated, but a vocal portion of the country is already beyond sick of talking about, hearing, or even looking at his name. Here to help is Chicago-based architectural firm New World Design Ltd., out to ensure that at least one city will be spared the fate of staring at Trump’s name each and every day.


How? Pigs ― golden, flying pigs to be exact. 


Yes, the New World Design Ltd. has conceptualized a design in which golden pig balloons float midair in front of the facade of the Trump Tower Chicago, thus obscuring his omnipresent moniker for passersby. 



The unorthodox intervention is inspired in part by the album art for Pink Floyd’s 1977 “Animals,” which features a balloon pig soaring around London’s Battersea Power Station ― itself, a tribute to George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The architects opted to turn the flying pigs gold, however, a nod to Trump’s signature taste. 


On their blog, the architects note that the flying pigs also represent the slim-to-none chance Trump had, by many accounts, of winning the election. There is also the allusion to Trump’s degrading comments about former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, whom he called “Miss Piggy.”


In an email to The Huffington Post, New World Design Ltd. affirmed their project’s ultimate mission to denounce Trump and everything he stands for, in a simple, playful and very public way. “Our project scheme is intended as a bold visual response to the loud, illogical and frequently hateful expressions that engulfed the elections,” they said. “It is a gesture in support of those of more rational, optimistic and inclusive minds.”



H/T Consequence of Sound

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What Being A 'Rock Star' Used To Mean, According To Sebastian Bach

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Sebastian Bach ― the former lead singer of Skid Row, Broadway actor, and occasional TV star in shows such as “Gilmore Girls” and “Trailer Park Boys” ― closes his just released autobiography, 18 and Life on Skid Row, with his concerns about “rock stardom.”


“The term ‘rock star’ has changed so very much from when I was a teenager,” Bach writes. “Now, guys with computer programs, hedge fund managers, athletes, and even presidents are called rock stars ... Well, it bugs me when a fucking dentist gets called a rock star. It bugs me when Kris Jenner calls Kim Kardashian a rock star. And it bugs me even more when Kanye West calls himself a rock star.”


On the phone with The Huffington Post, Bach clarified that this frustration essentially comes from losing ownership over his job title. “If a real rock star calls himself a rock star, he’s a dick,” Bach said with laughter. “Other people say, ‘Well, people in bands who call themselves rock stars are just assholes.’ I’m like, what the fuck?”


As one of the last true “rock stars” ― in that classic sense he longs for ― Bach’s confusion is understandable, and his autobiographical book makes this clear. Publicists and fans heaped the label and lifestyle onto his shoulders in a way that would have made using any other job title but “rock star” nonsense for multiple years of Bach’s life. 


Early on, Billboard labeled Bach and his band “The New Bad Boys of Rock,” a title Bach didn’t expect to be given. “That label has always been put on me as a marketing thing,” said Bach on the phone. “I didn’t realize that I was a bad boy of rock. [Laughs] I thought, well I guess I better live up to this somehow, because that’s like my job description, I suppose. You can have some fun along the way, but it’s a fine line between having fun and getting your nose broke by The Hells Angels.”



His book features many tales from the touring road that accurately depict the foregone rock-star lifestyle. “There’s lots of fights in the book,” said Bach. “I didn’t realize there were so many fights until I read [the narration for] the audiobook. I was like, ‘Holy shit, this is fucking crazy!’”


But despite there being many sensational anecdotes for any fan of rock stars during the late-’80s and early-’90s era, Bach also frames 18 and Life on Skid Row as a story of losing innocence.


He recalls meeting his former childhood heroes, such as guitarist Ted Nugent and KISS founder Paul Stanley, and these encounters didn’t tend to go as he hoped they would when he was younger.


“I’m a kid [at the beginning of the book], so I believe everything is great and everything’s perfect,” Bach told HuffPost. “Then as you get older, as we all do as adults, we find out stuff we believed as a kid might not be true. And that’s not just rock ‘n’ roll, I think that’s part of going from childhood to adulthood.”


Bach now takes on roles in theater and on television ― appearing recently on Netflix’s “Gilmore Girls” reboot ― but also continues his work as a touring music act. His job title remains, authentically, a “rock star.”

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3 Ways To Hack Your Environment To Help You Create

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This article first appeared on QuietRev.com


This is the first article in Quiet Revolution’s two-part series on seeking creativity. Check out this space next week to learn about different techniques that make your mind more likely to generate creative thoughts.


Much of our creativity is tied up in our intrinsic natures as introverts or extroverts, and the ways we interact with our environment is uniquely dependent upon our temperaments.


According to The Atlantic, the great film director Ingmar Bergman spent the last 25 years of his life living on a small island in Sweden to eliminate chaos from his life. There, “…he would plan his films, write the scripts, [and] make the screenboards… He limited his activities: Besides working and thinking, he might go for a stroll. … In the late afternoon or evening, he would have visitors over to go and look at a movie in his cinema. And that was his routine, every day. He didn’t try to do more.”



Bergman wrote in a journal every day, and one day he wrote, “Here, in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity.”


Dorthe Nors reflected that “it is the job of the artist to sit with our feelings, to be receptive to them, to examine them, turn them into narrative or paint or film.” The act of creation is often synonymous with making opportunities for solitude, generating this overwhelming sense of humanity, and pouring it out on the page or the canvas.


The act of creation can be difficult. It requires good routines, inspiration, and surroundings. It’s especially important for introverts to pay attention to their environments and carefully cultivate creative spaces.


We’ve rounded up three of the best strategies for blocking out external demands and distractions to create time for inner stimulation.


1. Twyla Tharp’s bubble


In her book The Creative Habit, the world-renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp writes that the ideal creative state—she calls “The Bubble”—is constructed and controlled. It’s “one where creativity becomes a self-perpetuating habit.” 


Tharp details the ways many other creatives construct bubbles, including novelist Philip Roth, who “lives alone in the country and works seven days a week, waking early and walking to a two-room studio fifty yards from his house… Near his desk he keeps two small signs, one reading ‘Stay Put,’ the other ‘No Optional Striving.’ [These are] reminders to avoid the temptation of anything other than the five essentials: food, writing, exercise, sleep, and solitude.”



Creating a bubble for yourself doesn’t have to be as extreme as Tharp’s or Roth’s—a bubble can also be a state of mind. Take stock of what you could subtract from your life. How can you adopt a more monastic mental state? Even when you’re amid chaos or traveling, you can still create a bubble for yourself and your creative work.


Try this theory in your life: How can you pare your life down to the minimum number of moving parts? What isn’t adding to your creativity? What can you say no to?


2. IDEO and Intel’s restorative time


IDEO designers frequently work on 10-12-week projects requiring intense teamwork. After a project wraps, the team is often wiped. But introverts can be especially burned out since they’ve most likely been working in a small project space with several other team members for weeks on end—not an optimal introvert environment.


But IDEO realizes that its success as a creative firm comes from its employees remaining inspired, so if the project calendar allows for it, designers are encouraged to take a few hours or a day off between projects. IDEOers use this time as a chance to rest. Once they’ve restored their energy, they use the time to get re-inspired.


Some IDEO teams actually build time for inspiration into their weekly work. One project team in New York used every Friday morning to get inspired together by taking trips to a museum or working outdoors.


Other offices structure this downtime into every working week. According to the New York Times, Intel “experimented in 2007 with conferring four uninterrupted hours of quiet time every Tuesday morning on 300 engineers and managers.” This pilot group loved it so much that the practice was extended to the rest of the company.



Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of Basecamp (formerly known as 37Signals) is an introvert, and he’s structured his entire company around quiet time. In his bookRework, he urges creatives to remember that “every minute you avoid spending in a meeting is a minute you can get real work done instead.”


Try this theory in your life: Make a case at your office for days off after projects, quiet time, or no-meeting zones. Even if you can’t work remotely, you can build an argument for solitude at work.


3. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s theory on creativity and flow


It’s easy to forget that we have an innate capacity to know what being creative feels like. When we’re in an optimal state for creativity, we’re in a state of flow—we’re completely absorbed in an activity.


Positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describes flow as a state when “we feel totally involved, lost in a seemingly effortless performance. Paradoxically, we feel 100% perfectly alive when we are so committed to the task at hand that we lose track of time, of our interests—even our own existence.”



So, why is it so hard to remember that doing excellent, creative work should feel good? Perhaps because it is increasingly hard to find moments of flow within our modern work environments. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi writes, “Few things in life are as enjoyable as when we concentrate on a difficult task, using all our skills, knowing what has to be done.”


Studies show that for most of us, flow occurs more often when we are engaging in work activities, not in leisure activities. But how can we ensure that we actually have the capacity to enter flow at work?


First, Csíkszentmihályi says we need jobs that provide “clear goals, immediate feedback, and a level of challenges matching our skill.” We also need an environment that will allow us to become wholly engaged in activities. This means having a sense of control with few distractions. For us introverts, this means longer stretches of interrupted work time, a quiet environment, and a community around us we know and trust. The thirdkey to finding flow is to work on something that you have intrinsic motivation for.


As Harvard Business Review reports, one CEO started using Csíkszentmihályi’s theories to help his employees find flow. His techniques included “allowing people to switch off email, fewer meetings, and focusing on smaller chunks of work.” This was particularly effective because the whole organization made the change.



Try this theory in your life: As you go through your day, notice the moments when you enter periods of flow. Identify what types of work and environments let this flow flourish. Try to maximize your time spent on these types of activities and in these environments.


As Kurt Vonnegut wrote,



“Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”



The product of solitude—namely the humanity that’s put on paper—can inspire, delight, and provide great comfort. And anyone who has created or been moved by art would agree that the challenge and pain of seeking solitude and translating to the page is well worth it.



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This article originally appeared on QuietRev.com.

You can find more insights from Quiet Revolution on work, life, and parenting as an introvert at QuietRev.com.


Follow Quiet Revolution on Facebook and Twitter.



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Wieners Rush Red Carpet To Protest Australia's 'Sausage Fest' Film Awards

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A group of women filmmakers wearing sausage costumes rushed the red carpet at one of Australia’s most prestigious screen awards to protest a lack of female nominees this year.


Sixteen members of the Women in Film and Television New South Wales chapter chanted “end the sausage party” on the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards red carpet Wednesday, interrupting live broadcastings of the event.


In the SBS World News Facebook Live video below, you can see protesters chanting and handing out flyers about their demonstration. Then one demonstrator yells,“Sausage roll!” That prompts all the protesters to drop to the floor and roll around the carpet.  





Protesters shouted out, “Gender roles not sausage rolls!” as security escorted activists off the red carpet, onlookers reported. One video that the Guardian’s Steph Harmon posted to Twitter appears to show a guard aggressively pushing a demonstrator. But WIFT president and sausage party protester Sophie Mathisen said the group was not surprised by the response. 


“None of the protestors were significantly roughed up, we were pushed around,” she said in an email to The Huffington Post. “You know, I think that the adrenaline meant that we didn’t really pay too much attention.”






WIFT supports Australia’s entertainment industry adopting a quota system to increase the number of women working in film and television. Research shows that when more women work in roles behind the camera, there is greater gender diversity on screen as well. 


“Women are making more content than ever before and this year’s nominations in not only feature films but also television categories are not at all reflective of this fact, a deeply disappointing and shameful situation for a body that proclaims to celebrate the width and breadth of screen excellence,” Mathisen said in a statement.


For those considering staging their own sausage party protests, Mathisen said that WIFT is making the costumes available for loan


“We think that this is a really important stance, something that we hope catches on,” she said. “There is disparity in a number of different industries, not just film industries, so it’s important that we actually start to call out these institutional biases and really raise awareness for them and institute change.”

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The Differences Between Living In The Suburbs And The City

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Life in a suburb or small town is very different than life in, say, New York City. The ample space and slower pace of the ‘burbs generally make it easier to head outdoors or find your dream home, but you may risk boredom without the hustle and bustle of big-city offerings. 


Considering a change of venue, or just wondering what life is like on the other side of the picket fence? Illustrator Victor Rosas II breaks it down in these flawlessly accurate comics from CollegeHumor.






Head over to CollegeHumor for the rest of Rosas’s illustrations.

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Let's Talk About The Best Scene In 'Jackie'

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One week after John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy planted a seed that revolutionized the image of her husband’s three-year presidency. During an interview with Life magazine at the Kennedys’ Cape Cod compound, the 34-year-old widow likened her family’s time in the White House to Camelot, the idyllic castle where King Arthur reigned.


The Camelot analogy resurfaces in the new movie “Jackie,” a haunting psychodrama that chronicles JFK’s murder from the first lady’s perspective. Before concluding her lengthy conversation with the Life reporter (Billy Crudup), Jackie (Natalie Portman) asks to say one last thing. Revealing that she and JFK would often listen to the Broadway musical “Camelot” before bed, Jackie recounts the lyrics of the show’s final number, her husband’s favorite. “For one brief, shining moment, there was a Camelot,” and it was the Kennedy White House, drenched in elegance. “There won’t be another Camelot,” she says in the film. “Not another Camelot.” This rare interview from the notoriously press-averse Jackie Kennedy reverberated throughout a grieving America, prompting a new mythos about the dazzling political dynasty to take hold.


Jackie’s Arthurian allegory remains synonymous with Kennedy folklore. It also plays a role in the best scene from Pablo Larraín’s masterful film. In the midst of deciding whether JFK’s funeral will entail a grand procession through the streets of Washington, à la Abraham Lincoln’s, Jackie spends an evening popping pills and sipping vodka. She puts on the titular song “Camelot,” which insists “there’s simply not a more congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering.” Pacing through the White House chambers as Richard Burton croons about Camelot’s perfection, Jackie tries on a series of designer outfits in quick succession. Pouring more alcohol, she strolls from room to room, testing her mournful march with pearls and gowns. How about fire-engine red? Peach? Perhaps a pale teal? Gold brocade? 



This sequence was not part of Noah Oppenheim’s original script. Larraín, a Chilean unfamiliar with the Kennedys’ Camelot affiliation, felt we needed to see Jackie ponder that “brief, shining moment” before feeding it to the Life reporter in the film’s finale. Larraín conceptualized a ravaged Jackie imbibing substances and traipsing through the White House’s private residence, where she and JFK slept in separate bedrooms. That expression of grief mirrors the public’s campy infatuation with Jackie’s appearance.


“To me, she was trying to find her own identity,” Larraín said of the scene. As the director sees it, the first lady and well-documented style icon had spent years dressing to be paraded about as JFK’s pageant queen. Finally, she could dress for herself ― but ultimately, “she just wears a black dress and says, ‘Let’s go to bed,’” Larraín said. She can’t yet flee the persona of a politician’s wife.


Larraín filmed the sequence in long tracking shots, with Portman calibrating Jackie’s emotions as the gowns grow more somber and the intoxicants more anesthetizing. When editor Sebastián Sepúlveda put the scene together, he spliced it up so the dresses change along with the rhythm of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe’s song. (Fun fact: Lerner was JFK’s college classmate.) Not wanting to emulate one of those clichéd movie montages where a teen girl tries on outfits to the sounds of a rowdy pop song, Sepúlveda edited the spectacle so its frenzy unfolds in one continuous crescendo. 



I thought it was like a ghost story in this part of the movie because she’s alone in the White House and she’s trying to live in that space, to give [the clothes] life,” Sepúlveda said. “It was like a complex dance of a mind that’s really starving. It’s not that she puts on her clothes because she’s happy. She’s trying to be the Jackie that all the people remember, the Jackie with the beautiful clothes. But she can’t be that. She’s not that anymore. That was a very beautiful journey because you have to do it in a playful way at the same time.”


The scene marks the first of only two instances in which “Jackie” features music other than Mica Levi’s nightmarish score. Jackie firing up that record becomes a wake-up call. It’s also one of the few times she is alone, removed from the prying gaze of cameras and advisers and crowds. For one brief, shining moment, she is an aching wife instead of a political dignitary, even if she is walking the corridors of the White House (constructed with intricate detail on a set in Paris). When the song ends and Jackie is left crying at JFK’s desk, we feel ravaged by the emotional excess. 


The scene invokes the duality of the Kennedys: the intimacy Jackie and John shared while listening to “Camelot” before bed, juxtaposed with the frosty notion of her closing the door to her conjoining room and climbing into a different bed after its conclusion. It summons the impermanence of life inside the White House, where Jackie’s inevitable eviction notice arrived earlier than expected. It forces us to consider the calculations of the complicated, unknowable Jacqueline Kennedy.


“If you look at Jackie Kennedy in photos or in videos, she could be telling you what she thinks and feels about whatever is around her,” Larraín said. “But you look at her and you say, ‘What is going on inside?’ And this movie is her point of view.”


“Jackie” is now playing in select theaters.

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Mom Didn’t Sell Any Knitted Goods At A Fair, So Twitter Bought It All

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Twitter showed a man some love after he tweeted about his mom struggling to sell her knitted wares at a craft fair.


On Nov. 26, Martyn Hett of Manchester, England texted his mom, Figen, to see how she was doing. He tweeted out her heartbreaking response:






The 28-year-old then mentioned his mom had a Depop page, which is similar to Etsy, where people buy and sell homemade goods.


A friend of Hetts bought a glove creature from his mother’s Depop page:






And a few more people followed along and bought goodies as well:






Then, in the very best way possible, knit hit the fan:


















Mama Figen even had to re-up on materials due to demand:






“She sews/knits for therapeutic reasons,” Hett told Buzzfeed News. “She’s a counselor and she believes that being creative is good for the soul – it’s advice she often gives to her clients. Since it went viral, she’s decided to donate money from her earnings to a local charity, Beacon Counselling.”


He also told Indy 100 that she’s getting requests from people who want her to make specific hearts to honor relatives who have passed.


In regards to the response, Hett thinks the whole thing is hilarious.


His mom, however, has decided to react in the most mom way possible:






She is sew cute!

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Tina Fey Is Worried About What The Internet Is Doing To Society

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A little less than two weeks after Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States, Tina Fey and David Letterman, two giants of the comedy world, sat down at Circo in Manhattan to discuss, well, a bit of everything. 


In the interview, which was published Wednesday in conjunction with The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Power 100 breakfast, Fey talked parenting, and friends, and bedtimes, and Lorne Michaels. But the meat of the article lay in breaking down the world we find ourselves in. A world that, in Fey’s eyes, feels a bit like a slowly climbing rollercoaster that has suddenly started to fall backwards.



I definitely came out of last month feeling misogyny is much more real than two years ago.
Tina Fey


 “It feels like we were on the precipice of things getting pretty good, and now we’re in a bit of a throwback moment. I definitely came out of last month feeling misogyny is much more real than two years ago,” Fey told Letterman.


“But the thing I worry about [more] than actual human interaction is the internet,” she added. “Because that’s just despicable: people just being able to be awful to each other without having to be in the same room. It’s metastasizing now, thanks to our glorious president-elect who can’t muster the dignity of a seventh-grader. It’s so easy for people to abuse each other and to abandon all civility.”


Anyone who has spent significant time interacting with people on the internet can attest to what Fey is talking about. Online, it is much easier to be harsh and biting online. Online, it is easier to voice your opinion without having to listen to the retort. To spew hate without consideration for those it affects.


The internet doesn’t provide us the empathy-generation machine that real-life interaction does. In person, face to face, it is harder, if not impossible, for humans to cut themselves off from the divergent opinions around them. Real-life interaction provides us with one of the most wonderful things about our species: the ability to feel compassion. Too often, the internet takes that sense of compassion away.


Fey and Letterman spoke as part of the leadup to The Hollywood Reporter honoring Fey with the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award, given to women who are pioneers in their industry. 


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