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Here Are The Newest Cast Members Of 'Star Wars: Episode VIII'

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"Star Wars: Episode VIII" has already begun filming, and the franchise announced Monday that there will be some new faces joining the force. 


Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro, Academy Award nominee Laura Dern, and newcomer Kelly Marie Tran are set to appear in the film alongside all of the returning cast members from "The Force Awakens."


Del Toro is well known for his Oscar-winning performance in Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic" and Dern famously starred in "Jurassic Park," but Tran is not as recognizable. She's appeared in a couple of independent and shorts films throughout her career and most recently starred in a College Humor sketch called "Periods Aren't That Gross": 





No word yet on what roles the newbies will play in the newest episode, but we did learn another interesting tidbit from Monday's announcement: "Episode VIII" is expected to pick up where "The Force Awakens" left off -- literally.


The franchise released some behind-the-scenes footage revealing that the last scene of "The Force Awakens" will also appear in "Episode VIII." In addition, it was announced that filming commenced Monday in London. 


As of now, the movie is slated for a December 15, 2017 release date. Watch the behind-the-scenes action from "Episode VIII" below:





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You'll Recognize These Iconic Outfits, But Do You Know Who Designed Them?

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Despite the dearth of black fashion designers featured in stores and on the runway, some of the most iconic style moments in history have been created by people of color. 


From Jackie O's wedding gown to several of Michelle Obama's biggest public appearances, there are plenty of eye-catching looks that have colorful backstories you probably weren't aware of. Even the Playboy bunny costume was created by a black woman. #BlackGirlMagic 


Long story short, whether publicly recognized or not, black designers have been slaying the fashion scene for ages. Check out the examples below -- and make sure to watch the video above for even more stylish proof.


Jackie Kennedy Onassis' wedding dress by Anne Lowe


Jackie O's gown for her marriage to John F. Kennedy was designed by Anne Lowe. The voluminous, off-the-shoulder dress was constructed out of 50 yards of ivory silk taffeta. Just 10 days before the wedding ceremony, a water line broke in Lowe's New York City studio and ruined the former First Lady's gown along with all 10 pink bridesmaids dresses. Lowe worked tirelessly to recreate all 11 designs in time for the Rhode Island nuptials.



The Playboy bunny costume by Zelda Wynn Valdes


Valdes was tapped by Hugh Hefner to dream up the first-ever Playboy bunny costumes thanks to her reputation for designing creations that highlighted the female body. Her namesake collection of curve-hugging designs was worn and loved by a host of Hollywood's biggest starlets during the 1940s and '50s, including Joyce Bryant, Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Ella Fitzgerald and Mae West. 



Farrah Fawcett's 1978 Academy Awards gown by Stephen Burrows


At the height of Fawcett's career in the '70s, it's no surprise that all eyes were definitely on the "Charlie's Angel" star when she wowed in a slinky gold gown by the world renowned designer Stephen Burrows at the 1978 Oscars. While Burrows was already a huge designer this moment definitely solidified Fawcett's style icon status. 



Michelle Obama's 2012 Democratic National Convention dress by Tracy Reese


Reese is one of America's most beloved fashion designers and that fact was only strengthened when FLOTUS stepped out onto the 2012 DNC stage wearing her now famous sleeveless, pink-and-dusty blue frock. Since then the First Lady has worn countless Tracy Reese designs -- adding to the long list of A-listers who adore the New York-based designer's collection. 



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Kids Write Love Letters To The Homeless To Show They 'Are Not Alone' For Valentine's Day

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Kids in the U.K. sent some love to those who need it most for Valentine's Day. 


A group of students from Merchant Taylors' School recently wrote sweet letters of compassion to homeless people as part of the project Wrapping Liverpool in Love.


Their sweet notes were attached to scarves and hung around the city on Sunday so that people in need would know they're cared for on the holiday of love, Michelle Langan, who started the initiative, told The Huffington Post. 



"We will all keep you in our prayers. You are not alone," reads one of the messages, attached to the winter wear. "I hope this keeps you warm. We are all behind you."


According to ABC News, about 150 kids between ages 8 and 9 participated in the project. Langan told HuffPost that the students wrote the letters in their spare time. 



Some offered messages of assurance.  


"Stay safe, stay warm and know you're loved," reads one note.


Others wrote words that weren't so realistic, however still brought across the kids' message of love.


"I hope superheroes will help you." 



Langan told HuffPost that she was inspired to create the project after hearing about a similar concept in Canada. She began collecting scarves with the help of donations, buying others from charity shops. Then, she decided to get kids involved to both educate them on the subject of homelessness, as well as add an additional element of kindness. She visited their school to spread awareness around the subject and then encouraged them to write the "love" letters. It was clear from the start that the students were committed to helping. 



"The kids really took the project to heart, and thought carefully about how their messages could raise someone's spirits," Langan told HuffPost. "They asked a lot of questions about homelessness, and were very thoughtful about what they could do to help."
















While the scarves would help keep those in need warm, the messages, Langan explained, would hopefully help uplift them. 

















“If they can get a scarf with a lovely little message from a child, letting them know someone’s thinking about them, it might make someone homeless feel happier for a couple of hours," Langan told the Liverpool Echo. "And it’s so cold at the moment hopefully they’ll be a bit warmer too.”


The notes certainly did not disappoint. Langan told HuffPost that when she went to distribute the scarves around the area, with help from a group of volunteers, she was met with appreciation. 


"One homeless man put on the scarf right away and carefully tucked the card in his rucksack," she noted. "He said it meant a lot to know that people cared."


 


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Homeless Shelter Pods Provide Night's Rest, Call For Better Solutions In Ireland

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Dubliners got a wake-up call during their morning commute on Monday, with wooden boxes placed around the city reading: “WE NEED REAL SOLUTIONS.”






The “shelter pods” are part of a campaign by Gimme Shelter Ireland calling for a solution to homelessness.


Part street art, part temporary housing, the large wooden boxes display a stark message about the dire state of homelessness in Ireland's capital city:


"In October 2015, 150 people were sleeping rough in Dublin. There are up to 1,616 children living in emergency accommodation.”






"Sleeping rough" means sleeping on the streets, as opposed to in a shelter or other accommodation for homeless people. According to the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, the total number of homeless individuals in Dublin has been steadily increasing over the last few years, reaching 3,328 in late 2015. 


The campaign is asking people to sign a petition calling for the Irish government to include the right to housing in the constitution. 


“We built these pods to provide some semblance of security for a fraction of the people sleeping rough in Dublin,” the campaign website reads. “We know these pods are not a sustainable solution to the homelessness crisis. We built them because we were saddened and ashamed of the State's efforts, or lack thereof, to tackle homelessness.”


As part of the campaign, Gimme Shelter has posted a video on its website, featuring a homeless man talking about the fear and insecurity of sleeping on the streets:





"You don't know, from one minute to the next, if they're going to try to rob you or jump on you... You have to be watching your back."


The video concludes with a powerful call to action: “Every person has the right to a home. We need real solutions. Sign the petition.”


Gimme Shelter Ireland -- "an ownerless campaign that was started by a group of friends and concerned citizens" -- is criticizing the government for the steep decrease in spending on affordable housing over the last decades. They also point to a government pledge to end homelessness by 2016, which so far has gone unfulfilled. 


Paudie Coffey, the Minister of State with Special Responsibility for Housing, said on RTE News' Claire Byrne Live last month that the government has committed €4 billion to tackle the issue of homelessness over the next five years. So far, Coffey said, the government has provided 13,000 additional housing units, and 2,000 people have exited homelessness in the past year.


The shelter pods were strategically positioned in front of government outposts: the General Post Office (the GPO), the principal chamber of the Irish legislature (the Dail), the central bus station (the Busaras), and the Central Bank. These placements send a clear message to officials that this campaign is aimed at them.


Some of the pods have been moved since they were put into place Monday morning. Social media users are pointing out the critical message is now blocked. 






All of the writing wasn't hidden though, with the black and red stamps on the sides leaving passersby with some serious food for thought:


“This is a shelter pod. This is not a solution.”  


h/t The Journal


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Actress Danai Gurira: Black Casts And Crews On Broadway Shouldn't Be 'Unusual'

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Actress Danai Gurira is making her first impression on Broadway in the coming weeks as the playwright behind "Eclipsed." The play is gaining buzz for its black female cast, which includes Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o, but Gurira told HuffPost Live last week that she looks forward to the day when seeing so many black women grace a Broadway stage isn't so noteworthy. 




"The Walking Dead" actress explained to host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani that while many repertory and non-profit theaters across the country are working on diversifying the theatre world, "there's still a lot of growing to do," she said. But even with the lack of diversity, Gurira said it "shouldn't be that unusual" for a Broadway play to have been written, directed and acted by a black cast.




"I understand the significance of the moment, but I also find it a shame that there is any significance to the moment," she said, adding: "It just really shouldn't be that much of an event, and that's what I yearn to see. I yearn to see that the next time one of my plays is on Broadway, it's just not that much of an event for a black woman to have written a play for Broadway."


Click here to watch the full interview with actress Danai Gurira. 


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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The Nude Painting That Facebook Really Doesn't Want You To See

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Almost every story of Facebook censorship sounds the same. Man or woman posts nude painting to Facebook. Facebook removes painting, marking it as "suggestive content." Man or woman posts unhappy response to said censorship, but eventually gets over it and resumes normal social media presence. 


Frederic Durand-Baissas's story, though, is a little different.


The 57-year-old French teacher from Paris posted a very particular painting -- Gustave Courbet’s 1866 "L'Origine du monde" -- back in 2011. Facebook did indeed remove the post, and went as far as to suspend his account. But Durand-Baissas did not take the backlash lying down. Instead, he went to court, seeking to officially reactivate his account and secure $22,550 in damages. Why? Because he says the entire ordeal violated his freedom of expression.


"This is a case of free speech and censorship on a social network," Durand-Baissas explained to The Associated Press. "If (Facebook) can't see the difference between an artistic masterpiece and a pornographic image, we in France (can)."


In court, Facebook originally argued that users like Durand-Baissas can only file cases against the company in California, thereby refusing to acknowledge Durand-Baissas's concerns. Yet, a high court in Paris decided last week that the company's argument was "abusive" and excessive, and found that its reasoning violates French consumer law. The ruling upheld a lower court’s decision that French users have a right to sue Facebook under French law and, as a result, Durand-Baissas's case will be heard. 





The Philadelphia Museum of Art similarly felt the wrath of arbitrary censorship when it posted Evelyne Axell's "Ice Cream" on social media earlier this month. Facebook removed the painting of a woman eating an ice cream, claiming it contains "excessive amounts of skin or suggestive content." This happened shortly after a few art historians and artists banded together to promote Facebook Nudity Day.


Facebook's sticky guidelines on nudity reads in part:



"We remove photographs of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks. We also restrict some images of female breasts if they include the nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring. We also allow photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures."



Despite the last sentence, Courbet's 19th century depiction of a woman's vulva might be too risqué for Zuckerberg et al. 



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Female Authors Helped Bookstore Sales Rise For First Time Since 2007

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Print is dead? Think again. 


American bookstores reported an increase in sales for the first time since 2007, according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau.


In 2015, sales hit $11.17 billion, a 2.5 percent increase from the previous year. However, Publisher's Weekly noted that e-book sales were down.


Harper Lee's novel "Go Set A Watchman" topped the U.S. bestsellers list. "Grey" by EL James and Paula Hawkins' thriller "Girl On The Train" came in second and third respectively.


The Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015 went to Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich. Only 13 other women have won the prize in the 100-plus years it's been awarded.


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Surreal Photos Reclaim The Words People Use To Insult Women

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Sugar tits. Butter face. The language we use to put down women is illustrious and plentiful, a cloying metaphor for every ingredient in a well-stocked kitchen.


Meanwhile, the disparaging remarks in the English language’s man-dissing arsenal are restricted to less evocative animal and body part comparisons, i.e. jackass. Or, worse, they draw from women-centric language, as if to say there’s nothing lower than femininity. Douchebag. Bitch.


Poking fun at the inane words we use to insult women, photographer Anna Friemoth staged literal representations of the terms and phrases in her aptly named series "Words for Women." In one image, a brunette smears a stick of butter on her made-up face, contorted in an agonized pout. In another, a figure proudly displays her bare chest, smeared in sugary frosting.



The shots are composed cartoonishly, playing into the ridiculousness of the phrases. And, each scene is adorned with vibrant blues and fluorescent pinks, suggesting that mocking the put-downs, and thereby turning them on their heads, can be a fun endeavor.


“I want people to have an ‘oh yeah’ moment when they draw the connection between the words and the image,” Friemoth said in an interview with The Huffington Post.


She came up with the idea for the series after having a conversation with friends about how peculiar terms like “trophy wife” really were. Inspired by Bettina Rheims' stylized, feminine portraits, she set up surreal scenes to convey the absurdity of it all. So the next time somebody calls you arm candy, think of a life-sized, bright-red wrapper, with a real-life woman stuffed inside. When you put it that way, it’s hard not to laugh.


Anna Friemoth's photos are on display at Gallery 151 until March 15. 








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'Broad City' And The Self-Love Revolution

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The scene: A lit candle. The faint sounds of "Happy to Be Sad" by Keeper. A Janet Jackson poster. Ears dressed in the most "yas kween"-evoking jewelry, uncanny seapunk lips to match. Oysters. A strategically positioned cell phone bearing the face of Abbi Abrams.


This is the "pre-masturbation" mise-en-scène according to "Broad City." Or more accurately, the self-love ritual of one Ilana Wexler, a 20-something woman who prefers the image of her own pleasure to the Lolita-ized world of online porn. Add a yoga mat, a mirror and a dildo, and the stage is set. 


For fans of the Comedy Central show, about to enter into its third season, this vista is hardly revolutionary. We're familiar with BFFs Abbi and Ilana speaking openly and emphatically about all things vaguely sexual -- pink dicks, pegging, Arcs de Triomphe. But, to television consumers used to self-deprecating female characters afraid of their own bodies and even more afraid of their own sexuality, Ilana is an aurora. 





In fact, the women of "Broad City," played by co-creators Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, have been described with many modifiers over the past two years. The Guardian called them "the anointed feminist stoner comedy kweens of the 21st centuryand Vulture dubbed them "crop-top-wearing mascots of bouncy-castle, post-Bloomberg New York;" bugle calls to their audiences of millennials in favor of legalization and Hillary Clinton.


Most reviews, including the ones mentioned above, remark upon a particular constellation of character traits: the women are confidently flawed, imperfect but pulsing with self-esteem. Instead of fixating on body ideals or insecurities, they -- buttressed by an Oprah-style foundation of best friendship -- genuinely embrace their personalities and images.


Abbi is no Mata Hari and Ilana made for a clutzy nude model. Still, the show leans more on self-love than self-loathing.


And, while a major chunk of this self-love takes the form of emotional hilarity and decidedly non-sexualized declarations of support, other parts are ... pretty sexy. Ilana embarks on a physical relationship with her doppelgänger, played by near-twin Alia Shawkat, seemingly taking the mantra "you do you" to a whole new level. Abbi uses post-it notes on her dildo, because scheduled "me time" is that important to her. 


Sure, Ilana is a bit more comfortable talking about herself and her libido than Abbi, but hey, women don't exactly occupy a single notch on the sex drive speedometer. Similarly, self-love is "Treating. Yo'. Self." for one and confidently correcting a barista's spelling of your name for another. Laverne goes to the docks to pick up sailors and Shirley spends a night in with Boo Boo Kitty. Ilana reaches for solo porn and Abbi dreams of Jeremy. 


Either way, it's refreshing to see characters embrace their selves -- sexualized and not -- irony never included.







Now, Abbi and Ilana are hardly the first or last women to embrace self-love and masturbation on the small screen -- cue episodes of "Sex and the City" and "Mad Men" and "UnREAL" and "SNL" and "Reign." There was "The Contest" in "Seinfeld," which saw Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine in a battle of will, each attempting to outlast the other in a self-pleasure fast. Though we weren't made privy to the moment, we know Elaine lost. Some scenes have been more overt, like Marnie of "Girls" masturbating in a gallery bathroom after ravenously flirting with a hotshot conceptual artist. Normalization is afoot.


But beyond a fleeting episode, what "Broad City" does best is show that self-love -- masturbation and all -- is routine. It's unapologetic but hardly narcissistic. It's rife for comedy but never sarcastic. In the age of "doing me," embracing the self can be radical and feminist and, well, regimen too.


Amidst today's expanding sea of female friendship-centric television shows, Abbi and Ilana's story is propped atop mutual encouragement, the acceptance of imperfections, and a healthy dose of ménage à moi. Which is great. We've had enough of the boners of bromedies. Bring on the vayaña jokes.







"Broad City" returns to Comedy Central on Feb. 17, 2015.





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This Is The Most Relaxing Video Ever Made

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There's something peacefully mesmerizing about watching conveyor belt consistences, a cake frosted with the utmost precision or gears turning in perfect harmony.


Digg has done us all a favor and mashed up some of the most euphoric videos that capture the motion of things working synchronistically. Once you start, it's nearly impossible to look away.


Enjoy the soothing visuals that glide their way through the video above, then enjoy five more in gif form below:
 


This cake being perfectly iced:





Yes.


These boxes sliding into formation 





Could watch all day.


These bottles getting simultaneously filled





Will watch all day.


This chain tube conveyer releasing bottle caps. 





Feeling very satisfied.


This deck of cards shuffling for eternity.





True magic.


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The Importance Of Photography In The Fight For Civil Rights

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Some images are difficult to ignore. The dashboard camera footage of Sandra Bland's arrest, three days before her wrongful death in prison. The still image of Michael Brown's body covered by a sheet, just after the unarmed 18-year-old was fatally shot by a police officer. Protest photos of massive crowds bearing a single message, so simple it's absurd: "Black Lives Matter."


A camera is not in itself political. But the photographic tool carries with it the potential for widespread awareness, reform and revolution. Contemporary protest movements are propelled by the images and videos circulating across social media, broadcasting in plain sight the systemic injustices and atrocities still inextricably linked with blackness in America.






In 1912, when Gordon Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, photographers didn't document the lives of people of color or the struggles they were forced to endure. Simply being seen was a fight in itself, a fight to which Parks dedicated his life. 


He grew up in poverty, the youngest of 15 children. After graduating high school, he worked a string of odd jobs -- a semi-pro basketball player, a waiter, a busboy and a brothel pianist. Over time, Parks became enamored with the photography of the Farm Security Administration -- how artists like Jack Delano and Dorothea Lange captured the plights of migrant workers and Depression-era communities.


"I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs," he told an interviewer in 1999, seven years before his death. "I knew at that point I had to have a camera." Eventually, Parks visited a pawn shop and purchased a camera of his own. 









From 1948 to 1972, Parks served as a photographer for Life magazine, becoming the first African-American photographer in the publication's history. During his time at Life, Parks captured images that have since become immortalized in the history of Civil Rights, his visuals piecing together a history that otherwise may have never been told. 


An exhibition titled "Gordon Parks: Higher Ground" will revisit eight of Parks' most influential Life photo essays, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. The images simultaneously ignited revolution and documented the process, capturing the immense power of photography as a dynamic weapon of change. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1961: "The world seldom believes the horror stories of history until they are documented via the mass media."









Park's essays begin with "A Man Becomes Invisible," based on Ralph Ellison's 1952 National Book Award-winning novel Invisible Man. Ellison's novel, from the perspective of an unnamed black protagonist, explores the isolating experience of being a black man in America. In one of Parks' photos, titled "Invisible Man Retreat," an unnamed subject sits alone, listening to Louis Armstrong records, illuminated by the glow of 1,369 light bulbs. 


Soon after, in 1956, Parks embarked on a series titled "Segregation Story," documenting the lives of an African-American family, the Thorntons, living under Jim Crow segregation in 1950s Alabama. Instead of focusing on the milestone moments in the fight for racial justice, Parks focuses his lens on quiet acts of prejudice -- a separate line at the ice cream shop, a back entrance at the local department store -- that often go undocumented.









Together, the images sought to debunk the most heinous myth at the core of racism -- that there is something inherently different about individuals of different skin colors. Chronicling the Thorntons in their most banal moments -- sitting on the couch, playing outside -- Parks captured the beautiful ordinariness of African-American life, not significantly different from American life whatsoever. 


His images exposed many Americans to the realities of segregation for the first time, setting off an irreversible sequence of events that catalyzed the Civil Rights movement as we know it today. Parks' 1963 series "The March on Washington" documents the titular occasion in black rights history, including one unforgettable image of the Washington Monument, brimming with people of all backgrounds desperate for change. 









Parks also documented another faction fighting for racial justice, the Nation of Islam, crusading for the separation of black and white America. Led by Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, the movement refused to speak with white journalists, allowing Parks unprecedented access to their self-sustaining subculture, complete with schools, stores, places of worship and self-defense training.


Like Parks, Malcolm X was well aware of the power of visual representation -- Maurice Berger called him one of the "most media-savvy black leaders of the period." Aside from carefully performing a charismatic and authoritative persona on camera for the masses, Malcolm X often carried a camera himself, to document the progress of the insular society flourishing around him. Parks called it "collecting evidence." 









Other photo essays featured in "Higher Ground" revolve around Duke Ellington, Muhammed Ali and the Black Panthers. They illuminate both the history of civil rights and black photography, which can never quite be pulled apart. Today photographers like Carrie Mae Weems, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Lorna Simpson are just some of the individuals continuing Parks' legacy of truth telling and activism through images. 


"I feel very empowered by it because when you can take a strong look at a crisis head-on ... it helps you to deal with the loss and the struggle and the pain," Frazier, who received a MacArthur Fellows grant in 2015, explained to NPR. "And it also helps you to create a human document, an archive, an evidence of inequity, of injustice, of things that have been done to working-class people."









Today, both disheartening and inspiring images regarding black life in America circulate social media with a lifeblood all their own, whether stills from Beyoncé's "Formation," the alarmingly white cover of The Hollywood Reporter's Oscar edition, or photos of the water residents of Flint, Michigan, were encouraged to drink


The late Parks didn't just document some of the most important moments in American history. With his camera in tow, he paved the way for a generation of image-makers, documentarians, activists and artists; people who cannot consciously bring themselves to look away. 


"Gordon Parks: Higher Ground" runs through April 2, 2016, at Jenkins Johnson Gallery in San Francisco.






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2 New Poems By J.R.R. Tolkien Discovered In School Magazine

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Two new poems by acclaimed Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien have recently surfaced.



The poems, titled "The Shadow Man" and "Noel," were written in 1936 while Tolkien was a professor at Oxford University, The Guardian reported Tuesday. U.S.-based Tolkien scholar Wayne Hammond discovered the writings after he found a note from Tolkien mentioning the pieces.


Hammond managed to track the poems down in a magazine from Our Lady's School in Oxfordshire after contacting headmaster Stephen Oliver.


"At first we couldn't find the 1936 edition and referred Mr. Hammond to the archives of the Sisters of Mercy in London," Oliver told the BBC. "Then, while preparing for an event for former pupils of the school, we uncovered our own copy and I saw the two poems Mr. Hammond had been looking for."


"The Shadow Man" tells the story of "a man who dwelt alone" until a "lady clad in grey" arrives and their two shadows become one. The piece is an earlier version of a poem published in 1962. The second, "Noel," is a Christmas story focusing on the Virgin Mary.


"The focus is on Mary, which may be why Tolkien wrote the poem for the school magazine, given that we are dedicated to Our Lady," Oliver told The Guardian.


The school said it plans to put the pieces on display in the future.


Head to the BBC to see the full text of "The Shadow Man."

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Oscar-Nominated Film 'Mustang' Perfectly Depicts What It Is To Be A Woman

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After a long school day, a crew of young girls takes a detour to a nearby beach before heading home. With their uniform skirts and blouses on, they wrap their neckties around their heads like warriors and splash confidently in the sea. They mount the shoulders of their boy classmates for a game of chicken; they wrestle and topple and argue over who really won the hard-fought battle.


Giddy from the game, they stroll home, where punishment for their free-spirited actions awaits. A well-meaning grandmother and socially conservative uncle -- the girls' caretakers after the unexplained death of their parents -- yell, beat and ground the young women for allegedly tempting their male peers. It’s the first in a series of increasingly stifling events that kick off director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Academy Award-nominated film, “Mustang,” a story about five sisters in Eastern Turkey who confront the oppressive gender structures that confine their small town.


The opening scene -- along with other gritty anecdotes from the film -- is plucked directly from Ergüven’s own life in Turkey, before she immigrated to France as a young girl. Of the film’s deeply personal approach, she said plainly in an interview with The Huffington Post, “It wasn’t so creative. It was my point of view.” 


Creative or not, Ergüven’s decision to frame the entire movie from the vantage point of a courageous young girl watching her older sisters’ rough stumble into womanhood is unique. Of the 23 feature-length films nominated for Oscars this year -- eight in the Best Picture category, five documentaries, five animated films, and five foreign language films -- “Mustang” is one of two directed by women. (The doc "What Happened, Miss Simone?" is the second.)


“For me, it’s very important to look at the world through the eyes of girls. In cinema history we have always been looking at the world through the eyes of men,” Ergüven  said. “For some men, if they don’t have sisters, they really can see women as objects.”




The girls in “Mustang” climb, curse, light furniture on fire, and escape the confines of their prison-like home whenever possible. But they are also unabashedly girlish; they call each other lovingly disparaging names, they giggle about crushes, they laze around in their swimsuits.


To prepare her crew of young women actresses for the roles they’d play in “Mustang” -- strong, playful, sexually explorative, rebellious women reluctantly allowing their grandmother to marry them off -- Ergüven gave them assignments. They watched Stanley Kubrick’s “Lolita,” Benh Zietlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” and Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank,” which the girls found “boring,” aside from a scene where the protagonists witness blunt, unedited sex.


“In Turkey they cut most of the sex scenes, so the girls never saw something like this and all of a sudden I heard them shout 'ahhhh!'” Ergüven said.


Censorship of sex scenes isn’t the only evidence of what Ergüven calls a backwards sort of patriarchy in Turkey. She spoke with me about Turkish men in positions of power whose ideals are ostensibly conservative, but in their conservatism are also sex-obsessed.


“For example, school directors are saying girls and boys should not take the same staircases,” Ergüven said. “Because there’s something so sexual happening at 8 o’clock in the morning when you go to math class, as you know,” she added sarcastically. She was referring to a 2013 incident in which an interim school director in Trabzon, a smaller city in Eastern Turkey, said unsegregated stairways were worrisome. His comment roiled the public, and caused a quick, fiery backlash.


But, Ergüven emphasized, these events aren’t restricted to rural Turkey. Istanbul and the country’s capital, Ankara, have their share of discriminatory norms. One notable scene from the film is culled from the director’s conversations with a doctor in Ankara. In it, the parents of a recently married groom bring the couples’ just-used bedsheets to a hospital, questioning whether it’s possible for the girl to have been a virgin if the sheets aren’t bloody. Ergüven said the occurrence is common during wedding season.


So, while she takes pains to accurately illustrate the realities young Turkish women must face, she also sees it as essential to flip the script, to write women characters who exhibit qualities like strength, courage, intelligence and resilience.


The girls in “Mustang” -- particularly the youngest, Lale -- climb, curse, light furniture on fire, and escape the confines of their prison-like home whenever possible. But they are also unabashedly girlish. They call each other lovingly disparaging names, they giggle about crushes, they laze around in their swimsuits. Ergüven is at her strongest here, bringing to life the intimate moments shared between young women. She says she has her keen memory to thank, for storing away the details that make up the texture of a feminine life.


“It’s so funny the things you say inside of a sisterhood,” Ergüven said. “'Who has one boob that’s bigger than the other? Your ass is fatter.' There’s all that ping-ponging that’s very prevalent. It’s part of my intimate experience.”


These candid, fluid conversations are juxtaposed in the film by strident opinions held by men speaking on TV and the radio -- unwritten laws that all women citizens should abide by, including a ban on public laughter. Ergüven said that, unsurprisingly, much of the debate surrounding her film in Turkey mirrored the language the male authorities use in the film itself.


“People love it or hate it,” she said. “Most of the debate is articulated exactly as the one inside the film. Most people would say, 'yeah, I can’t stand seeing the girls in their bathing suits.'”


To confront decriers, in Turkey and beyond, Ergüven says the best she can do is continue to make films that portray feminine strength. Although hers is among a small minority of Oscar-nominated movies directed by a woman, she says the Academy is not wholly to blame. Awards season, she says, holds a mirror to what’s happening in the industry. For her, boycotting festivals and awards shows that lack diversity or gender equity isn’t an option.


“If you’re nominated you’re part of a minority,” Ergüven said. “Boycotting muzzles yourself.”


Writing and directing a film about young girls’ suppressed sexuality, on the other hand, is a freeing experience and a catalyst for change. And if that film goes on to rack up award nominations in a male-dominated field -- well, that’s even better.


Also on HuffPost:


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These Startups Want To Create College Media Powerhouses

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A goalie chugging a beer at a hockey game would not be the top story for a traditional college newspaper, but a website like The Tab knows Internet gold when they see it.


The Tab's editor at the University of Virginia obtained a copy of a four-second video of the hockey team's goalie having a beer on ice and posted it to the website's Facebook page. It soon went viral, and sports blogs and major news outlets picked it up


Major outlets like The New York TimesAdWeek and Britain's Daily Mail joined local papers in citing reports by The Tab's writers from other campuses -- including one about a Dartmouth College protest and an interview with the person who made a fake "White Student Union." 


And there are plenty of personal essays on The Tab vying to be the next viral "dad bod" column, that appeared in March 2015 in the Odyssey, a similar startup that college writers populated. (The Tab currently has declarations like "The rise of the dad hat" and "Let’s stop calling it 'the walk of shame.'") 


This is the new college media world: a trend of quickly growing startups, fueled by investors and seed money, running entirely on content that college students and fans of the provocative create.


In the past couple of years, websites like The Tab, the Odyssey, Spoon University and FlockU began to create a foothold in collegiate life and culture, just as student newspapers have scaled back. A small, central staff of professionals runs each outlet, while students write all of the articles. Some sites pay and some don't. But each say they can offer a more unfiltered view of collegiate life and a larger platform for writers, with potential connections to professional media outlets. 


FlockU president Zanny Oltman said that existing publications were highly filtered. "The idea behind creating FlockU was to fill a void in the media space for college students," she told The Huffington Post. "We consider ourselves a destination where students can come and really discuss their lives in an unfiltered way." 


The Tab's style of reporting is different from most college newspapers; they're like a campus version of Vice Media, a bit more edgy and often written in the first person, mixing opinion with local news and reporters' experiences. 


"In the college media landscape, there are a lot of dinosaurs, there's a lot of people who still focus on the print paper, they're way too into styles which are now out of date, and they're a bit elitist," The Tab editor-in-chief and co-founder Jack Rivlin told HuffPost.


As of February, The Tab had raised $4 million and reached 45 American campuses, 46 British universities and one Canadian school. FlockU rolled out a relaunch last week after spending most of the fall semester touring campuses to recruit students. The Odyssey collected about $3 million in funding last year, while Spoon U raised $2.7 million in summer 2015, both to continue fueling expansions.



Only a few years ago, the consensus was that students preferred printed papers over their campus newspaper's website -- even as daily newspaper circulation nationwide declined significantly


That calculous changed for college newspapers largely due to the growth of smartphones, which made social media available at all times, and allowed for the rise for new platforms like Snapchat and Yik Yak. By 2014, even elite student papers like the Columbia Daily Spectator announced they were cutting back their print publication. Smaller papers cut printed editions altogether.


These startups won't replace traditional campus newspapers, said Gary Kayye, who teaches at the University of North Carolina journalism school, but that doesn't mean they won't have an impact.


"It'd be short-sighted and downright naive to think that these types of publications won't have any effect," he told HuffPost. "The plethora of campus newspapers that are owned by campuses need to seriously join the digital age and certainly the mobile age."


With everyone jockeying for attention in the same space -- social media -- it has offered an opening for outsiders like FlockU or The Tab.  



Rivlin and George Marangos-Gilks started The Tab as students at Britain's Cambridge University in 2009, trying to cover more of student life than the campus newspapers, which often focused on national and global issues. Rivlin spent a brief time working as a professional reporter in London after leaving Cambridge, before he and Marangos-Gilks, who handles the business side, raised enough money from investors in the U.K. to work on outlet full-time. 


In 2015, The Tab began working on an American expansion. A handful of its editors came over from England, but the rest of the couple dozen staff members in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, office are recent graduates from the United States.


The Tab's writers on campus are not paid for their work, but Rivlin said they're provided with analytics, editing and guidance on story ideas. They are experimenting with cash bonuses if students' stories do well to "share in the benefits of our growth," he added. 



We're very adamant about trying to build value for these students other than money
Mackenzie Barth, co-founder of Spoon University


"Fundamentally, this is a talent network of reporters," Rivlin said. "It's a newsroom that's distributed across two countries -- hopefully plenty more countries -- and we are constantly thinking of ways to help our existing reporters and editors publish more, but also to help people who wouldn't write, who wouldn't login to WordPress to write a whole story, but who might send a photo or send a video that could be a news story."


Spoon University doesn't pay either, but Mackenzie Barth, its CEO and co-founder, said writers get more out of training and exposure.


"We're very adamant about trying to build value for these students other than money," she told HuffPost. "I think once you introduce money, the incentive changes and we've held that idea pretty strongly over the last couple of years."



Spoon U started similar to The Tab -- Barth and Sarah Adler co-founded it as undergrads, originally as a print magazine about food at Northwestern University. After amassing a staff on campus of more than 100, and receiving interest from students at five other universities to start their own versions, Adler and Barth felt like they should try to continue building Spoon as a website post-graduation. 


They worked out of an apartment for a few months until they got accepted into Techstars in 2015, which offered them a bootcamp in running a startup and introduced them to potential investors. Now with a Manhattan office and hiring budget for the professional staff, Barth said Spoon is on track to add as many as 60 new campus chapters by April, on top of the 110 existing ones. They're considering expanding outside of food to write about similar topics like health and travel, and are focusing on adding more video content. 


It's not about churning out an unlimited number of articles, Barth said, because Spoon works from the idea that "quality is so much more important than quantity." 



The Philadelphia-based FlockU pays $50 per article through Venmo to each of its 300 student writers, or "Flockers." The Odyssey, based in Indianapolis and New York, pays a small amount to its campus editors. 


FlockU isn't raising money right now, but it has a revenue model based on marketing partnerships, and Oltman said they're being "very selective" about brands they work with. Caroline Weller, the site's managing editor, said they want to make the website feel like a "members only club for college students," more akin to Reddit than a newspaper.


"I'm for it, with caution," said University of Southern California journalism professor Robert Hernandez, in reference to whether students should write for these sites. Hernandez said that he worries about students being exploited for unpaid content, but "sometimes you do the ones that don't pay and the trade-off is it's great for exposure."


Another bonus, outlets like The Tab can offer, are that they are financially independent and can't be bullied by university PR offices -- there are no faculty advisers that administrators can pressure


"We represent students," Rivlin declared. "I have no interest in doing institutions or authorities any favors. I'm happy to have a cordial relationship, but if they do something wrong, we want to be the first to report it."


 


______


Tyler Kingkade is a national reporter that covers higher education and millennials. You can reach him at tyler.kingkade@huffingtonpost.com, or on Twitter: @tylerkingkade


 

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Lin-Manuel Miranda Has A History Of Rapping Incredible Acceptance Speeches

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And the award for best Grammy acceptance speech goes to Lin-Manuel Miranda.


The creator and star of the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” rapped his way through his acceptance speech for his win in the Best Musical Theater Album category at the 58th annual Grammy Awards Monday, and it was one of the most memorable moments of the night.


It was epic. It was everything. It was classic Lin-Manuel.


The Puerto Rican, MacArthur "genius" grant recipient delivered a similar speech almost eight years ago when he won a Tony for Best Original Score for his Broadway musical "In The Heights." In the 2008 speech, Miranda gave props to his cast and crew "for having each other's back, son!" and thanked his parents and wife for always sticking by his side. He ended his emotional speech with a shout out to all of his "Latino people" and, of course, to Puerto Rico! 


Watch as Miranda spits a few gratitude-filled verses, completely "off the dome," in the flashback video above.





 


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How To Use 5 Instagram Filters To Get More Likes

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Choosing the perfect Instagram filter can go a long way toward racking up likes.


Each photo needs something slightly different -- intensity or softness, saturation or fade. It all depends on the picture. 


New data from the digital design company Canva can help you pick the ideal filter to complement a photo and appeal to your Instagram followers. Canva looked at over 1 million Instagram images to find out which filters get the most likes


Here are the top five insights from that study:


1. Clarendon is a crowd pleaser




Clarendon is by far the most popular filter -- not just in every U.S. state but in most of the countries examined in the study. Why? Clarendon is a solid, all-purpose filter that deepens shadows and makes colors more intense. It offers a subtle touch-up that brightens photos without making them look garish. 


2. Skyline shines for food posts



Skyline brightens photos, making them especially well-suited for images of, say, candied walnuts, beets and goat cheese sprinkled on a lush bed of greens.


Food photos retouched with Skyline get an average of 91 likes. If you're tired of Skyline, your next best bets are Normal (which is the no-filter option) or the contrast-intensifying Helena. 


3.  For selfies, Normal is the way to go



Using the Normal setting for your selfies is a great way to boost their popularity. Unfiltered selfies receive an average of 78 likes per post, according to Canva's research. 


The popularity of the Normal option should come as no surprise. On social media, authenticity can be a rare commodity. Refusing to apply a filter, and making that refusal known by adding a #nofilter tag, communicates realness. 


4. Valencia is best for nature pics



Instagram users seem to love the great outdoors: Nature posts receive more likes than any other type of post on Instagram, according to Canva's research.


If you want your photos of waterfalls, gnarled tree trunks and towering mountain peaks to get even more love, try using Valencia. It's the most popular filter for nature images, generating an average of 121 likes per post. 


5. Even Kelvin can get you likes -- for fashion posts, anyway



Despite the fact that Kelvin is one of least popular filters, according to FilterFakers.com, it seems useful for getting likes on fashion photos. Believe it or not, fashion images filtered with the warm, color-rich Kelvin get an average of 162 likes -- over 40 more than images touched up with Valencia, the next best filter for fashion, according to Canva.

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Electronic Music Duo Creates New Album Using...Their Washing Machine

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Over the course of their two-decade career, electronic music duo Matmos have gained a reputation for offbeat, experimental records. But their new album, “Ultimate Care II,” could very well be the most outlandish effort yet. 


The men of Matmos, Drew Daniel and M.C. (Martin) Schmidt, are a real-life couple who are best known for collaborating with Björk on 2001's "Vespertine" and 2004's "Medúlla," as well as in live performances. For “Ultimate Care II,” which will be released Feb. 19, they've found inspiration in a household appliance -- their washing machine. Recorded in the basement of the couple's Baltimore, Maryland home, the album comprises different arrangements of sounds created by that machine, which happens to be a Whirlpool Ultimate Care II. (You can view the official video for "Excerpt Three" from the album above) 


“I think there’s something very queer about it,” Daniel told The Huffington Post in an interview. “It’s like a perverse desire to elevate something in your everyday life, [something] you’re not supposed to dignify with your attention.”



As offbeat as it sounds, “Ultimate Care II” actually represents a modern take on the French tradition of Musique concrète, in which sound fragments are used as raw material for abstract recordings. The album is also in line with Matmos' previous releases like 2001's "A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure," which sampled the sounds of liposuction surgery, rat cages and hearing aids. Using the washing machine for their latest, Schmidt said, began as sort of a personal dare amongst the men: “Could we make a compelling, complete work out of such a limited source?”


Soon, however, he realized that there’s a “certain freedom in restraint,” and together with Daniel, realized that “once you can exploit any object or system around you, the world is just endlessly generous.”


“It’s about the music,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter what the source is.”


Don't miss the video for "Excerpt Five," released in December, below. 





The men said they’ve found Baltimore, their adopted home of nine years, to boast an incredibly vibrant music scene even when compared to San Francisco, where they got their start. Opting for Baltimore instead of a metropolis like San Francisco or New York, they said, has inspired them to take even more chances in their art, too.  


“Baltimore’s poverty, racism and unemployment [are] obvious factors of life, but there’s also tremendous drive and weird creativity here. People in Baltimore have to be self-sufficient in ways that are really inspiring,” Daniel said. “There’s a strange purity of intent that comes from having no media attention. So when people do things, they do them just because they’re driven to do them.”


Stay weird, wacky and wonderful, Matmos! 


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Band Targeted In Paris Attacks Makes Emotional Return To Finish Concert

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The rock band that was performing at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris when three terrorists stormed in and slaughtered 89 people has returned to finish the show it started three months ago.


Eagles of Death Metal invited survivors and relatives of the Nov. 13 victims to enter early for Tuesday night's concert. The band also offered survivors free tickets, Reuters reported.


EODM's return engagement is taking place at the Olympia concert hall; the Bataclan itself has not yet reopened.


Emotional crowds began lining up a few hours before the concert began.


 






"I refuse to be afraid," one attack survivor told The Guardian inside the Olympia. "I want to enjoy this gig like I should have done on Nov. 13."


"The band came out to greet their fans and survivors," Europe 1 journalist Salomé Legrand wrote on Twitter. They said seeing the crowd was "really moving."


"It's important to be here, to usher in what's next," said Philippe Manoevre, a journalist with Rock & Folk.


Alexis, a Bataclan survivor, showed up Tuesday wearing the same clothes he had worn that terrible night. "The adrenaline is rushing," he told France TV Info. "I didn't sleep much. That's probably the case for a lot of people here."


Le Monde journalist Daniel Psenny, who was injured at the Bataclan and was injured on Nov. 13, tweeted from inside the Olympia Tuesday night:






Paris police implemented intensified security protocols in the lead-up to Tuesday's concert. Authorities closed off nearby streets and installed a security perimeter around the Olympia. Concert-goers faced pat-downs and metal detectors.


"The police apparatus in the area near the Olympia is so crazy," BFMTV journalist Jérémy Maccaud tweeted. "It's more anxiety-provoking than anything else, really."






A team of about 30 psychologists was also set to be there to help anyone who might be having trouble. Attack survivors in particular may find themselves reliving the trauma they experienced on Nov. 13, Carole Damiani, psychologist and head of the Paris Aide organization, told HuffPost France.


"If I don't go, the terrorists will have won," Thierry told the newspaper Le Parisien.


Even Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo came out for the concert. She tweeted her thanks to the band for coming back:






"We have an obligation to commemorate those who died that night," survivor Thibaut said, although he added that he's only going because the venue is different. He said he doesn't feel he can ever step foot inside the Bataclan again.


"I'm going to stand in solidarity with the musicians and the victims," Jacques di Bona told television station BFMTV.


"It's a symbolic moment, a form of catharsis that allows us not to move on, but to move forward," survivor Nicolas Stanzick said to Le Figaro.


"For some people, it's important to show up because it's part of the healing process, but it also may be way too soon for others who are just not in the right state," Alexis, a member of the victims group Life for Paris, told HuffPost France.






Tuesday's night concert does not mark the band's return to Paris -- that happened back in December when EODM joined U2 on stage for two songs. But Jesse Hughes, frontman for Eagles of Death Metal, used this occasion as an opportunity to advocate for gun ownership.


"Did your French gun control stop a single fucking person from dying at the Bataclan? And if anyone can answer yes, I'd like to hear it, because I don't think so," he told television station iTélé on Monday. "I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that I've ever seen in my life charging head-first into the face of death with their firearms."


The band has just kicked off its Nos Amis tour, beginning its European travels with a concert in Stockholm this past Saturday before coming to Paris.


Also on HuffPost:


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Kanye West's Album Has Been Pirated 500,000 Times, Website Finds

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Tidal's not the only one streaming Kanye West's new album. Turns out pirates are too.


"The Life of Pablo" has been illegally downloaded more than a half a million times since its Thursday release, according to an estimate by website TorrentFreak.


That astounding figure comes after the rapper vowed his album would "never be for sale" and would only be available on the music streaming service, which requires a subscription fee to use. 






As of Tuesday, however, his album is listed as the most popular music download on torrent website, The Pirate Bay. "Kanye West" is also among Torrent Hound's most popular search terms within the last 24 hours.


TorrentFreak, which specializes in reporting copyright, privacy, and file sharing news, blamed the rapid number of illegal downloads on the album's limited availability.


"At the time of writing close to 10,000 people were sharing a copy of the most popular torrent simultaneously, something we haven’t seen with a music release before," the website reported Tuesday. "Aside from torrent sites, the album is also being widely distributed on various direct download services and hosting sites, increasing the overall piracy numbers even further."






According to Harvard University's Lumen Database, at least 19 copyright complaints have been sent to Google by the Recording Industry Association of America over the illegal uploads.


TorrentFreak's founder, Ernesto Van Der Sar, called the rate of pirating unusual when reached by BBC News.


"Generally, we don't track music releases closely, so I'm not calling any records," he said. "However, I haven't seen numbers this high before for a music release -- not with Adele either."


Van Der Sar's mention of the British songstress follows the sale of 7.4 million copies of "25," making it the top-selling digital and physical album of the year.


Requests for comment from Tidal were referred to a Kanye West spokesperson who did not immediately return a request for comment.


Also on HuffPost:


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Kids Sing New Song From 'Frozen' Composer To Raise Awareness About Childhood Cancer

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Over 900,000 kids from around the world are standing up to raise awareness about pediatric cancer through a very special song.


In January, Childhood Cancer International (CCI) launched Child4Child, a campaign that invites kids and teens to record themselves singing a song by Frozen score composer Christophe Beck called "We Are One."


The empowering song features messages about strength and bravery in the face of difficult battles like cancer. As the press release for the campaign notes, "More than 900,000 children and teens have not only recorded themselves singing the chorus; they have created dances, lip-syncing videos, and even covers!"


 In honor of International Childhood Cancer Awareness Day, CCI officially released the song on iTunes on Monday, along with a video showing some of the many kids who participated in the initiative in the U.S. and beyond.


It's a beautiful display of the power of solidarity, especially when kids get involved.


Also on HuffPost:


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