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Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined by squalid retrenchments

COP21 UN climate change conference in Paris. Whatever happens now, we will not be viewed kindly by succeeding generations.Photograph: Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster. Inside the narrow…

Dec 14, 2015

You Can Have Millions Of Subscribers On YouTube—And Still Be Flat Broke

fusion.net

Fusion/Elena Scotti It was all so painfully awkward. That night, Brittany Ashley, a lesbian stoner in red lipstick, was at Eveleigh, a popular farm-to-table spot in West Hollywood. The restaurant was hosting Buzzfeed’s Golden Globes party. For the past two years, Ashley has been one of the most…

Dec 14, 2015

In Defense of the Velvet Underground's Doug Yule

pitchfork.com

"Where's Doug Yule?" a DJ asked Lou Reed in 1972, during an interview with WLIR radio. There was a pregnant pause. Lou answered: "Dead, I hope." Most Velvet Underground fans have stopped short of wishing death upon Doug Yule, who played bass in the VU from late 1968 to the summer of 1970. But his…

Dec 14, 2015

‘Invisible, Inc.’ Is the Best Strategy Game of 2015, Because Every Decision Matters | VICE | United Kingdom

vice.com

When is it acceptable to leave a friend to die? Invisible, Inc. , the fantastically named turn-based stealth game from Klei, is my standout strategy title of 2015 ( and one of VICE's top 20 games of the year ), and it has one main mission. It wants you to be decisive. Over the course of the game's…

Dec 14, 2015

GOP preparing for contested convention

washingtonpost.com

Republican officials and leading figures in the party’s establishment are preparing for the possibility of a brokered convention as businessman Donald Trump continues to sit atop the polls in the GOP presidential race. More than 20 of them convened Monday near the Capitol for a dinner held by…

Dec 14, 2015

Artificial-Intelligence Research Center Is Founded by Silicon Valley Investors

nytimes.com

A group of prominent Silicon Valley investors and technology companies said on Friday that they would establish an artificial-intelligence research center to develop “digital intelligence” that will benefit humanity. The investors — including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman — said they…

Dec 14, 2015

Global climate conference adopts historic deal

theglobeandmail.com

A woman walks past a map showing the elevation of the sea in the last 22 years during the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21) at Le Bourget, near Paris, France, December 11, 2015. STEPHANE MAHE/REUTERS The governments of 195 countries overcame decades of deep divisions to strike a watershed…

Dec 13, 2015

In the City With the World’s Worst Traffic, Uber Is an Awkward Fit

wired.com

I’d learned to dread turning that corner. It was the first corner out of the gate from Magallanes Village, where my family’s house is, feeding into Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, the perpetually snarled main highway in Manila. Since heading back home to the Philippines over the Thanksgiving holiday,…

Dec 13, 2015

What happens if Republicans face a brokered convention, explained

washingtonpost.com

In election after election, generally (but not always) well before the voting starts, pundits start wondering about the possibility of a "brokered" party convention. For the casual observer, that term is meaningless — in part because casual observers are mostly not paying any attention to…

Dec 13, 2015

A-Trak Is Becoming Dance Music's 'Real DJing' Evangelist | Billboard

billboard.com

Alain Macklovitch is a rare breed of purist, unapologetic yet inviting to those who haven’t seen the light. The five-time DMC World Champion -- known to his fans as A-Trak -- has emerged as spokesperson of sorts for DJs who treat mixing as an art form rather than an afterthought. His soapbox efforts…

Dec 12, 2015

The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist

wired.com

At 2:28 pm on August 28, 2003, a middle-aged pizza deliveryman named Brian Wells walked into a PNC Bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. He had a short cane in his right hand and a strange bulge under the collar of his T-shirt. Wells, 46 and balding, passed the teller a note. “Gather employees with access…

Dec 12, 2015

How Finland's Exciting Basic Income Experiment Will Work--And What We Can Learn From It

fastcoexist.com

Could Finland become the first country in the world to introduce a universal basic income? It’s quite possible: The Finnish government likes the concept, and it’s putting serious resources behind a national experiment. Starting in 2017, up to 100,000 Finns could get up to 1,000 euros a month, in…

Dec 12, 2015

In 2015, Netflix became a legitimate TV network. Now what?

wired.com

This year, Netflix finally crossed the threshold it had been building to since 2011: it became an honest-to-goodness television network. When the streaming service first stepped into the realm of original content, acquiring the high-profile prestige series House of Cards over HBO and AMC , the…

Dec 12, 2015

What Do You Do When a Notorious Celebrity Stalker Starts Stalking You?

jezebel.com

Justin Massler, a.k.a. Cloud Starchaser, believes that he is Harry Potter, Superman, and Jesus Christ. These narratives, he says, are all one and the same, various retellings of his life story populated by supporting characters that also exist in the modern world. He has explained this theory of the…

Dec 12, 2015

Pharma’s Bad Boy Exec Martin Shkreli Paid $2 Million for Wu-Tang Clan’s New Record

bloomberg.com

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Dec 12, 2015

Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ Resurrects Nearly Obsolete Technology

nytimes.com

LOS ANGELES — When Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” is released in a special roadshow version (with overture, intermission and additional footage) on Dec. 25, it will represent a feat worthy of the heist in the director’s “Jackie Brown.” The film is scheduled to open on 96 screens in the…

Dec 12, 2015

Now’s the time for theaters to recommit to the glory of 70mm

avclub.com

As the official teaser for Quentin Tarantino’s newest film The Hateful Eight concludes, Samuel L. Jackson uncorks one of his beautiful throaty laughs, an ornately mustachioed Kurt Russell cocks his old-timey shotgun, and amid a flurry of snow, the title splashes onto the screen. But for a small,…

Dec 12, 2015

How A Dead Millionaire Convinced Dozens Of Women To Have As Many Babies As Possible

fivethirtyeight.com

O n Oct. 31, 1926, Charles Vance Millar, a well-known and wealthy Canadian lawyer, died at age 73. Halloween was a fitting day for him to go; Millar loved practical jokes and spent far too much time doing silly things like dropping dollar bills on the sidewalk and then hiding to see who would pick…

Dec 12, 2015

The Story of FruityLoops: How a Belgian Porno Game Company Employee Changed Modern Music | NOISEY

noisey.vice.com

Images by Christopher Classens Deep in the bowels of YouTube lies a very standard definition video of Atlanta hip-hop artist Soulja Boy touring his home studio. Dressed in a baggy white T-shirt and yellow gold jewelry, the baby-faced rapper shows off a rinky-dink microphone, a small MIDI keyboard…

Dec 12, 2015

Son Little: Am I a political singer? How could I not be?

theguardian.com

‘Not commenting on important issues is sometimes as much a political statement as a protest song is’ … Son LittlePhotograph: Jean-François Monier/AFP/Getty Images I don’t consider myself a protest singer or a “political” artist. My music is the way I express feelings about my interactions with the…

Dec 12, 2015

Dictionary.com’s 2015 Word of the Year: Identity | Dictionary.com Blog

blog.dictionary.com

In 2015, Dictionary.com saw a number of themes emerge in the words that gained enough traction to be added to the dictionary along with words that trended in user lookups. The most prominent theme across both of these areas was in the expanding and increasingly fluid nature of conversations about…

Dec 12, 2015

Being A Girl: A Brief Personal History of Violence

bellejar.ca

1. I am six. My babysitter’s son, who is five but a whole head taller than me, likes to show me his penis. He does it when his mother isn’t looking. One time when I tell him not to, he holds me down and puts penis on my arm. I bite his shoulder, hard. He starts crying, pulls up his pants and runs…

Dec 11, 2015

The Return of the Politically Engaged Rapper

newrepublic.com

Late one September night in Atlanta, Killer Mike picked me up frommy hotel in a black Chevy Silverado. He’s a heavyset man with a dense beard, alittle over six feet tall, thick and stocky and built like an offensivelineman. “For all my proclivities for thuggery, I am a typical middle-classdad,” he…

Dec 11, 2015

Scared, Dead, Relieved: How the Ashley Madison Hack Changed Its Victims' Lives

fusion.net

Omar Bustamante/FUSION Over the past few months, Mark has gotten fairly intimate with the feeling of paranoia. On August 18, his name appeared among millions of others outed as members of the adultery dating website Ashley Madison. Four months later, his wife still has no clue. He worries almost…

Dec 10, 2015

5 Ways New “Recreational” Dispensaries Are Delegitimizing a Good Thing - Lift Cannabis News Magazine

news.liftcannabis.ca

I recently caught a CityNews report in Toronto on medical cannabis dispensaries that left a very bad taste in my mouth. In the segment, the reporter visits about five medical cannabis dispensaries in the city “undercover”- later revealing their identity on film and confronting the front line workers…

Dec 10, 2015

Hate Ads? Maybe You Should Give News Sites Some Bitcoins

wired.com

Then One/WIRED Kevin Owocki woke up at 4am this morning with an idea. When someone visits a news site and their web browser uses an ad blocker, he thought, what if the site replaced ads with an invitation to donate a fraction of a bitcoin? Even in blocking its ads, readers could instantly contribute…

Dec 10, 2015

This Australian Says He and His Dead Friend Invented Bitcoin

gizmodo.com

This story was originally published on December 8, 2015. Shortly thereafter, Craig Wright scrubbed much of his digital presence and disappeared for months—until May 2, 2016, when he publicly announced that he is the creator of Bitcoin. A monthlong Gizmodo investigation has uncovered compelling and…

Dec 9, 2015

Lucas Pope and the rise of the 1-bit 'dither-punk' aesthetic

gamasutra.com

We've seen a lot of aesthetic trends in the games industry that ape older graphical styles, from cel shading to the retro 8-bit look. The next one could well be the most surprising: a lo-res monochromatic black and white, with only patterns of differently-spaced dots to create the illusion of…

Dec 9, 2015

Some thoughts on... Papers, Please ~ The Three-Headed Monkey

the3headedmonkey.blogspot.com

In recent weeks, we have sadly witnessed an endless amount of news, images and discourses on the Syrian refugee crisis. In fact, we all know it is not a new phenomenon. It is the new version of a story told for the thousandth time, which narrates the tale of those human beings who seek something…

Dec 9, 2015

Six Takeaways from the 2016 Grammy Award Nominations

pitchfork.com

It approaches again: the music industry’s annual memoriam of itself, in which thousands of music-industry luminaries (and just as many who’d like to think they are) lavish mucho pomp and drawn-out circumstance upon a set of artists basically nobody else agrees are the best of the year. 2016’s Grammy…

Dec 9, 2015

Material Gain: The Lost History of Rap Tees

pitchfork.com

In 1995, a lucky stop sign in Pleasant City, a neighborhood in West Palm Beach, found itself draped in a drool-repellent Skyywalker Records varsity jacket. Estimated hang time: seconds. I imagine some kid on a bike squeaking off in a flash of satin green, with a dancing bass cloud stitched to his…

Dec 9, 2015

Are Artist Collaborations Making Genres Obsolete? — Cuepoint — Medium

medium.com

How music’s biggest stars defy categorization — and challenge the industry to keep up By Steven J. Horowitz N ext year could mark a memorable shift for the GRAMMY Awards. As the Dec. 7 announcement for the ceremony’s nominations loom closer, it’s increasingly evident that the notion of genres and…

Dec 9, 2015

The Long Haul: One Year of Solitude on America's Highways

esquire.com

Late October '14 I woke up driving an eighteen-wheeler 60 miles per hour through a field east of Amarillo, Texas. My partner was screaming as he bounced around in the back; he had just woken up, too. Everything in the truck rattled and shook. Baggage rained down on me from the upper bunk. The view a…

Dec 9, 2015

'Star Wars' Strikes Back: Behind the Scenes of the Biggest Movie of the Year

rollingstone.com

I t is a bleak time for the Republic. It is a period of great struggle for the entire planet, and not only is the dark side winning, it’s no longer clear any other side even exists. Seriously, you guys – Earth is messed up. Just ask a polar bear, or an almond farmer, or a GOP debate moderator. Or…

Dec 9, 2015