After a few false starts, Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s award-winning horror comic Locke & Key is getting another shot at coming to your screen. Hulu is producing an hour-long pilot adaptation with Lost’s Carlton Cuse executive producing and D…
$70 for a Logitech Harmony remote is a great deal on its face, but the real reason to buy this model is the included Harmony Home Hub.
Look at this massive PS4 controller. It not only looks awesome, it actually works. You can play games with it. If Godzilla were a gamer, this is the controller he would use. This massive DualShock 4 controller is located in the Sony Interactive Entertainment Building in Tokyo.
This is exactly where an irradiated iguana would go if he felt like playing some video games. All the buttons on the controller actually work, though sadly the thumbsticks are not usable. I’m not sure why they could make everything but those thumbsticks work.
Godzilla will have to slum it with the D-pad buttons instead of the thumbsticks. It’s not clear if that giant touchpad area works or not. The video shows the massive gamepad being used to play some Parappa the Rapper – a game which has no need for thumbsticks anyway. Kick! Punch! Chop!
[via Kotaku]
Three years ago the folks at Plastc came together to make a smart credit card – now that dream is over. A note sent to potential users, investors, and everyone in-between, was sent out this week. This note spoke about how not only would Plastc not be dolling out smart credit cards, they’d be filing for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy as … Continue reading
In a shocking revelation that came as a surprise to practically nobody, a $400 connected juicer may not be the must-have in the kitchen that it was pitched as. Nor is it the best poster-child for the Internet of Things and, as is usually the way, scorn heaped on Juicero has spilled over to the connected home more broadly. After … Continue reading
French artist Abraham Poincheval, who famously spent a week inside a rock and two weeks inside a bear sculpture, has succeeded in hatching chicken eggs after incubating them for some three weeks.
Poincheval embarked on his latest project in late March of imitating a mother hen by incubating some 10 eggs with his own body heat inside a glass vivarium at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum.
At the time, he estimated it would take 21-26 days for the eggs to hatch and the first did so on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the museum said on Thursday nine had hatched and the chicks were on their way to a farm.
For the endeavor, Poincheval sat on a chair, wrapped in an insulating blanket, over a container with the eggs. He could leave his seat for no more than 30 minutes a day for meals.
Earlier this year, the artist spent a week inside a block of stone, while in 2014, he lived in a hollowed-out bear sculpture for two weeks.
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The route between Libya and the southern shores of Italy continues to be a death trap for migrants and refugees attempting to reach Europe in rickety boats.
And of the 898 deaths recorded in the central Mediterranean so far this year, at least 150 were children, UNICEF said in a press release Friday. “Yet the true number of child casualties is almost certainly higher given that many children on the move are unaccompanied, so their deaths often go unreported.”
This particular route has been more heavily trafficked in the past few months than during the same period last year, International Organization for Migration statistics show.
Almost 37,000 refugees and migrants, 13 percent of whom are children, arrived in southern Italy since the start of 2017, according to the IOM ― about 11,500 more than this time in 2016.
And this year is shaping up to be no less deadly than last year. The death toll as of April 19 was almost exactly the same as in the same period one year ago.
“It is deeply concerning that vulnerable people, including thousands of children, are risking their lives to reach Europe’s shores using this incredibly dangerous route,” said Afshan Khan, UNICEF regional director and special coordinator for the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe. “This is further evidence that when safe and legal pathways to migration are cut off, desperate children and families will do whatever they can to flee conflict, poverty and depravation.”
Ironically, more robust search and rescue operations have compelled smugglers to make the journey even more dangerous. Instead of wooden ships, they’re sending people out to sea in cheaply made rubber dinghies that are unequipped to withstand swells and long journeys.
“Smugglers are now aware that international rescue vessels are venturing further out into international waters to make rescues,” said Christopher Tidey, emergency communication specialist for UNICEF. “So they have made the decision not to use seaworthy boats. They’re kind of banking on the fact that people will get rescued before their boats capsize.”
In addition, the dinghies require that people keep filling the engines with oil during the trip, Tidey added. When water flows into the boat, it often mixes with the oil, meaning that many of the migrants are covered in burns.
It’s difficult to determine what accounts for the uptick in arrivals to Italy in the past few months compared with last year, experts agreed.
The surge of arrivals in the last few days ― more than 8,300 people were rescued last weekend alone ― is most likely tied to warmer and calmer seas, Tidey said. But that isn’t the only explanation, seeing as scores of people were being rescued throughout the winter as well.
There are rumors that the European Union could strike a deal with the Libyan government to crack down on sea travel, Tidey noted, which might be encouraging smugglers to get as many people as possible out to sea now.
The conditions in Libya are also reportedly worsening, said Joel Millman, IOM senior press officer. Some migrants and refugees who had been in Libya for months, hoping their situations would ameliorate, are now leaving in larger numbers.
There are also new populations of migrants that are now passing through Libya, he added. There’s been an uptick in people coming from the Ivory Coast and Guinea between 2016 and 2017. And whereas one Bangladeshi made the crossing last year, a striking 2,831 have already done so this year.
“New smuggler networks have sprung up,” he said.
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PARIS — He was a proud defender of gay rights, joining protests against Russia’s ban on “homosexual propaganda” before the 2014 Olympics. He once went to Greece to help police officers deal with migrants who had crossed the Aegean Sea and were seeking shelter in the European Union. He was among the officers who responded to a terrorist attack at the Bataclan in November 2015, and he was in the crowd when Sting helped reopen the concert hall a year later.
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If this experiment is any indication, your neighborhood bartender is probably better at making drinks than guessing how old you are.
Watch barkeeps with three weeks to nearly 40 years of experience attempt to determine whether people are underage. The drink slingers checked out 10 participants in the stunt and let’s just say the results, like a Bloody Mary, were mixed.
“I’m glad I check IDs,” one bartender said in the Cut video after their true ages were revealed.
“I would have carded everybody here, for the record,” another declared.
A toast to keeping it real, bartenders.
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Jennifer Finney Boylan has lived a number of different lives.
An author, activist and educator, she recently established herself as a household name ― especially for LGBTQ people ― after appearing on “I Am Cait,” the E! reality show that documented Caitlyn Jenner’s post-transition life from 2015 to 2016.
But the crucial work Boylan has contributed to illuminating the lives and experiences of trans people spans decades. Her writing regularly appears in the New York Times, she’s served on the faculty of a number of universities, including Barnard College of Columbia University, where she currently teaches, and her 2003 memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders became a bestseller. In 2013, she became the first openly transgender co-chair of GLAAD’s National Board of Directors.
She’s also been recognized as one of the most public faces of the transgender movement long before Laverne Cox appeared on the cover of TIME ― often by fearlessly facing situations involving problematic questioning that would largely be considered offensive today.
In 2005 Boylan appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and opened herself up to invasive questioning about her marriage post-transition. She’s also appeared on 20/20, Today, and countless other media networks over the years, offering her life and journey as a model of possibility for transgender people at a time when few existed in the mainstream.
And now, as the author and activist approaches her 60th birthday ― and celebrates 20 years living publicly as a woman ― she’s releasing a new book called Long Black Veil. The novel pushes her to existentially examine elements inspired by the diverse relationships and experiences of her life ― and the different ways in which she’s lived.
“I guess a thing that I’m obsessed with is the continuity of identity,” Boylan told HuffPost. “I’m in my late 50s now and I’ve been a woman publicly for almost 20 years. So I have these 20 years, I had 20 years as a young man and 20 years as a child. So the thing I wonder about is, what does it mean to be a woman who never had a girlhood? How do I connect the child that I was to the woman that I’ve become? And I think we all do this – there’s a sense that, there’s a lot of before and afters in peoples lives.”
Questions surrounding this reflection on the course of her life are at the heart of Long Black Veil, released on April 11. It’s her eleventh book and a work of fiction ― a thriller that, while not explicitly about trans issues, contains gender-based themes that resonate with her own experiences as a woman, activist and educator.
“What do we owe the friends of our youth and are we now the people that we have been?” she continued. “And in any life that has a before and after, how is it possible to live one life rather than two?”
Long Black Veil follows a group of college friends in Philadelphia who decide to explore the country’s oldest prison, Eastern State Penitentiary. After finding themselves locked inside, the group is subject to a horrible occurrence ― the consequences of which follow them for the rest of their lives and eventually lead to a member of the group being charged with murder.
“What I’m interested in is the mysteries of the ways people live,” Boylan told HuffPost. “The secrets that people bear and the secrets that they eventually come to reveal if they’re lucky and if they find their courage. I’ve said before that the big difference for me was not the difference between being male and being female. It was the difference between someone who had a secret and someone who didn’t have one. So that’s the thing I wrote about before – that’s the thing that I’m writing about now too.”
The questioning of the continuity of identity as one ages over the years resonates both within Boylan and a character in Long Black Veil, as issues of gender and coming to live authentically are, of course, at the core of her life’s work.
Boylan plans to continue discussing Long Black Veil during a series of conversations she is currently participating in at the 92nd Street Y in New York City called “Imagining Men & Women,” which will bring her together with a handful of prominent feminists, writers, and one reality star: Caitlyn Jenner.
What does it mean to be a woman who never had a girlhood? How do I connect the child that I was to the woman that I’ve become?
The first talk in the series, a conversation between Boylan, Anna Quindlen and Susan Faludi, took place in late March and focused heavily on feminism and they way it has been shaped by the queer and trans rights movements. The talk with Caitlyn Jenner will happen on April 25 and will largely involve a discussion of Long Black Veil and Jenner’s upcoming memoir The Secrets of My Life, set to hit stores on the day of the talk.
“I don’t think people will be shocked to learn that there are trans issues in the thriller that I’ve written,” Boylan joked. “And some of them are not too far from my own experience, so how that character’s experience contrasts with Caitlyn’s experience is at least one of the things that we’ll talk about. I’m sure we’ll also talk about where she has landed now two years after coming out both in terms of what she’s accomplished, work left undone, disappointments she may have, disappointments other people in the movement people may have with her, and what the future may hold.”
The third event will feature a talk between Boylan and her long-time friend and fellow writer Richard Russo and focus on the pair’s relationship and the way the world has changed in its relationship with and understanding of transgender woman, as well as straight, cisgender people.
As Boylan continues to push the conversation surrounding transgender identity and representation further, we can all learn from her reflection on identity across the span of a lifetime and what it means to age and evolve as an individual. “I am the same person that I was when I was 6 years old in some ways. But in some ways not! In some ways I’m just a completely different person,” she said. “I would argue that the thing that’s the same is soul – something you can’t put your fingers on that you know is real.”
“Imagining Men & Women: Caitlyn Jenner on Transgender Identity and Courage” will take place at 92Y on April 25, while “Imagining Men & Women: Richard Russo on Fathers, Sons and Friendship” will be held on May 9.
Boylan is also one of the curators of the PEN World Voices Festival, coming to New York City, May 1 to 7.
Long Black Veil is now available for purchase.
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