Hasta La Gadget!

This “boy band” isn’t your typical pop sensation.

All members of the group, called FFC-Acrush, are androgynous people born girls but who identify as genderless ― and they’re quickly rising to fame in China.

The band are affectionately known as Acrush and they’re made up of five members aged in their 20s or younger: Lu Keran, An Junxi, Peng Xichen, Min Junqian and Lin Fan, according to Quartz.

And although Acrush was assembled by the Chinese entertainment company Zhejiang Huati Culture Communication Co. Ltd., they have all been dressing with androgynous swag for years.

Acrush has nearly 1 million followers on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. And the group just launched official accounts on Instagram and Twitter.

Their female fans call them “husbands” ― a term usually used to describe male pop stars like Justin Bieber, according to the BBC.

Agent Zhou Xiaobai told Quartz that the group avoids using terms that identify them as “he” or “she.” Instead, they use the genderless term “meishaonian,” which translates as “handsome youth.” 

The “A” in Acrush represents Adonis, the mythological Greek god of beauty and desire, according to Quartz. Zhou told the news outlet that Acrush is a “group advocating freedom, not bounded by frames.”

The band’s official Twitter account profiles each band member in typical boy band fashion. Peng is the romantic lead singer. Min is a musician at heart. An is the rebellious one. Lu is a natural-born dancer and Lin is the baby of the group at 18 years old.

The group’s parent company recruits musical talent from across China. They’re trained and then placed into various girl groups or boy bands who perform songs and play soccer on stage ― under the umbrella brand name Fantasy Football Confederation. (That’s why the band’s official name is “FFC–Acrush.”)

And while all the band members have chosen to assume an androgynous identity, company policy prohibits any member of Acrush discussing their personal sexual orientation.

Their debut video is due out at the end of April, when Zhejiang Huati Culture Communication plans to start launching another three girl groups, according to the BBC.

H/T Quartz.

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The dreaded day is here. There’s momentum building on the long-rumored Creature From the Black Lagoon remake, the one Universal Horror title we hoped against hope would slink unbothered along the muddy bottom of the studio’s shiny new shared universe starring its classic monsters.

Read more…

So, you have decided to stick to the iPhone 7 despite seeing some pretty stiff competition emerge from the Android segment of smartphones such as the Google Pixel, the LG G6, and the recently revealed Samsung Galaxy S8. Brand loyalty does seem to pay off pretty well, actually, and for those who would like to maximize their use of the iPhone 7, it would be best to ensure that it goes along with a decent protective case. The latest ExoLens Case covers this ground, that is for sure.

This is an extremely durable, dual layer case that opens the door for photographers and cinematographers alike to make use of the ExoLens PRO with Optics by ZEISS mobile photography lenses that they have come to fall in love with, all the while protecting their devices from drops and scratches when shooting. It has been designed using with high-end aesthetics and impact-resistant materials, and the clear ExoLens Case delivers a low profile, highly protective solution that will showcase your iPhone 7’s design culture, even sans the lenses. The asking price for the ExoLens Case? $49.95 a pop.

John Fellowes, Chief Executive Officer of Fellowes Brands, shared, “Many of our customers use our mobile accessories to shoot beautiful images in adventurous locations, where drops and scratches are common. The availability of our new ExoLens Case means they can enjoy professional-grade mobile lenses, without the risk of damaging their phone. We believe that protecting our customer’s phones while they shoot will give them the freedom to capture even more exciting imagery.”

With the ExoLens Case, users can make the easy switch between ExoLens PRO lenses with Optics by ZEISS, which has been designed to target professional photographers and journalists, in addition to the prosumer photographer who wants to create unique, and artistic snapshots. The clear case will also come with protection for the iPhone 7, where it hides the aesthetic of the handset. Right now, the ExoLens Case is available for the iPhone 7 only, and will hit the iPhone 7 Plus later down the road.

Press Release
[ ExoLens Case for the iPhone 7 arrives copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt ― the former Oklahoma attorney general who made his name by suing the agency more than a dozen times and says he does not agree that human activity is a primary contributor to global warming ― isn’t even enough of a hard-line climate change denier for some players in President Donald Trump’s administration.

A schism is brewing within the administration over what to do about a somewhat-obscure EPA ruling that, for the last eight years, has been the bedrock of policy to fight global warming: the scientific conclusion that greenhouse gases cause climate change, which is bad for humans and should be regulated.

A 2007 Supreme Court ruling found that the agency is obligated to regulate any type of air pollution that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare” under the 1970 Clean Air Act. The George W. Bush administration’s EPA determined that greenhouse gases were, in fact, a danger, but decided not to do anything about it. The Obama administration’s EPA took the issue up shortly after taking office and, in December 2009, issued its conclusion ― commonly called the endangerment finding ― which compelled the agency to start regulating those emissions.

The endangerment finding is the foundation of all of Obama’s global warming regulations, including the Clean Power Plan, which strictly limits emissions from power plants, the major contributors of U.S. emissions.

With an executive order signed Tuesday, Trump began the process to dismantle the power plant rules, which the Supreme Court had already blocked in response to the state lawsuits Pruitt spearheaded in his previous job.

However, the order Trump signed made no mention of the endangerment finding. It’s unclear if earlier drafts had addressed it, since the Trump campaign had said in written statements that he would overturn the finding, but it was Pruitt who argued against including it, Politico and CNN reported, insisting the language would trigger a difficult, years-long legal battle.

Pruitt’s approach puts him at loggerheads with Myron Ebell, the emphatic climate science denier who led Trump’s EPA transition team. Soon after the inauguration, Ebell, who oversees global warming and environmental policy at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, submitted a petition to the EPA requesting the agency reconsider the endangerment finding. The EPA has yet to respond. On Thursday, Ebell accused the White House of playing hot potato with a process he says is critical to prevent courts or a future administration from policing greenhouse gases, which he does not believe cause global warming.

“There’s a kind of passing of responsibility here,” Ebell told The Huffington Post by phone on Thursday. “I don’t know what advice [Pruitt] has listened to, but I’ve consulted a lot of lawyers on this, too.”

“If I had it my own way, I would advise the president to reopen the finding,” he added.

Ebell acknowledges that leaving the endangerment finding in place would make undoing the Clean Power Plan a legal nightmare.  

“If you take down the building but leave the foundation, you’re going to get in trouble,” Ebell said. “We need to excavate the foundation and cart it away. The endangerment finding is the foundation.” (He tempered the comparison moments later, admitting: “I don’t like analogical thinking. It’s very misleading to think analogically.”)

But overturning the endangerment finding wouldn’t be easy. White House attorneys would need to prove in court that the finding was arbitrary and capricious. Meeting that standard would require them to debunk the overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming.

“I don’t see on the horizon anything that would permit them to overturn this and have it legally upheld,” said Lisa Heinzerling, a law professor at Georgetown University who is credited with crafting the strategy of states and environmental groups in Massachusetts v. EPA, a 2007 ruling that said the EPA should regulate greenhouse gases. “That’s because of the strength of the scientific evidence and because of the law.”

The legal odds are overwhelmingly in environmentalists’ favor. In 2012, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a challenge to the endangerment finding from Pruitt himself. The court’s reading of the Clean Air Act found that the law requires a precautionary approach to scientific uncertainty. As a result, the roughly 3 percent of actively publishing climate scientists who don’t believe that greenhouse gases cause global warming represent too small a fraction to tilt the scales in favor of doubt, Heinzerling said. Plus, the Clean Air Act gives exclusive jurisdiction to the D.C. Circuit, meaning the Trump administration would need to sway the same court that unanimously upheld the endangerment finding five years ago.

“Bottom line is the enviros would welcome that fight,” said David Bookbinder, who in 2007 served as counsel to The Sierra Club in the Supreme Court case that laid the groundwork for the endangerment finding. He’s now chief counsel at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank.

“The president can’t just stand up and say, ‘no endangerment finding,’” he added. “The court would say, ‘Everything you told us you now think is wrong is based on what? Some crank scientists representing 1 percent of the world’s science and their nutcase views?’ It’s not going to fly. They have to have a rational basis for doing this.”

But Ebell’s not the only Trump associate who wants him to try to throw the endangerment finding out.

Breitbart News, the far-right news site run until recently by chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, accused Pruitt of “failing to drain the swamp at the EPA” in a blaring headline Monday. Citing unnamed sources, James Delingpole, a London-based columnist and hard-line skeptic of climate science, accused Pruitt of putting his political ambitions ahead of his promise to “take on the Green Blob.”

“True, his credentials as a climate sceptic are not much in doubt. Yes, he might even agree with President Trump that there’s a swamp out there that sorely needs draining,” Delingpole wrote a day before the executive order came out. “The problem is, insiders explain, is that the future of the EPA is of far less interest to Pruitt than his prospects of becoming either one of Oklahoma’s next senators or its next governor.”

Come next election, we’ll punish him at the ballot box.
H. Sterling Burnett, Heartland Institute research fellow, on Donald Trump

Absent White House support, zealous critics of climate action say they plan to lobby members of Congress to pass a bill to strip the EPA of its regulatory powers by amending the Clean Air Act. Possible allies include Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the antagonistic chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology; and Sens. John Barrasso (R-Pa.) and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who once infamously displayed a snowball on the Senate floor as proof that global warming doesn’t exist.

A spokeswoman for the House Science Committee said there is no current legislation being considered. Mike Danylak, a spokesman for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which Barrasso chairs, said, “Congress has never explicitly given the EPA the authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and the Senate EPW committee has no plans to do so.” But he said Barrasso is not exploring legislation to target the endangerment finding. Inhofe’s spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

“If Congress passed that law, Trump would sign it,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow on energy and the environment at the Illinois-based Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank. “That would put the kibosh on it right there.”

The White House referred HuffPost to the EPA, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Burnett said he’s holding out hope that Trump will fulfill his campaign promise to overturn the endangerment finding and, ultimately, withdraw from the 195-country Paris Agreement, the historic first global deal to reduce carbon emissions that includes the U.S. and China. But he sees battle lines being drawn in the White House. He views Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ― who has said the U.S. should maintain its seat at the negotiating table by remaining in the agreement ― and the president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who serves as a top adviser to the president, as getting in the way of that.

“To the extent that he has people pushing back on this within his own administration, it’s a matter of the public’s responsibility to hold his feet to the fire,” Burnett said of Trump. “He didn’t say ‘I’ll renegotiate the Paris Agreement.’ He said he’d withdraw. It’s public. It’s out there. It’s in print.”

He warned that failure to do so could turn voters against Trump if he runs for reelection in 2020.

“Come next election, we’ll punish him at the ballot box,” Burnett said. “If he doesn’t reverse the endangerment finding ― which he’s said is a terrible thing, it’s job killing ― if he doesn’t do that, we’re going to hold him accountable.”

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April Fools Day is the bane of some people’s existence (including those of us who work on the internet). But those who get enjoyment out of the holiday may be onto something.

Humor is simply good for you. It has physical and mental perks, like better memory, lower stress and even a reduced risk for heart disease. So, while you may roll your eyes at all those who are looking for a good laugh today, they may be boosting their wellbeing.

Still need a little more convincing? Happify, a website and app dedicated to helping people build skills for happiness through science-based activities and games, broke down all the ways humor helps your health in the infographic below.

Take a look at how silliness can add to your life. Then go ahead and play that prank (you know you want to).

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.