I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love Juicero. I love this dumb, insanely over-engineered, $400 juice squeezing machine that works marginally better than using your own hands. And it turns out I may share that passion with the nation’s First Daughter, Ivanka Trump.
This week we’re having a peek at the next generation in Google Pixel hardware – through its software running Android. What we’re doing today is taking a tip we’ve received with a giant grain of salt. Massive, I’m telling you – you might end up feeling better about this if you take TWO grains of salt with it. Thanks to … Continue reading
One pilot episode and a lot of waiting later and we finally have a premiere date for the first season of Amazon’s original ‘The Tick’ series: August 25. Amazon announced the premiere date in a new (very short) teaser trailer, which doesn’t show any footage but does hint at the show’s comedic nature. It’s not clear whether Amazon will release … Continue reading
After six seasons of her hit HBO series “Girls,” Lena Dunham says she never quite understood the extensive criticism she got about her nudity on the show.
On Tuesday, the actress and show-runner joined co-producer, Jenni Konner, and moderator, America Ferrera, for an in-depth discussion on the legacy of the show at the Tribeca Film Festival. Ferrera, recalling her own experience starring on the ABC show “Ugly Betty,” asked Konner and Dunham how they felt about the reactions to Dunham’s “non-traditional” body.
“Men, generally, were very angry that she felt comfortable showing her body,” Konner commented.
“In the third season, a reporter from The Wrap raised his hand at [a press conference] and asked ‘Why do you show your body so much?’ And I had a rage spiral.”
For Dunham, the vitriolic reaction to her body confidence seemed to stem from the fact that she didn’t feel she was being “so brave” by doing nude scenes.
“I’ve always been like Rihanna to myself. Like, I just have a great time with my own body,” the actress explained.
“I think people were so ready to believe that I was, like, jumping past some massive hurdle in order to get naked on television. That’s not where my fear lies. If that’s what scared me, I wouldn’t do it every week.”
Dunham added that she got more criticism from men and women who “also didn’t have perfect bodies” than anyone else.
“Some of the most love and compliments I’ve gotten have been from women who are considered to have perfect and beautiful bodies, who I think feel the constant pressure to maintain those bodies,” Dunham added.
“They seemed to have felt freed in some way by seeing me just say ‘fuck it.’”
Now that “Girls” is over, Dunham has plans to focus on her online feminist newsletter, Lenny Letter. She and Konner announced plans to expand the newsletter into a traveling variety show this May.
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Every single human being on this planet dreams (even some mammals too). And while there are tons of people who can’t remember their dreams when they wake up, they still get them. Human beings spend roughly around 6 years of their lifetime dreaming but have you ever considered what blind people dream about?
Dreams are typically very visual experiences. They play against the senses and trigger strange sensations that can alter our perception of reality. They are complex phantasmagoric experiences that are shaped by the things we eat, how much exercise we’re getting, or what position you’re in when you’re asleep.
So how do blind people navigate dream land?
Psych2Go’s newest video answers that very question. Those who go blind very early in life or are blind from birth typically don’t have visual aspects of their dreams. Yet, their dreams feature elevated levels of other senses. While those who go blind later in life continue to experience visual elements in their dreams.
It seems that blind people are very similar in their dreams to sighted people. They navigate a similar level of social interactions in dreams. However, blind people are more prone to nightmares particularly about getting lost, falling into manholes and getting hit by an unseen car.
Although the blind can’t see with their eyes, they see in their dreams with other senses. Despite what you may think, blind people have no difficulty in visually representing the content of their dreams.
How’s that for a weird fact?
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WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s first lower court appointment, Amul Thapar, got his Senate hearing on Wednesday and was asked what he thinks about Trump routinely condemning federal judges who rule against him.
He’s cool with it.
“What I will say about me and my colleagues is, we don’t pay ― it doesn’t matter to us,” Thapar told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Thapar, Trump’s pick for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, would be so dismissive of the president’s attacks on courts. He is counting on Trump, after all, to help him get confirmed. But considering he is currently a U.S. district judge in Kentucky, his decision not to defend the integrity of his livelihood was, at best, awkward.
Pressed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on whether it matters to him that federal courts have credibility in the eyes of the public, and told it weakens people’s faith in democracy when the president degrades an entire branch of government, Thapar pivoted.
“When the founders gave us lifetime tenure, senator, they did so to protect us from those types of attacks,” he said. “What we have is neither the purse nor the sword, but our reasoning. Our reasoning protects us, in a way.”
Thapar’s hearing comes a day after the White House assailed a federal judge who blocked part of Trump’s January executive order aimed at stripping federal funds from local jurisdictions to bully them into compliance with immigration requests.
“This case is yet one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a Tuesday statement.
It’s part of a disturbing pattern of Trump personally attacking judges who don’t rule in his favor. In February, he lashed out at U.S. District Judge James Robart for halting his executive order banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries. Trump referred to Robart as “this so-called judge” and said to blame him if terrorists flooded into the country.
That came after Trump drew widespread condemnation in June 2016 for criticizing U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, claiming this judge couldn’t fairly rule on lawsuits against Trump University because of Curiel’s “Mexican heritage.” (Curiel is from Indiana; his parents are Mexican immigrants.)
Some others in his administration have started doing it, too. Last week, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions managed to insult the entire state of Hawaii by denouncing a federal judge there who blocked Trump’s revised travel ban in March. “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” he said.
Asked later why he didn’t just refer to Hawaii as a state, Sessions said, “Nobody has a sense of humor anymore.”
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor and expert on federal judicial nominations, told HuffPost it matters to plenty of judges that the president would try to discredit the federal court system.
“The larger issue is undermining public confidence in an independent judiciary and separation of powers,” Tobias said.
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On Tuesday, it was announced that Universal had picked up “Blond Ambition,” a biopic about Madonna. It didn’t take long for the Material Girl to express herself and unleash a series of Instagrams in which she openly opposed the project.
First came the photo with a caption stating, “Nobody knows what I know and what I have seen. Only I can tell my story.”
Then, in a second post on the photo-sharing app (which has since been deleted), Madge went off on screenwriter Elyse Hollander, accusing her of getting her facts wrong. The image showed part of the script ― complete with a handwritten “WTF!” note ― which described the pop icon’s 1984 appearance on “American Bandstand” with Dick Clark.
Holland’s script had Madonna telling Clark, “I was born in Detroit, and I’m a famed high school dropout.”
In her caption, Madonna called out Hollander for the line, writing, “I was born in Bay City Not Detroit. And i did not drop out of high school in fact I went to University Of.Michigan.”
“Why would Universal Studios want to make a movie about me based on a script that is all lies??,” the rest of the caption said. “The Writer Elyse Hollander should write for the Tabloids. Anyone who supports this film is supporting lies and exploitation. Lies have no legs!!”
Madonna was, of course, born in Bay City, Michigan, and she didn’t drop out of high school. In fact, according to Biography.com, she graduated a semester early and was a straight-A student.
The only thing is, Hollander’s script borrows from that 1984 “American Bandstand” appearance, where the queen of pop definitely told Clark she was born in Detroit and was a high school dropout, even though those things aren’t true. It’s pretty much word-for-word what she said.
And how do we know this? Well, the internet is a wonderful place filled with old clips, like this one:
Is this why Madonna deleted the Instagram post ― because she realized she may have been a little too hung up on dissing the film to remember something she said in 1984? Perhaps. But the “Holiday” singer didn’t let up on her disdain for the project.
After deleting that second photo, Madonna posted the image below, writing in her caption, “Lies Have No Legs” with plenty of snake emojis.
It will be interesting to see what happens next.
Universal has yet to respond to Madonna’s comments, but HuffPost has reached out for comment and will update this post accordingly. A rep for Hollander declined to comment.
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Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny stole our hearts after she wrote to President Barack Obama asking him to attend to the Flint water crisis in 2016. Now, she’s back to remind you that there’s a march you should be attending this weekend.
In a video released on Wednesday, Copeny, also known as Little Miss Flint becomes Little Miss Rambo (a popular fictional boxing figure) as she paints her face and readies herself to fight music for the People’s Climate March this Saturday in Washington, D.C.
Produced by media companies Purpose and Footage Films, the video uses the three-year long water crisis in Flint to symbolize why it’s so important that people attend the march.
“I march for drinkable water,” Copeny says in the video before taking a sip of bottled water. Water bottles have been the only safe way to hydrate since 2014 when lead was detected in the city’s water supply. Flint’s water continues to remain contaminated to date.
Purpose senior strategist and social media producer Renee Miller said the company recruited Copeny for the video and shot it in her home to emphasize the reality of environmental dangers.
“We thought it was important to film her in her home since we wanted to highlight how environmental racism affects actual lives,” said Purpose senior strategist and social media producer Renee Miller. “Much like in Flint, black kids across the country are spending their days mitigating the effects of environmental racism and climate change.”
You can watch Little Miss Flint’s transition to Little Miss Rambo below:
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Admission to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is free ― technically. The institution promotes a “suggested” entrance toll of $25, but, after a few lawsuits, it’s become abundantly clear that patrons can in fact pay nothing and still revel in the glory of art history.
That could change for some, though. According to The New York Times, the Met, which is currently embroiled in a multimillion-dollar budget deficit snafu and accompanying staff shakeup, has been in talks with NYC officials about potentially charging an admission fee only for visitors who live outside of New York.
The move would, as the NYT and several other outlets since have pointed out, be controversial. The Met is a public institution, once mandated by a 1893 state law to offer free admission at least five days and two evenings per week. (Since 2013, it adheres to an amendment to its lease with the city that allows it to renegotiate the pay-as-you-wish policy in the future.) It receives annual grants from NYC ― without paying taxes or rent ― now totaling $26 million. That amount, however, covers only approximately 8 percent of the museum’s $332 million annual operating costs.
In the face of a $10 million deficit that could balloon to $40 million in the next year and a half, according to the Wall Street Journal, instituting a two-tiered admission structure could alleviate some financial pressure. The Met’s current blanket “suggested” admission structure generated $39 million in the 2016 fiscal year, amounting to 13 percent of the museum’s overall revenue. The NYT speculates that charging tourists would generate tens of millions of dollars more.
Reports in 2013 noted that six in 10 visitors shirked the full $25 fee, many of whom were locals familiar with the then-”recommended” nature of the fee. (After the aforementioned lawsuits, the Met settled upon slightly clearer language for its fee signage: “suggested.”) “It’s the unwitting out-of-towners who get yoked into chucking up the full price,” The Atlantic wrote, noting that third-party ticket websites ― like Groupon ― didn’t always communicate that fees were not mandatory.
When asked whether or not talks concerning the admissions structure switch were indeed taking place, a representative from the museums sent HuffPost the following statement:
Our admissions policy is one of many components of the Museum’s operating budget, all of which are continuously under review and refinement. The Met and the City are partners, and always in conversation on how The Met can continue to thrive and best serve all of New York City and beyond. While we have started preliminary discussions about our admissions policies, we have not submitted an official, detailed request.
A request for comment from the City of New York has yet to be answered.
Why is the Met in debt? There are several potential contributing factors: namely, financial mismanagement amid previously rising salaries, staff increases and expansion and rebranding plans. Plus, visitors ― particularly young ones ― are indeed paying less at the door, which, according to Daniel H. Weiss, the Met’s president, matters. A decline of “30 to 40 cents per person is material,” he told the Times.
A two-tiered ticket system is hardly unheard of; pay-as-you-wish is more common. Some major museums like the Art Institute of Chicago allow locals in the city and state of Illinois a discounted entrance fee. Still, the response to the free-for-locals-only suggestion for the Met has been met with some criticism.
“Especially at a time when our President is fueling his supporters’ xenophobia, the last thing we need is to make foreigners (let alone fellow citizens) feel less welcome at our country’s premier repository for world culture by instituting a two-tier admissions structure,” arts writer Lee Rosenbaum wrote on her blog.
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Donald Trump’s barrage of angry tweets and insults against members of the “disgusting,” “incompetent,” “irrelevant,” “worthless,” “nasty,” “failing,” “pure scum,” “boring,” “dumb,” “total disaster,” “sick,” “garbage,” “fake news” media has already caused press freedom in America to suffer, according to Reporters Without Borders.
The freedom of information advocacy group, also known as Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), evaluates and ranks 180 countries on a number of factors including media independence and institutional transparency to produce its annual World Press Freedom Index.
The new rankings, which reflect data collected throughout 2016, show the U.S. has slipped from 41st to 43rd place since last year’s index. The decline was largely driven by “toxic” campaign rhetoric leading up to the presidential election, among other factors.
RSF unveiled the findings Wednesday morning at a launch event co-hosted by The Washington Post (known to Trump as the “phony and dishonest Washington Post”) featuring media panelists from around the world.
“This year’s index reflects a world in which attacks on the media have become commonplace, and strongmen are on the rise,” Delphine Halgand, RSF’s North America director, said at the launch.
Major political events in leading democracies, like Trump’s rise to power in the U.S., were marked by what Halgand described as “high-profile media bashing: a highly toxic anti-media discourse that drove the world into a new era of post-truth, disinformation and fake news.”
Media freedom advocacy organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists flagged Trump as a threat to press freedom before he was even elected president. He was criticized for refusing to participate in a GOP debate last year amid worsening tensions with former Fox News journalist and debate host Megyn Kelly.
In his first 100 days in office, Trump has relentlessly vilified the media, denouncing specific outlets like The New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN as “the enemy of the American people.”
Despite revoking The Washington Post’s press credentials due to what he called “incredibly inaccurate coverage” during his campaign, and repeatedly deriding the paper on social media, Trump has often shared articles from The Post that reflect his interests.
RSF also points out that Trump’s predecessor, former President Barack Obama, “waged a war on whistleblowers” who leaked information about his government’s activities. The Obama administration used the Espionage Act to prosecute more leakers than all previous administrations combined.
Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, for example, remains behind bars since being convicted in 2015 of leaking classified information to a New York Times journalist. Sterling and his family, along with tens of thousands of supporters, maintain his innocence and have demanded he be pardoned.
There is a “continuing downward trend” of press freedom in America, Margaux Ewen, RSF advocacy and communications director, told HuffPost. She expects the decline could continue as Trump’s leadership progresses.
“It’s really concerning that the leader of the country of the First Amendment would be the poster child for how to attack the media verbally, and [how to] divert suspicion away from members of government to the press,” Ewen said.
The influence of Trump’s rhetoric extends far beyond American borders, she explained.
In Europe, for example, Italian comedian-turned-populist politician Beppe Grillo, an open admirer of Trump, has declined to answer questions from the journalistic “caste,” and called reporters “fabricators of fake news.”
In the Middle East, Egyptian President and Trump ally Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has intensified his regime’s crack down on free press by waging a “witch-hunt” on journalists suspected of supporting the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood ― something RSF has described as “Sisification” of the media.
At a meeting between the two leaders in Washington this month, Trump remained silent on the many of the alleged human rights abuses of Sissi’s administration, including the detention and mass arrests of reporters in an internationally condemned effort to quash dissent.
In Asia, Cambodian government official Phay Siphan threatened to “crush” media outlets publishing content that could harm the country’s stability. He directly cited Trump’s clampdown on so-called “fake news” as justification for his comments.
“You can already see the impacts abroad of the brazen language of Trump and his administration against the media,” said Ewen. “I think [world leaders] feel that they’re able to say [anti-media comments] more, because the U.S. president is saying it.”
A sobering 62 percent of countries on the index saw their press freedom scores fall this year, including other Western nations like the United Kingdom and Canada, which dropped by two and four places respectively. Both remain ahead of the U.S.
The U.K., which now sits in 40th place on the index, has compromised press freedom in the name of national security by adopting the most extreme surveillance legislation in British history, RSF reports. It says the new Investigatory Powers Act yields greater vulnerability for whistleblowers, journalists and their sources.
Britain was also host to high-level political “media bashing” during the Brexit campaign, when Brits voted to withdraw from the European Union. Brexit campaign leader Nigel Farage, also an open fan of Trump, often blasted news outlets for “biased” coverage that opposed his political interests.
In Canada, currently ranked 22nd on the index, RSF says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s commitment to a “free media” has fallen flat in crucial areas. Several journalists have been surveilled by police officials, and a reporter at VICE News is currently battling a court order to disclose private communication with a source.
“Media freedom has never been under as much threat as it is in this year’s index, and the cherry on top of the cake is that [leading democracies] are slipping,” said Ewen.
“Public trust in the media is at risk here in the United States, but we’ve also witnessed a resilience in the press since the new administration took office,” she added. “It’s really important to remind the people that the press is reporting for them.”
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