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Spotify's massive library of subliminal messages will make you perfect

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BY BEN RICHMOND

First Spotify blew my mind. Now it wants to tap into it through the backdoor.

After resisting its pull for ages as a cratedigging Luddite, I finally downloaded Spotify last year. Within months I became a full-on helpless addict, paying my Spotify bill before all others and ruthlessly binge listening to artists I discover, come to love, and vow to someday buy the vinyl of.

I'm also a big fan of just poking around Spotify's library and seeing what's there, and have lost hours of my life to this hobby. There are conspicuous absences—just try to get the Led out, for instance—but why would you want to hear something that FM radio shoves down everyone's throat every day at five anyway?

Instead, via the massive Smithsonian Folkways library, you can listen to chants from "Music of the Waswahili of Lamu, Kenya" but there's so much on there to hear, why listen to music at all?

You can listen to Spotify's kind of narrow selection of poems or its wider variety of bird calls. You can even do as I've done and get into Spotify's massive selection of subliminal messages.

Now, the general consensus in the scientific community seems to be that subliminal audio messaging doesn’t actually do anything, but given that Spotify has several types of subliminal messages and hypnosis, how can I really be sure? And since I can load up on them and run as many as I want a month for the same price as one CD used to run, why the hell not?

The variety is pretty interesting. There are some tracks with what seems to be murmured speech behind sounds of rain or the ocean, or a crackling fire, or some general New Age ambience with occasional bird sounds or sounds of nature. The hypnosis has a gentle voice coaching you to relax and then affirming the hell out of you, which is nice.

Read the full story on Motherboard

Photo adapted via skyseeker/Flickr


Trolls make "Weeds" star Mary-Louise Parker want to quit acting

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Mary-Louise Parker is thinking of quitting acting because of the Internet.

The 48-year-old actress who played the sexy suburban drug dealer Nancy Botwin for eight seasons on Weeds told the Australian press that the constant negativity often found in online forums was getting to be too much to her.

"The world has gotten too mean for me, it's just too bitchy," she said, according to the Herald Sun.  

"All the websites and all the blogging and all the people giving their opinion and their hatred … it's all so mean-spirited, it's all so critical."

Parker, who will star in the comic book-based films Red 2 and RIPD, admitted to having a thin skin.

"I don't know if you can imagine a friend sending you something they thought was funny, that was something mean someone wrote about you and there's like 50 comments from complete strangers across the world about you – and you can say 'Oh I let it roll off my back' and 'I wouldn't take it personally', but you have no idea until it happens to you. It doesn't feel nice.

"And there's more of that than there is whatever praise people think you're getting. There's way more mean-spiritedness. I stay away from it as best I can because I'm too thin-skinned, but still it finds you."

The actress is the latest celebrity to publicly speak against the detrimental nature of the Internet. Earlier this month, 1990s teen vixen Jennifer Love Hewitt revealed that she was quitting Twitter because of all the bad juju. 

H/T Herald Sun | Photo via Greg Hernandez/Flickr

This "Wizard of Oz" mashup is brilliant—but is it tainted by scandal?

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Move over, Pink Floyd. There’s a new Oz in town, and it’s not your parents’ alternate soundtrack—though it may have an even darker backstory.

Yesterday, former American Idol contestant and songwriter Todrick Hall dropped a house-sized revelation on YouTube in the form of a re-imagined Wizard of Oz. The 1939 masterpiece is recreated lovingly from the start, complete with Kirstie Maldonado of the a cappella group Pentatonix singing “Over the Rainbow” while wearing gingham and holding a little dog. 

But then suddenly the vocal group bursts into “Shatter every window, ‘til it’s all blown away,” unleashing a tornado of sound into the mix and replacing Harold Arlen with Carrie Underwood. It’s The Wizard of Ahhhs, and for the next six and a half minutes, the vintage musicals get a facelift that's the biggest thing to happen to the Emerald City since the original Oz dazzled its viewers with color for the first time. Glenda does hip-hop; Dorothy sings, “I've got my ticket for the long way 'round / two bottle whiskey for the way,” as she sets off down the yellow brick road; and Oz the Great and Powerful sings Kanye’s “Power” while dressed as a green-bedazzled vaudevillian—one part steampunk, two parts Joel Grey.

The whole story of the Wizard of Oz is presented here, and though there’s more direct homage to Glee than to that earlier iconic reboot, the all-black musical The Wiz, the spirit of Ahhhs feels much the same. By the time the final ensemble number closes with Mötley Crüeoh, my god!—this musical theatre nerd was beside herself.

It’s certainly not the first time Hall has scored big with a musical reinvention. Since taking his act from reality talent shows to YouTube, he’s regularly produced viral hits, from flash mobs to a musical Subway order

But there’s a not-so-happy twist: Hall was apparently working on an Oz adaptation for a while, and four years ago he allegedly swindled up to $7,500 from over 100 children to whom he had promised roles in a stage version of the production in Nashville. In 2011 he successfully Kickstarted the production—but the comments on the Kickstarter are full of angry backers who claim they never got the rewards they paid for. 

“I hope no one gives this guy another dime for his projects,” reads the final comment to date, from 2012. “No matter how good the project might be this guy has no honesty, integrity or very good character.”

But for better or worse, the 50,000 YouTube viewers who’ve listened to The Wizard of Ahhhs in half a day don’t know the history of the man behind the curtain.

All they know is that, as Hall’s brand-new Hollywood agent put it, “you made me laugh and you entertained me.”

It looks like Hall’s living in the Emerald City—at least until the next time he asks for money.

Screengrab via Todrick Hall/YouTube

WikiLeaks is not impressed with the new WikiLeaks movie trailer

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The trailer for the new WikiLeaks movie, The Fifth Estate, was released yesterday, and WikiLeaks promptly took to Twitter to voice its dissent. Benedict Cumberbatch, he of Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek Into Darkness and otter lookalike fame, plays the role of founder Julian Assange.

The trailer is very Hollywood, with Cumberbatch uttering heroic phrases like “courage is contagious” over swelling strings and explosions. The closing shot flashes the words, “You are the fifth estate.” The film is directed by Bill Condon, who most recently helmed the Twilight: Breaking Dawn series. From the looks of the trailer alone, The Fifth Estate seems pro-WikiLeaks, even if Assange denounced the film as a “massive propaganda attack” earlier this year.

Still, many Americans only know the name WikiLeaks or Julian Assange, not its origins. For all its visual histrionics and dialogue about “truth, justice, the American way,” the film, much like Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, is tackling a very contemporary event, so it will be interesting to see how much revision or reinterpretation has happened. It also gives WikiLeaks a sense of historical relevance in this new era of citizen journalism (the “fifth” estate), especially in this summer of whistleblowing.

The movie is out in October. Perhaps by then, Assange and Edward Snowden will be watching this movie from a balcony somewhere, like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show.

Photo via The Fifth Estate/YouTube

One Direction's new single is the best leak ever

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Three weeks ago, the heartthrob hub known as One Direction announced a new upcoming single.  On Wednesday afternoon, after weeks of teasers and five days before the song's official release, Twitter user r4dicaldanny leaked the single and promptly gained tens of thousands of followers.

"Best Song Ever" may not actually be the best song ever, but it's definitely the best leak ever, at least as far as the fans are concerned. 

Within minutes the leak had caused a fandom explosion. The Tumblr mirror of a YouTube link which was promptly pulled for copyright infringement gained nearly 40,000 notes within an hour. 

Any doubt you might have had that you're listening to a 1D song instantly fades at the chorus, which contains the anthemic lines:

I think it went oh oh oh

I think it went yeah yeah yeah

I think it went ohh woo!

The peppy number also contains the line, "Said I had a dirty mouth / but she kissed me like she meant it."  The mystery girl, dubbed "Georgia Rose" in the song, instantly sparked a flurry of speculation about who her real-life equivalent could be—and lots of fans joking about changing their names. (You guys were joking, right?)

The fandom instantly swung into freakout mode, with Twitter fans generally outraged and apologetic.

Meanwhile, Tumblr fans were generally delighted. While Twitter joked that Directioners were the best/worst fans ever, Tumblr was churning out fanart.

Illustration via iluvmybfharrystyles

And, of course, joking about how the fandom has no sense of privacy

WE HACK INTO SECURITY CAMERAS

WE HACK INTO TWITTER ACCOUNTS

WE LEAK SONGS

HALF OF THIS FANDOM WILL BE IN PRISON BY THE TIME WERE 30

The winner of the day seems to be Zayn Malik, whose high note is all anyone can talk about.

"YES HELLO MR OBAMA HAVE YOU HEARD ZAYN MALIKS HIGH NOTE IN BEST SONG EVER???!!???!!??!" gushed modestcantmanagethis

While the single has already been yanked from YouTube, copies are proliferating throughout the fandom.  Fans may not be able to agree on whether their illicit activities are embarrassing or awesome, but they do seem to agree on one thing:

Piracy is no excuse not to have a virtual dance party.

Photo via nadiahadlina/deviantART

"Best Daym Takeout": YouTube star gets super official

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It's early for an interview, 7:30am to be exact, but it’s the only time that Daymon Patterson can fit me in. The larger-than-life YouTube star, best known for his reviews of fast food menu items from the front seat of his four-door sedan, is in Puerto Rico, vacationing with his wife and toddler. Come 8am, "wifey and baby are ready to hit the streets of PR."

It's likely the last time he'll get to enjoy a minute to himself for a while. His television show—inspired by his unbelievable review of 5 Guys Burgers and Fries that helped him rack up more than 130,000 subscribers—makes its network premiere later this month, and he's readying a big media blitz upon his return to his native Connecticut.

"Best Daym Takeout," he says in a manner that suggests he's been repeating the show's title every five minutes since its program was conceived. "July 31st, 10pm on the Travel Channel. We're going to be looking at food in a completely different light."

What he means by that is that his show, which will run on a six-episode limited season for the first run, is out to change the way that cable networks cover food.

"I've watch a lot of food shows," he says, "a lot of Food Network. And you watch how it's prepared and they get into the ingredients and the way they create the dish from beginning to end. Maybe they take a bite and say it's delicious. OK, great.

"I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to be that guy inside a kitchen preparing a meal. I'm going to do what I do on YouTube; I'm just going to take it to the next level."

Here's how Patterson's show's boils down: Each week, Patterson will be seen scoping out the locales within a number of different American cities. The first two are Chicago and New Orleans. He'll cruise around the city a bit—play the "six-foot-five, 400 lbs. of cocoalicious lovin'" tour guide—then check into three restaurants based on the suggestions of his Facebook and Twitter fans and followers.

"Mom and pop locations," he stresses. "Nothing national. These spots are in your own backyard."

Once inside each restaurant, Patterson will exchange his pleasantries with current diners and staff and get everybody fired up for the fact that there are cameras in their restaurant and Daymon Patterson's dropped by.

He'll stop inside the kitchen, walk back into the dining area, "and then I literally make a to-go order that, once it's ready, and I tell the people at the counter this, I will take to the front seat of my vehicle right in front of their establishment and break it down the same way I break it down on YouTube.

"If I love it, you're going to know. And if it's just OK, you're still going to know. The game is just the same."

Patterson isn’t the first YouTube star to make the leap to television. Annoying Orange has found success on Cartoon Network, Lucas Cruikshank’s Fred got picked up by Nickelodeon, and there’s been serious talk of Smosh making a similar leap. B

But Patterson’s success is still a rare phenomenon, and it's all happened in a span of eight months—dating back to Oct. 25. That's when he quit his job at CarMax in Connecticut and started making YouTube food reviews professionally.

"I'd never seen this day coming," he says. "I was perfectly happy seeing new subscribers come to my YouTube channel. That GhettoNN movement, that was my thing. Daym Drops. I finally had my first 1,000 subscribers. That 1,000 turned into 10,000, and I was like 'Wow, that's crazy. You get a viral video and now everybody's checking out what you're doing.'

“And now I get a TV show out of it? That's a dream come true, in more ways than one."

Photo via Travel Channel

How a Directioner-Belieber war became the biggest trend on Twitter

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Fans of One Direction and Justin Bieber have come to an accord. Maybe.

Directioners managed to make the phrase "Beliebers shut up and make Directioners a sandwich" trend by tweeting it en masse Wednesday afternoon. That slapdown prompted an in-kind response from Beliebers, who turned the tag #DirectionersWeWillMakeYouSandwichesSOON into a worldwide trend as well.

It's not as friendly as it might seem on the surface. It's more of a sarcastic "Yeah, sure, we'll get right on that" than an "Oh, hey, no problem! We love you guys."

Magnificently, some of the Beliebers who tweeted the tag actually made sandwiches for the One Direction fans. Or at the very least, shared photos of sandwiches.

Then there were some who suggested spiking the virtual snacks with unsavory additives.

When rival fandoms wage war over anything and everything, a kind deed can go a long way, especially when in response to a stinging backhand of a trend. Kill 'em with kindness and all that.

Meanwhile, another sandwich-related tag, #ShutUpGringasAndMakeASandwichForBrazilians, also hit the top of the worldwide trend list, showing the power Twitter’s Brazilian userbase has to sway the global trends list.

In other Directioner/Belieber drama Wednesday, some users were slammed for apparently mocking Bieber and Avalanna Routh, a young Bieber fan with whom the singer had struck up a friendship before she passed away last year. 

The first of those screenshots, at least, seems to have been doctored. There's no display name above the handle, for one thing, and @gayforpayne has retweeted several people claiming the image was Photoshopped amid the waves of criticism sent his way. High drama in fandom on Twitter indeed.

Why can't we all just get along?

Illustration by Jay Hathaway, photo via Morguefile

This is your life, reduced to a vinyl record

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When you die, there’s a company that will press your ashes into a vinyl record—a jazz funeral at 33rpm.

It’s no mere gimmick. And Vinyly (rhymes with “Finally”) has been in business for four years now.

While founder Jason Leach began the site “just for fun,” word spread slowly, and by halfway through 2012 he began to get hundreds of inquiries.

To date, he’s only pressed four actual records, at £3,000 a pop, including one for a DJ that spun at his favorite club. So it’s not surprising the Web is a little short on reviews and testimonials for this service. There has been a notable recent customer: an Amsterdam artist named Francesca Grilli.

“She had a classical score written and played by string instruments,” Leach said. “This was filmed. The instruments and score were burning during the performance. We pressed the ashes from the performance into clear vinyl cut with the audio recording from the performance.”

It can’t be the cost alone that gives most people cold feet about this clever final resting plan. Many traditional funerals are far more expensive. Nor is it the possible recordings: Leach notes that you can record your voice, laughter, ambient noise, commision your own music, or just leave the vinyl blank so relatives can listen to your crackles and hiss.

The problem may boil down to a very important constriction: The deceased only gets 24 minutes to fill, 12 minutes per side. If you were the nostalgic type and wanted to be pressed into a copy of your favorite album, you’d likely be out of luck. Most LPs run almost twice that length.

Searching for seminal short albums that might sneak under the 24-minute bar proved largely fruitless. Even the self-titled Ramones debut would have to shave off a bit more than five minutes to make the cut, and X’s Los Angeles would go three minutes over. A Hard Day’s Night has a half-hour running time. And don’t even think about jazz.

That’s when it hit me: your best option in this realm of pre-recorded music, assuming you don’t just want to be the David Bowie single “Ashes to Ashes,” is to find the perfect EP. My Bloody Valentine’s You Made Me Realise, arguably their best release, clocks in at 17 minutes, as does the Pixies’ breakout, Come On Pilgrim.

Plenty of Belle & Sebastian EPs would fit the bill, providing just the right balance of melancholy and whimsy. There’s eight versions of Aphex Twin’s Girl/Boy EP to choose from. If you’d prefer one song in many forms, there’s lots of remix material to choose from. M83’s Steve McQueen EP has the title track in album form, plus revisions of it from Maps, SALM, BeatauCue, and Alluxe—altogether, an exactly 23.9-minute deconstruction of one tune.

Of course, if you really wanted to be classy about it, you’d go with a recording of French composer and pianist Erik Satie’s simple, beautiful, and haunting Gymnopédies Nos. 1-3, with a scant running time of 10 minutes. That leaves a whole side free for a live Rush song.

All of which begs the question: What’s your ideal B-side?

Photo via t1ger/Flickr


“House of Cards” and “Arrested Development” break new ground with Emmy nods

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Netflix has broken down barriers with House of Cards, the first Internet-based show to earn an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Drama Series.

The show got nine nominations in total, including nods for stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, and David Fincher for directing the first episode.

House of Cards was Netflix's first foray into creating original shows, but it wasn't the only one to make an impact. The Arrested Developmentrevival garnered three nominations, including an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series nod for Jason Bateman. However, the cult classic couldn't bash its way into the Outstanding Comedy Series field.

Netflix would most certainly like to win awards for its two shows. But bumping up its subscriber numbers is probably the main goal for the company with splashy original shows like House of Cards, Arrested Development, and the well-reviewedOrange Is The New Black. Netflix is due to hold an earnings call next week, which will give an indication as to whether the widely publicized fourth season of Arrested Development led to more subscribers. Missing or hitting subscriber estimates has been a big influence on Netflix's stock swings of late.

Webseries have been eligible for the Emmys since a rules change in 2008, but this year marks the first time an original streaming series has been a serious contender. (A spinoff of The Officewon a Daytime Emmy in 2007). 

With YouTube placing an emphasis on premium content and Netflix already talking about another season of Arrested Development, there's no reason to think webseries won't make the same impact on the Emmys that cable shows did after they became eligible in 1988.

Photo via Netflix

What happens when Netflix crops your favorite movie

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Netflix had a great day today, receiving Emmy nominations for two of its original series, House of Cards and Arrested Development. But Netflix doesn’t always show the same care for the movies it hosts.

A new Tumblr blog, called What Netflix Does, accuses the service of disregarding aspect ratios and showing viewers altered versions of movies without warning them the film has been cropped. The site was started four months ago, but it grew in popularity this weekend after being posted about by Gizmodo.

The sites manifesto reads as follows:

“Netflix does not always respect the original aspect ratio of films.

This would be by far my biggest complaint about the service, but not so many people seem to talk about it out here. Let this place be a desperate cry for help.”

In a statement to the Huffington Post, Netflix’s said  Joris Evers the movies’ altered aspect ratios are a mistake:

"We want to offer the best picture and provide the original aspect ratio of any title on Netflix. However, unfortunately our quality controls sometimes fail and we end up offering the wrong version of a title. When we discover this error, we replace that title as soon as possible."

Looking at the Tumblr, the films lose a lot of what you’re supposed to see. In some cases, it changes the whole vision of the movie.

For example:

The Last Action Hero (1993)

Netflix:

Actual movie:

Dune(1984)

Netflix:

Actual movie:

See way more Netflix errors here.

H/T Huffington Post | Photo via Netflix

A moving tribute to the movies

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Movies showcase every subject from superheroes to romance to tornadoes filled with sharks. So what happens when movies feature the subject they should be the foremost authority on—movies?

Chances are, they wound up in Slacktory's moving YouTubemontage, "Movies in movies: A metacinematic montage."

Slacktory used depictions of movie theaters from 93 different movies to create a truly meta homage to the moviegoing experience. From walking into the theater to reacting to onscreen action, editors Clara Darko and Brutzelpretzel successfully piece together a story about a night out at the movies. While Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Biloxi Blues may be leagues apart in every way possible, the Slacktory editors have managed to beautifully marry them together. 

The 139-clip montage is set to a wonderful set of music from famed movie composers John Williams and Elmer Bernstein.

It's a shame that video games rarely feature in-game characters playing video games, for Slacktory could surely continue to work its magic there, but instead it did the next best thing: video games in movies.

H/T Slacktory | Image via Slacktory/YouTube

In Africa, memory cards are the new cassette tapes

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African musicians are increasingly turning to memory cards from mobile phones to distribute music.

With access to the Internet limited and prohibitively expensive, cell phones are a cheap alternative for storing and sharing information. Africa also has a higher rate of mobile use than either the United States or Europe, having grown 40-fold in the last decade.

Just as the Sony Walkman helped give rise to a mixtape culture—trading tapes and bootleg copies of albums or live recordings—an independent scene has emerged with microSD cards. Tracks are traded from one phone to another via Bluetooth connections or card readers.  

“In much of West Africa, cell phones are are used as all purpose multimedia devices.” noted Chris Kirkley of Sahel Sounds, an independent record label, based in Portland, Ore. “In lieu of personal computers and high-speed Internet, the knockoff cellphones house portable music collections, playback songs on tinny built in speakers, and swap files in a very literal peer-to-peer Bluetooth wireless transfer.”

Kirkley has been collecting music from memory cards on mobile phones in the Sahara, including Mali and Senegal. In 2010, he released a stellar compilation LP, Music from Saharan Cellphones, that captured not only the music that was popular on  “the unofficial mp3/cellphone network from Abidjan to Bamako to Algiers” and nomadic desert renegades Tinariwen. It’s been recently released digitally.

For Kirkley, the distribution represents a cultural reclamation of the music, an independent system by and for the people.

“The ubiquity of cellphones has created a busy soundscape,” Kirkley told Motherboard. “There a furious outcry by these corporate machines who based their business on distribution and propagation, but it’s just the sound of a system in its death throes.”

For those who are skeptical about the media being the message, it’s important to note that SanDisk thumb drives were crucial in Cuba some years back. Those devoted to publishing their thoughts online would type up what they wished to say on their unconnected home computers, walk into a tourist hotel (where they were not legally allowed to be), and plug into one of the hotel’s business center computers to post from there.

In fact, in West Africa, the use of memory cards is a symptom of an explosion of musical exuberance extravagant even for the region. There is so much music that expecting only one distribution channel would be “kind of like trying to pour a bottle of Coke into a straw,” according the Wall Street Journal’s West Africa correspondent, Drew Hinshaw.

“Channels of distribution are flourishing in much of Africa,” Hinshaw told the Daily Dot. “USB sticks, cheap smart phones and the like. It feels to me that African pop music is bubbling up right now — finding a humorous, sometimes sinister electro cool voice—and maybe because the channels to circulate little hits are flourishing.”

Nic Offer, the frontman of New York dance-punk band !!! (pronounced chk-chk-chk), is similarly bridging this distinctive model for West African music distribution and the West

Just after his 40th birthday, Offer took a month to travel through Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, he told the Daily Dot.

In West Africa, “absolutely everyone is listening to music on their phone,” he said. “The phone is everyone’s new boombox or Walkman.”

Being a musician, Offer wanted to get some of the music that was so ubiquitous on his trip. The concierge at his hotel told him to get a memory card, because “that’s how things were done, that’s how music was sold.” He walked Offer to a cell phone kiosk and the proprietor sold him 100 “hits,” which he burnt, as it were, onto an SD card, as well as a small radio that played those cards.

For Okayafrica’s Africa in Your Earbuds series, Offer created a mixtape of 14 of those tracks (along with a bonus track written by him and Sierra Leone musician Daddy Rhymes). Some of these tracks remain unidentified, since memory cards often carry little or no track information.

WiIth less genre-specific organization, buying and selling music from card to card gave Offer the vibe he often gets when he picks up an old cassette mixtape from a thrift shop.

Those thrift shop tapes “by some 15 year old kid will have the Dead Milkmen next to Pet Shop Boys and PiL,” he said. “I figured my ignorance of African genres would make for an interesting mixtape.”

It does. And, given how little actual remixing he did, it gives the listener a real window not only into the vibrant and upbeat West African music scene but the way in which music moves through the culture there.

Photo by Nic Offer

The most legendarily terrible video game ever is now thriving

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BY ERIC FRANCO

Desert Bus was created by American illusionists Penn and Teller in 1995 for the Sega CD, devised as an intentionally bad video game that was to "work as a satire against the anti-video-game lobby" amidst the '90s culture wars. It was never released. 

But as a recently published New Yorker piece details, the game's been given a rebirth from the ashes of its Clinton-era obscurity by way of Desert Bus For Hope, an annual charity event created in 2007 and centered around the game's sole gameplay mechanic: Desert Bus puts you behind the driver's seat for a real-time, eight-hour commute from Arizona to Las Vegas. That's it. That's the entire game. There is no pause button. One point is awarded for completing the trip. 

Seems easy right? Well, for the most part it is, provided you have eight hours of free time. There are no passengers to accompany you during your commute nor any cars driving on the road alongside you. But as TNY's Simon Parker explains, the game's simplicity anticipates and foils all possibility for an easy cruise-control through any of the game's 16-hour round-trip. 

"Finishing a single leg of the trip requires considerable stamina and concentration in the face of arch boredom: the vehicle constantly lists to the right, so players cannot take their hands off the virtual wheel; swerving from the road will cause the bus’s engine to stall, forcing the player to be towed back to the beginning. The only scenery is the odd sand-pocked rock or road sign," Parker writes

While its 16-bit graphics are nothing near the photo-realism that big-budget, current-gen games strive for, by virtualizing the mundanity of driving alone, the distilled real-time gameplay in Desert Bus makes for something that's more realistic than how the Call of Duty franchise approaches realism. What better way to illustrate a desolate desert drive than with fewer pixels? This is what the Smithsonian should've featured in its flubbed but well-intentioned The Art of Video Games exhibit, which despite not living up to its potential was nonetheless a big milestone for the video game industry

Imagineering, the now-defunct New Jersey-based developer behind Desert Bus, created a game that's a mishmash of the two polar-opposite worlds on today's consoles. Indie games forgo fidelity and realism to create something artful and focused on gameplay, and blockbuster releases forgo innovating gameplay to focus on making a gun look photo-realistic—with the latter being the reason why, like movies, an effects-driven game almost immediately looks dated when its sequel is released. 

Read the full story on Motherboard

Ariana Grande's Arianators might be the new Beliebers

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If you thought the “Baby I” Twitter hashtag had to do with the forthcoming royal child, you were wrong. Turns out fans of Nickelodeon actress and Broadway singer Ariana Grande have taken over Twitter to promote their idol’s new single, “Baby I.”

The hashtag “#BuyBabyIOnITunes” made the top trending topics on the site and fans also rushed to purchase the single on iTunes, jumping it to the No. 3 spot on the charts. It’s beating out Miley Cyrus’s “Song of the Summer” “We Can’t Stop” and is only being trumped by Robin Thicke’s catchy “Blurred Lines” and the new One Direction single “Best Song Ever.”

The fans’ goal with the hashtag is apparently to beat One Direction, which has 2,119 fan ratings on iTunes. Grande’s song already has almost double that with 4,116 positive ratings. Grande’s huge Twitter fanbase could soon cause her to triumph over the seemingly unbeatable hysteria surrounding the British boyband.

Last night, #BuyBabyIOnITunes was the No. 1 trending topic in the world. And the single sat at number 2 on the iTunes charts as recently as three hours ago. Grande, 20, tweeted her thanks to her fans, and also counted down the single’s launch and then subsequent quick success. Though she’s appeared on TV, becoming a fan favorite on the show Victorious, Grande got her start singing in the Broadway musical 13.

Can her fans get her to number one solely through social media? Arianators might be the new Beliebers.

Photo via ABC Disney Television Group/Flickr

"Sesame Street" reaches out online to kids with incarcerated parents

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Sesame Workshop, the company behind the ultra-popular children’s television program Sesame Street, has turned to social media to promote a new campaign aimed at kids with at least one incarcerated parent.

In June, the company introduced "Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration," a digital toolkit that helps kids deal with the emotional hurdles and distress that comes with having a parent in jail.

"Unfortunately, few resources exist to support young children and families coping with this life-changing circumstance," Sesame Workshop explains

 "These children have to deal with the confusion, shame, and anger that accompany the sudden absence of a parent. The 2.7 million children with an incarcerated parent share similar experiences, but they don’t often feel comfortable talking about them."

The first step in the initiative was to introduce Alex, a groundbreaking character who has a lot in common with the kids "Little Children, Big Challenges" is trying to reach.

On Tuesday, the official Sesame Street Twitter account began getting the word out by tweeting out heartwrenching Vine videos told from a kid's perspective that somewhat resemble PostSecret confessions.

"Incarceration" is only the latest "Little Children, Big Challenges" campaign. In 2012, Sesame Workshop launched one for kids whose parents are divorced.

Photo via Sesame Street in Communities/YouTube


This Taiwanese singer started a major online scandal with just 3 words

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Taiwan’s uneasy and often quite touchy political relationship with mainland China colors even the realm of lowest-common-denominator pop culture, as Uni, an aboriginal Taiwanese singer, recently found out.

Over the weekend, Uni appeared on The Voice of China, a familiar sort of musical competition reality show, this one imported from Holland, with the apparent hook that the judges don’t see the singer until their song is over. 

But Uni’s brassy performance on a popular Chinese program wasn’t the problem here.

No, what the audience in Uni’s native Taiwan railed against—giving that video hundreds of thousands of views in the process—was her semantics. The singer, in her introduction, said she hailed from “China Taipei Pingtung District,” repeating that phrase later on. 

The terminology surrounding Taiwan’s geopolitical status is complex and thorny, as the issue of China’s control over the island remains unresolved, with the lingering possibility of annexation and frustrated hopes of independence causing much friction. There seems to be little disagreement in Taiwan, however, that Uni committed a major gaffe.

Under pressure from the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan’s government in international affairs must often identify the region as “Chinese Taipei.” Not even in mainland China do they use the term “China Taipei,” instead favoring the more directly hegemonic “China Taiwan” to suggest Taiwan’s place as subservient province. 

Reacting to a flood of negative comments on her Facebook page and across social media, Uni remarked that the show’s producers asked her to use the more common “China Taiwan Pingtung” in her introduction, but out of nervousness, she said “Taipei.” Fans weren’t buying it, especially as she appears to be the first Taiwanese contestant to add “China” to her place of origin.

Complicating matters further is Uni’s aboriginal background. Native Taiwanese are supposed to be more patriotic than the Han Chinese who have emigrated there over the years, and so the “China Taipei” flub scans as an even greater capitulation to the mainland, where, according to many Taiwanese, their not-quite-sovereign nation is regularly mocked.

A Taiwanese blogger captured and translated a few heated online reactions to the insta-scandal:

Most people used words like "可悲" (pathetic), "可恥" (disgraceful), "" (rotten), "滾出台灣" (get out of Taiwan), or "丟台灣人的臉" (made Taiwanese people lose face) to vent their anger. Here are some examples in the form of screen caps:

This girl pointed out that the show's Weibo introduced her as "coming from Taiwan", not "China Taiwan", yet she still said she's coming from "China Taiwan Pingtung".

This netizen multiplied the phrase "終於紅了" (finally red) which means "finally famous". He's implying that she used "China Taipei" only to get more popular in China at the expense of angering Taiwanese.

This netizen pasted a flag of communist China and sarcastically remarked that "he knows she must be crying now because of all the attacks". He suggested "she should cry with this flag and he's sure that her Chinese fellows will sympathize with a Taibazi like her". Taibazi (台巴子) is a derogatory term for Taiwanese used by Mainlanders.

One commenter, though, went on to note that it’s hardly unusual for Taiwanese celebrities to defer to Chinese authority when convenient.

Taiwanese people haven't had a problem with Harlem Yu and A-Mei being judges on "The voice of China" and hilariously neither of them had absolutely no reaction to this girl denigrating Taiwan like this. It seems like if you're a Taiwanese person going on one of these shows, its almost a requirement for your admission to say something stupid about the political status of the country. A-Mei, an aboriginal herself also seems to have forgotten the years her music was banned in China because the color of the RMB is filling her bank accounts is much more attractive than her old political views. 

Whether Uni’s Chinese exposure will outweigh the uproar she’s caused in Taiwan, as the “finally famous” attack implies, remains to be seen, but it doesn’t look likely: on the mainland, they seem to consider this less an overture of friendliness and more a case of “poking the green turtle,” i.e., wantonly aggravating advocates of Taiwanese independence. 

In other words, just more noise from an outlying province.

Photo via My Kafkaesque Life

You've never heard "Ice Ice Baby" like this

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All right stop, supercut, and listen.

YouTube remix artist Don Draper Says What has made a number of supercuts over the years. This time around, he took over three months to edit 280 movies into one movie montage of people performing Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby."

Everyone from Aladdin to Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator appear in the film, along with Pee Wee Herman, Dr. Horrible, and multiple appearances from Vanilla Ice himself (courtesy of 1991’s Cool as Ice).

It's similar to what Barack's Dubs has done with pop hits, using a variety of short clips to forcefully render a new version the song.

H/T Clipnation | Photo by strellevik/Flickr

Breaking down the appeal of One Direction's best video ever

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The video for One Direction’s “Best Song Ever” (actual title) just came out, and it’s basically the best way you could be spending six minutes of your life today.

They sing (mostly “yeah yeah yeah” and “oh oh oh”). They dance (or at least, they manage more than five consecutive seconds of dance moves, which is pretty impressive for 1D). Also, there are some bizarre facial prosthetics involved. It’s more or less meaningless, but it’s also incredibly entertaining, and here’s why:

BSE

If you’re over the age of 18, then the only BSE you’re likely to remember is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. But no, don’t worry, thousands of teenagers aren’t tweeting about mad cow disease, it just stands for Best Song Ever. And OK, objectively speaking, this may not actually be the Best Song Ever unless you’ve already accepted One Direction into your heart, but the video is pretty good. Everyone in the band dresses up in funny costumes and plays multiple characters, meaning that at one point you get to have two Harry Styles at once. A dream come true! 

GIF by kneeyum

It looks like a summer camp skit

I showed the BSE video to my mother to get a viewpoint from the pre-Millennial generation. “Are all these costumes symbolic of the fact that One Direction have more than one dimension?” Nice guess, but no. I’m reasonably sure that 1D (or their handlers) just decided that it would be funny for them to dress up in wigs and old-person prosthetics, and play a bunch of cheesy comedy characters. How long before we get a Spice World: The Movie-style One Direction film? I can’t wait.

GIF by rraemm

Homage to boy band history

Compared to boy bands of the past, One Direction are seriously terrible at things like wearing matching outfits and performing synchronised dance routines. On the bright side, they’re awesome at homoerotic friendship and being adorable (the two other cornerstones of boy band success), so we’ll give them a pass.

GIF by liliceinwonderland

Luckily, the band seem 100 percent aware of this, so this video is full of old marketing guys (also played by One Direction) telling the boys to shape up their act and start wearing cute stage costumes instead of mooching around in skinny jeans and hoodies. And as for the whole dancing thing, well... the fans are in on the joke. Everyone knows 1D can’t dance, so it’s just heartwarming to see them try. “THEY HAD LIKE 5 NEW DANCE MOVES IN THERE,” exclaimed one fan on Tumblr, while another posted in apparent astonishment: “dude they were actually in sync”.

Zayn Malik in drag

Yes, they put one of the band members in drag, and it wasn’t weirdly sexist or homophobic. In fact, he plays it straight. So to speak. 

GIF by harryniips

Zayn Malik, in the role of “Veronica”, is just as beautiful as a woman as he is as a man, prompting #LesbianForZayn to trend worldwide when the first video trailer was released. This has already spawned a new fanfic pairing: Haronica, since Harry Styles and Veronica were clearly flirting. Although as Tumblr user tuave pointed out, there may have been an ulterior motive for having “Veronica” be the only girl in the video:

“Im glad one direction finally realized that there cant be an actual girl in their videos without starting world war 3”

She has a point. Why would they include competition in their videos when they can just keep it in the family? 

Photo via YouTube

Watch the first footage from the "Veronica Mars" movie

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BY SAM GUTELLE

Veronica Mars‘ record-setting $5.7 million Kickstarter campaign set off a wave of similar big-name online fundraising campaigns. A little more than three months after the campaign ended, the first footage from the Veronica Mars film has been released during a panel at Comic-Con.

The Comic-Con featurette includes a behind-the-scenes look at the film and the groundbreaking project that spawned it, and it concludes with a brief trailer­. Of course, since the actors are now nine years older than when the show first began, the titular leading lady can’t be a high school wunderkind anymore. Instead, Kristen Bell will have to settle for playing a plain old TV adult genius.

During the behind-the-scenes portion, viewers get to see the moment creator Rob Thomas actually pushed the Kickstarter campaign live and set this whole trend in motion. Thomas calls the film “the little movie that could,” which seems a little silly when there are many other projects on Kickstarter that aren’t considered cult classics.

The Veronica Mars movie will arrive in 2014, at which point it may be a relic of another era; after the heavy criticism Zach Braff endured during his Wish I Were Here campaign, multi-million dollar Kickstarter campaigns will probably remain rare. Veronica Mars‘ place in history, however, shouldn’t be dictated by the trend it kicked off. On its own, it is proof of the Internet’s ability to fund a film that looks and feels just like a studio picture.

Plus, Kristen Bell is still super sassy. Even the 90-second sneak peek makes that clear.

Screengrab via YouTube

Publicists are already trying to capitalize on Cory Monteith's death

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Hey, people who work in public relations: Stop trying to capitalize on Cory Monteith’s death.

The 31-year-old Glee star, who died July 13 from a toxic mix of heroin and alcohol, has been used in marketing emails to members of the press to try and sell a book unrelated to Monteith.

Monteith had struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction since he was a teenager, and had recently spent some time in rehab for an undisclosed reason. The PR email’s subject reads: “Attorney and Author Was Cory Monteith Once” and goes on to shell the book by saying the author’s “main character, Jude, which is an image of him also reflects the life of Glee star, Cory Monteith,” even though the content of the book has nothing to do with Monteith or his life, and the author presumably did not know Monteith.

The connection is being made to make the book seem timely and relevant, and to capitalize on the Canadian actor’s death. The novel is about drug addiction in some form, and Monteith is in the news, but this is poor taste PR 101. Bad form all around—and more importantly, gross. 

Photo via VagueOnTheShow/Flickr

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