Directioners are reeling from newly leaked footage of two of their idols, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik, smoking joints and joking about drug use while riding in a van with what appear to be members of their security team. The two crooners were on their way to a concert in Lima, and spent the time alternately smoking and warming up, while laughing about their lives.

"Are we allowed to talk contraband in this?" Malik asks shortly before Tomlinson passes him a joint. 

Tomlinson seems to be filming the video while narrating the trip in the van, teasing Malik about his "intense warmup regime."

At one point the van passes a police car, and Tomlinson jokes that the police is "sure [he] can smell an illegal substance in [their van]."

"And he's hit the nail on the head," Tomlinson jokes. 

"So here we are," he says, "leaving Peru... joint lit... happy days."

Tomlinson seemed unfazed by the idea the video could come back to haunt him, but members of the fandom seemed shocked that he'd actually filmed the scene. They promptly responded as only fandom can—with photosets and hysteria:

Photo via creddie--forever/Tumblr

The mighty Twitter side of the fandom also promptly trended a number of hashtags in response, some more disturbing than others, particularly #CutforZouis. Self-harm out of a wish to show solidarity with members of the band has always been one of the serious problems that plagues corners of the One Direction fandom; thankfully, most of the people using the tag on Twitter and Tumblr are urging others not to participate in the trend.

While this isn't the first time rumors about the band members and illegal drug use  have surfaced, this is the first time it's been caught on video. 

"I wonder if this will come back to haunt me," Tomlinson muses at one point.

Oh, Louis. You don't say.

Screengrab via YouTube

Tumblr isn't one to announce its small changes, preferring rather to let them drift into the consciousness of the userbase.

The most recent feature to drift onto our dash is Recommended Posts. While Recommended Blogs have always been a feature of the dash sidebar (though there are extensions that will remove them), now Tumblr has taken the feature one step further. Recently it began introducing recommended blogs to users by placing original posts from those blogs directly onto the user's dashboard.

Although Tumblr hasn't officially announced it, the change appears to have begun surfacing around three weeks ago. XKit developer Atesh Yurdakul began receiving notes from users confused about why they were seeing the posts on their dash around that time. A week later, Yurdakul released an extension to remove the posts.

While the new posts don't seem to have any connection to Tumblr's sponsored posts, they could be evidence of Tumblr's strategy of enhancing marketing through inferable analytics culled from user data. So far, its attempts at guessing seem a bit hit-and-miss, but then again, predicting user interests has never been a fluid science.

If you want to remove the posts from your dash, the easiest way is to install XKit and then install the recommended posts removal extension. See our other Tumblr tips for more ways to personalize your dash.

Screengrabs via Tumblr

Amazon broke its silence Tuesday evening about its standoff with Hachette over contract negotiations stemming from the Department of Justice's disbanding of the publishing industry's fixed-price system for e-books. 

"We are not optimistic that this will be resolved soon," Amazon stated.

The stalemate may seem complicated, but its implications for the publishing industry—and how much you pay for ebooks—are far-reaching.

In a forum post closed to discussion, Amazon confirmed Hachette's claim that it was "holding minimal stock" of Hachette's print inventory, and the widely observable fact that it had killed pre-orders on all Hachette titles. 

"These changes are related to the contract and terms between Hachette and Amazon," Amazon wrote. Though Amazon did not specify the point of contractual dispute, the issue involves Amazon's press for a higher percentage of royalties on ebook titles. The previous five-year agreement in the industry prevented Amazon from demanding a higher rate. Now, with the Department of Justice having ruled in favor of Amazon in a major lawsuit between Amazon, Apple, and the five largest publishers in the industry, that freeze has been lifted. And Hachette is only the first publisher with which Amazon is likely going to try to renegotiate a significant royalty increase.

Here's how Amazon described the negotiations:

At Amazon, we do business with more than 70,000 suppliers, including thousands of publishers. One of our important suppliers is Hachette, which is part of a $10 billion media conglomerate. Unfortunately, despite much work from both sides, we have been unable to reach mutually-acceptable agreement on terms. Hachette has operated in good faith and we admire the company and its executives. Nevertheless, the two companies have so far failed to find a solution. Even more unfortunate, though we remain hopeful and are working hard to come to a resolution as soon as possible, we are not optimistic that this will be resolved soon.

While Amazon noted that Hachette had operated in good faith, it gave no real explanation for its decision to decrease its inventory, noting only that it is "the right of a retailer to determine whether the terms on offer are acceptable and to stock items accordingly."

A retailer can feature a supplier's items in its advertising and promotional circulars, "stack it high" in the front of the store, keep small quantities on hand in the back aisle, or not carry the item at all, and bookstores and other retailers do these every day. When we negotiate with suppliers, we are doing so on behalf of customers. Negotiating for acceptable terms is an essential business practice that is critical to keeping service and value high for customers in the medium and long term.

Still, it's not clear how Amazon's negotiations will help customers when the immediate result is to keep them from acquiring books and the end result—a higher percentage for Amazon—could result in higher ebook prices all around. 

Also, bizarrely, Amazon seems to be making the argument that books are interchangeable:

A word about proportion: this business interruption affects a small percentage of Amazon's demand-weighted units. If you order 1,000 items from Amazon, 989 will be unaffected by this interruption. If you do need one of the affected titles quickly, we regret the inconvenience and encourage you to purchase a new or used version from one of our third-party sellers or from one of our competitors.

It's true that Hachette titles aren't the majority of Amazon's retail supply, but none of those other 989 books that are available are by J.K. Rowling, James Patterson, Dan Simmons, David Baldacci, Ian Rankin, Mira Grant, or any of the other major bestselling authors Hachette represents: Authors for whom there is, at least for their fans, no substitute. As Publishers Lunch noted last night in a special evening edition discussing the Amazon post, "But, of course, the unit you want is a market of one."

In order to ameliorate the drop in sales for Hachette authors, Amazon is offering to fund 50 percent of an authorial pool to offset its own scaled-back retail loss, if Hachette will do the same.

Amazon also, somewhat bizarrely, chided the media for its "narrow" coverage of its dispute with Hachette and linked to a blog post by an independent literary publisher who characterized New York Times coverage as fear-mongering and praised Amazon's efficiency and ease of access.

As Amazon reaps the consequences of the Department of Justice's disbanding of the flat pricing structure, Apple has unsuccessfully fought against a counter-lawsuit from the DOJ for spearheading what the DOJ called "a horizontal conspiracy" to illegally fix prices. The final verdict in the countersuit was issued last fall, with a supporting brief from the DOJ issued this week.

Apple had attempted to argue that the courts applied "the wrong legal standard" to the case, possibly because Apple, along with the publishers, had hoped that the end result of the lawsuit would be to get the DOJ to take a closer look at Amazon's own pricing structures. Instead, the DOJ argued successfully that Apple and the Big Six (now the Big Five, after the court decision prompted Penguin and Random House to merge) were the monopoly.

Two of the other publishers named in the original suit, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster, are expected to file an appeal on behalf of Apple in the DOJ's counterclaim. Perhaps new attention to the dispute between Hachette and Amazon will lend greater support to the publishers' original motivation for installing the price-fix to begin with—to keep Amazon from hardballing the publishing industry.

Photo via brewbooks/Flickr

While Marvel's plans for a gun-toting raccoon and a talking tree in its upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy may suggest the company has a certain commitment to quirkiness, last week saw geek icon Edgar Wright abruptly walking off Ant-Man, a project he'd been passionately championing since 2006.

Ant-Man was scripted by Wright, best known for his brilliant Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz screenplays with Simon Pegg, and Joe Cornish, writer of the indie sci-fi social critique Attack the Block. The two writers were risky choices for Marvel—but then Joss Whedon was another risky choice, and look how well that paid off.

So why did he bail? While the official joint statement simply cited "differences in their visions of the film," the details may never be fully known. Some reported on a tweet that Wright allegedly posted and deleted, suggesting his complaints may have been with the big studio setting. Indeed, The Hollywood Reporter speculated in an article that the Marvel of 2006 is not the Disney-owned giant of 2014.

Other logistical complaints have also been suggested. Reportedly, Marvel delayed the start of film production from early June to late July, which caused all of its production department heads to walk off the crew—not exactly an auspicious start to filming. The Hollywood Reporter cites an unnamed source who suggests the delay stemmed from studio-directed rewrites of the Wright-Cornish script done without Wright's input. 

The Latino Review offers more scuttlebutt, claiming—again through an unnamed source—that Marvel had issues on two fronts:

• The "core morality" of the piece
• The too-few number of franchise characters

Given that Shaun of the Dead skewered the social commentary of zombie films and Attack the Block was a tart defense of urban community and an invective against classism, it's easy to imagine that Ant-Man's moral center might have been the most invigorating part of the film. Now, with Wright gone, we pretty much just have Paul Rudd to look forward to. The actor is still on board to play the titular shrinking superhero.

Marvel's history with directors and actors who don't play by its rules is notoriously finicky: Wright joins a long line of people who've broken with the studio. While some fans searching for a reason for the split point a finger at Disney, the source speaking to The Hollywood Reporter said it came down to a personality clash between Wright and Feige:

"Kevin Feige [and his top lieutenants] run Marvel with a singularity of vision, but when you take a true auteur and throw him into the mix, this is what you get," says a source. "They don't want you to speak up too much or have too much vision. People who have never worked there don't understand how they operate, but if you trust them, they have an amazing track record."

Possibly, but all the same, sometimes what studios want and what they need are two different things. After all, script writers who indulged whatever studios want is how we wound up a travesty like tapping Transformers 2 writer Roberto Orci for Star Trek 3.

Ant-Man was a risky venture from the start. But if Marvel did indeed allow Wright to walk for the sake of playing it safe with the script, that might ultimately prove to be the riskiest decision of all.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Levar Burton's Kickstarter to resurrect our childhoods and bring Reading Rainbow back to the kids of America has joined the elite list of fastest campaigns to ever reach $1 million.

The project, which launched yesterday, proposes to expand the successful Reading Rainbow app into a free webseries with special delivery to classrooms. It funded its million-dollar goal in just over 11 hours.

You all are INCREDIBLE! Together we are 22K strong & hit our 1st goal in less than 12 hrs - it's just the beginning! http://t.co/DCJI7TTisu

— Reading Rainbow (@readingrainbow) May 28, 2014

The campaign is now the fourth-fastest Kickstarter to reach $1 million. The groundbreaking Veronica Mars Kickstarter remains the fastest, hitting the mark in just over 5 hours and wrapping with a total of over $5 million. Roleplaying game Torment reached $1 million in 7 hours last year; gaming console OUYA did it in 8 hours in 2012. The highest-funded Kickstarter in history, the Pebble watch, needed 27 hours to gain its first million. 

Reading Rainbow didn't need time to build and spread via word-of-mouth. It already has a huge fanbase and a multi-generational nostalgia factor thanks to its 26-year-run (1983 - 2009) on PBS—along with one of the catchiest theme songs known to man. Yesterday's campaign brought out moments of nostalgia, tears of joy, and moving personal tributes:

"Just take a look, it's in a book"🎶 #WhoRemembers#ReadingRainbow#tbt👀📖🌈

— Anna of Arendelle (@AnnaClayton15) May 29, 2014

I wouldn't be an author without @levarburton, so the first $600 of my advance goes to Reading Rainbow. Thank u sir. pic.twitter.com/My8gssXAye

— Sara Benincasa (@SaraJBenincasa) May 28, 2014

So happy to back Bring Reading Rainbow Back for Every Child, Everywhere on @Kickstarter. I adopted a classroom! http://t.co/5Rl3UO1Rtt

— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) May 28, 2014

The campaign's swift success hasn't come without controversy, however; the Washington Postcritiqued the reasonReading Rainbow was cancelled in 2009 to begin with, and questioned whether the show was utilizing best practices to teach millennial kids how to read. The National Journal opined about the way public education was falling into the hands of crowdfunding: "[I]t's sad that it takes people like LeVar Burton to compensate for our country's literary failings."

Despite these doubts, the campaign currently stands at over $1.7 million, putting Reading Rainbow on track to prove the age-old adage: Butterfly in the sky— we can go twice as high.

Screengrab via Kickstarter

One of the most underrated aspects of the performing arts is the beauty of terrible community theatre. If you've ever been in an under-funded production, you know that necessity is the mother of invention—or in many cases, terrible wardrobe decisions.

A hilarious new Tumblr has decided to shine the spotlight on the one character who embodies the best and the worst that community theatre has to offer: the giant diabolical venus fly trap known to the world as Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.

Since no one quite knows what Audrey II looks like, set and costume designers have a little leeway with the man-eating plant's appearance. And as Low-budget Audrey 2 points out, the results are often inspired—in the worst way possible.

Like this Aquaman reject with a pot around his ankles and ivy-covered genitalia, who looks as if he somehow knows that one day he'll end up on a single-serving Tumblr made for the express purpose of mocking all that he is:

Or this bizarrely vaginal species of radish-turnip-potato-munchkin:

An inordinate number of low-budget Audrey 2s are, as it turns out, weirdly suggestive of the nether regions, which invites one to contemplate exactly kind of horror these little shops are selling:

Then again, perhaps we'd do better not to ask.

Low-budget Audrey 2 started yesterday and is already making a splasn on Tumblr, perhaps because the only way to escape the horror is to pass it on.

Photos via lowbudgetaudrey2/Tumblr

Laverne Cox is getting her own Time cover. She's the first transgender person in history to do so. 

That's not quite the victory it might first appear.

Cox's inexplicable snub from the 2014 Time 100 list set the stage for the media narrative of her vindication after the fact, garnering her a groundswell of public outrage over her omission, an appearance at the Time 100 Gala anyway, and ultimately a place on the magazine's June cover, for an article entitled "The Transgender Tipping Point."

Ironically, the Time debacle just underscores the double-edged sword that is Cox's media ascent. The Orange Is the New Black actress, along with transgender author Janet Mock, seems to have become the new visible face of transgender activism within the last year. But one celebrity transgender actress does not an equality movement make. 

Time's refusal to place her on the list of the most influential people of the year says far, far more about the real state of transgender erasure and invisbility in the U.S. cultural landscape than does its attempts to reap the rewards of its own snub of her by placing her on the cover months later. Giving her the cover for the upcoming issue allows Time to hail Cox as an icon within her own community, while conveniently failing to acknowledge the place she, Mock, and other transgender women hold within the larger sphere of cultural influence—something her inclusion on the Time 100 would have and should have done.

The difference between the two may seem like splitting hairs, but it's really not. Transgender individuals, and particularly trans women, are impacted to an extreme degree by the way they interact with the society outside of their community. To quote Cox herself:

The reality of trans people’s lives is that so often we are targets of violence. We experience discrimination disproportionately to the rest of the community. Our unemployment rate is twice the national average; if you are a trans person of color, that rate is four times the national average. The homicide rate is highest among trans women. If we focus on transition, we don’t actually get to talk about those things.

Cox isn't exaggerating.  The rate of suicide among transgender individuals is anywhere from 40 percent to 50 percent, over 25 times the national average. Nine out of 10 transgender teens report being bullied because of their gender expression. Only eight states explicitly protect people based on gender identity or expression. Violence against transgender men, women, teens and children is so constant that the trans community has created its own tracking system in order to make violent incidents in the community more well-documented and more visible.

Hate crimes, homelessness, mistreatment from the judicial system, inability to travel safely—it's virtually impossible to overstate the difficulty the trans community faces, both in attaining reasonable standards of safety as they go through life, and in garnering respect from outside the community. Time's cover article appears to be trying to shine a spotlight on the trans community, which is potentially a huge step forward for transgender acceptance within wider society. But it's important to remember that Time's erasure of Cox to begin with is also part of the problem. 

It's also important to emphasize that Cox and Mock are not "the face" of the transgender community. Not all trans women are extremely femme, not all trans women are fully transitioned, and not all trans women have the experience of realizing and accepting their identity from a very early age. It's important to make sure that Cox and Mock are not the only trans women who are positively represented in the media—not when the trans community is still fighting for basic representation in media to begin with. The media is stillmisgendering Chelsea Manning. The media is still overlooking actual trans actors in order to laud cisgendered men who can't even say the word "transgender" when they accept their Oscar for playing a transgendered female character.

The kind of narrative the media seems to want to uphold is that of glamorous trans women, and, alarmingly, dead or dying trans women and men. (Remember Hilary Swank's Oscar win for playing the doomed Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry?)  That these are the most common depictions of trans individuals in the media while the rest of the trans community is generally ignored and under-reported on is not only hypocritical, it's dangerous. Time's snub, after all, came just months after Grantland reporter Caleb Hunnan made the decision to reveal the background of a transgender article subject, over her objections—after which she committed suicide. That piece, and the initial hoopla that surrounded it, reads like a textbook circlejerk of insulated sports journalists who are bogglingly unable to comprehend the spectacle of a secretive trans woman trying desperately to hide her prior identity. 

In its apology, ESPN acknowledged that no one on its staff is trans. Moreover, no one on its staff had thought to run the article by a trans person at any stage, either for their thoughts on the high risks of outing a trans woman against her will, or the merit of exploiting her death after the fact in an article that attempted to paint her desire for privacy as duplicity and her trans identity as a kind of catfishing. The invisibility of trans women outside of their own community is lethal.

It's completely possible that Time's historic cover will set the stage for a new wave of transgender representation. But it's worth pointing out that Time also bizarrely called Cox an "unlikely icon" even after placing her on the cover. Unlikely? Really? An intelligent, gorgeous woman starring in one of the most critically acclaimed shows of 2013? 

This is only "unlikely" in the eyes of media that refuses to render trans women a visible part of the world we live in, unless they're buoyed by waves of public outrage—or unless they're already dead.

Screengrab via Time

The Book of Life trailer made a splash yesterday as it debuted to an Internet keen on visual spectacle and unconventional storytelling.

Set in Mexico and featuring gorgeous animation, Book of Life instantly became a hit on Tumblr. The trailer for the movie, which lands in theatres this October, spent most of yesterday making the rounds on Tumblr in the form of an infinite number of fetching, eye-catching GIFs and photosets.

The narrative begins on the Mexican Day of the Dead and involves a very colorful underworld. Combined with the beautiful CGI animation reminiscent of stop-motion, comparisons to Corpse Bride and Nightmare Before Christmas are probably inevitable. But Book of Life is very much a different cultural product, owing far more to the magical realism of its producer Guillermo del Toro than to Tim Burton. 

Book of Life's director and creator is Jorge Gutierrez, an Emmy-winning Mexican animator and writer best known for creating the award-wining Nickelodeon series El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. Gutierrez wanted to make his film a distinct cultural product that he could share with the world. The story is firmly grounded in Mexican folklore, but it also utilizes famous actors like Zoe Saldana and Channing Tatum, along with catchy covers of famous pop songs.

Gutierrez also had a goal of making certain that the beautiful, luminous qualities of illustrated concept art found its way to the screen. Indeed, screengrabs of the trailer look more like pages from an illustrated children's book than a movie. Even the gorgeous movie website is like falling into a picture book.

What do you think? Is Book of Life just another children's film? Or is it an extra treat in the usual bag of Halloween film tricks?

Photo via Film Habits

Amid conflicting reports about when exactly damning footage of Justin Bieber making a racist joke first surfaced, the pop star has apologized profusely for the prank, saying he was just "a kid" when it happened.

A day after British newspaper the Sun posted a video of Bieber telling the joke, Bieber has declared in an extensive apology posted to Twitter that he "made a reckless and immature mistake." 

But it may not have been all that immature. If TMZ's timeline is accurate, they received the footage four years ago, and claimed it was taken when Bieber was 15. Bieber himself claims the footage was taken five years ago, which backs up TMZ's claim. But a report from the Sun, echoed by People, claims that Bieber actually made the joke just three years ago, when he was 17 and the cameras were rolling for the documentary movie Never Say Never. 

In the video, Bieber looks directly at the camera, then sets up an obviously racist joke. Over his friends' objections ("Don't say it, don't say it") he then goes on to spill the punchline: "Why are black people afraid of chainsaws?" "Run n––, n––, n––, n––, n––."

"That's just straight ignorant," one of his friends replies.

TMZ claimed it waited until now to leak the video both because Bieber was underage at the time and because he had immediately apologized to his friends for the joke. On Twitter, Bieber's apology seemed heartfelt:

As a kid, I didn’t understand the power of certain words and how they can hurt. I thought it was ok to repeat hurtful words and jokes, but didn’t realize at the time that it wasn’t funny and that in fact my actions were continuing the ignorance. Thanks to friends and family I learned from my mistakes and grew up and apologized for those wrongs. Now that these mistakes from the past have become public I need to apologize again to all those I have offended. I’m very sorry. I take my friendships with people of all cultures very seriously and I apologize for offending or hurting anyone with my childish and inexcusable mistake. I was a kid then and I am a man now who knows my responsibility to the world and not to make that mistake again. Ignorance has no place in our society and I hope the sharing of my faults can prevent others from making the same mistake in the future. I thought long and hard about what i wanted to say but telling the truth it always what’s right. Five years ago I made a reckless and immature mistake and I’m grateful to those close to me who helped me learn those lessons as a young man. Once again…. I’m sorry.

But it's hard to reconcile his claims of being too young and ignorant to know better with the contrasting reports of his age. 15 is already old enough to understand how powerful a slur Bieber was wielding: at 17, it seems largely inexcusable. Compounded with the Bieb's well-known relationships with veteran black performers including former mentor Usher, whose influence Bieber recently dismissed, it's hard to know how making a racist joke on camera could have seemed like a good idea to him at any time post-stardom. 

It's also hard to take Bieber's assertion that he learned from his mistakes at face value given how many petty crimes the no-longer-teen heartthrob has been racking up lately.

Still, Bieber's fans rushed to forgive him:

@justinbieber strong thats why i see you as the best idol and role model we know who you are we know your heart we loved you and stayed

— thank you jackj (@drewsurvive) June 2, 2014

The Sun claimed that Bieber originally tried to buy the footage in order to suppress it from being released. Here's a thought, Bieb: next time, just save yourself all these years of trouble and don't be racist to begin with.

Photo via Instagram

The Chicago Sun-Times has syndicated a controversial transphobic opinion piece by Kevin Williamson, a former deputy managing editor of the conservative National Review.

Williamson attacks noted transgender woman Laverne Cox, who recently made the cover of Time magazine, in a piece headlined, "Laverne Cox is not a woman," blaming her and the transgender movement for encouraging "unreality."

Williamson blames the transgender rights movement's "ever-shifting" definitions of what transgender identity is for the claims that Laverne Cox is the "first" transgender woman on the cover of Time. Williamson points out that Chelsea Manning was also on the Time cover, though her cover was shared with Edward Snowden and Aaron Swartz, and appeared two months before she outed herself as fully transgender with a public request to be referred to as Chelsea. 

Instead of acknowledging the right to privacy that responsible journalism tries to respect for trans individuals who have not yet fully outed themselves, Williamson takes the semantic difference to mean that transgender identity itself is equivalent to "the voodoo doll." 

"As I wrote at the time of the Manning announcement," Williamson wrote, "Bradley Manning is not a woman. Neither is Laverne Cox."

Williamson goes on to argue that transgender individuals are attempting to distort "reality" and legalize "treating delusion as fact." He cites "the service of Eros" as a motivation, but fails to explain what Eros has to do with the incredibly high numbers of transgender individuals who are murdered, commit suicide, rendered homeless, face unemployment, and face hate crimes.

While the National Review is staunchly right-wing conservative, readers seemed deeply upset to see such an article in the Sun-Times. This is, after all, the paper that published liberal human rights champion Roger Ebert until his death.

Hey @Suntimes: publishing this deeply transphobic drivel is beneath even you. Retract and apologize. NOW. http://t.co/xG75vXuYVs

— Lauren Rankin (@laurenarankin) June 2, 2014

The paper's Facebook page has likewise filled with angry reader reactions as word about the transphobic piece has spread. A representative comment from reader Jenni Spinner argues that the syndication holds no value for local Chicago readers:

After Kevin D Williamson's hateful, disrespectul comment on Laverne Cox, I will not read, buy, subscribe, click, or otherwise support the Sun-Times. I realize it is a commentary, but it's not even an original Chicago view--it's repurposed from another publication--so it's regurgitated garbage of no use or benefit to S-T readers. It is extremely offensive and completely ignorant of gender identity, and the S-T editorial board's decision to publish under its own banner is questionable at best.

But this isn't the first time the Sun-Times has come under fire for transphobic reporting. In 2010, the paper incited controversy for reportedly referring to murdered transgender Chicago woman Sandy Woulard as "a man dressed in woman's clothing."  This is the same super-imposed style of journalism that recently led to controversy over a article for ESPN's Grantland, in which the transgender subject of the article committed suicide after Grantland moved forward with plans to out her as having been born biologically male, despite her own desperate objections.

Williamson would undoubtedly call that being true to reality. The rest of us probably just call it transphobia.

Photo via Instagram

After over three decades of using RenderMan to gradually move from a niche visual effects company to a major Hollywood studio, Pixar is releasing a version of the revolutionary visual effects software to the public.

RenderMan isn't just a software—it's a technology that Pixar developed in the early '80s, originally dubbed REYES (Render Everything You Ever Saw). Rendering is a long-used process that allows animators to create images based on mathematical representations of 3D images, or models. Pixar's RenderMan technology was used in dozens of movies, from early effects-heavy films like Star Trek: Wrath of Khan to numerous animated films like The Lion King. In 2001, it became the first software package ever to receive an Academy Award for "significant advances to the field of motion picture rendering."

Now, all that power can be yours with no watermarks. The animation studio announced Thursday that it will soon release a version of RenderMan for free to the public. (The commercial version is available for $495 per license.) The company cited a wish to advance open-source practices and standards as part of their rationale for releasing the free version:

As a further commitment to the advancement of open standards and practices, Pixar is announcing that, in conjunction with the upcoming release, free non-commercial licenses of RenderMan will be made available without any functional limitations, watermarking, or time restrictions.

Those wanting to download the free version can do so by registering at Pixar's website to be notified when the package is available. You can't use RenderMan on its own, however; you'll also need one of four separate modeling and animation software packages, Maya, Houdini, Katana, or Cinema4D.

We can't wait to see how this galvanizes the already-amazing amateur animation community. DeviantART is already full of gorgeous samples of what talented artists can do with the technology. Imagine all those 2D animated GIFs of your OTP making out on Tumblr, transformed through the magic of 3-D rendering.

Pixar, this may be the best gift you have given us yet.

Illustration by blue-lemmonade/Tumblr

Thailand's messy political landscape may invite comparisons to Westeros, but there's another fandom that hits much closer to home: Thai protesters could face arrest for launching the three-fingered salute from The Hunger Games

In the fortnight since Thailand's military junta overthrew Thailand's weak but democratically elected government, it has deployed troops into the streets of Bangkok to quell protests, shut down numerous partisan media outlets, deported journalists, and pressured at least one bookstore, Kinokuniya, into removing politically controversial books from its shelves.

It also spawned a very subtle, literary-based form of protest, with Thai citizens quietly assembling to read books like 1984 in public.

#AntiCoup activists stage "read-in" at Siam - Chid Lom Skywalk in BKK today to circumvent ban on public gathering. pic.twitter.com/3SO616OrgE

— Khaosod English (@KhaosodEnglish) May 31, 2014

Thai activists stage silent reading protest against censorship http://t.co/TfHEQvK88k photos by @TheLilyfish pic.twitter.com/uirT4TKcTq

— Nok (@Nok_KN) May 30, 2014

Another form of protest is proving more attention-grabbing—the raised arm, three-fingered salute that residents of The Hunger Games' marginalized, downtrodden District 11 used to signal passive resistance to their authoritarian government. On Sunday, more than 100 protesters gathered in a downtown Bangkok mall to protest by silently raising the salute.

Army ponders arrest for three-finger sigh. http://t.co/Zl2tSSyW91. #threeisamagicnumber #ThaiCoup pic.twitter.com/7Tg84NPEin

— Nok (@Nok_KN) June 3, 2014

The Hunger Games salute has become a symbol of resistance against the Thailand military coup. http://t.co/SL3NN777BZ pic.twitter.com/xuoJ0dmAF0

— The Star (@staronline) June 3, 2014

#Thailand's junta warns protesters over 'Hunger Games' salute http://t.co/y4i83Eoc24 #thaicoup #thailandcoup pic.twitter.com/aFj9vKkj7O

— Asian Correspondent (@AsCorrespondent) June 3, 2014

In response, Thai military officials have lashed out, threatening to detain protestors for as much as a week if they're caught flashing the sign. Army deputy spokesman Col. Winthai Suwaree, a representative for the military's rather Orwellian-named National Council for Peace and Order, told the Bangkok Post that authorities would look at the context to determine whether to arrest protestors. 

In the Hunger Games, the salute is originally a sign of respect and gratitude. It transforms into an ironic gesture of defiance, however, when the series' protagonist Katniss uses it in tribute to a victim of the government's dystopic tournament. Later, the gesture becomes the symbol of national, public rebellion against the government and a precursor to revolution.

In real life, it's not that tidy: the current Thai protests are weakened after more than seven months of political unrest due to ongoing tensions between democratic and anti-democratic political factions. The Post reported that Thai protesters are also using the raised three-finger salute to represent the three precepts of the French revolution: liberty, equality, and eternity.

The International Federation for Human Rights urged the military to respect human rights and personal freedoms. After declaring martial law on May 23, the junta detained numerous civilians with ties to activists and protests, including the family of jailed magazine editor Somyot Prueksakasemsuk.

Meanwhile, the Internet is showing support for the protesters using the hashtag #ThaiCoup.

Illustration by Jason Reed

He's no longer lighting up the silver screen, but even after his death, Philip Seymour Hoffman is still sharing his artistic inspiration with the rest of the world. 

A new video from PBS Digital Studios beautifully animates the words of the late esteemed actor to make a poignant statement on the delicate art of achieving happiness. Hoffman delivered the speech, "Happy Talk," as part of a series of talks at the Rubin Museum last year with Simon Critchley. The final talk, from which the animation is taken, is available in full here.

The animation is part of the series Blank on Blank, which remixes celebrity interviews to give them powerful new meaning and nuance. In its 32 segments so far, it's transformed the words of icons from Fidel Castro to Grace Kelly.

For the segment on Hoffman, animator Patrick Smith captured Hoffman's self-deprecating whimsy as he discussed the difference between pleasure and true, lasting contentment.

Hoffman also discussed the ever-present nature of the past and the fleeting status of moments of happiness—as well as how each person's internal darkness affects how he plays his parts. 

"Learning how to die," he explains, "and therefore learning how to live."

H/T The Daily What | Photo via Wikimedia Commons; CC-BY-SA-3.0

It looks like someone just can't agree to let it go regarding her husband's dislike of her favorite movie.

One Frozen fan is allegedly so enraged over her husband's inability to understand what she loves about the film that she's filing for divorce.

The Japanese blog and forum Kikonsha no Hakaba, or the aptly named Marriage Graveyard, got a shock last week when one of its readers, a 31-year-old husband, revealed that the Disney blockbuster had upended his otherwise stable marriage.

Culture blog Rocket News 64 conveyed the man's befuddlement. The man, who was not named, should have been primed to enjoy the movie: After all, he was a student of Danish literature, which gave life to Frozen's inspiration, Hans Christian Andersen's tale of the Snow Queen. His literary degree garnered him an annual salary of 11 million yen—equivalent to a tidy six figures in U.S. dollars. This let him lead a comfortable, debt-free lifestyle and enabled his 29-year-old wife to live on his salary.

And thus it had been for the duration of their six-year-marriage, until he uttered the fateful words:

"It’s an OK movie, I guess, but I didn’t really care for it personally... Do you really think it’s that good?"

His wife was reportedly so blindsided by his opinion that she retorted, "If you can’t understand what makes this movie great, there’s something wrong with you as a human being!"

In all fairness, we agree with the wife. Whatever Frozen's flaws—its lack of ethnic minorities, the careful crafting of thousands of unique snowflakes while its animators defend their inexplicable inability to make women's faces look distinguishable from one another—it holds an important place as one of the only major box office hits to focus solely on women, with a plot driven solely by two female characters with agency. If her husband can't see how important that is, then we don't blame her for getting angry.

Still, her reaction seems a little… how can we put this?… icy. After a fight over the movie, she allegedly demanded a divorce, and then went to stay with her parents, where she had been living for a week at the time her beleaguered husband turned to Kikonsha no Hakaba for advice.

The denizens of the Marriage Graveyard were unsurprisingly harsh, advising the husband to take the divorce and flee or to hire a private investigator to find out what the real motivation behind the wife's sudden need for a divorce was.

While we can't blame them for being suspicious, the man made no mention of any other marital tensions he and his wife were having. It's apparently all down to their incompatible desires.

Maybe some people just weren't meant to build snowmen together.

Photo via jiff01/Flickr

Days after Justin Bieber apologized for a video of him making a racist joke, the pop star has his foot in his mouth again.

The video comes courtesy of the U.K. tabloid The Sun and TMZ, both outlets to originally receive footage of Bieber's original comment. The new clip seems to be taken before or after an interview session, with Bieber sitting primed and ready to go on camera. Perhaps unaware the camera is rolling, he sings a snippet of his hit “One Less Lonely Girl.” Only he changes the lyrics.

“If I kill you,” he sings, smiling blithely at the camera, “I’ll be part of the KKK, and there’ll be one less lonely n****r.”

Previously, media reports were confused about the date of the first joke, in which Bieber says the N-word five times. But the Daily Mail claims that both videos are from the same source—unused footage collected in 2009, when Bieber was 14, for the documentary Never Say Never. 

While Bieber already apologized for the previous video, citing his ignorance and claiming that he was "a kid" when the footage took place, it's hard to imagine that even at the age of 14 he was unaware of the implications of his words. Especially disturbing are the fact that both jokes contain implied physical harm. The first joke, "Why are black people afraid of chainsaws?" "Run, n****r, n****r, n****r, n****r, n****r" takes on an even more disturbing overtone combined with the overt threat of the second.

When Usher said last year that fans would soon "see the truth" about Bieber, we're pretty sure this wasn't what he had in mind.

Photo via Instagram

The scene on David Otero's lawn Sunday must have seemed less like Pomona, Calif., and more like a George Romero zombie film. 

After someone, perhaps a disgruntled neighbor, informed Craigslist that Otero and his household were giving away free items, dozens of treasure-seekers turned up at their house. 

“We had to stay away from the window," Otero’s girlfriend, Lorrayne Skeens, told CBS Los Angeles. "We didn’t know what they were going to do. We felt very fearful."

The listing, which is now deleted, was titled "1st come 1st Served," and instructed users to come to Otero's address after 9am to claim "a bunch of free stuff that has to be gone by Sunday night."

Otero told CBS that he had clashed with neighbors in the past, and suspected that one of them posted the ad as a form of petty revenge, based on the author's knowledge of the kinds of items Otero possessed.

“They know I have a boat and that I’m a follower of Jesus Christ, and I have bibles and electronics," Otero said. 

Pomona police determined that the ad, which was posted to the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles Craigslist, did not actually violate the law. But it could be part of a growing trend which involves the use of Craiglist to harass or intimidate others. One man was banned from using the Internet after he spent months harassing a female neighbor by sending naked men to her house. Even more disturbing, in 2010 an angry ex-boyfriend, Jebidiah Stipe, posted his former girlfriend's address on Craigslist, along with a description of her alleged "rape fantasy." After another man, Ty Oliver, saw the ad, he corresponded with Stipe believing he was the woman in question, and ultimately followed through on the "fantasy" without realizing the woman he raped wasn't a consenting party. Both men were sentenced for the crime; Stipe received 60 years.

Kashmir Hill, a staff writer at Forbes who was herself the victim of a similar "prank," described this trend as "crowdsourced revenge," and noted that the penalties are usually light. In Otaro's case, the penalty was nonexistent

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Justin Bieber's attempts to control the public reaction and media narrative of his recently revealed on-camera racism aren't going so well.

This morning he apologized (again) to the U.K. Sun, which along with TMZ has been revealing five year old video footage of a 14 year old Bieber repeatedly dropping the "N" word in multiple instances of racist jokes. "I need to step up and own what I did," he stated. "I feel now that I need to take responsibility for those mistakes and not let them linger."

It's hard not to be skeptical that this sudden deep conviction and urge to apologize occurred only after his "jokes," which used the "N" word a collective total of nine times and included implicit physical threats, were brought to the attention of the public.

Still, the Bieb seems to be rolling with his newfound sincerity. Last night he took to Instagram in order to share a passage from the daily Christian devotional book Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence. The passage, which doesn't actually come from the Bible, though there are biblical passages later on, emphasizes confession, forgiveness, and healing:

When your sins weigh heavily upon you, come to Me. Confess your wrongdoing, which I know all about before you say a word. Stay in the Light of My Presence, receiving forgiveness, cleansing, and healing.

Photo via Instagram

Though Bieber did not provide his thoughts on the passage, the context was clear: as part of "owning" what he did, he's also asking his community to forgive him. That may be easier said than done. While some of Bieber's pals like boxer Floyd Mayweather, have spoken out in support of their friend in recent days, others, including Usher, have been a bit more equivocal. 

Sources told TMZ yesterday that the videos are surfacing now after years of extortion attempts on Bieber and his family to keep them private. Bieber, who allegedly apologized directly for the incidents years ago to his friends Usher and Will Smith, reportedly finally decided to allow them to go public and take responsibility for his actions.

This all sounds vaguely promising, if not for the fact that Bieber hasn't exactly taken much responsibility for anything lately. He's been too busy offending all of South America, offending all of China, screwing up depositions, randomly "retiring," and getting himself voted out of America.

Still, his antics don't seem to have made a dent in his massive following of Beliebers. It looks like if not even multiple instances of truly heinous racism can topple the Bieb, we might just be stuck with him for a long time to come.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The most frustrating thing about lazy attacks on children's and young adult fiction, like Slate's diatribe against adults reading teen lit, is that they encourage more lazy attacks.

You have already read this Slate article. You read the Slate article when it was in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Harper's, the New York Times again, the Baltimore Sun, in Salon a few days ago, and in Slate previously (bonus points that the writers congratulate themselves for not reading or writing “slutty werewolves”). You read the article when it was concerned that YA literature was too dark, too sexy, too depraved, too girl-centric, not enough like Jane Austen, not enough like Louisa May Alcott, and, in an early example from 1986, "a ghetto" composed predominantly of women authors.

Luckily I don't have to list the repeated patterns and tropes in these articles, because there's already a bingo card for them, created by current Hugo nominee Foz Meadows. There's even a John Green–specific bingo card, courtesy of YA blogger Kelly Jensen.

That's right, journalists: YA fans have literally read the Slate article so many times over the years that we have given up reading the Slate article and turned it into a drinking game instead. Congrats.

Image via fozmeadows/Wordpress

Study this bingo card, journalists. Recall it when you go to write articles about genre fiction, particularly if your article contains any of the following words: "embarrassing," "women's fiction," "teenage girls," or "vampires."

More importantly, read How to Suppress Women's Fiction and then ask yourselves if perhaps the tropes you're ridiculing could possibly have arisen from the perpetual struggle of adult women writers to use their voices in a society that does everything it can to shut them up.

Slate writer Ruth Graham claims concern for the complacence of Today's Youth, but she's really policing female authors. "Pleasure, escapism, juicy plots, and satisfying endings" are all signs of weak literature to Graham, but adult genres that cross gender lines get a pass. For Graham to acknowledge that plenty of adult genres contain these same hallmarks would be to undermine her own argument that "stretching yourself beyond the YA mark" is "akin to the excitement of graduating out of the kiddie pool."

That "kiddie pool" includes authors like S.E. Hinton, E.L. Konigsburg, and J.K. Rowling, who turned to young adult fiction using initials in place of a (female) name that could have hurt their career. Women writers are reviewed far less in mainstream literary review publications than male writers, are read less than male writers, and are more likely to be blamed for any perceived flaws in their genres. When Graham argues that "maudlin drama" demeans YA, she overlooks the ways in which female authors are barred from full ownership of "serious" literature. When Graham argues that YA "presents the teenage perspective in a fundamentally uncritical way," she fails to acknowledge that even if this were accurate, YA writers have spent decades fighting for a space where they can write from uncritical perspectives. 

Historically, women writing fiction have been minimalized, dismissed, hidden, and erased. These things exist alongside the media's regular handwringing over the existence of female-driven genres that operate outside the boundaries of traditional literature. (See also: fanfiction.) When male writers participate in these spaces, they are accoladed and elevated above their female counterparts. But their works are unavoidably ensconced in that welcoming circle of femaleness, imbibing those weakling female tropes and gaining power from all those non-serious female feelings. The media is just going to have to deal.

Until that day, let us ignore the alarms about women writing things, whether it be children's or YA lit, romance, fanfiction, webcomics, New Adult, or whatever new genre women are currently on the brink of creating.

While the Ruth Grahams lament the rise of this new destroyer of worlds, you and I can retire to our Steel Magnolia patio and drink fruity mixed drinks of which Hemingway and Kerouac would never approve. We can watch the world burn beneath the blazing pink flames of this new frilly literary establishment while discussing whether Hermione could take Alanna in a cage match. And when the civilizations of the earth have crumbled to a smoldering ash heap beneath the terrible inferno of our love for slutty werewolves and coffeeshop AUs, we can breathe a sigh of relief and express our inarticulate teenagery feelings with a reaction GIF.

And we can turn to the next chapter and keep reading.

Photo via jennnster/Flickr (CC-BY-SA-3.0)

The trailer for the reboot of our dreams is finally here.

Forget Star Wars and Star Trek. If you're an anime fan, you've been living for next month's Sailor Moon revival. It's been a fantastic year for sailor scouts around the world. Last month, Viz Media surprised the world by announcing it had done the unthinkable and secured translation rights for the original Sailor Moon, which is now already streaming on Hulu for the first time in history. 

If that's not enough, now the trailer for the series reboot, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Crystal, has landed. 

And it's as beautiful as we were hoping. 

The trailer isn't subtitled, but that doesn't really matter. The gang's all here—except for Tuxedo Mask. Looks like they're keeping him under wraps until his big entrance in the show.  In the meantime, you can join us in watching this trailer on loop until we become magical girls ourselves through the power of anime.

Screengrab via YouTube

There must be 5,000 ways to die, and George R.R. Martin has used at least 4,999 of them to kill off legions of characters in his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, a.k.a. HBO's Game of Thrones.

Now, he's putting his grisly spirit to good use, giving adventurous readers the chance to die horribly in one of his upcoming books.

The offer is part of GRRM's crowdfunding project for the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in New Mexico, a cause dear to the heart of the man who gave the world direwolves. He's also fundraising for the Food Depot of Santa Fe. To sweeten the pot, every person who donates will be entered into a contest to tour the wolf sanctuary with the real king of Westeros.

But the real prize has to be the one available to two lucky fans with $20,000 to spare: Martin will write them into a future installment of the series, with the tantalizing promise to ensure they meet a terrible end:

At this level, you'll get the incredibly exclusive opportunity to have George name a character after you in a future A Song of Ice and Fire novel. There is one male character and one female character available. You can choose your character's station in the world (lordling, knight, peasant, whore, lady, maester, septon, anything) and you will certainly meet a grisly death! 

The prospect of getting to appear in the series as a "martyr," the name given to the $20,000 reward level, has already proven irresistible: The two $20,000 spots have already been snapped up.

Although the charity has been live for less than a day, the overall funding goal of  $200,000 is well on its way to being reached, with over $160,000 raised so far. Other limited-offer rewards that went quickly included tickets to the Series 5 premiere and breakfast with GRRM himself.

At press time, you could still bid $7,500 to win one of GRRM's notorious "old Greek sailor caps (well worn!)" 

Illustration by kravinoff/deviantART