- Goodbye, Azealia Banks. The rap
game won't miss you and the pop music world won't care that another un-talented
hack has joined the party. Banks, who will release her new mixtape “Fantasea”
on July 4, has decided that she wants to go from marginal rapper that no one
really takes that seriously to reclusive, hard-to-reach pop hack. She posted a
message on her official blog in which she claimed that she wanted to be
perceived as a "vocalist" and was deleting her Twitter account as it
made her "too accessible.” In a post where the title said it all, Banks
wrote, “I never was… and as soon as I started paying to bulls**t urban media, I
started getting myself in trouble. From now I'm a vocalist, and will not be
associating myself with the "rap game"… or whatever the f*ck that
means.” At least she’s honest about the fact that she never belonged in the rap
game, which is just about the only factor working in her favor at this point.
As for her decision to delete her Twitter account, she wrote, "No more
twitter for me… it makes me entirely too accessible.” Right, because the last
thing an irrelevant, fringe artist who can’t stick with one genre wants is to
be accessible to her few fans and be able to connect with them. Banks recently
released a brand new track, “Jumanji,” taken from her new mixtape and produced
by Hudson Mohawke and Nick Hook. Both the single and mixtape are in advance of
her debut album “Broke With Expensive Taste,” due this fall.
To perpetuate her
image as an inaccessible pop enigma, Banks canceled almost all of her summer
festival appearances because of recording commitments but will return to the
stage to play the Reading and Leeds
Festivals……….
- Two tech titans playing a high-stakes game of chicken over the
controversial practice of tracking browser users’ online activity should
probably pay less attention to winning the battle and more attention to the
users they just might be f*cking over. Microsoft and Google are jerking customers
(and each other) around over how to implement "Do Not Track," a soon-to-be-released Web browser button that
opts a user out of data collection on websites across all participating
advertising networks. For too long, the debate over Do Not Track has dragged on
until it finally appeared there was a consensus behind the major players. All
the major browser makers support the plan and so do the Obama administration and
roughly 90 percent of the country's advertising networks and publishers,
including Google, Yahoo and AOL. However, Microsoft made headlines last week in
a blatant attempt to grandstand, announcing hat it would become the first
browser maker to turn Do No Track on as
the default setting in its upcoming version of Internet Explorer, called
IE10. That announcement was a giant F-you to the fragile compromise between
privacy advocates and the online advertising networks. Even though privacy
advocates support automatically opting users in to Do Not Track, advertisers
have been reluctant to agree to that point and have said they would only agree
to Do Not Track if the default setting is "off." Of course, they’re
figuring that many users are too lazy or not tech-savvy enough to turn Do Not
Track on. The standards-setting World Wide Web Consortium supports advertisers’
position, meaning the consortium is backing the exact opposite of what
Microsoft has planned for IE10. Advertising networks are now in a tough spot
because they may have to deal with a non-compliant browser and they would then
have to answer the question of whether or not they should honor the five
remaining Internet Explorer users’ requests not to be tracked. A conference
call held last week failed to resolve the issue and there is no firm date for
an agreement. Meanwhile, Microsoft is beating its chest and parading around
like a 2-year-old being potty trained who just successfully used the toilet and
wants to show everyone its work. "While we respect the W3C's perspective,
we believe that a standard should support a 'privacy by default' choice for
consumers," Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch said in a
written statement. That’s awesome, but just let us know when you’ve decided to
make an operating system that doesn’t absolutely suck………….
- Is it 1975 all over again? The Cold War may be over, the
Berlin Wall may have been torn down and the U.S.S.R. technically does not exist
any more, but Russia is still acting like it is in its Communist heyday. President “Bad”
Vlad Putin and his regime staged a massive raid of the homes of leading
opposition figures early Monday, suspiciously close to a rally on Tuesday that
is expected to draw tens of thousands to protest Putin’s official “return” to
power. Police rifled through papers, confiscated computer equipment and hauled
opposition leaders in for some friendly questioning. The targets of the raid
included prominent anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, Left Front leader
Sergei Udaltsov and Solidarity activist Ilya Yashin. Activists were also caught
up in the raid, as searches were carried out at Navalny’s RosPil
anti-corruption project and the home of Udaltsov’s parents. Authorities have
been looking to crack down more severely since violent clashes between police
and protesters on May 6, when more than 400 people were detained in central
Moscow for daring to speak their mind against an oppressive, totalitarian
regime. Those rounded up in the raids were ordered to Investigative Committee
headquarters at 11 a.m. Tuesday, a time that coincidentally happens to be just
one hour before the planned start of an opposition march and rally dubbed “the
March of Millions.” Hmm, wonder if they’ll be released in time to participate.
The beauty of the technology age was on display during the raid, as Navalny
posted comments and photos on Twitter as police burst into his flat about 9
a.m. "They are searching my house. It's about the mass disorder. They
almost sawed down the door (in fact they did),” he wrote. Similar searches of he
residences of former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and TV
presenter-turned-opposition activist Ksenia Sobchak were sadly not documented
via social media. Maybe it’s time to reschedule Tuesday’s march for a time when
opposition leaders won't be wrongly detained by the government for no good
reason……….
- Bears….they’re still a menace and they’re coming for you,
America. Two weekends ago, one of these furry assassins with an affinity for
honey and pic-a-nic baskets crashed a wedding reception in Colorado and ended
up in the background of the post-ceremony photo shoot with the wedding party.
Other scenes of bears wandering through towns and residential areas have been occurring
at an alarming rate and the latest incident involving these clawed killers
happened Sunday morning in sleepy Manchester,
N.H. Residents spotted a large black bear roaming the streets of Manchester in
the early morning hours. The 3-year-old bear was first spotted near City Hall
Sunday morning and eventually moseyed down a busy downtown street before
climbing a tree and ascending as high as he possibly could in order to evade
police and animal control officers attempting to capture him. A witness also
reported seeing the bear stand on its hind legs and attempt to climb over a
fence before fish and game officials showed up, at which point he was forced to
change tactics and climb the tree, located not far from a main intersection,
instead. Wildlife officers eventually shot the bear with a tranquilizer dart,
but he kept climbing until the drugs kicked in. The 140-pound terror was
removed from the tree using a cherry picker and placed in a cage. Fish and game
officials confirmed that the bear will be relocated to the White Mountains and
he hopefully remains there instead of venturing into civilization to strike
fear into the hearts of humanity…………….
- The redemption portion of Brian Banks’ story isn't fully written yet, but its further along than
it has ever been. Banks, a one-time high school star at Long Beach Poly whose
football career was derailed nearly a decade ago when he was wrongly convicted
of rape. He was exonerated last month in the California rape case in which he
was falsely accused after spending more than five years in prison. Prior to his
incarceration, he had the talent to make it to the NFL and now that he’s out, the
26-year-old linebacker is back to pursuing his professional football dream. His
agent, Bruce Tollner, confirmed Sunday that after flying to Kansas City for a
workout with the Chiefs, Banks will accept the offer of Seattle Seahawks coach
Pete Carroll for a formal tryout with the team during its upcoming minicamp.
Banks, who has also worked out for the San Diego Chargers and received interest
from the Washington Redskins, Minnesota Vikings and San Francisco 49ers about
potential private workouts, has yet to sign a contract with any team. Anyone
suggesting teams are only bringing him in for the positive PR may be partially
right, but the NFL is a competitive business and teams aren’t in the habit of
spending time on guys who cannot help their bottom line, feel-good story or
not. After Banks had a private workout at the Seahawks' practice facility
Thursday, Carroll said he wanted to bring Banks back for the minicamp and see
him on the field. The entire tale is like some twisted movie script or
“Law & Order” episode come to life, but seeing Banks finally capitalize on
his dream would still be great theater………..
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