YES WE KNOW THAT IT IS A PALINDROME THANK YOU.
We are human beings.
Kenishirotie / Getty Images / iStockphoto / BuzzFeed
(And also her dog.)
(For any Hannahs who are actually from Montana, I feel so sorry for you.)
Henryk Sadura / Getty Images / iStockphoto / BuzzFeed
Disney / Via giphy.com
One of the final season’s main plot lines involves a reporter using the terminal to chase down who is behind a hostile takeover attempt involving her network’s parent company AWN. Deals are dramatic!
Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy on a Season 2 episode of The Newsroom.
Melissa Moseley / HBO
"They finally got one for me, a Bloomberg terminal. This is a $24,000 system that gives me instantaneous access to all the financial information in the world," says Sloan Sabbith, played by Olivia Munn, in last Sunday's premiere episode of the final season of HBO's The Newsroom.
One storyline Aaron Sorkin and his writers plan to unspool over the course of The Newsroom's last six episodes is who is behind a hostile takeover attempt of Atlantis World Media, the parent company of the cable news network ACN that provides the show's setting. And the Bloomberg terminal gets a starring role in the reporting process.
"We knew early on that the fate of ACN would be on the table this season, and M&A [mergers and acquisitions] is a common occurrence in the media world, so the idea of a hostile takeover came up early," said Alan Poul, one of the show's executive producers in an interview with BuzzFeed News. "In working out story lines, we decided that if Sloan were an actual business reporter she would have a Bloomberg terminal, as it provides access to all kinds of information not available on the regular internet." (Munn's character, officially, is an economist-turned-anchor.)
tumblr.com / Via tumblr.com
Indeed, since information on the Bloomberg terminal is proprietary, producers weren't able to duplicate or construct a newsfeed the way they do for clips of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News that are shown on screens throughout the newsroom (most footage of news shows seen on The Newsroom is either obtained under "fair use" provisions or constructed from B-roll footage producers have access to through a deal with CNN). The show's producers asked Bloomberg for permission to feature the terminal, going so far as to have a representative from the former New York City Mayor's financial data giant, valued at more than $22 billion at last count, demo some of its features on set. They created fake screens to fit the show's plot — in one scene, a fake story about AWN's missed earnings report is shown; in another its stock chart; and in one glaring error early in the episode, Munn's character doesn't know the bombing at the Boston marathon occurred because she is engrossed in the Bloomberg terminal, but the service obviously would — and did — flash news breaks about the incident all over its wire and websites and TV network that day.
Poul and representatives for HBO and Bloomberg all said no money changed hands and that this wasn't a product placement. Michael Marinello, the Bloomberg executive who worked on the deal, described it as "branded entertainment" and said a company called Corbis Entertainment connected Bloomberg and the show, for which he paid them a fee to help oversee the project from the ground in Los Angeles.
The plot machinations and backstory to how Munn realizes that AWN is about to be targeted for a hostile takeover attempt are archetypal Aaron Sorkin in the worst possible way. But the gist of it is that she divines from the fact that AWN's stock price was up in trading despite missing quarterly earnings and a rumor that Goldman Sachs was jockeying for an adviser role on an upcoming media deal that her company was the one being targeted for a buyout. And, as a self-proclaimed puzzle lover, she identifies the potential acquirer as the step-siblings of Reese Lansing, played by Chris Messina, based on the fact that they become stockholders in the company upon turning 25 in a few weeks and a bad "relative" pun made a former student who works at a private equity firm, Savannah Capital, involved in the deal.
Got that? I didn't think so. I've been covering media deals for 14 years and I'm confused.
HOPEFULLY, more will become clear in episode four, where Poul said the Bloomberg terminal plays a role in another plot line where Munn's character uncovers through using it a clue that helps her figure out who is trying to buy the company.
Is Monster energy drink the devil? Yes, certainly.
If you answered yes, click play.
A thing that is happening.
Ian Gavan / Getty Images
Bryan Bedder / Getty Images
Atlantic Records
The host of PBS documentary series How We Got to Now time hops through his own life.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed / Courtesy of Nutopia
Best-selling author Steven Johnson hosts six-part documentary How We Got to Now, a series about everyday innovations and how they interlaced with history to form our modern-day lives. The last episode, "Sound," airs this Wednesday, Nov. 12, at 10 p.m. EST on PBS.
After ushering us through a few centuries, here are six ways Steven got to where he is now, as he wrote to us in an email.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
What childhood toy or activity was your absolute favorite?
Steven Johnson: I had a serious obsession for three or four years with the whole extended genre of dice-based sports simulations (APBA, Strat-o-Matic). I fell into an increasingly weird rabbit hole of "indie" baseball simulations that were allegedly more statistically accurate than the mainstream games.
I went back and bought a few of them on eBay when I was writing Everything Bad Is Good For You (which opens with a little reverie about this part of my childhood). They were effectively just an entire binder full of numbers; nothing remotely resembling a game in any their visual cues: no cards, or tokens, or illustrated boards to play on.
This was the late-'70s, early-'80s — just far enough into the digital age to have the computers design the games, but not far enough for me to actually have a computer of my own. Eventually I started designing my own games, which I'm convinced taught me more about simulations, statistics, and probability than anything I learned in school.
I mean you’re basically a doctor.
When you picked out your kids clothes you had them looking sharp.
Flickr: ifl / Via Creative Commons
Okay, so maybe “peekaboo” is a long way from stand-up, but if anyone saw how hard your baby laughed they’d know you’ve got some serious skills.
Comedy Central
You could practically open a museum dedicated to your kids what with all the drawings, crafts, costumes, clothes, toys, and photos you've kept.
Getty Images / Petras Malukas
You might not have thought of yourself as an artist before kids, but you do now after all the drawings you've done on restaurant place mats.
PBS
“Guess which one’s real.”
We’ve all got that little extra something.
In December 2006, Tondalo Hall’s boyfriend pled guilty to breaking the ribs and femur of their 3-month-old daughter. For his crime, Robert Braxton Jr. served two years in prison.
In court, prosecutors presented no evidence that Hall herself had harmed the child. But for failing to intervene against Braxton’s abuse, Hall was sentenced to 30 years behind bars.
Her tough sentence was meted out despite evidence that Braxton had also been violently abusing her. In statements to authorities in and out of court, and in a recent interview with BuzzFeed News, Hall described Braxton choking her, punching her, throwing things at her, and verbally assaulting her. Even the judge who sentenced her said that during her testimony, Hall seemed to fear her boyfriend.
Hall is one of 28 mothers in 11 states who a recent BuzzFeed News investigation found were sentenced to 10 years or more for failing to protect their children. In every one of these cases, there was evidence the mother herself had been violently abused by the man. Hall is one of three cases BuzzFeed News found in which the mother got a longer sentence than the man who actually abused the child.
Braxton walked free eight years ago, having been let go for time served. Meanwhile, Hall has been locked up in an all-female prison in McLoud, Oklahoma. She said that she has seen her children only once since she went to prison but that they write each other monthly. In letters shared with BuzzFeed News, the children tell her about sports, school, and clothes. They make reference to her case, too. “I hope God Let's [sic] you out of jail,” one letter says.
Hall has been trying to get her sentence reduced. She currently has 20 years left behind bars. She appealed but lost, and the trial judge in her case has denied a request to modify her sentence. She will not be eligible for parole until 2030.
But she is pursuing one last hope: clemency. Earlier this month, Hall applied for her sentence to be commuted — which would release her while not absolving her of her crime.
In the wake of BuzzFeed News’ original investigation, a women’s rights organization took up Hall’s cause, creating an online petition to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. “Tondalo Hall shouldn't be in prison while the man who abused her and her children is free,” wrote UltraViolet, a group that claims nearly 600,000 members nationwide. On Tuesday, an UltraViolet official said that more than 44,000 people had signed the petition since it was first circulated on Nov. 6.
In Oklahoma, a pardon or commutation cannot be granted without the approval of the state’s parole board. It is unclear when the parole board will make a decision on Hall’s case.
Hall herself almost missed the deadline to apply for a commutation. In Oklahoma, only inmates with 20 or more years left on their sentences can apply. When she mailed her application, Hall had 20 years and five days left behind bars.
Another Oklahoma mother, Alishia Mackey, also received a longer sentence than the abuser, and the victim, her son, believes she should be free. But Mackey has 10 years left on her sentence, so she is ineligible for a commutation.
The parole board declined to comment on Hall’s case.
Courtesy of Tondalo Hall, Oklahoma Department of Corrections
Some prosecutors defend the long sentences given to battered women who don't intervene to stop their children from being harmed as sending a message that mothers have a duty to protect their children, even if they must risk their own safety. But many domestic violence advocates women counter that such punishments blame the victim and demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of what it means for women to be trapped in abusive relationships. Such women often fear alerting authorities because doing so can provoke their partners to extreme violence and because the authorities often fail to protect battered women and their children.
Hall, who dropped out of high school in 10th grade, told BuzzFeed News that she met Braxton in either 2000 or 2001, when she would have been between 15 and 17. They soon began dating, and Braxton, who is two years older than Hall, seemed ambitious and nice — in the beginning.
She can’t quite remember what it was that set him off the first time: “I didn’t tell him where I went, or something,” she recalled. They got into an argument, she said, and he punched her in the face.
He apologized, she recalled, and said it wouldn’t happen again, and it didn’t, for a while at least. But then, during another argument, this time when she was pregnant, he put his hands around her throat. “He told me that my mouth was too smart,” she would later testify in court. With her head on the seat of the blue couch in her apartment, he choked her.
The abuse, both physical and verbal, picked up once her third child (and second with Braxton) was born in August 2004, Hall told BuzzFeed News. He isolated her from her loved ones, driving “a wedge between me and my family,” she said.
Hall summed up the alleged abuse in her commutation application: “Robert regularly choked me, blackened my eyes, threw objects at me and verbally assaulted me, while my children were in the home.”
Somewhere along the way, Hall’s friend Gayla Watts-Sparger noticed changes in Hall and her children. Watts-Sparger has known Hall since kindergarten and said Hall was always goofy and outgoing. “You know how you meet somebody, and everything they say is funny?” Watts-Sparger said.
But after Hall moved in with Braxton, Hall became “a lot quieter,” Watts-Sparger said, and Hall’s children acted strange too. Watts-Sparger recalled seeing Hall’s son, who was maybe a year old at the time, sitting upright and very still for a young child. When Braxton came by, Watts-Sparger said, the young boy would flinch.
Reached through his Facebook account, Braxton at first said he would speak with BuzzFeed News but then did not respond to subsequent messages. After BuzzFeed News left repeated voicemails and sent a detailed letter to Braxton’s address given in court papers, a woman identifying herself as “Ms. Braxton” called and said that Robert Braxton does not live there and that she doesn’t know where he is.
In the fall of 2004, Hall said, she noticed that her 20-month-old son’s leg was swollen. Braxton told her he didn’t know what might have happened. The problem persisted for several days, so she brought the boy to the hospital.
Doctors determined he had a fractured femur and other broken bones. Suspecting child abuse, authorities checked on Hall and Braxton’s 3-month-old daughter, and found similar injuries. Both Hall and Braxton were arrested.
Detectives at the Oklahoma City Police Department brought them both into the same interview room. Before the interrogation, Braxton was heard whispering to Hall, “Don’t say nothing.”
Hall initially told the police that she had hurt their son by throwing him on the bed as they were playing — a version she later said was a lie. After Braxton admitted he had squeezed his baby daughter too tightly and cranked her leg, detectives concluded that he was the one who had injured both children, not her.
Hall remained in jail, though. She pled guilty to enabling child abuse, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. She agreed to testify against Braxton — though she did not receive a deal from prosecutors for a reduced sentence.
Braxton took his case to trial. Hall wrote in her commutation application that Braxton “repeatedly threatened me” during their initial court hearings. “For example, when Robert and I were being shuttled to and from court he would terrorize me. He would tell me that I would spend the rest of my life in prison and he would be out with our children.”
Still, Hall agreed to testify against him. During Braxton’s trial, she was the main witness who could have seen Braxton actually harming the children. Yet Hall could not point to any specific abuse that she witnessed — because, she told BuzzFeed News, she didn’t actually see any abuse happen. In court, she also couldn’t recall the date her son began having trouble walking.
Prosecutor Angela Marsee grew frustrated that Hall was not providing enough testimony to nail Braxton. “What do you know?” she asked.
Hall replied that she had once woken up to hear that her daughter was screaming. Braxton had been changing the girl’s diaper. He told her nothing was wrong and that she should go back to sleep.
The prosecutor asked for more. “Was there anything else that happened in your apartment that gave you reason to know that your children were in danger at the hands of this defendant?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hall replied. That’s when she began to describe the time that Braxton had choked her, when she was pregnant. Yet Braxton’s lawyer objected to this line of questioning, saying it was not relevant to the child abuse charge against him. The judge sided with Braxton.
Prosecutors, who wanted life in prison for Braxton, sensed that their case against him was crumbling. With the trial in recess, the state and the defense worked out a deal. Braxton pled guilty but admitted to having harmed only one child. He said he grew frustrated while changing his daughter’s diaper and then broke her bones by “using too much force and pressure for a baby.” He was sentenced to 10 years in prison — but eight of those years were suspended, and he was released for time served.
Hall was upset with the verdict. “I didn’t feel like there was any justice for my kids,” she told BuzzFeed News.
Someone else was also upset with the trial’s outcome: Marsee, the prosecutor. And she would lay much of the blame on Hall.
Courtesy of Tondalo Hall
We cheer the Brazilian soccer team and find our inner peace through yoga. But what is the flagship example of Chinese soft power? It might just be a day of shopping and singledom.
Jason Lee / Reuters
Happy Singles Day, everyone! Today, 11/11, is the holiday you don't celebrate yet. But don't worry. You will.
A little background: Singles Day is a Chinese thing, and a recent one. It's like Valentine's Day for the consciously uncoupled, a special day for people lacking a special someone. On Singles Day, single people go out and have fun together, celebrating their lack of attachment and absolutely not feeling a little bit sad and alone.
Like most holidays, Singles Day started off with good intentions — in this case, college kids in Jiangsu Province having a bit of fun in the early '90s — before being turned, as it inevitably must, into a consumerist festival. Now, Singles Day is the day when single people buy themselves a gift, and Chinese retailers fuel the action with a Black Friday-style frenzy of special offers. E-commerce giant Alibaba, the most vocal proponent of Singles Day, says it did almost $9 billion in Singles Day sales today, dwarfing U.S. online sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
So why will Singles Day end up making it to the rest of the world? First, because it's an idea whose time has come: Everyone else has a day, so why not single people? Second, because it involves an official day of shopping, eating, and all-purpose consumption, which there can never be too much of in the eyes of the people who run the world.
But thirdly, and most importantly, Singles Day is a pretty unique opportunity for Chinese soft power to finally begin manifesting itself in the West.
Cultural soft power matters. Growing up in Australia in the early '90s, every kid in the schoolyard could do an American accent — how else could you all recite Simpsons lines to each other? You knew the U.S. was rich, because look at those giant houses the sitcom families live in! When the kids threw a tantrum, they'd run from the kitchen table and up the stairs to their bedrooms. Two-story houses! You knew America kicked ass, because Tom Clancy, and that it was a land of opportunity, because Wyclef.
As countries rise on the world stage, soft power inevitably comes with it. India has yoga and Bollywood, Brazil has soccer and Havaianas, Japan its anime and manga.
We all cried for the sad Brazilian soccer fan, and in doing so, we celebrated Brazil's soft power.
Via BBC
Compared to that, mainland China is coming up relatively empty-handed in the cultural big leagues. Despite its giant economic power and military might, we're still not humming along to catchy Chinese pop songs, or watching overdubbed Chinese soap operas. Singles Day is China Inc.'s big chance.
Obviously this won't be easy. Marketing types say it's tough to get a bona fide new national holiday off the ground, particularly when every trade group and PR lobby is trying to make their version of National Doughnut Day a Thing. And Singles Day falls on 11/11 — a date the Chinese appreciate for its symmetry, but Americans know better as Veterans Day. It's not one to be messed with lightly.
But commerce knows no boundaries, only obstacles. Singles Day can happen, and it's a chance for China and the West to get on the same page, at least for one magical shopping day each year. Some U.S. companies are already getting in on the action through their China-focused websites, making it even easier to roll out an American adaptation.
And all this is helped along by the fact that Singles Day is championed by Alibaba, the Amazon-eBay-PayPal of China — one of the world's biggest internet companies, and one you'll be hearing a lot more about in the next few years.
Alibaba has its eyes on the U.S. market, and so do Chinese gadget makers like Lenovo, which bought the Motorola handset business this year. The direction of the trend line is pretty clear: More Chinese companies will be headed this way, for a long time to come. Singles Day is their chance to bring something from home. And unlike Chinese pop music, it's something you will actually enjoy. Just like being single.
The Paper magazine cover was inspired by a 1976 shoot by the same photographer, Jean-Paul Goude. NSFW.
Paper magazine / Artsy.net / Via papermag.com
It involves being kind of a ninja.
(Though maybe don't leave a baby in the middle of a bed.)
Via youtube.com
Jim Chapman and Tanya Burr spoke to BuzzFeed News about their plans to move into TV, how they’re dealing with the recent spotlight on the UK YouTube scene, and their eagerly awaited wedding.
Burr is one of the most popular YouTube stars in the UK at the moment, with millions of fans, her own beauty range, and an incredibly lucrative career.
What makes the former beautician particularly intriguing for the casual viewer is that she is engaged to Jim Chapman – another hugely influential YouTuber. The pair live together in London and their private life is the subject of intense speculation among the young fans of the UK YouTube scene.
BuzzFeed News spoke to the pair this week about their TV ambitions, the pressures of being role models to millions, and how they're dealing with the recent increase in scrutiny from the national press.
Jon Stewardson
The pair met when Chapman was at university and Burr was at sixth form.
When she finished school, Burr began working on make-up counters, and was convinced to start making videos on YouTube by Chapman's sisters, Sam and Nicola, who run the hugely popular Pixiwoo channel.
Burr's videos are predominantly make-up, hair, and fashion tutorials. Five years after uploading that first video, her YouTube channel now has over 2.5 million subscribers.
She also has 1.1 million followers on Twitter, over 500,000 fans on Facebook, and 1.4 million on Instagram.
It has been watched almost 2 million times.
All via the excellent Bad Sex in Fiction awards, organised by the Literary Review . No naughty images, but contains very NSFW language, as you’d expect.
From The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark (yes Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark).
Thinkstock
From Things to Make or Break by May-Lan Tan.
iStock / LDProd
From Head of State by Andrew Marr. And this one didn't even make Literary Review's shortlist!
Ingram Publishing / Via literaryreview.co.uk
From The Age of Magic by Ben Okri.
iStock / thinkstockphotos.co.uk
It’s called Beam Messenger, and it lets you see everything the other person is typing.
Texting feels instant, but of course it isn't: Everyone composes, recomposes, thinks better of it, deletes. Beam is a new texting app for Android with a simple hook that feels revolutionary, and not necessarily in a good way: It shows you everything the other person is typing as they type it, and vice versa.
Everything. In real time. All the stuff you think better of and all the stuff you delete.
Lightning McQueen won’t be happy when he sees this. If you don’t agree, re-rank them yourself!
Memorable quote: "Whoever finds a friend, finds a treasure."
Pixar / Via beautifuldreams-blog.tumblr.com
Memorable quote: "If you go hard enough left, you'll find yourself turning right."
Pixar / Via iheartmbm.tumblr.com
Memorable quote: "I can't stop Andy from growing up... but I wouldn't miss it for the world."
Pixar / Via sharkbitegal.tumblr.com
Memorable quote: "You don't need to study scaring, you just do it."
Pixar / Via ssskime.tumblr.com
And now a journalist who tweeted about it is being told to “jump off a cliff”. Because of course.
Here's one the first images of the comet from its surface. Yay! Woo! Science! Etc.
ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA / Via esa.int
(In case you can't see the shirt properly, it's covered in images of half-naked women.)
Nature News / Via youtube.com
Bow down to art history.
Via papermag.com
papermag.com / Via Twitter: @metmuseum
E! / Via giphy.com
