James Frey's Blog, page 13
December 14, 2024
Six Dildos Only
by Jody Serrano
Texas is the land where regulation is always second, or so they say. However, it’s also a state where politicians have chosen to regulate oddly specific things, from laws allowing residents to hunt feral hogs from hot air balloons to laws outlining the number of dildos a person can own.
Recently, Texas lawmakers have set their sights on something that has become ubiquitous in recent years: sex toys in retail stores. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they want them out.
A ban on sex toys in stores. Republican Rep. Hillary Hickland is behind the proposal to ban sex toys. Earlier this week, Hickland filed HB 1549, a bill that would ban retail stores such as Walmart, Target, and CVS from selling sex toys. Under the bill, only a “sexually oriented business” will be able to sell sex toys.
December 13, 2024
They’ve always been cool – it’s not a fad.
Whether on Prince William, JD Vance or Jacob Elordi, facial hair gets people talking.
Prince William has had a beard at public appearances in recent weeks.Credit…Pool photo by Justin TallisAs far as beards go, his is more measly than grizzly.
For the past several months, Prince William, the shiny-headed British royal, has been fostering a modest bit of scruff. The heir to the British throne debuted the beard in August, with an Instagram post congratulating Team Britain on their success at the Olympics. At that time the growth was slight, as if he had forgotten his razor over a long weekend, the strands barely connecting with his sideburns.
That version of the Prince’s patchy beard didn’t last. As he told People magazine in November, he shaved at the behest of his daughter, Princess Charlotte, who was reported to have fallen into “floods of tears” at the sight of her father’s new look.
But this past week the beard was back — fuller, if only just so — as Prince William served Christmas lunch at a charity organization in London and attended the reopening of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris over the weekend.
December 12, 2024
Something that really is happening.
A disgraced chiropractor found a new job selling bodies. In an industry with few guardrails, he soon faced accusations of mishandling human remains.
By Mike Hixenbaugh, Susan Carroll, Liz Kreutz and Tyler Kingkade
Obteen Nassiri, who ran Med Ed Labs, said he sought to treat each donor with dignity / Anuj Shrestha for NBC NewsThis article is part of “Dealing the Dead,” a series investigating the use of unclaimed bodies for medical research.
LAS VEGAS — Obteen Nassiri was in need of a new line of work. After losing his chiropractor’s license following allegations that he had misled patients and defrauded insurers out of millions, he dove into an industry with virtually no guardrails or barriers to entry — the shadowy U.S. body trade.
Operating out of a beige strip mall in Las Vegas between a tattoo parlor and a psychic, Nassiri’s new company, Med Ed Labs, acquired corpses from funeral homes and medical schools, then sold or leased them at a markup to groups seeking human remains for medical training, including the U.S. military.
Within just a few years, he had built a national network of suppliers and clients. He also left a trail of scandal and alleged ethical failures, including complaints that he mishandled human remains.
December 11, 2024
December 10, 2024
December 9, 2024
Guerrillas Take LA
The survey, “Laugh, Cry, Fight,” got its name before the election, but it serves just as well in its aftermath, says a founding member.
Guerrilla Girls in New York, 2015. Photo: Katie Booth, courtesy of Beyond the Streets.A giant ape has overtaken Los Angeles exhibition venue Beyond the Streets—not King Kong, but Queen Kong. The official mascot of the Guerrilla Girls, in fact. This looming inflatable crowns “Laugh, Cry, Fight,” the first-ever L.A. exhibition for the famed anonymous art collective of rebellious women.
Each member of the Guerrilla Girls assumes the name of a historic female artist. They make public appearances only wearing their iconic gorilla masks. Regarding the exhibition’s title, founding member Käthe Kollwitz told me over Zoom, “We knew the show was going to start after the election, but we didn’t know how the election was going to turn out. It just seemed like a great motto for what we do.”
The Guerrilla Girls formed in 1985 in response to the show “An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art—which widely omitted women. They made posters highlighting the lack of female representation in art museum collections and posted them on the streets of New York art strongholds. This was a decade before Cost and Revs popularized wheat-pasted posters as street art—but six years after Jenny Holzer papered subway stations with her Inflammatory Essays. Reactions to the stunt were swift, widespread, and spirited.
December 8, 2024
Ben Franklin Was The Balls
It turns out that Benjamin Franklin was on to something in 1747
It’s a pretty sure bet that you couldn’t get through a typical day without the direct support of dozens of electric motors. They’re in all of your appliances not powered by a hand crank, in the climate-control systems that keep you comfortable, and in the pumps, fans, and window controls of your car. And although there are many different kinds of electric motors, every single one of them, from the 200-kilowatt traction motor in your electric vehicle to the stepper motor in your quartz wristwatch, exploits the exact same physical phenomenon: electromagnetism.
For decades, however, engineers have been tantalized by the virtues of motors based on an entirely different principle: electrostatics. In some applications, these motors could offer an overall boost in efficiency ranging from 30 percent to close to 100 percent, according to experiment-based analysis. And, perhaps even better, they would use only cheap, plentiful materials, rather than the rare-earth elements, special steel alloys, and copious quantities of copper found in conventional motors.
“Electrification has its sustainability challenges,” notes Daniel Ludois, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. But “an electrostatic motor doesn’t need windings, doesn’t need magnets, and it doesn’t need any of the critical materials that a conventional machine needs.”
December 7, 2024
Mo’ Laughter Mo’ Money
It’s time to stop taking advertising so seriously. Let’s put the laughs—and the growth—back into marketing.
[Images: [Images: Jacob Lund / Adobe Stock]In my 30 years of crafting award-winning and culture-shaping advertising, one constant has remained true: humor works.
Whether it’s to cut through the noise or to create a lasting emotional bond with consumers, funny commercials are the most memorable. Yet, in today’s landscape, comedic creativity seems to be a dwindling resource, and that’s a missed opportunity for brands. Humor isn’t just entertainment—it’s a growth multiplier.
HUMOR STICKS
There’s a reason you can still recall that absurd ad from 15 years ago with the punchline that made you laugh. Comedy doesn’t just catch attention; it stays with us.
December 6, 2024
Reincarnation Real
By
The recently resurfaced US Army Intelligence report presents an abstract explanation of how consciousness is created through the brain’s processing of energy in the physical world – transforming it into what Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonnell compares to a hologram (above)A study conducted by US Army Intelligence has suggested that reincarnation is real because consciousness ‘never dies.’
Entitled ‘Analysis and Assessment of The Gateway Process,’ the 29-page report was drafted by US Army Lieutenant Colonel Wayne M McDonnell in 1983 and declassified by the CIA in 2003.
The research has resurfaced on social media, with Chicago-based comedian Sara Holcomb summarizing the findings, saying: ‘We’re pretty sure reincarnation is real.’
‘Consciousness is energy and it exists outside of our understanding of reality,’ Holocomb said, paraphrasing page 19 of McDonnell’s Army intel report. ‘And energy… never dies.’
The mind-bending official Pentagon study was commissioned to better understand what its Army intel colleagues were doing sending personnel to a small institute in Charlottesville, Virginia that was working on the ‘Gateway Experience.’
December 5, 2024
Spinranker
Patrick Soon-Shiong says that his team is building a product where “the reader can press a button and get both sides” of a story.
BY ERIK HAYDEN
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong GETTY IMAGESWeeks after scrapping a presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris that had been prepped by his editorial board, the owner of The Los Angeles Times says his product team is working on a new tech-driven “bias meter” to add to articles on the paper’s website as soon as next year.
The idea, as Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong presented it, sounds like it’ll be a module that presents multiple viewpoints on a particular news item as well as allow some version of comments to be integrated. And it marks the latest signal from the billionaire that he plans to reshape the Times as the second Trump administration gears up and after the exits of multiple edit board members following the endorsement flap.
“Imagine if you now take — whether it be news or opinion — and you have a bias meter, whether news or opinion, more like the opinion, or the voices, you have a bias meter so somebody could understand as a reader that the source of the article has some level of bias,” Soon-Shiong elaborated in a radio segment hosted by incoming Timeseditorial board member Scott Jennings.
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