Comentariu la Argumentele împotriva lui Firea de Nicu Constantin

100K Sign Petition Demanding Chiefs Fire Kicker Over ‘Dehumanizing’ Commencement Speech

Robin Alam/ISI Photos via Getty ImagesA petition calling for the Kansas City Chiefs to dismiss kicker Harrison Butker has racked up over 100,000 signatures as of Thursday morning amid a furious backlash to a controversial commencement address he delivered at a Catholic college over the weekend.The three-time Super Bowl champion spoke for around 20

15 м

thedailybeast.com

Harris accepts CBS News' vice presidential debate invitation

President Biden and former President Donald Trump agreed Thursday to presidential debates on June 27 and Sept. 3.

15 м

cbsnews.com

Trump's potential running mates to compete for approval at major Christian conference as speculation swirls

The Faith & Freedom Coalition, an influential Christian grassroots group, announced a number of major speakers for its annual Road to Majority Conference, including potential vice president picks.

15 м

foxnews.com

Walmart chia seeds sold nationwide recalled due to salmonella

Private-label food supplier recalls 32-ounce pouches of Great Value Organic Black Chia Seeds because of potential contamination.

16 м

cbsnews.com

Want a Roku for your car? Save $40 on this wireless adapter

Save on streaming!

23 м

nypost.com

Woman recounts what it was like to live with a Bedouin tribe: full video

A travel enthusiast got a first-hand opportunity to see what it’s really like to live with an African tribe. Caitlin Redden was in Petra, Jordan, checking out the sights when a Bedouin tribe member invited her to his family cave. The New Jersey native accepted the invitation and spent the afternoon cooking, watching TV and...

23 м

nypost.com

Omar y Argelia, un legado que todavía no ha terminado, ahora entra a una nueva era

La pareja radial más querida de Los Ángeles debuta en el mundo digital desde sus propios estudios, mientras buscan abrir oportunidades a jóvenes universitarios que sueñan con una carrera frente y detrás de los micrófonos

24 м

latimes.com

Official trailer for 'It Ends With Us' released starring Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni and Taylor Swift song

The trailer for "It Ends With Us" was revealed to audiences via social media on Thursday. The movie starring Blake Lively and music from Taylor Swift will hit theaters on Aug. 9.

24 м

foxnews.com

Michael Cohen’s ex-lawyer tells Congress Trump ‘fixer’ lied about ‘hush money’ — and that former prez knew nothing

An attorney who formerly represented Donald Trump’s onetime personal lawyer Michael Cohen told House lawmakers Wednesday that Cohen lied about “hush money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels — having previously insisted the 45th president was not involved in the transaction. Robert Costello, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor, revealed to the

26 м

nypost.com

The Las Vegas Raiders have 8 huge home games in 2024. Get tickets now

Here's how to catch Antonio Pierce's squad at Allegiant Stadium.

28 м

nypost.com

‘The Drew Barrymore Show’: Drew Tells Dua Lipa She’s “So Incredibly Happy” Being Single

"I’ve made finally an investment in myself."

28 м

nypost.com

Suspect in deadly Fla. boat crash that killed 15-year-old ballerina ‘had absolutely no idea’ vessel was involved: attorney

The Florida boater suspected of operating the vessel that hit and killed a 15-year-old ballerina claims he “had absolutely no idea” his boat was allegedly involved in the hit-and-run crash, his attorney says. Carlos Guillermo Alonso, 78, of Coral Gables, is accused of running over Ella Riley Adler his 42-foot-long Boston Whaler last Saturday in...

29 м

nypost.com

Supreme Court rejects broad challenge to consumer watchdog CFPB

The Biden administration urged the Supreme Court to reject an appeals court decision that cast doubt on Congress’s authority to decide how to fund an agency.

33 м

washingtonpost.com

Power up on the go with this $19 keychain charger for iPhone and Apple Watch

A deal to get charged up about!

34 м

nypost.com

Olivia Rodrigo dances through mid-concert wardrobe malfunction in leather bra: ‘The show must go on’

A fan documented the "Vampire" singer's crop top breaking on stage during a performance in London Tuesday night.

35 м

nypost.com

UK tells schools not to teach 'gender identity,' set to enforce new sex-ed guidelines: 'Disturbing content'

The United Kingdom's Department of Education has issued new guidance ordering schools not to teach "gender identity" concepts in sex education classes and keep parents informed on sex-ed content.

37 м

foxnews.com

I found my cat trapped in the wall after a botched repair — I had to create a new hole to rescue him

Curiosity trapped the cat.

38 м

nypost.com

Achieve work, academic, or personal tasks with Microsoft Office 2019, less than $30

TL;DR: Whether you need productivity apps for work, school, or home computing, Microsoft offers some of the best programs. Now, lifetime access to Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac or Windows is only $29.97 (reg. $229)! Sometimes, setting a course on a new project, position, or course can be overwhelming. A major step you can take towards feeling...

40 м

nypost.com

Witness testimony expected to begin in Bob Menendez trial

Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey is accused of trading his influence and power to foreign governments.

40 м

cbsnews.com

Country singer Zach Bryan and girlfriend Brianna Chickenfry nearly died when vehicle flipped in bloody car crash

Zach Bryan and his girlfriend, Brianna Chickenfry, nearly died in a "traumatizing" car accident.

40 м

nypost.com

David Copperfield denies 16 women's 'entirely implausible' sexual misconduct allegations

Famed illusionist David Copperfield is denying accusations made by 16 women alleging decades-spanning sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior.

40 м

latimes.com

The Sadistic History of Reality Television

More than a decade after watching it, I still get twitchy thinking about “White Bear,” an early episode of Black Mirror that stands as one of the most discomfiting installments of television I’ve seen. A woman (played by Lenora Crichlow) groggily wakes up in a strange house whose television sets are broadcasting the same mysterious symbol. When she

42 м

theatlantic.com

More than a decade after watching it, I still get twitchy thinking about “White Bear,” an early episode of Black Mirror that stands as one of the most discomfiting installments of television I’ve seen. A woman (played by Lenora Crichlow) groggily wakes up in a strange house whose television sets are broadcasting the same mysterious symbol. When she goes outside, the people she encounters silently film her on their phones or menacingly wield shotguns and chainsaws. Eventually, trapped in a deserted building, the woman seizes a gun and shoots one of her tormentors, but the weapon surprises her by firing confetti instead of bullets. The walls around her suddenly swing open; she’s revealed to be the star of a sadistic live event devised to punish her repeatedly for a crime she once committed but can’t remember. “In case you haven’t guessed … you aren’t very popular,” the show’s host tells the terrified woman, as the audience roars its approval. “But I’ll tell you what you are, though. You’re famous.”“White Bear” indelibly digs into a number of troublesome 21st-century media phenomena: a populace numbed into passive consumption of cruel spectacle, the fetishistic rituals of public shaming, the punitive nature of many “reality” shows. The episode’s grand reveal, a television staple by the time it premiered in 2013, is its own kind of punishment: The extravagant theatrics serve as a reminder that everything that’s happened to the woman has been a deliberate construction—a series of manipulations in service of other people’s entertainment.The contrast between the aghast subject and the gleeful audience, clapping like seals, is almost too jarring to bear. And yet a version of this moment really happened, as seen about an hour into The Contestant, Hulu’s dumbfounding documentary about a late-’90s Japanese TV experiment. For 15 months, a wannabe comedian called Tomoaki Hamatsu (nicknamed “Nasubi,” or “eggplant,” in reference to the length of his head) has been confined, naked, to a single room filled with magazines, and tasked with surviving—and winning his way out, if he could hit a certain monetary target—by entering competitions to win prizes. The entire time, without his knowledge or consent, he’s also been broadcast on a variety show called Susunu! Denpa Shōnen.Before he’s freed, Nasubi is blindfolded, dressed for travel, transported to a new location, and led into a small room that resembles the one he’s been living in. Wearily, accepting that he’s not being freed but merely moved, he takes off his clothes as if to return to his status quo. Then, the walls collapse around him to reveal the studio, the audience, the stage, the cameras. Confetti flutters through the air. Nasubi immediately grabs a pillow to conceal his genitals. “My house fell down,” he says, in shock. The audience cackles at his confusion. “Why are they laughing?” he asks. They laugh even harder.Since The Contestant debuted earlier this month, reviews and responses have homed in on how outlandish its subject matter is, dubbing it a study of the “most evil reality show ever” and “a terrifying and bizarre true story.” The documentary focuses intently on Nasubi’s experience, contrasting his innocence and sweetness with the producer who tormented him, a Machiavellian trickster named Toshio Tsuchiya. Left unstudied, though, is the era the series emerged from. The late ’90s embodied an anything-goes age of television: In the United States, series such as Totally Hidden Video and Shocking Behavior Caught on Tape drew millions of viewers by humiliating people caught doing dastardly things on camera. But Tsuchiya explains that he had a more anthropological mission in mind. “We were trying to show the most basic primitive form of human being,” he tells The Contestant’s director. Nasubi was Tsuchiya’s grand human experiment.The cruelty with which Nasubi was treated seems horrifying now, and outrageously unethical. Before he started winning contests, he got by on a handful of crackers fed to him by the producers, then fiber jelly (one of his first successful prizes), then dog food. His frame whittles down in front of our eyes. “If he hadn’t won rice, he would have died,” a producer says, casually. The question of why Nasubi didn’t just leave the room hangs in the air, urgent and mostly unexamined. “Staying put, not causing trouble is the safest option,” Nasubi explains in the documentary. “It’s a strange psychological state. You lose the will to escape.”But the timing of his confinement also offers a clue about why he might have stayed. 1998, when the comedian was first confined, was a moment in flux, caught between the technological innovations that were rapidly changing mass culture and the historical atrocities of the 20th century. Enabled by the internet, lifecasters such as Jennifer Ringley were exposing their unfiltered lives online as a kind of immersive sociological experiment. Webcams allowed exhibitionists and curious early adopters to present themselves up for observation as novel subjects in a human zoo. Even before the release of The Truman Show, which came out in the U.S. a few months after Nasubi was first put on camera, a handful of provocateur producers were brainstorming new formats for unscripted television, egged on by the uninhibited bravado and excess of ’90s media. These creators acted as all-seeing, all-knowing authorities whose word was absolute. And their subjects, not yet familiar with the “rules” of an emerging genre, often didn’t know what they were allowed to contest. Of Tsuchiya, Nasubi remembers, “It was almost like I was worshiping a god.”In his manipulation of Nasubi, Tsuchiya was helping pioneer a new kind of art form, one that would lead to the voyeurism of 2000s series such as Big Brother and Survivor, not to mention more recent shows such Married at First Sight and Love Is Blind. But the spectacle of Nasubi’s confinement also represented a hypothesis that had long preoccupied creators and psychologists alike, and that reality television has never really moved on from. If you manufacture absurd, monstrous situations with which to torment unwitting dupes, what will they do? What will we learn? And, most vital to the people in charge, how many viewers will be compelled to watch?Some popular-culture historians consider the first reality show to be MTV’s The Real World, a 1992 series that deliberately provoked conflict by putting strangers together in an unfamiliar environment. Others cite PBS’s 1973 documentary series An American Family, which filmed a supposedly prototypical California household over several months, in a conceit that the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called the “dissolution of TV in life, dissolution of life in TV.”But the origins of what happened to Nasubi seem to lie most directly in a series that ran on and off from 1948 to 2014: Candid Camera. Its creator, Allen Funt, was a radio operator in the Army Signal Corps during World War II; while stationed in Oklahoma, he set up a “gripe booth” for soldiers to record their complaints about military service. Knowing they were being taped, the subjects held back, which led Funt to record people secretly in hopes of capturing more honest reactions. His first creative effort was The Candid Microphone, a radio show. The series put its subjects in perplexing situations to see how they’d respond: Funt gave strangers exploding cigarettes, asked a baker to make a “disgusting” birthday cake, and even chained his secretary to his desk and hired a locksmith to “free” her for her lunch break. “With the candid microphone, we are at the beginning of the Age of the Involuntary Amateur,” one critic wrote in 1947. “The possibilities are limitless; the prospect is horrifying.” Sure enough, a TV series soon followed.For all that critic’s revulsion, Funt was earnest about the potentially revelatory power of his shows. He was seemingly influenced by two parallel trends. One was a sociological school of thought that was trying urgently to analyze human nature following a wave of real barbarities: the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stalin’s great purges. The other was an interest in art that captured the contours of real life, in an outgrowth of the naturalist movement that had come out of the late 19th century. Émile Zola, one of its practitioners, argued in The Experimental Novel that fiction writers were essentially omnipotent forces dropping characters into realistic situations to consider how they might respond. Literature, he argued, was “a real experiment that a novelist makes on man.”The invention of television, as the academic Tony E. Jackson has argued, offered a more literal and scientific medium within which creators could manipulate real human subjects. This was where Candid Camera came into play. Funt’s practical jokes—setting up a subject in an elevator in which every other person suddenly turns their back to him—tended to consider the nature of compliance, and what humans will go along with rather than be outliers. Candid Camera was considered so rich a work that Funt was asked to donate episodes to Cornell University’s psychology department for further study.Funt was also highly influential to Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist who turned his Yale studies on conformity into a documentary titled Obedience. The Milgram experiment, conducted in 1961, asked members of the public to inflict fellow subjects with electric shocks—faked, unknown to them—when ordered to do so by an authority figure. Inspired by the 1961 trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, and the experience of his own family members who’d survived concentration camps, Milgram tweaked the Candid Camera model to more explicitly study how far people would follow orders before they objected. As the film professor Anna McCarthy has written, Milgram paid particular attention to the theatrical elements of his work. He even considered using recordings of humans screaming in real, rather than simulated, pain to maximize the authenticity of the subject’s experience. “It is possible that the kind of understanding of man I seek is an amalgam of science and art,” Milgram wrote in 1962. “It is sure to be rejected by the scientists as well as the artists, but for me it carries significance.”This studied interest in human nature continued in PBS’s An American Family; its presentation of ordinary life up close, the anthropologist Margaret Mead once argued, was “as important for our time as were the invention of the drama and the novel for earlier generations—a new way for people to understand themselves.” Throughout the later decades of the 20th century, television was similarly fixated on exposure, although shock value quickly took priority over genuine curiosity and analysis. During the ’90s, on talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show and Maury, people confessed their most damning secrets to anyone who cared to watch. Series including Cops and America’s Most Wanted offered a more lurid, voyeuristic look at crime and the darkness of human nature.[Read: The paranoid style in American entertainment]By the time Tsuchiya had the idea to confine a man to a single apartment to see whether he could survive the ordeal, the concept of humiliation-as-revelation was well established. “I told [Nasubi] that most of it would never be aired,” the producer explains in The Contestant. “When someone hears that, they stop paying attention to the camera. That’s when you can really capture a lot.” As an organizing principle for how to get the most interesting footage, it seems to stem right from Funt’s secret recordings of people in the 1940s. Tsuchiya appeared to be motivated by his desire to observe behavior that had never been seen before on film—“to capture something amazing … an aspect of humanity that only I, only this show, could capture.” And extremity, to him, was necessary, because it was the only way to provoke responses that would be new, and thus thrilling to witness.The reality-show boom of the early 2000s was intimately informed by this same intention. When Big Brother debuted in Holland in 1999, it was broadly advertised as a social experiment in which audiences could observe contestants under constant surveillance like rats in a lab; the show was compared by one Dutch psychologist to the Stanford prison experiment. (Another called the show’s design “the wet dream of a psychological researcher.”) The 2002 British show The Experiment even directly imitated both the Stanford setup and Milgram’s work on obedience. But although such early series may have had honest intentions, their willingness to find dramatic fodder in moments of human calamity was exploited by a barrage of crueler series that would follow. The 2004 series There’s Something About Miriam had six men compete for the affections of a 21-year-old model from Mexico, who was revealed in the finale to be transgender—an obscene gotcha moment that mimics the structure of Candid Camera. Without a dramatic conclusion, a nonfiction series is just a filmed record of events. But with a last-act revelation, it’s a drama.Contemporary audiences, blessedly, have a more informed understanding of ethics, of entrapment, and of the duty of care TV creators have to their subjects. In 2018, the British show Love Island spawned a national debate about gaslighting after one contestant was deemed to be manipulating another. There’s no question that what happened to Nasubi would trigger a mass outcry today. But reality TV is still built on the same ideological imperatives—the desire to see people set up in manifestly absurd scenarios for our entertainment. The Emmy-nominated 2023 series Jury Duty is essentially a kinder episode of Candid Camera extended into a whole season, and the internet creator known as MrBeast, the purveyor of ridiculous challenges and stunts, has the second most-subscribed channel on all of YouTube. What’s most remarkable about The Contestant now is how its subject managed to regain his faith in human nature, despite everything he endured. But the ultimate goal of so many contemporary shows is still largely the same as it was 25 years ago: to manufacture a novel kind of social conflict, sit back, and watch what happens.

Wisconsin teacher allegedly groomed girl, 13, sent hundreds of Snapchat messages

The teacher would offer up suggestive compliments on the girl's appearance, specifically her legs, and regularly send kiss and fire emojis, the complaint alleges.

43 м

nypost.com

Turn your tablet into a workstation anywhere with this versatile $55 docking stand!

Level up your work from home setup!

43 м

nypost.com

Former Miss USA Noelia Voigt’s pal claims pageant didn’t support her after a driver made ‘inappropriate advances’

Former Miss USA Noelia Voigt, who gave up the title last week to prioritize her mental health, was reportedly subject to "inappropriate advances" by a driver.

45 м

nypost.com

Two brothers arrested for allegedly stealing $25M of crypto in 12 seconds

Prosecutors said Anton and James Peraire-Bueno, who both studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, manipulated the ethereum blockchain to steal $25M.

45 м

washingtonpost.com

I’m a doctor and mom — this is why you should never pierce a baby’s ears

Parents — you might want to be all ears for this.

46 м

nypost.com

WNBA rookie Cameron Brink sets social media ablaze with pregame look before first regular-season contest

The Sparks selected Brink with the second overall pick in last month's 2024 WNBA Draft.

47 м

nypost.com

ABC News Taps David Muir, Linsey Davis To Moderate Joe Biden And Donald Trump’s Second Presidential Debate

The debate will take place Sept. 10.

49 м

nypost.com

You can now control an iPhone or iPad with your eyes with Apple’s new features

They're putting the "eye" in iPhone.

49 м

nypost.com

Liam Neeson, Sharon Stone demand Kevin Spacey return to acting after being acquitted of sexual assault charges

Liam Neeson, Sharon Stone and more come to Kevin Spacey's defense after the actor was blacklisted from Hollywood following sexual assault allegations.

50 м

foxnews.com

Kansas City deletes tweet disowning Chiefs’ Harrison Butker as backlash intensifies

Kansas City wants nothing to do with Harrison Butker either.

50 м

nypost.com

Jimmy Fallon mocks dismal CNN viewership while discussing Biden-Trump debate

"The Tonight Show" host Jimmy Fallon cracked a joke about CNN's viewership as the network gears up to host the debate between President Biden and former President Trump.

52 м

foxnews.com

Olivia Culpo says Christian McCaffrey is involved in wedding planning ‘to a certain degree’

The model exclusively told Page Six that her NFL star beau is letting her call the shots on decor for their upcoming nuptials.

53 м

nypost.com

The emotional background to Christiaan Bezuidenhout's golf career

South African golfer Christiaan Bezuidenhout knows more than most about overcoming adversity. When he was just two-years-old, Bezuidenhout accidentally drank rat poison in a grocery store after mistaking it for a can of soda. World Sport's Don Riddell has more on this remarkable golfer.

54 м

edition.cnn.com

The ultimate grilled recipes to get you through spring and summer months

Kick off the summer with these grilled recipes that will be sweet, savory and tasty for the whole family. Add vanilla ice cream to grilled peaches and serve as a unique dessert.

56 м

foxnews.com

Supreme Court upholds funding structure for CFPB

The Supreme Court said in a 7 to 2 decision that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding structure complies with the Constitution's Appropriations Clause.

56 м

cbsnews.com

Giants unveil red throwback uniforms for 2024 to commemorate 100th season

The Giants have a new throwback uniform.

58 м

nypost.com

House committee demands Biden agency staff reveal travel history amid electioneering claims

The committees tasked with overseeing small business and the Small Business Administration sent a letter demanding travel schedules of agency officials amid allegations relating to voter registration in their official capacities.

1 ч

foxnews.com

Supreme Court upholds funding structure for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a ruling upholding the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a key consumer watchdog and banking regulator.

1 ч

abcnews.go.com

In talks with Putin amid Ukraine war, Xi calls Russia-China ties a 'strong driving force'

As Russia's Vladimir Putin meets with China's Xi Jinping in Beijing, the pomp and pronouncements are meant to signal a unified alternative to the West.

1 ч

latimes.com

Rakim Lubin, former UConn basketball player, dead at 28

The 6-foot-8 forward, a three-star recruit nicknamed "Rock," played his freshman year with the Huskies in 2014-15.

1 ч

nypost.com

Supreme Court rejects payday lenders' challenge to Obama-era consumer protection bureau

Supreme Court rejects a conservative challenge to the U.S. agency that protects consumers from financial scams.

1 ч

latimes.com

Parents can't opt K-5 children out of LGBTQ curriculum: appeals court

A federal appeals court rejected parents' bid to opt their children out of classes and books that discuss LGBTQ topics like sexuality and gender.

1 ч

foxnews.com

Dodgers Dugout: Should the Dodgers be worried about Walker Buehler?

Walker Buehler has been shaky in his first two starts since his second Tommy John surgery. Should the Dodgers be worried?

1 ч

latimes.com

GOP primary battle turns Va.’s 5th District into a political Tilt-a-Whirl

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.)and Del. John McGuire (R-Goochland) are denouncing each other as RINOs — Republicans in name only.

1 ч

washingtonpost.com

The Secret Behind “the Bridgerton Glow-Up”

Bridgerton’s hair and makeup designer reveals the key to Penelope and Colin’s Season 3 transformations.

1 ч

slate.com

'Let Trump Speak Act' to ban gag orders on defendants put forward by House GOP

Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., is introducing the "Let Trump Speak Act" to stop judges from issuing gag orders to defendants in any criminal or civil proceeding.

1 ч

foxnews.com