Dallas County, population 2.5 million, now officially stands for "monetary and substantial reparations" for black Americans' suffering, after the County Commission summarily approved a resolution by its only black member that the white commissioners never bothered to read.
Lana Del Rey, the musical persona of Lizzy Grant, lives in an uncanny valley between the extremes of pop star and real girl. She looks something like both, but really is neither. This is why she enchants people, this is why she pisses people off (often simultaneously—her ardent detractors can argue against her artistic value but would be hypocrites to deny her ability to fascinate). She rubs right up against notions of authenticity with a singer-songwriter guise that can feel confessional—her terrific new album Ultraviolence is full of revelations of things generally not said in public. She explores what it is to be a proud mistress, an opportunist out for "money, power, and glory," a hack who, as a song title puts it, "Fucked My Way Up to the Top." (Duncan Cooper's rather astute profile of Del Rey in Fader links that song to a relationship Del Rey had with a record exec, even though Del Rey has claimed that it's about a hater.)
In a profile by The National Journal's Marin Cogan, former Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer reveals he has a special talent — for sniffing out gays. "Don't hold this against me, but I'm going to blurt it out," he told Cogan after she asked about former Majority Leader Eric Cantor's recent primary defeat.
KRON 4's "People Behaving Badly" is a recurring segment that wags a finger at the Bay Area's rude assholes for their minor transgressions, uniting its audience through the power of mutual hatred. But it transcended its mission in a recent segment when one of those assholes tried to fight back.
On Saturday, Poland's Wprost magazine published a secretly recorded conversation between two officials that revealed a recently departed minister may have been dismissed at the behest of the country's national bank head. Four days later, Polish police, prosecutors, and intelligence officers raided Wprost's office in an attempt to seize the recordings.
Sunni militants hung their black banners over the watchtowers of the Baiji oil refinery early this morning, according to the Associated Press. The facility, just 140 miles north of Baghdad, is still contested by Iraqi officials, who claim the government is in control and that the militants have retreated.
Former NFL player and talking head Terry Bradshaw was on Fox News' women-driven Outnumbered today where he weighed in on Hillary Clinton's presidential prospects. Terry Bradshaw does not like Hillary Clinton. "I don't particularly like her. Never have," he said. "The only reason she's on Fox is because she's promoting books."
As they are wont to do, teens went wild at a rave in an abandoned Royal Mail sorting facility in Croydon, London this past weekend. But one teen raver, "Josh," really knows what it means to just be there for the music, man: Even after he lost a finger ripping off a screaming fire alarm, he went on dancing, because he figured, "Fuck it, let's skank on and enjoy it." He contends that he was completely sober the entire time.
