Category: Top Stories

Keeping Up With The Zimmerman’s?

George Zimmerman’s Family Wants To Be Reality TV Stars (and Other Revelations from the Insane GQ Profile)

George Zimmerman’s Family Wants To Be Reality TV Stars (and Other Revelations from the Insane GQ Profile)

The Daily Banter’s Chez Pazienza tells it like is, even when the story is disgusting and is a shining example of what is wrong with America today. Here’s an excerpt to get your horror juices flowing:

There’s a reason writer Amanda Robb begins her GQ magazine profile of George Zimmerman’s family with Robert Zimmerman’s thoughts on “rebranding” the family name. Robert, who’s been the clan’s unofficial spokesperson since his brother George killed Trayvon Martin two-and-a-half years ago, talks about his vision for a potential reality TV show starring his elder sibling. “I learn a lot from watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” he says. “Like, use the shit you’ve got.” The younger Zimmerman has all kinds of plans for rehabilitating his brother’s image and capitalizing on his infamy, including a line of security products that would bear a distinctive “Z” logo and a Candid Camera-style program that would have George surprising unsuspecting strangers, presumably not by shooting them. Robb sets the stage by making it clear why the seemingly reclusive Zimmerman family might have agreed to do an interview with GQ in the first place.

If you think George Zimmerman’s public life has played out like one big psychodrama since he shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, you can’t imagine how bizarre it’s been behind the scenes. It makes sense that the Zimmermans would realize the potential peril George’s violent encounter with Trayvon Martin — and the court’s decision to let him walk for it — might put them in. But their paranoia runs so deep that it feels like it might have been a kind of dormant virus that existed all along and was either awakened by circumstance or actually led to the shooting that put them all in their current position as the family of a cultural pariah.

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Oculus’ Mindblowing New Prototype Is a Huge Step Toward Consumer VR

Oculus’ Mindblowing New Prototype Is a Huge Step Toward Consumer VR

The weeks leading up to Oculus’ first developer summit were full of rumors. Would the virtual-reality company finally unveil the consumer version of its Oculus Rift VR headset? If the design wasn’t finalized, would we at least learn the unit’s specs? Its resolution? Would there be a controller?

The answer to all of these was “no.” But Oculus still managed to blow everyone’s mind.

When Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe took the stage Saturday morning at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, his keynote was equal parts VR pep rally and love letter to the developer community, but it wasn’t detail-rich—until he revealed a brand new feature prototype called Crescent Bay. “This prototype shows off the features, the quality, the presence that we need to deliver for consumer VR,” he said, referring to the feeling that one is truly existing in a virtual space.

Crescent Bay is as big of a leap forward from the current developer kit DK2, Iribe continued, as DK2 was from the original devkit that Oculus funded via Kickstarter in August 2012. It features 360-degree tracking, improved ergonomics and weight, and integrated audio. And it was available to try that day: an in-house team in Oculus’ Seattle office had created a suite of experiences for it, and Epic Games&mdash:which had designed demos for each Rift prototype thus far—had contributed the piece de resistance, a new demo called “Showdown.”Oculus’ Mindblowing New Prototype Is a Huge Step Toward Consumer VR

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‘Loud Music’ Murder Trial Resumes After Hung Jury

'Loud Music' Murder Trial Resumes After Hung Jury

\'Loud Music\' Murder Trial Resumes After Hung Jury

The racially charged murder trial of Michael Dunn ended in a hung jury in February, but a retrial has begun as of Monday, CNN reports. The case centers on the November 2012 shooting death of Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old African-American high school senior, who was killed after Dunn, a then-47-year-old white man, fired 10 gunshots at an SUV containing Davis and three friends. The shooting followed an argument over the vehicle playing loud rap music in a Jacksonville, Florida gas station parking lot.

Dunn was found guilty on three counts of second-degree attempted murder during the original trial, with each sentence carrying a minimum of 20 years in prison, but a mistrial was declared on the first-degree murder charge. Dunn claimed self-defense, saying he was threatened by Davis and saw what he believed to be a gun barrel sticking out of the teenager’s vehicle. “I’m looking out the window, and I said, ‘You’re not going to kill me you son of a bitch, and I shot,” Dunn said during the trial.

After firing 10 shots at the SUV, Dunn drove away without alerting authorities. Police didn’t find a gun in the teenagers’ car; no witnesses reported seeing a weapon, and Dunn’s girlfriend claimed he hadn’t mentioned the gun before he was arrested. The case boiled down to Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, which allows individuals who believe to be threatened to protect themselves using lethal force. The trial created obvious parallels to the 2012 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.

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Uber Drivers Are Revolting Against Their Shitty Bosses

Uber Drivers Are Revolting Against Their Shitty Bosses

If you live in a major city, chances are your local taxi industry has been upended by Uber, or will be soon. Created in 2009 by founders who “just wanted to feel baller in San Francisco,” the app has become a ride-sharing juggernaut, waging a techno-libertarian insurgency against politicians and regulators standing in the way of its plans to dominate the global car service industry. With an estimated worth of $17 billion, the company is the darling of Silicon Valley’s cult of disruption, viewing itself not so much as a car company, but as a technology platform that will end ownership as we know it.

Increasingly, though, that techno-libertarian vision has come bumping up against the more mundane realities of running what is still essentially a taxi service. That was definitely the case in New York this week, where more than 100 irate black car drivers surrounded Uber’s headquarters in Queens to protest the company’s deceptive treatment and unfair payment policies. For the better part of the morning Monday, the drivers rallied on the corner of Jackson Avenue, shaking their fists at the black U logo, waving handmade signs, and shouting down bewildered twentysomethings that the company sent out to reason with mob.

The main beef, it seems, is Uber’s recent decision to start forcing drivers who signed up for its premium UberBlack and SUV service to receive ride requests from the lower-tier UberX and UberXL services. Previously, luxury drivers were able to opt-in to accept cheaper rides, but now Uber has effectively removed that choice. In an email last week, the company informed drivers that it would assign UberX fares to all drivers, regardless of their vehicle tier; drivers who canceled those trips risked having their accounts suspended or being kicked off the app altogether.

Uber insists that the changes are actually good for black car drivers, giving them the opportunity to pick up more rides, and theoretically at least, make more money. “What this does is increases earning potential,” said Taylor Bennett, a chestnut-haired spokesman who pulled me away from the protest to give me Uber’s spin. Over the summer, he said, the company found that black car drivers who opted to take UberX trips earned 35-to-50 percent more than those who just took luxury rides. “At the end of the day, it’s more trips and more money for our partners.”

Read more at Vice.com

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The big problem with the Apple Watch is that time is an illusion

The big problem with the Apple Watch is that time is an illusion

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the just-revealed Apple Watch. Who wants to use a touchscreen that tiny? Why would I want to send my heartbeat to my friends (a real feature of the watch emphasized in the product’s unveiling)? Why should people who aren’t titans of finance spend $349 on a watch?

But the best reason for skepticism is that it’s, at root, a watch, with the primary purpose of telling time. And time is an illusion.*

Read more here to blow your mind.

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