BuzzAndNova

One of the best parts of the popular social media app, TikTok, is the accounts that feature nothing but their adorable pets. From pet hamsters to giant bunnies, there is a special kind of animal for every one on TikTok. One of the most unique pets to gain tons of attention on TikTok is Bunny the dog.

So, what’s so special about Bunny? She can kind of “talk.” The viral sensation has drawn in over 5 million followers who watch Bunny, a sheepadoodle mix, simulate conversations with her owner through pushing buttons.

So, is Bunny the real deal? Some people believe that Bunny actually knows what she’s doing while others remain super skeptical. Bunny “communicates” with her owner through a pad of buttons with pre-recorded audio commands.

Alexis Devine is Bunny’s owner and told Bustle that she first learned about the soundboard from speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger’s work. She saw that Christina used a similar device to teach her dog Stella to communicate with her.

“I felt like there’s no reason to bring a creature into your home if your plan isn’t to build an extraordinary relationship with them,” Alexis told Bustle.

The work started slowly with just an “outside” button for when Bunny needed to use the bathroom or desired to go outside for some fun, but soon, Bunny was using the button regularly. Soon, Alexis started adding other buttons to the board. Bunny was learning what each button meant based on what Alexis would do after Bunny tapped a certain command.

Bustle reported, “If Bunny tapped the ‘water’ button, for example, Devine would fill her water bowl. It’s a mutually beneficial system. She knows using the buttons pleases me — she knows if she requests a walk and I hear her, she is pleased.”

@what_about_bunny

Enough already Buns! ?????##bunnythedog ##fyp ##tiktokdogs ##talkingdog ##communication

? original sound – I am Bunny

Bunny is now part of a research study to see if she actually knows what she’s doing with the soundboard.

Bunny is enrolled in an open research study at the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of California, San Diego. The goal is to find out if dogs are actually communicating using these soundboards.

Alexis told Bustle that she knows people are skeptical of the work she and Bunny do, and she is too, which is why she wanted to be a part of the research study.

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The PS5 has been out in the US for over a week now and has just got its first weekend under its belt in the UK, so it’s natural that users are starting to discover a couple of bugs with the new console. One of them seems to involve the disc in the drive spinning on its own accord for no particular reason.

Obviously, if you have the Digital-Only Edition of the PS5 this won’t be an issue.

Instances where the PS5 standard edition console disc seems to spin randomly have been reported by multiple users. The disc obviously has to do this at times, and on PS4 it was necessary when firing up the console and when you start a game. Other than that though, there was no need for the disc to spin.

However, on the PS5 people are reporting that the disc tends to spin once every 45 – 60 minutes. A couple of examples have cropped up on Reddit and ResetEra.

I have the disc for Ghost of Tsushima in my PS5 at the moment and it spins up even if I’m playing Spider-Man or Demon’s Souls. I can understand it needing to check that the disc is still there, but surely it shouldn’t need to spin it that quickly/loudly to do so.

Sony hasn’t acknowledged this issue yet but as it’s still early days we expect to hear something soon enough. Have you experienced this issue at all? Let us know in the comments.

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There’s another Cyberpunk 2077 delay – but just for the DLC this time. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most anticipated games of the year, and while it looks like its December 10 release date isn’t about to be postponed again, we have now heard that the game’s DLC isn’t going to be unveiled as early as planned.

CD Projekt Red president Adam Kici?ski reportedly told investors that “The initial plan was to do it before release, but after the recent delay, we decided to wait for the release to provide gamers with the game and then start talking about future projects. So, after release” (via Seeking Alpha).

It doesn’t sound like there’s been any change to the free nature of these expansions – in the same way that The Witcher 3 received free DLC after launch – though the studio’s difficulties in finishing the base game this year makes the DLC delay wholly unsurprising.

Waiting to reveal DLC plans, though, may be better for CD Projekt Red in the long run, allowing for continual marketing pushes that keep the game in players’ minds after launch – as with the Smash Bros Ultimate DLC fighters added to the game every few months. We expect this DLC to contain optional content such as side quests, as well as new customization options, weapons and skins for use in the game.

Of course, The Witcher 3 also got some paid expansions too, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see a mix and match of paid and unpaid content in the pipeline.

Cyberpunk 2077 was originally slated to release in April 2020, but saw a sizeable five-month delay to ensure development was completed. That then extended to a seven month delay, with an addition month thrown in taking the final release date to be December 10 – eight whole months after the game was first expected to ship.

We have important news to share with you pic.twitter.com/qZUaD6IwmM

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) October 27, 2020

Game development is difficult business of course, and we’re always keener on a finished game than a timely one. If nothing else, the reported scale of Cyberpunk 2077 will keep us busy whenever we get our hands on it – and the delay throughout much of this year meant we paid more attention to other, equally worthwhile titles that might have been swept aside in the neon hype of this expansive open world game.

There’s plenty for CD Projekt Red to do, even after launch, including promised full-blown next-gen iterations of the game for PS5 and Xbox Series X.

But at this point, with only a couple of weeks to wait at the time of writing, a new delay doesn’t seem incoming – and we’ll take some hand-waving around DLC plans if it means we don’t have to wait any longer for the main experience.

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The U.S. Surgeon General credits the new surge in COVID cases to “pandemic fatigue,” but it’s nothing compared to what healthcare workers on the frontlines are going through. TIME recently reported that nurses are experiencing burnout, but it often goes unseen. A nurse recently employed a social media trend to draw attention to the behind the scenes fatigue.

An ICU nurse posted her own “how it started/how it’s going” photo on Twitter, and long story short, it’s not going that great. The before photo of Kathryn, an ICU nurse in Nashville, was taken in the middle of April right after she completed nursing school. The after photo revealed just how much literal sweat and tears healthcare workers put in while treating people during the pandemic.

How it started How it's going pic.twitter.com/cg32Tu7v0B

— kathedrals?? (@kathryniveyy) November 22, 2020

Some people refuse to wear masks for even 10 minutes in the grocery store because it’s “not comfortable,” but it’s nothing compared to the safety measures Kathryn and other nurses have take on a daily basis. Kathryn’s photo displayed a sweaty face and facial marks from her PPE. “I mean just the physical effects of wearing all that PPE (personal protective equipment) for so long,” she told CTVNews. “We’re dehydrated all the time because we’re sweating so much and because with the masks on, you can’t drink until you leave the floor or go into the break room to take your mask off and drink.”

Kathryn posted the photo because she wanted to draw attention to what nurses deal with on a daily basis. “It’s exhausting,” Kathryn told CTVNews. “People don’t see it. They don’t. They don’t see what we see. They don’t see the reality of this every day.”

Ultimately, Katherine wants people to take the pandemic seriously. “There’s still no definitive treatment for this disease and so to see my patients, these people that I provide care for, suffer so intensely and then see other people acting like that’s not happening, or like they couldn’t cause that to happen to someone else, is infuriating,” she told CTVNews.

Katherine stressed that the best way to ease the burden on tired nurses is to take care of yourself. “There isn’t any cavalry coming to relieve us or take our place if we fall, and things are only going to get worse,” she told Scary Mommy. “We will do everything we can for as long as we can to help as many as we can, but the public has to do their part to limit the spread of covid or the healthcare system and the people who work in healthcare will collapse under the weight of it.”

The nurse received a lot of positive support on Twitter. Katherine also encouraged other nurses to share photos of their haggard looks and mask marks. “Healthcare workers, drop your covid unit pictures and stories in this thread. People need to see the reality of what this disease does and we may not be able to film inside the hospitals, but we can show people what it’s done to us. They have to see,” she Tweeted.

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One of the more interesting legal dilemmas going on about Hollywood celebrities at the moment has been the tension between stars Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard. If there wasn’t already enough drama, it looks like the latest report on the issue adds another chaotic layer to the situation. Apparently a new report from The Blast brings Amber Heard’s father into the debacle.

As revealed by legal documents obtained by The Blast, it seems David Killackey, owner of Performance Allison Transmissions which worked on both Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s vehicles, made some reports regarding Amber Heard’s father. According to him, Heard’s father had sent Johnny Depp “death threats” during a phone call. It appears he even did so much as to threaten Johnny Depp by saying he’d kill him with a gun.

Here’s a snippet of the alleged phone call featuring Amber Heard’s father:

“That f—ing piece of s–t is f—ing me too because I’m supposed to get 10% of the money and without it I can’t produce the movie I was gunna make!” and “He is ruining my baby girl’s career and blackballing her in Hollywood.”

It eventually led to the point where Amber Heard’s father threatened Johnny Depp with the gun.

“and when I get to him I’m going to beat the s–t out of him” and “I’m from Texas, and men from Texas carry 45’s and Johnny is going to meet the f—ing end of mine!”

Apparently David Killackey responded to Amber Heard’s father, suggesting he quit making such threats and that he appeared to be drunk. Here’s what Heard’s father then allegedly stated:

“yeah, maybe I am and I’m going to shove the whiskey bottle up your a–!”

At the moment Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are both continuing their careers in Hollywood, but the ongoing legal dilemmas could lead into some serious issues if things continue down this route.

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If you’ve been looking forward to a sequel for Insomniac Games amazingly good Marvel’s Spider-Man tie-in, you will be pleased to know that you might not need to wait too much longer as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (if indeed it does end up being called that) is tipped to arrive sooner than we think.

Speaking on the latest edition of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, host Imran Khan alluded to the fact that he knows a great deal about a sequel to Marvel’s Spider-Man stating:

“I know too much about Spider-Man 2, so I can’t speculate too much. I think a Spider-Man 2 will come sooner than we think.”

And by “sooner than we think” it would seem that Mr. Khan is referring to sometime in 2021 as the host also mentioned a potential 2021 release window earlier in the podcast. Now, the thing is, do you think that a 2021 release is ‘sooner than we think’? Or, would you have been expecting a fairly quick turnaround on Insomniac’s superhero sequel?

Given the fact that the first Marvel’s Spider-Man has been used extensively in tech demos for Sony’s forthcoming, next-generation PS5 console, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that any sort of sequel would be released for PS5 (and also PS4 – because Sony will not want to give up that 100 million plus existing userbase).

Additionally, the potential release of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on PS5 in 2021 looks to be something of a statement of intent regarding Sony’s ability to produce a steady stream of stunning first-party exclusives for the new console – arguably a fact that has been a deciding factor in Sony’s victory over Microsoft during this console generation.

Assuming that the rumor mill has been accurate as of late, then the PS5 looks set to have Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Horizon Zero Dawn 2, The Last of Us Part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima all launching in fairly close proximity to the Holiday 2020 release of the console. The PS5 could certainly have worse starts, that’s for sure.

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The age-old wisdom holds that a dog ages seven years for every single human year. Well, it turns out the age-old wisdom has some catching up to do. That’s because scientists are now claiming that the way dogs actually age is more complex than we humans have previously thought.

Researchers at the University of California now claim that dogs rapidly age in their first two years of existence, quickly evolving from puppies to the equivalent of human middle age. They then experience a rapid slowing of the aging process in their DNA until much later in life.

It would be the equivalent of going from our mid-teens to age 40 almost overnight and then staying there for the next 35 or so years of our lives before our DNA began to rapidly deteriorate as our body prepared for death. From the Smithsonian:

“According to the formula, a 2-year-old dog is the equivalent of a 42-year-old human, but things slow down after that. A 5-year-old dog is the equivalent of a 56.75 year old human, and a 10-year-old dog is the equivalent of 67.8-year-old person.”

It turns out the old 7 dogs years to 1 human year calculation was debunked by scientists several years ago. In fact, no one really knows where it originates from. They just know there’s no real science behind it.

However, in some ways, the old seven-year-measurement isn’t that far off, according to the new research. That’s because of the DNA of the labradors in the study showed the equivalent of a 68-year-old’s DNA by the time they were 10. So, in some ways, the folksy wisdom that’s held true for ages is pretty much aligned with cutting edge research.

From the Smithsonian: “[T]he comparison breaks down after early puppyhood. The dog clock ticks much faster with pups speeding through puberty and reaching sexual maturity within their first year. Then, the dog’s epigenetic clock slows down as the dog ages, and begins to match up with humans again in its later years. Overall, the average 12-year lifespan of a Labrador lined up with the average worldwide lifespan of humans, which is about 70 years.”

If you really want to figure out how old your beloved dog is, the Smithsonian has incorporated the University of California research into a calculator. Although veterinarians and other scientists point out that dog breeds, sizes and general health factors all have a significant impact on dog’s life span.

But there’s good news there, too. The University of California study is far from the only project looking into dog aging and health. A major project led by the University of Washington called the “Dog Aging Project” is looking not only into dog health issues but how to eventually increase a dog’s overall lifespan. Because most of us can agree that the only correct answer to the question “how long will my dog live?” is “Forever.”

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As a parent, there’s a fine line when it comes to letting your kids drink. On one hand, you may not want your teens to drink at all. On the other, you might just want to be open with them and adopt the, “if they’re going to do it, they might as well do it here,” philosophy before collecting car keys.

As an adult, long gone are your college days where it was acceptable to drink copious amounts of beer and wine without a care in the world. And once the stork stops by your house for a visit, all eyes are on you when it comes to how you portray drinking to your children. While your young kids may be tempted to have a sip or two of your nightly glass of wine or pint of beer, it’s important to resist the urge. Not only is it illegal for those under the age of 21 to drink in the U.S., but there have even been studies that have shown that drinking at such an early age can lead to binge drinking as they get older.

A study by a group of Rhode Island scientists discovered that those children that are given even as little as a sip of beer or wine are more than five times more likely to be heavily drinking by the time they’re in high school.

And while most parents know better than to test the limits with alcoholic beverages, one Hollywood mom is getting some serious backlash from her fans after she revealed that she occasionally lets her young daughter steal a sip of wine with dinner. That said, there’s a better reason for it than just letting the girl do it for fun.

But during an interview for her latest film, “A Bad Moms Christmas,” the cast was asked to reveal their parenting confessions and Kunis shared that she lets her three-year-old daughter Wyatt have a sip of wine every Friday.

Kunis and the entire family partake in Shabbat, meaning that the entire family drinks wine on Fridays. But unlike her famous parents, Wyatt is only allowed a tiny sip.

Friday mornings she wakes up and I say it’s Friday, she says, ‘I can have wine,’” Kunis revealed in an interview with People Magazine.

While some parents understand Kunis’ illegal wine sampling for religious purposes, other parents aren’t so open-minded about the idea of underage drinking.

Others, however, have pointed out that in many European countries, children pick up on drinking at an early age.

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Ex–New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg began his campaign for president last week with the purchase of a decaf coffee and a slew of ads on Google searches for climate change, guns, and President Donald Trump’s tweets.

The Bloomberg campaign’s ad blitz debuted less than two weeks after Google said it would implement major restrictions for political ads in the 2020 campaign. These restrictions appear unlikely to hold the presidential campaigns back, as indicated by Bloomberg’s spending, which is running close to $1 million, according to an estimate via search analytics platform SEMrush.

“We are investing heavily in digital, an area where the Trump campaign has had a free run throughout most of the country and we are going to change that,” Bloomberg campaign spokesperson Marc La Vorgna told BuzzFeed News. La Vorgna did not comment on the $1 million estimate.

Bloomberg’s campaign has run ads across thousands of different search queries, according to SEMrush, including ads that ran against search results for “Trump tweets,” “Fox News Trump,” “Trump approval rating,” “impeachment,” “climate crisis,” and “gun control.”

A Google spokesperson said that while the company’s new policies don’t go into effect until January, Bloomberg’s ads are already in compliance.

The former mayor of New York isn’t the only candidate advertising on Google. The Trump campaign is also an active advertiser on the platform. Campaigns sending traffic to donaldjtrump.com spent more than $3 million over the past month, according to SEMrush estimates (which are imprecise). Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, despite calling for Google’s breakup, is also an advertiser on the search giant, although not a big one; her campaign has spent in the range of $10,000 to $20,000 for ads on search terms like “Elizabeth Warren” and “Nevertheless she persisted T-shirt.”

For Google advertisers, context — what people are typing in the search bar — is much more important than online behavior. If someone searches “where to buy a Kia Optima,” for instance, that’s a more significant indicator that they want to buy a Kia Optima than if a third-party data broker found they were making $70,000 a year and had visited a car website within the past month. That’s just as true of politics as it is the automotive industry.

“The restrictions make it much harder to target based on behavior and psychographics,” Aaron Levy, a group director at Tinuiti, a digital marketing firm, told BuzzFeed News. “But they don’t restrict what you can do on a normal basis.”

Levy wouldn’t go as far as to label Google’s political restrictions as meaningless. But the core of the company’s allure to political campaigns remains.

In November, Google and Twitter tightened their rules around political advertising, setting Facebook apart for now. But a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News last month, “Nothing is off the table.”

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Let’s be honest: No man has ever inflicted the kind of pain on me that my closest friends have the ability to. In this article you will find 11 reasons why the end of a friendship cuts deeper than that time the guy I was dating and I broke up at my Year 12 formal (true story).

1. We get told that friendships last forever – and it’s a goddamn liieee.

We almost expect heartbreak from romance. But from the time we’re small, “Friendship Forever” necklaces hanging from our necks, we’re made to believe friendships will last our whole lives. So when they don’t, it hurts.

2. Friendships allow us to be 1000% ourselves, which means when a friend ~dumps~ us – our self-esteem goes down the toilet.

All those midnight talks of ambitions, insecurities; the moments of fragility and complete vulnerability. If the person who knows you best in the world can leave you, what does that mean for the other people in your life?

3. They know all about you. If a friendship ends badly, who knows what hell they’ll unleash on your life.

Look, I know we’re not seeing eye-to-eye on anything at the moment, but can we at least be agreed that that thing, that happened that time, with you-know-who is still just between us?

4. We’re not allowed to curl up in a ball and cry over our loss.

At least not in the same way we’re given permission to mourn a romantic break up. Nobody blinks an eye if you become a ball of mucus over a partner, but a friend? Where are my flowers and ice cream now?

5. They take your social life with them. Your goddamn social life.

Relationship falls apart? At least you know his friends are his, yours are yours. But a friendship? Any shared friends are potential collateral damage, and suddenly your Friday night drinking circle gets a lot smaller.

6. The time it takes to go from stranger to BFFL is a-bloody-lot

Ever heard of a whirlwind romance? Love at first sight? Of course you have. Because it takes no time at all to fall in love – but a close friendship? You’ve got to invest a shit tonne of hours, those inside jokes aren’t going to write themselves.

7. It’s just. So hard to know where you stand.

So, I know we’re not talking, but what if we run into each other? Should I cross the street? Speak to you as if I don’t know your first love’s name/your favourite band/your most embarrassing secrets?

8. It feels like you are the first person in the history of this planet to go through this.

It takes approximately 0.65 seconds to find a movie, song or smoke signal that talks about the utter agony of a romantic break up. The breakdown of a friendship? Nothing. Nada.

9. The person you want to talk to about this is, well, them.

Break up with your man and you go to your friends. Break up with your friends? It’s just not the same, let’s be honest.

10. Good luck trying to cleanse your life of all evidence of them. Ain’t no way.

When I broke up with my high school boyfriend, I threw out the mixed CD he made me, deleted his number, never visited our favourite park again. Breaking up with my friend? Would require relocation and a brain extraction to get rid of their influence in my life.

11. And lastly, what if there’s never anyone else?

I mean, is there an app for this? Making new friends in adulthood is hard. It feels like everyone else has walked off the set of Friends, exclusive membership to the group by invite only.

Fortunately, like a break up, the breakdown of a friendship means there is now more room for the right people to find you.

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A man who died after a Northern California sheriff’s deputy put him in a sleeper hold because officers believed he was suspected of carjacking was, in fact, driving his own car when he was pulled over, officials said Monday.

Shortly before dawn on the morning of Nov. 27, David Glen Ward was driving his green Honda Civic in Sonoma County when officers tried to pull him over. Ward had reported the vehicle stolen at gunpoint a few days earlier, but he did not update authorities that he had apparently since found the car.

Around 5:40 a.m., a police detective in Santa Rosa saw the 52-year-old’s car and, because it was still listed as stolen, called the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. A deputy tracked it down about 15 minutes later and he and several other officers attempted to make a traffic stop, the Santa Rosa Police Department said in a press release.

Ward, who police described as “incoherent,” initially stopped but then fled, police said, triggering a pursuit that lasted for seven minutes and hit speeds of about 70 mph. Officers tried to block his path and eventually succeeded shortly after 6 a.m, police said.

After they surrounded him, officers ordered him to open the door, which he refused to do, and instead kept raising and lowering his hands from view, according to police. Ward finally rolled the window down but did not get out of the car, the report said. As a result, the officers tried to remove him by pulling him through the driver’s side window.

“They struggled to remove Ward from the vehicle and were unsuccessful in getting him out,” police said, adding that, at one point during the struggle Ward bit two deputies.

The group of officers used “personal body weapons” and hit the driver several times “in an attempt to gain compliance and remove him from his vehicle.”

After several minutes of wrestling, one deputy tased Ward through the open window, but it didn’t do anything. Shortly after, another deputy placed one of his arm’s around Ward’s neck and put him in a carotid restraint, which is also known as a sleeper hold or a blood choke and is meant to knock someone unconscious.

While struggling with Ward, an officer was able to break his front passenger window with his baton and he was finally removed from the car and placed in handcuffs.

“During the struggle, Ward had asked the deputies and officers why they were harassing him and stated something to the effect of I’m the victim but did not specify what he was the victim of,” Santa Rosa Police Lt. Dan Marincik told BuzzFeed News.

At 6:10 a.m., a deputy called the dispatch center and reported that the driver had stopped breathing and they were starting CPR.

An ambulance arrived on the scene about 10 minutes later and took Ward to Petaluma Valley Hospital, where he died about an hour later.

Chokeholds have been controversial and several major police departments have stopped using them. Despite a 20-year ban on the maneuver, an NYPD officer deployed the chokehold on Eric Garner in 2014 as he repeatedly gasped, “I can’t breathe.” He was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

In October 2019, community groups and activists in San Diego called on police to ban the use of carotid restraint, saying that it was disproportionately used on people of color and can severely injure or kill a person.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office does not consider the carotid restraint to be a chokehold because it doesn’t constrict the airway. The department’s policy states that a trained deputy should only use the tactic when a subject is becoming “violent or combative…due to the potential for injury.”

In response to questions about Ward’s state during the entire encounter, Marincik said he didn’t know if he would “characterize any of the interaction as normal.”

“When he was handcuffed, his movement was minimal. At one point, one of the deputies or officers stated that he was breathing,” he said. “I do not know how cognizant he was at that time.”

Ward was in “poor health,” had a heart condition, and had trouble walking, family members told the Press Democrat. His mother, Ernie Ward, said he used an oxygen tank and often need a wheelchair after a drunk driver hit him about 20 years ago, the paper reported.

“He had a hard time breathing and it’s hard to imagine him having even the energy or force to aggressively avoid an arrest,” his half-sister, Catherine Aguilera, told the Democrat.

Marincik said his department is still investigating the incident and the four law enforcement officials who were involved in the incident have been placed on administrative review.

He did not know if Deputy Charlie Blount, who applied the carotid hold, had been properly trained in the tactic. Blount has with the sheriff’s department for 19 years, according to the release. Before that, he was an officer with the Santa Rosa police department for about two years.

In a statement, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office said it will be conducting its own probe to “determine if deputies followed policies.”

“We have an expectation not only to ourselves but to our community to keep people safe, and the last thing that we want is for someone to get hurt or worse,” Marincik said. “Unfortunately, when a use of force incident ends in a tragic outcome you can not help but feel grief and heartache not only to the person involved but for their family and friends.”

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This photo should strike terror in the heart of all of us, as it symbolizes a heinous piece of American history. Rainn Wilson, the actor best known for playing Dwight Schrute on NBC’s “The Office,” has taken to Instagram with a photo and a story that reminds us that racism in America is unfortunately alive and well.

The photo shows a tree in the front yard of a suburban L.A. home with a noose hanging from one of its branches.

“So my friend Jamey texted me this photo,” Wilson wrote. “Looks pretty innocent at first, right? But when you learn that he and his sister are African American, the photo turns instantly chilling. This was hung in a tree in her front yard in suburban Los Angeles, to be found by her seventeen year-old daughter.”

Imagine being a 17-year-old Black American, stepping out your front door, and facing this scene. Would you feel safe? Would you feel protected? Would you feel that America is a place where racism isn’t allowed to thrive?

You might feel understandably threatened. You might call the police with your concerns. That’s what Wilson’s friend did.

“When the police were called they said, essentially, ‘what’s the big deal?'” Wilson shared. “Yolanda lost it. What’s the big deal? Well, officer, the noose is the symbol of lynching which was used to hang thousands of African Americans, especially by the Klan. Granted, this is a pretty lame noose. Might have been made by some local kids or something. Who knows. But the fact is it is as strong a symbol of racial hatred, violence and oppression as a Swastika.”

Yes, this is 2019. And we still have to explain the history of lynching in America and why a noose hanging in a Black person’s yard is, in fact, a big deal. Wilson explained that far too many Americans are in denial about racism in the U.S.

“Many folks are in denial about the extent to which racism exists in our country in 2019,” Wilson continued. “Just ask a Black Person. They will tell you stories.”

(For the record, asking random Black people to share their stories of racism for your own education isn’t actually a great idea. Basically, that’s like asking people to open their wounds so you can look inside to make sure they’re actually hurt. There are countless stories of racism that people have graciously shared online and in books that you can read without asking for extra emotional labor to be done. Alternatively, try truly befriending some Black people and wait for them to feel comfortable enough with you to open up and share.)

Wilson shared another story from his friend:

“Jamey told me today that last year, while playing golf, he was looking for his ball in the brush and a white guy who wanted to play through called out ‘Hey, you can hurry up, we don’t have you picking cotton anymore!’ Not sure if he was trying to be funny or not but literally Jamey’s great grandfather was an ACTUAL SLAVE on a plantation and was regularly beaten there. That’s not that long ago. Great grandfather. And, perhaps, a relative or two of Jamey’s were lynched. Or saw a lynching. Or heard of a lynching. And now, his niece gets to be reminded of what hate looks like. Right in her own front yard in suburban LA.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rainn Wilson (@rainnwilson) on Jun 4, 2019 at 10:38am PDT

If your first response is to assume this story is a ‘hoax,’ think long and hard before sharing that thought.

People who want to deny that racism is a real thing are already twisting themselves into knots trying to call this story a hoax. Here’s the problem with that:

1) Hanging a noose in a Black person’s yard is racist no matter which way you slice it. Even if it was set up as some silly schoolyard joke, the joke itself is racist and harmful, and obliviousness to that fact is a clear manifestation of racism in our society.

2) Assuming or implying that a Black person you don’t know would set this scene up themselves to get attention is a racist assumption. If you believe that Black people make these things up more often than not, then a) You clearly aren’t close to very many Black people, and b) Your mental image of Black people is racist. If your automatic presumption is that this can’t be true, then you you haven’t been paying attention to the last several hundred of years of American history and/or you are looking at that history through a lens of white supremacy.

The impulse to automatically question or challenge a Black person’s story is a racist impulse that needs to be checked.

And checking it really isn’t that complicated. It’s not hard to choose to listen to thousands of similar stories and believe them. It’s not hard to recognize that racism didn’t just magically disappear with the Civil Rights Act, especially since large numbers of people actively opposed its passage. It’s past time to shift the benefit of the doubt toward the groups who have been demonstrably abused and silenced in our country, and to speak out against racism whenever we see it rear its head.

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Robert Downey Jr. kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2008’s Iron Man. Since then, he has played Tony Stark eleven times, including his cameo in The Incredible Hulk. This rivals Hugh Jackman’s portrayal as Wolverine. And just like when Jackman said goodbye in Logan, Stark was killed off in Avengers: Endgame. An Academy Award would be a great way to commemorate this long-running portrayal. It should have been done with Jackman. And while The Revenant was arguably not Leonardo DiCaprio’s best work, he received the Best Actor award due to his prestigious career.

When Disney originally released its “For Your Consideration” list for the Oscars, they left RDJ off. The actor even dissuaded people from campaigning for his nomination. Though now, Disney has revised their list, and Downey is included for Best Supporting Actor.

Disney Studios Awards has chosen Avengers: Endgame, Aladdin, Toy Story 4, The Lion King, and Frozen 2 for the Academy to select from. It’s a wonder why they left Dumbo out. Under Endgame, they list the film for Best Picture, The Russo Brothers for Best Directors, Markus and McFeely for Best Adapted Screenplay, a bunch of technical awards, and most of the cast for the appropriate Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards. There are no considerations for Best Actor or Actress. Thus probably because Endgame was an ensemble piece with no true lead.

Downey has been nominated for Oscars before but has yet to win one. Best Actor for Chaplin in 1992. And Best Supporting Actor for Tropic Thunder in 2008. Each time, he lost to Al Pacino and Heath Ledger respectively.

Downey would be a great contender for the Best Actor slot. He would probably go up against the likes of Joaquin Phoenix (Joker), Robert DeNiro (The Irishman), Leonardo DiCaprio (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), and Taron Egerton (Rocketman). Against Phoenix would pit fans further into the Marvel versus DC debate. And against DeNiro would further the Martin Scorsese drama.

The 92nd Academy Awards will air on February 9th, 2020. We’ll probably hear the contenders for each award soon. With twenty-two films under their belt, recent ones earning at least a billion dollars each, and Avengers: Endgame being the number one movie of all time, it’s high-time that Marvel is recognized by the Academy.

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The choices that human beings make each day will eventually define who we are. Our brains undergo serious alterations as time goes on. These changes are especially noticeable when it comes to analyzing those who decide to kill. However, this is the story of a man who decided that he was going to kill those who had decided to kill others.

Pedro Rodrigues Filho is a Brazilian serial killer who has made a name for himself by killing off other serial killers. Analysts who have spent time looking over his case have referred to him as the perfect psychopath. He experienced abuse before he had even left his mother’s womb. His father’s repeated beatings of his pregnant wife left Pedro with a damaged skull and he had not even been born yet.

Located off the coast of India, North Sentinel Island is located in the Bay of Bengal. It’s a ways away from civilization and no one has been able to make contact with the native inhabitants. The island is one of the last remaining uncivilized places of the earth!

An indigenous tribe has lived on the Island with extremely limited contact with outsiders. Anyone who has attempted to explore the island has been attacked or outright killed. North Sentinel is so dangerous for outsiders that India’s government has established a three-mile exclusion zone in an effort to prevent more violence.

On the April 25 episode of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” our favorite characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe came together to create something epic.

Scarlett Johansson, Chris Pratt, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, Chadwick Boseman, and Anthony Mackie all got together to sing their own version of “The Brady Bunch” theme song for Fallon’s audience, and it might even be catchier than the original.

“Here’s the story of a playboy genius who was gearing up to form some sort of crew,” Robert Downey Jr. started off singing before the cast dove into the theme song.

“So then one day all the heroes were assembled, to fight a villain who packed much more than a punch,” the cast sang along. “And this group was labeled the Avengers, that’s the way we all became the Marvel Bunch.”

Here’s the original “Brady Bunch” tune for reference:

Now watch as the cast of “Avengers: Infinity War” introduce themselves in song as “The Marvel Bunch.”

(via Simplemost)

“Avengers: Infinity War” is in theaters now, and if these superheroes are even half as good at protecting the world as they are at singing, you definitely won’t want to miss it. I can’t wait to see it myself!

When we hear the words “mobile home”, our minds often go to a place that is not exactly decadent. However, there is one German company that is trying their absolute best to change this perception once and for all. Their newest innovation will make your father’s old trailer look like a Tonka toy. Their beast on wheels is going to set you back a pretty penny, though.

In order to purchase this mobile home, you are going to need to have some serious money saved up. The Performance S is the latest mobile home model from the good people at Volkner Mobil and this bad boy is going to run you a cool $1.7 million. Yes, you read that correctly.