The team set out to identify and quantify the respiratory viruses on frequently-touched surfaces in airports. They found evidence of viruses on 10 per cent of the surfaces tested and most commonly on the plastic trays that are circulated along the passenger queue at the hand luggage X-ray checkpoint.

 The study was carried out by a team of experts from the University of Nottingham and the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare who swabbed a variety of surfaces at Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland during the winter of 2016.

 The plastic trays used at airport security checkpoints have been found to harbour the highest levels of viruses at airports, in a new scientific investigation by pandemic experts.

 Click here for full story

 The investigation, published in BMC Infectious Diseases, concludes that hand washing and careful coughing hygiene are crucial to the control of contagious infections in public areas with high volumes of people passing through.

 The study was part of a larger EU-funded research project called PANDHUB which explored the role of airports and other traffic hubs in the spread of serious infections. The findings add weight to previous studies showing that microbes are commonly found on surfaces in public transport vehicles and will strengthen public health advice in preparation for future flu pandemics.

 At Helsinki-Vantaa airport, the highest concentration of viruses was detected on the security check plastic trays with further viruses detected on shop payment terminals, staircase rails, passport checking counters, children’s play areas and in the air.

 The most common virus found in the survey was rhinovirus, which causes the common cold but the swabs also picked up the influenza A virus. Interestingly, no respiratory viruses were found on toilet surfaces.

 Professor of Health Protection, Jonathan Van Tam, from the University’s School of Medicine, said: “This study supports the case for improved public awareness of how viral infections spread. People can help to minimise contagion by hygienic hand washing and coughing into a hankerchief, tissue or sleeve at all times but especially in public places. These simple precautions can help prevent pandemics and are most important in crowded areas like airports that have a high volume of people travelling to and from many different parts of the world.”

 Virology expert Niina Ikonen from the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare said: “The presence of microbes in the environment of an airport has not been investigated previously. The new findings support preparedness planning for controlling the spread of serious infectious diseases in airports. The results also provide new ideas for technical improvements in airport design and refurbishment.”

 The airport study was carried out during and after peak passenger density at the airport by a method which detects genetic material from viruses on surfaces and in the air. The results provided by this method do not prove that the viruses found on surfaces and air are alive and cause disease, but previous experimental research has proven that many microbes survive on various surface materials up to several days.

 — Ends —

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 The University of Nottingham is a research-intensive university with a proud heritage, consistently ranked among the world's top 100. Studying at the University of Nottingham is a life-changing experience and we pride ourselves on unlocking the potential of our 44,000 students - Nottingham was named University of the Year for Graduate Employment in the 2017 Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, was awarded gold in the TEF 2017 and features in the top 20 of all three major UK rankings. We have a pioneering spirit, expressed in the vision of our founder Sir Jesse Boot, which has seen us lead the way in establishing campuses in China and Malaysia - part of a globally connected network of education, research and industrial engagement. We are ranked eighth for research power in the UK according to REF 2014. We have six beacons of research excellence helping to transform lives and change the world; we are also a major employer and industry partner - locally and globally.

 Impact: The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest-ever fundraising campaign, is delivering the University’s vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future. More news… ||||| (CNN) — What's the most germ-filled spot in an airport? The bathrooms? Those crowded waiting areas? The passport checking counter?

 Surprisingly, none of the above.

 A new study from a team of experts from the UK's University of Nottingham and the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare, published in the BMC Infectious Diseases journal, has revealed those airport security plastic trays are the biggest culprit for spreading germs in airports.

 So next time you're dumping your phone, passport and laptop into the tray -- it might be worth having the hand sanitizer handy.

 Revealing study

 The team monitored germ levels on a variety of surfaces at Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland during the winter of 2016.

 Germaphobes who travel will be horrified to find out they found evidence of viruses on 10% of all the surfaces they tested. Other germ hotspots were shop payment terminals, staircase rails, passport checking counters, children's play areas and -- unavoidably -- in the air.

 There was evidence of rhinovirus -- the cause of the common cold -- plus some signs of influenza.

 Surprisingly, their swabs didn't detect respiratory viruses on the toilet surfaces.

 "This study supports the case for improved public awareness of how viral infections spread," said Professor of Health Protection, Jonathan Van Tram, from the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham, in a statement.

 "People can help to minimize contagion by hygienic hand washing and coughing into a handkerchief, tissue or sleeve at all times but especially in public places."

 Next time you're dumping your stuff in the security trays, best have that hand sanitzer nearby. Alex Wong/Getty Images North America/Getty Images

 His team-partner, virology expert Niina Ikonen from the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare, added: "The results also provide new ideas for technical improvements in airport design and refurbishment."

 At the end of the study, the team suggest that airports could provide "hand sanitization opportunities where intense, repeat touching of surfaces takes place such as immediately before and after security screening."

 Related content 1 in 50 people finds love on an airplane, study claims

 It's also suggested that the trays -- and other frequently touched surfaces -- could be cleaned more regularly.

 The study pointed out that handling the plastic security trays is almost inevitable for travelers -- unlike using airport store payment points, for example.

 On board

 Even if you avoid airport germs, previous studies have shown airplanes are equally as dirty.

 2015 study from Travelmath reported that the tray table was the number one offender, with overhead air vents also among the most germ-filled surfaces.

 Of course, interacting with these surfaces, whether before you fly or on board, is no guarantee of picking up a virus. ||||| LONDON — Airport security is there to protect you, but it may also give you the sniffles — or worse.

 To all the places and surfaces we’ve been warned are teeming with germs or bacteria — your pets, the subway seat, airplane cabins, the A.T.M. — add the airport security tray.

 The plastic trays — used at airport checkpoints around the globe and touched by millions of passengers as they drop shoes, laptops, luggage and other items into them to clear X-ray scanners — have been found to harbor a variety of germs, including the ones responsible for the common cold, according to researchers in Europe.

 Scientists from the University of Nottingham in England and the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare swabbed frequently touched surfaces at Helsinki Airport in Finland during and after peak hours in the winter of 2016 and picked up traces of rhinovirus, the source of the common cold, and of the influenza A virus. |||||

Write a summary.

– You probably wash your hands after using the airport bathroom—but what about after going through the security line? You might want to start, because a new study from the UK's University of Nottingham and the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare found that those trays you put your belongings in as you go through security had more cold germs on them than airport toilets, the New York Times reports. Researchers analyzed a variety of surfaces at Finland's Helsinki-Vantaa airport during peak flu season in 2015-16 and found evidence of respiratory viruses (including the common cold, influenza, and others) on 10% of them, CNN reports. But researchers highlight the security trays as the biggest risk, with 50% of them having respiratory virus germs on them. Respiratory virus germs were also found on surfaces in the children's play area, payment terminals, stair handrails, and a desk and divider glass at the passport check area. No respiratory virus germs were found on toilets—a finding referred to as "interesting" in a press release. "People can help to minimize contagion by hygienic hand washing and coughing into a hankerchief, tissue or sleeve at all times but especially in public places," says a researcher. "These simple precautions can help prevent pandemics and are most important in crowded areas like airports that have a high volume of people travelling to and from many different parts of the world." Researchers also suggest airports install hand sanitization stations near areas of "intense, repeat touching of surfaces."


Here is a news article: Breaking news out of the Black Rock Desert: Burning Man is infested with huge, biting bugs.

 The weeklong festival — which has become increasingly popular among the tech elite in recent years — hasn't started yet. Still, horrifying photos of swarms of unidentified bugs have surfaced on Twitter over the last few days.

 The infestation was confirmed by John Curley on the Burning Man blog:

 You may have seen the bug rumors on the internet. We are here to tell you that they are all true. Well maybe not all of the rumors, but the bugs are real. They're everywhere. They bite. They crawl all over you. They get up and in you.

 ...

 What's going on? We don't know. We don't know how the little critters survive in the heat and the sun. All we know is that if you pick up some wood, you're likely to uncover hundreds or thousands of the things. They've blown up inches deep against the sides of the Commissary tent. They've covered the carpets at the Depot. They're all over the Man Base. So it's not a localized occurrence. It's everywhere.

 We don't know where they came from, but there are two main theories: One is that all the spring and summer rain has hatched critters that lie dormant, or usually come to life at a different time of year. Or maybe they hitchhiked in on a load of wood from somewhere. Or maybe, as Shade postulated out at Man Base, there's a Johnny Bugseed making the rounds at night, sprinkling them anywhere and everywhere. ||||| click to enlarge Black Rock City Playa Info/Facebook

 A new breed of Burner.

 Marcia said that one had flown into her mouth gotten lodged between her teeth. She reports that they are quite bitter to the taste...Twin Peaks, who’s leading the construction of the Center Café, was talking about how bad they are when she jumped a little and pulled her t-shirt away from her body. A good-sized green bug fell to the ground. It had crawled into her bra...Metal Shop Heather wears a welding mask most of the day. Bugs have crawled up inside her visor and nestled around her eyes.

 Burning Man is being invaded by something more grotesque than techie billionaires. According to the Voices of Burning Man blog, the playa is crawling with voracious bugs. “We don’t know where they came from, but there are two main theories: One is that all the spring and summer rain has hatched critters that lie dormant, or usually come to life at a different time of year. Or maybe they hitchhiked in on a load of wood from somewhere,” blogger John Curley writes.It’s a been a warm, dry season for the Burning Man build — ideal conditions for bugs to spawn. Insects are reportedly blowing up "inches deep" against the commissary tent. They’re embedding in carpets like spilled rice. And judging by a picture on the blog , they're bloodthirsty.Life in Black Rock City has turned into a David Cronenberg movie:A self-described entomologist on the blog identified the creatures as winged ants and stink bugs. Another commenter, alias Dan Fox, wrote that he was “eaten alive the first few days of the Trojan Horse build in 2011” but the plague then “faded away to nothing.”Another commenter read the whirlwind of bugs as a bit of poetic justice:“Perfect! This is mother natures answer to all the rich [fucks] who have brought the default world to BM and have changed it from an alternative to mainstream. They’ll need to hire extra sherpas to follow them with a fly swatter."Or, as Champagne Lounge wrote on its Burning Man community page on Facebook, you could always pack bats alongside your bug spray. ||||| Burning Man is a lot of things, and every time we try to say what it is or isn’t, we fail. But we do know that there are some things that are undeniably true. One of them is that Burning Man is a family affair.

 The latest example we present is Audrey Pickney, one of only two second-generation DPW workers. (Welboy’s son, Corey, is the other, but he’s not able to be here this year.)

 Audrey is in her second year of working DPW, after three years working with Gate, Perimeter and Exodus. Her mom, Ridge, is a longtime DPW worker who’s also taking a year off this year, so Audrey is holding down the family presence.

 She goes to the School of the Art Institute of the Chicago, where she is studying fashion and fibers, the art of sewing. It’s wildly expensive, but a variety of fellowships and grants have her about a semester and a half from graduation.

 You’d think it would be a stretch to come out here after the urban art world in Chicago, but she’s been doing it for so long, it seems perfectly normal. Her first year was 2002, when she was nine years old. That’s right, nine, so she’s kind of a poster child for young Burners, too.

 Her mom started coming to Burning Man in 2001, and she loved it, and she thought that Audrey would like it, too. So she brought her, and she’s been coming ever since. She’s missed a Burn here and there for school reasons, but still. That’s a lot of her youth spent in the desert.

 “I love it here,” she says down at the Depot as the day winds to a close and the heat is finally letting up. “All my people are here. … I love doing work with my hands, I love the desert … like, why would I not?”

 She has an infectious laugh, and her manner is easy and open. She seems so natural at an age, 22, when so many others are still trying to figure out who they are, trying on different personas. But she seems as free of artifice as the desert hills. Did coming out to the Burn help her learn how to deal with stressful conditions with grace and humor? Hard to say, but it seems pretty clear that it didn’t hurt.

 Does she think that Burning Man, or coming out to work on the build, is the kind of thing that could last for generations? Could it be handed down, complete with legends and stories and oral histories?

 “Well, I don’t know,” she says indulgently. “But my grandpa comes here, too.”

 That would be Donovan, whom we met last year at one of the most raucous events of Burning Man, the DPW parade. We made sure to take a picture of all three generations who were attending. And we’d seen that before, the multi-generational experience. But we hadn’t heard of many second-generation DPW workers.

 The event has a wild reputation, and deservedly so. You can find a lot of what you’re looking for out here, be it personal growth, sexual exploration, spiritual connection. We can say that Burning Man has earned its reputation, so one could arrive expecting to have a completely wild and racy time.

 But it’s not always like that. “It’s like a family and a community of people,” Audrey says. “You know, in the real world, we’re all a bunch of fucking weirdos, and we’re all probably kind of a little bit antisocial. But out here, we’re all like that, like, let it all hang out.” She laughs easily again. “You know?” Yes, we know.

 “It’s like the perfect little niche. It’s not for everybody, but if it is for you, you definitely know it.”

 In other news:

 You may have seen the bug rumors on the internet. We are here to tell you that they are all true. Well maybe not all of the rumors, but the bugs are real. They’re everywhere. They bite. They crawl all over you. They get up and in you.

 Twin Peaks, who’s leading the construction of the Center Café, was talking about how bad they are when she jumped a little and pulled her t-shirt away from her body. A good-sized green bug fell to the ground. It had crawled into her bra.

 Metal Shop Heather wears a welding mask most of the day. Bugs have crawled up inside her visor and nestled around her eyes. Cammy and Stinger needed some help from the medical team to deal with the infestation; Stinger’s back was covered with nasty red welts from the bites.

 What’s going on? We don’t know. We don’t know how the little critters survive in the heat and the sun. All we know is that if you pick up some wood, you’re likely to uncover hundreds or thousands of the things. They’ve blown up inches deep against the sides of the Commissary tent. They’ve covered the carpets at the Depot. They’re all over the Man Base. So it’s not a localized occurrence, it’s everywhere.

 We don’t know where they came from, but there are two main theories: One is that all the spring and summer rain has hatched critters that lie dormant, or usually come to life at a different time of year. Or maybe they hitchhiked in on a load of wood from somewhere. Or maybe, as Shade postulated out at Man Base, there’s a Johnny Bugseed making the rounds at night, sprinkling them anywhere and everywhere.

 We’ve been blessed by fair skies so far during the build. For the first time in the past several years, there’s been no rain or lightning or hail or high winds to bring things to a crawl. But maybe we are making our way around the various plagues, and this year it’s time for pestilence.

 Marcia said that one had flown into her mouth gotten lodged between her teeth. She reports that they are quite bitter to the taste.

 We don’t know how long it will last. Cobra Commander said at the morning meeting that high temperatures will be with us again today, and the hope is that the heat and the dryness will knock down the bug population. “Because otherwise we’re gonna have to nuke the city” to get rid of them. |||||
A summary of this is?

– There's a burning question in the days leading up to this year's Burning Man: Who let the bugs out? And while that may seem like an ordinary question at the start of any Burning Man, this year it's particularly literal as early-arriving Burners photograph an apparent infestation ahead of the festival's start on Aug. 30, reports Business Insider. The complaint originated on the Burning Man blog, where John Curley wrote: "It’s not a localized occurrence, it’s everywhere. We don’t know where they came from, but there are two main theories: One is that all the spring and summer rain has hatched critters that lie dormant, or usually come to life at a different time of year. Or maybe they hitchhiked in on a load of wood." The bugs are clearly bloodthirsty, reports SF Weekly, with images of bites now making the rounds. One woman reportedly had a bug fly into her mouth and lodge itself between her teeth. (Apparently they taste bitter.) Another wrestled one out of her bra. A self-described entomologist is calling them winged ants and stink bugs. Time will soon tell if the bugs put a damper on the impending festivities, because the critters are clearly no picnic. "They bite," Curley writes. "They crawl all over you. They get up and in you." And so far, they don't seem to mind the burning hot desert sun. (Check out what revelers at a Burning Man knock-off in Israel accidentally torched.)


Taylor Swift just posted a very cryptic post on her social media accounts, indicating that she may be returning with new music very soon, and one of her collaborators, Joseph Kahn, has seemingly confirmed the news.

 After Taylor returned to social media with a video of some sort of serpent, Joseph replied with a smiley face.

 Then, Joseph went a step further and wrote, “In 30 minutes, as a show of power, @taylorswift13 will blot out the sun,” obviously referring to Taylor‘s massive star power in comparison with the upcoming 2017 Solar Eclipse.

 If you didn’t know, Joseph is a music video director and has directed some of Taylor‘s 1989 videos including “Bad Blood,” “Wildest Dreams” and more. ||||| Christopher Polk/Getty Images

 No longer a blank space. Taylor Swift returned to social media on Monday, August 21, just three days after wiping her Instagram and Tumblr posts, deleting her post-2011 Tweets and changing her official website to a black screen.

 Shortly after the drastic disappearances from Swift’s social media platforms on Friday, fans were quick to notice that the blackout occurred exactly three years after the announcement of 1989, the Grammy-winner’s most recent album.

 A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Aug 21, 2017 at 8:00am PDT

 Swift shared a video to her Instagram and Twitter accounts on Monday, however the return is just as mysterious as the disappearance of posts. In the 10-second clip, a snake-like figure slithers as the lights flicker.

 Director Joseph Kahn, who worked with the singer on her “Bad Blood” video, quoted Swift’s tweet with the clip and added a smiley face. Shortly after, he wrote on Twitter: "In 30 minutes, as a show of power, @taylorswift13 will blot out the sun.”

 Us Weekly exclusively revealed in May that the singer has been quietly recording a new album during her time off, despite keeping a very low profile in recent months.

 "She's aiming to release an album this fall,” a source told Us at the time. "She's continuing down the pop route because 1989 was a huge success and fans really gravitated toward that album. She knows there's a demand for a new album and has really started focusing on making that happen for fans. She's just excited to get back out there.”

 See the best reactions to Swift’s video teaser below:

 #SolarEclipse2017: A complete eclipse only happens once every 30 years, everyone will tweet about this-

 Taylor Swift: pic.twitter.com/R5Jv2w0dFY — summer (@slaylorstan) August 21, 2017

 Haters: Taylor Swift is a snake

 Taylor: *Embraces it*

 Hater: pic.twitter.com/ToX7gdGgOp — Dayton / 7 (@hesotall_) August 21, 2017

 eclipse: "finally, 38 years later it's my time to shi—"

 taylor swift: pic.twitter.com/5Q9Y1DsanD — Maxwell Dunn (@maxwdunn) August 21, 2017

 RT IF YOU’RE PROUD TO SAY THAT YOU STAN A LEGENDARY SNAKE NAMED TAYLOR SWIFT 🐍🐍🐍🐍 — َ (@idwlfdeluxe) August 21, 2017

 Taylor Swift deleted all of her social medias because after a snake sheds it's skin, it comes back better than before.

 #TS6ISCOMIMG pic.twitter.com/IK83bPghqt — Demisus🌙 (@ArianaFenties) August 21, 2017

 Y'all can have the eclipse I'm just gonna be watching @taylorswift13 social media all day. 🔮👀 Bye. — Justin Mikita (@JustinMikita) August 21, 2017

 Taylor swift announces game of thrones cameo pic.twitter.com/drnWuJaaSA — Shitty Watercolour (@SWatercolour) August 21, 2017

 Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now!

 For the latest celebrity entertainment, news and lifestyle videos, subscribe to Us Weekly's YouTube Page. ||||| Is Taylor Swift releasing new music? Her mysterious snake videos hint yes

 CLOSE Taylor Swift shared a cryptic video snippet Monday across her social media accounts of a snake. USA TODAY

 Yep, it's a snake.

 Taylor Swift continues to tease fans with mysterious videos on social media, her first posts since wiping her accounts on Friday.

 Just after 11 a.m. ET on Monday, Swift posted a ten-second video of what appears to be a snake's tail on Instagram and Twitter.

 On Tuesday, around the same time, she posted a second clip of the snake.

 On Wednesday, the snake finally reared its head in an additional, heavily-CGI'd video. With the tail, middle and head of the snake all represented, fans were left guessing whether Thursday will actually bring new music.

 The posts are the first updates on Swift's social media sites since her official pages were blacked out (including Twitter, Instagram and her own website) prompting speculation of a new album announcement.

 Coincidentally, last Friday marked the three-year anniversary of Swift's Shake It Off release and 1989 album announcement, hinting that her much-anticipated sixth album may be around the corner.

 More: Taylor Swift erased from social media and fans can't shake it off

 Joseph Kahn, Swift's go-to music video director, quoted her tweet with a smiley-face and cracked a joke about Monday's solar eclipse, with many Internet commenters speculating that the two events were related.

 In 30 minutes, as a show of power, @taylorswift13 will blot out the sun. — Joseph Kahn (@JosephKahn) August 21, 2017

 Tswift trying to eclipse the eclipse https://t.co/0fThmqPB6n — Sydney Esiason (@sydneyesiason) August 21, 2017

 Only Taylor Swift could out hype a solar eclipse💁🏻 https://t.co/ZvGP8mlRxR — Brooklyn and Bailey (@BrookAndBailey) August 21, 2017

 As fans have pointed out, Taylor has been associated with snake imagery since her drama with Kim Kardashian last year. Right around the time Kardashian "exposed" Swift on social media, she tweeted a string of snake emoji, which fans interpreted as her taking shots at Swift.

 And earlier this year, Swift fans commemorate the anniversary of the drama by celebrating "National Snake Day" on July 17 as a holiday in Swift's honor.

 Twitter had plenty of jokes about Taylor embracing the snake.

 Instead of being very much excluded from this narrative, I guess she's owning it https://t.co/WhxLTA4FUv — Phillip Picardi (@pfpicardi) August 23, 2017

 No way...is Taylor Swift leaning totally into her supposed "snake" role people love giving her?! HERE FOR THAT!! Give it to em good, Taylor! https://t.co/azmocrQC7Y — Jeff Benjamin (@Jeff__Benjamin) August 21, 2017

 Queen of taking the hate and turning it into art. 🐍 https://t.co/e6ZfI5Rcj4 — Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) August 21, 2017

 i see a snake? im guessing her album is self-titled https://t.co/tRzFVOs8M1 — san (@duarxgui) August 21, 2017

 Oh yes, a smart business woman using self deprecation to her advantage https://t.co/CBlF5l5jNF — nick (@touchnick) August 21, 2017

 "Snakes shed their skin to allow for further growth and to remove parasites that may have attached to their old skin." #TS6ISCOMIMGhttps://t.co/ymiMvoniFK — Katie Krause (@Katie_Krause) August 21, 2017

 Viewers also thought the video's mysterious tail resembled a dragon, prompting a flurry of Game of Thrones references.

 Taylor Swift, the real Mother of Dragons. https://t.co/SYpIVkj4hq — Brandon Davis (@BrandonDavisBD) August 21, 2017

 Is this like a Game of Thrones reference? TSwift's the new mother of dragons, y'all. https://t.co/OxVid1KPLE — Brian Truitt (@briantruitt) August 21, 2017

 is this a dragon? did she just start watching game of thrones? so many questions I'm dying https://t.co/wc8bIGsOlE — sania (@jacobpercIta) August 21, 2017

 the mother of dragons we deserve 😩😩😩 https://t.co/QJBYqH0D2T — Randolph (@rabdolph) August 21, 2017

 One date that Swift fans should keep in mind: Sept. 30, the end of the eligibility period for next year's Grammy awards, which would give the singer a hard deadline if she wants any new music to qualify.

 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2wqK0Qs ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| About

 "Taylor Swift Is a Snake" is a catchphrase used to smear the American pop singer-songwriter as a deceitful manipulator in the light of her post-breakup dispute with Calvin Harris, Scottish musician and her ex-boyfriend, as well as an unrelated controversy stemming from her reaction to the lyrics of Kanye West's 2016 rap single "Famous", both of which became high publicized in July 2016. The phrase is mainly used in the form of emoji and comment spamming on her Instagram account.

 Origin

 The rocky relationship between Taylor Swift and Kanye West began with the latter's infamous interruption of Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. A few years later, the two musicians seemed to have reconciled their differences at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, with Taylor Swift confirming that there were no hard feelings between them in an interview with MTV, while Kanye West publicly apologized for his previous stunt during his acceptance speech for the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. Then in late June 2016, another feud arose between the two following the release of the music video for "Famous," the first single from Kanye West's seventh studio album The Life of Pablo.

 The music video quickly became a popular subject of gossips and media attention due to its inclusion of provocative imageries of celebrities and public figures, as well as lyrical references alluding to his

 I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex

 Why? I made that bitch famous (God damn)

 I made that bitch famous

 Spread

 Taylor Swift's Response

 In response, Taylor Swift claimed she was offended and never approved the lyrics. But Kanye West claimed she did approve the lyrics, with Swift and her supporters denying the claim.

 Kim Kardashian's Snapchat Video

 However, on July 18th, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West's wife, uploaded videos on SnapChat of Kanye West and Taylor Swift having the conversation (which she then uploaded to her Instagram account).

 Online Reaction

 Since then, there were various reactions to videos, with hashtags on twitter like #KimExposedTaylorParty and #TaylorIsASnake started being used. Various websites and media outlets like BuzzFeed and 4chan's /mu/ (music) have been discussing and reporting on the drama and creating various image macros on the subject.

 Justin Bieber's Instagram Post

 On August 2nd, Justin Bieber posted a mobile screenshot of himself video chatting with Kanye West via FaceTime to his Instagram account, along with the caption that simply read "Taylor swift what up." Within the first 12 hours, the post garnered over 1.5 million likes and 135,000 comments.

 Taylor swift what up.

 Bieber's dry greeting was largely interpreted as a subtle diss towards Swift in the light of her recent feud with West and it subsequently triggered a massive flood of spam comments on Taylor Swift's Instagram posts, in a very similar way to the raid that ensued on Miley Cyrus' Instagram account after Nicki Minaj confronted her by saying "Miley, What's Good?" during her acceptance speech for the Best Hip Hop Video Award at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards.

 Snake Video

 On August 21st, 2017, Swift tweeted a short glitched video of what appeared to be a snake's tail on her Instagram and Twitter accounts (shown below). Since the video marked the artist's first social media since her accounts had been purged of all content, many speculated that it may have signaled a new album in the works. Meanwhile, others on Twitter made jokes about the video post coinciding with the 2017 solar eclipse.

 Examples

 Search Interest

 External References ||||| The new era of Taylor Swift is HERE, so please cancel all your plans and pray for Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. According to Genius, Swift's new song is called "Timeless"—and not only has it been registered under her name, but a website is "coming soon."

 FINALLY!!!!!

 According to Genius, Taylor Swift's new single is called "Timeless".

 A website with the name was created. #TS6 pic.twitter.com/rLdGFqnedG — Taylor Swift Updates (@TheReputation13) August 21, 2017

 Swift first indicated that she was making her triumphant return by shutting down all forms of social media. She then dropped some cryptic code on the backend of her website, and has since emerged with what appears to be a snake (or perhaps dragon?) tail video—a clear reference to the fact that everyone spent the better part of 2016 spamming her with the snake emoji.

 In the words of this random Swift fan on Twitter:

 my names alyssia and i stan a shady ass qUEEN thats coming to slay everyone who dissed her in the past two years, watch out bitches. #TS6 — a loves taylor 🌊 (@newyearsdaytay) August 21, 2017

 Stay tuned for more updates.

 Follow Marie Claire on Facebook for the latest celeb news, beauty tips, fascinating reads, livestream video, and more. ||||| When Taylor Swift deleted all of her social media posts and became a faceless (wo)man on Friday, you knew something was up. Three days later, speculation is only growing after the singer posted a nearly inscrutable video to Instagram and Twitter. Is new music on the way? What kind of music will it be? Or, seriously, is this just a cry for help? The Ringer staff launched into full conspiracy mode and put forth their most viable theories.

 A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Aug 21, 2017 at 8:00am PDT

 Justin Charity: Taylor Swift tweeting tentacle porn and we just acting like it’s normal.

 Lindsay Zoladz: Look, it’s a snake. Do not tell me that someone as image-conscious as Taylor Swift didn’t Rorschach-test this on 50 of her closest besties to confirm that it does indeed look like a snake, which of course indicates that her new song will have something to do with the infamous Taylor-Kimye feud.

 I truly hope Taylor proves me wrong, though. This is already a precarious time for someone like Taylor Swift to be releasing new music—what with the foundation of American democracy crumbling and all—and it would be an especially petty time for her to microwave some year-old beef and pick a fight with another celebrity. Nobody needs “Bad Blood II” right now—the only person I’m interested in hearing a T-Swift dis track about is Donald Trump.

 Amanda Dobbins: My first thought, just like everybody else, was that it’s a snake. Fine; I don’t know how she’s gonna get through this press cycle without addressing the Kim/Kanye fiasco, and if she can have a sense of humor about it, all the better. Here’s my issue: Why are you releasing this in the literal middle of the internet’s Eclipse Insanity? I assume that this tease is related to the upcoming VMAs, and that Taylor is contractually obligated to promote her Single Release–Katy Perry Peace Summit (it’s happening, they both need the ratings) throughout the week. But there is no reason that can’t wait until Tuesday, when the press cycle is free and clear of eye-burning memes and Game of Thrones complaints. This is my problem with late-period Taylor—not the whining, which has always been part of her brand, but how incompetent the dissemination of said whining is. Get your messaging together. It’s 2017.

 Michael Baumann:

 Andrew Gruttadaro: In ancient Greece—likely around 585 B.C.—a solar eclipse occurred during a battle between the Medes and the Lydians, inspiring the factions to put down their weapons and declare peace. In the United States of America—in the year 2017 A.D.—musician Taylor Swift saw that a solar eclipse was coming and picked up her weapons and aimed them at the famed tribe of the Kardashians. People interpret omens differently. [Shrugs.]

 Kate Knibbs: Remember when people kept leaving snake emoji on Taylor Swift's (now-deleted) Instagram posts? I barely do, because last summer feels like it happened 5,000 years ago and on a different planet, so to refresh: Taylor Swift bashed Kanye West's lyrics about her in "Famous." Kim Kardashian West then posted a video on Snapchat showing Kanye on the phone with Taylor, who seemed to approve of the song. And thus Taylor was branded a snake, a disingenuous conniver.

 And now, after a low-profile 2017, Swift has deleted all her social media posts and uploaded a single, undulating reptile tail. It probably means that she's going to release new music, but I also hope it means that she's going to release new music and she's decided to set aside her gee-golly wallflower ingenue persona for good and embrace a public image that more accurately reflects her personality. Swift's a Slytherin. She muscled her way into songwriting fame by masterminding insanely catchy songs that simultaneously trashed the reputations of men who had wronged her. She got caught either flat-out lying or at least exaggerating for sympathy. Look what she did to Tom Hiddleston.

 Secretly Bad Taylor was no fun. It's time for Openly Bad Taylor. More feuds, more drama, absolutely no more hangouts with Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Instead of denying her snake side, I hope this weird video of a snake’s butt means that Taylor Swift has decided to lean into her true trickster nature.

 Jordan Coley: Those close to me have probably heard me saying this privately for months, but after Taylor Swift’s cryptic Instagram post Monday morning, I figured it was time I brought this theory forward. Prior to Monday morning’s post, Swift had not really posted anything on her Instagram in many months. She was noticeably absent during the election and was nowhere to be found at the Grammys this past February. This is, of course, because Taylor Swift is trapped in the Upside Down. Yes, the dark, lifeless parallel reality that Netflix’s Stranger Things famously brought to our attention. But didn’t she make that video for Russell Westbrook? Nope, we all know the NBA is rigged; that video was recorded before the season even started. But didn’t she promote Lorde and Haim’s new releases on Instagram? Pfft—automated PR content from her label. Listen, Taylor’s trapped down there, and whatever’s down there with her doesn’t look too friendly. Monday morning’s post was a cry for help. Now, we can either sit around and do nothing, or get off our butts and go buy some Christmas lights. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– First, Taylor Swift blacked out her entire online presence. Then, on Monday, she returned to social media—but all she shared was a mysterious video of a snake. The internet is going nuts trying to figure out what she's up to: CNN speculates the snake video could be some sort of reference to the "Taylor Swift is a snake" meme beloved by her haters. Of course, the most obvious possibility is that Swift is building up hype for a new music release, and one of her collaborators, Joseph Kahn, seemed to confirm that possibility by retweeting her snake video along with a smiley face, Just Jared reports. Kahn has directed music videos for Swift including "Bad Blood" and "Wildest Dreams." Us points out that Swift's social media blackout took place exactly three years after she announced her most recent album, 1989. The gossip magazine previously reported she's been working on an album to be released in the fall. Music lyrics site Genius posted lyrics for a new song supposedly from Swift called "Timeless," but the page has since been taken down. Still, that hasn't stopped multiple outlets including Marie Claire from reporting that must be the name of her upcoming single and/or album. (And this might be the website for it.) The Ringer overanalyzes the snake snippet and offers up ideas for what it could be teasing, including an upcoming "peace summit" with (former?) rival Katy Perry. A number of outlets including USA Today are rounding up fan reactions to the snake video.


A high court ruling blocking extradition to the US of Lauri Love, a student accused of breaking into US government websites, has been welcomed by lawyers and human rights groups as a precedent for trying hacking suspects in the UK in future.

 The decision delivered by the lord chief justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, is highly critical of the conditions Love would have endured in US jails, warning of the risk of suicide.

 Lawyers for the 33-year-old, who lives in Suffolk, had argued that Love should be tried in Britain for allegedly hacking into US government websites and that he would be at risk of killing himself if sent to the US.

 There was cheering and applause in court on Monday when Burnett announced his decision. He asked supporters to be quiet, saying: “This is a court, not a theatre.”

 In his judgment, Burnett said: “It would not be oppressive to prosecute Mr Love in England for the offences alleged against him. Far from it. Much of Mr Love’s argument was based on the contention that this is indeed where he should be prosecuted.

 “The CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] must now bend its endeavours to his prosecution, with the assistance to be expected from the authorities in the United States, recognising the gravity of the allegations in this case, and the harm done to the victims.”

 The court heard evidence from psychiatrists who work in the US prison system and questioned the adequacy of safeguarding procedures in US prisons.

 The CPS, which acts on behalf of the US authorities in the case, said it would read the judgment before deciding whether or not to appeal. It has 14 days to decide whether or not to appeal to the supreme court.

 Emerging from the front of the court afterwards, Love said: “This is not just for myself. I hope this sets a precedent for the future for anyone in the same position that they will be tried here.”

 At a press conference later, he added: “I am greatly relieved that I’m no longer facing the prospect of being locked up in a country I have never visited. This legal struggle has defined my life for the past four years. I’m not looking forward to be being prosecuted but I think there’s a better chance that it will be done justly and fairly in the UK.”

 Keyboard warrior: the British hacker fighting for his life Read more

 Love, who holds joint British and Finnish nationality, has Asperger syndrome and severe depression. His supporters had gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice before the hearing carrying placards declaring: “Trump can’t get no Love”, “Free Love”, “Trial at home” and “Give Love a chance”.

 They feared he would be held in solitary confinement and face a jail sentence of up to 99 years in the US.

 Welcoming the judgment, Emma Norton, the head of legal casework at Liberty, which intervened in the case, said: “We are delighted that the court has today recognised Lauri’s vulnerability, close family connections to the UK and the potentially catastrophic consequences of extraditing him. This was always a case that could have been prosecuted here and it’s shameful that Lauri and his family have been put through this terrible ordeal.”

 His father, the Rev Alexander Love, had said his son feared for his life because he did not think he could cope with the trauma of being sent to the US. He also praised Theresa May for devising the legal test that prevented Love’s removal.

 Nick Vamos, a solicitor at the law firm Peters and Peters and a former CPS extradition specialist, said: “This judgment will mean that US and UK prosecutors will need to be very careful in future about how they decide who should prosecute cases of concurrent jurisdiction, and will have to focus far more than previously on a suspect’s connections to the UK.”

  ||||| Lauri Love smiles as he leaves with parents Alexander Love, left, Sirkka-Liisa Love, second left, and girlfriend Sylvia Mann, from The Royal Courts of Justice in London, Monday, Feb. 5, 2018. The ruling... (Associated Press)

 Lauri Love smiles as he leaves with parents Alexander Love, left, Sirkka-Liisa Love, second left, and girlfriend Sylvia Mann, from The Royal Courts of Justice in London, Monday, Feb. 5, 2018. The ruling in Lauri Love's appeal against extradition to the United States, where he faced solitary confinement... (Associated Press)

 LONDON (AP) — An alleged computer hacker from Britain won his appeal Monday against extradition to the United States.

 The High Court in London ruled that Lauri Love's extradition wouldn't be allowed, although judges said it would still be possible to prosecute him in England.

 The decision in Love's favor was greeted with cheers in the courtroom.

 U.S. officials had requested Love's extradition on cyber-hacking charges for allegedly compromising government networks between October 2012 and October 2013 and stealing data.

 Love, 32, has Asperger's syndrome and a depressive illness. His lawyers said it would be "unjust and oppressive" to send him to the U.S. to face trial.

 He said outside the courthouse he hopes his case can help spur discussion about how people with mental health issues are handled by the justice system.

 "This decision is important for the appropriate administration of criminal justice and also for the humanitarian accommodation of people whose brains work differently," he said.

 He criticized prosecutors for suggesting his mental issues were fabricated, saying that only served to stigmatize people with similar problems.

 Love is alleged to have stolen large quantities of data from various American agencies, including the Department of Defense, the Federal Reserve and NASA, and the U.S. Army.

 He has been charged in three U.S. states: New Jersey, New York and Virginia.

 At a hearing in November, his legal team said there was a high risk that Love would kill himself if extradited.

 In their ruling, the High Court judges raised the possibility that Love could be put on trial in England, saying that that wouldn't be considered "oppressive" and that he would be much less of a suicide risk if imprisoned in England because he would be close to his family and loves ones.

 The judges said the Crown Prosecution Service "must now bend its endeavors to his prosecution, with the assistance to be expected from the authorities in the United States, recognizing the gravity of the allegations in this case, and the harm done to the victims."

 Prosecutors haven't indicated whether charges will be brought against Love in Britain. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Lauri Love: Alleged hacker hopes extradition case 'sets a precedent'

 Alleged computer hacker Lauri Love has won his High Court appeal against his extradition to the US.

 Mr Love, 33, from Stradishall, Suffolk, was first arrested in October 2013 on suspicion of hacking into FBI, US Central Bank and Nasa systems.

 Appeal judges said extradition would be "oppressive by reason of his physical and mental condition".

 They urged the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to prosecute Mr Love, who has Aspergers syndrome, in England.

 Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and Mr Justice Ouseley said Mr Love, who also has depression, "did not seek impunity for the acts alleged against him, but contended that he should be tried and, if convicted, sentenced in the United Kingdom".

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Lauri Love attended the appeal hearing with his girlfriend Sylvia Mann

 They said: "We accept that the evidence shows that the fact of extradition would bring on severe depression, and that Mr Love would probably be determined to commit suicide, here or in America."

 Mr Love is alleged to have stolen huge amounts of data from US agencies, including the Federal Reserve, the US army, the defence department, Nasa and the FBI in a spate of online attacks in 2012 and 2013.

 However, his supporters had warned if he was extradited there was a "high risk" he would kill himself.

 The judges urged the Crown Prosecution Service to work with US authorities because of "the gravity of the allegations in this case, and the harm done to the victims".

 They added that "if proven, these are serious offences indeed".

 The United States authorities now have 14 days to lodge a request for an appeal hearing at the UK Supreme Court.

 Lauri Love case timeline

 Image copyright PA

 28 October 2013: Lauri Love is arrested in Suffolk under the Computer Misuse Act and accused of breaching the security of Nasa and FBI, among other US government agencies. He is released on bail.

 27 February 2014: Mr Love is accused of a new charge of hacking into US Federal Reserve computer servers and stealing the personal information of users.

 20 February 2015: Police in the UK say they will not return Mr Love's computer because they cannot decrypt its files.

 16 July 2015: Mr Love is re-arrested by the Met Police executing an extradition warrant on behalf of the US.

 20 August 2015: Mr Love tells the BBC he fears he will not get a fair trial in the US.

 10 May 2016: A bid by the National Crime Agency to force Mr Love to hand over encrypted computer passwords is thrown out by a district judge at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

 6 September 2016: Mr Love tells the BBC he fears dying in jail if he is extradited.

 16 September 2016: A judge at Westminster Magistrates' Court rules Mr Love should be extradited to the US.

 24 October 2016: MPs sign a letter asking President Obama to block Mr Love's extradition.

 14 November 2016: Home Secretary Amber Rudd signs the extradition order.

 29 November 2017: The Court of Appeal begins hearing Mr Love's appeal against extradition.

 Speaking outside the court, Mr Love said he hoped he had set a "precedent so this will not happen to people in the future".

 "I'm hoping that this outcome can contribute to the discussion we are having as a society about how to accommodate people that have neuro-diversity, whose brains are made up in a slightly different way," he said.

 "There is an ongoing problem with people with autism in the justice system - they have actually been debating it in Westminster Hall.

 "I hope in the future to be able to contribute to a slightly better understanding of the stigma associated with depression."

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Lauri Love case 'victory for justice'

 Image copyright PA Image caption Supporters warned if Lauri Love was extradited there was a "high risk" he would kill himself

 His father Alexander Love said: "This is a victory for justice. What makes Great Britain great is that we live in a place with wisdom and compassion."

 Authorities in the US have been fighting for Mr Love to face trial on charges of cyber-hacking, which lawyers have said could have meant a sentence of up to 99 years in prison if he was found guilty.

 The decision to block extradition was met with cheers in the packed London courtroom.

 A spokesman for Mr Love's solicitors, Kaim Todner, said it was "important" the British justice system "has taken the stance that we should deal with the matter ourselves, rather than accept the US government's demands".

 Image copyright AFP Image caption The United States authorities now have 14 days to lodge a request for an appeal hearing at the UK Supreme Court

 "It has also been recognised that mental health provisions in US prisons are not adequate to satisfy us that Lauri would not have come to serious harm if he were extradited," the statement added.

 Emma Norton, head of legal casework for campaign group Liberty, said she was "delighted" the court had "recognised Lauri's vulnerability, close family connections to the UK and the potentially catastrophic consequences of extraditing him".

 She added: "This was always a case that could have been prosecuted here and it's shameful that Lauri and his family have been put through this terrible ordeal."

 Mr Love's local MP Matt Hancock said: "It has been a long and hard process for him and his loving family and I'm delighted this verdict has been reached."

 A CPS spokesperson said: "We have received the High Court's judgment on Lauri Love which we will now consider before making any further decisions." ||||| Getty Images / DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS / Contributor

 The UK's High Court has ruled that accused British hacker Lauri Love should not be extradited to the US to face charges. In a central London court decision, the judges ruled Love should stay in the UK.

 In their full judgement, the lord chief justice Ian Burnett and justice Duncan Ouseley discharged Love's order for extradition.

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 The judges ruled that Love's extradition would be "oppressive" due to his health conditions and it would be likely that he would be kept in solitary confinement in the US prison system. The new decision by the judges overrules Westminster Magistrates' court in late 2016, which said Love should go to the US.

 Love, who lives near Newmarket, is accused of hacking US government bodies and intelligence agencies in 2012 and 2013. He could have faced up to 99 years in prison and a potential fine of up to $9 million (£6.3m) if he was extradited.

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 However, Love lives with Asperger’s Syndrome and has a history of depression, and has argued his medical situation means he shouldn't be extradited to the US to face any potential trial. Love has publicly stated he would take his own life if he was forced to go abroad. His legal team has argued he should face trial in the UK instead of being extradited.

 "The support of his family, in particular, would mean that he would be at far lower a risk of suicide," if he was to stay in the UK, the judges said. Their ruling continued to say that there is "no satisfactory and sufficiently specific evidence" that treatments would be available in the US for Love.

 Despite the ruling, the judges said the UK's Crown Prosecution Service should "bend its endeavours" to prosecute Love over the charges he faces. Any potential prosecution should be done in accordance with US authorities. "If proven, these are serious offences indeed," the ruling says.

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 Police working for the National Crime Agency first arrested Love, in Suffolk, in 2013. He was not charged until 2015 when he was arrested on behalf of the US government and faced with the threat of extradition.

 Upon hearing the decision campaign group Liberty said it is important that a vulnerable person like Love should face trial where a possible criminal offence was committed. "We are delighted that the court has today recognised Lauri’s vulnerability, close family connections to the UK and the potentially catastrophic consequences of extraditing him," Emma Norton the head of legal casework said.

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 "This was always a case that could have been prosecuted here and it's shameful that Lauri and his family have been put through this terrible ordeal.”

 After the ruling, Love spoke outside the court. "I'm very thankful for all of the support that we've had, without which I don't think I would have made it this far."

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 "This decision obviously affects my life but the reason I have gone through this ordeal is not to just to save myself from being kidnapped and locked up for 99 years in a country I have never visited," he said. "But it is to set a precedent whereby this will not happen to other people in the future, if there is suspected criminality then it will be trialled here in the UK. We're hopeful that other people may be able to rely on this verdict to ensure they're more humanely treated by the justice services."

 Here's the background to Love's case.

 What's he charged with?

 It's alleged that Love was involved in #OpLastResort, run by hacking group Anonymous. The operation was a protest against the arrest of renowned programmer Aaron Swartz. (Swartz killed himself while facing charges in 2013).

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 Between 2012 and 2013 it is said Love belong to an Anonymous group accused of hacking into Nasa, the FBI and US Federal Reserve. A 2014 FBI legal filing says Love is allegedly a "sophisticated hacker" who stole sensitive personal information and made it available online.

 The FBI says an SQL injection was used to exploit vulnerabilities in Adobe ColdFusion and backdoors were inserted into the websites that could be exploited in the future. The website of the United States Sentencing Commission was also defaced and hosted a video created by Anonymous.

 Love has neither confirmed or denied any role in Operation Last Resort, as The Guardian reported in September 2017.

 Before this, in October 2013, the National Crime Agency arrested Love after pretending to deliver him a parcel at his parent's home. The body later issued legal proceedings telling Love to hand over passwords to his encrypted laptop but courts ruled this would not be legal and denied the NCA's request. No charges were brought by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

 The legal arguments

 The court case Love v Government of the United States of America – which is being ruled on today – was held in the Royal Courts of Justice in November last year. The appeal was took to court by Love after he lost a court case for extradition in 2016.

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 In the case three months ago, Love's legal team, led by Edward Fitzgerald QC, argued that Love should not be tried in the US because of his medical conditions. "There’s a very real risk that he would commit suicide," The Guardian reported at the time. "There’s a virtual certainty that his condition would deteriorate."

 It was argued the stress of being removed from his family and routine would exacerbate his conditions. Fitzgerald said the case against Love could be held in the UK and there would be a "real risk of inhuman treatment" against Love if he was sent to the US.

 Judge Nina Tempia, at Westminster Magistrates' court, ruled in September 2016 (court documents) that Love should be extradited to the US. She said: there is a "strong public interest" in the UK upholding its extradition treaties with the US; the offences are serious; "millions of dollars' worth of damage" was caused by the hacks; that US officials say they can manage vulnerable people in their prison system.

 However Tempia's ruling said Love is "at high risk of committing suicide" if extradited and he is "of good character" and is working and studying.

 Ultimately, it was decided that he should be extradited as Tempia was "satisfied his needs will be comprehensively met by the US authorities". Two months later, in November 2016, home secretary Amber Rudd signed an order that Love should be extradited. His appeal was then launched.

 The change in the law

 Love's case has many similarities with that of hacker Gary McKinnon. In October 2012, Theresa May – the then home secretary – blocked the extradition of McKinnon to the US after a 10 year battle. He faced up to 60 years in US jail if convicted of hacking charges.

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 McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome and suffered with depression, was allowed to stay in the UK after it was found his condition would "give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life" that it would breach his human rights.

 May also introduced a forum bar. "This will mean that where prosecution is possible in both the UK and in another state, the British courts will be able to bar prosecution overseas if they believe it is in the interests of justice to do so," she said at the time.

 The forum bar exists under section 83A of the Extradition Act 20013. It allows judges to block extradition to the US and other countries if a crime was committed in the UK and if it is in the accused's interests to stand trial in the UK. Essentially, the addition to the law ensured that government ministers would not have to make any final decisions on an extradition case when it comes to human rights grounds. Speaking ahead of Love's trial one of his lawyers, Karen Todner, said if the forum bar is successful "the UK police will have a green light to take more prosecutions here and not bow to the US pressure to extradite". |||||

Write a summary.

– A 33-year-old British man who allegedly hacked into the FBI, NASA, and Federal Reserve and did millions of dollars worth of damage as a form of protest in 2012 and 2013 won't be stepping foot on US soil anytime soon. The High Court of London decided against extradition on Monday, with the Guardian reporting that it agreed with the two arguments his lawyers put forth as part of Love's appeal against extradition: That he could be prosecuted in the UK, and that Love, who has Asperger's and depression, could end up killing himself while in US custody. The AP reports the judges felt his suicide risk would be lessened if he was jailed in England, where family and friends would be accessible to him. The BBC and Wired quote Love as saying "the reason I have gone through this ordeal is not to just to save myself from being kidnapped and locked up for 99 years in a country I have never visited," but that he hoped his case set a "precedent so this will not happen to people in the future. ... I'm hoping that this outcome can contribute to the discussion we are having as a society about how to accommodate people that have neuro-diversity, whose brains are made up in a slightly different way." Wired notes that Love would have faced up to 99 years and a fine of up to $9 million were he convicted in US courts. As for prospects of being tried on his own shore, the judges in their ruling "emphasize ... that it would not be oppressive to prosecute Mr. Love in England for the offences alleged against him."


Write an article based on this summary:

– As one New York City institution wrestles with high-profile molestation accusations, another finds itself the target of outcry over the "sexualization" of a young girl—in a painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says it will not take down the 1938 painting "Thérèse Dreaming" by the French artist Balthus, though 7,000 people have asked that it do so via the petition site care2. The petition started by Mia Merrill describes the work as "an evocative portrait of a prepubescent girl relaxing on a chair with her legs up and underwear exposed," and calls it "disturbing" that the museum would knowingly display such a sexualized image in our "current climate." As for the knowingly part, she notes that the Met paired a 2013 exhibit of Balthus' work with a sign explaining some of the pieces could be "disturbing" to viewers. A 2013 Guardian article indicates "Thérèse Dreaming" was part of that exhibit. Merrill writes that "if the Met had the wherewithal to reference the disturbing nature of Balthus, they understand the implications of displaying his art." The New York Post reports the museum on Sunday said the painting would remain hanging, with a rep saying, "Moments such as this provide an opportunity for conversation." The museum's description of the piece notes that Thérèse Blanchard, Balthus' neighbor in Paris, was 12 or 13 when she was painted. The Paris Review reports the late Balthus was asked about the "provocative poses" he painted young girls in, and replied, "It is how they sit." In his review of the 2013 exhibition for the New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl had this to say: "I kept thinking of a line by Oscar Wilde: 'A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence.'" (A US couple has been forced to give up their $1.75 million painting.)

When I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this past weekend, I was shocked to see a painting that depicts a young girl in a sexually suggestive pose. Balthus' painting, Thérèse Dreaming, is an evocative portrait of a prepubescent girl relaxing on a chair with her legs up and underwear exposed.

 It is disturbing that the Met would proudly display such an image. They are a renowned institution and one of the largest, most respected art museums in the United States. The artist of this painting, Balthus, had a noted infatuation with pubescent girls, and it can be strongly argued that this painting romanticizes the sexualization of a child.

 In 2013, the Met hosted the exhibit "Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations," which included more of Balthus' overtly pedophilic work. As the Guardian wrote: "The Met, not imprudently, has put a plaque at the start of the show that reads: "Some of the paintings in this exhibition may be disturbing to some visitors." If The Met had the wherewithal to reference the disturbing nature of Balthus for this exhibit, they understand the implications of displaying his art as a part of their permanent collection.

 Given the current climate around sexual assault and allegations that become more public each day, in showcasing this work for the masses without providing any type of clarification, The Met is, perhaps unintentionally, supporting voyeurism and the objectification of children.

 I am not asking for this painting to be censored, destroyed or never seen again. I am asking The Met to seriously consider the implications of hanging particular pieces of art on their walls, and to be more conscientious in how they contextualize those pieces to the masses. This can be accomplished by either removing the piece from that particular gallery, or providing more context in the painting's description. For example, a line as brief as, "some viewers find this piece offensive or disturbing, given Balthus' artistic infatuation with young girls."

 Ultimately, this is a small ask considering how expansive the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection is (they can easily hang up another painting), how overtly sexual the painting is (the Met's description of the piece provides no background on Balthus or his reputation), and the current news headlines highlighting a macro issue about the safety and wellbeing of women of all ages.

 Please sign this petition if you agree that the Met needs to reconsider the way it is displaying Balthus' suggestive, Thérèse Dreaming. I will be sending a letter to the museum alongside these signatures. ||||| Washington, D. C. Museum of Modern Art Gallery. "Paris Painters of Today," January 31–February 26, 1939, no catalogue. New York. Pierre Matisse Gallery. "Balthus: Paintings and Drawings," March 17–April 8, 1939, no. 2 (as "Jeune fille endormie"). New York. Pierre Matisse Gallery. "Figure Pieces in Modern Painting," January 20–February 14, 1942, no. 1 (as "The Dream"). New York. Pierre Matisse Gallery. "Balthus," March 15–April 3, 1949, no. 16 (as "Le Rêve"). New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Balthus," December 19, 1956–February 3, 1957, no. 10 (as "The Dream [Le Rêve]," lent by The Reverend James L. McLane, Los Angeles). Cambridge. New Gallery, Hayden Library, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Balthus," February 10–March 2, 1964, no. 10 (as "Le Reve," lent by Mrs. James L. McLane, Los Angeles). Pasadena Art Museum. "A View of the Century," November 24–December 19, 1964, no. 29 (as "The Dream," lent by Mr. and Mrs. Louis McLane). Cleveland Museum of Art. "Fifty Years of Modern Art, 1916–1966," June 14–July 31, 1966, no. 70 (as "Le Rêve," lent by Louis McLane). London. Tate Gallery. "Balthus," October 4–November 10, 1968, no. 12 (as "The Dream [Thérèse and Her Cat]," lent by Mr. Louis McLane, California). Marseilles. Musée Cantini. "Balthus," July–September 1973, no. 5 (as "Thérèse revant," lent by a private collection, U.S.A.). Paris. Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne. "Balthus," November 5, 1983–January 23, 1984, no. 14 (lent by a private collection). New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Balthus," February 29–May 13, 1984, no. 19 (lent by a private collection). New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Twentieth-Century Modern Masters: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection," December 12, 1989–April 1, 1990, unnumbered cat. (p. 203). London. Royal Academy of Arts. "Twentieth-Century Modern Masters: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection," April 19–July 15, 1990, unnumbered cat. Mexico City. Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo. "La Colección de Pintura Mexicana de Jacques y Natasha Gelman," June 23–October 11, 1992, not in catalogue. Martigny. Fondation Pierre Gianadda. "De Matisse à Picasso: Collection Jacques et Natasha Gelman," June 18–November 1, 1994, unnumbered cat. (p. 227). New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Painters in Paris: 1895–1950," March 8–December 31, 2000, extended to January 14, 2001, unnumbered cat. (p. 111). New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Balthus Remembered," March 27–May 27, 2001, no catalogue. Cologne. Museum Ludwig. "Balthus: Aufgehobene Zeit. Gemälde and Zeichnungen 1932–1960 / Balthus: Time Suspended. Paintings and Drawings 1932–1960," August 18–November 4, 2007, no. 13. Martigny. Fondation Pierre Gianadda. "Balthus: 100e anniversaire," June 16–November 23, 2008, no. 43. New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations," September 25, 2013–January 12, 2014, no. 9. Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. "Rétrospective Balthus," April 19–June 22, 2014, no. 21. Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. "Balthus," July 5–September 7, 2014, no. 21.

 References ||||| Revisited is a series in which writers look back on a work of art they first encountered long ago. Here, Jen George revisits Balthus’s painting Thérèse Dreaming.

 In Balthus’s painting Thérèse Dreaming, a young girl sits, face turned to profile, arms up, elbows out, hands rested on her head, legs a little open, underwear visible—a sort of clothed, daydreaming, preteen odalisque. She is at home in her youth. She has the countenance of someone who knows other things are coming, eventually. Maybe she knows what, though she probably doesn’t. Not like she needs to—experience comes from being alone in the world, and with time. When asked about the provocative poses of preadolescent girls in his work, Balthus said, “It is how they (young girls) sit.”

 When I first saw Thérèse Dreaming, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I stopped to sit. Maybe I’d been tired. I had been traveling cross-country with a counterfeit sixty-day Greyhound Ameripass—it allowed for unlimited bus travel within the U.S—and I had been smoking heavily and maybe not sleeping at all. I couldn’t stay all day in the Brooklyn apartment where I’d been sleeping, so most days I went to the Met, looking at art, spacing out, reading, sometimes staring at blank walls. It was inviting, the room and the painting. Thérèse’s skirt was like mine. My hair was longer. I liked her shoes. I liked that she was both in this room and not; she was dreaming, but I couldn’t see where she’d gone.

 I spent my days at the Met mostly trying to forget that I was hungry and without money. I wasn’t dressed properly for late fall in New York. I wrote letters I didn’t send to an older man, an artist back in California. He’d tried to draw me once, late at night, but I couldn’t sit still because I didn’t know how. In the drawing, he’d rendered my face too young, somewhat elfish. He’d titled the drawing The Model Who Kept Moving. “I don’t look like that,” I’d said. “You don’t know what you look like,” he told me.

 A week into my visit, walking south along Fifth Avenue after the museum had closed, I met an older man who was also walking. He asked me why I walked so fast.

 “Where is your coat?”

 He told me about New York, what the best places were, why the city itself was superior. “It is different and better if you have money. I can show you the other side.”

 The letters to the artist in California were brief, hopeful notes, written with a vague intention that if sent, the artist would think of me. Maybe we could see each other in the daytime, I’d written.

 “You should learn how to wear makeup,” the man on Fifth Avenue said as we neared Fifty-Ninth Street. He took me to get my makeup done at Bergdorf Goodman. We didn’t look at coats. At the beauty counters, wealthy women asked for creams, serums, masks, and lipsticks by name. I was made up heavily with blush.

 At the rooftop bar at the Peninsula Hotel later, there were heat lamps. I asked for whiskey, but he ordered us martinis.

 “You could be anybody,” he said. “The hotel owner’s daughter, for instance.”

 I was young enough, or feeling the alcohol enough, to believe that I could be anybody, that a way to get through life was to believe that you’re a certain type of anybody whom things belong to, are for. I ate all the free nuts. People looked at us, probably because I was looking at them. Or maybe they were looking at my heavy blush. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to eat the nuts.

 Later in the hotel elevator, he put his hand on my neck.

 “Do you always go where strange men tell you to go?”

 “No,” I shrugged.

 “They might want to harm you. Maybe I want to harm you.”

 “Well, do you?”

 “Maybe.”

 I told him a friend was waiting for me. He wrote his number in the journal with the letters.

 A few days before I left New York, I took a friend to the museum to look at the painting.

 “Does she remind you of anyone?” I asked him.

 “No,” he said. His failure to recognize a similarity between the painting’s subject and myself created a sudden distance between Thérèse and me. I’d spent so much time with her, more than with any one person in the last month, that I had almost considered her the type of close friend that girls have in youth, when they want to look the same and dress the same and think the same, and often do.

 I went back to the museum alone the day I was to leave from the Forty-Second Street bus terminal, trying to convince myself that I did look like Thérèse, that we had some quality in common. The gallery was empty. I sat looking at her, studying her face, trying to remember the ways we were the same. Thérèse didn’t reassure me, she didn’t acknowledge anything. She sat still in her pose, eyes closed, face turned away, her profile and underwear catching the light.

 I was about six years older than Thérèse is said to be, but Thérèse Dreaming would be the image, the place, that stayed with me when I traveled west across frozen highways, on a series of busses, stopping at Greyhound terminals and gas-station food courts, sleeping next to older women and accidentally resting my head against their shoulders as they farted all night and played scratchers and talked to me about their families. I remember they all told me how young I was, asked me what in the hell I was doing. “I wanted to be alone,” I said. “I wanted to be left alone for a little while.”

 Jen George lives and works in New York City. Her fiction has appeared in Harper’s, n+1, The White Review, BOMB, and The Brooklyn Rail. The Babysitter at Rest, published this month by the Dorothy Project, is her first book. ||||| Art Bizarre Balthus show reveals artist's fixation with cats and young girls 3 / 5 stars More character study than retrospective, the Met's provocative new Balthus exhibition has an unsettling undertone

 • Click here for more images from the Balthus show More character study than retrospective, the Met's provocative new Balthus exhibition has an unsettling undertone Thérèse Dreaming by Balthus, 1938. Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998 © Balthus

 If current trends continue, in just a few years all of contemporary culture will be nothing but an unending stream of cat pictures. Newspapers desperate to survive will publish only adorable kitten photos; social networks will strain under the weight of shorthairs and Siamese. The art world is already getting in on the act: witness the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis hosting an internet cat video festival (it drew 10,000 viewers in one day), or White Columns, the avant-garde New York gallery, laying on The Cat Show, featuring "purr-formers in residence". The Brooklyn Museum recently rehung its august Egyptian collection in a display called "Divine Felines."

 I wonder whether the Metropolitan Museum of Art had our contemporary cat mania in mind when it scheduled its smart, strange exhibition of the Polish-French painter Balthus – a figurative master in an age of abstraction, and one of the creepiest figures of modern art. You may know him as an anti-modernist with a taste for young girls. His love of cats, however, receives less attention, and in this cat-saturated moment that love might become the dominant one.

 The first painting, on loan from Switzerland, is a remarkable, full-length self-portrait done at the age of 27. Balthus is wearing high-waisted yellow trousers and an abbreviated necktie, stepping forward seductively with his left foot while an obese tabby nuzzles his right. On the floor, a stone tablet bears an inscription in English: "A portrait of HM the King of Cats." He earned the title. In one almost psychedelic work, from 1949, a grinning feline of human proportions sits at a seaside cafe table; a school of fish jumps from the sea on to the cat's plate, trailing behind it a glorious rainbow. In another artist's hands this might feel tasteless. From Balthus, this is par for the course.

 Cat's whiskers … Detail from Balthus's 1935 self-portrait, The King of Cats (1935). Photograph: Fondation Balthus, Switzerland © Balthus

 Balthus, born Balthasar Klossowski on 29 February 1908, fell for both art and cats at an early age. At 11, devastated by the disappearance of a stray he'd taken in, the young artist produced 40 memorial ink drawings, each five inches square and done in a forceful black-and-white that recalls the woodcuts of German expressionists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. In the first drawing, the preteen Balthus, wearing shorts, finds the cat, Mitsou, on a park bench. Soon they're snuggling together in bed, walking through the streets (Mitsou prances on a leash), sitting by the Christmas tree. In the final scene Mitsou is gone and the boy is left alone in his bedroom, sobbing uncontrollably.

 Drawing the line … the final ink drawing in Balthus's Mitsou series (1919, black ink on paper, 6 x 4 3/4 in). Photograph: Private collection © Balthus

 The Mitsou drawings made it into print in 1921 with a preface by Rainer Maria Rilke, a friend of the Klossowski family and, by the way, one of the lovers of Balthus's mother. Confident, musical, sweet and grim by turns, these drawings – the originals are being shown publicly for the first time, and they're the best reason to see the show – are much more than Balthus juvenilia. They're the pistol shot that began one of the most mystifying, frustrating careers in 20th-century art.

 He stood at the core of mid-century European culture, a mate of Picasso and Lacan, but despised much of what we now think of as the greatest achievements of modernism. (His brother Pierre Klossowski, subject of a fantastic show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2006, was the more progressive figure.) He was a vile anti-semite, despite his own possible Jewish ancestry. Born into something like genteel poverty, he later styled himself as a count and told Alberto Giacometti that he "needed a château more than a workman needed a loaf of bread".

 Recipe for concern … The Cat of La Méditerranée by Balthus (1949). Photograph: Private collection © Balthus

 And, oh, he also had an inordinate fixation on girls who'd just hit puberty. "Little girls are the only creatures today who can be little Poussins," Balthus said late in life, and this show counterposes images of sly, knowing cats with ones of ostensibly innocent children. The Met, not imprudently, has put a plaque at the start of the show that reads: "Some of the paintings in this exhibition may be disturbing to some visitors." Only some visitors? They should disturb us all.

 Thérèse Blanchard, his first muse (if you can use that word for a child), is shown reclining on a divan with her skirt hiked up, panties clinging to her inner thighs, while a cat sups milk from a saucer. Thérèse is depicted a second time, in bobby socks, splayed out on a bench and losing her balance. One girl is reading a book on the floor, her bottom hiked in the air; another lounges like an odalisque, gazing into a mirror while her bare leg dangles off a settee.

 The girls are self-possessed and serious, and Balthus always denied any hint of paedophilia. But get real: these are erotic images of children. Some, especially the Thérèse portraits, show real invention and even a little humour that make them difficult to dismiss outright. Others, especially the mannered domestic scenes of his later career, are barely competent acts of voyeurism. Their inclusion here displays a welcome willingness on the part of the curator, Balthus specialist Sabine Rewald, to present the artist in full.

 More a character study than a real retrospective, this show leaves out many of Balthus's most famous paintings to concentrate on two obsessions that end up rolling into one. Cats may seem anodyne fun to the legions of reblogging obsessives driving today's digital feline explosion. In Balthus's world, though, cats have a much more chilling flipside, and they stay with you long after the latest meme has faded. ||||| New Yorkers launched a petition demanding that the Metropolitan Museum of Art remove a 1938 painting of a young woman with her underwear exposed due to the “current climate around sexual assault” — but the Met refused Sunday.

 The piece, “Thérèse Dreaming” by the French artist Balthus, “sexualizes” the girl by depicting her lounging in a skirt with her knee up on a chair, according to the petition, which was posted on the website Care 2.

 “The artist of this painting, Balthus, had a noted infatuation with pubescent girls and this painting is undeniably romanticizing the sexualization of a child,” writes Mia Merrill, 30, a New York City entrepreneur who started the petition.

 “Given the current climate around sexual assault … The Met is romanticizing voyeurism and the objectification of children.”

 It proclaims, “The [Met is] a renowned institution and one of the largest, most respected art museums in the United States.

 “I am simply asking The Met to more carefully vet the art on its walls, and understand what this painting insinuates.

 “Ultimately, it’s a small ask in consideration of how expansive their art collection is … how overtly sexual the painting is, and the current news headlines highlighting a macro issue about the public health and safety of women.”

 The petition, which launched Friday, had raked in nearly 7,000 signatures by Sunday evening.

 But a rep for the museum said it won’t remove the painting because art is meant to reflect many time periods — not just the current one.

 “[Our] mission is to collect, study, conserve, and present significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas,” said spokesman Kenneth Weine.

 “Moments such as this provide an opportunity for conversation, and visual art is one of the most significant means we have for reflecting on both the past and the present.”

 In 2013, the Met held an exhibition of Balthus paintings titled, “Balthus: Cats and Girls — Paintings and Provocations.”

 When the erotic realist died in 2001, the lead singer of U2, Bono, sang at his funeral. The president of France and supermodel Elle Macpherson also attended the funeral. ||||| The superb Polish-French painter Balthus—an anti-modernist beloved of modernists, including Picasso—charms the eye and rattles thought. For more than six decades, until his death, in 2001, at the age of ninety-two, Balthus depicted young girls in gamy poses, attributing any perceived eroticism to viewers with unclean minds. His other perennial subject was the cat, his totem animal. A fat feline nuzzles his leg in a self-portrait made when he was twenty-seven; the artist cuts an imperiously Romantic figure and dubs himself, in an inscription in English, “The King of Cats.” It is the first painting in “Cats and Girls,” a focussed retrospective, finely curated by Sabine Rewald, at the Metropolitan Museum. Then come girls, by the dozen, often with cats in attendance. Was Balthus a pedophile? His interest, if not lust, didn’t stir before his subjects’ pubescence, but it waned in their late teens. The show occurs at a cultural moment that is stretched between sexualizing the young and reacting with horror and anger to the lately abundant cases of their sexual exploitation. If you can shrug off that tension at the Met, I salute your detachment. I sure can’t. Balthus puts me in two minds, attracted and repelled, in search of a third. He strains the moral impunity of high art to an elemental limit, assuring himself an august, unquiet immortality.

 He was born Balthasar Klossowski in 1908 in Paris. He added “de Rola” to his name, fancifully claiming noble birth; he was given to pretension all his life. He had a remarkably enriched childhood: his father, an art historian, and his mother, a painter who went by the name Baladine, hobnobbed with the literary and artistic élites. In his teens, he was mentored by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, a family friend and a lover of Baladine’s, while his older brother, Pierre, became André Gide’s secretary. (Pierre went on to be a cult hero of French intellectuals as a devoutly obscene philosopher, novelist, graphic artist, and exegete of the Marquis de Sade.) When Balthasar was eleven, his adored pet cat, Mitsou, ran away. He made forty ink drawings detailing his memories of the animal and his fruitless search for her. In the last, he stands alone, crying. Displayed at the Met, for the first time anywhere, the suite is fantastically talented—the most precocious art I believe I’ve ever seen, with boldly rhythmic compositions like those in German Expressionist woodcuts and uncanny affinities to Matisse. Rilke arranged for the publication, in 1921, of a handsome book of the Mitsou images, for which he wrote the preface. The artist was identified by his nickname, Baltusz. Imagine being thirteen years old and bathed in such glory. A year later, Balthus wrote in a letter, “God knows how happy I would be if I could remain a child forever.”

 Balthus was a largely self-taught artist, who learned what he needed from copying paintings and frescoes in Italy, especially those of Piero della Francesca. Besides the loftily serene Piero, his other major influence was the guttural messiah of realism, Gustave Courbet. That improbable pairing registers throughout Balthus’s work as classical elevation infused with sensual vigor. The style doesn’t feel conservative; it feels outside historical time. You’re always off balance with it, sometimes as if you were being subjected at once to a high-church orison and a dirty joke. Balthus learned to soft-pedal the latter quality after his first gallery show, in Paris, in 1934. Craving attention, he got all too much of it with “The Guitar Lesson”—a painting not in the Met show—in which a bare-breasted woman holds a schoolgirl, naked from the waist down, across her lap and strums the girl’s genitals. (In one study, the guitarist is male.) Strangely, Balthus was unprepared for the outraged critical response. Meanwhile, Antoinette de Watteville, a girl from a socially prominent Swiss family whom he had desperately wooed for four years, told him that she was engaged to a diplomat and to stop writing her. He attempted suicide with laudanum; his friend Antonin Artaud found him in time. He resumed painting only gradually, with commissioned portraits that bored him.

 Then, in 1936, Balthus met Thérèse Blanchard, the eleven-year-old daughter of a restaurant worker. During the next three years, he made ten paintings of her, which are his finest work. They capture moods of adolescent girlhood—dreaming, restless, sulky—as only adolescent girls may authoritatively understand. (I’ve checked with veterans of the condition.) In two of the best, a short-skirted Thérèse raises her leg, exposing tight underpants. We needn’t reflect on the fact that an adult man directed the poses, any more than we must wonder about the empathic author of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” But there it is. Balthus claimed a quality of sacredness for his “angels,” as he termed his models. That comes through. Yet, looking at the paintings, I kept thinking of a line by Oscar Wilde: “A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence.” It’s an odd relief of uncertainty, if nothing else, to learn that Balthus’s later relationship with his teen-age model Laurence Bataille, a daughter of the writer Georges, was frankly carnal. The painting “The Week of Four Thursdays” (1949), in which a loosely robed Laurence reclines in abandon and plays with a smiling cat, commemorates days when school was out and she came to pose. She grew up to become a psychoanalyst, like her stepfather, Jacques Lacan.

 In 1937, Antoinette de Watteville, having shed her diplomat, gave in and married Balthus. They had two sons. In the one painting of her in the Met show, “Girl in Green and Red” (1944), she looks half her age of thirty-two. Wearing a vaguely harlequin costume, she sits at a table, grasping a candlestick next to a loaf of bread with a knife thrust deep into it. The picture marks one of Balthus’s closest approaches to Surrealism, a movement whose leaders admired and courted him. He rebuffed them, but the equivocal sexuality of his art anchors it in a time, defined by Surrealism, of avant-garde evangelism for an anti-bourgeois, liberated libido. His reticence, in a classicizing style tremulous with carefully observed light, preserves his power to provoke, while the would-be-shocking sallies of, say, Max Ernst have become period curios. Eroticism fades in Balthus’s later work, with simplified figures and rather dull, tortuously worked surfaces of matte pigment, archly evoking Renaissance frescoes. His pretentiousness survived his passion. |||||


Summarize this article:

I like Lena Dunham. But her $3.7 million book deal with Random House, after a bidding war involving all of the major publishers, is emblematic of what is wrong with corporate publishing today.

 My first publishing job, in 1987, was at Random House. Bennett Cerf’s publishing company, the home of Faulkner, Capote and Dr. Seuss, is now only one of a handful of “major” publishers, by which I mean publishers who are corporate, bottom-line-driven, freighted with massive overhead and generally reactionary. The Dunham deal smacks of a search for the "Barton Fink" touch -- as in, "get me the next 'Bossypants,' stat." I realize that Dunham is an easy target — she's only 26, from an artsy New York family and the creator, star and director of her own HBO show. And there is an element of sexism in the backlash — a young, strong, independent female scores a big deal — but I have no problem with her agent, Kim Witherspoon, shaking down the dinosaurs on her client’s behalf. It's what the market will bear. I imagine Dunham’s book will kick ass, yet it will also get its critical ass handed to itself because of the advance. If Random House is already hucking it as the next Tina Fey meets Nora Ephron meets David Sedaris (no pressure, Lena), then the critics will be expecting Fey meets Ephron meets Sedaris.

 It has been reported that Tiny Fey received an advance of over $6 million for "Bossypants." A huge number, but at the time she already had nearly 10 years of "Saturday Night Live" plus two years of "30 Rock" under her belt, not to mention a visionary editor, Reagan Arthur, helping her. The genuinely sharp, funny and widely appealing "Bossypants" went on to sell more than a million copies. Rough math figures that Random House will need to sell a minimum of 500,000 copies of Dunham’s advice book to break even. Good luck with that.

 Even if they do break even or if somehow every single person who watched the premiere of Dunham’s show “Girls” buys the book — all 872,000 of you out there according to Nielsen — is this any way to run a publishing company? Put aside the cultural impact question for a second. The whole approach seems short-sighted at best.

 My publishing hero is Barney Rosset, the late, great founder of the Evergreen Review and Grove Press. Rosset was responsible for publishing Samuel Beckett, Pablo Neruda, Henry Miller, Jean Genet, William Burroughs and many other writers who have shaped our culture. They are also perennial sellers, forming a solid backlist that allowed Rosset to continually take risks and fight censorship battles. Rosset formed partnerships with his writers, was fiercely loyal to them and paid them small advances. But they were fighting the good fight together, and when the publisher made money, so did the writer.

 Imagine what Rosset would have done with $3.7 million dollars? Let’s say he paid 370 writers $10,000 advances each. Odds are that 20 years from now, a handful of those books would have been cultural touchstones, each outselling Dunham’s advice book. Right now, off the top of my head, I could give you a list of 370 writers who would write books that would have longer lasting cultural impacts than Dunham's 15 minutes of publishing glory. Or, let’s be more generous and more selective: Let’s give 37 writers $100,000 advances. Most struggling writers I know would kill for that kind of advance and could easily stretch that amount out to finish their books. Let’s say only one of these writers turns out to be a Lorrie Moore, Dorothy Allison, Karen Russell or Denis Johnson. Over time, they would surely outsell Dunham. And if two of the 37 turn golden? Let’s be ambitious. What if there are five brilliant writers in the group -- roughly one out of every seven writers -- we’ve chosen to invest in?

 This argument presumes time. Which is what corporate publishers don’t have. They have shareholders, parent companies or both, and they must justify their quarterly earnings. And this is why small publishers are thriving. Paul Harding’s 2010 Pulitzer prize–winning novel "Tinkers" was published by the micro-press Bellevue Literary after Harding was rejected by all of the major houses. There’s a good reason that small publishers like Graywolf, McSweeneys, Lookout Books, Soho Press, Wave Books and a handful of other indies are thriving and winning many of the awards the major houses used to regularly dominate. This is not to say that all of corporate publishing is dominated by versions of Lotto Fever and Ambulance Chasing. There are pockets of risk-taking, most notably with publishers like Calvert Morgan and his It Books, somehow hidden within the fortress of Murdoch’s HarperCollins; or Spiegel & Grau, a fiefdom inside the borders of Random House; or Reagan Arthur Books within Little Brown.

 Yet Random House’s rash deal with Dunham is the rule, not the exception. These decisions are why the corporate publishers are losing cultural relevance and why they might soon lose solvency as well. ||||| Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images for The New Yorker

 When word came down this morning that Girls creator and Tiny Furniture director Lena Dunham had sold a book of essays for more than $3.5 million, I braced myself for a resurgence of the Dunham haters. These are the people who, among other things, argue that Dunham is the beneficiary of nepotism. And what could be a bigger benefit than $3.5 million?

 It is a lot of money, and Girls is only a modestly-rated show: About a million people watched the finale on its air date and in its time slot, though about 4.1 million people watched it after that. By contrast, 2 Broke Girls pulled in, on average, 11 million viewers per episode in its first season. But instead of judging what cash value the Dunham name realistically ought to have in the marketplace, I'd rather think about her valuable ideas.

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 Dunham's book is only at the (accepted) proposal stage, but first Slate and then the New York Times obtained copies of that proposal. Among the ideas in it are a chapter devoted to “an account of some radically and hilariously inappropriate ways I have been treated at work/by professionals because of my age and gender." And another promises to advise readers on how to wear “Red lipstick with a sunburn: How to dress for a business meeting and other hard-earned fashion lessons from the size 10 who went to the Met Ball.”

 These are the kinds of subjects for which there's enormous demand but not much supply. It doesn't help to be told that you should be more aggressive in asking for a raise, in generic lady mag fashion, if the problem is as much that your boss is a sexist as that you're not asking for what you want. I'd rather hear Dunham's embarrassing work stories and what she learned from them than hear the same talking points women have been handed over and over again. And it's not as if most of us can easily relate to Christina Hendricks' experiences getting stylists to send her dresses that work with her cleavage—some of the most-discussed examples of fashion's inhumanity to curvy women of late. Sure, Dunham's been to the Met Ball, but she also looks like she knows her way around a retail outlet and a thrift shop, and she might have real ideas for those of us size 10s who aren’t headed to the red carpet. |||||

– Want to know what's wrong with the corporate publishing industry? Take a look at Lena Dunham's insane book deal, which Rob Spillman pegs at $3.7 million on Salon. Random House will need to sell at least 500,000 copies to break even, which Spillman thinks is a long shot. But even if the company pulls it off, "is this any way to run a publishing company?" Spillman wonders. "Put aside the cultural impact question for a second. The whole approach seems short-sighted at best." Imagine if Random House had taken that $3.7 million and instead given $10,000 advances to 370 writers—or even $100,000 advances to 37 writers. Surely a few of the resulting books would have been better and more successful than Dunham's book, and a few of the writers would have outsold her over time. But "this argument presumes time. Which is what corporate publishers don’t have," Spillman explains. "They have shareholders, and/or parent companies, and must justify their quarterly earnings." That's why small publishers are increasingly winning the big literary awards after taking chances on books that the major houses won't touch. "Random House’s rash deal with Dunham is … why the corporate publishers are losing cultural relevance, and why they might soon lose solvency as well." Click for Spillman's full column—or a column in defense of Dunham's massive deal.