Chicago rapper Vic Mensa discusses how love and concern for his hometown drove him to become an activist and humanitarian. 

While many of his song lyrics speak to the horrors of gun violence, Mensa goes even further, using his platform to promote gun control legislation and get behind movements like March for Our Lives and the protests at Standing Rock. His foundation, SaveMoneySaveLife, will help provide medical assistance and educational programs to communities in Chicago that have the highest rates of violence.

Mensa most recently released the single “Reverse,”  featuring G-Eazy. Read more…

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Did the CEO of Harley Davidson bash President Trump, calling him a moron?

The answer is no, he didn’t call Trump a moron. But, if you were one of the tens of thousands of people who retweeted or liked this viral tweet you may believe he did. 

According to this 100 percent false tweet, the CEO of Harley Davidson Matthew Levatich blasted Donald Trump for starting a trade war and blamed him for their decision to move some of their operations overseas.  Read more…

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Snapchat is starting to look increasingly more like old Facebook.

In a bizarre twist of events, it looks like Snap is now embracing a strategy that’s not unlike Facebook’s playbook circa 2010.

The latest sign of it comes from a new report in The Information, which says Snap has plans to launch a gaming platform inside of its app. Details are scarce on how it would work, but the main idea is that Snap would allow developers to create games that users could play inside of Snapchat. The platform could launch by the fall, according to the report. Read more…

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No, there isn’t a supervolcano brewing beneath New England, despite what some media outlets are saying. 

That said, something weird is going on about 100 miles below the lush New England ground.

Scientists have found a mass of warmer rock that appears to be welling upwards. This research, led by geophysicist Vadim Levin, appeared last year in the scientific journal Geology. 

“We never advocated it could lead to volcanism,” Levin, who performs research at Rutgers University–New Brunswick’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said in an interview. Read more…

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More than 35 people have been arrested by federal U.S. authorities as part of a sting operation targeting darknet vendors.

The year-long operation included the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), among other agencies.

According to an online statement by the Department of Justice, the operation was the first “nationwide undercover action” on sellers of drugs and weapons on the dark web.

Agents posed as a money launderer on darknet market sites, offering to exchange U.S. currency for cryptocurrency. From there, HSI identified sellers of illicit goods, which led to more than 90 cases being opened around the country, with subsequent arrests made. Read more…

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A popular excuse for not believing survivors of sexual assault is the bizarre misconception that speaking out somehow benefits survivors. 

But actor Terry Crews — who has been one of the most vital and fearless voices of the #MeToo movement since the beginning — showed a very real, tangible cost to speaking out Tuesday. He confirmed that his lawsuit against his alleged sexual assaulter was the reason he wouldn’t be in Expendables 4.

During his powerful testimony to a senate committee in support of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights, Crews spoke candidly about his sexual assault, the culture that enables predators, and the price survivors pay for coming forward. Back in October, Crews filed a lawsuit against WME producer Adam Venit for assaulting him at a party in 2016.  Read more…

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The Time’s Up movement has released its own anti-harassment PSA, aiming to help people understand how they should engage in the workplace.

Directed by Rashida Jones, the animated short features Donald Glover as narrator, and illustrates power dynamics and what’s OK when it comes to social interaction at work.

“Has the current wave of sexual allegations left you scared, confused, maybe even a little angry?” Glover asks. “It’s the culture shifting under your feet so fast you can’t make sense of it.”

Formed by 300 women in the entertainment industry, the Time’s Up movement seeks to fight sexual harassment across all industries. Read more…

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Donald Trump spent part of Monday night insulting late-night hosts including Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel. Of course, they’d respond, but how?

During a rally for South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, Trump railed against all three comedians, calling Colbert a “low life” and Kimmel “terrible.” 

But Trump especially went after NBC star Fallon, who he called a “lost soul.” Fallon was criticized by liberals for playfully ruffling Trump’s hair, a moment he publicly said he regretted, causing Trump to tweet the insult “be a man,” to the late show host. Read more…

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Four years ago, Facebook shared with the world its ambitious dream of building massive drones. Today, that dream is dead.  

In a Tuesday blog post, the company announced the end of its Aquila program, an effort to construct a “high altitude platform station system” (read: massive drones) that sought to bring high-speed internet access — and, of course, access to Facebook — to an estimated 4 billion people across the globe who do not have it.

“As we’ve worked on these efforts, it’s been exciting to see leading companies in the aerospace industry start investing in this technology too — including the design and construction of new high-altitude aircraft,” Yael Maguire, an engineering director at the company, said in the Facebook post. “Given these developments, we’ve decided not to design or build our own aircraft any longer, and to close our facility in Bridgwater.” Read more…

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Silicon Valley executives are meeting for half a day tomorrow in San Francisco to discuss consumer privacy, and people are kind of freaking out about it.

It all started when Axios reported Monday that people representing some of the largest technology companies in the world planned to meet and “discuss how to tackle growing questions and concerns about consumer privacy online.” 

The Information Technology Industry Council, an industry trade group that represents the biggest tech companies in Washington, invited its 67 member-companies to this special meeting. Spokespeople from Adobe, Autodesk, Facebook, Salesforce, and Visa have confirmed to Mashable that they will be in attendance. Adobe also told Mashable that it’s even sending its chief privacy officer Alisa Bergman. Read more…

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