by Caitlin White 38 mins ago

Auliea Hanlon has been fighting against the sentence that a teacher received for raping her daughter for six years—and she finally got some justice.

Back in 2008, 55-year-old Stacey Dean Rambold, a high school teacher in Montana, was accused of raping 14-year-old Cherice Moralez.

Rambold pled guilty to the charges, but as the case was going to trial Cherice took her own life in 2010, just a few weeks before her seventeenth birthday.

So when the sentence of just 31 days in prison arrived, it felt like even more of an injustice.

The appeal against Rambold’s mere month in jail argued that the statue used for his sentence, which was handed down by District Judge G. Todd Baugh, “[was] misapplied and the minimum sentence that could be imposed in Rambold’s case was two years.”

When the appeal was taken to the Montana Supreme Court in April of this year, they ruled that Baugh used an “inapplicable statute” to sentence Rambold and also barred him from handing down the new sentence. In his ruling, Baugh claimed that the victim looked older than her “chronological age” and was “probably as much in control of the situation as was the defendant.”

These comments infuriated Cherice’s mother who noted that she wasn’t even old enough to get a driver’s license when the rape took place. During the new trial, which was held yesterday (September 26) she argued that Rambold understood the impact his actions would have on her daughter and simply ...

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by Caitlin White 5 mins ago

Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader are starring in a new movie together called “The Skeleton Twins” so naturally, they’ve been doing a lot of press for the film. But when they spoke with Daybreak’s Chris Parente things took a turn toward awkward.

While most reporters interviewing the two actors about the movie have done their homework—by you know, actually watching the movie—Parente’s on-camera interview went awry when it became apparent that the journalist knew almost nothing about the flick.

Over the course of the interview it seems like he needs a few details filled in here or there, but then finally he asks Kristen about a scene from a different movie which results in utter confusion for both her and Bill.

The fact that his question involved full-frontal nudity just adds to the awkwardness. Unfortunately for him, Parente was thinking of Kristen’s other film “Welcome To Me” but when she tells him that, he finally has to admit that he hasn’t seen the movie at all.

For anyone else who might not know, “The Skeleton Twins” is a drama that played at Sundance and the Toronto Film Festival to excellent reviews. Apparently, the two Saturday Night Live alumni can pull off serious as well as funny.

Luckily, all three of them laugh it off at the end of the interview. Watch the awkwardness unfold below:

by Caitlin White 1 hour ago

Wilco has been a powerful force in the indie rock world for about twenty years now, so who better to spoof the current state of the music industry than frontman Jeff Tweedy?

For his latest project, Jeff has been working with his teenage son Spencer under the moniker Tweedy, and the latest track “Low Key” from their collaborative album “Sukierae” pokes fun at the way that musicians are no longer paid for what they create.

Jeff and Spencer are shown going door-to-door, encountering celebrity guests from Conan O’Brien to Chance the Rapper on the way and encountering plenty of rejection as they nearly everything they can think of to convince people to buy their music.

Their form of transportation seems promising:

But Conan just isn’t into buying the album:

…And neither is their fellow Chicagoan Chance the Rapper:

Even these cute cats don’t help:

It’s all very Wes Anderson in the best deadpan, quirky way and despite all the rejection the song is actually good! Wilco fans and newcomers will both enjoy the commentary. Watch it in full below:

by Caitlin White 3 mins ago

Austin Mahone‘s latest studio guests have us anticipating his next release with a completely new sense of wonder.

First, he posted an adorable Instagram with actress Hailee Steinfeld captioned “We got hiiiiiiits” and sparked our daydream that Hailee can not only act her heart out—like she did in “True Grit”—but also, perhaps sing?

Then tonight, (September 26), the singer posted a picture of himself with Mississippi rap duo Rae Sremmurd which is even more intriguing than the Hailee cameo.

First of all, this IRL brother duo are actually musicians too, and second, both Mahone and Rae Sremmurd recently appeared on Billboard‘s 21 under 21 list. Maybe that’s how they got connected?

He captioned the latest pic: “In the studio working with @raesremmurd these dudes have crazy ideas!” I’d give a lot to hear what the two might have been collaborating on, especially considering their song “No Flex Zone” took over the summer airwaves:

Anyway, for those who don’t realize how cool it would be if Austin teamed up with the brothers Rae, it’d be kind of like that time that Justin Bieber and Migos had a song together—AKA it would rule.

by Caitlin White 10 mins ago

By this time, if you haven’t heard about Snapchat then you’ve been living under a rock. It’s the iPhone app that allows you to take and send a photo that “self-destruct” after an allotted number of seconds.

MTV definitely has one ¯_(ツ)_/¯:

If by some strange chance you don’t know what Snapchat is, it’s kind of like texting but with the kind of impermanence that we’ve come to crave in the digital age. Which leads to the latest development on the Snapchat front: there’s now Snapchat for your computer.

It’s called SnapMeNow and you can access it on your browser by clicking here.

Previously, this image messaging system was relegated to your phone, even knock-off Snapchat apps like Bolt (which was a lot more like Instagram) operated only on your phone. But all that SnapMeNow requires is a web app and your computer’s camera.

SnapMeNow allows you to send a hyperlink of the snap to up to 100 people and you can make it last from 1 to 10 seconds. But take all this info with some precaution, these sisters the reputation they got for being affiliated with the app, which is often used for sexting.

And, it seems that the pictures don’t always entirely disappear.

An interesting difference with SnapMeNow though is it doesn’t create an account for you, but simply uses a hyperlink to your image, which might lend a bit more anonymity.

With this in mind, happy snapping!

by Caitlin White 21 mins ago

Have you used Tinder yet to try to meet a date? Britney Spears is newly single and using it, so I just signed up for the app too. Maybe that’s why this story is resonating perhaps a bit more than it would’ve before, but the takeaway is something that we all could’ve guessed: men judge women more harshly by their physical appearance than vice versa.

If men think they are meeting a traditionally “fit” woman and a heavier one shows up, they will behave poorly. Like extremely poorly. Sure, this isn’t a shocking thing to assume but watching it unfold in real time in the social experiment that the guys at Simple Pickup concocted is still a little unreal.

They created a Tinder profile that had photos of the girl as she really is—thin and very fit—and then had her show up to the date in a fake fat suit.

Related: Cuddlr Is Like Tinder, Except Without Sex Before Cuddling

Four out of five guys just up and left when they saw she was not a size 2—they didn’t even have the decency to stay around for a drink or try to get to know her. Some of them belittle her or blame her for making them “waste gas.” If there was ever a moment for using the acronym SMDH, this is it.

Watch their behavior below:

On the flipside, when women were met with the exact same challenge, their behavior is markedly different. All the women stay and some ...

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by Caitlin White 4 mins ago

No matter what else goes wrong in the world, we’ll always have the brilliant innocence of puppies. There’s videos of animals doing cute stuff all over the internet at this point and why? Because we need their cuteness to balance out the unrelenting stream of other news that’s maybe not always the greatest.

So, that’s why watching this puppy react with total confusion when it pops a balloon is a good idea. Because you can live vicariously through the sweet little animal and forget about your IRL problems.

First, the balloon disappears:

Then, complete confusion:

And utter, unending confusion:

It’s a profound mystery! And the answer never comes.

To this puppy, the balloon’s disappearance is the biggest, most confusing thing in the world. But it feels good to imagine a world that innocent. Watch the entire clip below to enter your own blissful crisis:

by Caitlin White 47 mins ago

Justin Bieber has been using his Instagram lately to send one clear message: he is head over heels for Selena Gomez. We’ve already chronicled our own stages of acceptance about the couple’s rekindling, and ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the various adventures of Jelena since they started hanging out again.

But this latest pic from Bieber’s feed feels particularly poignant—it’s a romantic, fuzzy shot of Selena literally stopping to smell the roses.

It’s an adorable and touching moment that captures a certain sense of mystery and seriousness we don’t often see from Jelena.

But he couldn’t let Selena get all the attention and shared his own somber black and white selfie later in the evening:

We couldn’t be happier they’re back together if this kind of adorableness is going to continue.

by Caitlin White 1 min ago

Ever wonder what the characters from “Frozen” would look like translated into “sexy” Halloween costumes? No? It doesn’t matter if you didn’t think such a thing was possible, because it exists. Yandy.com managed to turn even the roly-poly Olaf into an attractive Halloween get-up.

Because taking characters from a Disney movie and turning them into adult-sized, tantalizing costumes sounded like a good idea to someone. Here’s how Yandy approximated Elsa, Anna, and Olaf across four, uh, “sexy” varieties as follows:

Ice Girl Costume:

yandy.com

The most awkward part will be when mothers have to tell to their daughters that this costume is for “grown ups” and possibly even explain what a thigh high slit is.

Blue Snow Maiden:

yandy.com

I remember her dress being a little more floor-length in the actual film…

The Previously Referenced ‘Funny Snowman’ Costume:

yandy.com

Yes, that is a carrot nose.

Norwegian Maiden Costume:

yandy.com

*Stockings not included.

So there you have it—if any “Frozen” fans want to take their Halloween to the next level all these looks and more are still available for right under $100 here.

by Caitlin White 2 mins ago

Hudson Mohawke is a prodigy producer and DJ, so when the Scottish musician put together a mix for the BBC, we had to take note. It’s an hour of smooth, stuttering and unmissable tracks that feature his signature pulsing production style.

The Glasgow musician first rose to prominence as one of the duo TNGHT, who Kanye West signed to his G.O.O.D music label and collaborated with for several Yeezus tracks.

Kanye appears on the hour-long mix that Hudson put together for Diplo and Friend’s radio showBBC’s 1Xtra’s Hip Hop Month, along with hip-hop heavy weights like Action Bronson, Clipse, Madlib and more EDM-based musicians like Rustie and Diplo.

Related: ILOVEMAKONNEN Cried When He Heard Drake’s ‘Club Goin’ Up On A Tuesday’ Remix

Also listen for the track from ILOVEMAKONNEN, the quickly rising Atlanta rapper and singer who Drake recently signed to OVO Music.

Next time you don’t know what to listen to, throw this mix on. You won’t be sorry.