In The Buzz Cut, we bring you a round-up of all the weird, controversial, and wonderful stories we’ve been reading all week.
Gwendoline Christie, the supporting actor-turned-cult-icon of hit HBO series Game of Thrones, recently submitted herself for an Emmy nomination when the show did not offer up her name — and succeeded. In an interview highlighting her newest movie, In Fabric, Christie talks about being a 6’3″ tall actress, and using her body as an art piece.
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With the rise of Instagram influencer culture, a lucrative business has crept up: the buying of followers and likes not to be, but perhaps to seem, popular. And with 16 million fake followers — the third-highest number in the world — Indian Instagram influencers have invested heavily in it.
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An application that alters people’s faces to make them look older, FaceApp, resurfaced recently. This time around, however, the conversation is less about how realistically it makes young people look old, and more about how the Russian developers who made the app are silently collecting data about the faces of millions of people.
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Gossip Girl, the 2007-2012 hit television show that defined the teenage years of many millennials today, is getting a reboot — not as a continuation of the now-defunct New York-based series, but as a spinoff, with the original producers making a comeback. Stay tuned for more details, xoxo.
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Big Tech is everywhere — watching, tracking, capitalizing on online users’ browsing habits. Turns out, they haven’t even left porn sites alone: a new study shows Google and Facebook have inserted trackers into popular porn sites to follow people’s sex-watching habits.
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There’s a new 007 in town: Lashana Lynch was announced as the new secret agent who inherits the 007 title and must persuade Daniel Craig’s James Bond to retire. Is this another example of performative tokenism, or are we actually going to see a black woman as the next James Bond protagonist?
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The “new frontier in sports science” is menstruation: The United States Women’s National Soccer Team, which recently won the FIFA Women’s World Cup, had a leg up on others by way of an expert consultant who studies how to maximize performance for women athletes while they’re on their period.
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The Emmy nominations are out, and they are a disappointment — not because of the quality of shows that were included, but due to the lack of diversity and inclusion in them. With only 24 acting nominations for people of color, as opposed to last year’s 38, it seems Hollywood is moving in the opposite direction to progress.
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House of Cards actor Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual assault by an 18-year-old man, who also filed a criminal case against the celebrity. A year later, it looks like prosecutors have now all dropped all charges. Here’s what happened in the murky behind-the-scenes of one of the #MeToo’s few criminal cases.
