While You Were Sleeping, The FBI Shut Down The Silk Road

You haven’t seen twerking ’til you’ve seen Rihanna’s new ‘Pour It Up’ video

I remember an entertaining trend from my primary school days, in which groups of girls joyfully gathered together behind the toilet block and spent all lunchtime recreating the choreography from whatever the latest hit pop video was (probably TLC or Aaliyah or something). If this kinda stuff still happens in playgrounds across Australia, I’m pretty sure I’d be blushing my face off as a schoolkid, considering Rihanna’s new ‘Pour It Up’ video is the kinda source material they have to work with these days.

The video features a whole lotta intense splash-twerking (or as the top YouTube comment says, “Miley, watch and learn, my dear”), and, uh, “strippers going up and down that pole”, as Rihanna herself plainly puts it. Watch the whole thing below. Also, NSFW? I don’t even know anymore.

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The FBI pressed Alt-Ctrl-Del on the Silk Road

In insane internet news that we’ll be hearing a lot about in the near future, the FBI just shut down the Silk Road, that mysterious online marketplace in the deepest internet where people allegedly sell drugs and weapons and human organs and babies and probably also their old Oasis vinyl using that ubiquitous internet currency known as Bitcoin.

In an operation that’s apparently been going on since November 2011, undercover FBI agents reportedly made over 100 purchases of illegal substances on the site, including ecstasy, cocaine, heroin and LSD. Overnight, they seized the site’s domain and confiscated $3.6 million in Bitcoin.

The Silk Road’s founder, 29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht, was also arrested in San Francisco. Amongst other things, he was charged with narcotics trafficking, money laundering, computer hacking, and ordering a $150,000 hit on a Silk Road user.

Read more insane details in the associated court documents that were made public overnight.

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R.I.P. Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy, the bestselling author whose name became synonymous with high-tension government conspiracy thrillers, has passed away in hospital in Baltimore, aged 66.

Along with co-founding the video game developer Red Storm Entertainment, which led to top games including the Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six series, Clancy was best known for his iconic Jack Ryan novels, which were adapted into a bunch of blockbuster Hollywood adaptations, including The Hunt For Red October (1990) starring Alec Baldwin; Patriot Games (1992) and Clear And Present Danger (1994) starring Harrison Ford (both directed by Aussie Phillip Noyce); and, uh, The Sum Of All Fears (2002) starring Ben Affleck. The character is due back in cinemas early next year in the film Jack Ryan: Shadow One, with Chris Pine in the lead role.

I don’t know, but it kinda seems appropriate to watch this:

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Lorde has the #1 song in America right now

‘Royals’, the latest single from the 16-year-old New Zealander with the coo-ey vocal chops and penchant for dubstep, knocked Miley’s naked hit ‘Wrecking Ball’ off the top spot of the US charts overnight. To celebrate, she sang the whole thing on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. More importantly, when can we start claiming her as one of our own? Why is she still internationally known as a “New Zealander”? We fucked up, Australia.

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