Nicki Minaj would like to buy you a drink

I interviewed Nicki Minaj for Forbes:

“I kind of think of myself almost like a man,” Minaj explains. “I’m not going to fall back from something because it’s never been done before by a woman. It’s time for a female Jay, a female Puffy.”

Don't tase me, girl

I talked to TASER about Tasers, women, and targets:

The pink C2 was released in 2007. “Women may not want to look tactical in all black,” Tuttle reports, and with the pink model, “If it falls out of her purse, no one’s going to think, ‘Oh my god, what’s that?’”

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This is not a reinvention story

I've switched beats at Forbes, and it's been pretty rewarding so far. I wrote about the process:

The week before that I took a pole dancing class and discovered that I would make a terrible stripper: “Gyms for Women Sell More Than Fitness.”

Today, I interviewed a porn lawyer, talked to a co-founder of Taser, and set up a meeting with a molecular mixologist.

I plan to talk to the guy holding the sign on the corner with the reference to the Bible on it, but I haven’t done that yet.

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Bang

I had fun interviewing Lisa Looper about the super popular bra holster she created.

At this year’s NRA convention, men were interested, too. “There’ll be a big crowd of men standing around watching us demo,” she recounts. “I think at one point they think there’s going to be a flash, and it never comes. If you take boobs and guns and combine ‘em, there’s some sex appeal, whether you mean there to be or not.”

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The vice beat

Crickets, Shanghai, China
Over at my Forbes blog, I'm working the vice beat. Yesterday, I posted about cricket fighting, and today I'll have a post that's best described as: Is that a gun in your bra or are you just happy to see me?

The vice beat covers a lot of territory -- gambling, alcohol, tobacco, weapons, adult. But it can also include any business sector that a portion of the people view as having a negative impact on our culture. Illegal drugs, for example. Some people consider food a vice these days. I wrote a post awhile back on whether or not Apple is a sin stock.

Got tips on any subjects, people, or stories that you'd like to see explored on SIN INC? Email me.

I'm a pole dancer

For my Forbes blog, I took a pole dancing class.

In pole dancing class, there is nowhere to hide. At the start of class, I had chosen a pole in the second row. Presciently, most of the other women had chosen poles in the back row.

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My new logo

The awesomely talented Chris Bishop has designed a logo for my Forbes blog, SIN INC. It's a redux of the logo he created for my Reverse Cowgirl blog years ago. It is awesome.

Check out Bishop's original cowgirl logo. His haunting Bad Memory painting hangs in my home office. He's famous for his unicorns humping shirt.

[CHRIS BISHOP]

Tax that ass

My pal Bubbles let me interview her for my Forbes blog. What's it like to work with a pole tax? Bubbles explains.

Jezebel, as you pointed out, called Houston’s pole tax “genius,” adding, “Pretty smart to use money from folks who enjoy sexualized women to aid sexually assaulted women.” Are pole taxes feminist — or anti-feminist?

The pole tax is a regressive and optional tax and as such is definitely not progressive, liberal, or in line with a statewide economic policy that would further the interests of most of the working women in the state.

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The Bitcoin girl

I really loved Kashmir Hill's bitcoin survival story. Hilarious, interesting, smart. Definitely check it out.

Kenna unlocks a barred door next to the T-Mobile store on 20^th Street to a bicycle-choked staircase that leads to the second-floor “halfway hacker house.” He tells me he took over the space 14 months earlier and convinced the landlord to let him live in it for 9 months rent-free while he and his childhood friend, Jeff, cleaned the place up.

“We think it was basically a crackhouse,” says Jered. “We were sweeping hypodermic needles off the floors.”

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Price

From my latest on Forbes, "The Price of Investing in Sin":

In a way, the Asian carp are not unlike sin businesses. Forced to meet extraordinary challenges, both thrive under dire circumstances, surviving despite public dislike, under shifting environments, and circumventing genocide attempts.

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I need a stripper

I am looking for a stripper in Chicago.

Do you know one?

Are you one?

Do you know someone who knows one?

If you post this somewhere you hang out, might a stripper in Chicago see it and reach out to me?

Do you think kismet is possible when the subject is gentleman's clubs?

Email me.

Repent, Sinners

Porn Awards, Las Vegas, Nevada
I renamed my Forbes blog.

Now it's SIN INC.

There I will be working the vice beat.

Booze, broads, bozos.

It's the most interesting thing I've done in at least decade.

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