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.”

She a bad bitch

B.o.B "Headband" ft 2Chainz [Lyric Video] from Defient on Vimeo.
It's the end of my second week blogging daily on the sin beat at Forbes. I'm having a great time. Check it out.

I went to Aviary. It's the most awesome place ever. I regret not ordering the drink that comes on a Bunsen burner.

I bought Liar's Poker, and now I really need to read it.

Lazer

This video is crazy.

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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Trouble

Brandi Grissom's "Trouble in Mind" is a great piece of longform journalism.

That night, as he lay in bed, still high and muttering about angels, Andre stabbed himself in the chest with a knife, then fell asleep. The next morning, his mother, who had moved in with him, took him to the hospital, where Andre explained that he had cut himself trying to “cross over into heaven.” A nurse noted that Andre was psychotic. An emergency room physician, Dr. William Bowen, examined him while he rattled on about a new world order and the hidden meaning of symbols on the dollar bill. After determining that Andre’s self-inflicted stab wound was not serious, the doctor left the room to apply for an emergency detention order to keep him hospitalized. But by the time Bowen returned, Andre had slipped out of the hospital unnoticed. Bowen called the police and provided a description of him, explaining that he could be dangerous.

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Advice from Ice-T

"You don't get credit for being safe in life." -- Ice-T