Earlier this week, five-year-old drumming sensation Caleb H stole the heart of Slipknot fans worldwide, perfectly air-drumming along to the band's set. He followed it up with a drum cover which was uploaded to YouTube and now he was invited backstage to hang with the band and Jay Weinberg even brought him onstage to throw some drum sticks into the crowd with him.
The hang session took place at Slipknot's Jan. 24 show in Birmingham, England and was documented on Weinberg's Instagram page, where he posted a slideshow of pictures and video. Caleb, decked out in a Weinberg-styled mask and red Slipknot jumpsuit, got the opportunity of a lifetime, playing on Weinberg's massive kit and posing for pictures with all the members of Slipknot.
Weinberg walked to the front of the stage with Caleb, which was met with an overwhelming response from the crowd. With a few drumsticks in hand, the Slipknot skinsman schooled the youngster on being a pro rocker, encouraging him to toss some sticks into the audience before posing for another photo and walking offstage.
"It was such a blast inviting this young shredder Caleb to last night's show in Birmingham," Weinberg wrote on Instagram.
View the slideshow below to see the photos and video from this amazing moment.
In case you missed it, here's the clip of Caleb that went viral.
Meanwhile, Slipknot's headlining European tour with Behemoth continues. Get tickets here.
However, Kramer, whose bid to be reinstated behind their drum stool for this and tomorrow's spotlight at the Grammys was denied by a judge, was given an opportunity to speak at the ceremony, following Steven Tyler. He said, "A shoutout for love and gratitude — to MusiCares, to all our fans, to my partners, to my forever-supportive wife Linda, and to you guys out there and the music industry.”
Kramer then left the stage, and Aerosmith performed four songs with John Douglas on drums. They began with "Big Ten Inch," followed "Sweet Emotion." H.E.R. then came on for "Dream On." Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp of Joe Perry's side project Hollywood Vampires closed it out with "Train Kept A-Rollin'." According to Yahoo! Music, as Tyler introduced the musicians, he said, "Joey Kramer, where are you? We love you, man!"
Kramer has not performed with the band in the past six months due to an injury. The band required him to audition to prove he could play at "an appropriate level," which he subsequently failed. The drummer responded with a lawsuit in the hopes that it would reinstate him in time for this weekend's ceremony and tomorrow's Grammy Awards, but a judge ruled against Kramer.
"Given that Kramer has not played with the band in six months and the dearth of available rehearsal time before the upcoming performances, Kramer has not shown a realistic alternative course of action sufficient to protect the band's business interests," the ruling declared.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the futuristic Cybertruck were caught filming near SpaceX headquarters late Friday afternoon for an upcoming segment of Jay Leno’s Garage. Once again taking the spotlight at the Tesla Design Center in Hawthorne, CA, the site where the all-electric utility truck made its shocking world debut, camera and production crew were setting up to film a scene near the famed Tesla Supercharger monolith.
In the images sent to Teslarati, Elon Musk can be seen inspecting the rear of the Cybertruck and its motorized rear tonneau, as film crew busily prepared equipment for the camera truck that would follow the stainless steel pickup past SpaceX.
Cameras rolled as the Tesla Cybertruck made its way onto Crenshaw Blvd. in Hawthorne, CA, with the iconic Falcon 9 booster and SpaceX headquarters framed perfectly in the background. A black truck with a camera rig flanked the electric pickup truck.
Elon Musk inspecting Tesla Cybertruck prior to filming segment for Jay Leno’s Garage behind SpaceX HQ in Hawthorne, CA
Tesla Cybertruck filming a segment for Jay Leno’s Garage at the Design Center in Hawthorne, CA
Tesla Cybertruck near SpaceX HQ (Source: Anonymous Tipster)
Camera crew filming Tesla Cybertruck on Crenshaw Blvd near SpaceX HQ, Jan 25, 2020
The segment featuring the Tesla Cybertruck is expected to air on an upcoming episode of Jay Leno’s Garage. The talk show host and car enthusiast has been known to be a vocal supporter of Tesla and Elon Musk. Jay Leno has been quoted before saying that electric cars are the future and that these vehicles are far superior to internal combustion engines.
“I mean, the advantage of electricity. I have a Tesla. I’ve had it for three years. I’ve never done anything. There’s no fluids to change. There’s nothing. You know, For new technology to succeed, it can’t be equal. It’s got to be better. And they’ve (Tesla) sort of solved the battery problem. It can go 350 to 400 miles at a charge. There’s no maintenance. They’re faster than the gas car. So there’s almost no reason to have a gas car unless you’re doing long-haul duty,” the iconic show host said.
In 2018, the veteran comedian featured the next-generation Tesla Roadster on his automotive show where he talked about the supercar with Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen. A few years before that, Leno gave his audience an up-close look at the 2012 Tesla Model S.
While Teslarati did not spot the Model Y in Friday’s filming of the Cybertruck, rumors surfaced last week that Tesla’s much-awaited electric crossover Model Y will also be featured on Jay Leno’s long-running car show. This information was reportedly shared to a certain Tesla Model 3 owner Michael Hughes by a Tesla employee who gave him an early tour of the Model Y interior.
Below is a good look at the Tesla Cybertruck accelerating down Crenshaw Blvd. with the Model 3 chase car and camera truck not too far behind.
Tesla Cybertruck spied filming segment for Jay Leno’s Garage with Elon Musk
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that Tesla intends to open a product design center in Europe. The design center would likely be built at the same site as Tesla’s Gigafactory 4 project outside Berlin.
Tesla currently designs all their products in Hawthorne, California. Tesla’s design efforts are led by Franz von Holzhausen, who has worked with the company since the Model S. He previously worked with Pontiac, Saturn and Mazda.
But Tesla has more global ambitions, and wants to expand into new territories to attract some new ideas. Just this month, Tesla has announced their intent to open two separate design centers in their other main geographical service areas – Asia and Europe.
Earlier this month, Musk talked about the reasoning behind opening a Chinese design center:
I think something that would be super cool would be to — and so we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna try to do it — would be to create a China design and engineering center to actually design an original car in China for worldwide consumption. I think this will be very exciting. I think China has some of the best art in the world, and I think it’s something that would be appreciated on a worldwide basis. I think it should be done, and we’re gonna do it.
Later, Tesla released a sketch along with an official announcement of their intent to open a Chinese design center.
We have no more details on the European design center yet, but given Musk’s focus on bringing Chinese artistic tradition into the design process, perhaps he is thinking the same thing about Europe.
Europe obviously has a lot of automotive design and engineering expertise. Germany is famed for their auto industry and engineering expertise, and Italy for their design sensibilities. Many of the most beautiful and functional cars ever designed have come out of Europe.
This design center would allow Tesla to recruit designers who, for whatever reason, don’t want to or can’t relocate to California, and expose the design process to new ideas that should help broaden Tesla’s appeal.
It will also be beneficial for Tesla to have design, engineering and manufacturing at the same site. Currently, Tesla’s design happens in Hawthorne (LA), engineering in Palo Alto (Silicon Valley), and manufacturing in Fremont (East SF Bay area). Having all three departments under the same roof outside Berlin could streamline some processes for whatever product line Tesla decides to build there.
Or, perhaps, the announcement was more about shoring up public opinion. Musk announced the design center as part of a flurry of statements regarding Tesla’s Gigafactory 4 project just outside Berlin. Musk is now referring to the project as “Giga Berlin.”
The project has been moving along with Tesla signing the purchase contract for the land they’ll be building the factory on last week. Initial construction of an access road has started, and site exploration has begun. This week several unexploded WWII bombs were unearthed on the site.
But the main public concerns about the gigafactory project involve the environmental impact of construction there. A forest will be cut down to make room for the factory, an endangered species of bat needs to be relocated, and there are some concerns about water usage as the site is in a drinking water protection area.
Musk stated tonight that the factory will “absolutely be designed with sustainability and the environment in mind” and that Tesla’s requested water usage numbers represent a “rare peak” and not the factory’s actual average daily usage. He further said “Giga Berlin will build sustainable energy vehicles using sustainable energy, so net environmental impact will be extremely positive”.
Musk also reiterated that the forest the factory will be built on was originally planted as a tree farm for cardboard, and that Tesla intends to plant three times as many trees as they cut down anyway.
If those points weren’t enough to allay the concerns of locals about the impact of the site, perhaps Musk floated the possibility of Tesla designing and engineering cars in Germany to further turn public opinion more favorable towards their Gigafactory project.
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Just three days after Boeing warned airlines that they shouldn't count on the 737 Max flying again before midyear, the US Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it might move faster than that.
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FAA Administrator Steve Dickson spoke Friday with senior officials at Southwest, United and American Airlines, the three US carriers that own the plane, to reiterate that the regulator hasn't set a timeframe for completion of certification work on the aircraft, according to a statement from the agency.
"While the FAA continues to follow a thorough, deliberate process, the agency is pleased with Boeing's progress in recent weeks toward achieving key milestones," the statement said. "Safety is the top priority, and the FAA continues to work with other safety regulators to ensure that Boeing has addressed all known issues with the aircraft."
Boeing did not have an immediate response to the FAA statement. Shares of Boeing, which had been lower earlier in the day, jumped on the news. They were up nearly 2% just before the close
Earlier this week, Boeing told its airline customers that based on its experience with the certification process "we are currently estimating that the ungrounding of the 737 MAX will begin during mid-2020." The plane has been grounded since March following two fatal crashes that killed 346 people. A faulty safety system has been blamed for the crashes.
Officials at the three airlines, who all reported financial results earlier this week, said on conference calls with analysts that they were working with the assumption that the plane would not be approved in time to be back in service before the end of the summer or fall.
"We're actually encouraged at what we hope is a more realistic time line and target," said United President Scott Kirby, who is set to become CEO of the airline in May. United executives said on the analyst call that they don't anticipate flying the Max this summer.
Southwest owns 34 of the Max jets and is awaiting delivery of another 27 that Boeing built during the grounding. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly told investors he's eager to get the planes in service as soon as possible.
"Boeing needs to get the work done and get the certification flight done, give the FAA a chance to do their work and unground this airplane," he said. "Boeing surprised us all this week with their June, July predictions about the ungrounding.
Boeing stock, which had been trading lower before the FAA statement, closed up nearly 2% on Friday. The company and the airlines had no immediate comment.
A previous version of this story misstated the number of 737 Max jets Boeing has built for Southwest Airlines.
Uber conquered North America a long time ago. Except for Vancouver.
Uber launched quietly in Canada’s third-largest metro area in the summer of 2012. But that November, the local transport regulator informed the company it needed to follow the same rules as limousine services and charge a minimum of $75 per trip, effectively shutting Uber down.
The request didn’t fly with Uber co-founder and then-CEO Travis Kalanick (“almost no one was abiding by that rule,” he told a local news outlet at the time). But in striking contrast to most other North American cities, Uber’s usual lobbying tactics (Twitter campaigns, emails to users, heckling politicians) didn’t work on Vancouver.
In late 2014, with Uber rumored to be eyeing a return to Vancouver, the city placed a six-month moratorium on issuing new taxi licenses and British Columbia deployed plainclothes transit agents to monitor for any illegal taxi operators. Over the next few years, the city council repeatedly extended the moratorium.
So it was a very big deal when yesterday (Jan. 23) the Passenger Transportation Board announced it had approved both Uber and Lyft to operate their ride-hail services in parts of British Columbia.
Uber plans to start service by 11am today, the company said in an email to subscribers.
British Columbia opened applications to operate a ride-hail business in September 2019, so this has been in the making for a while. Still, it’s a milestone for Uber and Lyft, which have rarely if ever encountered the level of resistance to their service that they did in Vancouver.
How did Vancouver manage without Uber for eight years? According to a 2019 article in Slate.com, just fine:
So how have Vancouverites handled the lack of ride-hailing? Well, their city has hardly ground to a halt. The percentage of Vancouverites who commute to work by walking, cycling, or transit rose from 57 percent in 2013 to 59 percent in 2017. During that time, the share of commute trips by bicycle jumped by about 50 percent as Vancouver rolled out investments like a network of protected downtown bike lanes. TransLink, the regional transit authority, grew ridership by 5.7 percent in 2017, easily the fastest rate in North America. Andrew McCurran, TransLink’s director of strategic planning and policy, says ridership rose even faster in 2018, by 6.7 percent. Remarkably, a major driver was TransLink’s bus ridership, which rose by 7.3 percent last year.
Short-term car rentals like Car2Go were also popular, Slate reported:
Car sharing is also wildly popular in Vancouver, with 3,000 shared vehicles giving the metro area the most per capita in North America. Car2Go has 192,000 members in the region—more than anywhere else on the continent. Again, ride-hailing’s absence may be a contributor. It’s easy to see how “free-floating” car-share service—meaning you can pick up and leave a vehicle in any legal parking spot—can function as a ride-hail substitute when someone doesn’t want to drive round trip.
The second point is especially interesting because Car2Go, a joint venture of German automakers Daimler and BMW, late last year announced it would cease operations in North America on Feb. 29, 2020, leaving many cities without the sort of free-floating car rentals it offered. That means Vancouverites are soon to be without one popular mode of transport, giving Uber and Lyft more space to fill.
The accounts were created over a period of eight years.
Mr Stumpf's lifetime ban is more severe than anything faced by financial industry executives in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The Office of Comptroller of the Currency - the administrator of the federal banking system - also said it had settled with two other former executives, and announced charges against five other former officials.
When Mr Stumpf left the bank after the scandal was first revealed in 2016 he came under attack from Massachusetts senator - and now Democrat presidential hopeful - Elizabeth Warren on Twitter.
At the time it was reported that he had walked away from the bank with $130m.
In response to the ruling, Wells Fargo's chief executive Charlie Scharf wrote to employees saying: "At the time of the sales practices issues, the company did not have in place the appropriate people, structure, processes, controls, or culture to prevent the inappropriate conduct.
"This was inexcusable. Our customers and you all deserved more from the leadership of this company."
It's the latest regulatory blow to the troubled company.
