Kotaku

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Game Over for Kotaku UK

The problem is gamers just want to play games; they have no interest in politics or in seeing social justice injected into their hobby.

Case in point is the closure of the controversy-laden Kotaku U.K., the British arm of the prominent media outlet.

Kotaku U.K. was one of several of the U.K.-based Future Publishing’s forays into the online gaming space. Founded in 2014, the publisher picked up localized rights to the Kotaku brand and worked in partnership with its U.S.-based counterparts, with its own writing staff and editorial direction. Unlike the original Kotaku, which also hosts some social justice-oriented articles, the U.K. version was prominent in its promotion of progressive political activism.

While it would be irresponsible to pin the blame entirely on certain writers, the site attained no shortage of infamy when it made routine accusations of “transphobia” about games like Cyberpunk 2077, Persona 5 and Catherine — among many other transgressors.

For most, the site’s closure came as no surprise. The news was overwhelmingly met with celebration on social media. Nothing of value was lost — and gamers found nothing they liked about Kotaku U.K.

Various writers hired for Kotaku U.K. were employed purely for nepotistic reasons rather than for their talents. They used the platform to push their politics down the throats of unassuming readers, who by and large visit the site to find news and information about the games they enjoy.

As Kotaku U.K. was part of a larger organization, it was seemingly used as a stepping-stone for writers to push their agenda and garner internet clout by writing inflammatory articles. Following the inevitable backlash of negative feedback for their opinions, these level nine nonbinary woke druids would become outraged and claim to be victims of an “Alt-Right Gamer” conspiracy, a narrative they have pushed endlessly in the media to demonize anyone who disagrees with them.

For game creators who refuse to conform to the woke agenda, the choice seemed to be either shut up or lose your business. You and your company will be at the mercy of game critics who write article after article, thread after thread on the internet about how toxic your game is. Like a racket, that was how Kotaku U.K. operated, and that’s how many other gaming sites operate today.

In reality, the choice is actually simple — ignore them. As these journalists and their ilk are not the ones driving profit for your company. They’re not the ones buying games. They’re not the ones even playing them.

The truth is woke game journalists are full of wind and bluster, signifying nothing. They don’t have the influence they claim to have, just a platform that’s constantly derided and mocked by the gaming community. Their supposed clout in the industry wasn’t even enough to keep the lights on at Kotaku U.K.

The opinions of game journalists, unpopular as they are, are constantly highly ratioed on social media. Most engagement they receive is negative. It’s a regular sight to witness on social media as droves of people work to challenge their harmful and unfounded clickbait assertions, only for the writers to avoid scrutiny altogether and privatize their accounts, while they wait for the embers of the fire they caused to cool down.

As for the publishers themselves, in order for them to garner trust again with their readers, they should go back to the roots of what made them successful to start with and write articles without an agenda and do some actual reporting on the games themselves.

Warfighters

Posted on by Team Penthouse

A Generation of Warfighters — from Kabul to Kurdistan

“We will never win in Afghanistan … it gives us a place to go and be warriors.”

Former Special Forces Major Jim Gant said those words about a decade ago, while assessing the state of that war. A couple years prior, Gant had written an influential policy paper entitled “One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan.” General David Petraeus called him a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia. Gant earned a reputation in that war for being a master counterinsurgent or going native, depending on who you ask. So this American Spartan (the title of Gant’s 2014 memoir — written by his wife, Ann Scott Tyson) didn’t arrive at his conclusion of the war’s long-term viability without some hard-earned knowledge.

Yet the war goes on. In Afghanistan and beyond. The slow drift of the forever wars (nearing 20 years now, if you can believe it — old enough to buy its own beer) has seen our foreign policy go from the Powell Doctrine, to invasions without exit strategies, to occupations of various phases and fronts. We’ve brought the fight to the enemy from Baghdad to Niger, bombed terrorists from the Hindu Kush to the deserts of Syria. We’ve partnered with Kurds and Pashtuns, Sunni chieftains and Shi’a clerics. Young American servicemembers have died for the Global War on Terror, far from home, in a wide array of violent ways — sometimes believing in the cause, sometimes not.

Twenty years of war. Twenty years of bloodshed. Twenty years is a long-ass time, and also the length of a whole military career. That’s a lot of toil and deploying, even for professional warfighters, and it got me thinking: How are the veterans from early in this war similar to those now enlisting? How are they different? Have the expectations in the ranks changed at all, and how do those expectations differ from those who served pre-9/11 and those who joined up in the immediate aftermath of those attacks?

So I asked a few of them.

Will, 37, U.S. Army, major:
I started ROTC the week before September 11 …mostly to pay for school. I wanted to be a pilot, too. I don’t think I’d given much thought to making [the military] a career, I was just 18, you know? Then the towers fell and everything changed.
Dion, 52, U.S. Army, sergeant first class (retired):
I’m so old I fought in Desert Storm (laughs)! How was it different back then? There wasn’t much “Support the Troops,” not until we came back from the Gulf and had a victory parade. Going into the military was something a lot of folks looked down on. Now, it’s one of the most trusted professions. I didn’t really notice that when I was in, but now that I’m retired, I see it every day.
Terri, 24, U.S. Marines, lieutenant:
I was little when 9/11 happened, so the wars have been there most of my life, just kind of [set] in the backdrop. I wouldn’t say [deploying to combat] is why I became a Marine, but now that I am a Marine, it’s something I feel compelled to do … it’s something I want to do now.
Ryan, 50, former U.S. Navy, petty officer 2nd class:
I left [the Navy] in 2000. People talk a lot about 9/11 being the big dividing line, and I get that, but people forget the USS Cole was bombed the year before. Terrorism was already happening.

The Warfighters Continue

Will: I worked as a recruiting officer in New York a few years back, so I saw new recruits coming in. They changed a bit, but for the most part it was the same: They wanted to serve their country. Wanted college money, wanted to learn a trade. Now, their relationship to the wars? Yeah, that’s different. I talked to a young private last week, born in 2002. This is their normal.

Terri: Do I think my generation is different than the older ones? Huh. I don’t know. There’s the technology. I guess we’re like “digital natives,” as my dad would say. For Marines a couple years older, combat deployments were guaranteed. Now that’s less common. So maybe that’s a difference?

Ryan: Can’t speak for the other services, but I don’t think much has changed for sailors and the Navy. The mission set is the same: security and deterrence through sustained forward presence. Which is a lot of smart words to say: Be the biggest shark in the ocean — always.

Dion: I definitely noticed changes [in the personality types of soldiers] over my career. When I first came in, you were expected to do the job when ordered — no questions, no explanation needed, especially in combat arms. By the time I had my own platoon, though, explaining missions and objectives was part of the job. In some ways, that was good, made for smarter, more inquisitive soldiers. In other ways … I mean, it’s the green machine. Sometimes you just gotta crack skulls because your sergeant told you to.

Will: Only us old-timers now remember an America at peace. But that’s a lot of why I decided to stay in, make it a career. Same with a lot of people around our age, officer and enlisted. There’s always going to be an enemy. There’s always going to be a fight, somewhere. That sounds bad, I know, but that’s the reality. Best to keep it away from our shores as best we can, so our families can live in peace.

Terri: One of the great things about joining the Marines, about becoming a Marine, is the tradition. They drill it into you at OCS [Officer Candidates School] to the point that it becomes this real, tangible thing you’re aware of honoring and frightened of measuring up to …so for all the changes in generations and stuff, I think it’s the maintaining of excellence that’s most important. Times change, warfare changes, but the meaning of Semper Fidelis [Always Faithful] never does. That’s really cool.

Matt Gallagher is a U.S. Army veteran and the author of three books, including the novel “Empire City” available at Amazon.

Thank You Kindly

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Kindly Meyers

Consequently, we couldn’t resist tagging along on her recent trip to Cancun, while shadowing photographer Dewayne Jones — who, y’know, kindly let us snoop.

A fitness enthusiast, Kindly’s social media is filled with shots of her perfectly toned body. Just one look at her photos from all over the world is enough to stir a sense of lust — both wander and otherwise — within her audience that amounts to several million followers.

Hailing from Bowling Green, Kentucky, Kindly counts herself as a lifetime “Big Blue Nation” (Univeristy of Kentucky) superfan, even though she now resides 60 miles down the road in Nashville, Tennessee. As with most people of merit, Kindly also loves animals and loves to travel, so if you’re looking to find a way to her heart, at least now you know where to begin.

Should you wish to catch up with the excellent photographer, Dewayne Jones on your own, the “interscopephotography” Instagram would be an excellent place to begin. Full disclosure, we cannot guarantee that Dewayne will invite you to his next shoot, but the search for inspiration will be worth the effort regardless.

ADDENDUM: So the magazine, being a paper product and thus limited by annoying things like “space” and “cost” and other equally mundane considerations had a quick mini-feature they were going to run after the Kindly layout. They called it “Sneaker Freak” and conceived it starring our own Penthouse Pet Violet Summers. Even after commissioning the professional shoot, they simply ran out of space for the “featurette” in the issue. We, of course, over here in the generally confusing-to-old-print-people world of digital publications have no such limitations, so we decided to go with the original plan. To put this in terms these aged folks should understand, and in the nicest and most respectful way we can imagine, we now wish them all a hearty and unabashedly vociferous neener-neener.

As over 10 million people have already figured out, you can easily find Violet on a current basis over on Instagram as well, but do not forget our own preserved for posterity celebration of her both here, and in a decidedly more revealing fashion over on PenthouseGold. … NOW we can “kindly” bid you farewell. Temporarily.

Cassette Revolution

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Retro Cassette PLAYtime

We act like teenagers are non-communicative monosyllabic androids, but they actually have a million different ways of communicating with each other. They just don’t want to talk to us. Man, if I had Snapchat and WhatsApp and TikTok as a 15-year-old, I would have been a total hit with the ladies, producing hilarious videos to make them laugh coyly and slaying with the pithy banter.

Instead, my main form of communication with the opposite sex occurred via cassette mixtapes. Noble, but sad. And now they’re back, so dust off those Walkmans, girls, and prepare to hit PLAY. No, not fast-forward. Don’t touch that. You’ll miss this really great track by Tears for Fears.

Everyone in the 1980s had a thousand cassette tapes, purchased in bulk from your local music store — mine was called The Pop-In — so you could record songs off the radio or directly from a friend’s LP onto a C90. For the under 40s reading this, an LP is a long play album, a vinyl record. You may have seen DJs spinning them in nightclubs. Ha-ha, remember nightclubs? For teenagers reading this, nightclubs were buildings where young horny people used to congregate in great numbers to gyrate, drink alcoholic beverages and shout at each other over the music. Ask your dad. A C90 was a 90-minute cassette tape, by the way, and radio is what they used to call podcasts.

Enough explanations. Cassettes are back, baby! In the first half of 2020, 65,000 cassette albums were sold in the U.K., roughly the same amount as in 2002. And it’s not just nostalgia records bought by Gen-Xers. Lady Gaga released her latest album, Chromatica, in May 2020, and since then it has sold 12,000 copies on cassette, both as a single tape and a triple pack. Billie Eilish and The 1975 have also shifted shedloads of albums on cassette.

Some of this can perhaps be attributed to lockdown mania and the need for distraction through novelty gadgets. I was certainly first in virtual line to buy all those miniature retro games consoles. I have a Super Nintendo Classic Mini, a Commodore 64 and a PlayStation Classic gathering dust in the cupboard, right now. But the rise of cassette tapes may also be linked to the fact we’re all sick of the digital world.

Twenty-twenty has seen us exhausting all the good options on Netflix, listening to our fave tunes so much on Spotify that we can’t bear the sound of them ever again, and closing our web pages because the news is so depressing and, let’s face it, fucking boring. Cassettes keep us in the now and force us to engage with the entire album because skipping forward to track seven simply isn’t in the cards. It takes forever. You might as well just listen to the album as the artist intended. Chill out and stop being so impatient.

As usual with revivals, lots of people are claiming it’s a passing fad, that today’s youth will soon tire of cumbersome magnetic tape, especially when it gets eaten by the player and you have to painstakingly wind it back on with a pencil. And yet lots of very cool retro cassette players and knockoff Walkmans are now on sale at big-box stores and electronics outlets the world over, so demand is definitely rising.

Lo-fi sound is making a comeback because it’s gritty and fun. Weirdly, in an age of bland digital content, listening to and recording on cassette tape feels edgy. Plus, sending a mixtape to a girl, complete with your own handwritten, hand-drawn inlay card is hot. It’s individualistic. It’s physical. Damn, it’s downright sexy. So slip your cassette into the player by the bed for 90 minutes and hit PLAY.

If you don’t believe us, even Forbes has been talking about the Cassette Tape comeback. Granted, it was a year before us, but they have much bigger budgets. Besides, 2020 doesn’t really count as a year. It sucked. … In case you missed the little blurb in the news because of the relative HELL of the rest of the news, the inventor of the cassette tape died a couple of weeks ago, which makes those of us having attained a certain age feel somewhat bad for the rest of you — y’know, when we’re not just being annoyed by you.

The Sidewalk Project

Posted on by Team Penthouse

An Interview with Soma Snakeoil

Her organization, The Sidewalk Project, operates with an emphasis on community and wellness through direct action. At a time when the world is in such dire need of healing, the efforts of The Sidewalk Project have a deep and lasting impact in the local Los Angeles community and beyond.

What was your inspiration to start The Sidewalk Project?

I started The Sidewalk Project about three and a half years ago. It’s a lived experience organization and it’s really based on community activism and the experiences of other people who work with the organization. At the time, I was writing Home Street Home and I was newly sober. I’d been working on [Home Street Home] for about ten years with my ex, Fat Mike.

When you’re freshly sober, it’s a little bit like being born. Your eyes are really fresh with everything and you’re more sensitive to everything in the world. I really felt like I couldn’t just write about these experiences, I felt it needed direct action. I’ve been unhoused and I’m a former person who uses drugs and a longtime sex worker, so it felt really important to give back to the community.

We had a lot of conversations first, like “What do we actually want to do?” When it came to this idea of wellness through the arts – which was something that was a constant through each of our lives – we felt that it was something that uplifts community. So that was really the start of The Sidewalk Project. Somewhere along the line we ended up doing harm reduction and then it got really intense. It was like “How did we go from this very sweet art and music organization to doing crisis response on the street?”.

How do you see the world of art intersecting with that of public health?

One of the things that we say at The Sidewalk Project is: “Happiness grows as it’s shared.” It sounds really sweet, but there’s actually science behind that. When we were founding The Sidewalk Project, we did a lot of research around the idea of community and the idea that people experience more wellness when they are in groups of people in a community. When there are groups of happy people, the happiness spreads. And conversely, the same happens with groups of unhappy people. So, we want to be a group of people that shares happiness.

You can think of that in terms of what that looks like in large scales around social recovery. Right now, there are awful things that are happening in Los Angeles right down the road in my neighborhood where there’s massive oppression of unhoused people in a pandemic when before it was actually a happy community of unhoused people just banding together in a park in a terrible time of economic crisis. We know there are going to be more unhoused people on the street in the next few years. And then you bring in a bunch of riot cops with guns and batons and rubber bullets and all of that stuff and that is the opposite of public health and happiness and wellness. That’s trauma for the entire community and you can see it all over the news. Everyone in the neighborhood is unhappy. Whereas, when you look at community building activities where people are painting murals together and playing music and eating food together, that’s community building. That’s social recovery. That’s the opposite of trauma and that’s what we want to see in society: Anti-trauma.

How has your career in the adult industry inspired your world view?

I think it’s greatly affected my world view in a very positive way. There’s just more flexibility on a larger scale about how sex positive people view the world. You can look at it around sexuality, but that can actually transfer to other aspects of life. If there’s an ease to one aspect, that might carry over to other places in life. And, if you’re getting laid, you’re probably happier. And we know this through science. Your blood pressure drops, it’s better for prostate health, it’s better for digestion, etc.

It’s good to fuck, right?

In the BDSM world, things like service to your community is really held to the forefront in a very big way. Both as submissives, but also, we really think it’s important to take care of other people and family is important. We have BDSM families and that’s a very big aspect to my world view. And I’ve taken that over into how I function within activism.

What projects do you have currently coming up?

The Sidewalk Project is ongoing, so it happens every single day. It’s a living, breathing project and always evolving. One of the things I’m really excited about that we’re working on is a “Bad Date” List. The list is specifically for street-based sex workers. We take information on bad, violent, negative dates with street-based sex workers anonymously while we do our rounds with the needle exchange. This is a vital aspect to harm reduction for sex workers because it’s based in this anonymous, autonomous, and empowering way to offer information between sex workers so that they can make choices about which cars to get into.

This very much feeds into not just sex positivity, but this idea of empowerment as opposed to salvation. Within the sex worker community, we say: “Support not salvation” and that’s such a vital thing. In this time right now when there’s so much rhetoric around human trafficking and the conflation of human trafficking and sex work and misunderstanding about what’s going on. We had this very bad policy, SESTA/FOSTA, that’s hurt a lot of our people in our community and has actually pushed people back out onto the street. It’s dangerous for street-based sex workers, so we need to be able to offer support systems. Also, it’s feminist as fuck. I love that.

We’re also on a team with The Sidewalk Project where we’re doing education and engagement with the houseless community to let them know about COVID vaccinations. We actually take people to get their vaccinations. And I’m really excited to be involved with that because that feels very lifesaving.

Also, Punk Rock and Paintbrushes, which I’ve been a part of for quite a few years now, put out a book with a bunch of musicians and people from the punk rock community and I’m in that book. I share some of my stories and some of my art and the book is being released pretty soon. There’s going to be a signing at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach. It will be outdoors and it’s really cool because we haven’t been able to do any in person events for the punk community. We’re doing a COVID-safe event. People have been starting to vaccinate and it’s an outdoor event with a limited capacity, people wearing masks, social distancing. I’m happy to do that.

What goals do you have for the future of The Sidewalk Project and your art?

I have so many goals and then sometimes I think about how right now I already work so hard every day and so many people already work so hard every day. And we think of these ideas of the goals for the future, and we all have to have these goals. Even though I do have them, I was just thinking about how we are so conditioned by capitalism. We’ve always got to do the next bigger, better, more glamorous thing. And sometimes I just want to let it be.

One of the goals that I have for The Sidewalk Project is a kibbutz or a village of some sort. We keep talking about what that looks like and sometimes we want to just do it right now because they’re sweeping the streets and now there’s riot cops and it’s just like this fascist occupation out there. It’s like “Can we find a piece of land already to put a bunch of people on it?” There’s just such an impulse to find safe spaces for humans. There’s definitely that sense of ‘What does a community look like?’ It’s about people being empowered to make their own choices as we move forward.

How can people get involved with The Sidewalk Project?

We are accepting volunteers both for in-person and online. We do a lot of activism, so if people want to get involved and they’re not comfortable leaving their homes, they can get involved with online activism, raising donations, or putting together hygiene kits. Fighting back against bad policies is also really great. Also, come out with us. One of things we say is: “Wherever there’s a sidewalk, there’s an opportunity for a Sidewalk Project.” You can also just be nice to people. Hand someone a bottle of water. We like to think of it as a movement rather than just this idea of one set organized experience. Be good to yourself and be good to your neighbors.

Video: Matt Nathanson
Photography: Michael Diaz / Surgeon Studios
Website: thesidewalkproject.org

Penthouse Reality Evolution

Posted on by Team Penthouse

A Shift in Defining Beauty

For too long the Penthouse Reality has relied upon the Brand standards that began over half a century ago. (Technically they began three score and seven years ago, but it seems like someone has already taken an opening very close to that for something much more important, so we decided to avoid it. Good for us.)

Regardless, the Executives Have Spoken.

No longer will Penthouse feature the purely glamorous, occasionally esoteric or exotic, essentially unapproachable — not to mention unabashedly explicit — women (and even sometimes men) in its photographic layouts. As technology has evolved into a fundamentally digital world, the Penthouse Reality will finally shift along with it. No more do we have to throw black cloths over the photographer’s head and wait for a big POOF! from carefully apportioned magnesium flash powder to capture our images. With modern tools, we can instantly capture the real personalities of our models and Pets. Enough with the beautiful people languishing erotically. No more. The people want truth, not airbrushed fantasy (using neither air, nor a physical brush these days, ironically).

Enter the New Penthouse Reality Standards

Liya Silver
Lacey London
Sean Michaels, Brooke Banner
Rea Riley
Alina Lopez
Brandi Aniston, Chanel Preston
Lexi Belle
Shyla Jennings
Jezabel Vessir
Keira Croft
Aurora Snow
Sweet Marie
Vanna Bardot
Persia Pele
Gina Valentina, dude

We have always taken our lifestyle of leisure approach very seriously around here, so do not fear that this will stop. Instead we will endeavor to enhance your reality simply with some of ours. Those Perfect Pet layouts are boring anyway, right?

OH! We should offer a couple of final observations here. First of all, should you really wish to learn more about the early flash photography, you have many ways to do that, but we can give you a place to start. Secondly, before you start panicking and thinking all the great nudity will soon disappear in this New Penthouse Reality, you really should take special note of today’s date.

Riley Anne for PenthouseGold

Young MacDonald

Posted on by Team Penthouse

But Who IS Tom MacDonald?

In the current heated climate, few have the guts to speak up, while MacDonald is fearless in offering an alternative worldview, bringing hope to many who see themselves as outsiders.

The Canadian artist has become known for his social commentary flowing through slick delivery — and he’s swiftly amassed an impressive following together with his girlfriend, Nova Rockafeller. MacDonald beat Cardi B on the iTunes Hip-Hop Top 40 before making it onto the Billboard 100. His online videos regularly reach well over a million views within months of being released. The former pro wrestler attributes his success to staying independent and refusing to let a label mess with his vision.

Many major labels wouldn’t be keen to give the green light to an artist presenting songs such as “People So Stupid,” “WHITEBOY” and “Buttholes.” It’s working for MacDonald. He’s being hailed as the champion of “caption rap,” a term coined by hip-hop fans online to describe underground hip-hop artists who promote their music directly through social media. Like any subculture, it comes with angry skeptics who believe they’re gatekeepers of acceptable narratives.

In “No Lives Matter,” MacDonald raps:
“Freedom’s dead, if you have an opinion, take it back
People hate the president, if you don’t then you trash
Indoctrinate the nation using news and mainstream rap
The government abuses us, it’s all part of the plan.”

In 2019, his song “Cloned Rappers” was used as fuel for the crazy conspiracy that acclaimed rapper Eminem died years ago and is now a clone. The video setting looks like a scene out of Frankenstein, working well for conspiracy theorists desperately hunting for evidence clones have been created in a lab. The less conspiratorial chose to interpret lyrics as being metaphorical for rappers not being able to express themselves. The video for “Cloned Rappers” swiftly surpassed 1 million views on YouTube.

In March 2020, his song “Coronavirus” amassed 2.8 million views on YouTube. He rapped:
“This is a pandemic, but we don’t listen to the news
‘Cause they lied to us for years so how we know that this truth?”

These lyrics kick-started a debate about so-called “responsible leadership,” “insensitivity,” “problematic content,” and, therefore, the final destination of censorship. Heaven forbid, anyone’s allowed to think for themselves in 2020.

While self-quarantined in his own home, MacDonald took to his Facebook fan page to speak directly with his 1.1 million followers. During that livestream, he spoke about YouTube suppressing views and censoring content. MacDonald explained he worked around the clock in one day to write the lyrics for “Coronavirus,” mix the beat, record the song, shoot the video and release it to YouTube in the 23rd hour.

His other songs “Straight White Male” and “Everybody Hates Me” attracted a similar divided reaction of rolling eyes versus applause from supporters. It’s Tom MacDonald’s raw honesty and courage to say what many are thinking that’s attracting fans.

Anyone hoping such freedom of speech will fade away if Joe Biden is officially declared president has no idea what they’re up against.

[It said “IF Joe Biden” in the original Australian text, so we quoted it here. We try not to get involved in personal assaults on authors and their opinons — mostly because we have found it counter-productive to debate with idiots. Still, one can find many, many sources out there dealiing with the last U.S. Presidential election. … You can fact check yourself starting HERE, or you can decide to simply poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. At least that result might be beyond debate when it happens. These days you never can tell, though. -Ed.]

Easter Cam Girls

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Celebrate Easter Cam Girls with These Cute Chicks

Instead of your usual chocolate bunnies, colored eggs, and confetti … how about we load it full of the cutest chicks and some real sweets that will make your mouth water! What could be better than Easter Cam Girls? After all, thousands of the hottest chicks on the planet are ready for you to unwrap and enjoy during live sex shows right now on Camster.com! Continue reading “Easter Cam Girls”

Angel Sweety

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Heaven on Earth

Sinfully gorgeous Angel Sweety hails from the beautiful country of Colombia. With a luscious pout and a killer bod, it’s easy to see how this curvy cam girl has earned a devoted following—and the coveted title of Penthouse Cyber Cutie! One look at the 27-year-old stunner’s heavenly photos had us on cloud nine. But as one online admirer wrote, “Don’t be fooled by her innocent-looking face — she’s 100% naughty!”

What is your hometown?

The city of Medellin in Colombia. It’s called the “City of Eternal Spring” because of its pleasant weather.

How did Angel Sweety get started in the cam business?

I was actually introduced to the world of camming through a close friend. It caught my attention right away because I saw so many beautiful and exotic women, and I thought it would be a good way for me to develop myself as a woman and to be able to interact with people from all over the world.

What do you like most about the work?

What I like most about this job is that I have the freedom to express myself and to interact with so many amazing people that I would’ve probably never had the chance to meet. I get to show who I am, while providing my fans with satisfaction and meeting their needs.

What’s your most memorable cam performance?

I have had so many memorable experiences as a cam model, to be honest. But one of my favorites was when one of my fans asked me to relax with him and watch a movie together. He wanted to express his feelings for me through the message of the movie. It was very sweet and unexpected and one of my favorite private shows I’ve ever done.

Very, very few places in the working world truly empower women to be in complete charge of their own person, profession, income and overall lives as the cam industry provides. Angel Sweety provides an outstanding beginning to a more in-depth examination by Penthouse, but we hope there will be many more to follow. (For the record, there are also many, many worse jobs than following up on this story will be.)

Photographer: @SEBASJIMENEZPH … Angel Sweety: TWITTER and SCHEDULE

Mongolian Fate — Eight Centuries Vanish

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Inner Mongolia China’s Cultural Genocide

“The right to learn and use one’s mother tongue is an inalienable right for all,” tweeted the former president of Mongolia, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, in response to a decision by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to terminate bilingual Mongolian education in China’s Inner Mongolia. Continue reading “Mongolian Fate — Eight Centuries Vanish”

Breaking Good

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So, Yes, Drugs are Bad

When you are in the relentless grip of this drug, leisure time doesn’t exist. The only thing that matters is where your next puff is coming from.

I became addicted to ice just when Breaking Bad was coming out. As I started to deal more and more, a few people mentioned the similarities between me and Walter White, the lead character in the series — a family man turned bad. But Walter White became motivated by greed alone — I just needed to pay for a $1,000-a-day habit. If I saw any episodes of Breaking Bad during those lost years, I don’t remember. But I watched it when I came out of prison, safe in the knowledge that my story would end much more happily than Heisenberg’s. That’s why my book is called Breaking Good.

While Breaking Bad is obviously fictional and dramatized, the Australian series Underbelly is much more true to life. When I got sucked into a life of crime, I would hear stories about the actions of Carl Williams, Mick Gatto or Lewis Moran, the kingpins of the Melbourne underworld. At the time, I thought it was the typical meth-fuelled bullshit that I heard every day. Then, when I watched the series, I realized it had all been true. I even knew some of the characters from my kickboxing days and once fought on the same card as Benji Veniamin. Who knows? Some of these guys could have been pulling the strings when I was shot and stabbed in my factory. My co-author of Breaking Good thinks we should create a TV series around my story and, considering my frame, suggested we call it Overbelly. No one likes a wise guy!

Before I tried meth for the first time, I was drawn — perhaps tellingly — to films about addiction to money and power. Scarface was my favorite. Al Pacino’s character, Tony Montana, rises from being a Cuban refugee with nothing to a powerful drug lord. I’ll never forget that final scene where, having been shot, Montana’s corpse falls into a fountain in front of a statue bearing the message: “The world is yours.”

More recently, I enjoyed the John Wick films, American Made with Tom Cruise and the TV series Sons of Anarchy. I may have left the world of bikies, drugs, guns and women behind, but that outlaw lifestyle will always be fascinating.

And I also enjoyed the Netflix series Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons. I know presenter Raphael Rowe, and I take my hat off to him for going into these places voluntarily, having been wrongly imprisoned himself. The series shows the massive range of ways that countries approach their penal systems. Norway, for instance, is all about rehabilitation. Russia and the U.S. are more about out-and-out punishment. But in countries like Brazil or Colombia, the prisons are almost like self-enclosed cities, with the hierarchy built around control of the black market. I found prison to be hell on earth, but Australia’s prisons are like palaces in comparison.

If I was to recommend a show that warns people away from crystal meth? That’s got to be Netflix’s Tiger King. Some crazy shit happens when this drug takes control.

Simon Fenech is the author of Breaking Good: A Harrowing Journey to Ice-Fuelled Hell and Back (Echo Publishing, $29.99). Now available at all good bookstores. And feel free to check out Dopeworld here.

Breaking Good Addendum

[This being a contribution from our Australian Penthouse friends (hence the word “bikies” for “motorcycles”), we felt like we should add that this would be available at all good bookstores in Australia. We do think BookTopia ships to the U.S., though, if you happen to live here, so that might be worth a shot. Not only did our research reveal that this dude looks a whole lot scarier than Bryan Cranston, but we were thrilled to hear that they still have book stores in Australia. Remember books that smelled like ink and paper? -Ed.]

Russian Space Dogs

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Belka and Strelka Raise the WOOF

Many people know the story of Laika, the first dog to go into space. Sadly, Laika was also the first dog to die in space, as the Soviet space program successfully tested their hypothesis that dogs could die in space. A far more uplifting story is that of Belka and Strelka, the two dogs who followed in Laika’s paw-steps, and who became the first two dogs to come back from space alive. Continue reading “Russian Space Dogs”

Watch LaSirena69

Posted on by Team Penthouse

Watch LaSirena69 — And These Watches (if you prefer, of course)

Bruno Belamich and Carlos Rosillo founded Bell & Ross back in 1992. Their designs have since become the go-to time tellers for those working in a demanding profession, from astronauts and pilots to mine clearance experts and even Hollywood hitman John Wick.

To pull off wearing a B&R model, however, you’ll need to look the part. Walking around in your shorts and flip-flops is not going to do this type of watch justice, so listen carefully!

Even though it is rooted in Switzerland and Paris, there is something undoubtedly classic about Bell & Ross designs, especially their military-inspired chronographs. So, a white tee with Levis and an aviator jacket definitely fits the image. Finish that look off with a pair of black boots or an old pair of Redwings, and you’ll be all set for a day in the sky.

If you’re more monochrome than military, preferring the shape of a finely tailored suit like John Wick for a more business-orientated ensemble, then B&R have you covered. A dark black and gray combination is ideal to exude an aura of sophistication with a nice BR V2-93 on under your cuff.

Most leather looks are also going to fit aesthetically with Bell & Ross watches, especially their BR V3-94 R.S.20, which was created for French car manufacturer Renault. Whatever your preference, Bell & Ross is a mark of durable quality — made for men who push boundaries.

[As seems to be more and more the case lately, we have a couple of “web-only” observations on the print magazine priorities. We would much prefer to watch LaSirena69, as a reasonable place to start. -Ed.]

In manner of explanation, we understand that high-end magazines like to publish articles on a bunch of stuff only a few of us can afford. Presumably that makes all the editors still dealing with physical paper feel … well, we have no idea, but it seems to make them happy. To be fair, we actually happen to know someone who owns a one of these Bell & Ross watches — among many other fancy watches — and for our part we will say that the B&R has to be one of the nicest bits of masculine adornment we have ever seen in person in this office. … Really nice. Elegant without being showy, should that be your thing. (He will not let any of us even borrow it, though, which honestly seems a little mean, but that would be whining for another day.)

For today, you see, and in the category of thinking about things which will almost certainly not be on the shopping list this week, we decided to bid February 2021 adieu with another editor’s take on our Pet of the Month. As you might imagine, we do a lot of different kinds of “publishing” around here, what with all the magazines, and television networks, social media outlets, clubs, and all sorts of miscellenaous events — at least before we all got forced indoors while the groovy scientists try to figure out how we can back outside without millions of people dying and all. Well, we ran across this alternate interview presentation with our (really fun, by the way) Pet and immediately thought, “Hey! This would be much more fun for people to watch rather than, y’know, watches.”

LaSirena69, Penthouse Pet of the Month - February, 2021

This way you too can watch LaSirena69 all over again while pondering the truly important questions in life like, “Gee. I wonder if I’d have a better shot with LaSirena69 if I had a $4,000 watch.”

By the way, in case you are new here — or “indoors” in your case means “under a rock” — you may contrast and compare interview versions by visiting LaSirena69’s Pet Page. That way you can watch LaSirena69 a lot, whether you wear a watch or not.