As expected, a London court has fined Condé Nast £10,000 (approximately $14,573.20) after the publisher was found in contempt of court for printing a Michael Wolff column about the then-ongoing News of the World phone-hacking trial. You can read more about the case here and here.

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The man who died after being sucked out of a Somali passenger jet in midair on Monday appears to have been the person who detonated the bomb, reports the Wall Street Journal.

http://gawker.com/man-reportedly...

Citing a diplomatic source, the Journal’s Heidi Vogt writes that the man was able to “bypass rigorous security screening in Mogadishu” by arriving to the airport in a wheelchair. The source said the man was loaded onto the plane in the wheelchair and then moved to a regular seat. Five minutes after takeoff he then would have detonated the bomb and been pulled through the resultant hole in the fuselage.

All other passengers survived the incident, meaning this ended up being closer to a Jackass stunt than a terror attack.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com / image via AP

Yesterday, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein revealed how deeply afraid he is of our current scary “moment in history” in which Bernie Sanders’ proposals are being taken seriously. Perhaps Lloyd Blankfein lacks some historical perspective.

http://gawker.com/the-new-gilded...

In this moment in history, 2016, America is at the crest of a period of rising economic inequality that has not been widening for more than three and a half decades. It is no exaggeration to say that the concept of the American middle class that our parents and grandparents had is no longer one that exists in the real world. It is a level of inequality that has not been seen in this country since the Gilded Age that preceded the Great Depression.

Is this moment in history, 2016, really as “dangerous” as Lloyd Blankfein—who recently became a billionaire—seems to believe?

On September 16, 1920, a wagon full of dynamite and 500 pounds of shrapnel exploded on Wall Street in front of J.P. Morgan & Co’s offices. Nearly 40 people were killed, and hundreds were injured. Police believe the bombing was the work of anarchists who had carried out a nationwide bombing campaign targeting powerful institutions and government officials. At that time, anarchism had a decades-long history as a powerful radical movement in America. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, America saw a series of incredibly bloody labor battles in which thousands of workers battled police and company thugs. These repeatedly resulted in police and hired muscle murdering strikers, union activists killing police, and bombings. Decades later, after heavy government persecution of Communists real and imagined, the social and political movements of the 1960s once again gave rise to a wave of violent radicalism that routinely used bombings, armed robbery, and arson to fight against the government, police forces, and associated institutions.

Now, we have a presidential candidate who would like to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to fund free college tuition and jobs programs. And a few years back protesters camped out in a park near Wall Street for a couple of months.

For billionaire Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, whose $68 billion company has more than doubled in value since it went public, 2016 is in fact a moment of historically remarkable safety and security. He should be more grateful.

These things don’t always last.

[Photo: AP/ Flickr]

Making political advertisements doesn’t need to be very hard. Or, it at least needs to be much harder than correctly spelling the word “country.”

Above you see a screenshot from an already-deleted new ad by the Ted Cruz super PAC Courageous Conservatives that proudly and boldly spells the word “country” COUNRTY. Beautiful.

Courageous Conservatives is a super PAC with a direct tie to Jeff Roe, a close advisor of Cruz’s. (Roe’s hometown Riverfront Times called him “the architect of the Texas senator’s surprising first-place finish” in Iowa.) Courageous Conservatives’ stated goal is to “make some aggressive ads that people will want to share on social media,” so, mission accomplished.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com

Ben Carson is determined to stay in this race until the money dries out, and the money is drying out.

According to the Washington Post, Carson’s campaign—a 125-person Sisyphean operation—will shed around 50 employees as he limps through New Hampshire primary next week.

The paper reports the departing staffers “mostly work in field operations and at his headquarters in Northern Virginia.”

Even worse—he’ll probably have to start flying commercial again:

Salaries are being significantly reduced. Carson’s traveling entourage will shrink to only a handful of advisers. And instead of flying on private jets, Carson may soon return to commercial flights.

Was Carson’s campaign “successful?” According to the definition of the word, no. But it was a hell of a book tour.

http://gawker.com/people-are-cam...

Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Late last year, the conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson acquired the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the largest newspaper in Nevada. The immediate effects of Adelson’s ownership on the paper’s editorial autonomy were initially minor; its reporters managed to cover the sale, and the bizarre lengths to which their employer courted their future owner, like any other story. But now the Review-Journal’s newly installed publisher, a former Gannett executive named Craig Moon, is making sure his staff fall in line with their new leader’s wishes.

Politico columnist Ken Doctor has a lengthy dissection of the Review-Journal’s new pro-Adelson regime, and the list of new developments therein is sobering. According to Doctor:

• “Stories involving new owner Sheldon Adelson are being reviewed, changed or killed almost daily”
  
• “The newsroom is abuzz with word of a list of a half a dozen or so journalists whose work has rubbed Adelson the wrong way over the years, and who may soon be targeted for departure”
• Moon personally ordered the removal of a prominent statement of disclosure regarding Adelson’s various financial and political interests, which had been published on page A3 in daily printings of the paper. (You can still access and read the disclosure here.)
• On the same day of the statement’s removal, the Review-Journal published an article about a meeting between Adelson and representatives of the Oakland Raiders, concerning the former’s desire to erect a $1 billion football stadium in Nevada, whose construction would be partly underwritten with taxpayer money. Doctor claims that Moon personally oversaw this and subsequent articles about the proposed stadium, and in some cases “remov[ed] key points”—presumably ones that did not flatter Adelson—from the finished copy. Another stadium article never saw the light of day, Doctor adds, because Moon killed it.

We’ve asked Adelson and Moon for comment, and will update this post if we hear back. It’s unlikely they will, though. “Moon refused to comment on the recent changes, as did other principals involved in the story,” Doctor notes in his own story.

You can read the rest of Doctor’s piece here. When you’re done, be sure to pour one out for the staff of the Review-Journal. The paper they used to work for is not the one Adelson wants to own.

Email the author: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · Photo credit: Getty Images

One of the big questions in the Flint water crisis is who knew what and when. According to the AP, the Michigan governor’s office knew more than they’ve let on—and were aware of the problems as far back as last March, when his office received an email linking Flint to an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease.

http://gawker.com/how-much-did-m...

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has always maintained that he learned of a spike in Legionnaires cases sometime in early January. But the emails, obtained by the group Progress Michigan and reported by the AP, suggest his office was briefed in March. Via the AP:

“The increase of the illnesses closely corresponds with the timeframe of the switch to the Flint River water. The majority of the cases reside or have an association with the city,” Jim Henry, Genesee County’s environmental health supervisor, wrote March 10 to Flint leaders, the city’s state-appointed emergency financial manager and the state Department of Environmental Quality, known as the DEQ.

“This situation has been explicitly explained to MDEQ and many of the city’s officials,” Henry said in the email that was forwarded by the DEQ to a Snyder aide three days later. “I want to make sure in writing that there are no misunderstandings regarding this significant and urgent public health issue.”

Flint residents were already complaining about the water quality at the time the emails were sent.

Brad Wurfel, a DEQ spokesperson, followed up on the email, telling a Snyder aide in an email that although there appeared to be a “serious” issue with the water supply, he felt it would be “highly unlikely” to find Legionnaires bacteria around the water treatment plant. He has since resigned.

http://gawker.com/what-is-legion...

Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

North Korea has launched a brigade of balloons full of cigarette butts into South Korea. The charred detritus shall remind the imperialists of their bleak and smoky future.

Imagine you just started at a new job. You work remotely and have never met your boss in person. Nonetheless, on your first day of work, she asks you questions generally reserved for close friends: What was your family like growing up? Do you smoke weed? Do drugs? Enjoy casual sex? Have you ever had a threesome? Have you ever had group sex (more than three)? Have you been sexually assaulted? Have you ever had an abortion?

For some writers, most of them young, inexperienced, and hungry, that is what it’s like to work at the tremendously popular women’s site Bustle, which had 43.8 million unique visitors in the past 30 days, according to Quantcast. (In a little over a year, its numbers have doubled.) Bustle, which produces aggregated news alongside makeup and entertainment tips, as well as personal essays like, “What Getting A Medical Abortion Was Like For Me,” and “How Jessica Jones Helped Me Through My Own Rape,” sends some of its writers the “Bustle Writers: Identity Survey,” which includes 46 items. One question, which instructs writers to “check all that apply” contains almost 150 identifiers including the types of questions listed in the first paragraph of this post.

After I reached out to the site to inquire about this Survey Monkey-hosted form, it was protected with a password. I took screenshots upon being forwarded the document last week and you can see the survey in its entirety in the embed below:

Bustle Identity Survey

Some of the survey’s many caveats—this is optional, the information won’t be shared, even if you fill it out you needn’t fill it out in full, you can always say no if you should receive a suggestion for an assignment based on your answers—were upheld by Bustle’s deputy editor Julie Alvin in her response to my request for a comment on this story. Via email, Alvin wrote:

The survey sent to you is a survey that is typically sent to Lifestyle/Identity writers who have been hired to write for Bustle. The survey is completely optional, and all the questions on the survey are completely optional.

When there’s a conversation about a sensitive or complex issue — domestic violence, gender identity, substance abuse and recovery, etc — we want to make sure those topics are covered properly. In many cases, this means working with writers who have firsthand experience and who have expressed a desire to write on those subjects.

At least one former Bustle writer, though, didn’t feel that the survey was optional. “I felt like I needed to fill it out because I didn’t want to seem like someone who was bringing objections to the job right away,” she told me (like everyone else who communicated with me for this story besides Alvin, she spoke to me on the condition that she remain anonymous and unidentifiable). “You don’t ever want to be put in a position where you have to lie to your boss. Even though people can fill out this survey and choose to lie, it’s a weird experience. I’m a journalist. I don’t want to have to lie to this website where I’m supposed to be publishing the truth. Maybe that sounds silly or idealistic, but it was difficult for me to do that, especially on my first day.” She told me that she received this survey with her welcome pack and lied on it anyway.

Another former lifestyle writer for the site told me she wasn’t bothered by the survey at all. “I wasn’t offended by the questions or the fact that Bustle asked them, since our answers stay in-house unless we choose to write about it,” she explained by email. “Essentially, I think the survey is a good thing, mostly because it gives both the writer and the site the ability and opportunity to tell unique stories. The more female voices that are out there—writing on the topics that effect [sic] us the most—the better.”

Cases can be made for and against a survey that distills human experience and outright trauma down to a series of boxes to check, but what is inarguable is that this document is a sign of the times. I would add that it’s a fascinating one. The current media climate demands more life from writers than ever, especially if they aren’t interested in doing actual reporting. The market rewards personal storytelling with attention—the more lurid and specific, the better. Just a few weeks ago, we saw a young xoJane writer seemingly pushed to the brink by what she perceived to be the demands of her job and her reluctance to reveal. Nora Ephron’s signature mantra “everything is copy” has become the norm, except everything can’t ever be enough when your job is to churn out posts on a routine basis.

What this survey looks like to me is a crystallization of the industrialization of confession. It’s an efficient, logical method for testing how much of their guts writers want to spill, and which guts exactly. It was probably inevitable that something like this would be invented, even if it didn’t come from a company whose entire genesis reportedly derived from a rather cynically deterministic view of what women want to read about. Its depressing inevitability resembles that of factory farming, as conveyed by vegan writer James E. McWilliams in the New York Times in 2012:

Subsidies notwithstanding, the unfortunate reality of commodifying animals is that confinement pays. If the production of meat and dairy was somehow decentralized into small free-range operations, common economic sense suggests that it wouldn’t last. These businesses — no matter how virtuous in intention — would gradually seek a larger market share, cutting corners, increasing stocking density and aiming to fatten animals faster than competitors could. Barring the strictest regulations, it wouldn’t take long for production systems to scale back up to where they started.

Itemizing actual human experience may be extremely cynical, but it also makes sense in this economy.

Speaking of the economy, it’s less lucrative for a young writer to share her secrets than it is for a publisher to mine them. The former writer that I spoke to who was made uncomfortable by the survey told me she made $90 a day at Bustle ($15 an hour for six-hour shifts)—even less than the paltry $100 day rate attributed to Bustle that leaked a few years ago.

But because Bustle’s premium on revelation is well-established (more than 20 of the pieces that Bustle editor-in-chief Kate Ward highlighted in her Bustle’s 51 Best Articles Of 2015 post involve some sort of confessing), this former writer probably could have predicted being guided by her superiors to share her life on the site.

“It is [part of the job], but I think they should be paying their employees better, first of all, if they’re going to straight up ask for people to share incredibly private parts of their life with them, and right away with your welcome packet, without even meeting any of these people face-to-face,” she said. “This is the first job for a lot of writers who are desperately trying to break into this really competitive world of online writing and I think a lot of them feel like they do have to share that and they don’t necessarily have boundaries. Maybe I’m projecting, but I don’t think that a publication should ask that of their writers. I think it should be something the writers bring up with a publication.”

She nonetheless left the company on good terms, she says. In fact, everyone I talked to expressed that their experiences with the company have been positive. A current lifestyle writer for the site told me she didn’t receive the survey, but she’ll receive sporadic emails from her editor where the reverse pitches stay optional. “If [the subjects] do get a little bit touchier, it’s still voluntary,” she said. “It’s not like she asks us directly to respond and reveal anything. What my experience has been is if I wanted to write on a more sensitive subject or something that’s more personal, I can do that, and there would be no pressure to do so or even answer.”

“You did occasionally get ‘It’s sleep deprivation week, do you want to write an essay for a hundred extra dollars?’,” recalled yet another former writer. “But it was less invasive [than the survey]. They would send out sometimes, ‘If you’ve had an abortion, do you want to write an essay?’ but it was never, ‘Let’s find out who’s had these experiences and go from there.’”

The woman that I spoke with who objected to the survey says she wrote about herself on the site only rarely—her output was more based on lists and aggregation. It was way fluffier than even a personal essay about weed-smoking.

“Most stuff I’ve written is dumb, and that’s fine. I just feel like that’s my job now, to write dumb things for money,” she told me. “I’ve gotten used to putting my name on things that I know are silly, which saying out loud sounds really cynical, but...whatever.”

After receiving Alvin’s statement, I reached back out to Alvin and Bustle PR to engage in further conversation regarding the philosophical implications of the survey, their decision to password-protect it, and paying their writers $90 a day. In response, Alvin wrote:

We do not pay writers by the day, so the compensation information you have is incorrect.

The survey is password protected because the survey you received is outdated, and not intended for external distribution.

I clarified that $15 an hour for 6-hour shifts amounted to $90 a day. I also inquired about when the survey changed, as it was sent to writers as recently as last year. After not hearing back for a few hours, I sent Alvin the following email about her apparently contradicting statements regarding the survey’s use:

Just want to give you another opportunity for clarification: In your initial statement to me, you said, “The survey sent to you is a survey that is typically sent to Lifestyle/Identity writers who have been hired to write for Bustle. The survey is completely optional, and all the questions on the survey are completely optional.” More recently, you said it was outdated. That you referred to it in the present tense initially suggested it was not outdated but still in use. Just want to clear up the apparent contradiction.

I have not heard back from Alvin or Bustle, but I will update this post if and when I do.

[Image above is a modified version of the Bustle Writers: Identity Survey, edited by Jim Cooke]

Email the author of this post: rich@gawker.com

Sometimes, it seems like there is an endless barrage of news stories about people who are beaten or killed by police and receive no criminal or civil justice. But occasionally, these victims do get restitution. One such victim is NYPD Officer Larry Jackson.

A federal jury just awarded Jackson $15 million in a lawsuit stemming from an incident in 2010, when he was beaten and arrested in his own by a group of fellow cops who responded to a call about an altercation outside his house. Jackson, who is black, was off-duty at the time, and pled with the officers that he too was a member of the NYPD, according to the suit. He claims that the injuries he sustained to his hand left him unable to use his gun, and that he may have to retire from the force.

DNAinfo reports:

When police arrived, they mistook Jackson for one of the agitators and began to physically subdue him, ignoring his repeated attempts to identify himself as a member of the NYPD, according to the lawsuit.

“Dude, it is my house and I am a police officer too,” Jackson told the arresting officers, according to the complaint. Jackson was then handcuffed and taken to the 113th Precinct stationhouse even after officers found his NYPD shield, which had been in his front pocket the whole time, the lawsuit says.

Want to make sure you get your due when an NYPD cop mistakes you for someone else and smacks you silly? Try signing up to be a cop now, as a preemptive strike. We can’t promise it will bring you justice, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Image via Getty. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Wanna pawn some shit? Shop around.

People forced to use pawn shops for banking services tend to be those without ready access to traditional banks, not to mention very possibly desperate and in a hurry. All in all, not a business that naturally “lends itself” (a joke) to the process of shopping around for the best price.

But that is a big mistake! This fascinating piece on Priceonomics—based on data from the online pawn site PawnGuru—shows that the differences in price that different pawn shops will offer for the same item is absolutely obscene. Here are some samples of how much offers from pawn shops varied for the same items in these categories:

• Tools: 69%
  
• Electronics: 99%
  
• Guns: 100%
  
• iPhone: 167%
  
• Jewelry: 475%
  

By shopping your items around to different pawn shops instead of taking the first offer, you could make so much more money it is fucking crazy. Pawn shops make the subprime mortgage business look like a haven of standardized fairness.

Don’t use pawn shops if you can help it because they’re a ripoff but if you have to use pawn shops then shop around.

[Priceonomics. Photo: Flickr]

Kristin Cavallari has studied all the letters in the alphabet and picked six of them to make a new word: “Larox.” She debuted it on Instagram yesterday:

For more words designed by Kristin, see here.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

Your favorite rechargeable batteries, a $200 Windows laptop, and one of the best Bluetooth speakers you can buy lead off today’s best deals. Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more.

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Top Deals

It’s not often that Amazon features a laptop as one of its deals of the day, so anyone who uses a desktop at home or work should definitely check out this $200 Lenovo ThinkPad for their portable computing needs.

This model’s 11", 1366x768 display probably disqualifies it from being your only computer, but 4GB of RAM is double what you’d find in most similarly priced Chromebooks, and the 128GB SSD is positively spacious compared to the 16-32GB flash chips included in Google’s alternatives. Is it an amazing laptop? No. But it seems like a hell of a deal at $200. [Lenovo ThinkPad 11E Ultraportable Notebook, $200]

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Pyrex bakeware is up there with knives and skillets on the totem pole of essential kitchen gear, and this three-pan set can be yours for just $12 today. [Pyrex 6-Piece Bake N’ Storage Value Pack, $12]

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Eneloops are your favorite rechargeable batteries (by a long shot), and this discounted 4-pack of AAs comes with a charger, making it perfect for testing the waters. The charger will work with AAA Eneloops as well, if you need some for your rotation. [4-Pack Eneloop AA Batteries With Charger, $16]

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If you missed out on Monday’s Mohu Leaf HDTV antenna deal, Amazon’s custom-branded alternative is marked down to $20 right now, an all-time low. Order quickly to get it in time for the Super Bowl. [AmazonBasics HDTV Antenna, $20]

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Not sure if this is right for you? Lifehacker has a great guide to get you started.

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You guys have bought a ton of these mounts from various manufacturers, but having tried a few of them, TechMatte’s is the one I keep in my own car. [TechMatted Smartphone Car Mount, $5 with code T89L8XQ6]

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If you don’t want to block a vent, there’s also a CD slot model available for $9. [Nekteck CD Slot Magnetic Phone Mount, $9 with code MKMAMIYV]

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$15 Bluetooth keyboard aren’t particularly uncommon, but this iClever model is unique in offering a 7-color customizable backlight. In addition to just looking cool, that could come in handy if you’re trying to get some work done on a dark airplane, or while sitting in bed. [iClever 7-Color Backlit Bluetooth Keyboard, $15 with code LIWBC8VI]

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While I would argue that a good toaster oven is a better overall use of your counter space, I’ve never found one that can toast a piece of bread as perfectly as a humble slot toaster.

This two-slot model from Hamilton Beach is mostly notable for its $20 price tag, but its keep-warm function and seven different darkness settings are also very appreciated. [Hamilton Beach Keep Warm 2-Slice Toaster, $20]

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The Panasonic Vortex nose hair trimmer is one of the best selling items we’ve ever listed, and today, a Philips alternative is cheaper than the Vortex has ever been. [Philips Norelco Nosetrimmer 3100, $9]

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Last week, we posted a $200 deal on the 16-zone Rachio IRO smart irrigation controller. That deal is still available, but if you have a smaller yard, the 8-zone model just dropped to $150 as well.

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The Rachio IRO can control sixteen different zones in your yard, and automatically adjusts watering schedules based on the weather. If you want to keep tabs on it, its iOS and Android app will show you how much water you’re using (and saving), and allow you to make any adjustments necessary, no matter where you are in the world. All of these smarts mean that the IRO can save you 30% on your outdoor water use, so it should pay for itself over time. It’s also EPA WaterSense Certified, meaning your local water company might offer you a rebate for purchasing it. [Rachio IRO Smart 8-Zone Irrigation Controller, $150]

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Note: There’s also a brand new model of the Rachio available for $250, which adds a physical remote, revamped housing, and Amazon Echo support.

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If you have a wedding or engagement on the horizon, or just like collecting loose diamonds, Amazon’s offering big discounts on jewels and jewelry, today only. [Up to 75% Off Bridal Rings & Loose Diamonds at Amazon]

While I definitely recommend owning a large USB battery pack for long trips and power outages, at $5, it wouldn’t hurt to own this pocket-sized model as well to use as a daily carry. [Poweradd Pilot X1 5200mAh Portable Charger Power Bank, $5 code E879NFK8]

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If you never played the first three Uncharted games on PS3, the remastered collection featuring the entire trilogy is down to $29 on PS4 today. [Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, $29]

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And if you have Amazon Prime, you can save $12 on your preorder of Uncharted 4. Discount shown at checkout. [Preorder Uncharted 4, $48 for Prime members]

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Unlike cloth oven mitts, you can use these silicone gloves to handle foods directly when necessary, and since you’ll have the use of all five of your fingers, you should be less prone to dropping your dinner. [Heat Resistant Silicone BBQ Grilling Gloves, $8 with code 9A4D8RME]

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We don’t frequently highlight individual articles of clothing, but this deal is too good to pass up. Tumi’s T-Tech Softshell jacket is simple, practical, and has great reviews around the web. Most stores sell it for $80 or more, but you can get one on eBay today in a few different colors for just $33 shipped. [T-Tech by Tumi Softshell Jacket, $33]

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We’ve seen more Bluetooth car kits than we could possibly count, but this one is unique in featuring a built-in headset. You can still take a call over your car’s speakers (assuming you have an AUX jack), but if you need to be more discrete, you can pop out the headset and transfer the call in seconds. [Omaker Hands-free Car Kit Bluetooth 4.0 Music Receiver Audio Adapter with Headset and Dual Port USB Car Charger & Magnetic Mount, $24 with code HL3LZWIO]

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Blacklight flashlights are great if you want to spot hidden stains on train seats, hotel sheets, or (gasp) even in your own house...if that’s something you want to do.

It may seem silly, but if you find even one stain in a hotel room and complain to management, I guarantee that this thing will pay for itself several times over. [[51 LEDs ] OxyLED Pet UV Urine Stain Detector Blacklight Flashlight, $10 with code XJVNX4CG]

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If your car takes synthetic oil, and you like to change it yourself, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better deal than $28 for six quarts of Mobil 1 5W-30, complete with Prime shipping. [Mobil 1 94001 5W-30 Synthetic Motor Oil - 1 Quart (Pack of 6), $28]

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UE’s new Roll Bluetooth speaker is the company’s smallest offering, and early reviews indicate that it lives up to its UE Boom predecessors. If you’ve been waiting for a discount to pick one up, Amazon’s taking $30 off most of the colors they offer right now. That’s a match for the best price we’ve ever seen. [UE Roll Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker, $70]

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If you can’t afford an Oculus Rift and a computer to run it, this Google Cardboard-compatible View-Master headset only requires your phone, and can be yours for just $18 (if you’re a Prime member, that is). That’s only about two dollars less than its previous low price, but this is still one of the best “premium” Google Cardboard viewers out there. [Viewmaster VR With Google Cardboard Support, $18]

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We’ve seen a few great deals on cordless vacuum cleaners lately, but if you’re still tripping over an old-fashioned plug-in model at home, here’s another chance to cut the cord.

The Hoover Linx features an 18-volt battery, a motorized brush that you can turn on and off, and an easy-to-empty receptacle. It normally retails for $130-$160, but today, you can grab one for $90. [Hoover Linx Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner, $90]

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If winter has cracked your lips and turned your hands scaly, a good humidifier could be just what the doctor ordered. This Air-O-Swiss ultrasonic model was one of your five favorites, and it’s never been cheaper before. [Air-O-Swiss Ultrasonic Humidifier, $115]

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If you want a tablet to basically use as a portable TV (that’s basically what my iPad is at this point), a big screen is important, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better deal right now than Amazon’s Fire HD 10 for $180.

It’s not as fast as an iPad, it doesn’t have as many apps as a standard Android tablet, and its 1280x800 screen is far from spectacular. But if you just want to binge on Jessica Jones while you cook dinner, it’s tough to beat an internet-connected 10” screen for this price. [Amazon Fire HD 10, $180]

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If you live near a Costco, but never got around to joining, this deal should be enough to push you over the edge. You’ll still have to pay the standard $55 for a new Gold Star membership, but you’ll get a $20 gift card, 72 free AA batteries, a food court pizza, and a big bag of tortilla chips for free, plus a coupon for $25 off a $250 online order. Just note that this deal is valid for new Costco members only. [Costco Membership w/ $20 Gift Card and Three Free Items, $55]

https://www.livingsocial.com/deals/1462564-...

The Logitech G502 was your choice for best gaming mouse (though you don’t need to be a gamer to appreciate its benefits), and you can pick one up for an all-time low $50 today.

http://co-op.kinja.com/most-popular-g...

http://lifehacker.com/improve-your-v...

The marquee spec here is the DPI range of 200-12,000, adjustable on the fly. There are also five easily movable and removable weights, and 11 customizable buttons, along with the classic Logitech dual-mode scroll wheel. Mechanical microswitches and a braided cable are also nice touches. [Logitech G502 Proteus Core Optical Gaming Mouse, $50]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Logitech-G...

You can never have too many Lightning cables.

2-Pack RAVPower Lightning Cables ($8) | Amazon | Promo code 4BXRUCZZ

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

$20 is a very good price for any 20,000mAh USB battery pack, and this one actually includes a built-in solar panel to recharge itself. While that’s going to be much slower than recharging over microUSB, it can still top off the battery if you leave it out in the sun for a few hours, so it’s a nice little bonus. [ZeroLemon SolarJuice 20000mAh Fast Portable Charger with Solar Charging Technology, $20 with code Z36GZOGN]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NIOGKL8/...

You only really reap the benefits of Qi wireless charging if you scatter the pads all around your home and office for quick charges throughout the day. Luckily, you can afford to do just that with this deal. [TechMatte PowerPod 2 Qi Wireless Charging Pad, $11]

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PlayStation Plus memberships occasionally dip down to $40, but if your subscription is about to lapse, this $43 deal will work in a pinch. [PlayStation Plus, $43]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-PlayS...

It wasn’t long ago that portable, USB-powered external hard drives maxed out at 2TB, but Seagate’s new Backup Plus manages to double that, and you can pick one up for an all-time low $120 today. That price even includes 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive storage for two years, which is a $96 value on its own.

We’re not sure how long this deal will last, so if you need to keep a lot of storage in your travel bag, or plugged into your Xbox One, I’d grab this quickly. [Seagate Backup Plus 4TB + 200GB Microsoft OneDrive, $120]

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portab...

This Bluetooth speaker might cost a bit more than others that we list, but having owned it for about a month now, I can tell you the the sound quality absolutely blows away my trusty Jawbone Jambox, and Anker isn’t exaggerating when it boasts about 24 hour battery life. [Anker SoundCore Dual-Driver Portable Bluetooth Speaker, $36 with code NKJTGELK]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016XTADG2/...

Tech

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• Lexar 633x 32GB High-Performance microSDHC Flash Memory Card w/USB 3.0 Reader ($15) | Amazon

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• Poweradd Pilot X1 5200mAh Portable Charger Power Bank ($5) | Amazon | Use code E879NFK8
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Audio

• Beats Solo 2 Wireless Headphones ($230) | Amazon
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• Darkiron [Kanen] Series Headset with In-line Microphone ($15) | Amazon | Use code MY549HQS

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Home Theater

• Refurb VIZIO D43-C1 43-Inch 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV ($240) | Walmart
• Samsung 40 Inch LED Smart TV w/ $100 Gift Card ($330) | Dell
• Roku SE Streaming Player ($25) | Best Buy
• WALI Floating Shelf with Strengthened Tempered Glass ($16) | Amazon

Computers & Accessories

• Lenovo ThinkPad 11E 11.6" Ultraportable Business Notebook, Intel, 128GB SSD, 4GB DDR3, Win10Pro ($200) | Amazon
• HP 14" Chromebook, Intel, 2GB, 16GB ($229) | Best Buy

Mobile Devices

• i-Blason Armor Box Kido Series Light Weight Super Protection Case for iPad Air/iPad 5 ($19) | Amazon

Photography

• Refurb Nikon Super Three Lens Starter Bundle - 35mm, 50mm, & 55-200mm Zoom Lens ($329) | Amazon
• Lowepro Urban Reporter 250 Camera Bag ($40) | Best Buy

Home

• Select Laminate Flooring is Deeply Discounted Today at Home Depot
• [51 LEDs ] OxyLED Pet UV Urine Stain Detector Blacklight Flashlight ($10) | Amazon | Use code XJVNX4CG

Beauty & Grooming

• Panasonic ES-RT77-S - Arc3 3-Blade Electric Shaver with Built-In Trimmer Wet/Dry ($70) | Panasonic | Use code NEWYEAR
• Philips Norelco Nosetrimmer 3100 ($9) | Amazon

Kitchen

• Several K-Cup 48 Packs are $20 Each | Best Buy
• Take an Additional 20% Off at Oneida with Code EXTRA20
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Fitness

• Tone Fitness Kettlebell Set ($18) | Walmart
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Apparel

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Camping & Outdoors

• OxyLED MH20 LED Headlamp with Motion Sensor ($11) | Amazon | Use code 29BA9PX2

Tools & Auto

• Etekcity S9 Layout-Smart Class II Laser Distance Measurer, Bubble Level, 130-Feet (Green) ($36) | Amazon | Use code 6DL3DXF7
• 12000mAh Portable Auto Car Jump Starter Power Bank ($33) | eBay
• Omaker Hands-free Car Kit Bluetooth 4.0 Music Receiver Audio Adapter with Headset and Dual Port USB Car Charger & Magnetic Mount ($24) | Amazon | Use code HL3LZWIO
• Craftsman 6-in-1 Screwdriver ($6) | Sears
• Craftsman 18.0 Volt Cordless Drill Driver ($25) | Sears
• Kawasaki Heavy Duty Reciprocating Saw ($32) | eBay
• Mobil 1 94001 5W-30 Synthetic Motor Oil - 1 Quart (Pack of 6) ($28) | Amazon
• DuroMax XP4850EH Hybrid Portable Dual Fuel Propane / Gas Camping RV Generator ($325) | eBay
  

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017UASGDA

Media

Movies & TV

• Sideways 10th Anniversary Edition ($10) | Amazon
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Books & Magazines

• Car and Driver Magazine Subscription ($4) | Topmags | Use code 21589
• Road & Track Magazine Subscription ($4) | Topmags | Use code 21589
• Cat’s Cradle: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut ($2) | Amazon
• On Silver Wings Audiobook ($3) | Audible

Gaming

Peripherals

• Microsoft XBox One Controller + Cable (Wireless or Wired) for Windows USB ($35) | NCIXUS
• 111 Vault Sneakers ($40) | The Bethesda Store

PC

• Batman: Arkham Knight ($24) | Steam
• Fortified ($12) | Steam
• Wolfenstein: The New Order ($9) | Best Buy

PlayStation 4

• Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection ($29) | Amazon
• Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth ($48) | Amazon Prime
• Skylanders SuperChargers Dark Edition Starter Pack ($34) | Amazon
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege ($40) | Amazon

Xbox One

• Microsoft XBox One Controller + Cable (Wireless or Wired) for Windows USB ($35) | NCIXUS
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege ($40) | Amazon
• The Wolf Among Us ($8) | Best Buy

Wii U

• Shovel Knight - Wii U ($20) | Amazon
• Preorder Ryu amiibo (Super Smash Bros Series) ($10) | Amazon Prime
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Vita

• Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls ($25) | Amazon

3DS

• The Legend of Legacy ($21) | Amazon
• Preorder Kapp’n amiibo ($10) | Amazon Prime
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• Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. ($15) | Amazon

Board Games

• A Game of Thrones LCG Second Edition The Road to Winterfell Card Game ($14) | Amazon

Toys

• MJX X101C Wifi FPV RC Quadcopter Drone with HD 720P Camera, One Key Return Function, Headless Mode ($139) | Amazon | Use code 3F59VN8F
• Newisland Detachable Blasters Toy Guns with Foam Darts and Dartboard ($11) | Amazon | Use code 2LVNG9TX
• LEGO Creator 31037 Adventure Vehicles Building Kit ($20) | Amazon
• LEGO City Space Port 60080 Spaceport Building Kit ($94) | Amazon
• Learning Carpets, Giant Road ($27) | Amazon

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Send deal submissions to Deals@Gawker and all other inquiries to Shane@Gawker

In a move that should have come decades earlier, the Obama administration proposed on Thursday a tax on every barrel of oil produced by companies in the U.S—$10 a pop.

According to The New York Times, the president’s budget request to Congress is slated to include the fee, which if implemented will rake in $32 billion in federal revenue every year. From the Times:

The proposal to further increase costs for fossil fuel production is part of a broader effort by Mr. Obama to fight climate change. The goal is to make it more expensive to produce and consume energy sources that emit planet-warming greenhouse gases while stoking the market for clean, renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar.

A statement released by the White House says that the funds will be spent on research devoted to developing more fuel-efficient vehicles as well as better highway infrastructure. The move comes at a time when the price of oil in the U.S. is incredibly low—also a time when consumers may be more amenable to paying the tax.

Interestingly, the noted climate denier and conservative Republican chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, James Inhofe, has voiced support for the measure.

“It’s not a tax. It’s a user fee,” he told the Times. “Nothing is off the table.”

Despite Inhofe’s blessing, House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement that the proposal would be “dead on arrival in Congress.”

The tax is a long time coming, for a presidential candidate who in 2008 promised that the U.S. would “ end our dependence on oil from the Middle East” in a decade.

[Image via Getty]

Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.

When a candidate is down and out in the polls, there’s one tried-and-true strategy that should never be overlooked: an excellent sense of humor.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, currently polling behind Donald Trump in the upcoming New Hampshire caucuses, thought that the arrival of his mother, Barbara Bush, at a rally on Thursday was the perfect time for a carefully-placed child abuse joke.

According to Politico, the Florida governor joked about his mother’s iron fist at a campaign event in Derry:

“I jokingly say that when we were growing up in Midland, in Houston, that mom was fortunate not to have a child-abuse hotline available,” he said, as attendees laughed, explaining that “the discipline of learning right and wrong was her doing.”

Other reporters watching the event picked up on the joke, which surely landed just as well as Bush had hoped.

The event was an all-around celebration of the Bush clan, with Jeb calling his father, George H.W. Bush, the “greatest man alive.” They say that high-pressure situations, like a presidential candidacy, can tear a family apart. But judging from Jeb’s blossoming bid for president, the Bushes are closer than ever.

[Image via Getty]

Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.

In the shadow of the Super Bowl, unrest and citizen distrust are on the rise in San Francisco. Under the cruel hand of the NFL, the city by the bay has become virtually indistinguishable from the urban hellscapes of dystopian fiction.

Can you tell SF apart from a dystopia in this quiz? You won’t believe just how bad things have gotten for Frisco.

Top image: Associated Press

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

Zika, the mosquito-born virus that shrinks babies’ brains, continues to alarm scientists as they learn more about how it can be transmitted from person to person. Earlier this week, someone in Texas got the virus from sex, and today, a Brazilian government health institute reported that it discovered for the first time the presence of active Zika virus in urine and saliva samples.

http://gawker.com/someone-in-tex...

According to the Associated Press, the Fiocruz institute is now determining whether or not Zika can be transmitted through those bodily fluids. The Brazilian government has yet to make any recommendations based on the findings so far.

Countries like Brazil and El Salvador are still recommending, of course, that women avoid becoming pregnant while the virus rages on, even though many lack birth control and other resources to help in this endeavor.

http://jezebel.com/the-abortion-r...

Photo via AP. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

It’s a story as old as time—boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy hires hit men to murder girl, girl surprises him at her funeral by saying: “Surprise! I’m still alive!”

Such is the story of Noela Rukundo, a Congolese woman living in Australia who reportedly survived her husband’s attempt on her life because the hit men knew her brother and felt bad.

Rukundo was in Africa attending a funeral when her husband, Balenga Kalala, recommended she go outside “for some fresh air.” But as soon as she left the hotel, the BBC reports, she was kidnapped at gunpoint and driven to a safe house 30 to 40 minutes away.

“One of the kidnappers told his friend, ‘Go call the boss.’ I can hear doors open but I didn’t know if their boss was in a room or if he came from outside.

“They ask me, ‘What did you do to this man? Why has this man asked us to kill you?’ And then I tell them, ‘Which man? Because I don’t have any problem with anybody.’ They say, ‘Your husband!’ I say, ‘My husband can’t kill me, you are lying!’ And then they slap me.

“After that the boss says, ‘You are very stupid, you are fool. Let me call who has paid us to kill you.’”

The gang’s leader made the call.

“We already have her,” he triumphantly told his paymaster.

The phone was put on loudspeaker for Noela to hear the reply.

Her husband’s voice said: “Kill her.”

“I said to myself, I was already dead. Nothing I can do can save me.

“But he looks at me and then he says, ‘We’re not going to kill you. We don’t kill women and children.’

“He told me I’d been stupid because my husband paid them the deposit in November. And when I went to Africa it was January. He asked me, ‘How stupid can you be, from November, you can’t see that something is wrong?’”

So instead of killing her, the hit men gave her evidence to convict her husband-and left her on the side of the road. It took her three days to get back to Australia, where her funeral was in full swing. So she showed up and her husband thought she was a ghost. She was not.

It is an excellent story and you should read it.

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Is there anything people wouldn’t believe about Ted Cruz? A few months ago, someone sent Jezebel a tip about the rising Republican presidential candidate’s days as a Princeton undergraduate. It was a story that seemed both unlikely and physiologically improbable, but I figured I might as well ask around, just in case.

This is a man, after all, who left a strong enough impression during his Ivy League days that his undergraduate roommate once declared, “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.” Before he was a spectacularly disliked senator, trying to leverage his colleagues’ disdain into “outsider” status, he was a comically unpopular college student and a member of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society, Princeton’s 250-year-old debate club.

The stories published thus far about the young Cruz’s time at Princeton, and later at Harvard Law, already paint quite a portrait: A fellow law student who once gave him a ride from New York to Cambridge told the Boston Globe that he immediately asked for her IQ and SAT score; the Daily Beast quoted several students who regarded him as “creepy” and recalled that he would walk through the women’s dorm in a paisley bathrobe. His aforementioned freshman year roommate, the screenwriter Craig Mazin, has called him “a huge asshole” and “a nightmare of a human being.” A fellow debater who often traveled to debates with Cruz described him, witheringly, as “an extreme fan of the Les Misérables soundtrack.”

Armed with this context, when Jezebel received this anonymous tip detailing an absurd sexual rumor that was allegedly going around about Cruz his freshman year in college, we immediately began to look into it. This involved describing a frankly disgusting alleged scenario over the phone to one fortysomething Ivy Leaguer after another, as tactfully as possible, while making sure to characterize it as only a rumor, and likely untrue.

“Ew!” multiple people yelped in response. “Oh, God, no,” another murmured. “I’ve certainly never heard anything like that,” one alumnus said.

Ultimately, no one could substantiate the allegation that this particular rumor had even existed as a rumor, much less provide any factual basis for it. Because of this, I can’t print it here, despite its considerable entertainment value. But even as it became clear that this was a dead end, I kept making phone calls. Ted Cruz’s former classmates, it turns out, have a hell of a lot to say about him.

I emailed more than 75 people in an effort to corroborate the original tip, and spoke on the phone with nearly 20. In a political climate that values ideals and rhetoric above accepted fact, it can start to seem like any insane, nefarious story about a politician’s past is probably true—especially a candidate like Ted Cruz, whose overtly ruthless campaign tactics have set him apart from the rest of the Republican hopefuls.

But as one former debater pointed out, “This guy has wanted to run for elected office since the day that he was born.” Another told me in an email that Cruz “was a guy who avoided mud at all times.”

In early December, I contacted Sarah Hougen Poggi ’92, who’d left a comment on a New York Times op-ed detailing how she stopped attending Whig-Clio meetings because “I simply could not deal with his rudeness.”

“He didn’t become more civil or well-mannered” over the next four years, Poggi told me over email. “When anyone in my class and I talk about him there is no one who breaks in and says ‘Come on guys, he wasn’t so bad.’”

Poggi couldn’t help with our tip, but she did connect me with another alum named Leonard Nalencz, who, despite not having known Cruz personally, was so eager to assist in my quest that he mailed me his Princeton yearbook and offered, jokingly, to “give blood, go on a hunger strike, move to Baltimore, etc.”

“Everyone in my class that I’ve talked to is horrified that he’s a candidate,” he added. This is a sentiment that I heard quite a bit.

With the yearbook, I was able to piece together a list of students who might have known Cruz in college—students who lived in Butler College, his freshman year residential hall; students who were on the debate team; students who were members of Colonial, his eating club. Some were happy to hear from me; others less so. One responded to a three-line email inquiry (which did not contain the specifics of the rumor) by asking to be connected with my HR department, referring to my request for an interview as “a breach of privacy.”

Only a small percentage of the people who responded to my emails claimed to have known Cruz well (“I tried not to know him,” one woman from his dorm told me); almost all of them mentioned David Panton as one of Cruz’s few close friends. Panton, Cruz’s college debate partner, is now a supporter of the Cruz campaign. (“Despite what you may have heard in the media, the truth is that Ted Cruz was actually very well liked by many at Princeton,” Panton told Jezebel in an emailed statement. “Ted and I had many mutual friends who would usually stop by to watch movies, play video games, or even engage in long, fun discussions about politics, philosophy, and life.”)

Many Princeton alums I interviewed, speaking under conditions of anonymity, had harsh words for their former classmate. One such person, who studied with Cruz at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and asked not to be named in this story, referred to him as a “monster geek” who was “constantly dominating the conversation in order to get the attention of the professor.” She reported having such intense feelings of dislike towards Cruz during a public policy conference their junior year that “I had a complete allergy towards the [law] profession when it was over.”

“I was stunned that he would be the one that ended up [running for] president out of our class,” she added, “because he’s about as telegenic as an undertaker.”

“There are not that many people in my life who I can think of who I didn’t actually have extensive interactions with who bring up such bad feelings,” said Mikaela Beardsley, who lived in the same residential college as Cruz during their freshman year at Princeton, in 1988.

Beardsley says that she and Cruz, who lived next door to her close friend, would occasionally get into political arguments when she came by. “I’m a classic blue state anti-death penalty pro-choice liberal—I represent everything wrong with America, as far as Ted Cruz is concerned,” she said during a phone conversation, laughing. “We would just yell at each other.”

“And when he became Senator, I was like, ‘Oh my God, he called my mother a whore!’”

He did? According to Beardsley, the two were having an “intellectual debate” about abortion one day, when she disclosed that her mother had once ended a pregnancy. “I remember telling him [that] my mother had two children, they really couldn’t afford to have another child, they really would have struggled. And it was a very difficult, painful decision for my mother.” At that point, she said, “he became vicious and made it personal,” eventually telling her, in his loving way, “that my mother was going to hell and was a whore.”

“He made me cry, he was really awful,” she added. (Two other students who lived in Butler at the time recalled Beardsley and Cruz getting into an argument over abortion that resulted in tears.) “It was one of the worst things that anyone’s ever said to me.”

(Cruz’s campaign has not responded to an email asking for comment on Beardsley’s allegation, or to multiple requests for comment on our story.)

As the tip I was originally investigating was sexual in nature, a subject central to my interviews was Cruz’s sex life in college, which is not something either I or my interview subjects really wanted to dwell on. No one I spoke with who lived in Butler College could recall anything about Cruz’s experiences with women, which seem to have been confined to the debate circuit.

“Ted’s romantic life was extraordinarily limited, not that he wanted it that way,” said Stephen Wunker, who was on the debate team a year ahead of Cruz. “Ted was never one to, you know, chat up a woman, or have an easy sort of to-and-fro.”

That said, Patricia Murphy’s Daily Beast report mentions that “he was remembered to be ‘sort of a stud’ with girls on the debate circuit.” Several other debaters, speaking anonymously, agreed with this assessment—but according to Dae Levine, a Barnard alum and former Columbia debater in Cruz’s year, “He was never one to stay late [at parties], or to let down his guard.” A few debaters vaguely recalled him having a girlfriend; several individuals remembered being surprised when they’d learned this fact.

In naked but non-sexual news, multiple classmates who asked for anonymity recounted Cruz participating in the “Nude Olympics,” a (now defunct) Princeton tradition in which members of the sophomore class got drunk and ran around campus sans clothing during the first snow of the year. According to several classmates, none of whom were firsthand witnesses, Cruz was said to have run the wrong way and was later seen naked and banging against the window of a locked dorm in an attempt to gain entrance.

Numerous as the secondhand accounts were, we were unable to confirm the nude-lockout incident. However, we did establish that the following spring, Cruz, who was a member of the Campus Safety Committee, appeared in at least five separate issues of the Daily Princetonian as a staunch opponent of the concept of locked entryways.

From the February 28, 1990 issue:

“I personally don’t think it’s the best way of improving safety,” Cruz said. “I think the effect (locked entryways will have) in keeping people out of dorms is negligible. I do think it serves to be an inconvenience of being restrictive.”

From the April 13, 1990 issue:

In an interview before the debate, Cruz said he understands the university’s concern for security but said the locked entryway proposal is misguided.

From the April 18, 1990 issue:

Cruz’ only attempt to broach the topic of keeping entries unlocked was met by a mock-impassioned “Ted! Ted! Give it up, Ted!” from Witsil.

In results similar to the Daily Beast report, several sources, speaking on conditions of anonymity, independently referred to Cruz as “creepy.” A woman who lived in his dorm explained this diagnosis: “He was kind of this liminal character. I did not experience him as threatening, although other people may have.”

“He was just sort of an odious figure lurking around,” another dorm-mate said.

“The very first thing he ever said to me was ‘Hi, I’m Ted Cruz, I assume I can count on your vote for student body president,’” said David Mountain, a former classmate who also lived in Butler College. “At the end of the day, university politics is a popularity contest, and I don’t think he really understood that. Aside from his obsessive desire to be student body president, you would not have had him pegged for a career in politics.”

Cruz lost multiple student government elections in college, among them class president and campus and community affairs chair; he was eventually elected to Princeton University Council, and was president of the Ivy Council. He also lost a bid for president of the debate panel in 1990, but subsequently held other leadership positions.

Previous reporting on Cruz’s largely successful career as an undergraduate debater (in 1992, he and partner David Panton were named the top two collegiate debaters in the country) indicates that his allegedly overzealous off-duty argument with Beardsley wasn’t necessarily out of character. “I don’t think that Ted ever had a really good sense of when to rein it back,” teammate Monica Youn told the New York Times in April.

Levine, the former Columbia debater who also served with Cruz on the national board of the American Parliamentary Debate Association, was diplomatic in her assessment of Cruz: “I would say that there are elements of Ted’s debate prowess that I respect, but we were not what I would consider friends.”

“There was nothing spontaneous about Ted Cruz as a debater,” she said, adding that this didn’t go over well with fellow debaters, because the American Parliamentary Debate style emphasizes improvisation. “While nobody would argue with his intellect or his precision, there are definitely debaters who I would consider more extemporaneously talented than Ted Cruz as speakers and as leaders.”

Shawn Halbert, a fellow Princeton debater who also attended Harvard Law with Cruz, expressed irritation with some of his debate tactics. “He was known in debate circles for frequently telling the story of his father coming to the U.S. with the money in his underpants; he was very attached to that image,” she said.

Many of the people I spoke to were unable, after 25 years, to recall specific anecdotes to explain their dislike for Cruz; others emphasized that his unpopularity stemmed more from who he was than from any actions taken in particular. “I strongly believed that he wasn’t someone you would want to trust with a modicum of power,” Halbert said. “In my opinion, he was not regarded in the group as a person with substantial integrity.”

“There was no casual conversation with Ted Cruz,” Levine said. “I remember him being completely competitive, laser-focused on winning and not on socializing.” She continued: “His conservatism, added to his calculated nature, added to his antisocial behavior, created this persona that was a bit of a villain. Now, did he want that? Maybe. He certainly kept winning rounds. It worked for him.”

She added, of Cruz’s legacy as a debater: “He holds a special place, I think, as a success story, because he was not universally liked and yet he did very well on the debate circuit, which is a circuit that is very much about personality.”

On the heels of Cruz’s big win in Iowa, this theme is still apparent; a consistent lack of straightforward personal appeal—something long considered necessary for political success—has not held Cruz back in 2016, just like it hasn’t held Donald Trump back, or even Bernie Sanders (Hillary Clinton, it should be noted, has also not managed to free herself from these particular chains). The idea that a presidential candidate must be likable, or even good, has appeared to diminish significantly since even 2012; Ted Cruz, in a rise that proved surprising to many of the people I spoke to for this story, has managed to launch an increasingly successful presidential primary campaign on the back of his terrible personality.

Stephen Wunker was one of the few people willing to speak with me who described Cruz as a friend, despite disagreeing with his politics. “Ted was not the type to go broad in his friendships and have a million casual acquaintances,” he said. But “I could always trust Ted, he was always very responsible, as 18-year-olds go.”

Wunker, a registered Democrat, told me: “I did contribute to Ted’s Senate campaign thinking he never had a chance, doing it out of solidarity for a former friend, and here he is.”

Contact the author at ellie@jezebel.com.

A joint investigation published today by ProPublica and the New York Daily News shines light on the NYPD’s enforcement of a little-known law that allows the department to kick people out of their apartments without charging them with a crime or even arresting them. The process, known as nuisance abatement, is used almost exclusively against people of color.

https://www.propublica.org/article/nypd-n...

The nuisance abatement law was drafted in the 1970s as a way to crack down on Times Square brothels, but its use has greatly expanded by then, ProPublica and the Daily News report. Under the law, police can take civil action to shut down the use of places they believe are being used to commit crimes, using as little as affidavits from anonymous confidential informants as evidence.

Early in the extraordinarily thorough piece, reporter Sarah Ryley details some of the New Yorkers she encountered who’d been targeted by nuisance abatement actions: a man who was kicked out of his home and barred from seeing his daughter over gambling charges that were eventually dropped, a mother who was asked to bar her son from entering her apartment after a powder used for religious purposes was mistaken for cocaine, a man rendered homeless over a low-level drug charge that was eventually dropped.

Because nuisance abatement is a civil and not a criminal process, those on the receiving end of actions are not entitled to an attorney. Police often give an emergency appeal to a judge before enforcing an action, giving them the ability to temporarily remove people from their homes before they have a chance to argue their side. Without a place to stay or a lawyer to represent them, many of those targeted agree to incredibly far-reaching settlements in exchange for renewed access to their homes: barring family members from ever entering again; allowing police to conduct warrantless searches at any time; in some cases, moving out themselves.

Lillie Capers, a 90-year-old woman interviewed for the piece, was the target of nuisance abatement after her son sold drugs to an undercover police officer. The court orders used by the department require that locations are used for illegal activity in an ongoing manner, but Capers’ son was already living in a court-ordered drug-treatment when police issued an abatement action against her. Without a lawyer or even a judge present, she was pressured to sign a settlement barring her son from the home she owns for a year.

“I’m protecting the kid who wants to go to school and shouldn’t have to walk past the drug dealer’s door every time. I’m protecting that kid’s grandmother,” Robert Messner, who heads the NYPD unit that issues the abatements, told Ryley. “I’m not as concerned about the drug dealer. If the guy ends up in a homeless shelter, yes, I’m sorry he ended up in a homeless shelter. But if that’s what it takes so that a whole generation of kids can grow up and whose parents can’t afford to send them to fancy schools, if that’s what it takes, I’m okay with it.”

Read the entire piece here.

Image via Getty. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.