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College Basketball Players Should Feel "Blessed" to Play For Free, Says Child of Immense Privilege

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College Basketball Players Should Feel "Blessed" to Play For Free, Says Child of Immense Privilege
Screencap of Davis, right: CBS

Seth Davis is the lead college basketball writer for Sports Illustrated and part of the panel of suits that talks out of your television before, during, and after March Madness games. He’s also the son of Lanny Davis, a Washington ghoul nonpareil, whose allegiance has always been available to the highest bidder. Those bidders have tended to be among the least savory people on the planet: warlord dictators, colleges who harbored child rapists, the villainous owner of the Washington Redskins, etc. In exchange, Lanny got rich, of course, allowing him to provide a cushy life for Seth, who grew up in Connecticut and attended Duke.

Today, Seth has a new column at Sports Illustrated’s college-focused website Campus Rush. The column is titled—deep breath—“Will Players Stage a Strike at the Final Four? Rumors Persist Each Year, But I’ll Believe It When I See It.” At first blush it seems like Davis is writing merely about how it’s ultimately unlikely that a college team would ever pull out of the Final Four to protest not getting paid by the NCAA. But that headline is benign gloss, almost as if his editors were embarrassed by the actual point of the column, which starts off with an extended but entirely invented scene in which Oklahoma Sooners superstar Buddy Hield stands before his teammates and tells them they should boycott the Final Four because they play for free. They “respond” with this convincing argument:

One of Hield’s teammates blinks a few times, stands up and says, “Let me get this straight. We’ve been dreaming our whole lives of playing in the Final Four. I myself took a thousand shots in the driveway, pretending to win a national championship. Made every one. We’ve been at Oklahoma all these years—getting up early to lift weights, work out, get our shots up, practice our tails off, just so we could win enough games to get into the tournament. Now we have a chance to play in the Final Four. The Final Four! We’re going to have an open practice in front of tens of thousands of people, do all these interviews with big-time media. Then we’re going to play in a football stadium with 90,000 people in the house, with millions more watching on TV. The whole state of Oklahoma will be cheering us on. And if we win two more games, we’ll be national champs, and we’ll come home and they’ll give us a parade, and for the rest of our lives, we’ll be heroes because we delivered the University of Oklahoma a national championship.”

A rich guy’s wet dream is a poor teenager giving his basketball teammates a pep talk about pride.

In any event, this fantasy is just an excuse for Davis to pledge his fealty to the college sports establishment, which is under increasing attack, most recently and notably in the forthcoming book Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA, which is written by New York Times reporter Joe Nocera and cited in Davis’ column. Says Davis:

The problems facing college sports will be addressed this week, as well they should, but keep in mind that most of these same problems have been around since the enterprise began in the late 19th century. College sports, or at least college football (and later basketball), is big business, and wherever money is changing hands, corruption is sure to follow. But the transaction that will be on display this weekend is worth preserving. No, the players won’t be paid like professionals, but they will be feted like kings. They have earned that by working hard at their craft, under the supervision of some of the best coaches who ever stalked a sideline, in concert with the best strength and conditioning trainers money can buy, in front of the biggest audience most of them will ever see.

Exploited? Try blessed. Here’s hoping they spend this weekend counting their blessings while ignoring the members of the chattering class who are trying convince them to walk away.

We could all spend the rest of the day discussing the logical fallacies of Davis’ argument, from the idea that the world should operate as it did hundreds of years ago to the implication that it’s somehow a virtue for the sport’s money to flow to... strength coaches. Instead, we should appreciate this as a perfectly composed snapshot of establishment protectionism, as pervasive and pernicious in sports as it is in politics, the arena in which Davis père has led the charge for decades.

This worldview seeps out of Seth Davis’ writing. Last week, in previewing the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16, Davis wrote the following about the fifth-seeded Maryland Terrapins:

But the biggest takeaway for me watching Maryland last week is the distinctive leadership role that Rasheed Sulaimon has taken on. Remember, not only is he a transfer, but he also didn’t arrive on campus until very late in the summer because he was finishing up his coursework at Duke. Sulaimon has his flaws as a player (read: pounds the ball too much), but he loves the big moment in a way that few other players do. I believe this team gets a lot of its personality from him, and that is a good thing.

This is a breathtaking paragraph if you know anything about Sulaimon’s backstory. As Davis writes, Sulaimon is a “transfer” who “didn’t arrive on campus until very late in the summer because he was finishing up his coursework at Duke.” The reason for that is because Sulaimon was at the very least partly dismissed from Duke’s basketball team after being accused of rape (not that any administrator at Duke paid the allegations much mind at the time).

Alas, Seth crafting a narrative—alleged rapist as great team leader—that suspiciously elides an unpleasant fact is not exactly a surprise. It’s exactly what Lanny became famous for. The trash does not roll very far from the dumpster.


It Couldn't Possibly Matter Less if Susan Sarandon Doesn't Vote For Hillary Clinton

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It Couldn't Possibly Matter Less if Susan Sarandon Doesn't Vote For Hillary Clinton
Photo: AP

Table tennis semipro and cannabis enthusiast Susan Sarandon is among the most prominent celebrity endorsers of Bernie Sanders, which makes her public statements matters of great import to political commentators, columnists, and assigning editors. Today, everyone is mad because she said she’d support Trump if Hillary Clinton won the nomination.

Except, obviously, she didn’t say that. She hinted rather strongly that she wouldn’t vote for Clinton and said—possibly seriously but equally possibly with some amount of irony—that Trump might “bring the revolution” (the good kind) should he end up winning the presidency.

HAYES: How about you personally?
SARANDON: I don’t know. I’m going to see what happens.
HAYES: Really?
SARANDON: Really.
HAYES: I cannot believe as you’re watching the, if Donald Trump…
SARANDON: Some people feel Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in then things will really, you know explode.

This has caused a “firestorm” in the parts of the Internet media that experience presidential elections as deeply personal flame-wars between rival factions of columnists and Twitter users. It’s not just the (admittedly half-baked) accelerationism—it’s the apparently scandalous notion that Sarandon might not vote.

At the Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart, invoking Nader (that bastard who handed the election to George W. Bush by somehow being responsible for Bush having a more shameless and skilled legal team, as well as a highly partisan Republican-controlled Supreme Court), bemoans “the inability or unwillingness of too many to see that their insistence on political purity could lead to calamity.” That certainly sounds quite sensible, except for how I can’t figure out any conceivable scenario in which Susan Sarandon’s “insistence on political purity” contributes in any meaningful sense to a potential electoral calamity.

You can criticize Sarandon for wanting to heighten the contradictions at the (purely hypothetical) expense of the people who’d suffer worst under a (purely hypothetical and still quite unlikely) Trump presidency, but why bother getting worked up about whether or not she, personally, will vote for Hillary Clinton in November? Who cares?

It’s obnoxious when hyper-engaged political partisans shame the nonvoting masses for their supposed apathy, without bothering to engage with potential reasons for that non-participation. Those same hyper-engaged political partisans shaming the absolutely minuscule number of “purists” out there who cast protest or third-party votes is just tedious—especially when those purists live in states where their votes will have little bearing on a presidential election that will be decided by a tiny fraction of the national electorate anyway. However many Bernie-or-bust voters there are in Brooklyn and Portland—and Austin and Oakland and Amherst and Atlanta— they will bear no responsibility for an unlikely Trump victory over Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t matter who Susan Sarandon or Rosario Dawson or Killer Mike vote for, unless any of them also own homes in Miami and decide to register there (they have until 29 days before the election to do so).

The most aggravating part of the entire aggravating conversation is that nearly every professional commentator pillorying Sarandon today is in the same boat as she—their votes in November will be purely performative. For a New Yorker or Washingtonian to march into the voting booth and pull the lever for the Democratic nominee is to engage in a symbolic gesture of political self-identification, not to participate in any meaningful way in the political process. Staying home is equally valid and equally consequential.

Tim Tebow Is a Threat to Run 

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Tim Tebow Is a Threat to Run 
Photo: AP

While standing on a golf course and wearing a ridiculous hat this week, former good college-level quarterback Tim Tebow told Fox News that the idea of running for office is “intriguing” to him.

“I don’t know at this time in my life,” said Tebow, a conservative Christian who opposing defenses always considered a running threat. “If there’s there’s a chance to make a difference someday at something, that’s intriguing.”

I find the possibility of being the quarterback of the Florida Gators intriguing but I ain’t gonna do it because that would fuck everything up. Get it, Tim Tebow?

Jalopnik This Is The Only Batmobile That Makes Any Sense | Lifehacker Learn How to Memorize Informat

Why Won’t Donald Trump Tell the Truth About His Pens?

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Why Won’t Donald Trump Tell the Truth About His Pens?

Earlier today, Donald Trump tweeted out several photos of former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields in the seconds before she was manhandled by his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. In the tweet, Trump appeared dismayed and confused at the mystery object in Fields’ hand. There’s just one problem with Trump’s account: He not only knows what the device is—he has used one on multiple occasions.

The tweet above was part of Trump’s tirade against Lewandowski’s battery charges. But Donald should have thought twice before feigning ignorance at what is very explicitly a pen in the reporter’s lightly grazing hand. Because as the below photographs show, Donald Trump is very well acquainted with the popular writing utensil.

Here, for instance—what’s that in Donald Trump’s hand?

Why Won’t Donald Trump Tell the Truth About His Pens?
Why is Trump waving his hand like that? What is that bizarre stick betwixt his fingers? Image: AP

Let’s take a closer look.

Why Won’t Donald Trump Tell the Truth About His Pens?

It’s a pen.

And in this one. It couldn’t possibly be...

Why Won’t Donald Trump Tell the Truth About His Pens?
What is Donald Trump doing to this woman? What is that pointy thing?? Image: AP

Except that, yes, it is.

Another pen.

Why Won’t Donald Trump Tell the Truth About His Pens?

And most egregious of all, what is Donald Trump doing to this poor woman?

Why Won’t Donald Trump Tell the Truth About His Pens?
Why isn’t anyone stopping him? What is that contraption being jabbed into this woman’s chest?? Image: AP

Donald Trump is drawing on this woman with a pen.

Why Won’t Donald Trump Tell the Truth About His Pens?

Why did Trump so misrepresent his understanding of pens? Are those actually pens in Donald Trump’s hands? Do pens even exist?

At publication time, the Trump campaign has yet to respond to multiple requests for comment.

The NYPD Is the Only Remaining Gritty Part of New York City

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The NYPD Is the Only Remaining Gritty Part of New York City
Still: Film Forum

New York City used to be cool, but not anymore. Where’s the grime, the three-card monty, the lowlives and beatniks, the hookers in Times Square? Well, according to an internal affairs investigation, a group of NYPD officers might be running a protection racket on a group of nightclubs in Queens. How charmingly seedy and old-school.

Ace crime reporter Murray Weiss at DNAinfo has the story: Twenty-three cops, including lieutenants, sergeants, and detectives, are under an internal investigation for allegedly taking protection money from bars and karaoke spots in Flushing in exchange for tipping them off about raids and allowing drug possession suspects to go free.

From DNAinfo:

The internal records include the names, photos and possible violations of department or criminal regulations each of 23 officers may have committed, but provide few specifics.

Sources say some allegations come from Yam, 35, who was arrested by Internal Affairs Bureau investigators and prosecutors from the Queens District Attorney’s Office, and taken to a secret location in a hotel where he was debriefed over two days.

The strongest evidence, however, was captured on recordings and surveillance tapes that shows Sung and Yam convincing fellow officers not to raid the clubs they were protecting or to free customers being handcuffed for using drugs there.

New Yorkers of a certain persuasion enjoy nothing more than bemoaning the gentrified current state of the city, sucked dry of its danger and character after eight years of Giuliani and twelve years of Bloomberg. No doubt, many of these changes are real—the grooviest record store in Brooklyn, a 20-year institution, announced its imminent closure today—but if one wants that classic New York grit, one need look no further than New York’s finest.

While everyone else is cleaning up, moving to Park Slope, having kids, and getting boring, NYPD cops still act like characters in Serpico or The French Connection. They bust heads, take bribes, plant guns on suspects, fantasize about cannibalizing women. That is some hardcore New York shit!

There’s another class of denizen who thinks the city has the opposite problem. New York was nice under Bloomberg and Giuliani, they say, but the communist Bill de Blasio is bringing back an uglier time. (This class of New Yorker can often be found reading the New York Post.) These people, too, can learn something from today’s NYPD scandal: If anyone in New York is stuck in the bad old days, it’s the cops.

Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More

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Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More

APC power strips, New Balance running shoes, and a Bluetooth key finder kick 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, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter.

Top Deals

Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
New Balance Gold Box

Winter’s over, so it’s time to get outside and go for a run. Luckily, Amazon will sell you a new pair of New Balance running shoes on the cheap today.

There are options available for men, women, and kids, but the adult shoes start at under $40, and come in multiple colors and styles. You’ll also find a smattering of fitness shorts and underwear on offer, if you have a need. Just note that like all Gold Box deals, these prices are only available today, so sprint over to Amazon and lock in your order while you still can.


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
Dorco Pace 7

Dorco, the best deal in razor blades and supplier of Dollar Shave Club, is offering an insane discount on their seven-blade (yes, seven) Pace 7 razors today. This deal is a little complex though, so bear with me:

  • Each Dorco Pace 7 unit includes one handle and two cartridges.
  • Today only, if you add one unit to your cart, you’ll get an extra for free (automatically added to your cart).
  • If you add two to your cart, you’ll cross the $10 free shipping threshold, and get two units for free.
  • If you use promo code F63R98C9Y, you’ll save an extra 20%.

Add all of this together, and you can get four handles and eight cartridges (comprised of 56 individual blades) for just $13. Just add two units to your cart, and use code F63R98C9Y at checkout.

http://gear.kinja.com/yes-seven-blad...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
Pillow Gold Box | Mattress Gold Box

Today only, Amazon’s running not one, but two sleep-related Gold Box deals.

First up, you can snag a 4-pack of Perfect Fit Density pillows for just $30-$40, depending on the size you need. These pillows have a solid 4 star review average, and come in three different styles for different types of sleepers:

The green medium density is designed for stomach sleepers, blue firm density for back sleepers, and purple extra firm density for side sleepers.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...

And if you’re really serious about improving your nighttime routine, you can buy an entire foam mattress today for $344-$550. These 4.7 star-rated mattresses are constructed of seven inches of high density base foam topped with a three-inch layer of memory foam, and come with a 120-night risk-free trial period.

Like all Gold Box deals, these prices are only available today, or until sold out, so don’t sleep on it.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSEK2Y6/...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
60-70% Off Spring Coats & Jackets

If your local climate still demands jackets this time of year, or if you just want to be prepared for the fall, Amazon’s offering big savings on dozens of spring jackets for men, women, and kids, today only.


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
4-Pack Dimmable LED Bulbs, $19

Yesterday, we found six LED lightbulbs for $20 (which is still available), but like most cheap LEDs, they weren’t dimmable. If that scared you off, here’s a four-pack for $19, which is one of the best deals we’ve ever seen on dimmable LEDs.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More

While they might not conform to the classic look of our favorite chef’s knives, this Cuisinart Advantage knife set is anything but dull (get it?). You can own the whole collection today for just $15, matching an all-time low price.

http://gizmodo.com/five-best-chef...

Don’t let the colors fool you, these knives are stainless steel, and extremely sharp. The set has a 4.7 star Amazon review average on over 2,000 reviews, and while the colors might not seem like your thing, they do help you keep track and avoid cross-contaminating food while you use them.


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
Fitbit Charge HR, $100

Need a little push to get off the couch? The Fitbit Charge HR is the best fitness tracker for most people, and you can get one for just $100 today, which is a match for the best deal we’ve seen on the heart rate-tracking model.

http://gizmodo.com/fitbit-charge-...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More

It might not be mission-critical equipment for your home, but a good label maker is a nice gadget to keep around, and Amazon’s top seller is back down to $10 today, if you missed out on the same (short-lived) discount earlier this month

If you remember the old label makers that literally pressed the letters into a piece of tape, this is a bit more advanced than what you’re picturing. The Dymo LabelManager 160 can print in eight fonts at six sizes, along with clipart and special characters, and you can even preview the entire label on its LCD screen before you print. Every time we post this deal, it sells out quickly, so you’ll want to grab yours fast.

http://www.amazon.com/DYMO-LabelMana...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
APC Amazon Gold Box

Whether you want to keep your critical electronics running in the event of a power outage, or just don’t want them to get fried, today’s APC Amazon Gold Box has a deal for you.

Inside, you’ll find great prices on UPS battery backups and surge protectors of all shapes and sizes. If you need to keep your desktop computer running during a power failure, there’s a 700VA UPS with your name on it. But if you just want to keep your networking equipment running for a few hours, there’s also a $19 model designed just for that. You’ll even find a souped-up alternative on sale that features a removable battery pack for your phone.

http://www.amazon.com/APC-BR700G-Bac...

http://www.amazon.com/APC-Back-UPS-C...

http://www.amazon.com/APC-BGE50ML-Ba...

As far as surge protectors go, you’ll find both an 8-outlet model with a coaxial connection that’s ideal for your home theater, and also a tiny protector with USB ports and a built-in smartphone holder for your nightstand. Needless to say, most people could make good use of both.

http://www.amazon.com/APC-P8VT3-Surg...

http://www.amazon.com/APC-P3U3B-Esse...

There’s also a USB battery pack on sale, but you shouldn’t buy it.

Like all Gold Box deals though, these prices are only available today, and the best stuff could sell out early, so lock in your orders before the lights go out.


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More

You’ve got two choices when it comes to checking on the progress of your dinner in the oven. You could poke at it with a kitchen thermometer until you think it’s done, or you could sit on the couch and wait for your phone to tell you when it’s ready.

The highly-rated iDevices iGrill Thermometer uses a leave-in probe to monitor the progress of your meal on the grill, on the stovetop, or even in the oven, and connects to your iPhone or Android device over Bluetooth to alert you as soon as it reaches the proper temperature. I actually gave a slightly different iDevices thermometer to my dad for his birthday a few years ago, and it worked as advertised. Today’s $24 price tag is an all-time low, so be sure to grab yours before this deal overcooks.


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More

If you ever do any shopping at Toys R Us, this discounted gift card is essentially $15 in your pocket.


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
Aukey Dual-Port Car Charger, $6 with code CQMSYTSI

Your favorite USB car charger just happens to be the smallest one you can buy, and you can grab it on Amazon for just $6 right now price today. Yeah, you’ll find similar looking ones for sale on the counter at your nearest gas station, but trust me, those don’t have the ability to feed two phones or tablets 2.4 amps simultaneously.

http://co-op.kinja.com/your-favorite-...

http://www.amazon.com/Aukey-CC-S1-4-...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
Aukey Nut Smart Tag, $10 with code ZWTWQFMP

We’ve seen a few Kickstarter-birthed Bluetooth “smart tags,” pop up in the last few years, which means it’s about time for Chinese companies to start mass producing them for absurdly low prices.

Aukey’s Nut attaches to your keyring, backpack, dog, or just about any other easily-misplaced item, and can emit an audible alarm when invoked by a Bluetooth-connected smartphone app. And on the flipside, if you have a Nut handy, but can’t find your phone, the alarm works in reverse: Just hit the button on your Nut, and your phone will beep as long as it’s in range.

Many of these trackers include a single-use battery, and are meant to be thrown away once they die. The Nut though uses a standard, inexpensive watch battery that lasts for up to three months, and that you can replace on your own.

http://www.amazon.com/Energizer-Cr20...

http://www.amazon.com/Aukey-Bluetoot...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
Tarantino XX Box Set, $55

The biggest Tarantino box set is back down to its Black Friday pricing today. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include The Hateful Eight, but you will get eight other films, and two entire discs-worth of special features.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009B0OG1O/...



Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
KitchenAid V-Slicer, $17

Update: Price has now gone up to $17.

This highly-rated KitchenAid v-slicer can chop all of your favorite fruits, vegetables, cheeses, and fingers for just $16 $17, which is within a few pennies of the best price Amazon’s ever offered. Unless you’re a savant with a chef’s knife, this thing will save you a ton of time while prepping recipes.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0090JINY2/...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More

I assume most of you own some kind of vegetable peeler, but can it double as a julienne slicer? This $6 upgrade is a no-brainer.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0129AICNK?...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
Rubbermaid Easy Find Lid Food Storage Set, 42 Piece, $16

If you’ve ever spent more than 5 seconds sorting through your mismatched food containers to find the right lid, it’s time to throw them all out and upgrade to this 42-piece Rubbermaid system.

The set comes with 21 containers in six different sizes, and yet you only have to deal with three different sizes of lids, making it much easier to find the right one. Personally, I prefer glass storage sets like this one from Pyrex, but if you want to maximize the number of containers you get for your money, this is your best bet.

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


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
Pyrex 8-Piece Glass Storage Set, $15

No kitchen is complete without a substantial Pyrex aresenal, and this 4-container set (it’s technically 8-pieces, but that includes lids) is down to under $15 on Amazon right now. If you aren’t familiar, these magical vessels are super strong, and also freezer, oven, and even microwave safe.

http://www.amazon.com/Pyrex-8-Piece-...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
KingTop DualShock Charger/PS4 Cooling Dock, $14 with code I7WG5OGU

Not only does this unique PS4 stand include two charging docks for your controllers; it also features a pair of cooling fans for the console itself. Necessary? Eh, probably not, but it can’t hurt.

http://www.amazon.com/Controller-Pla...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
Razer BlackWidow Chroma RGB, $128

Today on Newegg’s eBay storefront, you can pick up a BlackWidow Chroma RGB mechanical gaming keyboard for $128, or over $30 off the usual price.

http://co-op.kinja.com/your-favorite-...

Like most Razer keyboards, you get Razer’s custom key switches, programmable macros, 10 key rollover, and everything one could expect from a top-tier gaming keyboard. This particular model though is notable for its key-by-key customizable backlighting. That means you can choose from a 16.8M color gamut for every single key, sync your choices with the rest of your Razer gear, set up different options for different games, and more.


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More
PS4 + Three Games, $369

If you still haven’t picked up a PS4, Newegg (via eBay) will sell you a console plus three games for $369. True, that’s $20 more than the normal price of the Uncharted bundle, but if you care for Star Wars Battlefront or MLB The Show 16 (a PlayStation exclusive), the price premium is well worth it.


Samsung’s SmartThings ecosystem is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to give your home a brain, and Amazon’s taking 20% off everything you need to get started today.

http://gizmodo.com/samsung-wants-...

You’ll need to start with either the SmartThings Hub for $79, but from there, you can add motion sensors, smart outlets, water leak sensors, and more to expand the system’s capabilities. We aren’t sure how long these special prices will be available, so head over to Amazon and lock in your order while you still can.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010NZV0GE/...


The new DJI Phantom 4 sure looks impressive, but for over $600 less, you can pick up the still-completely-amazing Phantom 3 Professional today. You’ll lose out on features like the (finnicky) accident avoidance, but the camera is still 4K, and it’ll last over 20 minutes on a single charge. [DJI Phantom 3 Professional, $779]

http://gizmodo.com/dji-phantom-3-...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More

Amazon’s hosting a solid little sale right now on a few SanDisk flash drives and SD cards. We’ve seen lower prices on most of these items during one-day Gold Box deals, but these are still solid discounts if you’re in the market.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Connec...

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extrem...

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-...

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-...

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-microS...


Today's Best Deals: APC Gold Box, New Balance Shoes, Bluetooth Key Finder, and More

Still haven’t made the transition to LED? Amazon will sell you a 6-pack of highly rated TaoTronics bulbs for just $20 right now. These put out the brightness equivalent of a 60W incandescent, but with only 9W of electricity each. Plus, many local utility companies offer rebates when you buy these things, so they should pay for themselves in short order.

http://www.amazon.com/TaoTronics-Bul...

Tech

Storage

$9 | 2-Pack of Kingston Digital 16GB USB 2.0 Nano Drives | eBay

$60 | WD My Passport Ultra 1TB External USB 3.0/2.0 Portable Hard Drive w/ $10 Gift Card | Best Buy

Power

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$98 | CyberPower PC Battery Backup LX1325G 1325 VA 810 Watts 8 Outlets UPS | Newegg

Audio

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QAYEGCS/...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MJMV0GU?...

Home Theater

$1050 | LG 65 Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart TV 65UF6450 UHD TV w/ $200 Gift Card | Dell

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A CNBC Columnist Asked Readers For Their Passwords. That Was a Mistake.

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A CNBC Columnist Asked Readers For Their Passwords. That Was a Mistake.

I like a good strong password just as much as anyone else. But CNBC’s stunty idea for a tool that tested the strength of people’s passwords is one of the stupidest things I’ve seen in days—possibly weeks!

A columnist for CNBC’s The Big Crunch tried to make a misguided point about the FBI’s iPhone situation with an interactive tool that asked readers to input their password to see how secure they were. The post is now down, but if you did comply with the CNBC request, it might be a good idea to change your password. You should do this from time to time anyway.

A CNBC Columnist Asked Readers For Their Passwords. That Was a Mistake.

The post asked you to type your password into a field, hit enter, and voila! CNBC’s expertly coded widget provided detailed analysis of that password, telling you whether it was strong, and if not, what was wrong with it.

I know what you’re thinking: Come on, this was only for “entertainment and educational purposes,” as the widget clearly stated in official-looking italic text. What could go wrong? Well...

A few people on Twitter claimed the widget is an insecure form that actually submits the characters you enter into the text field to third parties. Whether they’re right or not, you should never enter your password into some random internet form.

But is CNBC actually putting people at risk? I asked our in-house expert Adam Pash, the developer who runs Gawker Media’s Editorial Labs, for his take. He said although it’s unlikely, yes, someone could use this tool to get your password.

Since it’s a form field, it reloads the page when you hit “enter,” changing the url and, in effect, saving the password you just typed in.

So for example the original URL is:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-and-the-construction-of-secure-passwords.html

After you enter asdfasdf, the page refreshes and the url is:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-and-the-construction-of-secure-passwords.html?name=asdfasdf

“In theory, if there’s someone sniffing traffic on your network, they could see these urls being requested in plain text, and then try sniffing on other traffic coming from you that might indicate some account information,” Pash told me. This could be as easy as finding out your email address. And it wouldn’t be hard for these ad trackers to collect a bunch of people’s passwords in their logs.

So while CNBC’s cool tool is not necessarily malicious, it’s more just sloppy. “I’m not sure it’s a serious threat,” says Pash. “But it’s definitely dumb.”

It appears CNBC has realized it’s dumb too, because this is what you get when you try to find the story now:

A CNBC Columnist Asked Readers For Their Passwords. That Was a Mistake.

We’ve reached out to CNBC for comment.

Meanwhile, this tool seems totally legit.

[CNBC]


Donald Trump Thinks Woman Didn’t Say “No” Loudly Enough

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Donald Trump Thinks Woman Didn’t Say “No” Loudly Enough
Screenshot: CNN

Speaking from his private plane Tuesday, Donald Trump defended campaign manager Corey Lewandowski against criminal charges of manhandling a reporter, saying that if the reporter was really hurt she would have screamed.

Trump—who admitted seeing security footage clearly show his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grab the arm of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields—also indicated he was still unconvinced she hadn’t made the whole thing up.

“How do you know those bruises weren’t there before? I’m not a lawyer. She said she had a bruise on her arm. I mean, to me, if you’re going to get squeezed, wouldn’t you think that she would have yelled out a scream or something if she has bruises on her arm?” Trump said. “Take a look at her facial expression. Her facial expression doesn’t even change. So you say bruises on her arm—how did they get there? Who put them there? I don’t know that he put them there.”

A curious reaction. For Donald Trump, the female reporter’s word—even when corroborated by his own security cameras—means nothing. Why didn’t she make a face? How did the bruises really get there? Why did she wear that if she didn’t want to get grabbed?

In any event, Trump says he intends to stand behind Lewandowski, even if he did bruise a reporter for no justifiable reason, because he feels it’s not a crime deserving of punishment.

“I’m sticking up for a person because I’m not going to let a person’s life be destroyed over somebody that we have on tape—and you just take a look at what people are saying when they see that incident on tape,” Trump said. “And no jury, in my opinion, no jury would convict a man and destroy a man’s life over what you witnessed.”

Donald Trump—just asking the hard questions.

16-Year-Old Hacker Sneaks Game Onto Steam Without Valve's Approval

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16-Year-Old Hacker Sneaks Game Onto Steam Without Valve's Approval

Watch Paint Dry is a 45-second-long game about watching paint dry. It was made by a 16 year-old guy who’s not even a game developer. Despite not going through Greenlight or otherwise getting Valve’s holy lambda of approval, it got onto the Steam store.

This might sound like the beginning of a horror story—an odious new era of shit bubbling up onto Steam—but it has a happy ending. The game was both a prank and a test of a massive vulnerability in Steam, a last-ditch effort to get Valve’s attention after they failed to respond to multiple separate emails. Its creator, Ruby Nealon, chronicled the whole thing in a Medium post. In short, he managed to obtain a Steamworks (tools that let developers prep their games for Steam, basically) account in February through, as he puts it, “social engineering,” and he started poking around in its innards.

16-Year-Old Hacker Sneaks Game Onto Steam Without Valve's Approval

To get Watch Paint Dry onto Steam, Nealon found that he’d have to get through a three-step approval process: first, his store page (with required features like trading cards) would have to be approved, then he’d have to submit a final build of his game, and then he’d get the option to launch. It didn’t take Nealon long to realize that he could spoof the service into believing his game’s hastily slapped together trading cards had already gotten a once-over from a Valve editor. He then found that he could look at the source underlying trading cards, put in a request for information that didn’t exist, and receive a list of options that would actually yield functional results. With that information and approval from a non-existent Valve editor, his game was “ready” for Steam.

16-Year-Old Hacker Sneaks Game Onto Steam Without Valve's Approval

After that, it was simply a matter of digging through code for the command to release a game, then inputting his game’s app ID and the session ID he got from the trading cards. That was all it took: Watch Paint Dry appeared in Steam’s “new releases” section, albeit sooner than planned (Nealon originally planned to “release” the game on April 1st). It took some tinkering, and Nealon had to know what he was looking for, but it was, in the grand scheme of things, not a particularly difficult process.

When people first saw the game on Steam, they were pissed. Speaking during an interview earlier today, Nealon said, “I saw people begging me, ‘How can I get this game?’ and things like, ‘You’re the reason the gaming industry’s gone to shit, you fucking scumbag scamming developer!’” Nealon told me he never intended to make money off the game, and he was always planning to go public with how he did it. His plan was not to get a shitty game onto Steam and rake in ill-gotten bucks that could’ve been claimed by other, more legitimate paint-drying simulators, but rather to get Valve and the general public’s attention.

“I’ve been happy with people’s reaction to it,” Nealon said. “People are pissed off about it, and I wanted them to talk about it. I wanted people to realize that this is one of the Internet’s biggest websites, and this is the back end. A fucking 16 year-old did it in two nights.”

Yes, 16. Nealon told me that he’s not a game developer, but rather a 16-year-old university student (he took Open University courses to qualify as a graduated high school student at age 14) and Information Security hobbyist. He said he’s been cracking systems and helping companies fix vulnerabilities since he was 11.

“I always do it for fun, but there are people out there who make a full living doing bug bounties,” he explained. “Even Microsoft—they’re a shitty company, and I don’t like them—but while they didn’t offer me a bounty, they did offer me an acknowledgement. It was December 2012. That was the first thing I ever got. That was when I was 11. I’ve been doing this for quite a long time.”

Nealon estimates that he’s aided with 75-100 security vulnerabilities in total, but only about five or ten have been of the magnitude of his big hits with companies like Microsoft, Corsair (another which he publicly explained), and now Valve. Some companies, he said, have ignored or disavowed him, because, he figures, vulnerabilities make them look bad. One company got his YouTube channel banned after he used it to show them a potential vulnerability in their system. Larger companies, though, tend to pay and credit infosec types. Oddly, however, Nealon told me that Valve did not pay him or offer an acknowledgement, despite the gaping hole he pointed out.

16-Year-Old Hacker Sneaks Game Onto Steam Without Valve's Approval

“Not only did they not offer a bug bounty like Google would,” he said, “but they’re not willing to put me on their security acknowledgements page, because apparently that’s only for people who consistently submit bugs at them. I don’t want to sound like I’m bitching for free shit, but if this was Google or something with a similar majority of vulnerability here, Google would pay out. But Valve haven’t offered me anything. I’m not pissed off, but I’m a little bit disappointed, given that it’s a company of Valve’s size.”

There is a practical concern, though. If Valve doesn’t offer bug bounties, it’s unlikely that infosec mercenaries will ever declare open season on potentially catastrophic vulnerabilities like the one Nealon found. He explained in an email he sent to Gabe Newell (that he passed along to me):

“I’m only 16, I started University early when I was 14 and live with my parents. My family isn’t well off, but I get a grant that lets me keep myself financially stable. However, there are people out there who make their living purely off bug bounties. It’s not a stable source of income granted, but you should be able to make a living out of doing it. By not offering a bug bounty, you’re missing out on hundreds of things that could go unnoticed and could even be being exploited right now by the wrong people, just because researchers don’t want to take the time because they can’t afford to spend their time on work that won’t pay.”

16-Year-Old Hacker Sneaks Game Onto Steam Without Valve's Approval

I did reach out to Valve to verify that all of this is real and accurate, and they were at least thankful. “Working with Ruby we resolved the issue,” a Valve rep told me. “And we’ll thank him again here for the tip.” Valve let Nealon keep his Steam publishing account so he can hunt around for more bugs. He told me he’s already found another two major issues, which he plans to publish a post about as soon as Valve has closed them up.

Overall, though, it sounds like this has been another Very Valve Incident. All the way back in February, Nealon couldn’t get a response at all, so he had to plan an outsized prank to make Valve pay attention. Even after all that, Valve’s operating in both Valve Time and Valve Space. I suppose, ultimately, it’s worked out for the greater good, though Nealon told me he considered taking it even further.

“I was really tempted as well to call it something like Half-Life 3,” he said. “But I knew they were gonna be pissed off about this. Calling it Half-Life 3 or something, that’s me liable to be sued. I’m only 16, so I’m not sure whether I would be sued. Still, it was very tempting to do that, but I’m glad I kept it as is.”

“Posting the lyrics to Space Jam on an official Steam game page is a marvelous achievement.”

You’re reading Steamed, Kotaku’s page dedicated to all things in and around Valve’s wildly popular PC gaming service. Games, culture, community creations, criticism, guides, videos—everything. If you’ve found anything cool/awful on Steam, send us an email to let us know.

SCOTUS Is a Little Confused About How Contraception Coverage Works 

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SCOTUS Is a Little Confused About How Contraception Coverage Works 

In an unusual move, the Supreme Court asked the challengers in Zubik v. Burwell to provide the court with other alternatives for birth control coverage. The challengers in the case objected to Obamacare’s given opt-out for religious groups who believe that providing contraception was a violation of their religious ideologies. Today, SCOTUS told the challengers to brief the court on other contraceptive coverage that women who work for these institutions could access.

The challengers in Zubik v. Burwell, which SCOTUS heard last week, argued that the accommodation for religious groups, which essentially amounted to filling out a form, imposed an undue burden on them—because, as Talking Points Memo reports, “it triggered the process for employees to receive contraceptive coverage from outside their plans.”

During the oral arguments, there was incredible confusion among the male justices about how women who worked for these non-profits would obtain contraception coverage if SCOTUS disallowed the challenge. One of the fundamental misunderstandings was that many of the male justices (Roberts, Kennedy, and Alito especially) seemed to think that insurance exchanges provided individual contraceptive coverage and that women could easily purchase an insurance plan that would only cover birth control.

http://jezebel.com/the-supreme-co...

“If it’s so easy to provide, if it’s so free, can’t they just get it through another plan?” Kennedy asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, referring to the idea that women could simply go to insurance exchanges and purchase contraception coverage.

“So it comes down to a question of who has to do the paperwork? If it’s the employee that has to do it, that’s no good. If it’s the religious organization that has to do it, that’s okay?” Roberts asked as a follow-up—again, under the impression that contraception coverage can be purchased in Obamacare exchanges as a stand-alone thing.

Sotomayor finally attempted to clear everything up:

“They’re not on the exchanges. That’s a falsehood. The exchanges require full-service health insurance policies with minimum coverages that are set forth that are very comprehensive.”

But, apparently, SCOTUS had more questions after the oral arguments. TPM reports that briefs ordered by the court should address:

“Whether and how contraceptive coverage may be obtained by petitioners’ employees through petitioners’ insurance companies, but in a way that does not require any involvement of petitioners beyond their own decision to provide health insurance without contraceptive coverage to their employees.”

[...]

“The parties may address other proposals along similar lines, avoiding repetition of discussion in prior briefing,” the order said, which suggests that the alternatives the challengers offered in their initial briefs, which mainly argued coverage could be provided directly by the government or through programs funded by the government, would not suffice.

TPM speculates that the order could mean that SCOTUS is searching for a compromise. If the case resulted in a 4-4 tied court, that could mean that women employed at religious organizations in some states would have coverage, while women in other states would not. Essentially, women’s coverage would be determined by the rulings of lower courts, which were divided on the issue.

The challengers have until April 12 to respond.


Image via Getty.

Omarosa's Veiled Threat: If Trump Loses Wisconsin, You Won't Have to Worry About Corey Lewandowski

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Discussing the battery charges filed against Corey Lewandowski, Trump surrogate and former Apprentice Omarosa suggested to Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday that if the Republican frontrunner loses the Wisconsin primary next week, Trump would come to see his campaign manager as a “liability.”

http://gawker.com/trump-campaign...

On Tuesday, police released surveillance video showing Lewandowski grabbing former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and pulling her away from Trump as she asked the candidate a question. Fields was left bruised by the encounter.

Trump has tripled-down in support of his campaign manager, saying things like, “How do you know those bruises weren’t there before?” and “Wouldn’t you think that she would have yelled out a scream or something?”

However, according to Omarosa—a branding expert and former staffer to Vice President Al Gore—if Trump loses in Wisconsin, “I can guarantee that you won’t have to worry about Corey any longer. Because he will become a liability.”

In fact, she predicted, “He may be hearing those famous words.” (That is: “You’re fired.”)

Donald Trump Afraid Reporter's Pen Could Have Been a "Little Bomb"

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Donald Trump Afraid Reporter's Pen Could Have Been a "Little Bomb"
Image: AP

Donald Trump, who has Secret Service protection and metal detectors at every entrance, last night doubled down on the dangerous lie that he doesn’t know what a pen is, arguing that his campaign manager was justified in grabbing a female reporter because the writing instrument in her hand could have been “a little bomb.”

http://gawker.com/why-won-t-dona...

Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is now facing simple battery charges for allegedly grabbing the woman, former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, as she tried to ask Trump a question about affirmative action.

Still, it’s a step forward for the Trump campaign, which initially claimed Lewandowski had never touched her.

“Perhaps she made it up. I think that’s what happened,” Trump also said on March 10.

As it turns out, Trump’s own surveillance video of the incident, which was released yesterday by the Jupiter, FL Police Department, clearly shows Lewandowski grab Fields’ arm.

Still, Trump said he doesn’t think Lewandowski did anything wrong—the woman was, after all, holding a pen.

“She was grabbing me,” Trump said. “And just so you understand, she was off base because she went through the Secret Service. She had a pen in her hand, which Secret Service is not liking because they don’t know what it is, whether it’s a little bomb.”

So stupid it’s kind of genius—the Donald Trump signature.

Anderson Cooper Quite Accurately Tells Donald Trump He's Acting Like a Five-Year-Old

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During last night’s CNN-hosted Republican town hall in Milwaukee there was a funny, and perhaps even cathartic, exchange between Anderson Cooper and Donald Trump over Trump’s hounding of Ted Cruz’s wife, which culminated with Cooper telling Trump he was acting like a child while Trump insisted that he wasn’t acting like a child.

My verdict: Donald Trump was definitely acting like a child. Here is a transcript of their back-and-forth:

Cooper: After saying you were going to spill the beans about Heidi Cruz, you retweeted an unflattering picture of her next to a picture of your wife.

Trump: I thought it was a nice picture of Heidi. I thought it was fine.

Cooper: Come on.

Trump: I thought it was fine. She’s a pretty woman.

Cooper: You’re running for president of the United States.

Trump: Excuse me, excuse me. I didn’t start it. I didn’t start it.

Cooper: But sir, with all due respect: That’s the argument of a five-year-old.

Trump: I didn’t start it—no it’s not.

Cooper: The argument of a five-year-old is: “He started it.”

Trump: Excuse me. You would say that. That’s the problem with our country.

Cooper: Every parent knows a five-year-old who says “he started it.”

Correct! On the subject of whether Donald Trump was behaving in the manner of a small child, there can be no argument. He obviously was, and I think, deep down he probably knows it.

Will Donald Trump’s inability to ever admit he was wrong while also fully accepting blame for the error come back to bite him at some later point in this election? Stay tuned to find out, but you might not like the answer.

An Incomplete List of Thomas Friedman's Questions

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An Incomplete List of Thomas Friedman's Questions
Image of Rodin’s “The Thinker”: Getty

Hirsute oracle of the Davos set Thomas Friedman has a question. Thomas Friedman has a lot of questions.

In his columns today, Thomas identifies the “central question” of U.S. policy in the Middle East: “What do you do when the necessary is impossible, but the impossible is impossible to ignore — and your key allies are also impossible?”

Huh.

This is not the first time Thomas Friedman has asked a good question.

THE QUESTION ABOUT ISIS: “Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS?”

THE QUESTION ABOUT IRAQ AND SYRIA: “For me, the big strategic question in Iraq and Syria is: What would it take to uproot ISIS and create a Sunni island of decency in its place?”

THE QUESTION ABOUT IRAN:[The] big question about the Iran nuclear deal reached this month is, Will it ultimately be a break from the history set in motion in 1979, and put the region on a new path, or will it turbocharge 1979 in ways that could shake the whole world?”

THE QUESTION ABOUT EGYPT: “Watching the toppling of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt, the most interesting question for me is this: Will we one day look back at this moment as the beginning of the rollback of political Islam?”

THE QUESTION ABOUT DUBAI: “I had several conversations here on this question: Did Dubai cause the Arab awakening?”

THE QUESTIONS ABOUT AFGHANISTAN: “My wariness about Afghanistan comes from asking these three questions: When does the Middle East make you happy? How did the cold war end? What would Ronald Reagan do?”

THE QUESTION ABOUT ISRAEL:The only question I have when it comes to President Obama and Israel is whether he is the most pro-Israel president in history or just one of the most.”

THE QUESTION ABOUT THE ARAB WORLD: “An existential struggle is taking place in the Arab world today. But is it ours or is it theirs? Before we step up military action in Iraq and Syria, that’s the question that needs answering.”

THE QUESTIONS ABOUT RUSSIA: “That, however, raises a series of questions: Can Moscow ever define its interests differently under Putin? If not, how do we deter him without also weakening Russia to the point of instability? And if we do induce such instability over time with sanctions, do we know what comes next and will we be better off?”

THE QUESTION IN EUROPE: “TRAVELING in Europe last week, it seemed as if every other conversation ended with some form of this question: Why does it feel like so few leaders are capable of inspiring their people to meet the challenges of our day?”

THE QUESTION ABOUT AMERICA: “DOES America need an Arab Spring? That was the question on my mind when I called Frank Fukuyama.”

THE QUESTION ABOUT THE ECONOMIC CRISIS: “Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession?”

THE QUESTION FOR THE REPUBLICANS: “If I got to ask one question of the presidential aspirants at Thursday’s Fox Republican debate, it would be this: “As part of a 1982 transportation bill, President Ronald Reagan agreed to boost the then 4-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax to 9 cents, saying, ‘When we first built our highways, we paid for them with a gas tax,’ adding, ‘It was a fair concept then, and it is today.’ Do you believe Reagan was right then, and would you agree to raise the gasoline tax by 5 cents a gallon today so we can pay for our highway bill, which is now stalled in Congress over funding?”

THE QUESTIONS ABOUT CLINTON AND OBAMA:[Ask] them these questions before you decide if you are with Clinton or Obama: 1. Can they name the current leader of the Syrian National Coalition, the secular, moderate opposition, and the first three principles of its political platform? [Five more questions follow-ed.]”

THE CRITICAL QUESTIONS: “Therefore, the critical questions for America today have to be how we deploy more ultra-high-speed networks and applications in university towns to invent more high-value-added services and manufactured goods and how we educate more workers to do these jobs.”

THE SIMPLE QUESTION:A simple question: If you were upset with U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why didn’t you go out and build a school in Afghanistan to strengthen that community or get an advanced degree to strengthen yourself or become a math teacher in the Muslim world to help its people be less vulnerable to foreign powers?”

THE QUESTIONS FROM GENERATION Q: “Generation Q would be doing itself a favor, and America a favor, if it demanded from every candidate who comes on campus answers to three questions: What is your plan for mitigating climate change? What is your plan for reforming Social Security? What is your plan for dealing with the deficit — so we all won’t be working for China in 20 years?”

THE QUESTION ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA:Question: Does it turn out that social media is better at breaking things than at making things?”

THE QUESTION ABOUT COLLEGE:Question: How many college campuses today have environmental clubs and how many have coal clubs?”

No answers as of yet.


The Outrage Over People Potentially Being Mean on News Genius Isn't News

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The Outrage Over People Potentially Being Mean on News Genius Isn't News

In 2013, the lyric-explanation website Rap Genius rebranded simply as “Genius,” and announced that it would try to annotate not only songs, but poems, essays, and news articles. Three years later, the startup has become a flash point in the panicked and disingenuous hustle to scrub the internet of unkindness, which has since gotten confused with “abuse.”

A basic premise of the internet is that if you put something onto the internet, other people on the internet can see it. If you publish a piece of writing on a web page, it’s entirely possible that someone will read it—and they might like it, or dislike it. It’s even possible that they will publish something about what you published elsewhere.

This situation has been in effect for a long time now. Yet somehow, in March 2016, a pseudo-controversy over mean internet comments on Genius has become a real controversy, galvanizing the ranks of Precious Sensitivity Twitter and against all-fucking-odds prompting a response from a member of Congress:

Rep. Clark is right that “even platforms developed with the best of intentions can be, and are, misused to target marginalized groups, traumatize victims of violence, or intimidate certain voices into silence.” But she presents no evidence that Genius “has been shown to enable abusive behavior.”

Part of the problem here, other than deliberate misreading, is that the company presents itself as a revolutionary technology startup, but the basic concept is actually very simple: By using a browser plug-in or by appending “genius.it” before any web address (e.g. genius.it/google.com), you can “mark up” a website. You can’t edit or in any way change the words you see, but you can highlight the text and add your own comments on those highlights in the margin.

It’s unclear exactly why News Genius (edited by former Gawker editor Leah Finnegan) has been treated like A) the first website in history that’s allowed people to chime in on the writing of others and B) some sort of skeleton key that allows anyone to make changes directly to the website of anyone else. It’s one more overlay, like the ones that replace Donald Trump’s name with something comical.

The scandal began with Ella Dawson (a blogger who writes extensively about having herpes) whose essay about why the phrase “suffering from herpes” is an “insult” received critical News Genius annotations earlier this month. The dissenting annotations would only be visible if you used a specific URL (https://genius.it/8822019/ellacy...) or had the Genius plugin installed—otherwise, no one would ever know these comments existed, nor would you ever run into them.

But to Dawson, the act was tantamount to vandalism:

Dawson’s protestations about the sanctity of her herpes memoirs quickly turned into a rallying cry for anyone who thinks that you ought not say anything if you have nothing nice to say. The goalposts moved at lightning speed. Dawson found an ally in Alana Massey, a New York magazine columnist who wrote about her crisis of undereating and oversleeping, prompting News Genius to comment on whether she might be glorying in harmful behavior. The argument was no longer about criticizing small, personal blogs, but about criticizing the content of a personal essay in a major national magazine.

http://gawker.com/actual-rapper-...

As is the case with most scandals about nothing, it was hard for anyone to really nail down what it was they were objecting to. Chelsea Hassler at Slate fell into the drift as well, hammering News Genius as a threat to the internet itself. “A new tool wants to annotate everything on the Internet. But at what cost?” her piece asked. Her answer (“it’s clear that there’s one thing News Genius hasn’t taken into consideration while evolving its business model: a very real potential for abuse”) was never substantiated. After complaining that Genius targeted work that wasn’t “high-profile,” she cited rude annotations to a pair of widely circulated BuzzFeed articles. (What Hassler didn’t mention was the Genius legacy of three guys from Yale whose VC cash-rich startup began as a means of clumsily and at times mockingly trying to explain black lyrics to other white people—it’s worth noting that it wasn’t until two white women cried foul here that Congress intervened)

http://gawker.com/5953079/your-g...

Hassler conceded that the internet is a public space, but was unwilling to think that through:

Posting comments on Facebook or Twitter can lead to a discussion about the validity of those comments, a debate that takes place in a forum that is separate from the writer’s work. Regardless of how thick a writer’s skin may be, once the psychological barriers between the writing and the defense of that writing have been removed—which is effectively what happens when commentary is superimposed on someone’s work—it can feel ultra-personal and invasive.

Well, hm:

The Outrage Over People Potentially Being Mean on News Genius Isn't News

A ticker tape parade of false equivalences follows:

The Outrage Over People Potentially Being Mean on News Genius Isn't News
The Outrage Over People Potentially Being Mean on News Genius Isn't News

Missing from Hassler’s article was even an iota of self-awareness: How can she say that her commentary (or annotations, if you will) are any more valid than those that appear on News Genius? How is criticism on Slate an act of legitimate commentary, while criticism on News Genius is inherently an act of abuse? How can Slate, a website whose existence has been built partly atop commentary on the writing of others, come down against this activity? If Hassler had published these words as annotations on, say, the Genius.com mission statement page, would they have been transmogrified into abuses?

There are two big, dumb starting premises of this line of anti-speech, safe space reasoning. The first is that News Genius represents any new threat for abuse or misuse. To “annotate” a website is nothing new. Look, I can do it without Genius:

The Outrage Over People Potentially Being Mean on News Genius Isn't News

Or, as has been happening on sites like Slate and Gawker and others for many, many years (and decades!) I could write a reply to a blog post on my own blog, leave a comment, tweet, praise it on Facebook, critique it on a message board, slam it in an email, rip it to shreds on MySpace, or any number of other very easy ways to react to someone else’s writing. In fact, the ability to view public information and publicly respond to it is a basic underpinning of the internet and without this principle the internet would cease to function.

So, no, News Genius does not facilitate “pasting misinformation and guesses directly onto [Dawson’s] content.” Or anyone’s. It is not in any way comparable to “writing graffiti over someone else’s content.” When you put graffiti in the restroom stall, no one can use the toilet without having to see it. But if you visit Ella Dawson’s restroom stall, the walls are still clean.

If Genius were allowing anyone to alter the form and content of any website in the world, that would be a tool with an profound potential for abuse and disaster. But Genius doesn’t do that—it creates a voluntary, opt-in overlay and nothing more. If you want to pretend it doesn’t exist, you are free to never see it so long as you live.

The second false premise is the conflation of dissent or criticism—even glib or crass criticism, or outright meanness—with “abuse.” Abuse is extremely real on the internet. Ask women whose lives are threatened with anonymous descriptions of impending rape, or anyone whose address has been posted on Twitter. Abuse implies a violation of some kind. A sarcastic or mean comment might be unnecessary, but what is it violating? The Golden Rule? If the staff of News Genius hacks your website to paste its disagreements or floods you with alerts to make sure you don’t miss a single negative annotation, you can rightfully call abuse. If a News Genius user begins annotating your articles with messages about slitting your throat or spammed jokes about your weight, you can rightfully claim that you’ve been harassed by someone abusing the site, and the harasser ought to be punished. News Genius has always encouraged users to report abuse, and as of today has implemented a button.

But saying “this sucks” is not abuse, and to label it such cheapens the experience of every single person who’s ever been abused, harassed, stalked, or intimidated online.

It’s brave and noble of Dawson to publicly try to combat the stigma of STD infection. But when she writes “we need more voices to challenge the single narrative of herpes,” she’s already acknowledging her place in public—it’s right there in the “we.” If you want to advocate for a cause in front of an audience (and judging by the fact that her website has a “Press” section, I’m assuming she does), you have to take what comes with it. Dawson says she has a blog “to have total control of how I write and who interacts with me.” If only this were possible! Unfortunately, this is a fantasy, and will always be so. News Genius couldn’t destroy this fairytale vision of the web, because it never existed.

Joe Scarborough Is Pro-Torture

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Joe Scarborough Is Pro-Torture

This morning, Joe Scarborough sent out the following tweet:

One of two things is happening here. Either the host of MSNBC’s very own torture program Morning Joe is displaying his internalization of the commonly agreed upon opinion that torturing humans is bad as a cover to express his desire for the United States to engage in torture regardless or he does not understand that torture and “enhanced interrogation” are the same things.

As a quick refresher, here are some of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques the CIA has publicly admitted to using during George W. Bush’s first term in office:

  • Cramped confinement
  • Cramped confinement “with an insect”
  • Sleep deprivation
  • Stress positions
  • Waterboarding

Is Joe Scarborough stupid or evil? It doesn’t matter.

"Please Don't Shoot Me," Man Begged Before Cop Shot and Killed Him

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"Please Don't Shoot Me," Man Begged Before Cop Shot and Killed Him
Image: Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office

Moments before a Mesa, Arizona, police officer killed Daniel Shaver with five shots from an AR-15, Shaver was on all fours, pleading with officers not to shoot him, according to a newly released police report from the incident.

Shaver, a twenty-six-year-old from Texas, was killed on January 18. Philip Brailsford, the two-year Mesa Police Department officer who allegedly killed him, was fired from the department and charged with second-degree murder.

Shaver was staying at a Mesa La Quinta Inn on a work-related trip when he was killed, according to a local ABC affiliate. The police report (viewable in full here) alleges that officers received a call about a man pointing a rifle out Shaver’s fifth-floor hotel window.

According to the police report, the officers who responded asked Shaver and a woman he was with to exit the room. Shaver exited, then raised his hands and dropped to his knees. An officer told him to lay on the ground, and he did. He was “obviously compliant and offered no resistance at that point,” the report reads. Then, Shaver was ordered to put his hands behind his head, cross his legs, and not move. If he moved, the officer told him, he would be considered a threat, and “may not survive it.”

The officers then ordered the woman Shaver was with to crawl towards them, and ordered Shaver back to a kneeling position. “If you do that again, we’re shooting you. Do you understand?” an officer asked him, apparently referencing Shaver’s failure to immediately raise his hands as he kneeled. “No, please don’t shoot me,” Shaver replied. At around this point, according to the report, he began sobbing.

Officers ordered Shaver to crawl toward them, and he complied, “audibly sobbing” as he did so. As he crawled, he briefly moved his hand toward his waist and back toward his body, and Officer Brailsford began shooting.

“The movement of SHAVER’s right arm in the recording was a very similar motion to someone drawing a pistol from their waist band,” the report reads. However, it continues, “SHAVER’s underwear were clearly visible and it appeared his shorts had fallen partially down his leg at that point. SHAVER’s motion was also consistent with attempting to pull his shorts up as they were falling off.”

Monique Portillo, the woman who was with Shaver, told police that she was also staying at the hotel on business, and that she and a male coworker had met Shaver in the elevator. Shaver invited them to do shots in his room, and when they arrived, Portillo asked Shaver about a case in the room, which she thought might contain a musical instrument. Shaver opened it, revealing the rifle and a dead sparrow. He told Portillo that he worked for Walmart and that his job was to kill birds that made their way into the store. (The store does apparently employ people to shoot and kill birds.)

Shaver and the other man began playing with the rifle, according to Portillo, pointing it out the window as they did so. Luis Nunez, the other man, left the room to call his wife before police arrived, Portillo said.

The report’s detailed description of Shaver’s death is sourced from an interview with Portillo and from body camera footage from one of the officers, which Mesa police have not released. Both state prosecutors and Brailsford’s defense attorneys are arguing that the footage should remain sealed.

BuzzFeed News notes that Laney Sweet, Shaver’s widow, recorded a conversation in which a prosecutor told her she could view the body camera footage, but only if she did not speak to the media about it. She declined, and uploaded audio of the conversation to YouTube.

Sweet also said in the video that prosecutors told her they planned to offer Brailsford a plea deal for negligent homicide—a lesser charge.

U.S. peanut inventories are so high that farmers “may not have enough warehouse space” to store the

Police Say Teenage Girl Was Pepper Sprayed and Sexually Assaulted at Wisconsin Trump Rally

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Police Say Teenage Girl Was Pepper Sprayed and Sexually Assaulted at Wisconsin Trump Rally

The Janesville Police Department says a 15-year-old girl was pepper sprayed and sexually assaulted by two men outside of a Donald Trump rally yesterday in Janesville, Wisconsin.

The incident took place in a crowd of approximately 1,000 people standing outside the Holiday Inn Express where the rally took place, the police department said in a statement.

A 15 year [sic] girl from Janesville was peppered sprayed in the crowd by a non-law enforcement person. A 19 year old woman from Madison received 2nd hand spray as well. Both individuals received medical attention at local hospitals. A male in the crown [sic] groped the 15 year girl, when she pushed him away; another person in the crown [sic] sprayed her. We are currently looking for two suspects, one for the sexual assault and one for the pepper spray.

The incident mentioned in the statement was apparently caught on camera. Clips show the teenage girl accusing a member of the crowd of groping her.

“You were touching my breast,” she says. “You fucking touched my chest.”

She shoves him and someone else sprays orange pepper spray directly in her face and into the eye of a girl standing next to her. As she pushes her way out of the crowd, people yell that she’s a “bitch” and a “goddamn communist nigger-lover.”

Donald Trump has so far acknowledged that his rallies “don’t have problems” and “the little problems we have are very minor, nobody gets hurt,” which is to say it’s a fairly safe bet he won’t come out in support of this woman.

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