Oh you misunderstood Michael Bay: he confirms that Armageddon was perfect, he is sorry for nothing.

Do you still feel a need to fund Bret Easton Ellis's attempts to affirm his cultural relevance? You can give money to American Psycho: The Musical! with music by Duncan Sheik.

It's hard to imagine what could be worse than being fired in the same paragraph that heaps praise upon the work you've been doing. But at Tumblr, there is worse: your company shitcans you and then unveils shiny new LA real estate. What are they thinking?

Storyboard's story was short and strange: the editorial section, handpicking the gem posts amid the Tumblr's flurry of porn and spam, launched to acclaim. It would present a smart, friendly face for the otherwise sprawling, NSFW network. It might have even given Tumblr something to make money off of. Silicon Alley prodigy and Tumblr founder David Karp seemed pleased enough:

A year ago, Tumblr did something unprecedented — we created an editorial team of experienced journalists and editors assigned to cover Tumblr as a living, breathing community. The team’s mandate was to tell the stories of Tumblr creators in a truly thoughtful way — focusing on the people, their work, and their stories. The result of this ambitious experiment was Storyboard. After hundreds of stories and videos, features by publishers ranging from Time to MTV to WNYC — not to mention a nomination for a James Beard Award and entries into this year’s NY Press Club Awards — we couldn’t be happier with our team’s effort.

And in the same breath, he fired them all: "our editorial team will be closing up shop and moving on." Moving on to not having a job. Only a few days later, Tumblr VP of Sales Lee Brown posted pictures (including requisite grinning exec group shot) of the company's new digs in Culver City, a cushy corporate suburb of LA. Not the most artful timing—and indicative of an atmosphere of confusion and contempt at the Tumblr mothership.

To start, the destruction of Storyboard, says one former staffer (all emphasis added) was abrupt, but not out of character:

Because Tumblr is so volatile in many ways, nobody feels totally secure in their jobs.

But then the screw was turned:

LA office photos — Tacky! It's a sales office though. Gotta make that $$. That part wasn't a surprise, they just clearly had no tact in the posting photos of it. On any other day nobody would have noticed.

We've also heard from a current Tumblr employee that the LA satellite will house some of the company's media "evangelists "—a fancy word for publicists that makes them feel better and indicates Tumblr's enthusiasm distortion field. This makes sense given that all the TV shows and motion picture cinema strips are conjured up in Culver City's back yard, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense given that Tumblr is... Tumblr.

There's no clear way it's going to start raking in cash by inking GIF deals with Paramount (at least not enough to make a difference), at a time when revenue is increasingly crucial to the company, and its chief is increasingly oblivious (or full of shit) regarding that fact. According to our ex-Tumblr-er, advertising wasn't even on Karp's mind until recently: "a couple months ago, DK was of the belief that Tumblr didnt need marketing at all."

The disregard for the importance of a business to make money is only more glaring when you get Storyboard's take. Our source told me they doubted their axing had much to do with money, and everything to do with posturing. Or ineptitude:

I would be shocked if the three...journalist salaries plus budget was remotely close to the other budgets and engineering salaries at Tumblr. This was not a money issue.

Our source speculated that a recent catered sushi dinner for Karp at the L.A. branch was nearly half the budget of certain internal departments. So if money wasn't on Karp's mind, why kill Storyboard?

It may have been an issue of showing investors that they were cutting unnecessary fat, and [Storyboard was] an easy place to cut from. Tumblr doesn't NEED an editorial team. It was nice, I think [Storyboard] did a great job, but when the obsession is bringing in funds quick and there is not a single strategic thinking grownup in a position of power the idea that you might be able to monetize the work [Storyboard was] doing wasn't pressing.

David Karp, who's willing to say in an interview that he doesn't consider making money important for his company, sure doesn't appear to be one of those grownups—and if he keeps pulling moves like layoffs with an LA real estate chaser, it's going to be tough to attract any at all.

To contact the author of this post, write to biddle@gawker.com

When it debuted in 2010, Inspire, al Qaeda's English-language magazine, drew mockery—from us and others—for its seemingly laughable mission to bring modern media packaging and splashy headlines to the world of primitive holy war. It turns out that, if initial reports about the confession of Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are correct, it accomplished precisely what its proprietors hoped it would.

Wired's Spencer Ackerman called Inspire "a lifestyle rag for the conspiracy-minded takfiri, filling the inexplicably vacant media space between O: The Oprah Magazine, Popular Mechanics and the al-Qaida book Knights Under The Prophet’s Banner." But he also warned of Inspire's potential to, well, inspire violence:

[T]he apparent purpose of launching Inspire [is] getting frustrated Muslim youth to buy into al-Qaida’s holistic conspiracy theory that the crises of the modern era are attributable to a nefarious American-Jewish alliance against True Islam, and then giving them the tools to murder people.

The U.S. government was very explicit about its insistence that Inspire was dangerous, assassinating its editor and publisher, Samir Khan—an American citizen—in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen that also killed imam Anwar al-Awlaki.

Today, news broke that the sole surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Dzokhar Tsarnaev, has admitted to investigators that he and his brother Tamerlan learned to make pressure cooker bombs by reading Inspire, which ran a detailed feature about explosive-building in its debut issue under the headline "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom." Penned by someone calling himself The AQ Chef, the article's intro reads, in part: "If you are sincere in your intentions to serve the religion of Allah, then all what you have to do is enter your kitchen and make an explosive device that would damage the enemy if you put your trust in Allah and then use this explosive device properly."

As he recovers from a violent standoff with police, Dzhokhar has reportedly told authorities that he and Tamerlan acted alone in their attacks, spurred on by Inspire and "through watching videos," according to CNN's Jake Tapper—though Dzhokhar claims Tamerlan was the main motivator of the duo's plotting. The AP adds today that Tamerlan was assisted out toward the fringes of Islam by "a mysterious radical" known only as "Misha."

Despite Samir Khan's killing, Inspire has continued publishing. Its 10th issue, distributed in March of this year, is merely a Google search away, and national security and terrorism expert Scott Stewart wrote late last month that while he is "certainly not among those who want to sensationalize the threat the magazine poses ... dismissing it as irrelevant would be imprudent." He continued:

Despite the weakening of the al Qaeda core group and the serious blows that regional franchises such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Shabaab have suffered in recent months, jihadism continues to attract new adherents. And Inspire hopes to motivate and equip them to conduct attacks in the West.

“Don’t you think you’re awfully close to me, Shane?” asks Broadway legend Elaine Stritch of one of the cameramen who’s filming her documentary Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me. He pulls back immediately while she riffs in her sagging baritone, “This isn’t a skin commercial.”

Stritch is 88, thus ripe for this type of documentary that has become a twilight rite of passage for elderly showbiz survivors. Still-here cinema is a subgenre at this point: Joan Rivers, Carol Channing, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles and Charles Nelson Reilly are a few whose career arcs have been explored alongside current footage in recent years. Stritch’s entry is exceptional not because Shoot Me is a great film (it's good, but nothing so far has topped the brilliant arc and stark candor of Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work), but because of Stritch herself. She could master any media by just existing on camera. Get this woman a Vine.

If Stritch isn’t off-the-cuff and even unwitting in her crabbiness, she’s a master at creating that illusion. We see her on the set of 30 Rock, on which she has guested regularly, asking for her cue and then bellowing, “NO JUSTIFICATION.” Later, Tina Fey explains that working with Stritch is “always worth it,” and she’s not the only one in the film to deliver this kind of qualified praise. Stritch runs into some Adler relative when she visits the Stella Adler acting studio and tells her, “You look good. Your hair looks good for a change.” (And this is actually kind as the hair in question is a dry, unruly, multi-toned thatch. Shade?) Before one of her cabaret shows, we see Stritch barking on the phone at someone in charge, “Will you just be quiet and let me ask a question?” She admonishes a cameraman for not documenting her entire process of opening her English muffins (her late husband John Bay’s family owns Bay's English Muffins) and throwing away the trash. When he relents and moves in to watch her unwrap, she takes out a butcher knife and repeatedly stabs the package. The payoff is exquisite, especially since she does this with a straight face.

There is also this completely insane archival footage of her cutting the cast recording of Broadway's Company in 1970. In it, she listens to her vocal back and freaks out at herself (“Wronnnng!...Oh shut up!” she hollers at her recording).

Liz Smith, the former New York Post gossip columnist and Stritch’s friend, called the singer-actress whom she has covered for decades “just fabulous copy.” Smith’s comment was printed in a New York Times piece from earlier this month that works as a great companion to Shoot Me. It is an elegantly assembled laundry list of Stritch’s brusque quirks – she sends back an SUV that arrives to take her to a performance for a sedan, she sends back coffee several times until the temperature is just right, she sends away a stool and a microphone for not being the right colors, she denies ever having an outburst even though early in the piece, her reaction to being dropped off at the wrong venue is described as “a moment of Medea-like rage.”

And then, there are the bits about her relationship with alcohol:

Chiemi Karasawa, who made the new documentary Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, which will have its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this month, remembered a dinner with Ms. Stritch early in the filming. “She called herself a recovered alcoholic who has one drink a day,” Ms. Karasawa said. “The first thing she does is pull out her diabetes kit. She pulls out something else and she says, ‘I keep this next to my insulin kit.’ It’s a little bottle of Bombay sapphire. Everybody gasped. That was Elaine Stritch right there.”

… Ms. Stritch said in her Tuesday show at the Carlyle that she had half a Cosmopolitan before going on. But when asked about it later, she snapped, “It’s none of your business,” then added, “I don’t drink anymore.”

Elaine Stritch is a defiant, proud pain in the ass. After last night’s screening of Shoot Me, she showed up for a Q&A with Times theater critic Charles Isherwood (Karasawa and Stritch’s musical accompanist Rob Bowman were also on the panel). She announced herself before she reached the stage: the audience could hear her bellowing, “I want out of this elevator!” She referenced her slow transport several more times during the Q&A. She also discussed not liking the process of being documented, and enjoying the finished product but wishing she wasn’t in it. Stritch, whose unaltered face is frequently makeup-free in Shoot Me, told the crowd, “I loved the way I looked.” The fluidity of pride and insecurity courses through her persona.

I get the sense that Stritch’s moments of self-entitlement come from her longevity, that she is difficult because, damn it, she’s earned the right to be so. I think that this behavior would be less warmly received if she weren’t as old and experienced as she is, which seems partly condescending in an awww-everything-the-old-lady-does-is-cute kind of way, but it also ever so slightly balances out the ageist universe that’s inclined to simply ignore this person. But time has done her well, even despite its toll: Her flub-filled musical performances in Shoot Me feature many a forgotten line (which she routinely blames on the state of her blood sugar). They are alive in a rare way that thumbs its nose at perfection, and whatever the shtick involved, that’s as real as showbiz gets.

Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me is screening as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

To contact the author of this post, write to rich@gawker.com.

Ah, 1999.

The year everyone went around saying "tonight I'm going to party like it's 1999" and then received a well-deserved punch to the jaw.

A bunch of other things happened, too.

If you don't remember, it's probably because 1999 was 14 years ago and you are an old person.

But fret not! YouTuber ThePeterson's aptly titled "Remember 1999" supercut is sure jog your memory with its catchy compilation of the movies, TV shows, songs, and video games that first appeared in the penultimate year of the 2nd millennium.

And once you've overcome your existential crisis long enough to quit clutching your knees while rocking back and forth in a puddle of your own missed connections, be sure and check out the other two entries in ThePeterson's "Remember" series — 1997 and 2002 — below.

[H/T: MetaFilter]

Accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a fan of Infowars, the conspiracy-theory website operated by Texas radio host Alex Jones, the AP reports.

Around the time that he was becoming "an ardent reader" of the al Qaeda magazine Inspire and other Jihadist literature, "Tamerlan took an interest in Infowars, a conspiracy theory website," write Adam Goldman, Eric Tucker and Matt Apuzzo.

Only a short time later, Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar allegedly detonated two explosives at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 150. Immediately after the bombing, Jones described it as a "false flag" attack.

Today Jones quickly attempted to distance himself from the alleged bomber, telling Buzzfeed "My show is anti-terrorism and my show exposes that most of the events we've seen have been provocateured."

Infowars, alongside its sister site PrisonPlanet, has theorized that, among other things, the 9/11 attack was an "inside job," victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary are "crisis actors," the movie The Dark Knight Rises predicted or warned of the subsequent shooting at a Colorado movie theater showing the film, tap water is drugged with anti-depressants, that bankers are hoarding gold, the Department of Homeland Security is purchasing an alarming amount of ammo for unspecified but nefarious reasons, the U.S. government is working in concert with Monsanto to control the world's food supply and manipulate citizens' genes, vaccines cause autism, and Osama bin Laden was not killed in 2011.

Investigators have not publicly stated that Tamerlan was a devoted reader of the Drudge Report, which frequently links to Infowars.

[AP]

Disclosure. Disclosure! I like Frank Rich, based on my small but existent amount of contact with him in the course of my work. And as someone who is well-enough employed, in the unstable business of journalism, and who is still not too old to have maybe have a chance to eventually become better employed, I am also wary of Frank Rich. The former New York Times theater critic-turned-columnist, now a New York magazine writer and an HBO something-or-other, exists within a network of powerful goodwill and even more powerful professional obligation.

So it has been confounding to watch the progress of the author Nathaniel Rich, one of Rich's two grown sons, through the pages of the Times, and the commentary, or lack of commentary, accompanying it. Today, the paper's public editor, Margaret Sullivan, laid out just how much exposure Nathaniel Rich and his latest book have enjoyed:

The author’s new novel was reviewed in the Arts section on April 10, then again in the Sunday Book Review on April 14. Mr. Rich also wrote an essay for the Sunday Book Review, with many references to that novel, “Odds Against Tomorrow.” In addition, the Editors’ Choice section of the Sunday Book Review listed Mr. Rich’s novel second on its list.

Back in January, Mr. Rich and his brother were also the subjects of a feature story about literary families. (His father is Frank Rich, the former Times columnist; his mother is Gail Winston, an executive editor at HarperCollins; his brother is a comedy writer, a novelist and a regular contributor to The New Yorker.)

And then Sullivan, who has previously shown few qualms about hurting anyone's feelings, left those facts inside the parentheses and moved on to explain that the saturation coverage was a coincidence among the Times' various independently operating book-reviewing operations, and that what "can look like a conspiracy" is an occasional artifact of "different section editors and writers making their own plans without consultation with one another."

This is probably true in a narrow procedural sense, in the same way that no one necessarily ordered anyone to run an excerpt and two separate reviews of The Puppy Diaries, executive editor Jill Abramson's dog-rearing memoir, in the paper, either. But the Times, as an organism, knew whose puppy the book was about. And the Times knows who Nathaniel Rich is.

Even if they don't all get together in planning meetings, Times staffers generally do read the New York Times. And that means that in January, they had the chance to meet Nathaniel Rich and his brother Simon on the front of the Sunday Styles section, in that feature article Sullivan mentioned. The story was based on the premise that the young Riches have made it in the world on their own—that the children of two of the most powerful people in the writing business have built their careers without parental assistance. That, in fact, they have succeeded in "battling the perception of nepotism while carving out their identities."

OK! "Nepotism." "The perception of nepotism." Nathaniel Rich is a novelist and journalist; Simon Rich is a screenwriter at Pixar and a humor writer. If I counted right, they have six published books between them, at the respective ages of 33 and either 28 or 29. They would not have done this without their parents. And not merely in the somebody-had-to-make-the-zygotes sense, nor in the growing-up-with-a-house-full-of-books sense. The Rich boys are where they are because they are the Rich boys.

The Times' ongoing denial of this is deeply strange. Maybe the profile of the brothers was one of those Times stories in which the sophisticated reader is supposed to understand that the words mean the opposite of what they appear to say. Maybe the Times as an institution—an institution that employs, on the metro desk, Arthur G. Sulzberger, who is the son of publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who is the son of publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr., and so on back to Adolph Ochs's purchase of the paper in 1896—wants to believe it is the truth. But it isn't.

This was the key passage from the profile:

Both men avoided dropping Papa’s name. When Nathaniel graduated from Yale, he said, he made cold calls to magazines looking for work, most of which did not return his inquiries. And Simon said it was “Saturday Night Live” representatives’ obtaining a galley of his 2007 book “Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations” that led to an offer....

"Frank has stayed out of the way in them negotiating their careers,” said Nat Livingston Johnson, a filmmaker and one of Nathaniel’s best friends. “They’ve been self-made in that regard.”

Their father primarily helped them, Nathaniel suggested, by modeling a stringent work ethic. “Both Simon and I agree, and discount the myth of writers that you are struck by inspiration from the gods and your characters will talk to you,” he said. “That’s what writers say to enhance their own myth.”

The part at the end, where we learned that the true life-bonus enjoyed by the Rich children is that they learned to work harder than you, and certainly harder than some poor schumuck from Wichita whose father spent his days relaxing on an assembly line instead of callusing his hands writing theater reviews for the Times—that's outrageous, of course, but it's a paraphrase by the writer, so let's assume that the Rich brothers were trying to say something less offensive and it didn't survive the translation.

But this:

it was “Saturday Night Live” representatives’ obtaining a galley of his 2007 book “Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations” that led to an offer.

Well. In 2007, Simon Rich would have been about 23 years old. There are lots of funny and talented 23-year-olds out there, but almost none of them get their career breaks through their book galleys, because almost no 23-year-olds have any idea how to become a published author. Disclosure: I was over 30 before I had any idea of what steps I would need to go through to get a book contract. A former co-worker's ex-husband introduced me to an agent, who told me how to write a book proposal.

And furthermore, it occurs to me that despite 20 years as a professional writer and editor, and at least eight years sort of inside the membrane of the New York media world, I even now have no idea which actual people would be indicated by the phrase "'Saturday Night Live' representatives." What does it mean to represent a TV show? How do these representatives go about obtaining book galleys to read?

Relationships and knowledge are what the writing-and-culture business runs on. Some of it is cultural capital—knowing what to do and how to do it. Frank Rich's children were exposed, at an early age, to the actual specific process of professional writing: deadlines, pitches, writing to length. Jewelers raise jewelers; plumbers raise plumbers. Cal Ripken Sr. and Bobby Bonds brought up their children around professional baseball. Johann Sebastian Bach produced musicians.

But some of it is social capital—who you know, and what they can do for you. People look out for the interests of people they know, even without anyone picking up a phone and telling them to. Disclosure: I was going to write about the profile of the Rich brothers when it first came out, for somewhere other than Gawker, but that place revoked the assignment because it didn't want to be potentially unkind to Nathaniel Rich.

These are the advantages that go mostly unremarked. The same day the Times profiled the Riches, it ran a magazine story about Zosia Mamet, the daughter of playwright/movie director David Mamet and actress Lindsay Crouse. In it, the younger Mamet told the reporter that she had always aspired to act:

“I actually have a really vivid memory of sitting on my mother’s lap in a makeup trailer and just daydreaming about the time that I would be sitting in that chair myself,” she says.

None of the plucky details in the rest of the piece—the cold-addled rehearsal tapes, the failed readings for Law & Order—could possibly succeed in offsetting that moment. "Despite her pedigree, success came slowly," the story bravely ventured. This slowness was maybe not so apparent to several thousand other 24-year-olds who want to be actresses, but who haven't even figured out how to get to a reading for Law & Order to fail at it.

Thus, after persevering, at the advanced age of 24, Zosia Mamet is on a television show called Girls, which was created and written by 26-year-old Lena Dunham. Girls is widely praised for its acute portrayal of life for a certain class of young women in contemporary New York. But Dunham's work didn't exactly have to fight its way out of the slush pile to be noticed.

Does that matter, if the work is good? Dunham's carefully crafted and critically admired TV show led to Dunham's $3.7 million book proposal, which was basically a heap of pages saying "LENA DUNHAM™ BRAND BOOK TK"—a cover mockup and careful choice of typeface implying that the idea of the book was the idea of the book, and no more work would really be needed. Yet when it comes out, the Times will surely review it. Opportunity begets opportunity; attention begets attention. Nathaniel Rich is an accomplished and well-known author; he was invited to do a book chat on the website Gawker.com, which has no affiliation with Frank Rich or the Times.

In today's Times self-analysis, Sullivan asked the books editor about the intense, if not redundant, focus on Nathaniel Rich:

“In the best of all worlds, it would be healthiest to spread the attention around,” Mr. Heller said. “There are so many deserving writers out there, and it sends a wrong signal.”

In general, though, the current system is the most practical and “seems to work,” he said.

Photo by Hannah Welling/background via Shutterstock.

Citing "new information," federal authorities have dismissed charges against Paul Kevin Curtis, the man initially thought to have sent poisoned letters to Barack Obama and other politicians. TPM reports that a former Mississippi state politician is now being questioned.

The full theatrical trailer for Sofia Coppola's Bling Ring has arrived. Let's watch it six times, then go to Forever 21 to steal a bracelet.

This is Rep. Stella Tremblay. She is a Republican elected to New Hampshire's House of Representatives and she believes the government planned the bombing at the Boston Marathon last week that killed three people and injured more than 150 others.

Tremblay posted on Glenn Beck's Facebook wall last week, saying that the search for the suspects was going exactly as he'd suggested it would. She then goes on to suggest that the U.S. government planned to whole thing, but for what reason she does not specify. The message was posted Friday morning, before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested, for some context.

Just as you said would happen. Top Down, Bottom UP. The Boston Marathon was a Black Ops "terrorist" attack. One suspect killed, the other one will be too before they even have a chance to speak. Drones and now "terrorist" attacks by our own Government. Sad day, but a "wake up" to all of us. First there was a "suspect" then there wasnt. Infowars broke the story and they knew they had been "found out".

In her post, Tremblay also posted a link to a video of another radio host, Alex Jones, explaining why he believes the government is behind last week's attack.

Here is where things get, incestuous, one might say. In addition to hosting a radio show, Jones also runs the site Infowars, which reportedly was a favorite of deceased suspect and supposed ringleader Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Tremblay has previously made headlines for claiming that President Woodrow Wilson was sympathetic to Adolf Hitler's cause, as well as forwarding a doctored video that claims to show President Barack Obama admitting he was not born in the United States to other New Hampshire House members.

Speaking with the Foster's Daily Democrat Tuesday, Tremblay confirmed her belief that the Boston Marathon bombing was a government plot, saying: "It was one of my constituents that sent me an email, and it went to a site where a, I think it was a major retired marine was speaking, and then he said, 'Please go to Infowars,' and they had pictures of, what is it, black ops? With black backpacks. They show them at the scene, so they knew something was going on."

Not surprisingly, New Hampshire's Democratic Party is requesting the state's Republican Party condemn Tremblay's accusations.

"Even for the New Hampshire Republican Party, which has become synonymous with the tea party and radical extremism, Representative Tremblay's claims are a new low," state Democratic Party spokesman Harrell Kirstein said in a statement. "She is an embarrassment to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, to her constituents, and to the entire state of New Hampshire."

Meanwhile, a lawyer representing Katherine Russell, the widow of suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, urged in a news conference Tuesday that she had no idea what her husband was planning. Amato DeLuca also told reporters that Russell has spoken to law enforcement officials and is cooperating with their investigation, flatly stating: "It is pretty evident that she didn't know anything."

DeLuca also said Russell, who has a 2-year-old daughter with the elder Tsarnaev, is shocked that her husband would do such a thing.

"She cries a lot," DeLuca said. "She can't go anywhere. She can't work."

[image via YouTube]

The Justice Department has filed suit against Lance Armstrong to recover funds the U.S. Post Office spent sponsoring the fraud of an athlete.

Ah, kids. They're born, they do some cute stuff and then they become obnoxious teenagers.

So goes for NASA technology, it appears. The twin Mars Exploration Rovers were launched nine years ago (they grow up so fast when they're left to fend for themselves on a maybe desolate planet) for the purpose of learning more about the red planet. Like your average angsty teens, they have taken to drawing giant penises all over everything.

[image via Reddit, NASA]

If Politico is to be believed, there is trouble brewing at the New York Times. The story by Dylan Byers, "Turbulence at The Times," focuses on resentment amongst the newspaper's staff over executive editor Jill Abramson's leadership.

The exposée begins with an anecdote — a fight between Abramson and managing editor Dean Baquet — that spills into the newsroom. It goes on to recount numerous tales of bruised egos and dangerously low morale from anonymous staffers at the country's newspaper of record. Quotes from Times staffers paint Abramson as a tyrant repeatedly.

“Every editor has a story about how she’s blown up in a meeting,” one reporter said. “Jill can be impossible,” said another staffer.

Abramson has been notably absent — or “AWOL,” as several staffers put it — at key periods when the Times required leadership. “The Times is leaderless right now,” one staffer said. “Jill is very, very unpopular.”

This depiction of Abramson is notably different than coverage when she was named the newspaper's first female editor a year and a half ago. She was hailed as the newspaper's savior, the New York Observer even depicting her as the Grey Lady's patron saint. But, taking a look back, The New Yorker's profile contains some foreshadowing:

Abramson had previously been the paper’s managing editor, and many in the newsroom considered her to be intimidating and brusque; she was too remote and, they thought, slightly similar to an earlier executive editor, the talented but volcanic Howell Raines, who had also begun the job right after Labor Day, in 2001. After less than two years, Raines was forced out, and his memory is still cursed.

That comparison still exists, and makes its way into Byers' story:

“It’s beginning to reach Howell Raines-like proportions,” one staffer said, referring to the former executive editor who, from 2001 to 2003, is reported to have ruled the paper through humiliation and fear before being forced to resign after the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal.

But how much of the story is true and how much is exaggerated? The job of a newspaper reporter is certainly not an easy one; a recent study named newspaper reporter the absolute worst job to have. And most of stories in the article seem more to depict a tough boss than an absolute tyrant. Morale has not been very good at the Times for a while now either. So it's a bit hard to tell how much of this is Abramson's fault at all.

Whether or not her leadership skills leave something to be desired, Abramson is certainly doing something right: the Times was awarded an impressive four Pulitzers just last week.

[image via Getty]

Ben Affleck, an actor who's won an Academy Award for pretty much everything but acting, is joining the Live Below The Line challenge, which aims to raise awareness about global poverty. As a part of the challenge, Affleck and other participants will only be allowed to spend $1.50 a day on food and drink from April 29 to May 3. That is not a lot of money!

Ever dedicated to public service, Gawker thought of some ways that Affleck can get by on the $1.50 a day that is considered the benchmark of extreme poverty worldwide.

Sam's Club Samples

Perhaps Ben doesn't know, because he is a very famous movie star with millions of dollars and probably a personal assistant or whatever, but buying bulk isn't just something Ann Romney pretends to do to seem grounded. It can be very cost-effective!

But truly the greatest thing about shopping at Sam's Club is the samples. On a good day, in nearly every aisle, someone is cooking up something delicious and it's all completely free. Spend a few hours wandering around, picking up samples and enjoy real America.

Netflix Family Plan

The video streaming service announced this week that it will introduce a "family plan" which will allow users to stream up to four videos at once. The company is also reportedly cracking down on the 10 million people currently using Netflix by just borrowing someone else's password.

This is great news for Ben! If Jennifer Garner foots the bill, Ben can enjoy all the movies he likes completely free of charge and saving anywhere you can is definitely a smart idea when you only have $1.50 to spend per day.

May we suggest Ben watch his own movie Armageddon, which Michael Bay is absolutely not sorry for, no way, no how.

Film a Movie

There may be limits to how much Ben can spend, but there are no limits to how much Ben can earn. (There are no limits to how much any of us can earn. This is America, if you can dream it, you can do it.)

Take a movie role real quick! Ben is a two-time Oscar winner, surely someone will let him be in their movie; Katherine Heigl is still getting roles after all. It's easy: just show up on set, memorize a couple lines and then, boom, make a beeline for the craft services table. A feast awaits, and better yet, it's completely free.

Participants in the Below The Line challenge are asked to tweet their experience as they go, so be sure to check here for updates on Ben Affleck's hungry tummy.

[image via AP]

Je ne sais quoi. Some people have it. Some people don’t have it. Some people don’t even know what it is. Tavon aka “Tay” aka “Bulldog” White, an inmate at the Baltimore City Detention Center, allegedly had a lot of je ne sais quoi. Enough to impregnate four of the corrections officers assigned to guard him.

The Washington Post reports that thirteen female Maryland state prison guards (plus a number of incarcerated members of the Black Guerilla Family prison gang, and the gang's outside "suppliers") were indicted earlier this month on federal racketeering charges.

According to the mind-blowing indictment (which you can read in full here) the Black Guerilla Family ruled the detention center from behind bars by manipulating a network composed of inmates, corrupt guards, and outside associates. According to prosecutors, the gang's crimes included trafficking in controlled substances, bribery, extortion, money laundering, obstruction of justice, assault, robbery, murder, and witness retaliation. Gang leader White is said to have bragged about pulling in $16,000 in a "slow" month thanks to illegal dealings.

The most sensational sections of the documents, however, are those describing the relationships between leading gang members and female guards. Corrupt corrections are said to have been in bed with gang-affiliated inmates, trafficking contraband items (like cellphones and drugs) to the prisoners by hiding them in their underwear and hair.

They were also literally in bed with them.

According to the indictment, Tavon White fathered five children by four different guards between 2011 and 2012. Two of the women later had “Tavon” tattooed on their bodies (one her neck, the other on her wrist). One was given a diamond ring, and both were allowed to drive Mercedes Benzes belonging to White. A third woman was provided an Acura. No word on what the fourth woman got. Hopefully a hearty "Thank you."

Then there was this:

In one instance, prosecutors described Officer Jasmin Jones allegedly standing guard outside a closet while Officer Kimberly Dennis had sex with inmate Derius Duncan.

The Post reports that an affidavit for search warrants of the guards’ homes stated that the gang “strategically recruited female officers who they thought had ‘low self-esteem and insecurities.’”

So remember, ladies, just because the prisoner you are guarding because he was admitted to jail on attempted murder charges in 2009 gives you an Acura purchased with money garnered through illegal activities that you helped facilitate, doesn’t mean he loves you.

And if you end up in jail, you probably won't get to see him anyway.

[Washington Post // Image via Shutterstock]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

The Federal Reserve has at last released the first images of the redesigned $100 bill, to go into circulation in October. Along with a tacky golden "100" in the bottom right corner, the new bills will also feature raised printing and security ribbons that change depending on from what angle you look at them. Throw in the silly drawing of the quill pen and this may be the worst $100 bill ever. Annotate it and tell us what you think.

For good measure, this is the back.

If you've visited a right-leaning blog or received email from your conservative uncle recently, chances are good you've seen a photograph of a car with a "Coexist" bumper sticker that's alleged to be the car carjacked by one of the Boston Marathon bombers. It's not. And, even if it was, getting some kind of creepy glee from the sticker being on the car would make you a colossal dick.

Let's tackle the facts first: Here's the picture being circulated on sites like the Daily Caller:

That's the car they're claiming was highjacked by the Boston Marathon Bombers. It has a "Coexist" bumper sticker, and the bombers were Chechen Muslims, two facts which make the people who send this picture around feel all tingly in their bathroom areas and think is very, very funny. That car is also a Mazda Protegé.

The hijacked car in question wasn't a Mazda at all. It was an SUV, and people seem to be confusing this small, Japanese sedan with this small, Japanese sedan:

... which is clearly not the same car. The car above, which was at the scene of the shootout, was the bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaez' personal Honda Civic. It's clearly not the same car — just look at how the taillights are split on the body and trunk on the Civic, and aren't on the Mazda. Also interesting to note: there's no Coexist bumper sticker on Tsarnaez' car. That's probably because — and this is just a hunch — much like readers of Red State and Daily Caller, I don't think Tsarnaez really identifies with that particular bumper sticker. He seems more like a Calvin-peeing-on-something kind of guy.

You'd think this wouldn't be rocket science to figure out, but it's pretty clear there's a good number of people who really, really want a Coexist bumper sticker on there. People like Adam Carolla, who really should be able to tell the difference between two cars. Here's Carolla delightedly talking about the non-existent bumper sticker on the O'Reilly Factor:

Adam's clearly excited/aroused (based on pupil dilation) by this. Which makes him a dick. Here's why:

Let's break down what it would mean if, hypothetically, the hijacked car actually had a Coexist bumper sticker:

• Someone who owns the car thinks it'd be great if people who thought different ways got along

• That someone had his/her life threatened and their car hijacked

• As a result someone who thinks people should be nice to each other had something very not nice done to them, and somehow this is funny. Or at least "ironic."

If that's your pattern of thought, come on, that kind of makes you a dickhead. Nice person + life threatened by zealot = funny? Really, hypothetical dipshit? Whether or not you actually think people who think differently can get along, what's with the degree of delight that this happened to an innocent person?

In that video clip, Carolla expresses his issues with the bumper sticker, saying it "could be shortened quite a bit, maybe to just "Co." Which means he just wants it to include the Islam and Peace symbols? Sure, whatever floats your boat, Adam.

You'd think if anyone could understand the value of divergent things coexisting, it'd be Adam Carolla, since the 80% of him whose greatest contribution to humankind is processing buffet food into rich, healthy nightsoil coexists with the 20% of him that has spectacular taste in cars and a really terrific car collection.

Carolla also suggests that if the car that didn't actually have the Coexist bumper sticker instead didn't actually have a "This Car Is Protected By Smith And Wesson" bumper sticker, the car wouldn't have been hijacked. Which of course, is true, since carjackers use bumper stickers as their primary deciding factor of what car to hijack. I think they even have a reference book that ranks the bumper stickers to the worthiness of the car to hijack. Fun fact: the #1 ranked sticker is "How's My Driving? Call 1-800-EATSHIT."

This whole thing is just embarrassing, not just because it's not even true, but because the fundamental thought process behind it is so stupid and awful. Coexisting with idiots who don't believe exactly what you do is what America is all about. We've been doing just that for over 200 years. And, every religion has its miserable bastards: Islam has its bomb-hiding extremists, Christianity has the funeral-ruining Westboro Baptist Church, Jews have ultra-ultra Orthodox communities that treat women like crap, and on and on and on, a beautiful chain of embarrassing fuckwads polluting some small portion of every faith.

I'm not saying I'm ever likely to put a Coexist sticker on my car (no room left with all the variants of "If this car's a rockin'..." stickers) but if anyone thinks that the sticker on the back of someone's car means it's funny they had a gun pointed to their head, there's some fucking off they can avail themselves to, out back, behind the dumpster full of steaming excrement.

(Thanks, Steven!)

Just when you thought air travel couldn't get any less appealing, along comes Virgin America to assure you that it most certainly can.

In an effort to promote the launch of its ultra-cheap Los Angeles to Las Vegas route, Virgin introduced a new "Seat-to-Seat Delivery" option that allows passengers to hit on other passengers by sending them unsolicited drinks, meals, and snacks through the in-flight entertainment system.

The purpose of this feature, according to airline president Sir Richard Branson, is to help Virgin travelers "get lucky."

"I'm not a betting man, but I'd say your chance of deplaning with a plus-one are at least 50%," Branson says in a video explaining how the function works.

Understandably, many are finding the system not so much convenient as straight up creepy.

"Just when you thought you had found a safe place to avoid getting hit on," wrote one commenter. "The mile high stalker club," snarks another.

As Eater astutely points out, the most apparent of all flaws in Branson's Big Idea is that "Unlike being at a bar...unimpressed parties can't leave if the drinks or people suck."

I'm not a betting man, but I'd say Virgin's chances of losing all their female customers over this are at least 100%.

[image via Facebook]

U.S. officials tell the Washington Post that the CIA wanted one of the Boston bombing suspects' names added to a terrorist watch list more than a year before the attack.