Hong Kong news magazine HK01 recently toured a 30-square-foot “toilet subdivided room” (廁所劏房) renting for 2000 HKD a month (around $250). Reporters responded to a listing at a rundown low-rise building in the city’s Kwai Chung district and found this.
What you get is a sink overlapping a toilet, and a space that’s not large enough to fit an average adult lying flat on the ground. At just five feet long, you would have to lay on your side with your legs tucked in, despondently. The landlord helpfully includes a small bit of wall so you don’t have to stare at the toilet all night. Clearly stunned at the stark horror that is just 30 square feet, the reporter sits there on the toilet and turns on the sink faucet. At least the water works.
Hong Kong 01 helpfully mocked up how it would look to curl up and cry yourself to sleep.
For storage, there is one carry-on worth of shelf space above the sleeping area and a locker located in the hallway if you are foolhardy enough to own other things.
Hong Kong is notorious for its subdivided flats where entire families live in rooms smaller than a parking space and single units are split into multiples for lucrative renting. Despite measures by the government, housing prices continue to rise and contributed to the “Umbrella Movement” pro-democracy protests in 2014. Hong Kong was rated as the least affordable city in the world by the US think tank Demographia, with New York ranked a mere 7th. At the rate New York is going, we’ll get the option of living in a dive bar’s bathroom with the stall toilet ripped out soon enough.
In the industry of internet writing, certain truths become doctrine: Anger is effective, outrage more so, and dead girls and women—particularly those abused and victimized and murdered—rule the attention game. They are the internet’s profane saints and they have always fueled the media, selling newspapers and magazines and generating reliable clicks.
The feminist media is no exception, it relies in a particular way on the traffic generated by the dead girl—the clicks and associated revenue that come with the grisly details of her death, and the outrage and anger of readers. The taxonomy of dead women is different, too; the value of a woman’s body is differently determined on, say, Jezebel, than in tabloids or glossy celebrity-focused magazines.
Tabloids value mothers and children, in particular: JonBenét Ramsey and Jessica Chambers and Laci Peterson; attractive girls and women ready-made for readers to mourn. These girls represent the fictional decay of the American family and the internal dangers that somehow lurk within it; their deaths threaten to decay the family itself.
The feminist hierarchy of the dead women is slightly different. Motivated by ideology disinterested in the preservation of the American suburban family, it’s subsequently less interested in tabloid-ready looks or shocking revelations about husbands or mothers.
Our own dead women, instead, reflect our own values. Death transforms them into sacrifices to a social order we know to be true, one that we hope we can counteract by naming it; we make political sense of their deaths in order to make them seem less senseless. Through news stories of the immortalized dead, we pay witness to particular kinds of violence, to our own suspicions about gender-based crime, to an inherent knowledge that the world is unsafe for women. Anyone who has spent time in or around women’s media recognizes the hierarchy of dead women: women who have been killed by a man wounded by her inattention, women murdered by abusive husbands and boyfriends, women who were executed simply for uttering the word “no.” They are our unholy saints, our martyrs.
I’ve written many of those stories: a post about Caroline Nosal, a Wisconsin woman murdered by a co-worker after she turned down his advances; an unnamed woman who was murdered by a co-worker after she complained about sexual harassment. There are others, too: a three-year-old girl brutalized in retaliation after her mother turned down a man; a teenage girl stabbed to death for rejecting a prom invitation; a mother of three murdered because she refused to give a man her phone number. These stories are valid, they pay witness to the thousands of dead women sacrificed to an invisible, merciless social order.
Over the last decade or so, the feminist internet has built a catalog of dead girls and women; in blog posts, a kind of small hagiography. Collected, they remind us of the tenets of our political religion: that “no” is a dangerous word; that the simple act of rejection—of expressing a preference—can have violent and deadly consequences. These stories are our liturgy, shared with familiar ritualistic language, a sarcastic “just tell him no,” observations about “toxic masculinity,” or a Margaret Atwood quote. It’s a language so familiar that here at Jezebel, that in our own comments section readers will simply type “MA,” a quick reference to the Atwood quote, that they all understand.
That these observations aremost loudly made on the feminist internet (itself a thriving zone for women’s otherwise altered speech) seem implicitly to be some sort of argument that things are better than they seem. Even there, women are charged with sexism, their claims of knowledge dismissed (“not all men”) but these dead women are incontrovertible proof, tangible evidence, of violence and its body count.
The dead women of the feminist internet are a silent rejoinder to critics who claim that women’s fears about simple speech are irrational—critics who claim that the public sphere and our national history value the freedom of speech, the freedom to express any opinion, no matter how unpopular. Women understand that they are not yet within the boundaries that delineate acceptable action and speech in the name of safety; if these boundaries exist at all, they are false. The dead pay witness to that falsity; they insist, in their absence, that the violence that results from gendered power hierarchies is not simply a delusion of women.
The dead woman has been the site of witness and outrage since the creation of mankind. The Old Testament tells the story of the Levite’s Concubine, an unnamed woman (her name isn’t important, anyway) who is given to a group of Benjamite men to assuage their apparent need for sexual violence.
The passage, in Judges 19, is particularly brutal even for the Old Testament:
[...] the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. 26 At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.
27 When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. 28 He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.
The concubine was, of course, dead, but she proved more valuable in death than she ever was in life. Her husband mounted her body on the donkey to return her home, not for burial or for mourning, but to cut her body “limb by limb,” to send across Israel. As the pieces of her body were distributed and received, the Israelites became outraged and attacked the Benjamites, burning their farms and murdering the tribe’s virgins. The Benjamites sought peace with the other tribes of Israel and, in reward, they were allowed to rape and take the women of the Shiloh tribe as their wives.
With enough women raped and murdered, the story draws to its conclusion, its moral lesson is found in Judges 21:25, “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.”
The story of the Levite’s Concubine is terrifyingly compact. In a few hundred words, it recounts the value of dead women: A woman is dead, more women are murdered and women are raped, all to maintain the cultural order and peace of men.
The anonymous scribe of Judges, like the artists who depicted the scene centuries later, all focused on one simple poignant detail: Hands on the threshold. The hands that lay but do not touch or feel because they are lifeless. The detail renders a sculptural image of two inanimate objects one on top of the other; image and support.
No woman ever speaks.
In May 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people near the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among the dead were two women; two sorority sisters. In his 141-page manifesto, My Twisted World, Rodger believed himself to be innocent. He was a victim of pretty, blonde girls and their “flawed sexuality”—the flaw evident in their refusal to acknowledge his evident potency. Rodger believed himself to be an unwilling saint of sorts, “condemned to suffer rejection and humiliation at the hands of women.”
“They are attracted to the wrong type of male,” Rodger wrote.
After he completed his account of rejection and bitter prerogatives, Rodger bought a few guns and knives, hopped in his BMW and drove downtown. After stabbing three roommates, Rodger uploaded a YouTube video and emailed his manifesto. Then he armed himself with two pistols, a Glock 34 and two Sig Sauer P226s, weapons that in his manifesto he treated as objects that reflected his lethal masculinity, and drove to the Alpha Phi sorority house. The two women he murdered there were not Alpha Phis; they were simply standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got back into his car, killed another male student and injured more.
Rodger’s spree, driven as it was by savage misogyny (in the lingo of internet feminism, “toxic masculinity”), spurred the social media hashtag #yesallwomen.
That hashtag, which Rebecca Solnit described as “a watershed moment in which the conversation changed... opening some minds and updating some ideas,” was a testament to the mundanity of gender-based violence. Under the hashtag, women documented personal experiences with discrimination and violence, written in the familiar language of the liturgy. Yes All Women, as Solnit suggested, simultaneously preached to the choir and paid witness to lost souls, convincing them of the right way; the right ideas. In a search of an articulate narrative of pain—a language that, at its best, is fragmented—Rodger’s manifesto and the two dead girls he left in his wake became an impetus, a prompt for an ancient expression that becomes clearer and clearer and yet never clear enough.
At its most reductive, Yes All Women was written on the bodies of two women, victimized by everything feminists understand to be wrong with power and with masculinity. Still, though Solnit is right and the hashtag was a commanding force, it fundamentally rendered two dead women invisible. Their names were Katherine Cooper and Veronika Weiss.
Without this violence against Cooper and Weiss, there would have been no movement, no watershed. This is the fundamental paradox of the feminist internet’s dead girls: we require their production in order to take action. There is nothing to witness if nobody is dead. There is no contemplation without saints.
In August 2015, Alison Parker, a reporter at a CBS affiliate in semi-rural Virginia, was gunned down on live television. Three stills from the video— shot from the perspective of Parker’s murderer—appeared the next day on the cover of the New York Daily News accompanied by bold, white text that simply read “Executed.”
The video was shocking, but the NYDN’s cover, arranged like an altarpiece triptych, had the meditative quality of a religious painting. The three-part image invited introspection and refused closure. The terror—both Parker’s and viewers—is repeated on an infinite loop, in which Parker and the viewer contemplate the danger we collectively struggle to name.
In the first panel, Parker stands unaware of the gun looming in the foreground, wearing the standard uniform of a television reporter as she cheerily interviews a subject. In the second, the bullet has been fired, evidenced by the flash from the muzzle, but Parker has yet to turn towards the shot (a chilling conflation between the usages of the word “shot,” with gun or camera). In this moment, her death is imminent to the viewer; it will happen, we know it will happen. Roland Barthes described that particular tension, that inherent knowledge of death that every photograph carries, as an emotional “catastrophe.” In the final panel, Parker turns toward the gun, her mouth open in fear. There: the catastrophe.
The cover inevitably produced controversy (as did the easy availability of the video of Parker’s murder). The responses ranged from earnest cries to banish both the video and photograph to defenses of the NYDN’s decision to expose readers to the catastrophe. At the New Republic, Jeet Heer argued that watching Parker’s death was to become “voyeurs in [her] murder”; at Gawker, Sam Biddle argued that looking at the images would force us to confront the realities of an ungovernable gun culture. Look or look away; compassion or confrontation, those were the options. Maybe they were both wrong. “Moral indignation, like compassion,” Susan Sontag wrote in Regarding the Pain of Others, “cannot dictate a course of action.”
Parker herself, as with all the dead women, was at the center of this, and thus almost beside the point. Death had made her both meaningful and silent. Voyeurism and exploitation were argued over; moral certainty, as always, was what we sought. Looking away from the images was a kind of moral high ground, some kind of utopic belief that refusing to be a “voyeur” was absolution. On the other hand, looking at them was framed as a heroic confrontation of reality. Neither seemed quite true enough. The debate itself seemed exploitative,as there were no morals to be parsed and no arguments to be had without the dead girl.
Parker was not the only person murdered that day. Her co-worker, Adam Ward, was also murdered. No one argued over whether or not the Daily Mail’s photograph of his lifeless body was exploitative. But he was not young and pretty and female; he was not right for the debate.
Since images of dead women are controversial, dead children are often used in their place. Dead children are visually linked to dead women; that’s why the slippage between “dead woman” and “dead girl” is so easy. Children, like “all women” in feminist parlance, are culturally innocent, victimized by systems beyond their control. Children, too, are silent and the adult-made corruption responsible for their deaths (guns, the refugee crisis, extremism and casual violence) is a grim contrast to their purity. Children, like the right kind of women, are sympathetic. The dead child is the dead girl magnified.
We are “allowed” to reproduce images of dead children. Their bodies are the stuff of “iconic” photographs, of calls to action. Think of the photograph of Alan Kurdi lying lifeless on a beach, the three-year-old Syrian refugee whose tiny shoes and upward facing hands became the site of the debate over the refugee crisis, if only for a moment.
Or the photograph of Baylee Almon, the one-year-old girl pulled from the bombed-out rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Over 20 years ago, an amateur photographer named Charles H. Porter IV snapped a photograph of Almon’s burned and bloodied body cradled by a firefighter. Almon was already dead, yet she appeared on the cover of nearly every major newspaper; Porter eventually won a Pulitzer. The image is hard to resist, resembling, as it does, an inverted, time-warped pietà.
The photograph needs to have religious undertones because Almon’s death—her limp legs and dirty white socks—can not be meaningless. The dead child and the dead girl both need to be marked as sacrifices to the world’s cruelty. Pious reflection eludes charges of exploitation.
Writing about dead girls is a form of exploitation. There is no way to resolve the uneasy relationship between the violence done to these women and their postmortem examination. There is no easy way to resolve the close ties between veneration and violence; they are too closely bound to one another.
A dead girl, particularly of the feminist internet, is always viral; a post about her death will always be shared on social media, it will always get clicks. It’s impossible to resist and impossible to ignore.
Yet it’s not as simple as labeling this kind of exploitation as something inherently “bad” or immoral and subsequently turning away from it. At websites like this one, paying witness to the lives of women is part and parcel of what we do. Mundane violence is simply—and sadly—part of that.
Wedged into this practice is an element of spectacle: the outrage and the awkward relationship between violence and monetization. There is little room in that cycle for mourning, of lives lost or a tangible body count. On the internet at least, the individual dead girl is necessarily abstract, a representation of ideology rather than an individual. The gap between this long digital trail of dead girls, and the actual woman (the “good friend” or “loving daughter”) is necessarily catastrophic. It transforms the individual into a body; into an object readymade for veneration. That is how the dead girl produces the news cycle.
The feminist naming of routine physical and sexual violence is something that we deeply believe in; it shapes our worldview and quite literally maps boundaries on women’s lives—where we can go, when we can go and with whom. It deserves reflection and contemplation. That is the cruel irony of the feminist internet. Besides, who else would catalog the never-ending number of murdered and abused women? Who else would claim those dead girls?
Earlier this week, a coworker sent me a link to what I presume must have been a fun or interesting tweet. I will never know for sure, however, because the only thing that link taught me was that nothing is sacred. Not even curated feeds of up-to-the-minute entertainment and celebrity news.
Friends, this is what I saw when I clicked the link:
A slap in the face from the entertainment arm of the world’s biggest news organization. But why would they do this to me, a loyal content consumer?
After some digging, I found this:
What I thought was a fun joke between two friends (me and @APEntertainment) was apparently too much for the Associated Press.
Or perhaps—let’s not be hasty—it was just an automatic response?
I wondered if, perhaps, my single interaction with @APEntertainment triggered some sort of bot, or maybe even an institutional rule to block those who appear to demand it even when they are actually just making a little joke. To test this theory, I tweeted “stop” at every AP-affiliated account I could find.
It’s been almost 24 hours, and not a single one has blocked me. I even asked two coworkers to tweet “stop” at @APEntertainment specifically. Almost a day later, they are both still free to peruse the various goings-on of the always exciting entertainment industry.
With this one, brutal action, the Associated Press has hurt me in two distinct ways. The first is that I have no idea what I may have missed in the world of celebrity since I’ve been blocked. How long have I been barred from receiving a constant stream of industry updates? Do the celebs even still exist? What’s changed in Hollywood? I have no conceivable way of knowing, and it’s the unknown that can drive you mad.
The second, of course, is that I did not deserve this fate. The free flow of information is integral to our identity as American citizens, and I will not be kept from my rightful access to all the hottest celeb news of the day.
In conclusion, @APEntertainment, please unblock me immediately and apologize. We all make mistakes—it’s time to fix yours.
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Netgear’s high-end Nighthawk AC1900 wireless router boasts a 4.3 star rating from over 9,000 (!!) customer reviews, and Amazon will sell you one for $140 today, an all-time low by $11, and about $40 less than usual. If you’re still rocking 802.11n at home, this is the only excuse you need to upgrade.
We’re all probably a bit ashamed of the amount of produce we allow to spoil in the fridge, but these Rubbermaid FreshWorks containers use a few neat tricks to extend your food’s lifespan, and avoid unnecessary waste.
Note: We posted this deal a week ago, but now it’s back in stock.
First, each FreshWorks product includes a “crisp tray” which elevates the food off the bottom of the container, giving moisture a place to drip, and air enough room to flow. Second and most importantly, the lids feature special filters that regulate the flow of oxygen and CO2 into and out of the containers. All told, Rubbermaid claims keeps food fresh up to 80% longer than store packaging.
You can find 20V and 40V electric lawn care tools for under $100 on a pretty regular basis, but if you really want gasoline-equivalent power, you should take a good hard look at today’s 80V GreenWorks Gold Box deals. Inside, you’ll find a mower, a blower, and more, so head over to Amazon before these prices grow back.
Before you head out on your next hike or camping trip, be sure to pick up these Gonex outdoor accessories for just a few dollars each.
We see paracord bracelets on sale pretty frequently, but $2 is basically unprecedented, and this one even includes a compass, fire starter, and eye knife. And as for carrying your other gear, this well-reviewed shoulder pack is only $6 today with code 1Sale4of.
Vantrue’s compact N1 dash cam is only $67 today, but it doesn’t skimp on features. You get night vision, automatic loop recording, a g-sensor to detect crashes, and even a parking mode that uses motion detectors to film anyone or anything that gets too close to your vehicle while it’s stationary. Just be sure to use code VANTRUE1 at checkout to save $30.
This deal combines two of our favorite things: ergonomics and finding weird impulse-priced products on Amazon. Depending on your setup, getting the arm rests of your chair to line up with the surface of your desk and your peripherals can be a pain. If you’re struggling this could be great.
Here’s your latest batch of Quick Charge gear, including a 10,000mAh aluminum battery pack for just $15 with code POWER233. If your phone supports the QC 2.0 standard, you should absolutely upgrade any chargers that you use regularly.
If Fido won’t stop digging through the trash or trying to escape your yard, this $28 training collar can help. In addition to 100 different levels of static shock, it can also use vibrations or beeps to gently prod your pooch towards better behavior. Just note that this is a Gold Box deal, meaning this price is only available today, or until sold out.
Anker’s back at it again with the discounts, with a special focus today on phone cases. Most of the options here are for iPhones, but there’s also a Galaxy S7 case, and a universal dry bag. Check out all of the deals below, and be sure to note the promo codes.
Just because you’re outdoors and/or floating on a body of water doesn’t mean you can’t have something comfortable to sit on. This $40 inflatable blob might stretch the definition of “couch,” but it certainly beats sitting in the dirt. This particular model includes a water bottle holder, plus two side pockets to hold your phone and other gear.
If your phone supports Qi wireless charging, $8 is a great price for a charging pad. I recommend stocking up, and scattering these all around your home and office. Just use promo code FJ8ABTSW at checkout to get the discount.
We’ve seen our fair share of cheap Bluetooth ear buds, but how about on-ears? Mpow’s Muze Touch headphones are wireless, foldable, and can run for 12 hours on a charge. That’s a heck of a package for $30. Remember, your next phone might not have a headphone jack, so this is as good a time as any to get accustomed to wireless.
Obviously, this isn’t much of a deal compared to some standard Xbox One bundles that we’ve seen, but if you own a 4K TV, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to buy the old model anymore.
Your favorite USB car charger just happens to be the smallest one you can buy, and you can grab it on Amazon for $9 today with code 2CARCHAR. We’ve seen it go as low as $6 on a few occasions, but this is the best deal we’ve seen in several months, if it’s been on your wish list.
Amazon’s free Prime Pantry shipping promotion seems to be a permanent fixture at this point, but each month brings a new slate of eligible items, and August’s have just been revealed.
http://gear.kinja.com/get-the-most-f…As always, just add five of the items on this page to your Prime Pantry box, enter code PANTRYAUG at checkout, and the $6 shipping charge will be waived. Plus, if you happen to have a free Pantry shipping credit from accepting no rush shipping on a previous Amazon order, it should stack, granting you an additional $6 discount.
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Justin Bieber is nude again. Okay. We get it. But the timing of these nudes, which depict the singer skinny dipping with a model in what appears to be a random pond in Hawaii, is... interesting.
You may be aware that Bieber is not the first famous male to be photographed naked this week. Earlier this week, the actor Orlando Bloom was caught by paparazzi paddle boarding with his girlfriend Katy Perry. Perry was clothed, Bloom was not. You can see his droopy uncircumcised penis here and here, if you so choose.
So Bieber being snapped with his dick out just days after Bloom made headlines for the same reason is curious. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but something about these photos seems pre-planned, as if the paparazzi was tipped off to Bieber’s location. Here are the (safe for work) photos in question—you’ll have to click through the tweet to see them in full:
Maybe Ray—who, again, is a model—just naturally perches topless on large rocks in a perfect position to be photographed. You know, muscle memory and all. In the photos of Bieber, you can see that the paparazzo is shooting from behind some shrubbery, but—unlike Bieber’s first round of skinny dipping pictures, which look like they were shot from a galaxy away—the pap appears to be just a few feet off from the pair. Maybe this photographer is the Ethan Hunt of paps... or maybe Bieber and Ray okayed his presence there.
But if Bieber was sending some shot at Bloom, what even would it be? That his dick is bigger? It doesn’t appear to be, frankly, and anyway we already know what Bieber’s looks like. So, I dunno. I have no idea what he’s doing, but I’m not sure he does either.
Did you happen to catch the Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony tonight? The floor projection, the dancers, the athletes—what a show! Unfortunately, we can’t actually show you any of it. But don’t worry. I’ve got the next best thing.
As is tradition, NBC will be your one and only cable-based window into the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio for the next two weeks. And as is also tradition, NBC will be cracking down on any rogue video that’s not theirs.
At the moment, NBC doesn’t appear to have a video of the full opening ceremony available on their website. I do, however, have a brand new set of colored pencils and crayons. With the help of a few friends, I’ve managed to recreate the most important parts of the Rio Opening Ceremony below. It’ll be just like you were there. Promise.
This is the image that played on TV for an hour because I thought the ceremony started at 7 p.m. In fact, it started at eight.
Image: Me
Before the actual ceremony began, the crowd enjoyed a fireworks show with a finale that spelled out “Rio” in sparks.
Image: Emma Carmichael’s Brother and the only capable artist with me this evening
Next, Matt Lauer came on to talk about Brazilian culture. Hi, Matt.
Image: Me
At some point after that (in the midst of my artistry I forgot to note the time), a bunch of dancers dressed up in foil and pretended to be the ocean. It looked great!
Image: Me
Then a bunch of dancers pretended to be different types of bugs. I am relatively confident this was meant to represent the landscape of ancient Brazil.
Image: Me
I don’t remember which part of Brazil’s history this was, but there was lots of brightly colored string. Perhaps the “String Age.”
Image: Me
Brazil notably chose not to skim over the uglier parts of its history and prominently acknowledged the country’s history of slavery. I did not really do the dancers justice.
Image: Me
Some time passed while I frantically drew, and when I looked back up, a whole city seemed to have risen up from the floor. A bunch of people were doing what I assume was parkour.
Image: Me
Soon after, the Brazilians lied to the people of the world and said that Alberto Santos-Dumont made the first powered flight instead of the Wright Brothers.
Image: Former Gawker Writer Dayna Evans
Later, Brazilian samba legend Elza Soares came on with three other singers, though I ran out of blue crayons.
Image: Me
Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen walked across the stage, as well. As you can see below, she looked great.
Image: Former Gawker Writer Dayna Evans
I am sorry but I do not remember what this was.
Image: ME
More time passed before, at long last, the athletes came out. Believe me when I tell you that there are an absurd amount of Germans at the Olympics this year. Good for Germany.
Image: Me
Then more countries came by with flags.
One thing that caught many a tweeter’s eye was each country’s brightly colored, pack-leading bicycle.
Image: Me
And of course, finally, Michael Phelps arrived with the rest of Team USA.
Image: Former Gawker Writer Dayna Evans
It was truly a beautiful celebration of athleticism and unity. I can only pray I did it justice. Now, let the games begin.
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.
By now, you should know that Anker PowerLine Lightning cables are incredibly popular, but did you know there’s another tier of cables above them? Anker’s PowerLine+ line increases the bend lifespan from 5,000 to 6,000 and adds a nylon braided exterior. Want to see one for yourself? The 3' model is available in red for $13 today, or about two bucks less than usual.
Can’t get rid of your home network’s dead zones? This Powerline range extender essentially adds a new AC1200 router to any power outlet in your house, and today’s deal is an all-time low by $15.
If you’ve ever thought about pulling out your blender to make a smoothie, sauce, or dip, and then held off because you didn’t want to clean 3,000 different parts, this deal is for you. The 4.3 star-rated Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender is down to $27 today on Amazon.
The big advantage here is that unlike a traditional blender, you can dip the Smart Stick into whatever container you were already using to hold your ingredients; be it a single-serve cup or a huge mixing bowl. That saves you time, and means fewer dishes to clean up once you’re done. Reviewers also say it chops through everything from fruit to ice cubes with no trouble, so it really can be a full blender replacement for most use cases.
Vantrue’s compact N1 dash cam is only $67 today, but it doesn’t skimp on features. You get night vision, automatic loop recording, a g-sensor to detect crashes, and even a parking mode that uses motion detectors to film anyone or anything that gets too close to your vehicle while it’s stationary. Just be sure to use code VANTRUE1 at checkout to save $30.
Just because you’re outdoors and/or floating on a body of water doesn’t mean you can’t have something comfortable to sit on. This $40 inflatable blob might stretch the definition of “couch,” but it certainly beats sitting in the dirt. This particular model includes a water bottle holder, plus two side pockets to hold your phone and other gear.
If your phone supports Qi wireless charging, $8 is a great price for a charging pad. I recommend stocking up, and scattering these all around your home and office. Just use promo code FJ8ABTSW at checkout to get the discount.
Your favorite USB car charger just happens to be the smallest one you can buy, and you can grab it on Amazon for $9 today with code 2CARCHAR. We’ve seen it go as low as $6 on a few occasions, but this is the best deal we’ve seen in several months, if it’s been on your wish list.
Amazon’s free Prime Pantry shipping promotion seems to be a permanent fixture at this point, but each month brings a new slate of eligible items, and August’s have just been revealed.
As always, just add five of the items on this page to your Prime Pantry box, enter code PANTRYAUG at checkout, and the $6 shipping charge will be waived. Plus, if you happen to have a free Pantry shipping credit from accepting no rush shipping on a previous Amazon order, it should stack, granting you an additional $6 discount.
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. We want your feedback.
Trump had us all fooled, thinking he wouldn’t endorse the reelections of certain Republican party leaders just because he said a few days ago that he didn’t.
At a campaign event in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Friday, Donald Trump endorsed the reelections of Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain less than a week after he’d refused to do so. In the same appearance, Trump endorsed Senator Kelly Ayotte, with who he’s feuded in the past.
“We all have disagreements, but we disagree as friends and never stop working toward victory. And very importantly toward real change. So in our shared mission to make America great again, I support and endorse our speaker of the house Paul Ryan.”
The New York Times reports Trump said that Ryan is, “a good man. We may disagree on a couple of things, but mostly we agree.” Now they even agree that Ryan should keep his job.
Trump spoke of Ronald Reagan, big tents (why not huge?), and party unity. “Big, big tent,” he said. “Remember?”
On Tuesday, Trump declined to endorse Ryan or McCain in their respective primaries, telling the Washington Post, “I like Paul, but these are horrible times for our country…. We need very, very strong leadership. I’m just not quite there yet.” This last line, which mimicked language Ryan used back in May when he hesitated to support Trump, was widely interpreted as a grade-school-caliber taunt.
On Wednesday, Trump’s convictions already seemed to be easing up when his running-mate, Mike Pence endorsed Ryan by proxy, sort of. “I strongly support Paul Ryan, strongly endorse his reelection,” Pence told Fox News.
In that same interview Pence said that Trump “strongly encouraged” him to endorse Ryan.
Common sense dictates that, if you haven’t done so already, now is a good time to stop giving Trump money. Unfortunately, this conflicts with the good business sense that if people can’t stop giving you money, you will make more of it.
A Mic investigation published on Thursday reveals that there’s no easy option on Trump’s website for discontinuing monthly contributions to his campaign or removing one’s credit card information. The only obvious choice the reluctant Trump donor currently has is to swap one credit card number for another.
Mic’s investigation was spurred by a tweeted letter from CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond to the Trump campaign. The letter requested that his recurring donations to the Trump campaign be discontinued and complained that there was seemingly no way to do so online.
Mic also found that Clinton’s campaign site features a button called “Remove Card.” If you click it, your credit cad information is removed from the site and your donations to the campaign are immediately stopped.
Mic’s investigation was published one day after the New York Times reported that Trump’s campaign contributions for July had almost pulled even with Hillary Clinton’s. According to figures release by the Trump campaign, Trump and the Republican National Committee raised $64 million in July from digital and mail fundraising, most of it in small donations. Trump raised a total of $82 million in July, nearly as much as Clinton’s $90 million.
On Friday, the Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates Chicago Police Department misconduct, released nine video clips, taken from police body and dashboard cameras, that show the aftermath and events leading up to the fatal shooting an unarmed 18-year-old black man named Paul O’Neal by an officer, according to the New York Times.
The Times’ account of the videos, which were released eight days after the shooting, is as follows:
They show two officers firing at least 10 rounds in the span of three or four seconds at a stolen Jaguar after it narrowly missed hitting one of the officers.
Seconds later, the Jaguar crashed head-on into a police S.U.V. and an occupant of the stolen car, Paul O’Neal, fled on foot. He disappeared from view behind a house as officers gave chase, and then several more shots rang out. Shortly afterward, officers are seen gathering around Mr. O’Neal, handcuffing him as he lay on the ground, and talking to each other about what had just happened.
In a video taken after the shooting, in which O’Neal can be seen handcuffed with blood on his back, one of the officers, who said he shot at O’Neal, says, “F—, man, I’m gonna be on a desk for 30 g—— days now. F—— desk duty for 30 days now. Motherf——.”
The videos appear to show cops warning one another to turn their body cameras off, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Though cameras were able to record the scene leading up to and following the fatal shooting, they failed to document the moment when an officer fired the shot that killed O’Neal (according to the autopsy, O’Neal died from a gunshot wound to the back). Police said they are investigating whether the body camera worn by the officer who fatally shot O’Neal malfunctioned or was turned off.
The three officers who fired their guns during the incident have been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.
At a news conference on Saturday, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that, after watching the video, he believes it’s possible that the officers who shot at O’Neal violated a department policy that forbids police from firing into or at the moving vehicle of an unarmed suspect, Reuters reports.
Seeing as that’s exactly what the video shows, it would seem Johnson is onto something.
A redacted version of a 2013 document that designates guidelines for the Obama administration’s counterterrorism operations, including drone strikes, was declassified on Saturday as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU first requested the document be made public in the fall of 2013. The administration refused to comply with their request on the the basis of “presidential communications” privilege, the Washington Post reports.
The document, known as “The Playbook,” shows that President Obama must approve the targeting of specific terrorist suspects with drones or other weapons outside of war zones, though there are certain cases in which he does not need to sign off.
The document also states that strikes against “high-value terrorists” can be made “when there is near certainty” that the target is “lawful,” and that the action will not injure or kill non-enemy combatants.
Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian notes, “Much of the section governing strikes against non-‘high-value targets’ remains blacked out in the public version of the playbook.”
According to the document, the White House’s National Security Council staff review “all operational plans” for killing and capturing terrorist suspects.
NSC staff members do not testify before Congress and are not approved by the Senate
An inmate being held at a South Carolina detention center unwittingly freed himself by allegedly punching Dylan Roof in the face and back. That’s gotta feel good.
New York Daily News reports that Dwayne Stafford, a 26-year-old man who allegedly assaulted accused Charleston Church shooter Roof in a bathroom at the Charleston County Detention Center on Thursday, was released on a $100,0000 bond on Friday, according to police.
Stafford had been incarcerated since January 2015, when he was arrested on charges of first-degree assault and strong arm robbery.
After the alleged jailhouse assault, fans of Stafford immediately organized a fundraiser to donate money to his commissary account. It’s not clear who paid for Stafford’s release, according to NYDN.
Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon said that Roof and his lawyer will not press charges against Stafford.
Roof, 22 and a self-proclaimed white supremacist, remains behind bars, awaiting state and federal trials. He stands accused of slaughtering nine black people in Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last year, for which he faces the death penalty.
How devious is former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes? Following his July resignation, amid an internal inquiry into his serial sexual harassment (and worse) of female employees, a clearer picture of the infamously vindictive Nixon aide’s tactics has begun to emerge. For instance, according to a report this morning from Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine, he used Fox News resources to secretly spy on reporters critical of him and his network—including two employees of Gawker Media:
Targets of the campaigns included journalists John Cook and Hamilton Nolan, who have aggressively covered Ailes for Gawker. According to one source, private detectives followed Cook around his Brooklyn neighborhood and Fox operatives prepared a report on him with information they intended to leak to blogs.
Sherman, who wrote a book about Ailes in 2014, has produced a series of damning scoops—so far unchallenged by Fox News or its parent company, 21st Century Fox—detailing Ailes’ decades-long history of predatory behavior and sudden fall from grace in the wake of sexual harassment claims from former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson.
His latest report confirms a story Cook himself had heard in 2013 from a former Fox News executive. As Capital New York reported in 2014, that executive told Cook that private investigators, acting under orders from Ailes himself, had placed him and his family under surveillance. “Cook was asked” by the executive, the site reported, “if he takes his kids, then aged 2 and 4 (he’s since added another to the family), to Prospect Park for picnic lunches.”
Even at the time, this wasn’t out of character for Ailes. In 2011, Cook and fellow Gawker staffer Hamilton Nolan reported that security officers for Fox’s former parent company, News Corporation, had been caught spying on employees of Ailes’ hometown paper, the Putnam County News & Recorder, after Ailes began to believe that they were complaining about his and his wife’s management style in private. “It’s unclear why News Corporation shareholders were paying for security guards to tail former staffers for Ailes’ unrelated vanity projects,” Cook and Nolan noted. Sherman’s story today reports that “Ailes assigned private investigators to follow [former PCNR editor Joe] Lindsley around Putnam County,” and that Ailes once “asked Fox host Andrea Tantaros, whom Ailes had once seated next to Lindsley at a dinner party at Ailes’s home, to contact Lindsley and report back on his whereabouts.”
According to Sherman, Fox News operatives also “prepared a report on [Cook] with information they intended to leak to blogs,” including accusations that Cook is anti-Semitic.
Fox News’ parent company, 21st Century Fox, appears to be in the process of unwinding Ailes’ private war room. “Last week, according to the source, Fox News dismissed five consultants whom Ailes had hired to do work that was more about advancing his own agenda than Fox’s,” Sherman says.
Gawker reporters and former PCNR staffers were not the only targets of Ailes’ spying operation. Sherman writes that “Fox operatives set up web pages to attack my reputation, and Fox funds paid for Google search ads against my name that linked to the sites.” He also claims that Ailes enlisted longtime Fox contributor Bo Dietl to spy on him and his wife, Jennifer Stahl, who collaborated on Sherman’s 2014 biography of Ailes.
Dietl, along with representatives for Ailes and Fox, denied Sherman’s report. But there is existing evidence suggesting that Dietl is in the business of smearing people whom Ailes regards as enemies. As documented by Gawker in 2014, Dietl’s private investigations firm, Beau Dietl & Associations, was involved in preparing and spreading negative rumors about Wendi Deng, who was married at the time to Ailes’ boss, Rupert Murdoch—and who served as a rival power center to Ailes in the Murdoch universe.
The News Corp executive chairman has long struggled—along with his sons Lachlan and James—to rein in the worst excesses of Ailes and Fox News. The elder Murdoch now works out of Ailes’ old office, on the second floor of the News Corporation building in Manhattan.
Ailes’ attorney, Susan Estrich, told Sherman that the surveillance and smear campaign allegations were “totally false,” and Fox News chief financial officer Mark Kranz and general counsel Dianne Brandi both denied to Sherman that they had any knowledge of Ailes’ black ops. But in 2014, Dietl told Gawker that he had been “in touch” with Brandi regarding claims that his firm was spreading dirt on Deng.
The New York Yankees called a press conference this morning to announce that Alex Rodriguez’s career as a Yankee will end next week. His final game will be on Friday against the Rays, after which the Yankees will release him, and he will retire and become a “special advisor and instructor” to the club.
Rodriguez, who fought with the Yankees last season over honoring his home run milestones and paying his bonuses, has only started 55 games this season, all of them at DH. He is hitting a miserly .204, and slugging just .356. But with the Yankees playing .500 ball, why not let him hit and try for 700 homers?
There is still about $7 million left on Rodriguez’s contract for this season, and another full year at $21 million. The press conference didn’t address whether Rodriguez will receive all of that money, though he will have a special advisor contract that will run through the end of 2017.
Rodriguez said that his retirement was Hal Steinbrenner’s idea, and according to a release from Steinbrenner, Rodriguez will work with prospects throughout the Yankees’ farm system, and serve as an instructor at spring training next season.
Crying as he spoke to the press, Rodriguez said, “We all want to keep playing forever. But it doesn’t work that way.”
A think tank does not immediately appear to be a lobbying entity, since people who work for them are not called “lobbyists.” However, according to a joint New York Times and New England Center for Investigative Reporting investigation published on Sunday, this impression is, in many instances, false.
The investigation found that several major think tanks, while they profess to be purely research-driven organizations eager to assist in America’s robust policy debates, court companies for charitable donations in exchanges for pushing their corporate agendas.
There are several advantages to masquerading as an institution that promotes the public good, not corporate profit. Donations to think tanks are tax-exempt, and think tanks have an easier time getting away with not filing lobbying reports on their financial transactions, because what lobbyists?
The Times report focused on the financial ties between the Brookings Institute, a wealthy Washington-based think tank and the Lennar Corporation, one of the largest home builders in the country. The investigation revealed that Lennar donated $400,000 to Brookings. Meanwhile, Brookings promised to “provide public validation” for a real-estate project Lennar was working on in San Francisco, and named Kofi Bonner, a Lennar executive in charge on the development, as one of the institute’s senior fellows.
“Thousands of pages of internal memos and confidential correspondence between Brookings and other donors — like JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank; K.K.R., the global investment firm; Microsoft, the software giant; and Hitachi the Japanese conglomerate — show that financial support often came with assurances from Brookings that it would provide “donation benefits,” including setting up events featuring corporate executives with government officials, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
Similar arrangements exist at many think tanks. On issues as varied as military sales to foreign countries, international trade, highway management systems and real estate development, think tanks have frequently become vehicles for corporate influence and branding campaigns.”
The article also notes that as non-profits struggle to meet donor goals, the think tank industry is thriving. Small think tanks with narrow interests have proliferated in Washington recently, while the big guns, like Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute, fatten their budgets.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, who’s been critical of financial ties between think tanks (Brookings, in particular, now knows not to fuck with her) and corporations in the past, told the Times, “This is about giant corporations who figured out that by spending, hey, a few tens of millions of dollars, if they can influence outcomes here in Washington, they can make billions of dollars.”
Think tank executives maintain their research is objective and scholarly, they even have “systems in place” to make sure of it and everything.
Error-proneNew York Times reporter Alessandra Stanley has spotted a novel and inscrutable hand gesture where one places their hand over their heart. It is popular in particular amongst politicians, usually the last to become aware of national trends. Stanley has observed Chelsea Clinton doing it, Michelle Obama doing it, but, most of all, Hillary Clinton doing it all the time.
But why? Do their hearts hurt? Are their palms too moist?
Language experts Stanley spoke with for her article, published Friday, told her it is supposed to communicate “a subliminal message of sincerity” that might also be “contrived.” One source, a democratic pollster, tells Stanley that female politicians in particular are enjoying the craze because it’s “a way of showing emotion without crying.” Just wildly speculating here, but now that this exotic hand gesture has caught on we should expect to see fewer of this country’s most powerful women crying in public.
Stanley also knows that the gesture signals respect or possibly a greeting in parts of Asia and the Middle East. Perhaps this is a clue.
“It’s possible Mrs. Clinton picked it up while traveling as secretary of state,” Stanley muses.
This seems unlikely, but is it inaccurate? Stanley has been called out many times for taking liberties in articles, the kind that precipitate retractions. An article she wrote on Peter Jennings, for instance, was amended with 19 corrections.
This time, we may not ever get the truth. “The Clinton campaign,” Stanley writes, “did not return calls asking for comment.”
Ray Kelly proves that just because you leave your job as New York City police commissioner, sadly it doesn’t mean you exit the public spotlight forever.
Gothamist reported that Kelly, who now works in the private sector as an executive at K2 Intelligence, went on John Gambling’s AM 970 radio show this weekend to speak about policing issues in New York, including the resignation of NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, and demonstrations outside New York’s City Hall last week where protestors called for reparations for the families of those slain by police, and divestment from the NYPD.
In the course of said interview, Kelly characterized the protests as “ridiculous” and “myopic.” Kelly assured listeners that, “If there’s one group that’s concerned about black lives more than any other group it clearly is the police department, not only in New York City but really throughout America.”
Which is why when people exercise their (increasingly curtailed) right to criticize the police, cops get pretty bummed out. According to Kelly, large gatherings of these people can “depress” cops.
Your new TV, produce you won’t have to throw away, and the steam mop your arsenal is missing are just a few of 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.
We’re all probably a bit ashamed of the amount of produce we allow to spoil in the fridge, but these Rubbermaid FreshWorks containers use a few neat tricks to extend your food’s lifespan, and avoid unnecessary waste.
First, each FreshWorks product includes a “crisp tray” which elevates the food off the bottom of the container, giving moisture a place to drip, and air enough room to flow. Second and most importantly, the lids feature special filters that regulate the flow of oxygen and CO2 into and out of the containers. All told, Rubbermaid claims keeps food fresh up to 80% longer than store packaging.
Even if you’ve integrated your robot vacuum and Dyson into your regular routine and take your shoes off at the front door, you still need to mop on occasion. This Shark Blast & Scrub Pocket Mop fires concentrated hot water at tough stains, so you’ll need less elbow grease to get rid of them. It’s also only $60 today.
By now, you should know that Anker PowerLine Lightning cables are incredibly popular, but did you know there’s another tier of cables above them? Anker’s PowerLine+ line increases the bend lifespan from 5,000 to 6,000 and adds a nylon braided exterior. Want to see one for yourself? The 3' model is available in red for $13 today, or about two bucks less than usual.
If you’ve ever thought about pulling out your blender to make a smoothie, sauce, or dip, and then held off because you didn’t want to clean 3,000 different parts, this deal is for you. The 4.3 star-rated Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender is down to $27 today on Amazon.
The big advantage here is that unlike a traditional blender, you can dip the Smart Stick into whatever container you were already using to hold your ingredients; be it a single-serve cup or a huge mixing bowl. That saves you time, and means fewer dishes to clean up once you’re done. Reviewers also say it chops through everything from fruit to ice cubes with no trouble, so it really can be a full blender replacement for most use cases.
If your phone supports Qi wireless charging, $8 is a great price for a charging pad. I recommend stocking up, and scattering these all around your home and office. Just use promo code FJ8ABTSW at checkout to get the discount.
Amazon’s free Prime Pantry shipping promotion seems to be a permanent fixture at this point, but each month brings a new slate of eligible items, and August’s have just been revealed.
As always, just add five of the items on this page to your Prime Pantry box, enter code PANTRYAUG at checkout, and the $6 shipping charge will be waived. Plus, if you happen to have a free Pantry shipping credit from accepting no rush shipping on a previous Amazon order, it should stack, granting you an additional $6 discount.
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. We want your feedback.
On Sunday, Donald Trump took to Twitter to accuse the media of “going crazy” distorting “so many things,” including his alleged ignorance about nuclear deterrence, his proven ignorance about Crimea and, most intriguingly, “the baby.”
While “the baby” presumably refers to the crying infant Trump recently joked about ejecting from a rally, the Republican nominee’s curious use of quotation marks raises other questions. Does Donald Trump think the alleged baby was something else? Or is he suggesting, as Alex Jones has, that the seemingly innocent child was really a globalist plant?
A third possibility is that Trump actually meant Blake Shelton’s 2002 hit single “The Baby,” which seems unlikely, but hey, let’s remember who we’re talking about here.
According to the Associated Press, three people were hospitalized in Oklahoma City on Saturday after a swarm of “30,000 to 60,000" BEES escaped and stung passersby during a BEE deal done wrong in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
Authorities say the BEES were released during a failed exchange between a BEE buyer and a BEE seller. From KOKH-TV:
Officials tell Fox 25 a person was selling three hives, each containing more than 10,000 [BEES], when one was dropped in a Walmart Neighborhood Market parking lot Saturday morning. Thousands of [BEES] swarmed into the air and fire crews rushed to spray water in the area and distract the [BEES] from people nearby.
BEEkeepers were then called to the scene and managed to corral the BEES.
