Could swimmers one day get ear-removal surgery to reduce their drag in the pool—and would such a move be considered “fair play?” We must think about these hypotheticals before they become reality.

An automatic pet feeder, Amazon gadgets, and the USB charger Apple should have made lead off Monday’s best deals.

http://deals.kinja.com/todays-best-li…

Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter.

Top Deals

Automatic pet feeders aren’t exactly a new idea, but this is easily the smartest one I’ve seen.

The Arf Pets Automatic Pet Feeder can hold over a gallon of dry food at a time, and distribute perfectly portioned meals up to four times a day, on the schedule of your choosing. It’ll even sound an alarm as it dispenses the food, so your pet doesn’t miss out. I wouldn’t recommend leaving your pet alone for days with this thing, but if work keeps you late every once in awhile, it’d be great to know that your furry friend isn’t going hungry.

Today only, Amazon’s offering the Arf for $70, or $30 less than MSRP. Just note that it’s a Gold Box deal, so grab yours before they’re all gobbled up.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EG58C36/…

Amazon bills this buy two and save $5 promotion as a back to school special, but I’m not going back to school anytime soon, and I would still love to buy some of these snacks. Eligible products include everything from Lays chips to IZZE drinks to oatmeal, so head over to Amazon and pick out your two favorites.

Update: Now up to $7

Zika’s officially here, and Repel 100 was your pick for the best bug spray to protect yourself. If you haven’t picked up a bottle yet, and you have something else you’ve been meaning to buy, Amazon’s marked it down to an all-time low $6 (from $8) as an add-on item.

http://co-op.kinja.com/repel-100-is-y…

https://www.amazon.com/Repel-Insect-R…

We’ve seen lots of deals on flash drives that include microUSB connectors for Android devices, but this one is designed just for iPhone and iPad owners.

Since iOS devices don’t let you use microSD cards for extra storage, SanDisk’s iExpand could come in handy for offloading your phone’s vacation photos if you’re running low on space, or storing extra movies and TV shows for long flights. $40 also happens is the best price Amazon’s ever listed on this model, so don’t miss out.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CIEBU22/…

While these wouldn’t be cost-effective for your doomsday, three or four day emergency food packs might be worth keeping around for various natural disasters you might feasibly experience in your life.

The boxes include three or four days worth of food for a single person (1,650 calories per day), and are guaranteed to last on the shelf for 30 years. All you have to do for each meal is add hot water. Just note that this is a Gold Box deal, meaning these prices are only available today, or until sold out.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014ER40MS/…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014ER40RI/…

The Halo 5: Guardians Limited Edition must have been a real flop, because it’s selling for just $28 on Amazon today, an all-time low by $10, and miles and miles from its original $100.

That gets you the game, limited edition packaging, dossiers, the Halo: The Fall of Reach animated series, requisition packs, a Metal Earth Guardian model, and more. This was certainly not the best Halo game, but it’s still worth playing if you’ve enjoyed the rest of the series.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS…

http://kotaku.com/halo-5-guardia…

You know the little charging brick that came with your phone? Throw it out, and spend $7 on this replacement from Aukey (with code AUKEY12W). It’s basically the same size as Apple’s standard iPhone charger, but it includes two ports, folding prongs, and 2.4A of current (instead of 1A) to charge your devices faster.

https://www.amazon.com/AUKEY-Dual-Tra…

https://www.amazon.com/Charger-Foldab…

Here’s a plot twist for you: You can save a bunch on Kindles, Fire TVs, Amazon Echoes, and more today, courtesy of...Best Buy? These price drops are right in line with what we’d expect to see from Amazon on Black Friday or Prime Day, so if you’re in the market for a new Amazon gadget, there’s no reason to skip this sale.

• Amazon Fire TV Stick | $25 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote | $35 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire TV (2015 Model) | $70 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire TV Gaming Edition (2015 Model) | $110 | Best Buy
• Amazon Kindle Voyage | $150 | Best Buy
• Amazon Kindle Paperwhite | $90 | Best Buy
• Amazon Kindle | $50 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire - 7" Tablet - 8GB | $33 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire 7" Tablet - 16GB | $53 | Best Buy
• Amazon Echo | $130 | Best Buy
• Amazon Tap | $100 | Best Buy

The arrival of the Xbox One S brought with it a revamped controller, and Amazon’s running the first discount we’ve seen.

Note: Only the white model on this Amazon listing is the new controller. The other color options are the old model.

The Xbox One S gamepad improves on the original with a textured grip, double the range, and most importantly, Bluetooth, meaning you can connect it to your PC without an adapter.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GW3H3U8/…

If you don’t need the latest and greatest Xbox One S, Best Buy will sell you one of three previous-generation Xbox One bundles and a 50" Sharp Roku TV for a flat $500 right now, or $100 less than buying both separately. I paid that much for an Xbox One with no games (and obviously, no TV) when it came out in 2013.

You don’t need to buy a new car, or even a new stereo, to enjoy Bluetooth calling and audio streaming on the road. You just need an AUX jack and this $15 dongle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OOZJBPW/…

If you don’t immediately think jeans when you think Levi’s, I think it’s time to come out of that 100 year old rock you’ve been living under. And, with BOGO 50% off denim at Levi’s when you use the code BOGO50, you’ll be able to come out of that rock wearing really great pants.

If you’re in the market for a solid mid-range gaming headset on a budget, the Logitech G430 is down to $40 today, a match for the best price we’ve seen since Black Friday.

Whether you’re back-to-school shopping for your kid or just getting into adult coloring books, Amazon’s deeply discounting Crayola art supplies in today’s Gold Box.

http://toyland.gizmodo.com/crayola-now-ha…

A few days ago, we saw an 8TB WD external hard drive for $220, which was a great deal. But if you skipped out, this Seagate version is a whopping $30 cheaper.

Now that Harry Potter is culturally relevant again, it may be a good time to pick up the 8-film Blu-ray set for $60, or about $10 less than usual.

https://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-C…

Update: Sold out.

If you missed out on Prime Day, Bose’s highly-rated SoundTrue II around-ear headphones are back down to $100 today, matching their all-time low price.

Mpow’s matte iPhone 6/6s case is one of the thinnest you can buy, and today, it’s also one of the cheapest. The code should work on all three colors.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0157PAZF2?…

Strip lights can add dramatic accents to your home, or just light up the area under your kitchen cabinets, and this 16' TaoTronics set is a great deal for $24.

The strip packs in 1.5 LEDs per inch, which far exceeds most competing models, and you can use the included remote to dim them or choose from over 4,000 different colors. They’re certainly not the cheapest strip lights we’ve seen, but outside of expensive Philips Hue strips, they might be the most versatile.

https://www.amazon.com/n/dp/B006K0JYD…

If you own a boat, motorcyle, RV, or even car that doesn’t get a ton of use during certain months of the year, this $15 trickle charger can keep its battery charged up and healthy, so you don’t have any nasty surprises waiting for you the next time you try to start it up. Today’s deal isn’t a huge discount, but it is the best price Amazon’s ever listed.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K72C1T4/…

Update: Sold out

You might not need to use a Dremel all that often, but it’s one of those things everyone should keep in their tool box, if only for sanding wood and carving jack-o-lanterns. Luckily, Amazon’s offering a basic starter kit today for just $36, an all-time low.

The Dremel MM-20 features a variable speed motor that can spin anywhere from 10,000 to 21,000 RPM, and includes six accessories to get you started with projects all around the house.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JGB09VE/…

Mpow’s super-simple motion-sensing solar outdoor lights can illuminate your yard or porch with no wiring or maintenance, and you can get one for $11, or two for $21 today on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XJJV1FM?…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015CCL1V2?…

The Logitech G502 was your choice for best gaming mouse (though you don’t need to be a gamer to appreciate its benefits), and the upgraded Proteus Spectrum model (which includes fully adjustable backlighting) is on sale for an all-time low $60 today, matching a deal from a few weeks ago.

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

http://lifehacker.com/improve-your-v…

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

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B019OB663A/…

Stocking up on basics at H&M is a no-brainer. The already low prices lend themselves to saving you a bunch of money and even if they’re cheap, they last. Right now, grab two basics tees or tank tops for only $10. It really is that simple.

No need to worry about the quality of the built-in apps on your 4K TV when Roku is built right in. This 2016 model hit a new price low today by $40.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C6XHQWS/…

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.

It may sounds too good to be true, but customer reviews are fantastic, and Amazon’s taking offering a 2-piece set for $17 today, matching an all-time low. If they save just a few batches of arugula or scoops of blueberries that you would have otherwise thrown out, they’ll have already paid for themselves.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01…

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.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0177MEIHE/…

Hoover’s Sweethome-recommended Air Cordless 2-in-1 vacuum acts as both an upright and a hand vacuum, all in a single, sleek, battery-powered package. $105 is within $5 of the best price Amazon’s ever listed, so grab one before they’re all vacuumed up.

https://www.amazon.com/Hoover-Cordles…

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.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ARQVM5O/…

We’ve already started to see some bundle deals on the new and improved Xbox One S, but this is by far the best one yet.

http://gizmodo.com/xbox-one-s-rev…

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.

There are literally hundreds of products available for the promotion, so you should have no trouble finding five that you need. As for the rest of your box, check out this page for every Pantry item that includes an additional coupon.

Tech

Storage

• Lexar JumpDrive S75 USB 3.0 Flash Drive 64GB | $13 | Office Depot
• Lexar JumpDrive S75 USB 3.0 Flash Drive 32GB | $7 | OfficeDepot
• Seagate Expansion 8TB USB 3.0 3.5" Desktop External Hard Drive | $190 | eBay

Power

• AUKEY Dual Port Home Travel USB Wall Charger (Black/White) | $7 | Amazon | Use code AUKEY12W
• AUKEY 5 Pack Micro USB Cable | $4 | Amazon | Use code 5CABLEW5
• AUKEY Surge Protector 4-Port Charger with 4 Outlets Power Strip | $17 | Amazon | Use code AUKSTRIP

Audio

• Amazon Echo | $130 | Best Buy
• TaoTronics Bluetooth 4.1 Wireless Headphones | $28 | Amazon
• BRAVEN - Portable Bluetooth Speaker | $50 | eBay
• AUSDOM M04 NFC Wireless Bluetooth 4.0 Stereo Over-ear Wired + Wireless Headphones with Built-in Microphone | $18 | Amazon
• Gold 3.5mm Male to Male Auxiliary Stereo Audio Cable | $2 | eBay

Home Theater

• Kohree RGB Bias Lighting for HDTV | $12 | Amazon | Use code 5FYOQONG
• Amazon Fire TV Stick | $25 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote | $35 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire TV (2015 Model) | $70 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire TV Gaming Edition (2015 Model) | $110 | Best Buy

Computers & Accessories

• Dell Inspiron, 15.6",AMD A8 Processor, 6GB RAM, 500 GB Hard Drive, Windows 10 Black Notebook | $250 | Staples
• Dell SE2716H 27" Curved Monitor | $200 | Staples
• LG 34-Inch 21:9 UltraWide FreeSync IPS Monitor | $348 | B&H
• ASUS 28-Inch 4k UHD LED Monitor | $400 | Amazon
• LG 34-Inch 21:9 3440 x 1440 UltraWide WQHD IPS LED Lit Monitor | $500 | eBay
• Canon imageCLASS Laser Color Wireless Photo Printer with Scanner, Copier & Fax | $274 | Amazon

PC Parts

• Amazon Kindle Paperwhite | $90 | Best Buy
• Crucial MX300 275GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD | $70 | Amazon
• DeepCool 20th Anniversary Case & CPU Cooler Sale | Newegg
• Thermaltake TR2 TR-600 600W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Power Supply | $20 | Newegg | After $25 rebate

Mobile Devices

• Amazon Kindle | $50 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire - 7" Tablet - 8GB | $33 | Best Buy
• Amazon Fire 7" Tablet - 16GB | $53 | Best Buy
• Samsung Galaxy Tab A 7-Inch Tablet (8 GB, Black) | $119 | Amazon
• Samsung Galaxy SM-T713NZKEXAR Tab S2 8.0, 32GB, Black | $299 | Amazon
• MPOW Mpow iPhone 6s Case | $4 | Amazon | Use code FAMCHGYX
  

Photography

• Canon PowerShot N100 | $250 | Usa

Home

• Uniden AppCam26PT HD Indoor WiFi IP Camera with Motorized Pan/Tilt | $40 | Amazon
• TaoTronics Colored Led Strip Light Kit (300 Leds, 16.4') | $24 | Amazon
• Massimo Color Changing LED Bulb (4-Pack) | $22 | Amazon | Use code MASBULB8
• 5M SMD RGB 5050 Waterproof LED Strip light 300 w/ Remote & 12V Supply Power | $15 | eBay
• New 13-Gallon Touch-Free Sensor Automatic Stainless-Steel Trash Can | $35 | eBay
• DHP Parsons Modern End Table | $10 | Amazon
• Hoover Sprint QuickVac Bagless Upright Vacuum | $39 | Amazon
• Mpow 8 LED Bright Solar light | $11 | Amazon | Use code PWAVPADF
• 2pack Mpow 8 led Bright Solar light | $21 | Amazon | Use code RMW2TYRD
• 7-color changing Solar Lights (6-Pack) | $21 | Amazon | Use code EDD2K8YN
• Intex Inflatable Pull-Out Chair and Twin Bed Mattress Sleeper | $25 | eBay
• Crayola Products are On Sale Today | Amazon
• Paper Mate InkJoy 300RT Retractable Ballpoint Pen, Medium Point, 24-Pack | $5 | Amazon
• Hausbell Solar Powered Garden Stake Spotlight (2 Pack) | $18 | Amazon | Use code 5PAYPLLW
• uni-ball Signo 207 Retractable Gel Pens, Ultra-Micro Point, Black Ink, 4-Pack | $4 | Amazon
• Prismacolor Scholar Colored Pencils, 48 Pack | $13 | Amazon
• TGS Gems Himalayan Salt Lamp Ionic Air Purifier on Wood Base with Cord | $16 | Amazon | Use Code HBCPZN6Z
• Chamberlain 3/4 HPS Smartphone-Controlled Wi-Fi Belt Drive Garage Door Opener with Ultra-Quiet Operation | $215 | Home Depot
• LANGRIA 3-Tier Metal Stand Coat Rack with 11 Hooks, White | $20 | Amazon | Use code DEIRF3KA

Kitchen

• Rubbermaid Easy Find Lids 24-Piece Plus 4 Food Storage Set | $11 | Walmart
• Samsung MS11K3000AS 1.1 cu. ft. Countertop Microwave with Ceramic Enamel Interior | $110 | Amazon
• MIU COLOR® 22 oz Glass Water Bottle w/ Tea Infuser | $19 | Amazon | Use code MC700C29
• 14 Inch Magnetic Knife Bar, Magnetic Knife Storage Strip | $15 | Amazon

Tools & Auto

• Dremel MM20-07 2.3-Amp Multi-Max Oscillating Tool Kit with 6 Universal Quickfit Accessories | $36 | Amazon
• Metal 7-Pattern Nozzle | $6 | Amazon
• Mpow Streambot Bluetooth 4.0 Car Audio Receiver | $15 | Amazon | Use Code 7STIJPWH
• Craftsman Programmable Digital Tire Gage | $13 | Sears
• Craftsman Hand Sledge Hammer | $10 | Sears
• Extreme Max 1229.4000 Battery Buddy Intelligent 6V / 12V Battery Charger / Maintainer | $15 | Amazon

Lifestyle

Apparel

• Stuhrling Original Skeleton Watches are On Sale Today | $50 | Amazon
• ASICS 33-M Running Shoes - Women’s | $70 | REI
• Alpine Swiss Men’s Flip Flops Beach Sandals | $8 | eBay
• Crocs Santa Cruz 2 Luxe Mens Loafer | $25 | eBay
• Alpine Swiss Kilian Mesh Sneakers Casual Shoes Mens & Womens Lightweight Trainer | $20 | eBay
• Large 20 Slot Leather Watch Display Case | $20 | eBay
• West Chester 96650 Synthetic Leather Waterproof Winter Gloves | $12 | Amazon

Beauty & Grooming

• SHANY Pro Signature Cosmetic Brush Set, 24 Pieces | $32 | Amazon

Camping & Outdoors

• Mountain House 3 Day Emergency Food Supply | $39 | Amazon
• Mountain House 4 Day Emergency Food Supply | $49 | Amazon
• Repel 100 Insect Repellent, 4 oz. Pump Spray | $6 | Amazon
• Wenzel Fairweather Cabana Tent | $45 | Woot
• Ozark Trail 3-Room Vacation Home Tent | $139 | Walmart
• Rubbermaid 45 Qt. Blue Wheeled Cooler | $25 | Home Depot
• 10'x30' Party Wedding Outdoor Patio Tent Canopy | $74 | eBay

Fitness

• Magnetic Indoor Bicycle Bike Trainer Exercise Stand w/ 5 levels of Resistance | $52 | eBay
• Refurb Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Weight/Body Fat/BMI Digital Smart Scale | $48 | eBay
• 1 Pair Cushioned Arch Supporters | $1 | eBay

Media

Movies & TV

• Jurassic Park [SteelBook] | $8 | Best Buy
• Kingsman: The Secret Service | $8 | Amazon
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes | $8 | Amazon
• The Fifth Element | $9 | Amazon
• Mission: Impossible (Special Collector’s Edition) | $5 | Amazon
• Fargo: Season One w/ Beanie | $15 | Best Buy
• Birdman | $8 | Best Buy
• Gone Girl | $8 | Best Buy
• Harry Potter: Complete 8-Film Collection | $60 | Amazon

Books

• Burying Water Audiobook | $4 | Amazon
• Worthy [Kindle] | $2 | Amazon

Gaming

Peripherals

• Mayflash PC USB Universal Arcade Fighting Stick | $33 | Amazon
• Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum RGB Tunable Gaming Mouse | $60 | Amazon
• Razer DeathAdder Chroma - Multi-Color Ergonomic Gaming Mouse - 10,000 DPI Sensor + Gaming Mouse Mat | $74 | Amazon
• Corsair Vengeance K65 Compact Mechanical Gaming Keyboard - Cherry MX Red | $60 | Newegg

PC

• GOG.com We Need to Go Deeper Sale
• DOOM | $30 | Humble Store
• Call to Arms | $5 | Steam
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - Game of the Year | $10 | Amazon

PlayStation 4

• Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book | $40 | Amazon
• Fallout 4 | $22 | Amazon
• PDP Official Universal Media Remote for PlayStation 4 | $20 | Best Buy
• Gravity Rush Remastered | $19 | Amazon

Xbox One

• Xbox One S Wireless Controller | $49 | Amazon
• Xbox One 500GB Console - Halo: The Master Chief Collection Bundle | $300 | Amazon
• Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons | $5 | Walmart
• DiRT Rally | $40 | Amazon
• Insignia Media Remote For Xbox One | $5 | Best Buy

3DS

• Super Smash Bros. | $29 | Amazon
  

Board Games

• A Black Locust Game: The Opulent | $20 | Amazon

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.

High-powered New York City real estate developer Aby Rosen has sent his business partner Jared Kushner a pretty rude message. A new billboard at a construction site Rosen owns at 337 Lafayette Street in Manhattan exhorts passersby, in huge white letters, to “Vote Your CONSCIENCE!” On Monday, Rosen posted a photograph of the billboard to Instagram with the caption, “Wake up America.”

The idea of “voting one’s conscience” was a central tenet of the short-lived Never Trump movement that strove to usurp Kushner’s father-in-law before he was formally nominated in Cleveland. And like Kushner, though he may have embraced a certain strain of Republican rhetoric as a matter of political convenience. Rosen does not himself appear to be a Republican.

Filings with the Federal Election Commission show that Rosen has contributed to a number of Democratic candidates and committees over the years—including Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate bid. In September, Rosen gave $500 to Congressman Hakeem Jeffries’ re-election campaign, and in 2014 he gave $10,000 the Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee and $17,600 to Cory Booker’s joint fundraising committee.

Still, Kushner’s newfound conservatism appears to have become something of a wedge between him and Rosen, industry magazine The Real Deal hints:

The pair partnered in 2014 to buy an office complex in Dumbo from the Jehovah’s Witnesses for a whopping $375 million, alongside Asher Abehsera’s LIVWRK and Invesco, and they continue to work together to rehab the complex and ink deals with new creative and tech tenants such as WeWork and Easy.

Notably, Rosen was slated to partner again with Kushner on his more recent purchase of the nearby Witnesses’ Watchtower building at 25-30 Columbia Heights for $340 million but backed out before the deal closed. California-based private equity giant CIM took his place. It wasn’t clear if his anti-Trump sentiment had anything to do with his decision not to take part in the transaction.

RFR Holding, Rosen’s development firm, did not return Gawker’s request for comment. The company’s logo is displayed prominently next to the billboard at 337 Lafayette Street—just a block north of the Puck Building, Kushner’s flagship property.

Rosen is a ruthlessly efficient capitalist, gutting some of New York City’s most prized landmarks without sentiment or concern: He is responsible for sterilizing the mysterious graffiti haven 190 Bowery, which he acquired for $55 million; evicting both the Four Seasons and a Picasso from the Seagrams Building, which he acquired for $375 million; and razing the so-called Peace Pentagon (at the current site of the “Vote Your Conscience” billboard), which he acquired for just under $21 million.

For decades, the Peace Pentagon housed activist groups like the War Resisters League, the Granny Peace Brigade, and the Socialist Party USA. The building has been razed. Rosen’s intent for the property aren’t yet clear, although the Landmarks Commission recently recently approved his plan to convert a historic battered women’s shelter across the street at 348 Lafayette to luxury retail.

Rosen also recently agreed to pay $7 million in unpaid taxes on his art collection. But yeah, sure—vote your conscience.

Today, Donald Trump spoke in Detroit to introduce his new, billionaire-friendly economic agenda. It was very bad. In fact, pretty much the only good thing about it was when he (accidentally?) said “titties.”

http://gawker.com/donald-trump-c…

Elizabeth Warren, who has a far less cordial relationship with the ultra rich, noticed the badness of Trump’s plan. Then she slammed his ass on Twitter.

Oh shit!

Here she goes!

Seems bad IMHO.

As of Monday evening, Donald Trump had not responded to Warren’s comments. But if he starts tweeting about “Pocahontas” in the near future, now you’ll know why.

In a further sign of Donald Trump’s fracturing support among establishment conservatives, 50 senior GOP security officials issued a statement on Monday calling the Republican nominee “dangerous” and a risk to America’s “national security and well-being.” By his own account, however, Trump wasn’t mad at all. In fact, he found the whole thing funny.

The statement, signed by former top aides and cabinet members who served under presidents ranging from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, criticized Trump for being alarmingly ignorant of “basic facts” and either “unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood.”

“He lacks self-control and acts impetuously,” reads the letter. “He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior. All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be President and Commander-in-Chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”

Monday night, Trump (who, again, was not mad) responded to the statement with a press release thanking the letter writers for outing themselves as clueless elites.

“The names on this letter are the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place,” wrote Trump. “They are nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power, and it’s time they are held accountable for their actions.”

To a degree, of course, Donald Trump has a point: Many of the greatest threats to national security today are a direct result of the catastrophic foreign policy fuck-ups of previous administrations. On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that the guy who doesn’t know about Crimea and flips out at the parents of dead veterans is somehow going to make America safer.

Gizmodo isn’t going anywhere. But as you know by now, a bunch of stuff happened involving an angry billionaire and a wrestler, and now our parent company, Gawker Media, is being acquired.

Gizmodo will remain the best publication in the world, or at least top three. But it’s fair to say that next week marks the start of a new period here at Gizmodo, and at Gawker Media. In honor of new beginnings, we decided to look back at the best from our past—by assembling Gizmodo’s greatest work, as so deemed by its former writers and editors, from the pre-acquisition era.

Anyway, that was the plan. But given that Gizmodo tends to hire stubborn, poorly behaved, insurgent little twit bloggers, I ended up getting a big pile of random shit from them. Some of it is eloquent and succinct. Some of it desperately needs an edit. Some of it clearly did not follow the orders laid out in my email. In fact, some of the submissions weren’t even about blog posts or Gizmodo (???) and were therefore omitted, sorry!

Here is what I was able to salvage, in no particular order, from nearly 30 former Gizmodo staffers. And truly: it’s all wonderful. RIP Indie Gizmodo 2002-2016 // Gizmodo 4Ever.

Adam Frucci—(2006-2010)

My favorite post was deleted from the main site for obvious reasons, but it lives on on Gizmodo Australia.

This video is overwhelming: the inflatable palm tree, that Simpsons font, the music, the obvious impossibility of making some no-name bluetooth headset “sexy.” The whole thing feels like a mix between a local commercial and a snuff film. The midwest’s own gadget-blogging Larry Flynt, Charlie White, made this, which somehow didn’t make it past the pilot episode. Charlie, where’s episode two??

John Mahoney—(2008-2009)

I submit the day we wrote the entire blog as if it were taken over by the spam worm Conficker.

There’s no real tag but this link should give you a homepage view where these posts start (“DAY OF YOUR DEATH”). They go on for...several pages.

It really reeks of 2009: spam worms (lol), horrible April 1 internet jokes (conficker was supposed to check in and do something unknown and scary on April 1 so there was an EXCELLENT news peg). We also posited that conficker’s origin was an STD carried by Adam Frucci.

The comments were split about 50/50 on those who thought it was funny and those who just wanted it to end. One of the ongoing gags was that we were asking in this weird computer spam voice that people submit their social security numbers in the comments, and Mark Wilson wrote what was maybe the funniest post of the day to me, when he wrote to all the angry commenters as himself, promising to end it all if they all just...commented with their social security numbers. I laughed really hard at that one, but by this point at the end of the day I’d been drinking for some time.

But yes this was truly ART if you ask me. One of my biggest regrets was losing the exceedingly detailed style guide I wrote to all staff the night before. It had tons of spam email text we could pepper in (Gmail spam folders were really incredible around this time, just thousands and thousands of these insane stream-of-robot-consciousness messages which I also wish I would have saved more of). It also had image guidelines and templates (save all JPEGs at 10% quality level, overlay fluorescent green or magenta text if possible). The whole thing would really be a Document with a capital D of mid-2009 spam aesthetic had I not forgotten to save it out of my Gawker email.

Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan (2013-2015)

It took me a week to pick a favorite post (sorry, Katie) because THERE ARE SO MANY. Giz gave a smart and hilarious group of writers a platform to blog about almost anything through the lens of technology, including cults, bad science, the politician-robot cabal, hating CES, liking CES, drought, smells, underpants, the future(s), and oh—oh, yeah, phones and VR and headphones and gadgets. But I picked this post [Antiques Roadshow Appraised My 2008 Toshiba TV] because it reflects the soul of the blog during a certain era, and also because it’s really funny. And a little bit poetic. /play clowntown.

Kyle Wagner—(2011-2013)

To me, a good Gizmodo post should have some material effect on the world around us. That effect could be anything from tech support/light detective work provided to a man who made his fortune reblogging instruction manuals to the professional reputation afforded a blogger who fucked a FleshLight strapped to an ottoman. The best, like this post, alloy that real-world-technology with the DNA of the staff. Ostensibly, this is a product test for a G-Form iPhone case which had been marketed as “rugged.” Practically, it’s just a video of Sam Biddle throwing his iPhone off of a roof to obvious, predictable effect. “Your iPhone Will Still Shatter If You Drop It From a Roof with This Super-Case,” the headline offers. True. The case’s makers never made any claim that it wouldn’t (that was the iPad version). Sam, who is an idiot, had not read the box. Sam’s phone, which belonged to an idiot, paid the price for Sam’s incompetence. Sam was not due for an upgrade with his carrier. The blog did just-OK traffic.

Joel Johnson—(“All of them” when asked what years he worked at Gizmodo)

There are too many. But one first floated to the surface: Biddle’s 2012 piece about going Wisconsin to take a “tech” bath with Kohler. It’s not the best writing that’s ever been on the site, nor the most ridiculous or insightful or useful, but it was the first piece that felt like young Sam was taking the best things about Gizmodo—freedom to experiment with the form, an open-hearted interest in whatever new technology was sludging through the pipes each day—and exploiting the agency to put himself in the center of a story. It was one of the first times his writing coalesced into the sincere, uncomfortable, and empathetic style that he has continued to develop (primarily via text message). The best thing about Gizmodo has been that it has served as the sophomoric swamp from which a thousand wonderful dumb idiot bloggers have bloomed, and their influence has leached far outside of tech writing.

Matt Buchanan—(2006-2012)

Joel’s going to be so mad (or not care at all).

If you haven’t seen though, it’s worth watching the time brian threw a halo 3 swag bag off his balcony and spoiled the game a day before it was released. (A few weeks later, over a halo 3 competition, we tubgirled the front page of kotaku. It turns out the glory days of gadget blogging was in no small part a bunch of people acting like teenage buttholes!!!! Possibly because we were working 80 hours a week to do things like be the first to post a grainy picture of a new playstation taken from inside someone’s intestinal tract, idk man.)

Ashley Feinberg—(2012-2015)

My favorite post I ever wrote for Giz was about Heaven’s Gate’s still-active website. When I found the site, I wasn’t even thinking about writing something; I just really wanted to buy the book they’re hocking on it. But then when I realized the people selling it were actually true-believers and willing to answer questions, I found my new best friends and am now just waiting ‘til the day I can reach the evolutionary level above human.

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/futures-ranked…

Just kidding. The Heaven’s Gate people hate me now, but it was super fun to report and uniquely qualified to live on Gizmodo. Giz is at its best when it takes a broader topic and exposes the weird things that make it tick. Like this post by Kelsey about NiceBooby.Net. (Giz is also at its best when its pissing off commenters, like in this post by Matt Novak that is probably my favorite Gizmodo post of all time, if not simply because Facebook had an aneurysm over the photo caption.)

Brian Lam—(2006-2011)

Iphone 4 prototype scoop: Arguably the biggest gadget scoop of all time. And on the arguable most beautiful iPhone design yet.

CES TV-B-Gone prank: We had too much fun protesting the madness and pointlessness of CES’s parade.

Sean Hollister—(2014-2015)

We knew there was no way Apple was going to send us The Watch. Not a chance. Though I’d explained, repeatedly, that every single person who worked at Gizmodo during the “iPhone in a bar” incident didn’t work for us any more, Apple PR wasn’t going to risk Gizmodo’s brand of tell-it-like-it-is.

So after I wrote this post, I followed my own instructions. I stayed up damn late to buy The Watch with my very own money.

http://gizmodo.com/i-beta-tested-…

The result: at publish, I had the only Apple Watch review that pulled no punches. The only one that wasn’t, in the immortal words of ex-Gizmodo EIC Brian Barrett: “Apple Watch Review: Gonna Be Juuuuuuust Nice Enough To Get Embargoed on Apple Watch 2 Next Year.”

Bob Sorokanich—(2013-2014)

My pick has to be Leslie Horn’s beautiful piece, “You’re Wrong About Voicemail.” It’s a “tech” blog, in that it delves into a piece of modern technology and examines how we use it. But it’s so much more than that. A moving personal story. A humorous, yet poignant insight. A post that, when you’re through reading it, makes you want to pick up your phone and call someone, goddammit, instead of wallowing through four scrolls’ worth of Kinja to find a commenter to peevishly disagree with. When I first read it in 2015, it made me weepier than I aim to be while sitting at my desk; today, re-reading it a year and a half later, it did the same.

Brian Barrett—(2009-2014)

It’s too hard to pick an absolute best or favorite, mostly because my memory is shot from years of writing online. But I’ll take this chance to highlight BREAKING: David Pogue Has Lost His iPhone and its 18 updates. There’s a little bit of everything that makes Gizmodo great in there. It started as a dumb joke, just a little one-paragraph Pogue dig with some ironic all-caps urgency. It quickly evolved into serious (and not quite serious) reporting. And a little over five hours later, we actually got Pogue’s phone back for him. As a post, it’s equal parts funny and tenacious. It mocks internet news tropes while excelling at them. And it may be the only time Wagner worked a full day.

Kate Knibbs—(2014-2016)

Gizmodo is the home of some of the weirdest investigative reporting and essays on the internet, and I want to talk about the week I realized that, because it was the moment I fell in love with my job. In September 2014, I read two meticulously reported, muscular features on the legacies of cults, published within ten days of each other. They were thoughtful, sad, beautiful pieces of writing that told stories I’d never heard before, and I couldn’t believe my luck, because they were published at the place I had just started working. Ashley Feinberg’s “The Online Legacy of a Suicide Cult and the Webmasters Who Stayed Behind” and Matt Novak’s “The Man Who Fought the Synanon Cult and Won” made me understand how special Gizmodo is, and how much support and freedom it will give writers who have a story they want to tell.

Leslie Horn (2012-2015)

It’s so hard to pick a favorite Gizmodo post. I wrote You’re Wrong About Voicemail, my favorite thing I’ve ever published, when I was working at Gizmodo, although (like most of what I wrote while I was at Giz), it wouldn’t have been half as good without the editing skills of the one and only Brian Barrett. After my dad died unexpectedly in 2014, writing was one of the things that really helped me process. I also think that this genre of post, which covers how technology affects our lives in a real, human way, and not in the Silicon Valley ‘we can change the world’ tech jargon way, is one of the types of writing Gizmodo does best.

http://gizmodo.com/5922074/the-be…

But Gizmodo’s talents are vast and varied. We used to do something called Battlemodo which was essentially head-to-head testing of the same types of products. Mario Aguilar did these best. Two come to mind in particular. First was the bike lock Battlemodo where he tried to figure out what lock was hardest to crack. I can still see Mario and Joe Brown on the roof of the old Gawker offices with a hand saw trying to cut through a Kryptonite lock. The second Battlemodo I’m thinking of almost killed Mario. It was the best e-cig battlemodo, done back when e-cigs were a new and novel thing, of course since they were technically a gadget, Mario tested them. And testing them requires smoking them. Smoking a whole freaking lot of them. I believe this allowed Mario to quit smoking, but he did pick up an e-cig habit along the way.

http://gizmodo.com/5521307/girlfr…

By the way, have you, like me, been wondering what’s going on with the girlfriend body pillow? Barrett gives periodic updates, andcontinues to do so on Kinja even though he’s moved on from Gizmodo. That’s commitment right there.

Alissa Walker (2013-2016)

Before I came to work at Gizmodo, the post that I always loved the most was the one where Kyle Wagner helped David Pogue find his iPhone.

I remember watching this unfold live as the updates got appended to the headline. Forget the fact that it might possibly have been a bad idea to mount an international crowdsourced search for the lost iPhone of the country’s most famous technology critic. Here was a tiny green dot on a map and a determined community of commenters—including Pogue, who eventually gets into the comments himself. But the is-this-really-happening commentary also marks an important turning point in our relationship with our gadgets. Yeah, Gizmodo helped find a phone (I mean Gizmodo is just generally good at finding lost iPhones, right?), but this idea that a bunch of people on the internet could organize to do that—for better or worse—is part of the conversation we’re still having today about privacy that’s gone way beyond phone-tracking features. This Gizmodo story became an early and important part of that conversation. Also important: Repeatedly making fun of David Pogue for using Lockerz.com.

When I worked at Gizmodo I got to write a lot of important stories, mostly about the wonderfulness of cars. But none of it was as good as this single headline:

http://gizmodo.com/the-plan-to-ma…

Finally, I have to give a shout out to this post from last week:

http://gizmodo.com/hey-facebook-i…

This is Gizmodo at its best—and that includes the exquisitely reported Facebook exposé that motivated Facebook to throw this kind of laughably obvious shade. Within a few hours of Facebook posting anti-clickbait changes to its algorithm that were illustrated by a fictional post on “GizmoTecho,” Gizmodo had purchased the gizmotecho.com URL, set it to redirect to its skewering Facebook story, AND created a Twitter account for the post’s author, Larry Brittain (which is, interestingly, an anagram of “arbitrarily”). What’s even more hilarious than Gizmodo’s commitment to the gag, however, is the fact that one of the largest tech companies on the planet is blatantly suggesting that it’s going to bury the content of the blog that wrote negative stories about it! Pretty hilarious, right?

Mat Honan—(2010-2011)

Joel Johnson’s defense of Gizmodo writers from accusations of bias rung really true to me in a way that I think anyone who has faced ire in the comments can relate to. But it was also so Giz: full of voice and passion, fuck-you-opinionated, and consequences be damned.

Here’s a very old one! My pal from Wired, Brian Lam, had departed to go take over Gizmodo. And frankly there was a big part of me that wondered why. Why would he leave a prestigious, established publication where he was well-respected and on a solid career track for a start-up tech blog? This answered my question. It was utterly delightful and devil-may-care in a way that, if you know Brian, is pure Blam. And the last line in the video is *DELICIOUS*

The iPhone 4 story, for all its fallout and the hand-wringing it inspired, remains the tech scoop of the century. Nothing else comes close. Jason Chen completely undid Apple’s veil of secrecy around its upcoming iPhone launch at a time when the company was at its most leak-proof.

I truly loved this Ashley Feinberg catchup on Heavens Gate and the webmasters that were left behind. It was a “hiding in plain sight” kind of story (who still pays those bills?) but Ashley did an amazing job reporting it out, and telling the story of a once notorious, now all-but-forgotten, suicide cult whose history was deeply embedded in the internet itself.

Oh my god! Remember when Gizmodo turned off all the TVs at CES?

I wrote this! It good! Have insight!

http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-ya…

Finally, I remember filing this story to Joe Brown and walking away because I was so nervous about it. I think I said something like “hey, I wrote this thing and it’s really weird, and, uh.... bye.” I came back like an hour later, still deeply hungover, and half expecting Joe to be pissed I’d wasted my time on this. Instead he was smiling and asked me to go back in the bathroom and take the photo that appears at the top. I still get the occasional comment about this one.

http://gizmodo.com/5875243/fever-…

Sam Biddle—(2010-2013)

Every gadget blog in the world gets a daily wave of dull PR pitches and pathetic junket invites, but only Gizmodo gave me the opportunity to say yes to one and turn it into something worthwhile. I don’t think there’s any other publication that would’ve let me write an article about flying to Wisconsin to take a bath, and that’s why I will always love Gizmodo.

Update 08/09/2016 10:27 AM: My favorite Gizmodo moment of all time is Brian Lam throwing a promotional bag of Halo 3 bullshit off a balcony and then immediately spoiling the end of the game, which I don’t even think was out yet. There was a halcyon period when writing on the internet didn’t require being beholden to a bunch of extremely loud whiners on Twitter and Reddit. The video was literally named “Halo 3 Fanboys Eat Shit”! It was a lovely gesture to both PR dumbness and tech/gamer diaper babies.

Update 08/09/2016 10:29 AM: Oh also please add that the iPhone 4 scoop was the greatest tech reporting coup of all time and I literally don’t think it will ever be topped, anywhere, by anyone.

Eric Limer—(2012-2015)

God I fucking love this review of Will.i.am’s Puls smartwatch that Ashley wrote. Ashley had been on the very real and important “God damn it Will.i.am is a real moron” beat for a while, and the wonderful culmination of it all was this deservedly vicious of immolation of a device that was practically a parody of itself from the start.

This gadget (and Will.i.am, really) is such giant target to punch upwards at that it’s almost impossible to miss, and what I love about Gizmodo at its best isn’t just that it hits, but that it hits hard and directly to the kidney. Look behind the terrific insults and you’ll find a detailed, point-by-point evisceration of the gadget’s design and features, a level deeper than just hammering on its self-evident dumbness. It’s a kind of critique you can only get when a team is devoted to learning its tech fundamentals and also allowed—and encouraged—to practice its technique with the flamethrowers in public and on the regular.

Jamie Condliffe (2011-2016)

You can think of this post as plain, simple, dumb fun. But it’s also a great idea, wonderfully written, and still makes me laugh a couple of years on.

Kat Hannaford (2009-2011; Editor of Gizmodo UK, 2011-2014)

I grew up reading the words of Gizmodo; its humour and writing style influenced me more than anything else, and I’m still so proud I was able to work with people such as Jason Chen, Mark Wilson, Biddlesworth (sozzlepops), and Waggles. My favourite Giz stories were the unique takes we took on the churnalism every other tech site ran (see: Chen’s Palm Pre review, which featured a video of him cutting a block of cheese with it), stories from the edge of what could possibly be deemed a tech story (see: my favourite-ever protégé, who I will no doubt work for one day, Chris Mills’s review of electricity-flavoured vodka), and the stories that were nixed, but had more words written about in our group IM than the blog post would’ve contained, such as the algae lamp).

Peter Ha—(2012-2013)

jeezus. h. christ. i can barely remember what i did this morning. how am i supposed to remember anything from 2012, katie!?

Look, I wrote a ton of stuff during my time at Gizmodo that either bombed or met whatever arbitrary traffic goal we were supposed to hit at the time in order to keep our jobs. Like the time I wrote about the demise of The Daily or the time I just felt like pissing off PlayStation fanboys. But I also broke the news of Under Armour’s bra for your feet. And let’s not forget the woman who had an epic meltdown at an Apple Store in LA that we all couldn’t stop watching.

http://gizmodo.com/5993806/not-sa…

But the most Gizmodo story was definitely our expose on what YouTube considered art versus porn. We unpacked the topic and found some interesting things about YouTube’s process of determining what is and what isn’t art when it comes to nudity. But really, it was fun to see all the music videos we’d flagged with nudity be taken down within minutes of being included in any one of the stories about the subject. In particular was Sigur Rós’ Fjögur píanó that starred Shia LaBeouf that the entire music industry apparently used as a benchmark for what was porn versus art. Sorry Shia. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Michael Hession (2012-2015)

Nothing says Gizmodo to me than a funny-as-fuck irreverent gadget review. I don’t give a shit about the Sony Smart Watch. But it’s hilarious and honest and to the point. You don’t see that much in tech reporting. It’s why I loved Gizmodo as a reader back in 2004, and it’s what made me love working there years later.

Brent Rose—(2011-2015)

Working for Gizmodo literally changed my life and made two of my greatest dreams come true. I’m not exaggerating. If I had to pick one of the stories I wrote I’d probably go with the time we reverse-engineered Four Loko. I had started our Happy Hour column a few months before and one day a giant box of Berocca tablets arrived at Giz HQ for some reason. We were looking at all the insane ingredients in it and Sam Biddle, who sat across from me, said, “I wonder if you could make Four Loko with this.” Bingo! Four Loko had just been pulled from the shelves because it was the scourge of the nation. But lo and behold, add a little malt liquor, vodka, Kool-Aid, and sugar and we had Faux Loko, which tasted just like the real thing and caused people to make all the same bad choices. We served it at an official party and everybody got blackout drunk. One alum was lying on the floor of the bar while another nearly got into a fist-fight at a pizza place on the way home. That epitomized Gizmodo in those days. Even though it was well-established by that point it still felt like the Wild West.

http://gizmodo.com/5875243/fever-…

If I had to pick my favorite Giz story that anybody ever wrote, though, that would be Mat Honan’s fever dream while taking a dump at CES. It was the best piece of writing to come out of CES that year, or any year, and it looked into the dark heart of the shiny-on-the-surface consumer electronics world. It was so honest, so brutal, and so completely crazy. And that’s the thing, I honestly don’t think that any major outlet but Gizmodo would have published a story like that back then. That kind of thing was a testament to the type of freedom afforded its writers and to the site’s mission as a whole. It was a thing of beauty.

Joe Brown (2010-2013)

I’m a little emo that two other people chose the Kohler junket story. That piece really encapsulated what we were trying to do: pull back the curtain of bullshit. Technology is the native language of the Internet, so the “Tech Blog” is a commodity at this point. Even just saying the phrase gives you such a clear mental picture: a reverse-chron river of pithy headlines about shiny objects that you brainlessly peruse while cramming a sandwich in your mouth. There is nothing wrong with this—I do it every day, and sometimes it’s a highlight. But Gizmodo became Skynet-self-aware before anyone else—probably when Blam threw that Halo swag off his balcony—and our mandate changed. We were so fiercely devoted to not pandering to our readers, and, whenever possible, illuminating the machine behind shiny objects.

http://gizmodo.com/5844836/why-wa…

Another great example of this was our iPhone 5 review... written nearly a year before the phone even came out. We had an intern make up a shitty cardboard mock, shot arty video, and wrote up a pretty thorough review. And you know what, it was pretty close! Again, curtain of bullshit. Instead of worrying about pissing off Apple (they were so pissed!), we put our readers first and did something no one else had the balls to try. There was a spirit of pure journalistic intent at Gawker at that time; and even though our no-fear story selection cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in pulled advertising, Nick and Andrew knew that this same fearlessness was what made us so valuable. I hope that whoever buys Gawker/Gizmodo has the courage to stay true to that core principle. Otherwise, we’re just another gadget blog river feeding an ocean of the same words.

John Biggs (2004-2006? I think?)

I liked this.

http://gizmodo.com/183456/pathfor…

Annalee Newitz—(2015; also co-founder of io9)

I feel like the best Gizmodo posts I wrote were for my Ashley Madison series last year. As I read about the data dumps from Ashley Madison, I kept finding obscure references to how most of the women in the company’s social network were actually bots. At that time, most of the stories about the dumps were about people were tormenting each other by “outing” would-be cheaters whose names appeared in the company’s credit card records. I had no interest in those stories. All I could think about were those poor bots, and the women they replaced. I vowed to find them, and expose the hidden bot labor that made Ashley Madison’s con game work. With the help of several analysts, I downloaded the dumps and pored over the leaked membership database (or at least the small piece of it that was dumped), the software code, and internal emails. And I found the bots. That’s when the story got really weird.

Wilson Rothman (2007-2010)

Brian Lam hired me as Features Editor, but mainly to babysit the eager young bloggers based in New York. I came from old-school journalism, so there was bi-directional culture shock, but we (mostly) got over it. My first success, and still a favorite achievement, was proving that Monster HDMI cables did no better than cheapo Monoprice ones—and doing this with Monster’s own gear...inside Monster’s own HQ.

http://gizmodo.com/5350002/taste-…

My greatest accomplishment was launching Taste Test, a celebration of the tech, science and art of what we eat, which in its inaugural week included contributions from and interviews of such notables as Alton Brown, Grant Achatz, Michael Ruhlman, Wylie Dufresne—done with a budget close to $0.00.

My wife’s favorite Gizmodo post is not one that I wrote, but one by Adam Frucci, revealing to dear readers the instructions for a pan flute made from tampons. (Talk about peaking early, Frooch.)

http://gizmodo.com/5391271/giz-ex…

I loved John Mahoney explaining the value of audiophiles (and, by extension, other fanatics), Matt Buchanan explaining why coffee makers represent the best and worst of human engineering, and John Herrman explaining basically everything.

I miss the commenters, whose intelligence outweighed their trolliness. I miss the locker-room chatter in Campfire (pre-Slack, for you youngins). I miss Addy’s early-AM dispatches. I miss Jesus’s blood red Simpsons font photoshopped over anything we damn well pleased. And I miss Brian Lam’s impossible ideas, which would always somehow become possible, then probable, then inevitable.

John Herrman (2008-2011)

The entire Symbian tag. Works if you read it chronologically or in reverse.

http://gizmodo.com/tag/symbian

WebOS tag is also good. Zune tag: obviously good.

Also this still cracks me up

http://gizmodo.com/5458382/8-thin…

Because:

1) It was a clear traffic-grab. It didn’t matter if Adam meant any of this stuff! (Mr. Frucci, reached for comment, said “it took me about 20-30 minutes if i recall correctly.”) And it worked! I don’t know if we still got traffic bonuses then but I hope so. Adam knew how the internet worked then and how it would work in the future.

2) Also it was......................................... mostly right? People got so mad, and then the iPad was a huge hit, and people stayed mad but also became smug. They pointed and said, “wow, that was dumb, as you can see from the sales figures, and Steven P. Jobs.” Anyway look at the list: most of these things are now standard to the iPad, or have been addressed/superseded by equivalent or better features. (Less prescient: the Flash complaint and the “closed App Store”)

The opportunistic complainer was not wrong, maybe by accident. I remember thinking, as an excited new gadget blogger, that we shouldn’t have published this on iPad launch day. In retrospect, it was probably the only one we should have posted.

A wireless blood pressure monitor, the sequel to your favorite travel pillow, and a bunch of Yukon Outfitters bags lead off Tuesday’s best deals.

Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter.

Top Deals

The Cabeau Evolution was your favorite travel pillow (by a long shot), and you can save 20% on the company’s “Cool” model today.

http://gear.kinja.com/your-favorite-…

Like the original Evolution, the Evolution Cool is made of memory foam, and wraps all the way around your neck to provide support if your head nods off to the side while you’re traveling. The key difference is the integrated vent running along the middle of the pillow, which should keep your neck from getting too sweaty.

If you have any long trips on the horizon, you can save 20% on all four colors today with promo code LBYL79GJ. Cabeau’s pillows never go on sale, so if you’ve had one on your wish list, this is a great opportunity.

https://www.amazon.com/Cabeau-Evoluti…

Update: Sold out on Amazon, but Best Buy is currently offering it for the same price.

Whether you’re starting or expanding your collection, Amazon’s running a great deal today on your favorite rechargeable batteries.

http://co-op.kinja.com/the-best-recha…

$30 today gets you an Eneloop Power Pack, complete with eight AAs, two AAAs, two C and D spacers, and a charger. That’s about $7-$10 less than usual, and within a couple bucks of an all-time low. Whenever this deal pops up, it tends to sell out within hours, so don’t miss out.

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-KJ17…

By now, most of you probably have a USB battery pack or two to keep your phones charged, and that’s great! But I’m willing to bet most of them won’t start your car if its battery dies.

The $59 Anker compact car jump starter has your standard pair of USB ports and a 10,000mAh built-in battery, but it also ships with a set of removable jumper cables to jolt your car’s engine to life in a pinch. Once you’re up and running, it’ll even recharge itself via an included 15V car charger, so it never even has to leave your glove box.

Hopefully you don’t need to use this often, but it’s one of those things you’ll be really glad you bought when the time comes. This particular model has been a little cheaper during a couple of Amazon Gold Boxes, but today’s price is still well below its usual $70-$80.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T2GT9L4?…

This 20V Worx string trimmer isn’t the most powerful model out there, but it should get the job done for most normal yards, and it critically includes two batteries (roughly 20 minutes each) and a charger for just $80.

Can’t wait for fall? Neither can Sperry. They’re marking down their fall styles to $75 for both men and women. So if you need a new pair of boat shoes, now the chance to grab a pair for $20 off.

Fitbit’s Alta is one of the first fitness trackers that actually looks nice on your wrist, owing largely to its fashionable interchangeable bands, and we’re finally starting to see some (admittedly small) deals.

http://gizmodo.com/fitbit-alta-re…

Amazon’s currently offering several colors and sizes for $119, or about $11 off its MSRP. No, that’s not a huge deal, but it’s about as good as you’re likely to see these days.

https://www.amazon.com/Fitbit-Fitness…

Lärabars are great for starting your day or fueling up on the go, and Amazon’s taking an extra 25% off when you buy various multipacks as part of a back-to-school promotion. Just pick your favorite flavor, and you should see the extra savings at checkout.

Anker’s new waterproof SoundCore Sport Bluetooth speaker was one of your five favorites, and you can pick one up for just $27 today with code ANKERBS2, or $3 less than usual.

http://co-op.kinja.com/these-are-your…

The SoundCore Sport features 10 hours of battery life, a built-in microphone for handsfree calls, and impressive IPX7 water resistance. There are plenty of IPX4 or IPX5 speakers out there that can handle a splash, but this thing could fall into your bathtub and come out completely unscathed.

http://www.amazon.com/Anker-SoundCor…

Today only, Amazon’s deeply discounting a number of Yukon Outfitters bags, running the gamut from backpacks to dry bags to giant duffles. Like all Gold Box deals though, these prices are only available today, or until sold out.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

We’ve shared lots of deals on 32 and 64GB flash drives that include microUSB plugs for your Android devices before, but here’s one on a massive 128GB model. In case you haven’t seen these yet, they’re perfect for storing videos to watch on your tablet during a long flight, or sharing large amounts of vacation photos from your phone without using a computer.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017DH3NXI/

Fitbit’s Alta is one of the first fitness trackers that actually looks nice on your wrist, owing largely to its fashionable interchangeable bands, and we’re finally starting to see some (admittedly small) deals.

http://gizmodo.com/fitbit-alta-re…

Amazon’s currently offering several colors and sizes for $119, or about $11 off its MSRP. No, that’s not a huge deal, but it’s about as good as you’re likely to see these days.

https://www.amazon.com/Fitbit-Fitness…

If you’re trying to keep an eye on your blood pressure, Amazon will sell you this Omron 10 Series electronic monitor today for $48, an all-time low. This monitor has a 4.3 star review average on over 3,000 reviews, and includes both a wireless monitor that can store your last 100 readings, and Bluetooth connectivity so you can store unlimited readings on your smartphone (including Apple HealthKit).

Not to stress you out, but this is a Gold Box deal, meaning the price is only available today, or until sold out.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KW4PO82/…

There’s a little-known indie game called No Man’s Sky out today on PS4, and if you have Prime, you can snag a copy for $48 (discount shown at checkout).

https://www.amazon.com/No-Mans-Sky-Pl…

In case you weren’t aware, this 20% video game discount is available for Prime members on all preorder and new release games (physical copies only), out to two weeks post-release. So if you’re ready to take off an explore the universe, this is an easy way to save $12.

http://deals.kinja.com/calendar-of-up…

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Prime-O…

http://gear.lifehacker.com/amazon-prime-w…

Only luddites use tape measures anymore. This laser distance measurer takes instant distance readings that are accurate to within 1/16 of an inch, and includes several built-in area calculation functions, in case you’re a little rusty on your middle school math.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS…

You can never have enough Lightning cables, and Inateck is offering you a great chance to stock up today. $5 (with code U6PDB6VE) is a solid price on a standard 3' cable from a reputable manufacturer, but $7 is really enticing for 6'.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01…

Update: You can also get a pair of 6' Anker Powerline Lightning cables today for $20 with promo code ANKERBS2. That’s more expensive than just buying a pair of Inateck 6' cables, but Anker’s are wrapped in kevlar, and won our Kinja Co-Op.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GN2G8Y0?…

USB-C is slowly taking over the charging world, and you can manage the transition with a two-pack of USB-C to USB-A cables for just $9 with code 7ZCMJZ5D, which in the very recent past would have been a good price for just one of these cords.

https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Cable-…

This is a brand new Amazon listing, so there aren’t any reviews yet, but Inateck is a well-known and reliable manufacturer of charging gear, so I don’t think you need to be concerned.

We’ve seen our fair share of sub-$20 Bluetooth speakers, but not many of them can join you in the shower. The Omaker M4 can do just that thanks to its IP54-rated splash resistance, and still deliver up to 12 hours of playtime on a single charge. That’s perfect if you like to sing in the shower, or just need to catch up on your ever-expanding podcast backlog.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

You spend 1/3 of your life in contact with a pillow, so it had better be a good one. This Langria bed pillow is stuffed with chunks of shredded memory foam, and it can be yours for only $24 today with code BACKTOSS. Don’t sleep on this deal.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EA13E9S?…

Hoover’s Sweethome-recommended Air Cordless 2-in-1 vacuum acts as both an upright and a hand vacuum, all in a single, sleek, battery-powered package. $90 is the best price Amazon’s ever listed by about $10, so grab one before they’re all vacuumed up.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SWCU1LG

You never want to be in a situation where you need a solar and hand crank-powered weather radio with a flashlight and USB port for charging your phone, but when you can get one for $18, you probably should buy it just in case.

https://www.amazon.com/Upgraded-ELECL…

http://thevane.gawker.com/you-need-to-bu…

The thing that’s really frustrating me about No Man’s Sky is that I bought an Xbox One, so I can’t play it. If you’re in the same boat, this $280 console deal is about as cheap as PS4s ever get. Just note that you won’t get any bundled games.

Update: You can also get PS4 with Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Uncharted 4, and No Man’s Sky for $400.

This week, make your own 4-piece travel kit at Living Proof for only $33. You could end up saving almost $30 on minis of your favorite Living Proof products. Plus, they’re the perfect size to bring in your carry-on.

Amazon bills this buy two and save $5 promotion as a back to school special, but I’m not going back to school anytime soon, and I would still love to buy some of these snacks. Eligible products include everything from Lays chips to Starbucks Refreshers to oatmeal, so head over to Amazon and pick out your two favorites.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X65J4AI?…

We’ve seen lots of deals on flash drives that include microUSB connectors for Android devices, but this one is designed just for iPhone and iPad owners.

Since iOS devices don’t let you use microSD cards for extra storage, SanDisk’s iXpand could come in handy for offloading your phone’s vacation photos if you’re running low on space, or storing extra movies and TV shows for long flights. $40 also happens is the best price Amazon’s ever listed on this model, so don’t miss out.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CIEBU22/…

The Halo 5: Guardians Limited Edition must have been a real flop, because it’s selling for just $28 on Amazon today, an all-time low by $10, and miles and miles from its original $100.

That gets you the game, limited edition packaging, dossiers, the Halo: The Fall of Reach animated series, requisition packs, a Metal Earth Guardian model, and more. This was certainly not the best Halo game, but it’s still worth playing if you’ve enjoyed the rest of the series.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS…

http://kotaku.com/halo-5-guardia…

You know the little charging brick that came with your phone? Throw it out, and spend $7 on this replacement from Aukey (with code AUKEY12W). It’s basically the same size as Apple’s standard iPhone charger, but it includes two ports, folding prongs, and 2.4A of current (instead of 1A) to charge your devices faster.

https://www.amazon.com/AUKEY-Dual-Tra…

https://www.amazon.com/Charger-Foldab…

The arrival of the Xbox One S brought with it a revamped controller, and Amazon’s running the first discount we’ve seen.

Note: Only the white model on this Amazon listing is the new controller. The other color options are the old model.

The Xbox One S gamepad improves on the original with a textured grip, double the range, and most importantly, Bluetooth, meaning you can connect it to your PC without an adapter.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GW3H3U8/…

You don’t need to buy a new car, or even a new stereo, to enjoy Bluetooth calling and audio streaming on the road. You just need an AUX jack and this $15 dongle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OOZJBPW/…

If you’re in the market for a solid mid-range gaming headset on a budget, the Logitech G430 is down to $40 today, a match for the best price we’ve seen since Black Friday.

A few days ago, we saw an 8TB WD external hard drive for $220, which was a great deal. But if you skipped out, this Seagate version is a whopping $30 cheaper.

Now that Harry Potter is culturally relevant again, it may be a good time to pick up the 8-film Blu-ray set for $60, or about $10 less than usual.

https://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-C…

Mpow’s matte iPhone 6/6s case is one of the thinnest you can buy, and today, it’s also one of the cheapest. The code should work on all three colors.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0157PAZF2?…

Strip lights can add dramatic accents to your home, or just light up the area under your kitchen cabinets, and this 16' TaoTronics set is a great deal for $24.

The strip packs in 1.5 LEDs per inch, which far exceeds most competing models, and you can use the included remote to dim them or choose from over 4,000 different colors. They’re certainly not the cheapest strip lights we’ve seen, but outside of expensive Philips Hue strips, they might be the most versatile.

https://www.amazon.com/n/dp/B006K0JYD…

If you own a boat, motorcyle, RV, or even car that doesn’t get a ton of use during certain months of the year, this $15 trickle charger can keep its battery charged up and healthy, so you don’t have any nasty surprises waiting for you the next time you try to start it up. Today’s deal isn’t a huge discount, but it is the best price Amazon’s ever listed.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K72C1T4/…

The Logitech G502 was your choice for best gaming mouse (though you don’t need to be a gamer to appreciate its benefits), and the upgraded Proteus Spectrum model (which includes fully adjustable backlighting) is on sale for an all-time low $60 today, matching a deal from a few weeks ago.

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

http://lifehacker.com/improve-your-v…

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

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B019OB663A/…

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.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0177MEIHE/…

Mpow’s super-simple motion-sensing solar outdoor lights can illuminate your yard or porch with no wiring or maintenance, and you can get one for $11, or two for $21 today on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XJJV1FM?…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015CCL1V2?…

Tech

Storage

• Samsung 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Duo | $35 | Amazon

Power

• CyberPower 10-Outlet PFC Sinewave UPS System | $137 | B&H
• [Apple MFi Certified] Inateck 100CM/3.3 Feet Lightning Cable | $5 | Amazon | Use code U6PDB6VE
• [Apple MFi Certified] Inateck 200CM/6.6 Feet Lightning Cable | $7 | Amazon
• Inateck USB C Cable (2 Pack, 3.3ft/ 1m) Type C USB 3.1 Solid Conversion Data Cable USB-C to USB-A Cable | $8 | Amazon | Use code 7ZCMJZ5D

Audio

• Samson Go Mic USB Microphone for Mac and PC Computers | $30 | Adorama
• Generic Bluetooth Wireless Headset | $7 | eBay
• Omaker M4 Water Resistant Bluetooth 4.0 Speaker | $18 | Amazon | Use code PMTN2ETB

Home Theater

• Sharp 50-Inch LED Smart HDTV Roku TV and 500GB Xbox One Console | $500 | Best Buy
• Samsung 50 Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart TV w/ $175 Gift Card | $600 | Dell
• Samsung UN55KU6300 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV (2016 Model) | $798 | Amazon
• Samsung 65 Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart TV w/ $400 Gift Card | $1300 | Dell

Computers & Accessories

• Dell XPS 8900 Desktop, Core i7, 16GB, 1TB, GeForce GTX 745 | $799 | Dell | Use code DELLXPS799
• Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 700 12" Full HD+ Inten Core M5, 4GB, 128GB SSD, Touchscreen Tablet with Keyboard | $500 | Adorama
• Asus VivoBook X540SA 15.6" Intel, 4GB, 500GB Laptop | $200 | eBay
• Brother HL-3170CDW Color Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex Printing | $170 | Newegg

PC Parts

• Refurb Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 2TB 64MB cache Internal Hard Drive | $30 | eBay

Mobile Devices

• LG Google Nexus 5X 16GB 12.3 MP Unlocked GSM 4G LTE HexaCore Android Phone | $225 | eBay
• 4 Pack F-color Clear Transparent Waterproof Smartphone Bags | $13 | Amazon | Use code HTRZSUNV

Photography

• Summer Sale on Refurbished DSLRs and Lenses | Canon

Home

• LUCID 10 Inch Gel Memory Foam Mattress - Dual-Layered - CertiPUR-US Certified - 25-Year Warranty - Twin XL | $144 | Amazon
• LUCID 10 Inch Gel Memory Foam Mattress - Dual-Layered - CertiPUR-US Certified - 25-Year Warranty - Full | $220 | Amazon
• LUCID 10 Inch Gel Memory Foam Mattress - Dual-Layered - CertiPUR-US Certified - 25-Year Warranty - King | $261 | Amazon
• LUCID 10 Inch Plush Memory Foam Mattress - Dual-Layered - CertiPUR-US Certified - 25-Year Warranty - Queen | $228 | Amazon
• Homasy Portable Mini Dehumidifier | $22 | Amazon | Use code O2TDCQ5I
• American Tourister iLite Xtreme Spinner 21 | $69 | Buydig | Use Code TRAVELFUN30
• American Tourister iLite Xtreme Spinner 25 | $79 | Buydig | Use Code TRAVELFUN30
• American Tourister iLite Xtreme Spinner 29 | $89 | Buydig | Use Code TRAVELFUN30
• ONME Magnetic Screen Door Curtain | $15 | Amazon | Use code KHUHA5ST
• Holmes - 20" Box Fan | $13 | eBay
• Rubbermaid Ergo Reach Pulse Flat Mop Kit | $14 | Amazon
• LANGRIA Queen Size Shredded Memory Foam Pillow with Removable Bamboo Cover | $24 | Amazon | Use code BACKTOSS
• Pictek Digital Indoor Thermometer and Hygrometer with Alarms | $10 | Amazon | Use code ZKINJAZA
• Carlisle 36141503 Duo-Pan Dustpan & Lobby Broom Combo | $15 | Amazon
• Uni-ball Signo 207 Retractable Gel Pens, Ultra-Micro Point, Black Ink, 4-Pack | $4 | Amazon
• Everyday Home 210 Piece Sewing Kit Deluxe Caddy | $8 | Staples
• Get up to 30% Off Select Bath Vanities and Sink Basin Tops | Home Depot
• TaoTronics LED Desk Lamp (5 Color Modes x 6 Dimable Levels, Memory / Favorite Function, 60-Minute Timer, Night Mode, with 5V/2A Output USB Port) | $53 | Amazon | Use code KWB2YCCN
• TaoTronics LED Desk Lamp, (Four Color Temperatures) | $40 | Amazon | Use code XAYJSYJQ

Kitchen

• Waring Pro - Convection Toaster/Pizza Oven | $50 | eBay
• Bella 10-Piece Hard Anodized Ceramic Cookware | $70 | Amazon
• MIU COLOR® 22 oz Glass Water Bottle - BPA and PVC and Lead Free with Nylon Sleeve | $19 | Amazon | Use Code MC700C29
• Kitchen Grips 2-Piece Long Handle Pan Holder, Black | $6 | Amazon

Tools & Auto

• Ultrafire 5000LM Zoomable CREE XM-L T6 LED Flashlight | $4 | eBay
• AUKEY Dash Cam, 1080P Rotatable Car DVR with Wifi, Mini Covert Versatile Video Camera with G-Sensor WDR | $48 | Amazon
• Craftsman Universal Oil Filter Wrench | $9 | Sears
• Mpow Air Vent Universal Car Mount With Included iPhone Case | $7 | Amazon | Use code T5PZN3MX
• Mpow CD Slot Mount Universal Cell Phone Holder | $9 | Amazon | Use code 8GEK24MQ

Lifestyle

Apparel

• Men’s Akribos XXIV AK813 Swiss Chronograph Date Stainless Steel Mesh Watch | $40 | eBay
• Patagonia Nano-Air Jacket - Men’s | $120 | REI
• FILA Men’s Xtent 4 Running Shoe | $25 | eBay
• ASICS Women’s GEL-Flashpoint 2 Volleyball Shoes | $35 | eBay
• New Balance 980 - M980BS2 - Men’s Running Shoes | $40 | Joe’s New Balance

Beauty & Grooming

• SHANY All-in-One Makeup Palette with Tools and Eyes, Lips and Face Beauty Book | $14 | Amazon

Camping & Outdoors

• Select Yukon Outfitters Backpacks and Bags are on Sale Today | Amazon
• Z-Shade 12' x 14' Prestige Instant Shelter | $98 | Sears

Fitness

• Omron 10 Series Wireless Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor with Bluetooth | $48 | Amazon

Media

Movies & TV

• Preorder Aliens 30th Anniversary Edition | $10 | Amazon
• Walking Dead Season 6 Limited w/ T-Shirt | $30 | Best Buy
• Miyazaki’s Spirited Away | $22 | Amazon
• American Graffiti (Special Edition) | $10 | Amazon
• Apollo 13 - 20th Anniversary Edition | $8 | Amazon
• Revenge of the Nerds | $5 | Best Buy
• Porky’s | $5 | Best Buy
• Teen Wolf | $5 | Best Buy
• The Sandlot | $5 | Best Buy
• Super Troopers | $5 | Best Buy
• Dude, Where’s My Car? | $5 | Best Buy
• The Flash: Season 1 | $15 | Amazon

Books

• The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality Audiobook | $4 | Amazon

Gaming

• Legend of Zelda Leather Watch | $30 | Thinkgeek

Peripherals

• XL Precision Gaming Surface | $6 | Monoprice
• Precision Gaming Surface | $5 | Monoprice
• TOMOKO Water-Resistant 104-Key Wired Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, Multi-color Backlight & Anti-ghosting Keys, Blue Switch, Keyclick, Fit for Gamers, Typists, Cherry MX Black | $55 | amazon | Use code CPV3V99K
• Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum RGB Tunable Gaming Mouse, FPS Mouse | $60 | Amazon
• Logitech G430 Over-the-Ear Gaming Headset | $40 | eBay

PC

• Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm | $8 | Gamestop
• Steam Weeklong Deals Include Mount Your Friends, TrunOn, Dashy Square, More | Steam
• Deus Ex Human Revolution Director’s Cut | $5 | Humble
• Tomb Raider | $5 | Humble

PlayStation 4

• Sony Playstation 4 Console - PS4 500GB | $280 | eBay
• No Mans Sky Limited Edition | $80 | Best Buy | In Stock
• Street Fighter V Standard Edition | $24 | Amazon
• Gravity Rush Remastered | $18 | Amazon
• Dragon Age Inquisition GOTY | $35 | Amazon
• Ghostbusters | $30 | Best Buy
• DriveClub | $12 | Amazon
• Assassin’s Creed Chronicles | $14 | Amazon

Xbox One

• LEGO Jurassic World Standard Edition | $16 | Amazon
• Halo 5: Guardians - Limited Edition | $28 | Amazon
• Ghostbusters | $30 | Best Buy
• Assassin’s Creed Chronicles | $13 | Amazon

3DS

• Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes | $25 | Amazon
• Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon | $32 | Amazon

Toys

• Estes Ready-to-Fly Rocket Bundle (Helicat + 3 Rockets) | $35 | Woot

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.

As reporters and editors, we at Gizmodo like to investigate stuff and ask questions. But there comes a time when you’re beat and have to reach out for help.

That’s why we’re coming to you, our readers, with a question we haven’t been able to answer despite weeks of probing.

So:

Did you have sex at Gizmodo’s Star Trek book party?

Because someone had sex at Gizmodo’s Star Trek book party.

Was it you?

Did a discussion on what we can learn about the future economy from Star Trek make you all tingly?

Did you turn the mostly sanitary Gawker Media offices into a splooge-caked sex dungeon where even men risk pregnancy just by sitting on the furniture?

Ugh!

The night of June 13, 2016 started innocently enough. A medium-sized crowd had gathered at Gawker Media HQ to celebrate the launch of Manu Saadia’s book Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek, which was being released on Felix Salmon’s imprint, Pipertext. It was a lovely evening. There were snacks, wine, domestic and imported beers. Saadia spoke eloquently on his tome, which reviewers call “a fanciful romp through the economic theories that underpin Final Frontier life in the mid-22nd through late-24th centuries.”

Romp indeed. This shit is catnip.

It wasn’t until almost all of the guests had left that Gawker Media’s Victor Jeffreys II realized some shenanigans were afoot. As the last security guard left, she told Victor she suspected there was still someone in the second floor’s female toilets. Victor walked over, heard some rustling going on inside and knocked. The rustling stopped.

Two minutes went by. Then five. Then ten. Nothing. Then more rustling. The office was empty and the party was over. Time to go.

But Victor wasn’t about to go barging in. Luckily, Jezebel’s Julianne Escobedo-Shepherd was still hard at work upstairs and Victor tapped her to give the errant guest a nudge. “I dip my head in and there’s obviously someone in the first stall,” Julianne told me. “I hear a little shuffling. I’m like ‘Hey ma’am sorry but we have to get everyone out of here’. She’s like ‘Ok, just a minute.’”

More shuffling. Five minutes go by. Victor and Julianne retire around the corner to give the guest some privacy and they hear the the bathroom door close. The long dark-haired woman is followed by a taller man with short-cropped hair. They’re grabby, re-arranging themselves, “Canoodling,” as Julianne describes it. Giggling and apologetic, they stop to take a selfie in Gawker’s lobby, then continued walking down the stairs, only to stop for a mid-flight face-suck. Not that Julianne and Victor looked, they assure me. They could hear everything.

And that’s all we know.

So:

Was it you?

A bath installation worker from Pennsylvania may soon be a millionaire thanks to Walmart’s $3.3 billion purchase of Jet.com. He previously invested $18,000 of his own money into winning a contest held by Jet, and he received 100,000 shares of the company when he won. Kind of a weird thing to do, but good for him.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably frustrated by the fact that, somewhere in your house or apartment, a smoke alarm with a dying battery is beeping, and beeping, and beeping—usually once every 60 seconds—but you cannot figure out where the alarm is located. The following solution to this problem will sound counter-intuitive, but it’s worked for me and others (Taylor Berman), so I’d like to share it with you:

1. Stop trying to locate the alarm with your ears. Since you’re reading this article, this method has likely failed you already. So, for now, ignore the beeping and wherever you think it might be coming from.
   
2. Pretend the alarm is an old wallet, or some other long-lost object that doesn’t make noise. That is, proceed as if the alarm could be anywhere. Rifle through everything. Your apartment might become a bit messy as you empty your drawers and cabinets. But you will find the alarm.
   

If you’re curious how this scintillating piece of advice came about, read on...

In December of 2013, about a year after I moved to New York, I found an apartment through a friend of a friend in the southern section of Bushwick, Brooklyn. The place was perfectly decent. It had four tenants (including me), a washer and dryer in the basement, a large adult cat that liked to climb on my chest while purring and drooling, a recently-renovated kitchen, and a five-minute walk to the J train.

It was initially hard to appreciate my new accommodations, however, because on the day I moved in, I noticed the apartment had a rather unusual feature: A loud and persistent beeping noise, almost like a chirp, emanating from the apartment’s main bathroom. It sounded exactly like the noise a smoke alarm makes when it needs a fresh battery. The strange thing was: There did not appear to be a smoke alarm anywhere in or near the bathroom.

From what I could tell, it—whatever it was—wasn’t attached to the ceiling or wall, or buried in any of the drawers belonging to the little rolling cart that carried our toiletries, or in the cabinet beneath the sink. But it was so loud. The smoke alarm had to be somewhere in there, right?

The situation’s weirdness quickly deepened. Each of my three roommates were aware of the noise, they told me, but had been stumped as to where it was coming from. When I asked how long it had been beeping, one of them responded: “Six months. Maybe longer.” They’d simply grown accustomed to the sound.

I prepared myself to admit defeat. The more I thought about it, though, the crazier the beeping seemed to be. If I couldn’t figure out where the beeping was coming from, I reasoned, then perhaps my sensory faculties were less reliable than I had thought. The fact that my roommates hadn’t been able to solve this particular mystery only heightened this strange sense of dread, the dread of experiencing an otherwise familiar phenomenon without being able to identify its cause.

The sound quickly became the only thing I could focus on when I was showering, or standing in the kitchen, or sitting in the adjacent living room. And then, one night, I started over. Treating this as a fresh but not unprecedented phenomenon, I looked at the ceiling. But there was no detector on the ceiling. No tiny red light. So I waited a minute to hear the beep again.

An hour or so later, I had still not found the source of the beeping. The walls? No. The hallway outside the bathroom? No. Inside the walls? No. (Perhaps I wasn’t looking for a smoke detector? I later found online references to beeping air filters, beeping water heaters, and beeping cell phone chargers.)

“We’ve looked everywhere,” one of my roommates told me. “Nobody can find it. I’m not even sure if it’s a smoke detector.”

I asked a tenant living in the apartment across the hall, whose bathroom shared a wall with ours, if he could hear the beeping from his own unit. He could not. He too tried searching our apartment for the beeping but, like me, became stumped after realizing that it seemed to emanate from the unoccupied space right above our bathtub, but beneath the ceiling—as if it were invisible, floating in the air, but still making that fucking beeping sound.

I hesitantly started Googling for answers. I say hesitantly because part of my frustration was that my otherwise trusty methods of investigation had failed me. The solution, like the problem, appeared simple: Just find the sound. Narrow down the possibilities. Follow your ears. Easy.

Searching for variants of “beeping,” “mysterious beeping,” “beeping behind walls,” and so forth, led me to stories like that of W. Carter Byrnes, who in 2005 became a minor media sensation after he complained, on an online forum for TiVo owners, about a frequent beeping in his Washington, D.C. townhouse, whose source he tried for years to locate without success. His story spurred dozens of strangers to show up at his property to see if they could locate whatever was making the noise. (It turned out to be an alarm clock buried in a drawer, floors away from where Byrnes thought the beeping was coming from.)

I did not intend to wait years. So I started looking for answers.

The online corpus of advice for finding hidden beeping objects is surprisingly wide, covering all sorts of situations. But it’s not very deep. Most advice boils down to: “listen harder” (and maybe also turn off the electricity for a few minutes to make sure the beeping is battery-based). If you were truly desperate, a Metafilter poster wrote in 2005,

I would [...] draw a map of my house to scale, then buy or borrow a decently sensitive digital sound recorder (some MP3 players have ‘em), and during the quietest part of the night, record the beep for a few minutes with the recorder in various parts of the house. Note on the map where the recorder was. Then, upload the recordings, and use a program to analyze the volume levels. This will give a whole lot of close numbers, like 67, 67, 68, 70, 65 and so on. Write these numbers on the map of the house, on the location where the recorder was when they were found. Head towards the higher numbers. Might take a few late nights to do it, but it should inevitably lead to the villainous noise. Unless the noise is moving around, of course.

I seriously contemplated doing this. But then I began to read about the technology, known as piezoelectricity, behind the specific kind of sound that smoke alarms make. The piezoelectric element embedded in most smoke alarms works by sending an electric charge through a piece of ceramic, which rapidly changes shape, producing sound waves—i.e., the loud beep you hear when a smoke alarm is activated. Or, in my case, when it requires a new battery.

A key feature of the piezoelectric element in smoke alarms is that its sound travels rather far, with little degradation to volume or frequency. This is a good thing: You want the beeps from an activated smoke alarm to seem as if they’re coming from every room in a building. But the very same feature can frustrate attempts to locate the alarm if it’s a) unclear where the physical device is located, and b) if the device is emitting not a constant death wail but a short, solitary beep every 60 seconds. What all of this means is: The beep of a nearly-dead smoke alarm is not always a reliable indicator of the alarm’s location.

This is particularly true for a setting like the bathroom of my apartment in Bushwick. All sound waves attenuate, or diminish, the further they travel from their source. But the degree of attentuation heavily depends on environmental factors. A December 2004 study about smoke alarm effectiveness that was commissioned by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission noted that, “the least attenuated sound level would be in a small room ... [and] a soft room would have a higher attenuation factor than a hard room of the same size.” A soft room contains lots of soft surfaces, like upholstery, whereas a hard room contains lots of hard surfaces, like ceramic. And my former bathroom was both small and composed almost entirely of hard surfaces such as tile and glass. In other words, a sound that was already designed to travel as far as possible would, in a setting like my old bathroom, seem as it were coming from everywhere, or nowhere, at the same time.

So I closed my laptop and headed for the bathroom. I realized I had been far too cautious in trying to find the source of the beeping; when you’re the new member of any social setting, you don’t want attract to complain too much about, or work too hard to correct, something that everyone perceives but annoys only you. But at that moment, solving the mystery of the beeping had become more important to me than whatever social transgression I would commit in turning our common bathroom upside down, which I proceeded to do, at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday night.

It was in the cabinet beneath the sink, toward the very back, obscured by a rather large canvas bag of sand. The bag’s color (dark gray) and shape (or lack thereof) had blended very well into the back of cabinet, whose interior and exterior were painted black, while its weight had made it seem like nothing else was there.

After bringing the smoke alarm into the living room, I removed its battery, and the beeping ceased. Then I texted one of my roommates:

We never figured out where the bag of sand had come from, or why someone had placed a smoke alarm beneath it. But if I were to guess, my guess would be this: Someone who used to live in the same apartment had placed it there because he or she had been trying to cook an elaborate dish in the kitchen, which was right next to the bathroom, but kept setting off the fire alarm with the cooking fumes. Placing the alarm in a different room, within a cabinet, under a heavy bag of sand, would have almost certainly prevented the smoke alarm from detecting those fumes.

The relief I felt at finding the alarm was tremendous. It quickly diminished, though, when I began talking about writing this article during a pitch meeting the next week, where most of my coworkers regarded the idea of this piece with undisguised derision, then proceeded to make fun of me for it, off and on, for the next three years.

For example:

Anyway: That’s how I found a beeping smoke alarm when I didn’t know where it was. With my simple method, hopefully you can, too.

“About ten years ago I had a crush on a woman at Fox News. She was a low level staffer. I was in college at the time. So I was going out on what I thought were dates. Chris, I thought these were dates. These were not dates. She was actually reporting back to Fox News about me. She was reporting back about what I thought of her and about CNN and MSNBC and Fox. Because I was a reporter on the beat, they were actually spying on me that way.” — CNN’s Brian Stelter, who is currently married to a former Fox affiliate reporter...

So you’re a journalist, you met a girl and she wants to date you. Here are some signs this woman is actually a Fox News spy:

1. She’s actually listening to what you’re saying

2. She says Shep Smith is for sure straight

3. She’s heard of Hamilton Nolan

4. She doesn’t immediately get up and leave when you say the words “Sean Hannity”

5. She asks about John Cook’s kids

6. She makes an unironic reference to the Benghazi movie

7. Peter Sterne follows her on Twitter

8. She says she was never sexually harassed by Roger Ailes

9. You are a reporter and someone expresses interest in dating you

Confession: I like SoulCycle. More than “like,” even. I love it.

I don’t believe in God, but I believe in SoulCycle. (Yikes, haha!) I wake up early most weekday mornings to go to SoulCycle. On weekends, I also wake up early to go to SoulCycle. My husband comes, too. (We don’t SoulCycle next to each other but usually across from each other; I find it less distracting to be within eyesight of him but not directly next to him.) I know this makes me sound like the worst.

I also know that a lot of people don’t like SoulCycle, including some people who work at Gawker Media, the company whose current acquisition proceedings has led us here, to Senior Week, where we get to blog about whatever stupid thing we want, and which will render this particular post of mine in the top few pages of my Google results for years. I know that people don’t like SoulCycle, and I get it: It’s a hilariously expensive, carefully and ruthlessly curated part of the “boutique fitness” trend, one that’s often paired with things like green juice and leggings and fucking annoying Instagram posts with captions that namedrop annoying shit, like chia seeds and mind-body wellness. I understand all of this hate and mockery. But fuck it. I’m tired of hiding.

I used to be “cooler,” I guess. I used to run obsessively, I boxed for awhile, and I did other workouts less likely to be described as “a cult” or “a pseudo-yogi schtick” or, as one of its own co-founders described it, “a mini-production.” Now I pretty much only do SoulCycle. (Okay, I also do yoga.) Yeah, I went full fucking yuppie—I once took an Uber to SoulCycle during a blizzard, come at me—and I regret nothing. Not even the amount of money I spend to ride a stationary bicycle in the dark.

SoulCycle isn’t really “cool” in the same way that “running a marathon” is cool, nor is it “cool” among the cynical New Yorkers I spend most of my time with. And yes, as a deeply cynical person, I’m admittedly shy about sharing that I spend an absurd amount of money to engage in a feel-good exercise ritual. But here’s the deal: It’s fun, it makes me happy, and it’s better for my mental health than most of the other shit I could spend my money on. (Don’t bother asking how much money I spend on SoulCycle, because it’s none of your business! I’m not rich, but I rarely socialize and I buy my clothes in bulk on Amazon and have no other hobbies, okay? Leave me alone.)

This post was supposed to be a listicle about why I like SoulCycle so, shit, here are some things you should know:

1. The best SoulCycle studios in New York are those in Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan. They have chiller vibes than the studios uptown. There is also a good SoulCycle in Miami Beach that I tried this year. I will say that I once found a cockroach in the locker room at the Union Square SoulCycle, just a gentle warning, no judgement. :)

2. My favorite SoulCycle teachers—highly recommend!!—are Eve, Danny, Ross, Sidney, Kym, and Karyn (she’s a new one for me and, boy! is she hard). Pointer: If you go to the SoulCycle website, you can read little bios about each teacher and see what kind of music they play. I like working out to shitty dance music or 90's rock, but maybe you’re different! That’s cool, do you!

3. I own one piece of SoulCycle apparel, and it’s a pair of socks that my husband purchased (for $14!) when he forgot to bring his own. A good tip is that you don’t actually need to wear the branded apparel to take the classes, even though a lot of people do. Unnecessary IMO and needlessly expensive.

4. This is a really hard workout, but you actually have to try in order for it to feel hard. If you don’t try, then congratulations, you just wasted $34 worse than I did, because I came and at least tried. But if you try, you’ll end up with a nice endorphin kick, a feeling of accomplishment, and the ability to walk up several flights of stairs without getting winded.

5. If you’re self-conscious or have some deeply rooted exercise-mental-health shit, this is a good workout for you. Yes, it’s addictive, so be careful. But it’s also a workout you do in the dark and—at least at the studios I go to—your fellow classmates will be a big hodgepodge of different ages, body types, and fitness levels. People are chill! People accept you! The vibe is good! I used to run a lot of miles, most days, and it became a grim psychological place—this is the opposite of that for me. It’s fun.

6. Speaking of mental health shit, I’m a control freak! You too? The nice thing about SoulCycle is the vigilant environmental control, unlike the uncertainty of the great outdoors and existence in general. At SoulCycle, there is air conditioning, someone is picking the music for you, there is gum and there are hair elastics and there is plentiful shampoo, and there is no risk of being run over or rained on. It is 45 minutes of control in an otherwise uncontrollable life.

7. The people at SoulCycle—staff and fellow attendees—are very friendly. I run a blog at Gawker Media and work on the Internet. Do you know how many friendly people I talk to every day in the course of my work? Let’s just say the friendliest part of my day ends around 7:45 AM.

8. $34 is cheaper than therapy. $34 is cheaper than therapy. $34 is cheaper than therapy. $34 is cheaper than therapy. $34 is cheaper than therapy. $34 is cheaper than therapy.

9. SoulCycle will help you drink less, if this is something you think you might like to do. I promise. This is because you have to cancel your class by 5:30 PM the night before, so if you don’t do that, and then you drink too much, you just wasted $34 sleeping through your SoulCycle class plus the cost of the alcohol (and probably the bar snacks am I right pals?). Here is a good guide to drinking that is compatible with a morning SoulCycle routine and with getting older, in general.

10. If this feels like an ad, fuck it. Here’s the truth: I really enthusiastically enjoy SoulCycle, I strongly encourage anyone to give it a try, and I would love to work in SoulCycle PR if Gawker Media’s acquisition doesn’t go the way I’d like. Peace.

This is Gawker Media’s last week as an independent media operation, and while that shouldn’t affect you much one way or the other as a reader, we’re still going to take advantage of a pretext to run some especially fun and stupid posts. If you have any ideas for such posts, hit us at tips@deadspin.com.

After Dallas police officers used a bomb-carrying robot last month to kill the sniper Micah X. Johnson, it was widely reported that the incident marked the first time an American law enforcement agency had used that technique. But it appears that the bombing was not only unprecedented, but utterly unplanned-for: According to the Dallas Police Department’s open records team, the department has no written rules, guidelines, or protocols for how or when to use bomb-carrying robots against suspects.

On July 7, Johnson opened fire on a group of Dallas police officers who were patrolling a protest, killing five officers and injuring nine others. When police apprehended Johnson, they used a Remotec ANDROS Mark V-A1 robot that was rigged with about a pound of C4 plastic explosives to kill him, keeping officers away from danger. The Mark V-A1 is generally used to dispose of bombs, not to deploy them.

Gawker filed a request with the department under the Texas Public Information Act seeking any departmental doctrine for using a bomb-carrying robot against a suspect, including but not limited to the use of the Remotec model. Last week, the department responded via email that “A search was made within the Dallas Police Department by the respective Divisions(s) for this information and no records were found.” (Emphasis theirs.)

Debra Webb, a public information officer with the DPD, told Gawker that based on the verbiage of the response, it is safe to assume that no records outlining departmental doctrine for the use of bomb-carrying robots against suspects exist. The apparent lack of any written plans would seem to confirm that officers on the ground came up with the killer robot strategy on the fly, as several experts suggested to the Intercept several days after the shootings.

After being notified that the Dallas Police Department had no records in response to the request, Gawker also received correspondence from the Dallas city attorney’s office, indicating that it intends to seek a ruling from the Texas Attorney General on whether to release the requested information. A representative of the DPD’s open records team said that this correspondence likely referred to the second portion of Gawker’s request, which asked for doctrine governing the use of the Remotec model in general—not in bomb deployment specifically. Those records, according to the DPD, do not exist.

The department’s apparent lack of established protocol for using bomb-carrying robots is striking, especially considering the detail with which it regulates officer use of nonlethal weapons. As of 2015, for instance, the DPD’s use-of-force policy contained a three-page section devoted to the use of pepper spray and pepper balls, and another four pages devoted to electronic control weapons, which are better known as tasers.

Ezekiel Edwards, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s criminal law reform project, called the department’s lack of doctrine on bomb-carrying robots “highly concerning and highly problematic.” “We want our police departments that have obtained remote-controlled robots that can be used to explode human beings and kill them to have policies about their use,” he said.

Edwards drew an analogy between law enforcement use of lethal robots and the use of tasers. Tasers, he said, were originally developed as a less-lethal alternative to handguns, to be used only when an officer is facing a mortal threat. But because of their ease of use, they are now deployed whenever “someone is being disobedient, or someone is giving you attitude, or they’re taking too long, or there’s some kind of threat, but not one that puts the officer’s life in danger,” he said. Similarly, though they are intended for extreme circumstances only, remote-controlled robots might become overused if they are not closely regulated, because they make it easier and safer to deploy lethal force compared to a more direct confrontation with a suspect.

Edwards added that the ACLU does not oppose to the use of robots to kill suspects in general, as long as the use of lethal force in a given scenario is otherwise lawful. “Once a decision has been made to use lethal force, assuming that decision is made lawfully and it comports with the Fourth Amendment, it wouldn’t make sense to hold that such force can only be applied in person by an officer and not by a remotely controlled robot, particularly if doing so would put the officer’s life at greater risk,” he said. “They really should be confined to extraordinary situations, and certainly Dallas appears to be an extraordinary circumstance.”

The Dallas Police Department did not comment on the rationale behind its decision to deploy a robot against Johnson without having protocols for the use of robots in place. “We’re not commenting on any of the specifics or anything like that, since everything’s still under investigation,” Webb said. In a statement after the incident, the department said that the robot was used “as a last resort, to deliver an explosion device to save the lives of officers and citizens.”

Charles J. Key, a retired Baltimore police lieutenant who was a founding member of that department’s first SWAT team, told Gawker that he was not surprised that the DPD had no doctrine for deploying a bomb-carrying robot, and that it was likely that the technician who was operating the robot had not been trained specifically to deploy a bomb. “I’m sure that this was all a last minute, ‘Can we do this this way?’ procedure,” he said. “I’m not sure on the mechanics of how it was done—whether they placed the charge and removed the robot before activating it or not. Those little devils are expensive.”

However, Key said, the technician was almost certainly trained to disassemble a bomb with a robot, and activating one would be a fairly simple reversal of that procedure. He believes that deploying a bomb was the wisest choice for the situation, even without established doctrine. “Police were specifically targeted by an individual who had obvious training, obvious fire discipline, and a weapon that was capable, and he knew how to use it. That is the worst situation that you can imagine,” he said. “You send in a SWAT team. They’re highly capable, but you’re still dealing with an adversary in a protected situation. He’s barricaded himself in a place that he can defend, with the probability that anyone who tries to engage him is probably going to lose some team members. As a police officer, particularly in that kind of tactical situation, you try to reach a solution that resolves the threat without further loss of life. Given the choices, I think it was the only choice.”

It is not clear whether other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies have developed doctrine for using bomb-carrying robots, before or since the incident in Dallas. In response to a similar request from Gawker, a representative of the Chicago Police Department said that it had no existing doctrine on bomb-carrying robots. The Los Angeles Police Department provided documents regarding the use of deadly force in general, and the use of robots to diffuse bombs, but not the use of robots to deploy bombs. Requests sent to the New York Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation for doctrine regarding bomb-carrying robots have not yet been answered.

Key believes that other law enforcement agencies will likely look to the Dallas incident as a blueprint for their own future policies. “There’s no protocol, but I would imagine that if there is a protocol, it would say, ‘Under these circumstances, see Dallas,’” he said. “That’s the kind of protocol they would adopt.”

Here’s a question on every New Yorker’s mind: Where is it going to happen when it happens in New York City?

I’ve thought about this a lot. When I ask my friends, they say it’s probably going to happen in Times Square, because there are a lot of people there, or Grand Central Terminal, because it’s so open and beautiful and also symbolic. Others say it’ll probably happen not in one place but several, scattered across the city; or that it’ll happen underground, in the subway system, where it’ll be hard to see what’s going on.

Personally, I think it’s going to happen in or around Union Square, because if you look at where it’s happened in other cities, it’s often in places that resemble that area. I wouldn’t put money on it, though. Which isn’t to say that I don’t think it won’t happen eventually. Because it almost certainly will.

Where do you think it’s going to happen in New York City?

“This white, 53-year-old mother hadn’t counted on God sending an African American with dreads named Glenn.” A Christian blog post headlined “When God Sends Your White Daughter a Black Husband” is just as good as you would think.

Close watchers of the Olympic games will notice that there are swimming medals awarded for four different “strokes.” That’s three strokes too many and we’ll tell you why.

What is the purpose of swimming as a sport? To go fast. It is a race. The point is to swim faster than everyone else. Now then.

Is the “breaststroke” the fastest way to swim? No.

Is the “backstroke” the fastest way to swim? No.

Is the “butterfly” the fastest way to swim? No.

So why do we have competitions in them? Defeats the point of swimming!

In fact, the last way of swimming is called “freestyle,” which is not a specific stroke, but which means swim any way you like. Invariably, in freestyle, all the swimmers swim the same way—the fast way, because it is a race, and the fastest way to swim is the best way to win the race.

What we propose is: They should only swim that way.

“But the different strokes require different skills,” a swimming apologist might say. We’ll grant that that’s true. In fact, many useless and counterproductive activities take “skill” to master.

Imagine if, in addition to footraces in which people run as fast they can, the Olympics also featured a crabwalking race. Some of the world’s top athletes would spend years mastering the crabwalk, and they would be the best crabwalkers in the world. The best normal runners would stand no chance against them in a crabwalking race. None of that would change the fact that a crabwalking race would be a very silly thing to have in the Olympics, when running is the fastest way to use your legs to race someone.

In fact, the Olympics already have walking races, and people universally think they’re stupid. We contend that a walking race in the Olympics is no stupider than making people do the slow ways of swimming.

Thank you.

If you’ve ever been to Chicago, chances are you’ve been dragged to a “local joint” to get that “famous Chicago pizza.” Here is the thing though: Chicago pizza actually sucks and is bad.

I’ve lived in Lincoln Park for 10 months now, and as a local, I’ve found that most people are disingenuous when it comes to ordering pizza.

Of course, they won’t hesitate to tell tourists all the places they “need” to try:

Giordanos is so good.

Lou Malnati’s is for true Chicagoans.

Pequod’s is the best pizza in town.

And yet, when it comes to ordering pizza themselves, they get the same thing every time: A half-cheese, half pepperoni medium pie from the Papa John’s on Clark and Drummond just north of Wrightwood Ave.

Chicagoans want to seem interesting and informed when talking about pizza. They want to prove to friends back home that eating deep dish pizza somehow makes them cultured. But as soon as they’re alone, they dial (773) 281-7272 and order a Papa John’s pizza made with only the freshest ingredients.

And that’s because Papa John’s is the best pizza in Chicago.

Deep dish pizza makers are cowards who hide their ingredients under tomato sauce – a pizza paywall. The brave and noble Papa John does not hide his toppings from you, the consumer. He leaves them out in the open for only God to judge. Only the famous cat, Garfield, with his love for the thick layered pasta dish called “lasagna,” could truly get behind such a pizza cat-astrophe as deep dish.

So come to Chicago, take a photo at the bean and ride your bike up and down Lake Shore Dr. But when it comes to pizza, stick with what you know. Stick to Papa John’s.

“Curry shoff” is a guy who emailed tips earlier today asking if he could write about why Papa John’s is the best pizza in Chicago. We said yes.

On January 16, 2013, Deadspin published an exposé of Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o’s fake dead girlfriend. The next morning, reality TV personality Donald Trump tweeted his congratulations. Fourteen minutes later, Deadspin tweeted back “Go fuck yourself.” This is the story of that tweet, as told by those who lived it.

Barry Petchesky, Deadspin staffer: He forgot Jack Dickey! Also he was an asshole in general.

Jack Dickey, former Deadspin staffer: I admired Trump’s knowledge of the inner workings in that he recognized that Scocca was our “best guy.”

Tom Scocca, former Deadspin staffer: One of the oddities at the time was that Trump had name-checked me at all, when I wasn’t one of the bylines on the piece. But now I realize that I had gone on TV, because no one else was willing or available, and Trump gets all of his information from TV.

Dickey: I will say something Trumpian: I was doing so much press that morning, the ratings were so huge, that I didn’t even notice he declined to credit me. I am glad people stuck up for me—some of the initial replies were along the lines of “You forgot Jack Dickey,” etc.

Dom Cosentino, former Deadspin staffer: Five minutes after the Deadspin tweet was sent, Ley did a post about Trump’s initial tweet, just to remind Trump he had forgotten about Dickey. That’s the kind of great hustle that always distinguished Deadspin from other sports and culture blogs.

Tom Ley, Deadspin staffer: All I remember is someone dropping it in Campfire, and everyone being like, “We should say something really mean back.”

Scocca: I’ve made so many good and bad decisions that other people get credited or blamed for. But this is the one thing that people think I did that I had nothing to do with.

Petchesky: I suggested “Go fuck yourself.” It seemed to the point and accurately summed up our reaction. Scocca wanted something slightly different. Something about clowns?

Scocca: I don’t recall having any input at all!

Dickey: Scocca wanted us to write “Get fucked, you clown.”

Scocca: That sounds like me!

Petchesky: I went a little rogue and hopped on the official Deadspin Twitter account and tweeted out “Go fuck yourself.” I thought shorter was better. I’m glad we didn’t take time to workshop it, our response was and should have been from the gut.

Tommy Craggs, former Deadspin staffer: All in all I think I would’ve preferred “Get fucked.”

Cosentino: I was heading into the office and had just gotten off the train when it happened. I glanced at my phone, chuckled a bit, and stopped to buy a coffee. But I’ll never forget how I stood there on Prince Street and chuckled for a bit.

Tim Burke, Deadspin staffer: I was pretty much inundated with media inquiries minutes after we published the Te’o story, and I spent almost the whole afternoon and evening doing radio or TV interviews. I never saw the Trump tweet or our reply to it, and only found out about them when Tampa Bay Times writer Greg Auman mentioned it while we talked somewhere around midnight. I went another two years, at least, before learning who really sent the reply in the first place.

Craggs: I’m embarrassed to recall that I momentarily thought “Dammit, Barry,” mostly because I was super-conscious of not coming off like we were spiking the football. I went from “Dammit, Barry” to “Fuck yeah, Barry” in maybe two seconds.

Ley: Trump had just started doing his thing on Twitter, and I think he was still in that “LOL this guy is a lovable dummy on the internet!” phase.

Craggs: We were just given a rare opportunity to say something to his face.

Burke: I try not to think about that tweet very much. The idea of Donald Trump thinking about me or even being aware I exist is very unsettling to me.

Craggs: I am exceedingly proud of that tweet, and proud of Barry for having tweeted that tweet in our name.

Petchesky: The Te’o story was the grand slam and this was the bat flip. So of course Trump got huffy.

Craggs: There were nasty voicemails left on the general tips line, I believe. From Trump’s lawyer, I think?

Petchesky: If Trump actually had any money maybe he would have helped Peter Thiel out with the lawsuits.

Scocca: Our response to Trump then stands as the correct and valid response to Trump, which is basically, Get this guy outta here. He worked so hard to establish that he’s a dickhead and a buffoon, it’s insulting for him to presume he’s welcome. That’s the mystery of this political campaign, that he feels like he can stand up there and tell people, “I am your voice,” like he’s doing them some honor. You? You’re a brass-plated dipshit. Who the hell wants you on their side?

Cosentino: It remains the most cogent piece of political analysis Deadspin ever published.

Scocca: Oh my God, is Trump our fault? Wait, no, he was always a dick.

This is Gawker Media’s last week as an independent media operation, and while that shouldn’t affect you much one way or the other as a reader, we’re still going to take advantage of a pretext to run some especially stupid posts. If you have any ideas for such posts, hit us at tips@deadspin.com.

Last week, Donald Trump started naming and shaming journalistic outlets he deemed guilty of something called “media bias.” Thus far, the outlets so judged include MSNBC; the Washington Post; the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists; and Politico.

Trump issued his latest pronouncement with a statement critiquing Politico.com’s choice of lead stories on Monday, when they opted for “anti-Trump stories” instead of “unbiased reporting” on his Detroit speech. The statement is illustrated with an annotated screencap of Politico’s homepage, Trump-related headlines circled in digital highlighter, a practice that recapitulates his long-standing practice habit of printing out copies of articles he doesn’t like, scrawling notes across the page, and mailing them back to the author. The charges are also stamped with the words “MEDIA BIAS OFFENDER.”

All of the MEDIA BIAS OFFENDER announcements feign the same exhausted knowingness: “This website usually tilts to the left, but today’s online edition of the Post doesn’t even try to hide the fact that they are essentially a propaganda arm for Hillary Clinton and her campaign.” Meanwhile, Politico, “operates with a click-bait model that places a premium on sensational stories and pushing an anti-conservative viewpoint.”

“It’s no wonder that the online publication has continued its downward spiral from a legitimate political outlet into gossip and tabloid journalism,” Trump’s statement read. But what’s wrong with gossip and tabloid journalism? And what happened to “Why didn’t the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer Prize for Edwards”?

Trump’s ostensible commitment to the purported journalistic values of “objectivity” or “neutrality” is, obviously, part and parcel of his ongoing appeal to right-wing conservatism—consolidating his base of support around his cult of personality, and delegitimizing all truths other than those he provides. This makes it all the more uncomfortable when he identifies something that really is gross, as when journalists at the NABJ/NAHJ conference cheered for Hillary Clinton. (Granted: It was a private event, not a press conference; it’s still gross.)

But even if we take as a given that Trump does not actually believe in anything, and that any values he claims to hold are simply a matter of political convenience—in the manner of, say, a fascist running for elected office—the fact is that his campaign and candidacy has triggered a whole lot of journalistic handwringing in the institutions that sincerely believe in the ideals Trump cynically endorses. Like, for example, the New York Times, where David Carr’s replacement recently ruminated on how “Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism.” He wrote:

If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?

Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career. If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.

“We are a nation protected by norms, not just by laws,” Vox.com’s Ezra Klein, who claims to explain the news, solemnly wrote after the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. In this election, Klein explains—not argues, but explains—Americans are faced with an unfamiliar choice: “The Democratic Party is a normal political party that has nominated a normal presidential candidate, and the Republican Party has become an abnormal political party that has nominated an abnormal presidential candidate.”

The Columbia Journalism Review called it “a Murrow moment,” meaning that journalists should feel free—nay, compelled! obligated!—to say that Trump is being fear-mongering racist, when he is being a fear-mongering racist. CNN’s Brian Stelter (why always him?) took up the cause.

A Murrow moment, indeed. Of course, journalists needn’t even go that far for Trump to brand them as media bias offenders: All one has to do is report unflattering facts about him—and there are ever so many—and he lashes out. That is because Trump is a narcissist, and, by his own admission, this is all a game. “Hope [Hicks, his press secretary] said, ‘Don’t call back because she is only going to write bad things; that is all she knows how to do.’ Then you will write bad, and I will tweet badly about the Times: that they are inaccurate and don’t know what they are doing,” he told Susanne Craig, the New York Times reporter who broke the story about his private jet being unregistered. “And that is what we do. We play the game.”

To dub behavior like this abnormal—or, to be more explicitly sociological about it, deviant—is to immediately obscure any analysis or interpretation of how a man who played a real estate developer on reality television came to be the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States. If your theoretical framework does not account for reality, it is not actually a theory at all, but fantasy—and then we are talking about what we wish were true, rather than what is true.

There is no “normal,” there is only the world as it is. To redefine something unexpected or unanticipated as “abnormal” is to privilege one’s ideas about how the world ought to be over how the world actually is. The wunderwonks of 2012 might not have seen Trump coming, but that doesn’t mean that nobody else did, and it certainly didn’t stop voters from supporting him anyway.

Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. To treat this as meaning anything less than what it does is to erase the individuals who voted for him and the structural conditions that made him an appealing candidate to begin with. Whether that erasure is motivated by ignorance, disingenuity, or laziness makes no difference—the consequences are the same: Whatever comes after Donald Trump loses in November will stretch the norms of journalistic objectivity once more, and this argument over “media bias” will have to be litigated all over again.

Assuming, of course, that there are even any journalists left by 2020.

Today at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, Donald Trump joked about second amendment fanatics assassinating President Hillary Clinton (or, possibly, a justice she appoints) to prevent her from putting liberal justices on the Supreme Court.

He said:

Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment—by the way, and if she gets to pick—[booing]—if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I dunno.

Trump is far from the first person to joke about someone assassinating Hillary Clinton, but it is considered unusual for a major party nominee for the presidency to “go there,” as they say.

Surely this will only further boost his incredibly successful campaign into a stratosphere of popularity not yet reached by any candidate in this country’s history.

UPDATE (4 p.m.) A very quick statement from the Trump campaign:

[Via Bradd Jaffy]