What is up, generations of bemused and confused observers have asked, with Donald Trump's hair? The television clown and serially bankrupt business mogul sports a peculiar, swirling spun-sugar-colored confection on top of his head. It is clearly an elaborate work of artifice, designed to confound the eye.

But what is the truth that lies hidden beneath this tonsorial oddity? Today, as Trump presided over a publicity event in which desperate people scrabbled for crumpled cash, Gawker photo editor Victor Jeffreys II found himself taking pictures and video from a vantage point shockingly close to the famous hairdo and the person below it. As we reviewed his footage, we were struck by a sudden flash of pink—the pink of a totally hairless scalp.

From one angle after another, the harsh lighting cut through the halo of meticulously crafted bullshit. Donald Trump is bald, bald, bald. Donald Trump's crown is thoroughly devoid of hair. Donald Trump is as hairless as a naked mole rat.

Photo and video by Victor Jeffreys II; video editing by Kate Bennert.

A housekeeper in Tempe, Arizona, was cleaning the room of 18-year-old high school senior Joshua Prater when she stumbled upon an improvised explosive device.

The unnamed woman was unaware that the device posed an immediate threat to her life, so she drove it to a nearby fire station herself.

There, firefighters contacted the Tempe Police bomb squad, which sent over investigators to examine the device.

"They had it X-rayed, they saw it was a valid IED," Tempe Police Sgt. Mike Pooley said. "It was something that wasn't big, but could cause serious injuries and the death of someone."

Pooley said the device was "ready to go" and just needed a trigger.

Prater was subsequently arrested on charges of misconduct involving weapons and possessing a prohibited weapon.

He reportedly told police that he constructed the device eight years ago and was unaware that it still contained explosive powder.

However, upon searching Prater's room, police uncovered additional bomb-making materials.

The purpose of the device remains unclear.

Pooley commended the cleaning lady on her quick action, saying that although she risked her life to deliver the device to the authorities, she ultimately "did the right thing."

[mug shot via AZFamily]

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Former Enron CEO and current jailbird Jeffrey Skilling should be out of jail in just four years, skipping nearly a decade of his prison sentence for corporate fraud and graft.

As the world's richest people are prone to do, Skilling is getting out of jail early with a combination of cash payments and legal maneuvers.

In exchange for early release, Skilling is paying Enron's victims some $40 million in shut-up money and has generously agreed to stop suing everyone involved with his conviction and sentence in 2006.

Skilling's promised payments would equal 0.1% of the $40 billion Enron stole under Skilling's leadership. He was originally sentenced to 24 years behind bars, but his total sentence would be half of that if his lawyers get approval on this latest scheme.

Skilling's appeal went to the Supreme Court in 2010, and the justices agreed with his attorneys that the original conviction was "based in part on an invalid legal theory known as the 'theft of honest services.'”

The same judge who sentenced Skilling will rule at the next hearing, on June 21 in Houston.

[Photo via Getty Images.]

Fed up with being given yet another unimaginative packet of worksheets to mindlessly fill out in lieu of an actual lesson, one high school student from Duncanville, Texas, tells his teacher as much, and is kicked out for it.

But on his way out of Mrs. Phung's world history class, the teen, identified only as Jeff, decides to go all-in with a rousing rant for the ages.

"You want kids to come into your class? You want them to get excited for this? You gotta come in here and make them excited," Jeff tells his apathetic teacher. "You want a kid to change and start doing better? You gotta touch his freakin’ heart."

He continues:

You gotta take this job serious, this is the future of this nation. And when you come in here, like you did last time, and make a statement, about 'oh, this is my paycheck' — indeed it is. But this is my country's future, and my education.

Though there was no standing ovation at the end of Jeff's speech, one YouTuber who claims to be his classmate says the teen was "giving out free high fives after school."

[H/T: Reddit, Viral Viral Videos, video via YouTube]

Ho-lee balls. Looks like some shit is about to hit the motherfucking fan in the ritzy Brentwood district of Los Angeles where some motherfuckers—who shall remain nameless but we all know who they are because their tremendous gate, a thousand feet (9 ft) tall, looms over our lives, blocking out the sun and giving our children rickets—have decided that the gate height regulations that have sustained peace in Brentwood area for millennia just don’t apply to them. Some people, with their rockstar husbands and their children named after common grocery store food items, have determined that the six feet of privacy offered by standard gates is unsuitable to their needs. FUCK IT, we’re talking about Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth Paltrow is running for mayor of Bitchville as the nominee on the Gate Is Too Damn High ticket.

Gwyneth Paltrow's gate is too damn high.

TMZ confirms that one of Paltrow’s neighbors has reported the actress’ home to the L.A. City Department of Building and Safety, stating the excessive amount (surface area?) of its gate is an eyesore.

What will the L.A. City Department of Building and Safety inspectors find when they arrive on the scene? A navy blue shrine to privacy, extending up into heaven like the profane Tower of Babel. The gate-height equivalent of a crackhouse right in the middle of Gwyneth Paltrow's beautiful neighborhood. A regulation six-foot gate rendered monstrous by the addition of three feet.

Luckily, a day of reckoning is upon us – a day when all those who violate accepted norms of gate height decency will burn. Or possibly have to re-size their gates.

If the gate is found to be in violation, Paltrow and husband Chris Martin (and children Apple and Moses — this affects everyone) will have 45 days to fix it. Otherwise, they risk paying more than 90,000 pennies ($900) in fines.

[Image via Getty]

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

Texas Congressman Steve Stockman, a man who fantasizes about armed fetuses shooting their way out of the womb and believes that oil and gas are the best things to come from the earth, is hosting a fun giveaway. But what for? Tickets to a Spurs game or a maybe a concert? No, of course not. Through a contest on his website, the representative of Texas' 36^th district will reward some lucky winner with a free, brand new AR-15 assault rifle.

I'm giving away a FREE Bushmaster AR-15! Sign up in just seconds at stockman2014.com/ar15-entry/ #tcot #teaparty #gop #tlot #rkba #nra #texasgop

— Rep. Steve Stockman (@ReElectStockman) May 8, 2013

In case you don't recall, the gun Adam Lanza used to murder 20 children at Sandy Hook was modeled on the AR-15. It's worth noting here that gun rights groups were third largest industry donors to Stockman's campaign from 2011 to 2012.

[Image via AP]

Eminent physicist Stephen Hawking has pulled out of June's Israeli Presidential Conference in support of an academic boycott of the nation. A spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry said, "Never has a scientist of this stature boycotted Israel."

A police report obtained by WKYC details the horrifying ordeal of the Cleveland kidnapping victims, which included beatings, brutal forced abortions, starvation, and death threats.

According to the report, one of the victims, Michelle Knight, was forced to deliver Amanda Berry's child in a plastic baby pool as Ariel Castro, the alleged kidnapper, looked on, issuing death threats.

"Michelle stated that Ariel told her that if the baby died, that he'd kill her," the police report states.

The report states that Castro impregnated Knight five times, and each time she was forced to undergo an absolutely barbaric abortion. Castro reportedly “starved [Knight] for at least two weeks, then he repeatedly punched her in the stomach until she miscarried."

The report also explains how the women's presence inside the home was kept secret for so long. All three women were initially kept chained in the basement, but were eventually freed “from the chains, to live upstairs on the second floor of Castro's Seymour Avenue home." The three women were let outside only to go in the backyard, and every time "they had to wear wigs and sunglasses and keep their heads down."

Also included in the report are details about how each women was abducted.

Knight said she was in the area of West 106th Street and Lorain Avenue when Castro offered her a ride home in August 2002, the report said.

Instead, Castro took her to his house where he chained her up in the basement, the report said.

Public records show that the mother of two of Castro's children lived just up the street in the 2200 block of West 106th Street at the time.

Meanwhile, Berry was walking home in April, 2003 from Burger King on West 110th Street and Lorain Avenue when Castro offered her a ride home, the report said.

Castro told her that his son also worked at Burger King. DeJesus told police that Castro initially approached her with Castro's daughter, the report said. The two girls went to school together.

Castro later returned without his daughter and told DeJesus that he would give her a ride to his house so they could hang out, the report said.

Instead, like the other two girls, Castro drove DeJesus to his house.

The dramatic rescue of the women, much of which has already been reported, is explained in greater detail. Berry noticed that Castro failed to lock the “big inside door" after he went to McDonald's on Monday, but she told police she was scared to open the exterior storm door because “she thought Ariel (Castro) was testing her." She eventually managed to get the attention of neighbor Charles Ramsey and called the police.

When police arrived at the house, they first checked the basement and then the home's second floor.

"As we neared the top of the steps, Officer Espada hollered out, 'Cleveland Police,' at which time ... Knight ran and threw herself into (Officer) Espada's arms," the officer writing the report noted. "We then asked if there was anyone else upstairs with her, when (DeJesus) came out of the bedroom. "

Espada then put Knight down and DeJesus jumped into the officer's arms.

Knight remains in the hospital, but both Berry and DeJesus went home to their families on Wednesday. Ariel Castro was charged Wednesday with four counts of kidnaping and three counts of rape.

[Image via AP]

The day after it was announced that the interim head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service had been passed over for the full time position because of her connections to the agency's controversial interrogation program, her successor was reportedly outed on Twitter by former Washington Post assistant editor John Dinges and then confirmed by veteran intellegence reporter Jeff Stein. According to Dinges, the new head of the program will be Francis “Frank” Archibald, a former station chief in Latin America.

New head of #CIA clandestine service was head of #LatinAmerica Division since ca 2011. Francis "Frank" Archibald, 57.

— John Dinges (@jdinges) May 8, 2013

Archibald — who is still undercover — is, according to the Washington Post's description of the person who took the job, a "57-year-old longtime officer who served tours in Pakistan and Africa." As Jeff Stein, a former reporter at the Washington Post and Salon.com, reports, Archibald was likely chosen because there's “not a whiff of scandal in his background. The Associated Press notes he reportedly ran the covert operation that removed Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic from power, an operation which is “regarded inside the CIA as a blueprint for running a successful peaceful covert action.”

According to the Washington Post and the Associated Press, the woman – who is also undercover but is identified by Stein as “Gina” — who held the position in an interim basis for the past two months before Archibald's appointment played an “extensive role” in an interrogation program that relied on torture.

From the Washington Post:

She had run a secret prison in Thailand where two detainees were subjected to waterboarding and other harsh techniques. She later helped order the destruction of videotapes of those interrogation sessions.

…

After running the “black site” in Thailand, the female officer returned to headquarters for a senior job at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Former colleagues said she lobbied for several years to have the videotapes taken in Thailand destroyed.

From the AP:

The officer briefly ran a secret CIA prison where accused terrorists Abu Zubayada and Abd al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials. She was also a senior manager in the Counterterrorism Center helping run operations in the war on terror.

She also served as chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez and helped carry out his order that the CIA destroy its waterboarding videos. That order prompted a lengthy Justice Department investigation that ended without charges.

Stein also points out that CIA Director John Brennan and two members of his selection advisory panel, Stephen Kappes and former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, who were in charge of the decision to pass over “Gina,” were themselves involved with similarly controversial interrogation and rendition programs.

Brennan was the deputy executive director at the CIA when the controversial programs began. Kappes, according to a CIA source Stein spoke with in 2009, "helped tailor the agency's paper trail regarding the death of a detainee at a secret CIA interrogation facility in Afghanistan, known internally as the Salt Pit." And McLaughlin, who was deputy director of the CIA during much of the time waterboarding took place, told TIME in 2011 that the program "wasn't set out to torture people. It was never conceived of as a torture program."

The CIA denies that “Gina's” former role with the interrogation program played a part in the decision.

“The assertion she was not chosen because of her affiliation with the CT mission is absolutely not true,” said CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood, using an abbreviation for counterterrorism.

Youngblood described the new head of the spy service as a “talented and effective intelligence officer” who “is known for his collaborative and inclusive leadership style.” She noted that women will fill two other senior CIA jobs.

According to the Associated Press, the identities of both agents are "widely known in intelligence, diplomatic and journalistic circles."

[And Magazine/Image of Getty]

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

The sun has risen, and it's time for "Hey, Science," our boldly scientific weekly feature in which we have your most provocative scientific questions answered by real live scientists (or related experts). No topic is off limits in our ongoing quest for truth and time-wasting. This week, doctors explain: Why do cardio exercise when you could just do cocaine?

Today's question comes from perky Gawker reader Emma, who writes: "Why is the use of cocaine awful for cardiovascular health while running/doing some form of high-intensity exercise for 35 minutes a day ideal for heart health? Both activities raise one's heart rate to about the same BPM for similar amounts of time. Both activities temporarily raise one's blood pressure. I know there has to be a simple answer out there, but I'm not finding it and whenever I ask friends they are wont to say phrases like 'Wow. Just wow.' while looking at me as if I'm wearing a drug rug and telling them about how nobody's ever overdosed on weeeeed. Yes, I'm kind of ashamed for even wondering something so dumb, but if Gawker can't be my personal judgment free zone then what can?"

Right you are Emma! Forget your so-called friends and come party with us. But first, the experts speak:

John Cooke, professor of cardiovascular medicine, Stanford:

Although they both increase the heart rate and blood pressure, exercise is beneficial in many ways that cocaine is not. The increase in blood pressure with isotonic exercise (as with running) is modest by comparison to the increase that can occur with cocaine. Furthermore the increase in heart rate and pumping action of the heart is highly regulated by the nervous system and is in tune with the metabolic demands of the body during exercise (not so with cocaine)
Whereas exercise tends to cause relaxation of the blood vessels to your muscles and heart, cocaine can cause the heart vessels to spasm. Coronary spasm reduces blood flow to the heart at the same time that the cocaine is making your heart do more work which can result in heart damage or death. Cocaine can also trigger abnormal heart beats.
Finally, whereas exercise can have favorable effects on your blood cholesterol and blood sugar, cocaine does not

I have seen young people that are regular cocaine users with coronary arteries resembling those of a sick old man, and there are famous examples of athletic young people ending up in the morgue after a noseful of cocaine.
Any questions? [Ed.: we're asking for a friend, we swear!]

John Hwa, associate professor of cardiology, Yale:

Interesting question. Cocaine can intensely stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, which will elevate heart rate, but it can also stimulate release of some hormones that are bad for the heart, and inhibit some hormones that protect the heart, leading to adverse cardiovascular consequences. While exercise increases blood flow to heart due to blood vessel dilation, cocaine causes blood vessels to constrict. This effect can be severe, especially in diseased blood vessels (i.e. atherosclerosis), leading to decreased oxygen supply to the heart. Unlike exercise, cocaine can also promote blood clotting. Cocaine can decrease the heart muscle’s ability to contract and can cause abnormal heart rhythms. So, in marked contrast to exercise, cocaine can cause problems with both the blood vessels supplying the heart, as well as the heart muscle itself.

Kenneth Carpenter, Ph.D, clinical director, Substance Treatment and Research Service, Columbia:

In the short run (the activity event) - Cardiac output during exercise is to meet the demand for energy and oxygen as requested by the wide range of muscles used to keep the body in motion. Thus, the body is in a position to receive the products of heightened delivery system. While cocaine use can increase cardiac activity the demand for this is not the same as in the context of the working out, thus the heightened delivery is not needed. This can pose numerous challenges to the rest of the body and heart... Thus they key is to think of cardiovascular functioning health in the broader context of the bodies response to the event - in exercise it is a coordinated response - while cocaine may stimulate a cardiac response - it is not the same when we think of it in a broader context. In addition, there are some breaking mechanisms during workouts (fatigue, be winded, etc) that allow an individual to control the stress being applied; with cocaine use this more voluntary control of the event is removed thus taxing the cardiovascular system differently. I would also suggest that the neurochemical basis for the stimulation most likely differs which could have implications for the overall cardiac functioning.

If we think of exercise over the long run, cardio exercise offers more protective factors and (mood regulation, increased endurance, lower blood pressure, improved cognitive functioning) than extended cocaine use (dopamine depletion, cardiac problems such arrthymia later in life, a potential for impaired cognitive functioning) which also is associated with lifestyle factors that can negatively impact health.

Dimitri Cassimatis, assistant professor of cardiology, Emory, and my brother-in-law:

In brief, stimulant drugs and especially cocaine not only increase the work of the heart, but can have a direct toxic effect as well. Additionally they can sometimes cause the arteries of the heart to spasm, decreasing blood flow right when the heart is working harder, causing a heart attack. Finally, they are more likely than exercise to cause arrhythmias, which sometimes can be fatal.

White lines, don't do it.

Previously

The outrageously factual archives of "Hey, Science" can be found here.

[Send your own bizarre "Hey, Science" questions to Hamilton@Gawker.com. Image by Jim Cooke. Photo via Getty.]

This 38-year-old gymnastics instructor was profiled on last night's season finale of My Crazy Obsession for her Troll doll affinity. She goes by the name of Michelle Kerrins, but she is such a Shelly. Her obsession is amusing enough, but it's really her delivery that makes her story so riveting (her "Troll 2" license plate doesn't hurt either). Forget the cartoon adaptations, this woman speaks like a Troll doll should speak, her helium-filled peanut shell of a voice enthusing things like, "They're in all my crevices!" and "I like the odd things in life." Oh, me too, Shelly. Me too.

Make sure you watch Shelly's attempts at getting her husband to turn his "man cave" into her Troll hole. It involves her proposing to wear her Troll bikini while doing backflips and/or wearing a Troll mask and nothing else. Typical Troll tactics.

As a shared thoroughfare, the city sidewalk works best when its users maintain an acute awareness of their surroundings. This should involve recognition of fellow flaneurs, nearby traffic, and the general pace of pedestrian traffic. There is an iffy yielding system. While it seems like organized chaos, there are rules to the side of the road.

Possibly the biggest threat to sidewalk flow, besides SUV-sized double-wide strollers, is the phone. The phone which causes people to abruptly stop to text. Or unpredictably slow down whilst reading an email. Or rapidly spin-around as their Google Map compass makes them aware they were heading the wrong direction, as we've all lost our hippocampi.

The other long-time enemy of sidewalk traffic is the umbrella. Rather than just paying attention to foot-traffic, there is a large and drippy halo fighting for air space above everyone's heads. Also, sometimes the ribs are spiky and metallic eye-level weapons. Unlike the phone, the umbrella is an arguable necessity in times of precipitation, unless its golf umbrella sized, in which case take it to a field.

Ignoring the possible consequences of their invention, a company has combined both of these hazards. Brolly has taken a drunk-level idea and turned it into a real thing. It's an umbrella that allows you to text and deter downpours as you idle on down the sidewalk in a protected bubble of insularity.

Here's what Brolly promises:

"The finger hole area is lined with a squeezable material that makes squeezing your umbrella rib something you will have a blast doing. And most importantly, by having your fingers free, you can text or email in the rain, which is something no other umbrella can claim."

Also, the Brolly promotional video has a hilarious sequence demonstrating the "difficulty" of life without this new, revolutionary product. The Brolly umbrella comes in blue, black, green, and obnoxious.

[Image via Eugen Shevchenko/Shutterstock]

Email the author of this article at maggie@gawker.com.

You may have heard that the highest-paid employee in each state is usually the football coach at the largest state school. This is actually a gross mischaracterization: Sometimes it is the basketball coach.

Based on data drawn from media reports and state salary databases, the ranks of the highest-paid active public employees include 27 football coaches, 13 basketball coaches, one hockey coach, and 10 dorks who aren't even in charge of a team.

So are my hard-earned tax dollars paying these coaches?

Probably not. The bulk of this coaching money—especially at the big football schools—is paid out of the revenue that the teams generate.

So what's the problem then? These guys make tons of money for their schools; shouldn't they be paid accordingly?

There are at least three problems.

1. Coaches don't generate revenue on their own; you could make the exact same case for the student-athletes who actually play the game and score the points and fracture their legs.
2. It can be tough to attribute this revenue directly to the performance of the head coach. In 2011-2012, Mack Brown was paid $5 million to lead a mediocre 8-5 Texas team to the Holiday Bowl. The team still generated $103.8 million in revenue, the most in college football. You don't have to pay someone $5 million to make college football profitable in Texas.
3. This revenue rarely makes its way back to the general funds of these universities. Looking at data from 2011-2012, athletic departments at 99 major schools lost an average of $5 million once you take out revenue generated from "student fees" and "university subsidies." If you take out "contributions and donations"—some of which might have gone to the universities had they not been lavished on the athletic departments—this drops to an average loss of $17 million, with just one school (Army) in the black. All this football/basketball revenue is sucked up by coach and AD salaries, by administrative and facility costs, and by the athletic department's non-revenue generating sports; it's not like it's going to microscopes and Bunsen burners.

But wait. I looked up my coach's pay in a state salary database and he wasn't on top. What gives?

Most of these databases include only the coaches' base salaries, which are drawn directly from the state fund. This is how you could be led to believe that Virginia's offensive coordinator earns more than its head coach.

Far exceeding these base salaries is the "additional compensation" that almost all of these coaches receive, which is tied to media appearances, apparel contracts, and fundraising. While this compensation does not come directly from the state fund it is guaranteed in the coaches' contracts; if revenue falls short, the school—and thus the state—is on the hook to cover the difference. Plus, even it doesn't come directly from taxpayers, this compensation is still problematic for all the reasons listed above.

Beyond salary and additional compensation, coaches earn money from bonus incentives tied primarily to the team's performance. This analysis ignored those bonuses and focused on guaranteed money, as it's impossible to guess at whether a coach will hit his benchmarks. And we're not even touching the ridiculous amounts of money coaches can get if they're fired before their contract ends.

Regarding the asterisks on the map:

* Penn State is technically "state-related" and not truly public, and as a result the school does not receive as much state funding as a typical public school (leading to higher tuition) and does not have to disclose as much information about its employees. You can read the details here.

** It's difficult to track down salary information for employees at Ole Miss and Mississippi State, but the highest non-coach salaries we could find top out at around $500,000. While we can't prove that nobody at these schools earns more than Dan Mullen's $2.65 million per year, we think it's very unlikely.

Rupert Murdoch is thisclose to finally cleaving his entertainment properties from the dying, scandal-ridden newspaper side of the business. Today he announced a new logo: A pair of chopsticks on a plate? Two lasers streaking across a black sky? A broken saucer?

In a memo to his soon-to-be-former News Corp. employees, Murdoch said the logo "serves as a powerful symbol of the inspiration and high bar set by our company. Like our name, the logo reflects the rich creative heritage of Twentieth Century Fox and signals the promise of the 21st century and our restless drive toward the future." There's also a pointless animation. Excelsior!

Evil corporatist archconservative billionaires the Koch brothers are considering making a bid to buy several big newspapers from the Tribune Co., including the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune. Unions and liberal politicians are justifiably alarmed by this prospect. They're trying to pressure the shareholders not to sell to the Kochs. Here's another, perhaps more productive idea: let the Kochs buy that crap.

The Koch brothers, much like fellow archconservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch, are old. Old, and rich, and conservative. This means a few things:

1. They feel (wrongly, not that it matters) that the media has an incorrigible liberal bias against their interests.

2. They have enough money to buy media outlets.

3. They don't understand new media.

Therefore, rich old conservatives, like Rupert Murdoch or Philip Anschutz or the Koch brothers love the idea of buying newspapers. They don't care that the era of newspaper dominance of the media is now permanently over. They don't care that newspapers are, in general, a horrible business (there is a reason Tribune wants to sell, not hold). They're old! And too rich for anyone to tell them about all the newfangled news on the computers these days. To rich old guys, newspapers are still the premiere media outlets in America. Why, in the mind of the Koch brothers, the LA Times is probably still "the most powerful media outlet on the entire West Coast," rather than "the dessicated corpse of what was once the most powerful media outlet on the West Coast and is now a site that once in a while beats Nikki Finke."

It's perfectly reasonable for rational non-archconservatives to not want the Koch brothers to buy their metropolitan newspapers and turn them into local versions of National Review. But the reality is that rational non-ideological businesspeople will never be able to outbid these rich old conservatives, because A) rational people realize that buying these newspapers is a horrible business idea, and B) the ability to use a newspaper's pages to spout your own wingnut ideology is really the only good reason to get into the newspaper business right now, anyhow. Rich old conservatives will happily pay more than these papers are worth (witness Murdoch's huge bid for the WSJ) in order to enjoy the imaginary bully pulpit that comes with them. It's just a fact.

We're simply here to point out the bright side: the reason these rich old conservatives don't have more competition for these papers is that these papers are far less influential than they used to be. Hell, let the rich old fuckers have the papers. The only people who reliably read most metro newspapers these days are other old people. Funneling the Murdochs and Kochs of the world into the newspaper industry will, in the long run, afford them far less influence than they would get if they were, say, equally rich and savvy venture capitalists funding a host of new media projects that might have the potential for flourishing growth, rather than a guarantee of slow decline.

So take heart, unfortunate liberals. Sure, your local newspaper may soon become a right wing rag. But in all likelihood your local newspaper has already had enough layoffs to make it pretty worthless anyhow. A smart young liberal with no money and a blog can build up more real public influence today than the Chicago Tribune's in-house editorial page has (even if someone paid millions for the right to run that page). The future of the media, like it or not, is not in the newspaper industry. So let the rich old fuckers have the past.

[Photo: Getty]

We hear that Michael Musto, the Village Voice's longtime society columnist and the last remaining vestige of the "classic" Voice, is one of the five Voice staffers targeted for layoffs— the proposed layoffs that caused the Voice's editors to quit today.

Musto's column, La Dolce Musto— a quirky mix of nightlife gossip, party talk, gay issues, and whatever the hell else has been happening in Michael Musto's life in the past week— has been running in the Voice for almost 30 years. Even with all of the layoffs at the once-great alt-weekly, the idea of a Musto-less Voice just seems... sacrilegious.

UPDATE: Michael Musto sent us the following statement from the Voice's owners, which is vague. More details as we get them.

Subject: Editing Departures at the Village Voice
Voice Media Group today accepted the resignations of editors Will Bourne and Jessica Lustig. Following their departure, VMG will be instituting further structural and staffing changes at the publication. Contrary to published reports, those changes do not involve laying off five members of the editorial staff.
The proposed changes do include minimal staff reductions, and directly align with the long-term growth strategy of Voice Media Group. They will ultimately support the ongoing sustainability of the Village Voice.
VMG believes the editorial team at the Voice must be thoroughly committed to producing the content and products that best serve its New York audience. The editorial staff and in particular its leadership must be fully committed to both print and digital publishing platforms. We are committed to supporting our incredibly talented editorial staff throughout this process.
Veteran VMG editor and newsman Pete Kotz will temporarily direct the talented Village Voice staff while management conducts a search for a permanent New York editor. The right candidate will focus on maintaining the journalistic excellence of the Voice while embracing and enhancing new platforms and areas of consumer interest.

[Photo: Getty]

If you enjoyed the rant, in which Janet Hubert (aka The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's Aunt Viv 1.0) called Wendy Williams a demon, you'll probably like this new interview about her being fired from the sitcom. She's still not over it.

On February 19, one of the largest bank heists in history was pulled off and almost no one noticed. No getaway vehicles were left idling, no guns were pointed, no panic buttons were pressed—but somehow several crews in two dozen countries working in perfect precision walked away with $40 million in cash.

Eight people in New York have now been charged in the robbery, which spanned the globe and required almost military coordination. The technique used by the thieves, as detailed in the indictment unsealed today, was decidedly simple, even if it required skillful hacking and precise timing.

Essentially, they broke into credit-card processing companies and raised withdrawal limits on credit and debit cards, the information for which they then transferred to new magnetic stripe cards.

From there, they'd simply coordinate a time to cash in. After a preliminary, $5 million haul in December, courtesy an Indian card-processing company and National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah, they went after a U.S. credit-card processor and the Bank of Muscat in Oman. From The New York Times:

On Feb. 19, “cashing crews” stood at the ready at A.T.M.'s across Manhattan and in two dozen other countries waiting for word to spring into action. [...]

After securing 12 account numbers for cards issued by the Bank of Muscat in Oman and raising the withdrawal limits, the cashing crews were set in motion. Starting at 3 p.m., the crews made 36,000 transactions and withdrew about $40 million from machines in the various countries in about 10 hours. In New York City alone, a team of eight people made 2,904 withdrawals, stealing $2.4 million.

Surveillance photos of one suspect hitting various A.T.M.'s showed the man’s backpack getting heavier and heavier, Ms. Lynch said, comparing the robbery to the caper at the center of the movie “Ocean’s 11.”

Authorities have not yet said when or how the crime was discovered or the suspects identified, and its unclear if arrests have been made in the other countries where the withdrawals had taken place (according to the Times, "[l]aw enforcement agencies in more than a dozen countries, including Japan, Canada, Germany and Romania, have been involved in the investigation").

The arrested suspects appear to have been involved in the cash-withdrawal segment of the operation only, and police haven't indicated who else may have been involved, or how. Alberto "Prime" Lajud-Pena, 23, apparently the crew's ringleader, was killed in the Dominican Republic in late April in what police believe to have been a homicide.

[image via U.S. Attorney's Office]

The first America's Cup 2013 disaster is underway: the racing sailboat Artemis has capsized in the San Francisco Bay near the America's Cup pier. One of the eleven crewmembers has died.