An internal IRS memo circulated today revealed that Joseph Grant, head of the tax bureau's tax exempt and government entities division, will retire next month as the IRS continues reeling from an abuse-of-power scandal.

Yesterday's Google I/O keynote—a tech Nuremberg of fanboyism, developer jargon, and fancy new features for Gmail—dragged on for hours. Those thousands who sat patiently in their chairs were rewarded with a brand new, $1,300 laptop—including reporters whose job it is to impartially cover Google. Let's see who took the bait.

Tech writers of all stripes get free things all the time—it's part of the fun! The idea is that a company loans you something, you use it, review it, and then you mail it back. These loan periods are often informal. Some companies have explicit policies about mailing gadgets back, and some manufacturers require your signature on a lengthy, sternly-worded contract. Often, this stuff goes by the wayside: I know there are a handful of dusty phones and a broken Roomba (among other detritus) sitting around my apartment from the three years I worked Gawker Media's Gizmodo.

But yesterday, the "loan" was completely—and surprisingly—optional. Writers could either sign a piece of paper saying they weren't going to keep the computer, or they could eschew the whole thing and just keep it as private property. This is also a computer that, unlike other product giveaways, doesn't need much "evaluation"—the Chromebook Pixel has been out since February, and any publication that was going to write a review would have done so by now with the free Chromebook they were given back then. So who took one this time around—and why? I asked around, and the results were mixed.

(I asked Scoble just to make sure my keyboard was working.) Some answers weren't clear. A staffer at the New York Times declined to comment on the record, but the paper has a very clear ethics statement about loans. Our man on the ground from Gizmodo hasn't emailed me back yet. Gizmodo took Chromebook with a loan agreement. Writers like TechCrunch's Drew Olanoff or GigaOm's Jordan Novet have yet to answer. CNET is silent. I've been told many didn't bother signing anything "I saw a number of people say they didn't need to sign," one reporter told me. "The very fact that the PR people were asking 'do you need to sign a loan agreement' indicated to me that they were hoping not."

The Verge didn't give a straight yes or no, but linked to its explicit policy about loaner gadgets.

@samfbiddle @reckless i think nilay is probably busy but we have a policy against handouts. theverge.com/ethics-stateme…

— Laura June (@laura_june) May 16, 2013

Its Editor-in-Chief didn't want to talk about it at all:

@reckless @laura_june @samfbiddle this is the dumbest conversation ever. We take things all the time, then they go back.

— Joshua Topolsky (@joshuatopolsky) May 16, 2013

Interpret that how you want! Other writers just laughed the whole thing off:

Confession: I also ate some of the food Google provided. And used their Internet.

— Seth Weintraub (@llsethj) May 16, 2013

The difference being that the food (probably?) wasn't worth $1,300.

We'll wait for more responses, and update the chart accordingly. It's a touchy question, but a very important one—as The American Prospect's Jeff Saginor wrote, "Technology events are not giveaways for Oprah’s favorite things—journalists don’t get to go home with bags full of expensive toys and then pretend to critically cover the companies that bribe them."

Google is giving out even more free laptops today. If you grab one, feel free to shoot me an email with your answer. That is, if you haven't put it on eBay already.

If you're a fun girl of drinking age who lives in the D.C. area, why not go to a stranger's wedding with a guy off Craigslist? He seems "all right," what with his picture of him riding a lion that is riding a horse, and his degree and good career. He actually kind of sounds like a "catch," plus this wedding is Open Bar.

One Man Needs Date to a Wedding - 28 (Northwest DC)

Do you have a selfie? And, uh, a résumé? Take a picture of yourself riding a dinosaur riding a train inside a space station and immediately send it to this guy with a lot of personal information, what could go wrong?

You only YOLO once.

Staten Island! Riverdale! The Brood II cicadas of the East Coast are not something to anticipate anymore; they're something crawling out of the ground and shedding their skins all over the map. Exclamation points are out on cicadamania.com and cicadas.info, while magicicada.org keeps soberly logging the sightings, 500 at a batch: shed skins in Brooklyn, nymphs in Princeton, hordes in Virginia and southern Maryland as the full, swarming emergence moves north, right on schedule.

Why get excited about the inevitable? What better to get excited about? You could have spent the last 48 hours reading stories about how the Obama administration was overwhelmed by scandal and then not overwhelmed by scandal, or you could have just refreshed the cicada map. The last time Brood II was out, when the parents of these cicadas were breaking through their old skins and inflating their wings and singing their deafening songs of cicada-lust or cicada-romance, it was Whitewater. Hard-wired behavior.

The cicadas seem to be enjoying it more. So enjoy the cicadas. (Unless you're phobic, in which case you need to get across the Appalachians already.) If the action on the map has reached your latitude, walk outside into the writhing thousands. They look like a plague, but they are harmless. Listen to the scraping of countless legs. Hear the shrieking from the trees. Pluck a few of the white ones off the fence and fry them in a pan with some olive oil. A sprinkle of salt. Their abundance takes this into account; the cicadas are expecting to be eaten. They are throwing themselves onto the surface world in one great wave for this, a hot spring and summer of death and copulation, the numbers ensuring that the copulation comes out ahead. It is the main event.

And remember: There is nothing sudden about this. These cicadas have been alive for 17 years, all around you. The ground is full of cicadas always, the same way that the bared midriff passing you on the sidewalk is wrapped around a tube of bacteria and solidifying feces. This is what is always underneath it all. Have a look.

[Photo via AP]

After selling cocaine to undercover cops at least 19 times over the last two years, a Papa John's delivery guy from Brooklyn was finally arrested this week for trying to unload $27,500 worth of the drug along with a large pizza and a box of Papa's Chicken Poppers.

Prosecutors say 45-year-old Ramon Rodriguez had been using his gig at the Fifth Avenue Papa John's in Sunset Park as a cover for his cocaine dealings, often hiding the stuff in pizza boxes and engaging in handoffs while in uniform.

Undercover officers had apparently been buying drugs from Rodriguez since the fall of 2011, but only arrested him this past Wednesday.

He was booked on charges of of criminal sale of a controlled substance (multiple counts) and criminal possession of a controlled substance (one count).

Another man, Jonathan Martinez, was also arrested for allegedly selling $1,200 of cocaine to an undercover cop in a meeting arranged by Rodriguez.

[photos via handout]

A world-renowned Japanese chef passed away this week after being brutally attacked by two men who had apparently left his restaurant unsatisfied.

Miki Nozawa, whose sought after Japanese-Italian fusion dishes have been served to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Denzel Washington, had reportedly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at the hands of two German patrons of his popular eponymous restaurant in the resort island of Sylt.

The altercation allegedly started after the two men, aged 36 and 50, ordered a beef, vegetable and fried noodle dish, but refused to pay, finding the meal not to their liking.

Later that evening, Nozawa ran into the duo again at a stripclub, and asked them to pay the €20 they owed him for the food.

Refusing for a second time, the inebriated men and Nozawa again began to quarrel and the heated verbal exchange eventually turned physical.

The German newspaper Bild reports that Nowaza sustained a "big purple bruise" on the left side of his body, and was rushed to a local hospital with massive internal bleeding.

Doctors fought for his life, but he ultimately succumbed to his injuries.

According to at least one report, the men, described as "skilled laborers" by trade, were detained following the fight, but "released due to lack of evidence."

The investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Before moving to Sylt, Nozawa was the head chef at Flavio Briatore's Billionaire Club in Sardinia.

[H/T: tomuban, photo via Bild]

Virginia Maiden had an unusual Tuesday, to say the least. She awoke that morning to find that her 1995 Toyota 4-Runner had been stolen. “She was so confused, didn’t know what was going on, it was just gone,” a co-worker would later tell the press. So Maiden hitched a ride to McDonald's, where she worked the drive-thru window. At some point that day she spotted something in the drive-thru line that shocked her: a 1995 Toyota 4-Runner.

At first Maiden wasn't sure if the car was hers, but as she was talking with the customer she noticed her McDonald's visor hanging from the rearview mirror. Then she knew.

“You would think whoever stole the car would say, ‘I’m not going to go to McDonald’s because the owner works there,’” Rebecca Guerrero, second assistant manager at the McDonald’s in Kennewick, Washington said.

The woman driving the stolen car had ordered ice cream, so the quick thinking Maiden told her the ice cream machine was temporarily broken, and that she should pull up to the next window. Maiden then called police, who arrived in time to arrest the suspect.

“What if she [Maiden] was off? What if she was on a break and not at the window? What if she looked away … It was meant to be,” Guerrero said. ”It was at the right time and the right moment.”

A search of the car revealed clothes allegedly stolen from J.C. Penney's and Sears. No charges have been filed yet.

[Daily Mail/ABC News/Image via Getty]

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

Man turned meme Caleb "Kai" Lawrence McGillvary, the celebrity hitchhiker who was on the run from police this week, has been arrested in Pennsylvania for the murder of 73-year-old lawyer Joseph Galfy.

Galfy was discovered beaten to death in his Clark, New Jersey, residence on Monday, and today police issued a warrant for McGillvary's arrest. The 24-year-old drifter, who says he is not homeless but "home free," was captured at a Greyhound bus station in Philadelphia.

According to Philadelphia's NBC 10, authorities believe Galfy picked up McGillvary in Times Square Saturday night before taking him to his house. They also believe the two had a "sexual encounter."

In a Facebook posting from Tuesday, one day after police discovered Galfy's body, a user called "Caleb Kai Lawrence Yodhehwawheh," who appears to be McGillvary, posted this:

Rob Ford, Toronto's conservative mayor, is a wild lunatic given to making bizarre racist pronouncements and randomly slapping refrigerator magnets on cars. One reason for this is that he smokes crack cocaine. I know this because I watched him do it, on a videotape. He was fucking hiiiiigh. It's for sale if you've got six figures.

It began like this: We've made fun of Ford before for his bizarre pronouncements and nude pictures. Last week, we got a tip from someone claiming to have a videotape of Ford smoking crack. Would we like to buy it?

The tipster made the following claims:

• Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smokes crack cocaine.

• There is a video of Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine, taken within the last six months.

• Rob Ford purchases his crack cocaine from a crew of Toronto drug dealers that service a veritable who's who of A-list...Torontonians? Torontites? Anyway, a lot of prominent people in Toronto purchase and enjoy crack and powder cocaine, and they all buy it from the same folks. The same folks Ford buys it from. Ford's longtime friend, people on his staff, his brother, a prominent hockey analyst, and more.

As evidence of his claims, our tipster provided the photo above. It shows Ford hanging out with a number of people. The gentleman standing to his right, flipping the camera the bird, is Anthony Smith. Smith, a 21-year-old college student, was killed two months ago outside a Toronto nightclub in a gangland-style shooting. A photo, from a CBC story on his murder, is at left. Smith was, according to our tipster, a kid from the same neighborhood as the dealers who service Ford, and the photo was taken while Ford was going to the neighborhood to purchase and smoke crack cocaine.

If you're curious about the photo's veracity, at left is another photo, from the National Post, of Ford wearing the same sweatshirt.

Needless to say, the story intrigued me. I asked the tipster for a screengrab of the video to verify that he had what he claimed to have. He refused. If I wanted to see the video, I was going to have to go to Toronto. He sounded confident enough. Certain things that he told me checked out. So off I went.

Toronto is lovely. Our first effort to meet up, at a Toronto bus station at night, fizzled. The tipster was there, but the person who actually had possession of the video was a no-show. The tipster and I retired to a coffee shop to talk Toronto politics and Rob Ford's curious history—his rise as a sort of oddly drunken, brazenly honest conservative voice in a decidedly liberal and polite city. It was a nice night, but I was beginning to worry I'd been had.

The next morning, I connected again with the tipster. He was going to locate the owner of the video, he told me. Last night, there had been a mix-up. The video was being stored in a safe place, but the person who had access to the safe place had briefly disappeared, and so the owner couldn't get access to the safe place to get the device on which the video was stored. By the morning, however, the tipster and the owner had located the person who had access to the safe place. This was going to happen.

Checkout time was at noon. My flight was at 7:30 p.m. I loitered around downtown Toronto, checking out the mall, until I got the text: We were to meet up at a chain restaurant near the airport. The tipster picked me up from the restaurant and drove me to a housing development. The owner of the video would meet us there.

We sit idling in his car, making small talk. The tipster calls the owner and talks in language other than English. "He'll be right down," he says. Fifteen minutes pass. "Waiting for the elevator," he says. Ten minutes pass. A young gentleman opens the rear door of the car and gets in. The two men speak in a language other than English. The young gentleman immediately exits the vehicle. No video.

The tipster looks at me: "The battery is dead." The young gentleman—the owner of the video—needed to go back upstairs to charge the battery on the device that contained the video. We wait. More small talk.

The owner of the video returns. He thrusts a device, a phone with a touchscreen, in my face. "Can I hold it?" I ask.

"No."

I crane my neck. It plays.

Here is what the video shows: Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, is the only person visible in the frame. Prior to the trip, I spent a lot of time looking at photographs of Rob Ford. The man in the video is Rob Ford. It is well-lit, clear. Ford is seated, in a room in a house. In one hand is a a clear, glass pipe. The kind with a big globe and two glass cylinders sticking out of it. In the other hand is a lighter. A slurred voice off-camera is ranting about Canadian politics in what sounds like an attempt to goad Ford. "Pierre Trudeau was a faggot!" is the one phrase the lodges in my mind. Ford, pipe in one hand and lighter in the other, is laughing, and mildly protesting at the sacrilege. He seems to keep trying to light the pipe, but keeps stopping to laugh. He is red-faced and sweaty, heaving with each breath. Finally, he finds his moment and lights up. He inhales.

Update: The Toronto Star, whose reporters have also seen the video, say that it's Justin Trudeau—Pierre's son and the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada—and not Pierre getting called a "faggot." It's hard to keep all these Canadians apart. The Star also has Ford himself, and not the voice off-screen, making the "faggot" remark, though that's not how I remember it.

In one move, the owner stops the video and draws the device back into his pocket.

"You took this?" I ask.

"Yes."

"When?"

"Within the last six months."

"You're sure it's crack?"

"Yes."

"You've seen him smoke crack before?"

"Yes. Gotta jet."

And he is gone.

So: That was a video of the mayor of Toronto smoking crack. The trouble is, the owner wants money. More money than I am willing to pay. The tipster has already reached out to one other news outlet, a Canadian organization that he refused to name, which offered $40,000. The owner rejected that. He thinks he can get six figures. It's unlikely he's going to get six figures.

But I am going to try. The tipster wants this video out. Rob Ford needs to be held to account. The owner just wants money—preferably enough to get out of town after this blows up, since he doesn't think it will be safe for him. The tipster and I both fear that the owner will try to sell the video back to Ford. That would be a shame.

So if Gawker can't come up with enough money to ring this owner's bell, perhaps we can find a partner. This isn't just the mayor of Toronto smoking crack cocaine, after all: This is Toronto Confidential. There are a host of important local officials wrapped up in this drug ring. 60 Minutes? No. Dateline NBC? No. Inside Edition? No. National Enquirer? No. CNN? Maybe!

Well, no. But when I emailed an acquaintance at CNN this afternoon, laying out much the same information I've offered above and asking for discretion and confidentiality lest we screw up a pretty fucking great story about the mayor of the fifth-largest city in North America smoking crack cocaine on camera, he forwarded the email to his producer. The producer, in turn, asked CNN's Canada reporter about it. The Canada reporter—and this was a pretty fucking big mistake—called a source who used to work in Ford's office. Within 40 minutes, word had gotten back to me that "CNN called Ford's office asking about a crack tape."

And so here we are. The owner still hasn't found a buyer with pockets deep enough to meet his demands. But word is out around Toronto now that the tape exist, and Ford's circle knows about it courtesy a CNN reporter. So, with permission, I am laying out everything I know about the Rob Ford Crack Tape in the hopes that a) everyone knows that Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, smokes crack, and b) this knowledge might hasten the arrival of the Rob Ford Crack Tape on the internet or broadcast television, because really, it is something to behold.

If you want to buy it, let me know. I can put you in touch with a guy.

Ford's office did not immediately respond to an email.

Update: We've received an email from Dennis Morris, a gentleman with a hotmail.com email address purporting to be Ford's attorney. Here is the message. We haven't corrected its formatting.

Greetings;I am a lawyer,and have been contacted by Mayor Ford's office in reference to your indicating you will post a photo of Mayor Ford smoking crack cocaine. Mayor Ford denies such took place,and if such posting occurs,it is false and defamatory,and you will be held legally accountable.In reference to the photo,you wish to publish, Mayor Ford has his photo taken daily,sometimes with others.

If the person you mention is now deceased,it is sad,regardless of his alleged background.

Please govern yourself accordingly.

Dennis Morris.

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

[Images via National Post and CBC]

With the Powerball jackpot back up to $550 million, here's a story you might find inspiring: For some time now, Richard Cerezo, of Geneva, Illinois, has stored 11 old Lotto tickets in a cookie jar for safe keeping. Earlier this month, on his wife's suggestion, he took the tickets to a local convenience store.

"I thought I had probably won about $600," Cerezo told the Patch.

It turns out it he had underestimated his winnings by just a bit. Cerezo had won the February 2 Lotto jackpot. His prize? $4.85 million.

He collected the check on Wednesday.

"I'm awestruck, this is unbelievable," he said.

…

"When I realized we had all six numbers, it was that shocking moment of 'Whoa, can this really be?' So I called my son over and asked him to double check this," Cerezo told Chicago's WGN-TV. "And he looked it through and goes, 'Yep, looks like a winner.'"

Cerezo and his wife plan to use the winnings to pay off their mortgage and other bills and to help out their son and daughter. They also have plans to donate to their church and favorite charities. "It is very important to us that we help others with this money," Cerezo said.

The lesson? Always keep your lotto tickets in a cookie jar for months at the time, though it remains to be seen if that tactic will protect Cerezo from the various tragedies and lawsuits that have afflicted other recent lottery winners.

[ABC News]

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

The testimony of a dying and paralyzed man — who identified his assailant by blinking his eyes — helped convict an Ohio man of murder.

In 2010, Ricardo Woods, 35, shot David Chandler in the head and neck in Cincinnati. Police interviewed Chandler, also 35, shortly after the shooting. At the time, Chandler was paralyzed, connected to a ventilator, and able to communicate only with his eyes. Two weeks later, he died.

Police videotaped the interview with Chandler and showed it to jurors. The video shows Chandler blinking three times to identify Woods. When police asked him if he was sure, he again blinked three times.

Defense attorneys objected to the video, saying Chandler's blinks were unreliable as testimony, but Judge Beth Myers disagreed, citing a doctor who treated Chandler.

The jury also heard testimony from a jailhouse informormant who said Woods told him that he shot at Chandler. Woods was convicted of murder and felonious assault and faces life in prison.

[Associated Press/Image via AP]

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

An Australian politician has apologized for liking an illicit picture of a teenage boy on Facebook. In the picture, the boy was partaking in the time-honored Australian tradition of "sneaky nuts," whereby he was furtively exposing his genitals.

"At first glance it appeared to be a harmless picture," Peter Collier, Western Australia's minister for education, said in a statement.

But then when everyone looked closer at what they thought was a harmless photo of a 16-year-old and an older man, there it was! Sneaky nuts.

"It was a silly mistake on my part. I only became aware of the actual content of the photo when shown by a journalist today," Collier said. "This obviously highlights the pitfalls of social media. I apologise if I caused any offence."

The "liking" of the genital photo went unnoticed until last month, when the teenager began bragging about it on Twitter.

The stunt was popularized by Australia's actually funny comedian Chris Lilley (Summer Heights High), and has become a global sensation. Last year in Canada, a school had to place stickers in 1,300 yearbooks over a photo where a student had exposed themselves.

A mother of a 4-year-old in New Mexico chased down her child's abductor and rammed him with her car after a seven-mile pursuit, leading to the safe return of her daughter and the arrest of the suspect.

The young girl was playing in front of her home in Albuquerque's North Valley at about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday night, when a stranger picked her up and drove off. A group of teenagers, who saw the abduction, then went to tell Melissa Torrez, the mother of the little girl.

The family called 911 immediately, but Torrez jumped into her car and began chasing after the kidnapper. After a seven-mile chase, during which Torrez was in contact with the Albuquerque Police Department, Torrez lost control of her car and crashed into the suspect's, who then fled on foot.

"I don't ever want to lose my kids," Torrez, a mother of three, told KOAT-TV.

After jumping out of her car, Torrez found an empty baby car seat. The kidnapper had pushed the little girl out of the car right at the beginning of the chase. She was found later wandering nearby her home, uninjured.

"I was like...what a sick man," Torrez told the TV station.

Police have arrested a suspect, David Hernandez, who called into the police after seeing his photograph on television. He was charged with the kidnapping, but is claiming he is innocent.

[KQRE]

VFiles' YouTube videos are among the most stupidly entertaining on the internet, and you should be watching all of them. I Love VFiles. I love VFiles so much that I almost don't want to write about it for fear that it gets really popular then MTV turns it into a shitty television show.

This is ironic, since the simplest way to explain VFiles' videos, which you can watch here, is that they do to the fashion world what MTV did to music: smartly package the inscrutable culture and business of high fashion to make it fun for outsiders. VFiles accomplishes this mainly through the relatively unknown but spectacularly talented hosts they've plucked out of the fashion world, and the high production values that make them look great.

One of the best VFiles series is Model Files, a mockumentary that follows real-life fashion casting director Preston Chaunsumlit on a series of made-up (I think?) assignments. Model Files spoofs a lot of the obvious fashion absurdities on display on America's Next Top Model and previously tackled by Zoolander. In the first episode, Preston casts the shirtless guys who hold open the door at Hollister: "Hollister guy has to be chiseled," he says, "he has to turn on both soccer moms and frat guys." But the show is infused with an insider's perspective that makes it as educational as it is amusing. The show teaches you new ridiculous facets of the fashion industry even as it spoofs them. And of course there are many beautiful models, who turn out to be pretty good actors, too.

Another series, Xtreme Fashion Week, takes the fashion press' endless appetite for behind-the-scenes coverage of runway shows its logical conclusion by strapping GoPro cameras to the heads of models and reporters for a nauseating gonzo experience.

But my personal favorite VFiles series is Status Update, a surreal gossip and entertainment show hosted by comedian and animator Casey Jane Ellison. Ellison, whose on-screen character is sort of a goth Paris Hilton, turns the low-rent pop culture vlog into a hilarious stoned-out parody. It's vocal fry as performance art.

Here's the latest Status Update, released a few hours ago:

My only issue with VFiles is, having watched most of their YouTube videos, I'm still not sure exactly what VFiles is. Their website, VFiles.com, is a confoundingly ambitious mix of Pinterest, Facebook and Style.com that demands a sync to your Facebook account (gross). Wikipedia says it's: "A New York-based social media platform for Fashion, style, and pop-culture enthusiasts." There's also a VFiles store that sells weird clothes inspired by the costumes of various nineties subcultures (raver, grunge, hip hop, etc).

Whatevs, as they say on Status Update:. All you really need to know is they make great videos, and Model Files' Season 2 starts on May 21nd.

The city of Philadelphia canceled a job fair for ex-cons today when too many ex-cons showed up. Way to keep hope alive, Philly.

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot franchise performs several admirable balancing acts. Among them:

• It adheres to traditional, if not conservative values, such as the importance of intelligence, the power of teamwork, the virtue in staying covered up (those Starfleet uniforms reveal nothing!) without seeming stuffy.
• It does that sci-fi thing of explaining a lot about the universe that it's introducing you through dialogue without any of the exposition seeming like it's been piped in from a Wikipedia page. Don't know what Prime Directive is? It's OK, the charaters in Star Trek Into Darkness gradually explain it. Don't remember that Spock is only half Vulcan? Don't worry, you'll get a gentle reminder.
• It is a big masquerade ball where familiar faces like Zachary Quinto don appearance-altering aesthetics and symbolize giant concepts/personality types (Kirk is spontaneity; Spock is logic), yet the acting is so good that this rarely feels over-the-top, if at all. Everyone in Darkness is in top form and utterly charming — Quinto, Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana and Karl Urban, especially. Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan is a tremendous addition to the cast, as he brings an elegance to the kind of diabolical, impossible-to-defeat villain type that he's playing.
• It behaves like a superhero franchise in that its characters pull off humanly impossible feats of strength and agility without falling into the trappings of the modern superhero movie and having to be either overly meditative or sneer at itself.
• It acts like an action franchise but it's actually capable of pulling off excitement. My heart rate increased during a scene where Kirk must fly from one ship to another, zooming through outer space and dodging space junk as a hairline fracture in his helmet threatens to cause his head to explode. All the while, the person in his target destination is being distracted from opening the hatch.

• Its one-liners are truly weird. "Sometimes I wanna rip the bangs off his head," Kirk smarts when frustrated with Spock. "Damn it, man, I'm a doctor not a torpedo technician!" says Bones.

I have no deep association with what came before 2009's reboot. I can't say whether or not Star Trek Into Darkness will satisfy diehard fans of the series, but I suspect that for many of them, very little would at this point. However, I have seen virtually every big budget action movie that has been released in recent memory, and Into Darkness, like its predecessor, is among my very favorites. This is the only remaining action franchise that I care about it, the only one that moves nimbly enough to consistently entertain. It has no lofty goals but it is sharply written and acted enough to avoid feeling mindless.

If anything, Star Trek Into Darkness seems too eager to please. It winds down with a three-part climax, during which new members of its multi-ethnic, multi-species crew—a real rolling pan-universe Benetton ad—is constantly and politely flashing on screen. I don't need to tell you what the image of a spacecraft at skyline-level aimed at a building evokes, but the film apologizes for itself in a dedication to 9/11 veterans that flashes onscreen during the credits. Star Trek Into Darkness doesn't always go boldly, but its momentum is thrilling all the same.

You don't drink and drive. That's a stupid, terrible thing to do, with a simple, understood cause and effect. So why do we keep waking up, wondering how on earth that drunken Facebook message seemed like a good idea, and oh my god, Amazon confirmed shipment for WHAT? We've outgrown the drunk dial or drunk text. And oh, the chaos we've drunkenly stumbled into now.

In a way, your computer is the most dangerous thing in your house, because it does everything. You have access to essentially every form of social and financial mechanism in your life. Shopping accounts, banking accounts, Facebook friendships with your boss and her husband, butterfinger-deletable archives of every photograph of your children. All of that stuff is vulnerable to your Scotch-soaked brain. If you make bad decisions when you're drunk, well, the internet is the place where literally every decision is possible.

And every decision you make while drunk is worse, too. That might sound like a truism, but it's true of alcohol in a way it isn't for other narcotics. "Substances such as cocaine and LSD work like pharmacological scalpels, altering the functioning of only one or a handful of brain circuits," Stephen Braun writes in Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine. "Alcohol is more like a pharmacological hand grenade. It affects practically everything around it." Alcohol affects your entire brain. Your entire brain is dumber when you're drunk.

So what does a drunk do with the world at his fingertips? Terrible things. Things like

Buy All of the Things

Everyone's a drunk internet shopper. A quick survey around Gawker HQ confirms this. Shoes were the most popular item we heard, with Jezebel's Katie JM Baker alerted by email one bleary morning that she'd lost a bid on an expensive pair of sequined sneakers, even though she does not wear sneakers. It gets worse, though. "I'm a really terrible drunk shopper. I once bought a plane ticket. I signed up for improv classes. I bought a weird hanging wall decoration," Gawker's Leah Beckmann confesses. "It was all the same summer, after a break-up. Lots of weird purchases and lots of drinking."

And that's just financial. While you might rack up some worrisome debt while drunk, your bank account will heal, eventually, probably. Your dignity might not. Definitely stay the hell off of Facebook. Even while sober, you're probably an awkward mess on there. But drunk, inhibitions to the wind? Good god, the possibilities.

Social Destruction

"Man, this is sad, but I have a friend who died a couple years back," Leslie Horn's story begins, ominously. "And one night I was drunk and [Facebook] messaged one of his good friends—he was cute—that I only vaguely knew. Just like, Hi whatever this is a weird thing to be going through. He never wrote back. It was just random, drunken, late night Facebook condolences, more or less, but I don't know, sometimes that leads to banging. I've done so much dumb shit on Facebook when drunk."

Or maybe you share something you shouldn't. "I accidentally got two cops fired," says our editorial assistant Ashley Feinberg. "It was freshman year of college, and we were in my room drinking, and one of my friends accidentally broke the window. So the RA had to call the campus police because I guess that is window breaking protocol. And things were a little tense so I started asking them about their utility belts, which turned into a bunch of fun pictures of them handcuffing me, playing with the night stick, etc. I then decided would be a good idea to put these very obviously not OK photos on Facebook at 3am. It was not. I got a call from the chief of security the next day and had to come in to his office and he'd printed out all the pictures and blown them up and kept asking me if I'd been coerced. They were in both color and black and white, for some reason. I had to go through and explain what was happening in each one, regardless of me assuring him that I had been handcuffed willingly. Apparently that is still a big no-no for cops and they soon were no longer employed there."

Those are uniquely Facebook phenomena, catching some hot guy or girl you only tangentially know and firing off a winky face or sharing bad-idea photos. But the internet also raises the stakes for time-honored bad decisions as well.

The Sex Stuff

You have more ways to just go for broke, like the irrepressible Sam Biddle. "I got naked and Facetimed an ex-girlfriend last year. I think I was pretty hammered." She was an ex at the time? And did she, um, know that you would be naked? "Yeah, she was an ex. And well, we were sexting. She knew. I'll just leave it at that."

And then there are times where simply having access to the wider world of the web will get drunken, idiot you into situations that, while not strictly online, are made possible by it. Like total and irredeemable social immolation:

"I'm pretty good with electronics when I'm drunk," Deadspin's Greg Howard says, "But my best friend went to Brazil with me a few years ago. It was our whole soccer team. We got fucked up the last night—we were all browned out essentially—and he said he had to take a shit. He just up and disappeared. We went looking for him the next day, and the whole team found him passed out on the toilet with his laptop out. He'd shat in the toilet, and he had a porn site up with four RedTube videos loaded—for seamless switching I guess—passed out with his dick in his hand. It was pretty sickening, really."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why drunk internet is bad internet. Be safe out there.

23 years after being abducted on his way to kindergarten, one lost boy has finally made his way back home with the help of Google Maps.

Lou Gang, originally from China's Sichuan province, was kidnapped at the age of 5 and taken to the southeastern province of Fujian, nearly 1,000 miles away.

After being abandoned there, Luo was adopted by a family that loved him as their own, and Luo's birth parents eventually gave up their search and adopted a daughter.

But Luo refused to abandon hope of ever finding his biological mother and father.

"Everyday before I went to bed, I forced myself to re-live the life spent in my old home," he told a Fujian news outlet. "So I wouldn’t forget."

Nearly a quarter-century later, his persistence finally paid off.

After posting what little he remembered of his hometown — a crude map with two bridges — to a Chinese website dedicated to "bringing lost babies home," Luo was informed that a couple who reported their son abducted 23 years ago lived in a small town in Sichuan matching the description he provided.

The South China Morning Post reports on what happened next:

Luo searched for pictures of the Sichuan town and found they looked familiar to him. To confirm his suspicions, he turned to the satellite version Google Maps. The minute he zoomed in on an area called “Yaojiaba” near the Sichuan town, Luo recognised the two bridges.

“That’s it! That’s my home,” shouted Luo, in tears.

Not long after, Luo — whose given name, it turns out, is Huang Jun — was finally reunited with his birth parents, Huang Qingyong and Dai Jianfang.

"I felt heartbroken," Luo's mother is quoted as saying. "I couldn't eat or sleep and I cried every day thinking my son was missing and didn't have enough food or clothes out there."

The Daily Telegraph cites the China Daily as reporting that some 76,000 Chinese children go missing each year, with as many as one million currently listed as lost.

[screengrabs via SCMP]

Lifehacker This Chart Helps You Find the Right Career Based on Salary and Growth | Gawker We Are Raising $200,000 to Buy and Publish the Rob Ford Crack Tape | Gizmodo Warning: Don't Drink and Internet | Jalopnik Lexus LFA Owner Forces Town To Remove Speed Bump Because He Can

Highlights from Kathleen Hanna's contributions to the NYU Riot Grrrl Collection include 'zines, Bikini Kill set lists, and an undoubtedly amazing Corin Tucker VHS tape.