Surrounded by political and religious leaders, the head of Egypt's armed forces just officially announced in a televised address that that the military had seized power from President Morsi. The constitution has been suspended and the head of the constitutional court will be acting president until elections are held.

Lord knows everyone's had some troublesome times in their lives. Maybe you didn't even realize you were pregnant until cramps started up again, the hollow, throbbing ache that left you so doubled over it was all you could do to crawl on your hands and knees to the cool tiles of the bathroom floor and rest your forehead against the porcelain lip of the tub, and that's when you noticed your thighs were wet. Maybe you wandered much further from the campsite than you intended, searching for a better vantage point to watch that thunderstorm roll across the basin, and as soon as you saw the meticulously tended fire and the horrible hunk of charred meat in it, the half-full water bottle you'd just passed made sense and you realized the coppery smell carried on the wind wasn't "ozone" but blood. One time Jennifer Aniston ate a Big Mac.

Here's how Jennifer Aniston described The Day She Ate a Big Mac in an interview for The Cut. (The question was, "Have you ever been in a situation where you had no other choice but to grab some fast food?" which for normal people is like asking "Have you ever been in a situation where it was nighttime?" but for Jennifer Aniston is like asking "Have you ever been in a situation where you had to take a life?")

"I'll never forget when Justin and I were on a road trip and we were so hungry. The only thing around was McDonald's. I think I ordered a Big Mac. Wow, my body did not react well to that! It was like putting gasoline in a purified system. I am always trying to eat organic and natural foods, so that just made my stomach turn and made me feel terrible. And I think what you put in your body, as well as stress, is reflected in the quality of your skin."

I would have thought that if you'd put gasoline in a purified system, the gasoline would simply run right through it, easy breezy beautiful, because the system was so purified and efficient. (I assume the system in question is some sort of Rube Goldberg machine design to transport liquids from Point A to Point B). According to Jennifer Aniston, though, putting gasoline in a purified system causes that system to poop itself, nearly to death.

Road trip!

[The Cut // Image via Getty]

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

The North Korea YouTube account is the country's officially recognized, premier means of reaching Western audiences. It's also utterly insane. But it starts to make a little more sense once you meet the people behind it.

The odd first thing you'll notice about the North Korea YouTube page—created specifically to win the hearts and minds of English-speakers—is that nearly all of the videos are in Korean, making them almost wholly ineffective. But it gets even stranger—look closer and you'll discover that the channel is actually run by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA). This international gang of misfits has tasked itself with creating a positive online presence for the most colorful of the world's paradoxically communist dictatorships. And not one of them speaks Korean.

The international group's stated mission is to put a more positive spin on the global North Korea conversation. Which makes their decision to post videos such as the following even more bizarre. Because while they put hundreds of clips like the following online, they don't know any more about the contents than that it has to do with "Potato Pride:"

KFA All the Way

The KFA was founded in 2000, and its "delegates" come from a wide variety of nationalities, their President and founder being a Spaniard named Alejandro Cao de Benos, pictured above. Cao de Benos is incredibly passionate about his organization's work, of which the three main objectives are as follows:

- Show the reality of the DPR Korea to the world

- Defend the independence and socialist construction in the DPR of Korea

- Learn from the culture and history of the Korean People - Work for the peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula

Now, it may seem odd to willingly head a crusade to improve the public perception of a totalitarian dictatorship that perpetuates starvation and sends hundreds of thousands of its citizens to brutal labor internment camps. But then again, Cao de Benos is an odd guy. In this interview posted on May 16, 2012 he describes how he views himself as "a soldier of Kim Jong-il," and how he was drawn to the DPRK when he heard that it "defeated American imperialism." He loves North Korea, he explains, because it reflects his faith. Do with that what you will.

What may be most surprising, though, is that North Korea seems to love him right back. In 2002, Alejandro Cao de Benos became the very first foreigner ever allowed to work on behalf of the North Korean authorities in an official capacity—a dream he'd had since he was a teenager. In order for this to happen, actual North Korean law had to be changed, allowing him to obtain a North Korean passport. He spends about half of every year in the DPRK. So more than just acting as North Korea's moral support overseas, the KFA acts as an officially recognized liaison between the everyman and the Hermit Country itself—and this includes their incredibly active social media accounts.

Perhaps even more bizarre, all of the official, English-language North Korean social media outlets are created and maintained largely by American citizens. In fact, the International Communication Secretary and man in charge of the KFA's (and consequently North Korea's) English-language Internet outreach is a Chicago resident named Tommy Seilheimer (below).

Radio DPRK

Seilheimer appears to wear quite a few hats, according to his LinkedIn profile. He's former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach's webmaster, for one (Seilheimer is also one of the 460 people Bach follows on Twitter, for further corroboration). He runs something called Defcon13 Media, an SEO/web design shop. And while he's not listed as an official member, he's at least closely affiliated with a Poison tribute band that calls itself Posin. In between these gigs, he finds time to provide Kim Jong-un a North American soap box.

Seilheimer may have never visited North Korea personally, but he feels for a country that, in his eyes, has been grossly misrepresented in the media. Speaking about his initial interest in the group, Seilheimer tells us:

A lot of media in the US really was going hardcore after them. So I started watching some documentaries for myself and made my own decisions regarding what I thought they'd been through—as well as what they continue to do. It's one thing to have actually been there. And to actually go there and see what's going on is a whole different story. KFA delegates have gone on the state sanctioned tours, and they show you everything. So we don't really comment on that. I've never seen that and nobody at the KFA has ever seen any of these camps, so we just kind of leave that for the politicians to battle out. But we obviously wish the best for everybody.

According to Seilheimer, at least as far as their English-language, Western-directed social media goes, the KFA is intent on staying politically neutral. Or as politically neutral as one can be while supporting a virtually genocidal dictator. According to Seilheimer:

It's the Friendship association. We're not trying to be political. We're about sharing DPRK culture and all the learning that goes along with it. The [North Korean] government looks down on anything negative that we or anybody else would post.

Now while the Supreme Leader (or as Seilheimer casually refers to him, the President) doesn't quite have the best track record of keeping up relations, it would be perfectly plausible for this international gang of Kim Jong-un groupies to avoid courting controversy. Except for the fact that, well, they don't.

Listed inconspicuously at the top of the DPRK's website is the innocent, esoteric little acronym "OCN." Click through, and you'll find yourself at the Blogspot-hosted sabre-rattling of The Anti-imperialist National Democratic Front (AINDF). And who might be authoring these posts that describe how "Chairman Kim Jong Il made haughty Washington, which poses itself as a mater of the world, kiss the ground" and "the US should review history of the DPRK-US showdown recorded with ignominious defeat before launching the war exercises against the DPRK," you may ask? None other than our very own Korean Friendship Association—whose definition of "non political" is, to the say the least, profoundly confused.

While Seilheimer doesn't appear to have written any of these screeds himself, he's definitely aware of them. As he explained to us, "The other US delegates are free to write their own articles, but I definitely read them just to make sure they aren't attacking the US or vice versa." If this is what's gotten through, one can't help but wonder what qualifies as an attack.

Still, not everything is so politically oriented. The KFA's other blog is a much less political and far more bizarre creative outlet. You'll find, among other wonderful things, some lovely, not-at-all staged photos of North Korea's remarkable advancements as well as this lyricization of the Official Delegate for Ireland's feelings towards the Dear Leader. Short preview: he likes Kim Jong-il. A lot.

Getting the Word Out

But the main website is only one small aspect of the oddly crafted online persona the KFA maintains for North Korea. The truly interesting and even more baffling content comes in what these people are sharing with whomever might be willing to listen using everything from LinkedIn and Pinterest to YouTube and Facebook. Some of the articles, as well as all the photos and videos they aggregate on these networks, come from official DPRK sources. Seilheimer elaborates:

Anything we post on YouTube or Twitter or any of the other social media sites—it's all just about getting it out there. We're really looking to reach anybody. A lot of it's about learning, and the music is really good. Obviously, though, the documentaries and informative stuff we put up definitely does the best. Our big thing is just getting the videos out there. We don't push anybody. We don't say this is how it is. We literally just post the news and they can make their own decisions.

However, the problem is—and with the YouTube channel in particular—none of these Western, English-speaking delegates posting these North Korean articles and videos actually speak any Korean. Upon being asked how they overcome this seemingly massive barrier, Seilheimer tells us:

We usually use Google Translate; it's probably our best friend. Some people that we do know speak Korean, but we don't want to bug them all the time. For the most part, the press releases [the DPRK] make are pretty good. We just clean them up a little bit and rely on Google Translate. As for the videos, a lot of them, obviously, only come with a title on the top. So we just kind of go by that.

But the ever vigilant KFA doesn't let a little thing like "total lack of understanding" stop them. Despite supposedly not knowing what anyone in the videos they're swiping from DPRK news is saying, they've been busy filling their YouTube page with hundreds of nearly identical, bizarre, often unsettling videos. And by god are they prolific.

Since Aug 29, 2012, the officially-recognized, KFA-run North Korea YouTube channel has uploaded 535 videos of wildly varied genre. Some will actually have descriptions written in English, making them appear to have been made with a Western audience in mind. For these, the themes generally stay somewhere along the lines of "Look How Not-Starving and Not-Imprisoned-in-Labor-Camps North Korean Citizens Are." For example, we learn that one Pyongyang man is off to offer his mom a Mother's Day bouquet of flowers in honor of her being "very meticulous" and showing "deep care for [his] growth." A heartwarming sentiment to which we all can relate.

But these relatively innocent forays into fiction exist alongside some videos of a very different nature. Their decision to post an English-dubbed video exposing Western propaganda, for example, seems a bit counterintuitive to their stated desire not to "push anyone."

Still, in addition to slandering Western culture, they do a nice job diversifying all this content of which they have no real understanding. You'll get women running through fields of flowers, what I can only pray is a North Korean remake of Game of Thrones, comedy skits, and this all-female reinterpretation of Brokeback Mountain.

A good portion of the channel really is relatively harmless, albeit totally non sequitor. Take this prime example, an episode of North Korean Iron Chef and its accompanying song. An excerpt of the translated lyrics, in which we see the deification of a noodle dish, follows.

Naengmyeon naengmyeon Pyongyang naengmyeon/ One of the best delicacies in the world/ Even groom and brides eat naengmyeon at their weddings/ Ah sure is cool/ Two bowls are not enough/ Okryu-gwan is a pride of North Korea

As recently as May, the channel saw another big hike in video uploading, including this one of "westerners" extolling North Korea's virtues and the freedom it graciously bestowed upon them. Sure, the lip movements don't always match the words they're saying, and the sporadically shifting blurs over their mouths would seem to suggest some poor video manipulation—but any tampering would, admittedly, have been done on North Korea's end. That didn't, though, stop the KFA from posting it.

While Seilheimer maintained that the government in no way has any control over the content they do or do not choose put out, the reality is that, by virtue of coming from official DPRK sources, everything they're working with has already been explicitly pre-approved.

Of course, it's incredibly unlikely that unintelligible videos and glorified photos of the Dear Leader are going to do much to alter the Western mindset regarding North Korea. At least, not for the better. So in that respect, although contradictory and hyperbolic, their efforts at "educating" the public aren't doing any real harm, as far as we know.

Still, this attempt at applying North Korean propaganda techniques to a Western audience is equally fascinating and terrifying, particularly for the depths of denial it requires. Which, come to think of it, is just one more thing they share in common with their beloved Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The fourth and fifth moons of Pluto have officially been named Kerberos and Styx, respectively. The Earth's moon is still named fucking "Aiden."

Researchers have found that merely by manipulating whether or not a newborn common lizard gets fed right away, they can change the entire trajectory of the lizard's subsequent life and behavior. Obviously this also applies to human children, which means that by the time you start sending them to test prep for preschool admissions, you've already missed your chance. Better give them away and start over.

ExaroNews a British investigative web site, has just published the full transcript of a secretly recorded meeting between media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the staff of The Sun, a U.K. tabloid owned by News Corp., in which Murdoch admitted that he was aware for decades that journalists from his newspapers had been bribing both police and public officials.

According to the site (which is behind a paywall), the meeting took place in a boardroom at The Sun's headquarters in East London with Murdoch at the head of the table. Present were nearly two dozen executives and reporters from The Sun, who had been arrested on allegations of illegal newsgathering practices.

In the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that shut down the News of the World—the Sun's sister title—News Corp. established a management and standards committee (MSC) with the assistance of Linklaters, a law firm, in order to gather any evidence of purported wrongdoing on the part of its reporters and hand it over to the police.

The Sun staffers were irate over Murdoch's decision to supply mass internal communications to the police "that had betrayed confidential sources, some of whom were public officials who received no payment for information," reports ExaroNews.

The journalists felt that News Corp. had turned them into "scapegoats." It was with that mindset that some entered the room with hidden digital recorders.

As the meeting began, Murdoch came across as angry at the authorities and said his newspaper group had been "picked on."

Graham Dudman, The Sun’s former managing editor, began by telling Murdoch that everyone in the room was loyal to the company up until their arrest:

One thing that everybody in this room shares – everybody in this room shares – whether we are 20-something, 30-something, 40-something, 50-something or 60-something, is that we were arrested, thrown into police cells, treated as common criminals in front of our children, our families, and our neighbours, and our friends and our colleagues, for doing nothing more than the company expected of us – nothing.

"I’m just as annoyed as you are at the police, and you’re directing it at me instead, but never mind," Murdoch responded, with no small bit of sympathy for himself:

"And if you want to accuse me of a certain amount of panic, there’s some truth in that. But it was very, very— I don’t know— it’s hard for you to remember it, it was such— but it was— I was under personal siege – not that that mattered – but it was—the whole place was— all the Press were screaming and yelling, and we might have gone too far in protecting ourselves. And you were the victims of it. It’s not enough for me to say you’ve got my sympathy. But you do have my total support. But go ahead, please.”

In response, Dudman asked what assurances Murdoch could offer about the individual's future at News International in the event that staffers go to court or are convicted.

"I’ve been told that I must not give guarantees, but I can give you something," said Murdoch, asking staffers to "just trust me":

"RM: “Yeah, but emotional support is not enough. I’ve got to do more. I mean, at least, everybody will be paid. You’re all innocent until proven guilty. What you’re asking is, what happens if some of you are proven guilty? What afterwards? I’m not allowed to promise you- I will promise you continued health support- but your jobs – I’ve got to be careful what comes out – but frankly, I won’t say it, but just trust me. Okay?”"

It's at this point that Murdoch acknowledges that illegal newsgathering practices were a long-standing part of the culture (emphasis added):

I guarantee you that [medical support] will continue. And I will do everything in my power to give you total support, even if you’re convicted and get six months or whatever. I think it’s just outrageous, but—and I don’t know of anybody, or anything, that did anything that wasn’t being done across Fleet Street and wasn’t the culture. And we’re being picked on. I think that it was the old right-wing establishment, [Lord] Puttnam, or worse, the left-wing get-even crowd of Gordon Brown. There was a sort of—we got caught with dirty hands, I guess, with the News of the World, and everybody piled in. It was a get-even time for things that were done with The Sun over the last 40 years, 38 years, whatever it is.

He went further, specifically acknowledging he had long been aware of the News of the World's routine practice of lining the pockets of cops for information:

RM: We’re talking about payments for news tips from cops: that’s been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn’t instigate it....

I remember when I first bought the News of the World, the first day I went to the office… and there was a big wall-safe… And I said, "What’s that for?"

And they said, "We keep some cash in there."

And I said, "What for?"

They said, "Well, sometimes the editor needs some on a Saturday night for powerful friends. And sometimes the chairman [the late Sir William Carr] is doing badly at the tables, (laughter) and he helps himself…"

Throughout the meeting, Murdoch tried to shift blame to officials: "But why are the police behaving in this way? It’s the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing." Murdoch also promised revenge. That vow came during an exchange with Geoff Webster, The Sun’s deputy editor, who referenced police corruption:

GW: Keir Starmer, the head of the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], making a statement today which relates to the Savile inquiry and historic sexual offences and all the rest of it, also includes children. The Met Police have got 13 coppers dedicated to chasing paedophiles, and they’ve got nigh-on 200 looking at us. And the support staff that goes with that 200 will be at least another 100.

RM: Yeah, I’ve heard bigger figures… They’ve had waves of people come in. The second wave has knocked over the first wave. It goes on, and on, and on. It doesn’t help you to know that the police are incompetent.

GW: It would be nice to hit back when we can.

RM: We will, we will.

The mood of the meeting, which began angry, turned sorrowful, reports ExaroNews, when Deidre Sanders, the Sun's "agony aunt" (advice columnist) began to speak. Sanders had been a source of emotional support for staffers during the ordeal and she read a letter written by the wife of a Sun journalist.

The heart-wrenching letter details the effects of her family after her husband was arrested:

After he’d been led away the police went into our house, room by room, looking for evidence. By then I was comforting my two-year-old grand-daughter, who was a witness to her granddad being led away to prison. The police left with all our old video-tapes: ‘If you can’t prove what’s on it, we have to take it,’ and a small bag of expenses sheets and letters from the editor etc. Seven hours later, after most of the TV crews had gone, he came home shattered by the unending questions, as well as by the betrayal at the hands of the MSC.

The letter goes on:

And one 15-year-old girl has had her hair fall out in clumps because of the stress. Characters have changed. There have been suicide attempts. For what? A hideous political game: for what end? To save News International’s integrity, put way before the well-being of its employees. They deserve better, these are… not the debris. They’ve been on the firing line, literally for you, and have loved every minute. Those people will never come back, they’ve been lost forever.

In response, Murdoch directs the blame at the lawyers he employed in order to keep the blame out of the executive suite:

Thank you very much. That’s very moving… I’ll go and shove it down the throat of the company lawyers. That was the most ups—

[Sun executive sobs.]

It’s a very, very moving letter. Alright?

Another revelation from the meeting, besides Murdoch's self of victimization and thirst for vengeance, is an indication of his succession plan. He laid that out in response to a question from Dudman, the Sun's former managing editor, making it clear that his son James Murdoch is not in the picture.

GD: “Will the company’s support vanish overnight if you’re not here?”

RM: “Yes—If I wasn’t here, the decision would be— Well, it will either be with my son, Lachlan, or with Robert Thomson [News Corporation chief executive]. And you don’t have any worries about either of them.”

Got that in your digital recorders? Nothing to worry about there.

UPDATE: A spokesperson for NewsCorp offered the following statement about Murdoch's comments during the meeting:

"No other company has done as much to identify what went wrong, compensate the victims, and ensure the same mistakes do not happen again. The unprecedented co-operation granted by News Corporation was agreed unanimously by senior management and the board, and the MSC continues to co-operate under the supervision of the courts. Rupert Murdoch has shown understandable empathy with the staff and families affected and will assume they are innocent until and unless proven guilty."

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

[Image via Getty]

Jay-Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail is not so much an album as a co-branded multimedia content delivery platform, Presented By Samsung™ Galaxy™. He announced it, after all, during an epic commercial for the phone, and Samsung is giving away a million copies to people who download a special app by July 4th. But now another, more unsettling use for the new album has become clear: It's a massive data-mining operation. Fans used to obsess over album liner notes; now they freak out about terms-of-service.

I read this and........"Naw I'm cool" pic.twitter.com/x8fXPG1tvC

— Killer Mike (@KillerMikeGTO) July 2, 2013

Occupy-supporting Atlanta rapper Killer Mike noted on Twitter yesterday that when he tried to download the Magna Carta app—which has racked up more than a half million downloads, according to Billboard—it requested some oddly intrusive permissions from your Android phone. Why does Jay-Z need your GPS location? Is he going to cruise by on a platinum-coated jet ski, personally chucking out copies of the album to people who downloaded the app?

What the NSA needs to do, clearly, is start giving away Jay-Z albums. People will be lining up to turn their metadata over.

In a blog post today, Twitter announced that they're "experimenting with new ways of targeting ads," which is their way of saying they're planning to track you around the web—even when you leave Twitter—and relay that information to advertisers to craft better ads. Here's how to opt out.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Twitter started experimenting with this kind of off-site tracking a year ago, only then it wasn't explicitly opt-out. Twitter already uses things like Follow buttons and social widgets on websites to see where its logged in users go after they leave Twitter itself, but now they're putting it in print, and that's actually a good thing.

To turn off Twitter's new tracking:

1. Log in to Twitter and visit your account settings page.
2. Uncheck the box that says "Tailor Twitter based on my recent website visits."
3. Uncheck the box that says "Tailor ads based on information shared by ad partners."
4. Scroll down and click "Save Changes."

If you have Do Not Track enabled in your web browser, you'll see the checkbox like mine above that indicates it's enabled and neither of the boxes should be checked.

On the bright side, at least Twitter is being above board with its changes (unlike Facebook when they started doing the same thing)—they say that users won't see more ads on Twitter, just better ones, as a result of the tracking.

At the same time, it's one thing to use data collected while someone uses your service to improve your advertising—it's another to continue collecting data when someone leaves your service in order to improve your advertising. Still, opting out is easy, and we suggest you do it as soon as possible. For more tips on how to protect yourself from this kind of tracking, check out our guide to stopping everyone from tracking you on the web, and the best browser tools to protect your privacy.

Experimenting with New Ways to Tailor Ads | Twitter Blog via Boing Boing

Americans are currently drowning in student debt. Debates over this issue tend to descend into arguments over whether college is "worth it." Meanwhile, debt-hobbled graduates scrounge unsuccessfully for living-wage jobs. Oregon has a better idea.

What do you get when you combine no money down with income-based repayment and a self-sustaining system? A pretty good fucking idea, by all appearances. The WSJ reports that the state of Oregon is considering enacting a plan that would allow kids to attend state schools for no money up front— in return, they would agree to pay 3% of their annual salary for the next 24 years. That means easier access to college for everyone, plus college graduates that would not come out saddled with huge debt payments. It's Social Security for college education, more or less.

And the math seems to work out: the state estimates that the program "would cost the state more than $9 billion over 24 years until enough students had graduated and were paying into the system to cover its outlays." At that point, it would become self-sustaining. They also estimate that students would pay back the cost of their educations in an average of 20 years, making their final four years of payment a profit to the college fund.

Sounds better than what we're doing now, at least. Do it, hippies.

[WSJ. Photo: Denise Mattox/ Flickr]

Perhaps you are under the impression that if you do not use email or the telephone, both of which we now know subject you to government surveillance, you can fly under the spies' radar. Perhaps you think a postcard sent to your sick grandmother in Ohio is free from bureaucratic scrutiny. You are wrong.

According to a just-published New York Times story, the American government is keeping track of your snail mail the same way it's keeping track of all your other channels of communication. Under two programs known as "mail covers" and the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program (MICT), the United States photographs the exterior of every piece of mail sent—" about 160 billion pieces last year"—and then saves the photos for review for an indeterminate amount of time.

Though they've existed for years—MICT was created after 2001's mailed anthrax attacks killed five people—the mail surveillance programs came to light last month, when the FBI referenced them in their investigations into ricin-tainted letters sent to President Obama and Michael Bloomberg. And while a federal judge must sign off on governmental wiretapping requests, the only thing authorities need to do to check out your mail is ask the U.S. Postal Service, which "rarely denies a request," according to the Times.

Perhaps you're thinking, "Well, at least the government can only take a picture of my letters. They can't just open my mail." You're wrong there, too, thanks to Dubya.

Law enforcement officials need warrants to open the mail, although President George W. Bush asserted in a signing statement in 2007 that the federal government had the authority to open mail without warrants in emergencies or foreign intelligence cases.

Basically, if you've got a secret/illegal thing to tell someone in today's America, best to do it by carrier pigeon or smoke signal. Good luck.

[Image via AP]

A Wells Fargo branch in Montebello, California did its part to make one cancer patient’s life a smidge more hellish last Friday, when tellers mistook mild-mannered lymphoma patient Joe Jaramillo for a serial robber nicknamed “the Surgical Mask Bandit," and attempted to have him arrested.

Like the creatively festooned bandit of legend, the L.A. Times reports, Jaramillo walked into his local Wells Fargo wearing a light blue surgical mask, though his was to prevent him from succumbing to infection while receiving chemotherapy, rather than to facilitate the illegal removal of cash from banks. Jaramillo was also wearing a baseball cap to protect his hairless head, which, to be fair, is usually a no-no in banks.

After Jaramillo explained to the teller assisting him that he was wearing the mask due to his cancer treatment, and provided his government I.D. and, perhaps most crucially, did not attempt to rob the bank, employees refused to give him money from his account, fearing he was there to rob the bank.

Soon, six police officers (notified via silent alarm) had Jaramillo surrounded and instructed him to put his hands over his head. Jaramillo later described this moment as “so embarrassing."

In a statement, Wells Fargo apologized for mistaking Jaramillo for an armed and dangerous criminal during his otherwise uneventful trip to the bank, though it couldn't resist adding that the mask and hat he was wearing did match the description of the serial robber. (In images released by the FBI, the Surgical Mask Bandit also wears gloves and a hooded sweatshirt and carries a large blue duffel bag filled with stolen money, but whatever.)

As a Sowwy about your cancer and also for trying to arrest you, the bank pledged to make “a $5,000 donation to the cancer charity of Mr. Jaramillo’s choice." Jaramillo reportedly plans to donate the funds to the American Cancer Society.

And then immediately hit it up in a robbery, most likely.

The Perfect Crime Bandit.

[L.A. Times // Image via CBS/KCAL9]

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

Big dogs need a lot of exercise — far more than most of us humans can give them. What do they expect us to do? Run? Throw a ball? There are just too many things we need to be watching on Netflix. But what if they could get their exercise while giving us a fun ride at the same time? Enter the Dog Powered Scooter.

These babies, which are basically just Willy Scooters fitted with a clever attachment, start at about $600. You stand on the thing while your dog runs along side and exhausts himself. Here is one happy pitty taking his owner a ride at the speed of almost 20 miles per hour.

Via TheDogs

There are a few kinds of ethically depraved humans that the animal-rights activists behind the Vegan Sellout List will not tolerate. One type is the "paleo-terrorist," those bloody-fingered 21st-century neanderthals who gorge on innocent murder victims, quite literally, for breakfast. Another strain is the "haughty, nose-turning carnist," those sniveling foie-gras elitists who dismiss veganism as a trendy affect of socio-economic privilege.

But perhaps the most disgraceful is a combination of the two, the soul-blackened person who knows better than to participate in the senseless slaughter of birds and pigs and cows and ducks and baby lambs, but does it anyway: the EX-VEGAN.

That is where the Vegan Sellout List comes in handy. Summoning "the spirits of the billions murdered," the Animal Liberation Frontline site is a user-submitted database that aims to shame former vegans by publicly identifying them online, thereby exposing them as filthy, hypocritical motherfuckers. Or, at least, ruining slightly adjusting their Google imprints.

But what seems to be an unintended consequence is that the AFL has inadvertently generated some truly excellent character sketches, entries that read like magnificent short stories, or fables, or epitaphs.

A few examples (we've abbreviated their last names):

Dave R.
Aberdeen, WA
Crusty punk, violent drunk, big part of the scene but has secret barbecues.

Secret barbecues!

Jessica P.
Seattle, WA
Sad because all her vegan friends snub her

:(

Taylor W.
Newton, MA
Ex-vegan with short kids.

This, it seems, is supposed to be catty. But trying to shame someone for having short kids is like ridiculing a person for having "old parents," or "one husband," or "a small sink."

Tommy Dumont
Irvine, CA
Traded in his vegan ethic for a cheap leather jacket and jheri curls.

Jheri curls!

To clarify: the Vegan Sellout List is not a new conceit. In fact, the idea has been wafting around the internet at least since 2004, when it was called the Veg Break List and initially hosted at the domain, impassionedinsurrection.info.

The Veg Break List was ripped off the Edgebreak List, a master directory of scene kids who'd "broken edge." Founded in 2002, the How's Your Edge outgrowth began as a satirical gag but gradually morphed into a something so nasty and self-righteous that its creator, Brian Murphy, shut it down after four years.

But while Murphy was still managing the Edgebreak archive, a stranger approached him about starting a vegan offshoot, which he openly mocked. In a 2007 post, Murphy, who'd been vegan for a decade, recalled:

Back when I was running the Edgebreak list, some kid contacted me about doing a Vegan Break list. This was probably in 2004. To me, his concept was the lamest idea around. No only was it lame, but I found it to be a little stupid. I don't recall Minor Threat writing lyrics about the "rules" of veganism. In fact, I could have sworn the concept of vegansim is hundreds of years old. Who is this kid to say who is and isn't vegan. Or even list them.

Now in hindsight, the edgebreak list was on that juvenile tip too. Regardless, I ended up telling the kid I thought his idea was not good. He then got real mad at me and said he was going to add me to the Vegan break list. At the time, there were 7-8 names on this list. Mine was never added. Believe me, I looked for it.

Amusingly, the anonymous kid copied-and-pasted the submission form directly from the Edgebreak List. A screenshot:

It might be difficult to decipher, but the Veg Break List's basic four guidelines were to avoid submitting someone who: "1) Was never vegan; 2) Was only vegetarian; 3) Was vegan less than a month; 4) Is still vegan."

Those rules are almost identical to Vegan Sellout List's 2013 criteria, posted on the site's mission page: "Please do not post names that fall under the following categories: 1) Was never vegan; 2) Pretended to be vegan; 3) Was vegan for 3 days then sold out; 4) SOMEONE WHO IS STILL VEGAN."

So the Vegan Sellout List has more or less been around since 2004, recycled down to its submission-form verbiage. But without this deliberately stolen concept, we wouldn't have this accidental genius:

Jill M.
Los Angeles, CA
Claimed she binged-ate tofu pies!

[Ex-Vegans.com]

Take away timing, ego, innovation, and opportunity and what you are left with is bullshit. And bullshit is a dead deer, a dead car, and the smell of gunpowder and imminent media disaster.

Our ears were still ringing from the gunshots. He had emptied his entire clip into the writhing animal seconds earlier.

"Do you want this?" the California highway patrolman asked as he dropped the buck’s bloody carcass in front of the equally lifeless, $2 million prototype automobile. This would be Tesla, the world’s first electric sports car, and its introduction to The New York Times and the CBS Evening News. Dead and standing in a pool of blood reflected in its burgundy metallic paint.

We’d been making a much better impression just a few minutes earlier…

(This section is excerpted from the book "Reboot: The (Previously) Untold Story Of Tesla's Electric Sports Car" by author David Vespremi, the former Director of Public Relations for the company who recently won a lawsuit against the company.)

The on-ramp from Woodside Road to Interstate 280 North is essentially a long sweeper with a pronounced kink at the bottom that gradually opened up as the onramp rose in elevation to meet the freeway. As I approached it at moderate speed, I knew that the instant torque of the electric motor would allow me to break traction, at least momentarily, and drift the rear end of the Tesla Roadster prototype in a bit of a powerslide before I would need to counter-steer a bit and accelerate back out of the slide.

I also knew that executed precisely, this little bit of showboating was generally a sure-fire move for impressing upon journalists that this car was in fact something special. Far from a sluggish boat anchor that would need to make excuses for itself in comparison to its gasoline powered counterparts ('yes I'm slow, unwieldy and bordering on narcoleptic to drive, but did I mention how green I am...?") The Roadster was lithe, alive, and deliciously playful.

My passenger this brisk morning was the esteemed David Pogue of the New York Times, whom I had met for the first time just twenty minutes earlier in Tesla's lobby. Following behind in a rented van and capturing our every move on high-def video was a national TV news crew from the CBS nightly news (Ed: You can see the aired version of that story here). The plan was to do a little vehicle-to-vehicle filming from the open side door of the van and maybe take a few beauty shots at Filolli Gardens along Cañada Road.

Along the way, I would feed David as much information about the car and the company behind it as he cared to hear. As Tesla's PR guy, I knew the drill well and had done it countless times before, and I also knew the stakes were high to have it go flawlessly.

This particular prototype I was driving, Engineering Prototype #2, was a bright burgundy red example, and one of just two working prototypes in existence at the time (circa summer of 2007). For this reason, it was also valued in the neighborhood of $2M and had required me to submit to a background check for driving privileges for which even the company's CEO and co-founder, Martin Eberhard, wouldn't qualify owing to a couple of points on his license.

What I didn't know that morning was what, exactly, I was driving.

Allow me to clarify. An awful lot of how modern cars drive is dictated by several onboard computers that oversee the mechanical components. The computers help regulate how much power the engine is able to generate at any given moment when called upon, how much braking force is applied to which wheel, and how steering and shifting inputs are synced to these other sub systems.

This is all well and good, but as drivers, we have the reassurance that comes from knowing that despite all this computerized oversight, there are still the same four, six or eight pistons generating the power, a box of mechanical gears sending it to the wheels, and generally some mechanical connection between the driver inputs like the steering, throttle and brakes that have existed for the better part of two hundred years now.

The Tesla Roadster, by contrast, is essentially a giant computer with a 900-pound battery pack sitting just behind the driver’s head. It has more in common with an iPhone than the car sitting in most people’s driveways. In a normal car, it might be a nerve wracking experience to suddenly lose all engine power, but you’d still have fully functional steering and brakes to get you to the side of the road safely.

But in the Tesla Roadster, when the computer crashed, nearly everything went with it – power and brakes – the truly important things. Given this, the single most critical point of focus for a driver like me behind the wheel of an early prototype was an innocuous little touch screen display just above my left knee and out of view from the passenger seat.

This screen, known as the VMS (Vehicle Management System) display in Tesla parlance, or the blue screen of death, to those of us on the sales and marketing team that actually had to drive the cars in traffic, was like a really buggy, virus-infested version of Windows that would crash or freeze up for no apparent reason at the most inopportune times.

The engineers loved it, because through it, and the computerized interface it was connected to, it provided ready access to every critical system used in powering and driving the car –from the power steering to the regenerative brakes to the motor and battery controls to the air conditioning – the EPS logged and controlled it all. Of course, when the EPS crashed or froze, short of a reboot, the car suddenly became a giant paperweight that may or may not be moving at the time.

The only real safeguard against potentially being stranded, or worse, was keeping an eye out for error codes on the EPS. Sounds easy enough, right? On a typical car that we are all accustomed to driving, we might see two or three check lights on the dashboard alerting us to whether the oil was critically low, the airbag sensor detected a fault, or the car was due for service. The seriousness of the warning would dictate, what, if any action one might need to take right there and then.

The EPS screen was another matter entirely.

It regularly spit out error codes varying from marginal to critical importance so fast it was like what might come out of a courtroom reporter transcribing an auctioneer. And that's when it was working.

Add to this was the uncomfortable fact that Engineering Prototype 2 was in Tesla speak “a shared resource,” meaning the engineering team would have it in a thousand pieces any given night and by two, three or four a.m. they were to have it reassembled into a functioning car as to not render it catastrophically undriveable for marketing/sales use in the morning.

Did I mention that engineering and sales/marketing, by virtue of constantly stepping on each other’s toes, didn’t have the most cordial of working relationships?

While no one from either team (openly) wished death or grave bodily injury on their counterpart on the other team, one often had the sense that a wheel falling off from missing lug nuts was, from the perspective of the night crew, not an unpardonable oversight. Between 6-8 a.m. the car was generally hastily washed down by an intern putting in some sweat equity for resume material (this season it was Grif Harsh, the son of Meg Whitman, eBay's former CEO and California gubernatorial candidate). And hopefully, someone, anyone, would have remembered to plug it in long enough to give it at least a partial charge before it would become a sales and promotions work horse at 8am.

By the time I retrieved the keys from a metal box secured to the wall at the back of the shop, I would say a little prayer that the guys wrenching on it the night before had enough lucidity left (after a night of pounding Red Bulls) to put the thing back together without too many important parts left behind on the shop floor.

I would generally assume the alignment would be off, and this particular morning I could already confirm that the car was pulling to the right side and crab-walking a bit from having its suspension disassembled and reassembled without anyone checking to make sure the wheels were all pointed in roughly the right direction relative. Fortunately for me, nothing would appear to be amiss to Mr. Pogue or to the news van following behind.

That morning, like every morning, I was also blissfully unaware of what version of the software had been loaded into the car. Engineers often installed new, buggy versions whenever they tore the car apart and reassembled it – which was virtually every day. The car could be making give or take a hundred horsepower more or less than the advertised 200, it may or may not have ABS enabled, it may or may not have traction control enabled, and its energy consumption could give a real world range of plus or minus a hundred miles from the indicated display.

So back to that onramp.

Playing it relatively safe, I goosed it just enough to break traction at the rear and, as the back of the car began to swing wide, I gave it a bit of opposite lock on the steering wheel, dialed in some more power as the car straightened back out, and rocketed onto the freeway, rendering the camera van a tiny spec in the rear view mirror.

Based on his wide eyed grin, Mr. Pogue seemed to be enthralled with the experience. And then it happened. The proverbial blue screen of death as the EPS froze.

Doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 mph and merging into the fast lane, the prototype lost all power functions. Now, this wasn't the first time I had to think fast behind the wheel of the two EPs. I had a spectacular near spin in my very first outing in EP2 along with a multitude of failures to start. I'd had my close calls with the law, including a 3 a.m. drift session in San Rafael prepping the car for its television debut racing a Ferrari in a Microsoft Forza video game commercial.

I'd even gotten the car completely sideways with a customer riding shotgun on Michigan Drive in Chicago. We'd had 3 and 4 a.m. photo shoots in some of the more colorful back alleys of Williamsburg and Harlem in NYC that could have gone horribly wrong, but somehow didn't.

But a full power loss at speed was something altogether new. I guess I missed the code that said stop accelerating immediately, and the EPS, all safety systems off, shut down, essentially buffering itself into oblivion when it could no longer cope with the litany of error codes being thrown.

With the average in-flight magazine writer or foreign journalist riding along, I might have come clean right then and there, and apologetically indicated that the car had essentially given up the ghost and we would momentarily be gliding to a halt if we managed to avoid being taken out by a speeding SUV. But this wasn't just any morning, and the New York Times and CBS together was a big deal for Tesla. Make that a very big deal. So, I made the call to bluff.

As the car began to rapidly lose forward momentum, I signaled right and played like I was taking an exit for a scenic overlook – maybe setting up for some impromptu b-roll beauty footage for the benefit of the guys in the camera van. The brakes suddenly as effective as pressing blocks of wood against the tires, I let the goofy alignment carry the car right until we were doing 50, then 40, 30 and 20 mph up the Farm Hill Road off-ramp just one exit from where we had merged on.

As the car continued to slowly glide to a halt, I frantically pushed through the reboot sequence to cycle the EPS, smiling for David’s sake as beads of sweat glistened on my forehead, hoping he wouldn't catch on.

When the prototype finally ground to a halt on the shoulder, a few hundred yards from the top of the uphill onramp, I knew the gig was now undeniably up. It was time to come clean.

"Are we stopping here?” he finally inquired with a bemused expression, very much stating the obvious.

“Yeah, ummm, we’ll be back underway momentarily,” I stammered, trying to feign an air of calm. “I just need to check back with home base on scheduling..." (OK, maybe not coming entirely clean just yet).

No sooner had I pulled the cell-phone-to-the-ear trick then did a loud speaker put an end to the ruse once and for all.

"Move the car," it commanded.

I looked in the rear view mirror to see a CHP cruiser, light bar lit up in red, inching closer.

"Move the car now or I'm moving it for you. You can't park there," the voice boomed.

The thought of the cruiser bashing the back of the prototype Roadster's carbon fiber bumper with its bull bar was too much to take. Before I could even suggest a course of action, Mr. Pogue, one foot already out the door, was signaling to the camera crew in the van to come over.

He knew what was up without my saying a word and within seconds we were huffing and puffing away pushing the 2,800 pound Roadster uphill the last few hundred yards to get it off the exit ramp, the police cruiser pacing us from behind.

Wiping the sweat from our brows and gasping for breath as we crested the hill, a picture postcard idyllic scene greeted us. In a field of tall grass were two deer grazing, the hillside opposite lit in a warm glow from the morning sun. Tranquility realized in a moment.

And then just as quickly, snatched from us as one of the two deer, apparently spooked by the arrival of a shiny red wheeled object and a bunch of gasping men, bolted from the field across the road, which had moments ago been empty, straight into the side of a speeding minivan.

Predictably, the van, now featuring a deep deer-sized indentation on the driver’s side fender emerged the clear winner.

The police car that had been behind us slowly pulled alongside and an officer emerged, naively, I thought, to render aid to the motorist and/or deer. Instead, he approached the deer, drew his gun, and shot it.

To our horror, the deer continued to writhe and spasm. The officer paused for a moment and proceeded to unload his entire clip into the deer until we could hear the empty pistol clicking with no more rounds left to give.

Re-holstering his weapon, he then grabbed the deer by the antlers and dragged its now lifeless body to just a few feet from the Roadster's front bumper, dropping its head unceremoniously on the asphalt before our feet.

"Go ahead and take that if you want it," were his parting words as he got back in his car, turned off the light bar, and drove off.

Staring the deer corpse in the face, its mate having bounded away with the first shots fired, I turned to Mr. Pogue and suggested that this might be a good time to break for lunch. I would arrange for the pick up of the lifeless car and possibly its antler adorned kindred spirit.

David hopped in the van and took off. Back on the cell, I called home base. "Hi Phil, it's David. Could you send the van over towards Cañada College. I'm going to need a lift back to the shop...."

This story originally appeared in Reboot: The (Previously) Untold Story Of Tesla's Electric Sports Car" by author David Vespremi. The author wants everyone to know that the price for the first part includes the other updates.

Email us with the subject line "Syndication" if you would like to see your own story syndicated here on Jalopnik.

Photo Credits: AP, Getty Images

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As nations continue arguing over who might take in American fugitive Edward Snowden, the Ecuadorian embassy in London claims it discovered a bug hidden in ambassador Ana Alban's office.

An Oklahoma man who caught a burglar breaking into his home wasn't content to simply scare the criminal away; instead, the man bum-rushed the burglar, pinned him to the ground, hogtied him, and left him in the front yard for police to find because the homeowner was late for work.

The incident took place early Wednesday morning, when the homeowner and his nine-months-pregnant wife were awoken by the sound of shattering glass coming from their daughter's room.

"That folding chair was in her bedroom, shattered glass all over the place, and I said, 'A raccoon didn't do that.' And he was just like, 'Oh God,'" the man's wife, Denay Houston, told News 9.

The couple heard something in their garage, so Houston's husband went and waited patiently by their front-door for the burglar to emerge. “Then he bum-rushed him,” Houston said.

Houston's husband pinned the burglar, later identified as Robert Cole, to the ground and hog tied him, with Cole's hands and feet tied behind his back. “[My husband] was just like (nods head), kind of like the head nod, like, 'Okay, what's done is done,'" Houston said. "He's like a super-hero."

Houston's husband, whose name wasn't released, called 911 and then told Houston that he was going to work and that she should watch over the hog-tied criminal until police arrived.

"That's just the type of person he is, you know? That's just the type of person he is. Business is business. 'I got to take care of business, he's safe, the police are coming, I got to go,'" Houston said.

Police arrived not long after Houston's husband left. Cole was arrested and faces one charge of first degree burglary.

[via Fark]

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

To commemorate the 51st birthday of Thetan Master and extraordinary lover Tom Cruise, we've taken on the enormous task of cobbling together videos of Hollywood's strangest alien just being...normal. Sure, it’s easy to find crazy clips from Scientology videos, Matt Lauer interviews, and Oprah’s couch, but what about the real Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, the private guy who loves cooking spaghetti carbonara, flying planes, and fencing? What’s that guy doing tonight? Probably the same thing the rest of us would do on our first birthday after a public and messy divorce: enjoying a quiet normal night in.

So happy birthday, Tom, the normalest guy of them all. These are for you.

In a September 30, 1983 appearance on the Merv Griffin Show (post-Risky Business but pre-All The Right Moves), Cruise tells the Great American Normal Sibling Story: he has three sisters, he wished they were brothers, but he loves them so much now. Just like you and your sisters.

Gossip columnist and TV personality Rona Barrett asks Cruise in 1984 what he saw in the mirror growing up. More specifically, she asks him whether or not he thought he had all the physical “accoutrements that were necessary in order to possibly think of an acting career in films.” Like any normal person, he’s horrified by the question and responds in a normal way.

The success of Top Gun in 1986 was all Cruise needed to land an interview with Jimmy Carter—not that Jimmy Carter—but this Jimmy Carter. Cruise, like a patient normal person, looks around awkwardly as Carter barks directions to the camera operators.

Tom Cruise Just Tolerates Oprah’s Wet Pants Reference (1988)

It couldn’t have been easy to be Cruise in 1988. Promoting Cocktail, Rain Man, and filming Born on the 4^th of July must have been exhausting. And then you go on Oprah to talk about your very serious film and she opens with a question about your wet pants. Normal response? Embarrassment.

Doing press for Rain Man, Cruise faces prying questions about his personal life and newfound celebrity. He calmly but firmly tells his interviewer he lives a “very normal life” that includes going to the movies, the gas station, and grocery shopping. He does not go to theChateau Marmont for dinner, okay?

Tom Cruise Just Laughs at Dustin Hoffman’s Shriveled Dick (1989)

In this 1989 Danish television joint interview with Dustin Hoffman, Hoffman offers up his “little shriveled peepee” for viewing as Cruise laughs hysterically and slaps his knee. An absolutely normal response to anyone, especially Rain Man, talking about erections.

When Jim Whaley asks Cruise in 1992, “Would you wait three years or however long it took to get the next right script?” a pleasant Cruise tells him, very normally, “you can always find something and create it and make it, you know, what you want.” Cruise, like all Americans, knows jobs are sometimes shitty and that unemployment can be "ouch."

Tom Cruise Just Enjoys Rosie O'Donnell (1998)

In the 1990s, Cruise had a perfectly normal relationship with Rosie O’Donnell, playing along with her show’s “My Tommy” charade for years. In a sweet and normal gesture of friendship and fun—now relegated to the What the fucking fuck? annals of television history—it made for some very normal viewing.

Tom Cruise Just Wants the Soup and the Salad (2013)

And in case this last year of Tom Cruise news has taught you anything, Cruise wants you to forget. So this April, he went on Jimmy Kimmel and, while being a great sport and a totally normal dude, dramatically reenacts the most normal question of them of them all: “Is there way to get the soup and the salad?

TOP IMAGE: Sam Woolley

Late Wednesday, rescue workers found the body of Randy Udall, Senator Mark Udall's brother, in a remote area in the Rocky Mountains. Udall went missing over a week ago after embarking on a multi-day solo hike in Wyoming.

California lawmakers today approved a bill that would allow transgender public school students to choose which restrooms they use and which sports teams they join based on their gender identity rather than their chromosomal gender. The bill is now headed to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature.

The state already prohibited discrimination against transgender students, but this bill, AB -1266, clarifies exactly what legislators expect from educators: "This bill would require that a pupil be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records."

Opponents of the bill say they're worried transgender students' rights are overshadowing other students' rights to privacy. "It is not all about discrimination," Republican state Senator Jim Nielsen said. "Elementary and secondary students of California—our most impressionable, our most vulnerable—now may be subjected to some very difficult situations."

Despite the critics, it's worthwhile to note that the Massachusetts Department of Education instituted a similar policy for its transgender students earlier this year [PDF], and to the very same kind of conservative protestations. Months later, there's been no cause for concern there thus far.

[Image via Flickr user LeafLanguages]