The Guardian, lately under heavy pressure from the British government, will be teaming up with the New York Times to produce more stories based on Edward Snowden's leaked information about the NSA. Good.

Quintuple threat (actress/comedian/musician/tap dancer/awesome person) Charlene deGuzman stars in I Forgot My Phone — a short film she wrote about life in these modern, soul-sucking, smartphone-saturated times.

Like this if you watched it on your phone.

(Oh, and here's a fun fact from the film's director, Miles Crawford, that fits perfectly with its theme of alienation: "Between shots on an upcoming video. I asked my good friend to pretend to propose to his girlfriend over and over and over. They don’t talk to me anymore.")

[H/T: Boing Boing]

Welcome to Thatz Not Okay, a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Please send your questions (max: 200 words) to caity@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

My name is Elizabeth, which has any number of nicknames. I've been called Beth, Betty, Eli, Lizzy and Liz, but my only accepted nickname is Biz. Some people prefer not to call me Biz and choose Elizabeth, which is fine because that's my name. But on occasion, there are people who just decide to assign me another nickname of their preference. Usually, I can correct it immediately (“Actually, it's Biz. Yeah, I know, still using a childhood name at 35 years.”)

While for the most part these new forms are unwelcome, I have to admit I've occasionally accepted different nicknames for different reasons: "La Eli" when I was in Spain because I'd rather not be called "Bees", “Liz” by a terrifying high school history teacher (who I wouldn't dare correct), “LizBiz” by the ski team teacher (who, overhearing the history teacher wasn't sure if it was Liz or Biz and would mumble this hybrid perhaps hoping I wouldn't notice—I kept that going for entertainment value), and a couple more people are allowed to call me “Liz” for no particular reason except maybe that they are European and it amused me.

Right now I'm in a pickle. A woman who is pretty smart and powerful wrote me an email addressing me as Liz. We will be in contact more frequently and everyone else in the group knows my nickname except her. I really don't want to embarrass her by not telling her, but I think I'll also embarrass her by telling her. Maybe she already knows and doesn't care. And maybe I should just bite the bullet and accept that people are going to call me whatever the hell they want.

I still haven't figured out how to address this issue by my age. Is that okay?

Dear Bess,

Thatz not okay.

Here’s the good news: We can solve your work problem very quickly. As someone whose nickname is a weird, made-up version of a real name (“C-A-I-T-Y; ‘cavity’ without the ‘v’”), I have some experience with your predicament. If someone addresses you incorrectly over email, the deftest way to correct them is simply to sign your preferred name when you reply. If someone calls you “Miss Jackson,” you can sign your email “Janet.” If someone calls you “Liz,” you sign it “Biz.”

If you never personally introduced yourself to this woman “who is pretty smart and powerful” (WIZARD???) as “Biz,” my guess is that she thought "Biz" was a nickname only your friends had permission to use. And you don’t say she just a friend. You don’t say she just a friend.

Now that we got that cleared up:

“Biz” is so far down on the list of known nicknames for Elizabeth that it’s basically like you’ve plucked a word from the English language at random, and decided to call yourself that. This particular word happens to consist of some of the letters in your given name, rearranged.

For that reason, saying, “My only accepted nickname is Biz” is like saying “My only accepted nickname is Buttons.” That’s fine that you go by that—we’ll all call you Buttons—but no one is going to guess that /ˈbʌtnz/ is the arbitrary collection of mouth sounds you have chosen to represent you. No one is going to say, “Nice to meet you, Elizabeth—or do you go by Lil Bits?" You can’t get mad that people aren’t remembering to call you by a cat’s name; that’s the risk you take when you make the decision to keep wearing a silly childhood nickname into adulthood.

Some of my relatives still don’t know what my name is. "Caitie"? "Caitlin"? "Cathleen"? Who cares? I know who you mean. Thanks for the savings bond!

It seems to me, Buttons, that you haven’t figured out how to, as you put it, “address the issue,” because, to you, this issue is very compelling. “My-name-is-Elizabeth-but-I-go-by-Biz-but-in-Spain-they-called-me-La-Ellie-and-yes-I-DO-have-European-friends” is your identity. If everyone called you Biz—“MY ONLY ACCEPTED NICKNAME”—without hesitation, what would you talk about? How would people find out you had been to Spain?

If your colleague fails to take the hint after a subtle correction, there’s nothing wrong with (politely) informing her point blank that you actually go by Biz. It only becomes weird and embarrassing if you let her keep calling you by the "wrong" name for months on end and then she finds out your "real" name at a holiday party.

As a rule, though, your name is a much bigger deal to you than it is to other people. Remember this when you feel shy about correcting them (“Oh, you go by Biz? ‘K.”) and the next time you feel tempted to pass off “How to Succeed in Bizness: The Complete Oral History of My Name” as small talk.

I am an avid beer drinker, home brewer, and I also run a small beer blog on the West Coast. Recently, I was having a discussion with my friend about his father who used to brew a strong beer with his own recipe but stopped a few years back. When I asked why his father stopped, my friend said it was because two of his friends died leaving his house while too drunk on the homebrew. I want to ask my friend for the recipe. Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

The time to ask for the recipe would have been before you knew the painful backstory of Dead Man's Brew. Now that you know the history, there’s no graceful way to say to your buddy, “Look, I know this recipe was involved in the death of several family friends, but... it would be a huge help to have it on my blog.”

Your friend’s dad didn’t stop brewing his beer because he got tired of doing it one day. He stopped brewing it because he feels it was directly responsible for deaths of two of his friends. Presumably your friend is aware that you are "an avid beer drinker, home brewer, [and] also run a small beer blog on the West Coast." And yet, even as you grilled him about the beer his dad used to brew, and "Why did he ever stop brewing that beer?" and "Hmm, wow, that beer sounds delicious," and "Oh boy, I do sure love talking about and making beer," he didn’t offer to provide you with the recipe.

There are thousands upon thousands of commercially brewed beers made in this country, and a near-infinite number of potential homebrew recipes. Yet you are acting like you are the Woodward and Bernstein of beer bloggers, hot on the trail of the recipe THEY didn’t want you to see. Why do you have to sample this specific brew? Because it exists? Here is a book full of recipes that exist. From an outside perspective, it would seem that your interest in this beer stems from the fact that it will get you FUCKED UP and possibly kill you. In reality, if this guy’s dad was just an amateur home brewer, he probably wasn’t crafting totally inscrutable, complicated beer. We’re not talking aged cognac barrels in northern Sweden; think more: “I call it Ol’ Red’s Ale because we use to have a dog named Old Red. The ingredients are hops, yeast, and half a bottle of Yuengling. I made it till it killed my friends.”

On that note, it’s not clear from your email whether the friends died in some sort of car accident or simply collapsed in the entryway after imbibing the beer. If the latter, perhaps the recipe is for poison?

Either way, you should probably just accept the fact that (unless your friend or his dad one day offers it to you), this is just going to be one of those thousands of recipes you will never taste.

Though we all know the saying “If it bleeds, it leads on the niche beer blog,” there is no delicate way to say to this guy, “That’s so sad your dad’s friends died but also I don’t care. What’s the recipe?”

Submit your "Thatz Not Okay" questions here (max: 200 words). Art by Jim Cooke / Image via Getty.

Scientists cannot tell you how many animals there are in the world. But we can tell you something more important: which animals are the best.

50. Deer

49. Turkey

48. Cow

47. Turtle

46. Rabbit

45. Cat

44. Zebra

43. Whales (Non-Killer)

42. Alpaca

41. Rhinoceros

40. Yak

39. Wolf

38. Hawk

37. Seal

36. Llama

35. Tiger

34. Armadillo

33. Beaver

32. Camel

31. Cheetah

30. Bear

29. Ape

28. Shark

27. Sloth

26. Chicken

25. Dolphin

24. Parrot

23. Lizard

22. Panther

21. Stingray

20. Porcupine

19. Snake

18. Prairie Dog

17. Moose

16. Killer Whale

15. Flamingo

14. Kangaroo

13. Monkey

12. Lion

11. Hippopotamus

10. Pig

9. Dog

8. Alligator

7. Anteater

6. Rat

5. Elephant

4. Otter

3. Giraffe

2. Goat

1. Platypus

[If your favorite animal is not on this list, it is not among the top 50 animals. Image by Jim Cooke.]

The most surprising aspect of Forbes' list of the world's highest paid models is that the names here don't make more money. Considering that DJ Pauly D earned $13 million within this compilation's very same time frame, the $7.2 million second-highest-grossing figure Miranda Kerr brought in seems low. Also, no Kate Upton.

Forbes methodology draws from "editorial shoots, independent licensing ventures, spokesperson gigs and contracts from beauty and fashion companies from June 2012 to June 2013." The combined earnings for this year's top ten has dropped noticeably from the previous year, from $92.5 to $82.8.

It's possible Victoria's Secret has affected this math, since moving from big fixed packages to incentive-based compensation—six of the top 10 are on the lingerie corporation's payroll. As Forbes puts it, "Victoria’s Secret has ratcheted back over the years, and multi-year agreements have become a rarity."

So are models really making less overall or are there just fewer super-models? Whatever, they're all filthy rich, go Pats:

2013

1. Gisele Bündchen ($42 million)
2. Miranda Kerr ($7.2 million)
3. Adriana Lima ($6 million)
4. Kate Moss ($5.7 million)
5. Liu Wen ($4.3 million)
6. Hilary Rhoda ($4 million)
7. Carolyn Murphy ($3.6 million)
8. Joan Smalls ($3.5 million)
9. Candice Swanepoel ($3.3 million)
10. Lara Stone ($3.2 million)

2012

1. Gisele Bundchen ($45 million)
2. Kate Moss ($9.2 million)
3. Natalia Vodianova ($8.6 million)
4. Adriana Lima ($7.3 million)
5. Doutzen Kroes ($6.9 million)
6. Alessandra Ambrosio ($6.6 million)
7. Miranda Kerr ($4 million)
8. Lara Stone ($3.3 million)
9. Carolyn Murphy ($3.5 million)
10. Candice Swanepoel ($3.1 million)

[Forbes // photo of Adriana Lima by Getty Images Entertainment/Chris Jackson]

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

MORE: Lawyers sign deal to dismiss Paula Deen sexual harassment, discrimination lawsuit in Ga.: http://t.co/eHCkdTupqF -KK

— The Associated Press (@AP) August 23, 2013

Here are two ways to look at director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett's new intensely bloody home-invasion horror flick You're Next:

Option 1. It is a derivative pastiche of ideas and deaths we've seen before, including (and not limited to) elements of Friday the 13^th (murder comes right after sex!), Nightmare on Elm Street (an axe rigged above a door, chopping whoever opens it square in the chest!), Home Alone (nails are hammered through a board, which is then placed under a window, nails up!), Gremlins (death-by-blender!), and The Strangers (that whole home-invasion thing!). It telegraphs Manson Family inspiration even more explicitly than the creepy-crawly The Strangers—some victims' blood gets used to paint, "YOU'RE NEXT" on the walls. The killers wear masks that are meant to be so scary, they become iconic (they're flimsy plastic renderings of a lamb, a wolf, and a tiger). There is a final girl.

Option 2. It is a self-consciously clever pastiche of several elements that we've seen before and loved and keep coming back to watch. And by including the kind of family unrest that we see in domestic dramas, it collides two worlds whose orbit patterns rarely intersect. That's novel!

What seeing this movie should come down to for you is whether you want to watch a group of a dozen or so people trapped in a house (one that's remote and surrounded by forest, duh) being brutally picked off for about 90 minutes. About two thirds of the way through, the reasons why this extended family is being targeted are revealed, though revelation of the exact explanation is expertly stretched out for the rest of the film's duration.

Me, I'm an Option 2 kind of guy. You're Next is well-paced and convincingly acted (Sharni Vinson, a ringer for Rashida Jones, has the kind of scream-queen fire that was seemingly extinguished after the '80s); it's gratuitous, but rarely cheap (only during the relatively tame first act does it employ the kind of fake-out jump scares that something like The Conjuring thrives on). It's somewhat reminiscent of The Purge, a surprise home-invasion hit from earlier this year, except there is more payoff (by that I mean death) and far fewer pretensions of social commentary. It's about the sickest major release of the year, sometimes to a hilarious extent ("I want you to fuck me in bed next to your dead mom," says one character's significant other).

It's also acclaimed—it has a 79 percent on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this post. We are now in an age where pulpy horror, once a critical whipping boy, routinely is judged by critics on its own merits (The Conjuring and Sinister are two recent examples of critical favorites). And it's poised to land at No. 1 this weekend—the only movie featuring death by an inverted blender that will be able to make that claim, should it happen (at least, to my knowledge). This is America's movie this week, and I'm sick enough to find that totally hilarious.

It's in the Internet's nature to rage.

And so, when Warner Brothers announced last night that Ben Affleck would be donning Batman's cape and cowl for the Man of Steel sequel, the Internet did what it does.

Fizziology data shows that within the first hour of the news arriving online, nearly 100,000 tweets were fired off fanboys, 71% of which were negative.

Someone even had the bright idea of putting up a Change.org petition urging Warner Brothers to recant their casting choice posthaste.

At the time of writing, that petition has gathered over 15,000 signatures.

In short, people are pissed.

But hang on a second:

For a little perspective on the matter, let's jump in the not-so-way-back machine away from the Superman/Batman film to a little movie called The Dark Knight. Batman's iconic villain The Joker was the major casting decision for that film, and with beloved performances by everyone from Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson and even Mark Hamill as the voice of animated Clown Prince of Crime, fan expectations were high. When Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros (the same people involved in casting Affleck, mind you) announced that Heath Ledger was cast in the role, everyone on the Internet looked into their crystal ball and saw a brilliant, Oscar-winning performance that would change how people viewed this seminal villain, right?

Actually:

So, maybe the Internet give Affleck a chance to prove himself. Hey, at least his suit won't have nipples.

[photos via Getty, images via GeekTyrant via Newsarama, IGN]

Welcome to Annotate This, where we gather reviews, trailers, and annotate the posters for movies coming out this week. It will help you decide what to avoid, what to see, and what to pretend to see. Click on the image above to add your comments to the mix.

The World's End

Under Edgar Wright's direction, British actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost head up this sci-fi comedy about five childhood friends reuniting to do a pup crawl in their hometown, only to find that robots are overtaking the earth. The trio worked together for 2004's Shaun of the Dead and this one is even better. Like maybe the most entertaining movie of the year.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

Lily Collins plays a girl who everyone thinks is boring and normal but then she's a demon-slayer. Lena Headey and Jonathan Rhys Meyers along with "an overabundance of main characters" are in this—so many people, so many potential sequels! It's a "random collection of sexy-supernatural teen signifiers." Two reviews mention the amount of pleather.

Drinking Buddies

A meet-cute with a problem—the crushing couple are both already dating people! They all go on a weekend trip together. Everyone is adorable: Jake Johnson, Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, and Ron Livingston. From mumblecore-dude Joe Swanberg, it's got a classic Hollywood vibe with "deep melancholy," though it's also improv-y. A contradiction!

The Grandmaster

This Wong Kar Wai directed action biopic is inspired by the life of real king fu champion Ip Man. One of Wong's most used actors, Tony Leung, has been cast as the master. His first movie in six years, the auteur is keeping up the style flourishes, as per usual, though the story-telling is atypically straight-forward for him.

You're Next

A fresh twist of the knife for home-invasion horror. A bunch of killers show up at a family reunion, but then someone in the family is also super talented at murdering. Someone wrote that it gets better after a bunch of the cast is killed off. Read Rich Juzwiak's review here.

The Frozen Ground

This is "a solid if unmemorable true-crime drama" about an Alaska State Trooper who tries to halt a violent serial killer who has been undetected for 13 years. It seems very Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but in Alaska and with Nicolas Cage. Also John Cusack is the bad guy (?!?).

Therese

Director Claude Miller's last movie, Therese shows the difficult life of the extremely rich in 1920s France. While this premise is a little Gatsby-ish, Audrey Tautou is compelling as a depressed and churlish young woman, whose dissatisfaction with her life (she is in love with her husband's sister) eventually ends in fiery blazes.

Una Noche

Three teens attempt to flee Cuba and head to Miami in this intimate and interesting film from writer/director Lucy Mulloy. Much of it seems like a frantic thriller, like last year's amazing Barbara, about a woman trying to flee East Germany. A New York documentary filmmaker, Mulloy's portrayal of Havana as well as the characters is vital.

Short Term 12

Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of I Am Not a Hipster, expanded his 2008 short film of the same name, about do-gooder twenty-somethings (Brie Larson and John Gallagher Jr.) working for a home of at-risk teens. It's affecting, with "wondrously energized" dialogue and a plot that evoked comparisons to The Wire "sounds agonizingly depressing on paper but mesmerizes onscreen."

Scenic Route

Two longtime friends (Josh Duhamel and Dan Fogler) are taking a little road trip when their car breaks down in Death Valley—so they proceed to tear each other's souls apart. Though it ends up being "less harrowing than it intends to be."

On hearing the news that Aziz Ansari will make more money on one book than most of us will see in a lifetime, most of us had the same reaction: a rush for a fresh razor blade while drawing a final warm bath. But wait! Don't strip the safety plastic off your Venus Pro-Glide yet. After talking to multiple book agents, it turns out there's actually a method this madness, and if you follow them in order, you too, could get three mil for your dumb book.

1. Write a Good Proposal

It's easy to dismiss celebrity book deals as just that—Celebrity Book Deals [exaggerated eye roll; jerk-off motion with hand]. But the book agents I talked to all agreed: the book proposal trumps celebrity, and it has to be really fucking excellent to get you seven figures.

Say what you will about the eternal Human Centipede of Hollywood, but celebs like Ansari didn't just show up with a one-sheet and a smile to earn that kind of money. You may find Lena Dunham to be an insufferable narcissist made all the more insufferable now that she's $3.7 million richer (many of us certainly do!), but her book proposal was more than fully fleshed out. The 64 page doc, which quickly appeared on, and was just as quickly scrubbed from, the internet, provided a more than thorough understanding of what Not That Kind Of Girl was going to be.

Similarly, Ansari's been working on the material for his new book long before the actual sale—combining stuff from his recent Buried Alive tour with first hand accounts from academics, plus "original research."

2. Be Famous

I know I said not to dismiss celebrity book deals as Celebrity Book Deals [exaggerated eye roll; jerk-off motion with hand]. Buuuut.

People are obsessed with celebrities—whether its schaudenfreude, Twitter stanning, or an over-valuation of potential. Shocked that television stars in ensemble comedies are commanding higher paydays than literary greats like Franzen or Brashares? Hate to break it to you kiddo, but TV is the Great American Cultural Product, and booksellers know it: Every time you like one of Mindy Kaling's Instagram's of unnecessarily beautiful and ridiculously unwearable shoe purchases, you're adding another dollar to the purchase price for her second book.

3. Get a really, really good agent.

Like, say, 3 Arts Entertainment's Richard Abate. Not only did he negotiate Ansari's $3.5 million payout, he earned Tina Fey her $6 million paycheck for Bossypants, negotiated for Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns. and recently banked seven figures for B.J. Novak. All four were brand new to the publishing world.

Of course, if you can't get Abate, there are great agents all around town: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at WME, Lisa Bankoff at ICM... ah, fuck it, just go with Abate.

Got a tip? Send it in to tips@defamer.com.

[Image via Getty]

Gizmodo How To Do an Absinthe Wash (And Why You Should) | Jalopnik This Is Exactly What You Want To Do To Every Driver On A Cell Phone | Lifehacker Dominate Your Fantasy Football Draft with This Cheat Sheet | Jezebel Listen Up, Ladies: Here's Everything Real Men Think Is Wrong With You

One of the biggest games of the year—Tom Clancy's new Splinter Cell: Blacklist—takes players right into Guantanamo Bay prison camp to torture an inmate—and then lets them "decide to spare or kill their interrogated target."

In the game you play Sam Fisher, a "U.S. government super-spy and needed savior of the free world." In this level, Fisher "slips in disguised as a prisoner [as part of a covert operation] walking past barking dogs and guards possibly roughing up a prisoner." Then, continues Kotaku's editor in chief Stephen Totilo, "he gets himself into a cell with a bona fide Blacklist terrorist and tortures the guy."

While the new Splinter Cell shows the prison with unsettling detail and realism, it limits the player moves so they can't get into politically incorrect situations—apart from torturing and killing a prisoner, that is. But that's something that the player's character does in a pre-recorded segment. In fact, Totilo was disappointed because the game doesn't really allow you to explore the other prison cells and barracks with complete freedom.

Trivializing death, torture and crime

This isn't the first time that realistic torture and crime has been portrayed in a video game. Many titles, like the Call of Duty series, offer users the possibility of participating in all kinds of military operations. Usually you're one of the "good guys" only killing not to be killed, or take your enemy's position.

The multi-billion dollar game series Grand Theft Auto, however, allows players to steal cars, kill bystanders and rivals, traffic with drugs, and participate in every imaginable crime. The latest installment will be more realistic than ever.

But this is the first time that a game hits a controversial subject like Guantanamo, putting your character in the role of torturer. Even while it doesn't offer a full waterboarding simulation—not yet—should we trivialize these very real matters making them "fun" with games?

Mei Xiang, a giant panda at the National Zoo, gave birth at 5:32 eastern time this evening to—a fat white worm? I thought baby pandas were supposed to be cute, even if they aren't Top 50 material. Anyway, you can watch Mei Xiang care for her newborn on the National Zoo's panda cam here. Don't get too attached: The last one didn't make it. Pandas!

[Image via AP]

In the past, there's been a certain ceremony to the public sexual awakening of pop divas.

After gently turning us down with "Let's Wait a While," Janet Jackson teased us with sensuality and newfound body confidence (the "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" video) that became more explicit with each following album. Madonna's always-present sexuality became explicit, as she turned Euro-confusing and then darkly hilarious in the passage from "Justify My Love" to Erotica. Mariah Carey jumped into a pool to wash herself clean of Tommy Mottola's oppression and within years was popping out of a cake (and her coochie cutters).

Whatever artistic integrity or biographical importance their public declarations of sexuality may represent for these women, the calculation, self-objectification, and attention-baiting is much clearer. This is always the case when your personhood is industry.

But all of these artists (and so many more) come off as delicately blooming flowers compared to Miley Cyrus at the MTV Video Music Awards last night. Where her elders cooed and moaned upon emerging as sexually charged beings, Miley Cyrus did this:

It was like she plopped out of a furry teddy-bear vagina a fully grown 20-year-old ready to do things with her own. And oh the places she went! And oh the things that we've seen!

I was mesmerized by Cyrus' performance for the same reason I was mesmerized by Beyoncé's Life Is But a Dream documentary: Watching pop stars putting real effort into to acting like normal humans is never less than hilarious. Everything about Cyrus' performance was as try-hard as a 14-year-old in the mall with tissues in her bra, rouge on her cheeks, and lipstick on her teeth.

But then, all bravado is a performance, regardless of how big a stage you're on. Maybe darting her tongue like it's a smaller reptile in her larger reptile mouth is actually how Cyrus transmits her sexual readiness. Maybe pronounced swagging is swagger itself. Maybe arrhythmic flailing works for her.

Like Nicki Minaj, who twists up her face routinely because she's so striking that she can afford to do so, Cyrus was not afraid to look ugly on that VMAs stage. Though obviously choreographed, she exhibited a sort of hideous spontaneity that's you don't see as much in these safe, media-trained times watched over by St. Beyoncé. The carelessly tossed limbs and awkward fumbling stances reminded me of youthful experimentations with sex. Cyrus' performance was a pop rendering of clanking teeth, an elbow to the face, bodies that never quite find the right rhythm.

In fact, it reminded me of the awkward, iconic mess Madonna made when she just kind of flopped down and started rolling on the ground during her "Like a Virgin" VMAs performance, 29 years ago.

Cyrus was onstage for six and a half minutes, performing her own "We Can't Stop," and then alongside Robin Thicke on his own song of summer, "Blurred Lines." It had the feeling of a stage-hijack, like Cyrus didn’t know when to leave the party (the young ones never do). Whatever attempt to subvert and reframe the misogyny of "Blurred Lines" (Cyrus was the sexual predator, chirping, "I know you want it!," while Thicke merely stood there and agreed, "You know I want it, baby") was undone by a greater, unstoppable spirit of #YOLO chaos, and a giant foam hand that Cyrus insisted on using to molest Thicke, and herself. She looked, audaciously, daringly, like an idiot.

And not just an idiot, but a compulsive one. She couldn't stop, she wouldn't stop, no matter how many think pieces you write about the problematic nature of her borrowing from "ratchet culture." The debate that has surrounded Cyrus' grill-donning and twerking in the middle of a group of black women, in a cultural moment when white male R&B singers are all the rage (Thicke's "Blurred Lines" and Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience are respectively the biggest single and album of the year so far), at the very least demonstrates a general consensus that there are right and wrong (polite and crass) ways for white artists to sample elements of black culture.

But while she's certainly outrageous, I'm not sure that Cyrus is quite the outrage that some make her out to be. Her foolishness is instructive in itself, proof that simply borrowing black culture indiscriminately doesn't transform dorks into cool kids, a demonstration of how silly white kids who think they're really down can appear. It's not a phenomenon that started with Cyrus, and just by reflecting a widespread social practice there's at least a sort of anthropological honesty there, albeit a distasteful one. The unsavory elements of Cyrus' mugging at least have "created a dialogue," which from what I can tell, is something very many people on the Internet treasure. This performance had it all.

So Cyrus' showing was essentially incorrect—physically, visually, politically. Her entire aesthetic was awkward. But that kind of awkwardness is something our hate-watching, mess-celebrating culture values. Something that Lady Gaga tried to unsuccessfully touch on with her own mess of a performance of "Applause," which began with canned boos. But Cyrus outperformed Gaga on that front. I can't remember the last time I saw a pop star throw herself around a stage like that. Watching Cyrus with a simultaneous sense of delight and horror, I thought of the sage words of Throbbing Gristle's Genesis P-Orridge in the 1998 electronic-music documentary Modulations: "When in doubt make no sense. No sense is good. And nonsense is good."

As far nonsensibility is concerned, no one even came close to touching Cyrus. Sexual coming out is a grand tradition in pop, and I've never, ever seen it done like this before. This is one of those awards-show performances that only the Video Music Awards seems to be able to spawn—like Britney's "Gimme More," or the Madonna-Britney kiss, or Prince in assless pants. We'll still be talking about what the fuck was going on with Miley Cyrus last night for decades to come.

Buzzfeed, a business premised on the free sharing of news and information via social media networks, instructed its one billion employees not to tweet about an office visit from noted startup advisor Kanye West. But one newbie found a loophole that was quickly exploited by his fellow viral vixens.

Sorry, haters, you just can't stop these kids from sharing content!

h/t @ckanal

The world of beauty pageants has seen its fair share of spectacularly botched responses during the contests' Q&A portion.

But of all the botched responses, in all the botched response villages, in all the botched response worlds, Miss Philippines USA 2013 candidate Joanlia Lising's botched response stands alone.

Asked by the presenter which of the five senses she would pick if she could only pick one, Lising proceeded to go off on a sentence-fragment tangent that may end up resulting the first recorded instance of a person actually dying of secondhand embarrassment.

You have been warned.

[H/T: Daily Picks and Flicks]

Authorities in Oregon say a homeless man who held up a bank for $1 was just looking for a way to go to jail so he could receive free health care.

According to Clackamas County sheriff's deputies, 50-year-old Tim Alsip entered a Bank of America in Southeast Portland last Friday morning and handed the teller a note that read, "This is a holdup. Give me a dollar."

A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Office told KGW Alsip had spent a week trying to get himself locked up, going so far as to phone 911 to report himself.

Alsip, who told deputies he needed medical care for unspecified ailments, was found sitting on the floor of the bank's lobby waiting to be arrested.

He was subsequently booked into Clackamas County Jail on suspicion of robbery charges.

[H/T: Scallywag & Vagabond, photo via Shutterstock, mug shot via CCSO]

Happy National Dog Day! Post photos of your dog here, please. Or really any dog, at all. Or just write a story about a good dog you saw, once.

The farther we get from the last economic collapse, the closer we get to the next economic collapse. But which bubble is next to pop? Student loans? Desert real estate? Today, we turn our untrained eye to the backbone of the U.S. stock market.

We're not talking about some fly-by-night, overhyped, boiler room penny stocks here. We're talking about the S&P 500, the big boys, the best that corporate America has to offer. A staple of even the most conservative portfolios. As terrified investors flee emerging markets, the S&P becomes an ever more popular destination of choice, for your retirement money. The S&P 500 index has been an outstanding investment since the end of the recession.

Put it all in perspective for us, Bloomberg:

The benchmark gauge for U.S. equities has risen 14 percent relative to income over the past 12 months to 16 times earnings, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Valuations last climbed this fast in the final year of the 1990s technology bubble, just before the index began a 49 percent tumble. The rally that started in March 2009 has now outlasted the average gain since 1946, the data show.

A replay of the year just before the collapse of the tech bubble, and a rally that is, historically speaking, ripe for its end. What could go wrong?

Other bubble candidates today: central banking, Chinese mortgage lending, and the "bubble" metaphor itself.

[Bloomberg. Image via]

If you're reading this, your chair might feel crowded, because there's 63 percent more of you than there used to be. Or 56 percent, maybe. Who knows? Last week, Quantcast, the web-traffic-monitoring service whose numbers are the basis for Gawker's editorial decisions, announced in a vaguely worded blog post that it had performed "a major measurement update" for "even greater measurement accuracy."

This update applied retroactively to Quantcast's data, so that (for instance) this past month of June, in which Quantcast had counted 6.8 million unique United States visitors to Gawker, now accounts for 11.1 million unique U.S. visitors. That is a difference of 4.3 million. Or 4,315,090, to be precise, since we are talking about measurements of individual users who read the site.

And the revision is not a simple re-weighting of factors. Apparently Quantcast's cookie-based measuring system was missing readers on mobile devices. So when the company revised its system to find them, they appeared in irregular batches—63 percent more readers showed up in June, but only 57 percent more showed up in April.

Long ago, when news was delivered in stacks of dried and flattened wood pulp, nobody really saw where it went once it was thrown off the truck, and readers were all a phantom army. There was the old concept of "pass-along," where for every paper that went out, you assumed that multiple people were reading it (that is, encountered the ads)—that one humble copy of your free weekly, left in a coffeehouse restroom stall, might reach several dozen readers, all giving it their rapt attention, so conservatively you should guess that your real audience was two and a half—four—five—hey, why not seven!—seven times the mundane number of actual newspapers you put out. Who could say otherwise?

With news distributed online, the informational mystery goes in the other direction: not multiplication, but division. The servers now record each of the many, many times a piece is accessed—how many times the pages are flipped in all those coffeehouse restrooms—but those voluminous numbers must somehow be distilled down to actual readership figures. (Pace the commenters, nobody gives a shit about "page clicks." ) How many views are going to a single reader? How many are going to that reader's mobile device?

Everybody's distillation comes out differently. The revolution that was supposed to have linked real reading behavior to real results—remember when clickthrough was going to make advertising a precise science?—has produced whole new kinds of distraction. In June, a New York Times story informed readers that Betches Love This was getting "four million unique visitors a month," by Google Analytics numbers. Quantcast (at least the Quantcast numbers of today) puts this year's best month for Betches Love This at 551,538 people.

So there's the Google Analytics number; there's the subscribers-only ComScore number (used by Gawker's ad department). The Quantcast numbers have the advantage of being public and daily. They are great for bragging with:

It was just a matter of time! RT @ycombinator Rap Genius reaches the Quantcast Top 100 http://t.co/1NQLeMtgK8 …

— Mauricio (@rightMau) August 24, 2013

Wow, @quantcast lists @goodreads as 60th largest site in the US. Apple, we're comin' for you! ;) https://t.co/ZhoiyGhTx3

— kyusik (@kyusik) August 23, 2013

Yes, you read that right. @theblaze just outranked @NETFLIX in terms of traffic. https://t.co/an9FxD0h2l

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 25, 2013

(And for setting Gawker Media site-performance bonuses with.)

They have the disadvantage, it turns out, of allowing 4,315,090 people to just wink into existence overnight.

[Image by Jim Cooke]