There are worthy rants and there are unworthy rants. And then there's whatever Colorado news anchor Kyle Clark was doing during yesterday's 4 PM newscast.

(Move your mouse cursor over the image below to play video.)

In what can only be described as the world's first and only epic rant about people inundating news stations with the same snow-covered patio photos after each and every snow storm, Clark implores Coloradans to "do better."

"C'mon Colorado," Clark entreats. "We love winter. We own winter."

After dropping his lapel mic, Clark took to Twitter to share some of the backlash to his "first and last on-air editorial":

The emails from the people seriously offended by the snow photo editorial are the absolute best.

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) November 22, 2013

From the Inbox: A viewer is baffled I am still employed: http://t.co/wL0kdEjYqM #9NEWS

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) November 22, 2013

Thank you for your thoughtful take on our story. RT @AdamObendorf: Try hiring a photographer, asshole.

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) November 22, 2013

For sure. A ton of them RT @runthetrailsCO: Hilarious @KyleClark @9NEWS tho I think you should expect even more patio pics from here on out

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) November 22, 2013

[H/T: HyperVocal]

Vinnie Chase fans are in for a real treat, because TMZ just uncovered the real Vincent Chase and he is beyond adorable. He also wants Warner Brothers to stop using his name in the Entourage movie, because grandpas are always up to some kind of wacky shenanigans, aren't they?

Chase is an acting coach who has been teaching the craft for over 60 years, according to his website. He claims in a cease and desist letter he sent to Warner Brothers that he met Entourage producer Mark Wahlberg back in the early 90s, and Wahlberg lifted his name and likeness for the character that would one day make women around the country forget that Adrian Grenier first made a name for himself making out with Melissa Joan Hart in a quarry.

Though no legal action has been filed yet, Chase has been filing cease and desists with the Entourage producers since the days of the TV show. I think we all know what the real solution here is, right? Celebrity cameo! (Because you know, who else is going to teach Rob Gronkowski to act like himself?)

Exhaustion may have induced the epileptic seizure that killed a young Merrill Lynch intern in London. The coroner can't be sure, but she told reporters that fatigue is an epilepsy "trigger." The man's family says he didn't complain of strain, but he sometimes sent them emails after ostensibly working through the night.

Major U.S. retailers including Walmart and Sears have declined to contribute to any compensation funds that would help the families of the more than 1,200 people who died while making their products in Bangladesh last year.

In the final, desperate days of his seemingly unending mayoralty, New York City's Michael Bloomberg has been handed yet another stinging defeat.

First, a new mayor was elected on a platform that essentially rejects Bloomberg's vision. Then his dream of a high-rise kingdom on Manhattan's East Side was killed by the City Council. And yesterday, an appeals court declined Bloomberg's attempt to keep the NYPD's Stop and Frisk tactic intact, all but ending the argument once and for all.

In August, Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court found the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy, which stopped young minority men on the street under the slightest of suspicions, to be unconstitutional. But Bloomberg vowed to fight the ruling, and actually scored some minor victories as Scheindlin was removed from the case and her order for an independent monitor to oversee the police department was blocked.

Yesterday, however, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that Scheindlin's ruling still stands, and that the appeal process should continue to run its course over the next few months. But Bloomberg is out of time. In just over a month, Bloomberg will no longer be mayor of New York, and the new mayor, Bill de Blasio, has vowed to end the city's appeal of the ruling.

"This marks the end of the Bloomberg administration's effort to short-circuit the appeals process and undo the district court's rulings before Bill de Blasio takes office," Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the New York Times.

While the city will still appeal the ruling over the next few weeks, there's little chance any appeal would be successful in that time frame. 12 years in office was still somehow too short for Bloomberg's agenda.

The Obama administration is trying out new bird protection laws, pulling in a cool million in fines from an energy company responsible for murdering 14 golden eagles — a federal crime — with its wind turbines.

The $1 million settlement against Duke Energy Co. is the first time the government has exercised these particular Migratory Bird Treaty Act rules against a wind power company. But, similar fines have been levied in recent years against oil and power companies responsible for drowning or electrocuting birds.

The settlement concerned two Duke Energy wind farms in Wyoming, two of the deadliest farms in the area. In addition to the fine, the Charlotte, NC-based company will have to employ scientists to shut down turbines when eagles are spotted, as well as implement radar technology similar to the missile-tracking technology used in Afghanistan.

Even so, the settlement probably won't have much of a deterring effect — the Duke Energy Co., which operates wind farms under its renewable energy arm, has a market cap of $50 billion.

Of the $1 million, $400,000 will go to a wetlands conservation fund, $100,000 to Wyoming, and the rest to anti-eagle death projects.

[image via AP]

Get it together, Canadian men. Vancouver police report that incidents of public masturbation are on the rise.

You might not know Marc Breaux's name, but if you had a lucky childhood, you were almost certainly captivated by his creations. Breaux choreographed the chimney sweep scene in"Mary Poppins," and hid in the bushes and yelled at Julie Andrews to turn on a mountaintop for "The Sound of Music."

81 years is a hell of a long time to be married to someone, but 102-year-old John and 98-year-old Ann Betar would be the first to admit that "it isn't a lovey dovey thing for 80 years."

For some perspective: When they got married, the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't even built yet, Hitler had just come to power, and the New Deal was just getting started. Forever ago, pretty much.

"Be content with what you have and what you're doing," John Betar told younger married couples (almost every other couple in the country).

The couple had to elope to New York City to escape their small Syrian neighborhood in Connecticut, where Ann was going to be married off to a man twenty years older than her. I think their marriage is going to make it, though.

"We're always holdings hands," John reflected.

[Footage courtesy of WFSB]

Wilco, Guster and members of Furthur are coming together November 27 to recreate The Band's very excellent 1978 farewell concert, "The Last Waltz" — documented and made famous by Martin Scorsese — at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY. In addition to the 41 songs performed in the original "Last Waltz," this year's show will feature a few additional tunes.

My eyelashes are mascara-less stumps and I’ve been commando in the same stained, hot pink sweats for 36 hours, but I don’t care. It’s 2011, and my mom and I are at my grandmother’s house in Michigan hoping for some rest after a hellish year spent cycling through chemo, radiation, and surgeries.

Set on a quarter mile cul-de-sac, the condos are built into a gentle slope where the elated cries of grandchildren echo as they race across the shared backyard. Beyond the lawn, families and fishermen float down the shallow river in inner tubes or boats beneath the canopy of ancient oaks and elms that line the riverbed. This year, the river is so shallow that the children step into the centers of their inner tubes to carry their portable yachts to avoid rocky butt scrapes, the water lapping around their ankles. I want to puke.

At gramma’s, I don’t try to keep up appearances. I forgo foundation, scarves to hide my bald head, and the pretense that undergoing chemo, radiation, and a stem cell transplant was some kind of backwards blessing. I think I’m safe from the usual painful judgments about how a cancer survivor should behave. I’m not.

In my boyfriend’s dreary basement apartment, I’d spent weeks wrapped in a blanket in front of the television, only moving when I needed to go to the bathroom to vomit. I haven’t mustered the energy to visit with even my best friends, because the effort to choose a non-itchy outfit and then follow conversation is too exhausting.

At a lunch date with several other cancer survivors, now close friends and confidantes, I sobbed into my Thai chicken pizza as I tried to explain my frustration that I wasn’t feeling better—Carina was back to normal three months after her transplant—and the insistence of ‘healthy people’ that, to survive, I need to be more positive.

The vehemence with which people insist that “positivity is the best medicine” when they catch wind of my misery—not difficult to sniff out since I’ve got one major silent-but-deadly depression cloud following me—makes me want to explode. “Chemo is the best medicine, motherfuckers!” I should shout but I don’t have the energy. The haters are making me doubt the data that says high stress-levels, chronic depression, PTSD, and other traumatic life events are statistically unrelated to developing cancer.

I am relieved for the distance from D.C., but disappointed that even my grandmother’s home, a place that usually elicits an internal sigh of relief and quiet joy as I gorge on peanut-butter-slathered English muffins while watching the birds breakfast on the feeders beyond the breakfast nook windows, is shrouded with the same gloom that has crept over everything like a moldy film. The thoughts—that I am undeserving of the outpouring of love and support from friends and family, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical care, or even the surviving this cellular cluster fuck—won’t stop.

My relatives are obviously disappointed too. I think that they expected me to exude the upbeat attitude of the survivors on television commercials, donning pink ribbons and walking marathons, declaring a new lease on life. Cancer patients are expected to be poster children of a movement, meant to reassure the masses that this plague, and even imminent death, can be overcome with positive affirmations and attitude adjustments. We are a society that believes in control, to the point of delusion. We are a nation founded on the idea that any obstacles can be surmounted and dreams reached through hard work and self-control. I am the unpleasant face of cancer. I am not accepting pain and loss gracefully. I am a disappointment.

Our family friend, who I call Uncle Ron, arrives unannounced to gawk at cancer’s wreckage and to gather intel he assures me he’ll keep secret from the little old biddies at assisted living. I trust him as much as I’d trust Edward Snowden. He’s hoping for a glimpse of a gray-skinned and starving husk of a twenty-nine year old but besides that my scalp and face look Brazilian bikini waxed, I appear the same.

“How are you?” he asks.

“Good.” I shrug. I’ve decided to try not to give him what he wants.

“How are you feeling?”

“Not great,” I say.

He takes the opening to lecture me on the importance of optimism, encouraging me to be grateful for the life God gave me.

I start crying.

His eyes well up too. He smiles and keeps repeating, “Choose positivity. Choose happiness,” before pulling me in for a hug. Did everyone really believe the depression was choice? Did they believe I’d given myself cancer too? Did I give it to myself?

Of course, one of my worst fears was that the positivity pushers were right. I was sick because I couldn’t keep a shit-eating grin on my face throughout an adolescence fraught with familial drama and long depressive episodes, or because, while I lived in New Zealand, I secretly sobbed for six weeks when I should have been hitchhiking to the ski slopes or hiking fern-lined trails, or because of the many mornings when my heart raced, dreading my looming day ahead teaching at Brooklyn high school. Maybe these numerous blue periods all added up to cancer.

Uncle Ron didn’t seem to consider the year-plus of chemotherapy—so dangerous that the oncologists administered it through plastic tubing surgically forced through my veins; a treatment that filled my mouth, labia, and anus with sores that bled and left me barren—might also have affected my hormones and brain chemistry, not to mention destroyed my faith that somehow I would live forever. He thought I was depressed by choice.

In his memoir about a depressive episode he suffered, William Styron writes of others’ attitudes towards depression, “[S]uch incomprehension has usually been due not to a failure of sympathy but to the basic inability of healthy people to imagine a form of torment so alien to everyday experience.” My Uncle Ron could not imagine the depth of my suffering. He saw my depression, so deep that I could barely bring myself to engage in small talk or string words into coherent sentences, as a sort of adolescent foot stomping, an excuse to feel sorry for myself. He was sure that with a little cajoling, I could pull myself up by the boot straps and become the vivacious niece who relayed stories about hopping on the back of an English ex-pat’s motorbike in a Thai island jungle without hesitation.

Ron was also motivated by fear. Many people want to believe that cancer can be overcome with enough willpower and exuberant positive affirmations. The notion that we can control cancer by dieting—cutting gluten, dairy, GMOs, and alcohol from our diets or binging on kale juice, green tea, and soy—has trickled into Facebook feeds and taken over targeted ad space. We feel more in control of our lives if we believe sick people got that way by making bad choices. This hopeful but woefully misguided belief that if the cancer patient eats like a Paleolithic person or ignores her fears, she will ‘beat the odds,’ denies patients the freedom to mourn the loss of her old self—because cancer almost always kills a more fearless version of ourselves.

The truth is we don’t know why this shit happens. In an interview with The Guardian, Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of the ‘cancer memoir’ The Emperor of All Maladies, says, “In a spiritual sense, a positive attitude may help you get through chemotherapy and surgery and radiation and what have you. But a positive mental attitude does not cure cancer—any more than a negative mental attitude causes cancer.” We need to stop blaming cancer patients and start supporting their emotional needs. We can’t stop time. We can’t control most of life’s plot twists. We can embrace the unexpected, and give a patient a shoulder to cry on so that she can face her disease with genuine hope and realistic expectations.

Lauren Sczudlo is a teacher, burgeoning author, and nap enthusiast. She is writing a memoir that examines her priorities as twenty-something year old before the cancer diagnosis – falling in love, screwing up, crying about screwing up, and pleasing other people – and after – falling in love with her life. She lives in Washington, DC with her boyfriend and two cats, Nico and Cricket. Follow her on commentary crayZCricket.kinja.com.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

I felt like Will Smith in "Enemy of the State." I was being hunted, harassed and stalked by criminals with technological expertise. I had been thrust into an unexpected war. I felt exposed, vulnerable and alone on the front line. I had awoken a hideous network of villains and saboteurs, who were in pursuit of me, hoping to ruin my life. I had received creepy emails, backlash on Twitter and three death threats. My computer had been bombarded with viruses, and a technician had advised me to buy all new equipment because the malware was tough to remove.

"Also, be leery of unusual cars or vans in the neighborhood," the tech added.

"Why?" I asked.

"If someone wants to break into your computer network, he will need to be close to your house. That is, unless he has advanced skills. Then, he could gain access from anywhere."

I hurried home from the hardware store with my all-important purchase: heavy-duty padlocks. I knew I had to secure the gates at my residence, so that an intruder or a team of intruders could not access my backyard and possibly my home.

I pulled into my driveway and scanned the street, glad that the suspicious white car with the young, male driver was no longer present. It had been there on the previous evening, according to my daughter, Kayla. She'd seen it when she returned from work, and she had monitored it for several hours until it disappeared. She did not report the incident to me until the next day.

"Mom, why was there a guy in a white car, watching our house last night?"

Because she had no knowledge of the "be leery of unusual cars or vans" warning by the computer technician, I could not accuse her of paranoia.

I affixed padlocks to the gates, and the phone rang. It was like a gun. It had become a powerful way to threaten and to terrorize me. It was one of my enemy's weapons. I reluctantly picked up the receiver.

"We know where you live," a muffled male voice spoke. "Your life will be ruined." He hung up.

A caller that morning had told me I would be raped, tortured and killed. I glanced out the front window. The night had once looked innocent and peaceful, but suddenly it seemed ominous and dangerous. Then I logged onto my computer to see whether the Twitter backlash against me had ceased. It had not. But there was an odd message on my feed, which read, "Please follow me. I need to direct message you."

I did as I was instructed, and the interaction resulted in a bizarre phone call. Just as "Enemy of the State" protagonist Will Smith got aid from Gene Hackman — an off-the-grid, former government agent — I was being offered assistance.

"Don't worry. We're going to protect you. We're computer experts," were the first words uttered by a man nicknamed "Jack," who claimed to be an operative with the underground group, Anonymous.

I knew little about the famous, decentralized network of activists and hacktivists, who are sometimes called "freedom fighters" or digital Robin Hoods, so I conducted Google searches during our half-hour phone conversation.

"Jack" instructed me on how to protect my computer network and explained in detail how he and a buddy planned to electronically go after the man who had been threatening me and who had been urging his devotees to follow suit. He then uttered the name of the person who has become the most well-known online face of revenge porn: a man named Hunter Moore.

"We know Hunter and his followers have been attacking you on Twitter. We will go after him and we won't stop until he stops victimizing people," he said. (xoJane reached out to Moore to comment for this story, but received no response.)

I felt better after the call, but wondered if it had been a practical joke. Was this really the notorious group Anonymous or was I being duped? Did I have an ally or would the stalking and emotional harassment escalate into physical violence against my family? I would learn the truth within 24 hours.

How It All Began

Many months earlier, I was drawn into the nasty world of revenge porn. Revenge porn (RP) is the online distribution of nude and topless photos without consent in an effort to humiliate and hurt their targets, mostly females. A picture is uploaded to a revenge porn website by an angry ex-boyfriend or a malicious hacker usually with identifying information about a woman, such as her full name, city, workplace, social media page, boss' email address and parent's phone number. Followers of the RP websites then may harass the victim, often forwarding the embarrassing photo to her family members, friends and business contacts. This can lead to a loss of economic and employment opportunities, and it can strain or end a woman's personal relationships. At least two women have killed themselves over revenge porn, and Cyber Civil Rights Initiative studies show that 47 percent of victims contemplate suicide.

In October 2011, my 24-year-old daughter Kayla was alone in her bedroom, emulating poses from fashion magazines. She snapped over 100 cute and sexy pictures in the mirror with her cell phone. One shot revealed her left breast. She never intended to show the pictures to anyone, but wanted to save them on her hard drive. She forwarded the entire lot from her cell phone to her email and then to her computer. Three months later on January 1, 2012, her email was hacked; and nine days after that, the photo revealing her left breast appeared on the notorious revenge porn website, Is Anyone Up? Kayla was an actress, but she was working part-time as a waitress when she got the distressing phone call.

"Kayla, I have to talk to you right now," Kayla's friend, Katie, was panic-stricken. "I'm at work in the middle of my shift. I can't talk," Kayla said

"This is really important," Katie replied. "You are…" Katie began hesitantly, knowing the news would devastate Kayla. "You are topless on a website. It is called isanyoneup.com."

Kayla was in disbelief. How was this possible? She had never given a revealing photo to anyone. She was confused; it had to be a mistake.

Kayla hung up and searched the website on her iPhone. She found the upsetting photo, along with her personally identifying information. She erupted in tears. She felt helpless, exposed, violated and vulnerable. Who had seen the picture? The site bragged of 300,000 daily visitors. Would it be saved on strangers' hard drives? Would it spread to other sites? Kayla was frantic.

During a break, Kayla phoned and uttered the four words that every mother dreads, "Something horrible happened, Mom."

I'd never heard about revenge porn prior to the call, but for many months after, I would hear about little else. I cancelled appointments, put work on hold and ignored routine tasks because a naked image rarely comes off the Internet unless someone becomes obsessed with its removal. RP website operators are consumed with what they do; therefore, anyone who hopes to prevail against them must be equally consumed.

I emailed the site owner, Hunter Moore, and asked him to take down the photo in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He refused.

I was not surprised. By this time, I'd perused Moore's online TV and newspaper interviews. He called himself a "professional life ruiner" and described his website as "pure evil." He threw legal letters in the trash, addressed his followers as "my children," taking a page from the Charles Manson handbook; and regularly taunted victims, encouraging them to commit suicide. People claimed to be afraid of him. He had no fear oflawsuits; he knew a victim would be unlikely to sue because a civil suit would cost $60,000 (according to attorney Marc Randazza), and forever link a woman's name with the image she hoped to hide.

Moore maintained that his victims were sluts, asked to be abused and deserved to lose their jobs, embarrass their families and find themselves forever ruined. Below photos on the site, his followers posted crude and mysogynistic remarks. Victims were taunted as "fat cows," "creatures with nasty teeth," "ugly whores," "white trash sluts" and "whales." One commenter said, "Jesus, someone call Greenpeace and get her back in the water." The website was not about pornography; it was about ridiculing and hurting others.

News of Kayla's topless image circulated. Her job was in jeopardy, and Kayla also feared that her conservative boyfriend would learn about the snapshot and terminate their relationship. When Kayla searched Is Anyone Up?, she made an amazing discovery: her friend Susan was also featured on the site.

"Susan never showed her photo to anyone, except her husband," Kayla informed me. "And she was hacked, too."

These words became the trigger for "Operation No Moore," my investigation of Is Anyone Up? and its site owner. I had been a private eye in the late 1980's.

Operation No Moore

Up until this point, the media had portrayed revenge porn as a platform for angry exes to take revenge on former lovers; but now I knew some sites had hacked photos. After all, I only knew about two victims, and both had been hacked by what I soon learned was the same guy. He went by the fake name, "Gary Jones."

I turned my home office into what looked like a CIA command post while Kayla, feeling depressed and defenseless, locked herself in her bedroom. My husband Charles, an attorney, was angry about how revenge porn had disrupted our household.

"The photo will just go away if you ignore it," he said, unaware that images tend to proliferate in cyberspace rather than disappear.

"That's not how the Internet works," I replied. "It would be really nice to have a lawyer's assistance."

"I don't want to be involved," he marched out of the room.

Revenge porn was a pack of wolves. It was tearing our family apart. Kayla was withdrawn. Charles was agitated, and I was obsessed. I contacted Hunter Moore's publicist, his attorney, his hosting company, his Internet Service Provider in France, some of his advertisers and his mother's former workplace at the city of Davis, where associates pressed for details about Mrs. Moore's son and his venomous website. I also registered Kayla's photo with the U.S. Copyright office and spoke to nine attorneys about copyright law, right to privacy and options for legal recourse. The consensus was that revenge porn was largely untested in the civil courts, while criminal laws were nonexistent, except in the state of New Jersey. Within days, I became an expert on revenge porn; and it was not long before lawyers were telephoning me for guidance.

Contacting Law Enforcement

Kayla and I went to the Los Angeles Police Department, where we hoped to find sympathy and an "eager to help" attitude. We found neither. A female detective from the cyber-crimes division was more interested in condescending stares and judgmental remarks than taking a report.

"Why would you take a picture like this if you didn't want it on the Internet?" the detective blasted Kayla.

When the detective went to fetch forms, I whispered to Kayla, "I'll call the FBI when we get home."

The operator at the FBI call center was not condescending or discourteous, but he also did not want to help. He said, "Just file a report online."

I knew this was code for "We are too busy with other cases and won't do a darned thing."

"I see," I replied sarcastically. "You help Scarlett Johansson when she gets hacked, but you won't help the average person." (The actress' nude picture had appeared online).

The man sighed as if he didn't have the energy to fight me. "Just a moment. I will transfer you to a detective."

The FBI told me that three agents would be coming to our house later in the month.

"I think they are just trying to pacify you," Charles said. "They probably won't take the case."

However, Charles changed his mind after my investigation file expanded from one inch to four inches and then to eight inches. The contents included personal data about Moore and his associates, printouts from his website, copies of relevant articles and reams of information on other involuntary porn stars who were featured on his site. In other words, Kayla and Susan were no longer the only hacked victims. I'd found others, and I knew it would be difficult for law enforcement to ignore folks from all over the country, who had been violated by the same pair: Moore and "Gary Jones."

A Victim Named Jill

Jill was a kindergarten teacher in Kansas. I knew she was going to be posted. Moore had mentioned it on his Twitter feed — which I had been monitoring — and he asked his followers if they thought she'd get fired. They had responded with the typical landslide of loutish and smutty comments.

An hour later, her photos were visible to the world along with identifying information, including the name of the school where she taught. This was the cue for followers of Is Anyone Up? to bombard the principal and school board with Jill's naked shots and crude remarks, such as "Fire that slut" and "You have a whore teaching your children."

"Is Jill there?" I said to the school receptionist. "She's in class right now."

"I'd like to leave a message. This is urgent. Please tell her to call me when she gets time."

While I was leaving my message, the principal had marched into Jill's classroom and interrupted her lesson.

"Please gather your things and go home," he said while five-year-old students watched in wonder.

Bewildered, Jill accumulated her belongings, and as she was leaving the building, the receptionist handed her my message. She called me from the parking lot; and that is when I revealed the agonizing news.

Jill became hysterical, repeating, "Oh, my God. No. Oh, my God. No."

I was teary-eyed myself. I could feel each victim's pain, and I could imagine being in their situation. Anyone could be in their situation. It was not their fault. Making calls was depressing, and I felt like a suicide hotline. Yet, in a weird sense, it was satisfying in that I felt I was helping others. Plus, I had experience with the issue, and I could offer advice.

I gave Jill instructions on how to send take-down notices to Google and other search engines in order to de-index her name from the pictures. I told her to beef up her online presence, joining respectable websites so the disturbing pictures wouldn't appear on the first page. I told her to register the photos with the copyright office, and I told her about the FBI investigation.

"Plus, if I get my daughter's picture off the Internet, I will tell you what I did."

A Victim Named Tory

Tory lived in Atlanta, and her computer had been compromised by "Gary Jones." A medical image of her bloody and bandaged breasts appeared on Is Anyone Up? next to her name, workplace and a link to her Facebook page. Her nipples were fully visible.

"The photo is from my doctor's office," Tory weeped into the phone. "I'd just had surgery. How could someone do this to me?"

A Victim Named Tina

Tina from northern California was also a victim. She and a female friend had been documenting weight loss through photos. Some of the shots were topless. "Gary Jones" had gotten into Tina's email, nabbed the sexiest pictures, and sent them to Moore, who posted them.

"I was horrified," she told me on the phone. "I was at the drugstore and a total stranger came up to me and said 'I've seen you naked.'"

Tina had been stalked online, and she was seeing a psychologist because she no longer felt safe in the world.

A Victim Named Cathy

Forty-year-old Cathy was divorced, and she feared losing custody of her two children. She had taken extreme measures to dodge the graphic photos depicted beside her name, city and social media links. Cathy had quit her job, changed her phone number, moved to a new town and gone back to using her maiden name. She was freaked out when I located her because she thought she'd erased all traces of her existence.

"I don't understand how you found me," she bawled into the phone. "If my ex-husband sees the photos, he will petition to take my kids away. I'm gonna lose my kids. What am I going to do? I can't lose my children."

Cathy had not been hacked; her photos had been morphed. In other words, she had never taken a nude shot. Someone had photoshopped her head with an unknown nude body in highly acrobatic and embarrassing poses. It made Cathy look like a veteran porn star.

"I've emailed Hunter Moore 20 times. He knows it isn't me, but he won't take the pictures down," she wailed. "Please help me."

The Results of My Informal Survey

Within a week, I had spoken with dozens of victims from around the country, and my findings were astonishing. A full 40 percent had been hacked only days before their photos were loaded onto Is Anyone Up? In most cases, the scam began through Facebook and ended when "Gary Jones" gained access to the victim's email account. Another 12 percent of my sample group claimed their names and faces were morphed or posted next to nude bodies that were not theirs; and 36 percent believed they were revenge porn victims in the traditional "angry ex-boyfriend sense" (although some of these folks were on good terms with their exes and thought the exes might have been hacked). Lastly, 12 percent of my sample group were "self-submits." The "self-submits," of course, are not victims at all; they are individuals who willingly sent their images to Moore. In the end, it was disturbing to realize that over half of the folks from my informal study were either criminally hacked or posted next to body parts that were not theirs.

A Victim Named Mandy

Mandy was a special victim. If I was Sherlock Holmes, she was my Watson. She originated from Iran, had been hacked by "Gary Jones" and was as feisty as a tornado. Under her topless photo, there were posts, such as "I hope she gets stoned to death." Although Mandy was Catholic, rather than Muslim, she had highly religious relatives, who would ostracize her permanently for this sort of transgression.

At one point, while I was on the phone with Mandy, Charles decided to help us, saying, "Hunter Moore will regret the day he messed with Kayla Laws."

Mandy had never been a private eye, but she knew how to finagle information, find clues, look outside of the box and compile information for "Operation No Moore." Although she was afraid of "the most hated man on the Internet," a name the media had bestowed upon Moore, she worked tirelessly behind the scenes, helping me compile evidence for the FBI.

An Alliance with Facebook

"He's back on Facebook," Mandy revealed. "We need to wait until he gets a few thousand friends, then pow. Kick him off."

I was in daily contact with a number of victims from Is Anyone Up? Although they felt helpless, frightened and exploited, they shared a minor joy, a feeling of power that could be exerted at will. We could kick Hunter Moore off Facebook anytime, any moment, regardless of how much effort he expended to compile "friends." This is because I had created an alliance with the executives at the popular social networking service, something that seemed quite remarkable in itself.

I had initially contacted Facebook to request that they fund a civil suit on behalf of victims. They had banned Moore from their site and sent him a legal letter because he had violated their terms of service by linking victims' photos with Facebook pages. Moore responded to their letter with a copy of his penis. He had also put a bounty on their lead attorney; in other words, he wanted nude photos of this man. Facebook executives mulled over my "civil lawsuit idea," but ultimately decided against it, thinking it would lead to a slippery slope in which everyone would ask them to finance lawsuits.

The victims and I repeatedly kicked Moore off of Facebook. He would sneak on, create a new page and tirelessly build a huge network of friends and followers. We would wait patiently. Then, I would make the all-important phone call and poof, his page would disappear. The victims would phone me, elated. Also, one person from our group knew the CEO of PayPal and got Moore banned from the e-commerce site, hindering his ability to collect donations.

Operation No Moore Nonsense

It had been eight days since Kayla's topless photo first appeared online, although it felt like eons. Moore had been inundated with appeals to remove it: from me, Kayla, his advertisers, his publicist, his attorney, his website technician and his hosting company, among others.

Hunter ignored the requests, so I jacked up the intensity and moved on to "Operation No Moore Nonsense," which required Charles' assistance because we had to be ready, willing and able to sue. I contacted Jeffrey Lyon, the president of Black Lotus communications — Moore's Los Angeles-based internet security company — and asked for his help

"I need to talk to my tech guys," Jeffrey told me on the phone. "We might be able to block Kayla's page. Although it would technically still be there, no one could see it."

"That would be great," I replied. Hours later, the tech folks at Black Lotus had succeeded. However, shortly thereafter, Moore circumvented Jeffrey's efforts and maliciously created a new page for Kayla. Her topless photo was visible again, and we were back to square one.

"Maybe we should try blocking the photo instead of the page," Jeffrey said when I contacted him to report Moore's handiwork. "I will talk to my tech guys and see if it can be done. Give me a couple of days."

I thanked him and turned my efforts toward Moore's Los Angeles attorney, Reza Sina, who I had spoken with twice. He'd expressed sympathy for the victims, yet claimed to have no control over his client. My intuition told me that Reza had more control than he acknowledged. I also felt he did not take me seriously, so I figured it was time for Charles to have a stern chat with him, lawyer to lawyer.

"We have talked to the FBI," Charles revealed to Reza on the phone. "They will be coming to our house. Plus, I am walking into court and filing papers in 30 minutes if that photo is not down. Period."

Twenty minutes later, Kayla was removed from Is Anyone Up? And a few days after that, Jeffrey and his tech folks were able to block photos of other victims from our group, although it was unclear whether Moore could bypass the cyber-barrier.

The FBI

Three young FBI agents from the Los Angeles Internet Crime division appeared at our door. They were professional and supportive. Unlike the LAPD detective, they never pointed an accusatory finger at Kayla or other victims. I handed them a copy of "Operation No Moore." They were astonished by the extent of my research.

"It's almost 10 inches," I said. "I have phone numbers for hacked victims all over the country."

Charles quipped, "You should hire Charlotte. Working for the FBI is her calling."

The agents agreed to take the case and spent several hours at our house, examining computers, copying files and questioning Kayla about the hacking. I told them that I had disclosed the cumbersome and detailed story to a reporter named Camille Dodero with The Village Voice because it was important to clear up misinformation. The media had been inaccurately reporting that photos on revenge porn websites stemmed from disgruntled exes. There had been no mention of hacking or photoshopping.

"Also, Hunter Moore lies about living in San Francisco," I told the FBI. "I'd like to put his home address on the Internet so victims will know how to serve him legal papers."

"I can't tell you what to do," the lead agent said. "But we would rather you not put his address out there yet, and we'd prefer The Village Voice not publish anything at this time because we don't want Moore alerted to the investigation.

"Unfortunately, he probably knows about it," I said. "We told his attorney and the president of his security company. I'd be surprised if they didn't relay the information."

I asked Camille to stall The Village Voice story, and then I phoned the Los Angeles Police Department detective to let her know that she could close her file.

The FBI agents stopped by our house for two more visits; the final one included a "victims meeting," designed to discuss the possibility of a civil lawsuit and to give the agents an opportunity to interview multiple victims in one location.

Shortly thereafter, Moore took down Is Anyone Up?, selling the domain.

The FBI Raid, Threats and Anonymous

The FBI raided Moore's home — or more accurately, his parent's home near Sacramento — breaking down the front door and confiscating Moore's computer, cell phone and other electronic equipment; and Camille felt compelled to move forward with The Village Voice article. Before going to press, she telephoned Moore for a statement. He went ballistic, cursing and making threats.

"Honestly, I will be fucking furious, and I will burn down fucking The Village Voice headquarters if you fucking write anything saying I have an FBI investigation," he said.

He asked who had supplied her with the FBI information, but she refused to say.

He added, "I will literally fucking buy a first-class plane ticket right now, eat an amazing meal, buy a gun in New York, and fucking kill whoever said that."

Moore soon learned it was me.

Fear entered my life. I received verbal attacks on Twitter, computer viruses and death threats. Moore publicly announced that he would relaunch Is Anyone Up? with all of the original photos, plus the site would be more insidious than before because it would include the addresses of victims along with driving directions on how to get to their homes.

This prompted me to make Moore's home address public on Twitter, which resulted in even greater backlash, the creepy guy in the white car and the odd phone call from Anonymous.

It was two hours after the Anonymous call, and I was still wondering if the whole thing had been a practical joke. Kayla was studying near the front window, and that is when she saw it for the second time.

"Mom, that white car is outside again," she yelled.

"What?" I was in disbelief. I was tired of having my family victimized. I was more furious than afraid and fully prepared for a mother-to-stalker showdown. I marched out of the front door, unsure whether I was stepping into danger.

Kayla tagged behind, yelling, "Mom? What are you going to do?"

There was a blonde, curly-haired, 20 to 30 year old kid in the white car. He was fiddling with something in his lap.

I stood in the street and yelled, "May I help you?"

He looked up at me and flew into panic mode. He quickly started his car and screeched away, almost barreling into my neighbor's stucco wall. I got five digits of his seven digit license plate.

On the following day, I learned the truth about "Jack." He was real. He was my Gene Hackman. Anonymous launched a massive technological assault on Moore, crashing his servers and publicizing much of his personal information online, including his social security number.

Moore retreated, becoming oddly quiet. He stopped speaking with the press, probably on orders from his lawyer because the FBI investigation was pending. The case is still open today.

Although Is Anyone Up? was down, I knew there were other disturbing sites and other desperate victims. I began pushing for legislation to protect victims, meeting with politicians on the state and federal level. I testified in Sacramento in favor of SB 255, an anti-revenge porn bill in California; it passed. I am hopeful that a federal law will be introduced soon.

2012 was a bizarre and difficult year. Sometimes I look back and wonder what would have happened if Moore had removed Kayla's photo when first asked. Would his site be up today? Would Gary Jones still be hacking into emails? Would there be a pending FBI investigation? Would politicians have taken up the issue, and would there be a law in California with the possibility of federal legislation? But most of all I wonder if Charles was right.

Does Hunter Moore regret the day he messed with Kayla Laws?

This post originally appeared on XOJane. Republished with permission.

Katie Couric is leaving ABC News to join Yahoo. Even sinking ships need anchors, apparently.

Following the release of more than 300 inmates, Annie Dookhan, a Massachusetts state chemist who used to "process" drug samples almost three times as quickly as her colleagues, pled guilty Friday to fabricating her results. Police estimate her fraud possibly tainted as many as 40,000 prosecutions that she was involved in.

The 35-year-old chemist not only lied about results, declaring untested samples positive, but also tampered with evidence, forged other people's signatures, and lied about her own credentials. She was sentenced to three to five years in prison.

Dookhan's superiors began to suspect something was wrong when they audited her work back in 2010 due to her unusually fast case turnover. Although the audit revealed no wrongdoing, she was caught forging a coworker's initials just a year later. Dookhan was suspended, but still allowed to testify as an expert witness in criminal cases.

It took more than a year-and-a-half after Dookhan's suspension for Dookhan — who the judge described as "a tragic and broken person who has been undone by her own ambition” — to admit that she had fabricated case results.

Since then, more than 300 people have been released, including Donta Hood, who was accused of murdering someone after Dookhan's tainted evidence got him released. Hood is now back behind bars on first-degree murder charges.

At least 50 of those 300 released have been rearrested. One, Jamell Spurill told the police arresting him, “I just got out thanks to Annie Dookhan. I love that lady.”

[image via AP]

Massachusetts voted this week to raise its minimum wage to $11 per hour by 2016 and then tie subsequent increases to inflation. That sounds almost livable!

A Florida couple received a strange package on their doorstep at their rental home in Louisiana this summer. It was just a regular shipment of 11 pounds of marijuana, but they didn't know that yet.

The unidentified couple returned the package unopened to UPS, only to find the package back on the doorstep of their rental home once more. A woman who was cleaning the house took the package inside, and the package was quickly forgotten about. Until it was time to go back to Florida.

They finally opened the package to find two full suitcases, and thinking it was some lost luggage finally returned to the them, they threw it in their car and went on back to Florida. With 11 pounds of weed.

Finally, this incredibly suspicious couple actually opened the dang suitcases and found that each one contained a huge amount of the dank stuff. They then turned it over to the police.

How little sense does this story make? Who doesn't look in their just-returned bags, in case of, y'know, weed? And especially with drugs just popping up all over the place these days, it's always best to check your belongings for any huge unknown stashes of narcotics.

Willie Nelson has suspended his tour after a bus crash this morning left three of his bandmates in the hospital.

The Daily Dot brings our attention to a true Craigslist gem: A listing for a $1 penthouse in D.C. Thing is, you gotta be naked.

According to the post, you have to be 26 or younger, and willing to be a "naked roommate." The poster recognizes that this "sounds crazy," but assures you this is totally legal. That's what the $1 is for!

"I'm a male looking for another male (straight or bisexual w/girlfriend preferred, but masc gay is cool too) to be my naked roommate," the poster writes.

Will there be touching? Oh, there will be. "Arrangement would be mostly 'looking' but some 'touching' will be required."

You also have to be attractive, "very attractive."

How naked is naked? Can a loosely-draped sarong keep you a little bit sheltered? What about the temperature in the apartment? What if it gets cold? Can you towel yourself off after a shower, or must you air dry?

Who's down?

[Shutterstock]

Insofar as your entire life, to this point, can be understood as a series of undertakings begun in earnest, gradually disintegrated by pressure and time, and then finally destroyed with sudden, spasmodic violence, you—exactly you, you there, reading this now—are the perfect person to make and bring the mashed potatoes to the family Thanksgiving get together. You have been practicing this procedure, in iterations metaphorical and not, for many, many years. Finally, you will have a fleeting opportunity to feel less terrible about that, you absolute horror-show of a person.

There's not a lot of glory to be had in the Mashed Potato role at these potluck-type deals, and with good reason: We all understand, at a very basic level, that virtually any minimally-competent person (ahem, hands down, Mr. Schiano) can make perfectly OK mashed potatoes, and for the most part, we never require our mashed potatoes to be much more than perfectly OK. For chrissakes, the most complicated culinary technique involved is turning the stove off before the potatoes dissolve to liquid; a goddamn dog could do that, or anyway probably some dogs could do that, good dogs, dogs who are not losers [stares daggers at Abruffham Lincbark], and you're a hell of a lot smarter than a dog, at least in the sense that you only bark at your own reflection when it goddamn well asks for it.

So the bad news is, yeah, when Aunt Hortense asked you to bring the potatoes, she was basically calling you a nigh-useless human dumpster fire who can't be trusted to crank open a can of cranberry jelly without sawing both your arms off and staggering over a cliff. On the other hand, the good news is that you can clear the abysmal bar of familial expectation with relative ease, here, and thus perhaps ascend to the rank of Napkin Bearer in years to come. It'll take gumption, can-do, pep, probably some other weirdly olde-thymey bullshit, and, er, well, the ingredients and kitchen implements required to make mashed potatoes.

Let's do it.

The first thing to do is to roast some garlic. That's right, damn you: Garlic! You are going to roast some garlic to glorious spreadable softness, and then you are going to mash it into your mashed potatoes, and it is going to cause those potatoes to taste fucking amazing. The neat-o thing is that adding a moderate quantity of roasted garlic to your mashed potatoes won't cause them to taste overwhelmingly of garlic—in fact, an unsuspecting eater could down a heaping mouthful of the result and not necessarily recognize that she is tasting roasted garlic in there at all. What our hypothetical unsuspecting eater will recognize is that the mashed potatoes taste good—remarkably good; deep and nutty and warm and surprisingly lively for boiled and pulverized tubers—and that is what you are going for: good-tasting food, and not simply a bland starchy spackling paste to adhere you to the sofa for the rest of the afternoon. So. Garlic. Yes.

There's not much to this: Peel the outermost layers of skin off two whole heads of garlic; with a knife, slice off and discard the top quarter-inch or so of each intact head, exposing the flesh of the individual cloves; drizzle these exposed cloves with some extra-virgin olive oil; wrap the oil-drizzled heads of garlic in aluminum foil; stick them in a 400-degree oven for a half-hour. At the end of this half-hour, the garlic cloves will have turned a sexy caramel color and the consistency of room-temperature butter and your home will be filled with the aroma of cooked garlic and, OK, yeah, go ahead and prepare two more heads of garlic for roasting, because you are not going to be able to use these ones now that you have smeared their softened insides across your naked torso.

The roasted garlic is very hot. Set it aside for a while.

Now, peel and chop some potatoes. Say, five pounds of 'em? Sure, that sounds good. Hack them into quarters or eighths, so they'll cook more quickly and offer even more laughably futile resistance to their eventual pulverization. As for what potatoes you use: Russets are the classic choice, here, thanks to their starchy, floury texture, but you can use what you like, or what's cheap, or whatever. Idaho potatoes are generally fine for mashing; butter potatoes and Yukon Golds are maybe a tad closer to the waxy end of the potato spectrum (there's a potato spectrum) (all its colors are brown), but they'll yield some tasty mashed potatoes, too. Stay away from reds and fingerlings and such, for the primary reason that they'll take much, much longer to soften, and you printed this column out days ago and forgot about it and now you have to leave for Aunt Hortense's in nine minutes and that is just not going to work.

(A note, here. Yes, goddammit, peel your goddamn potatoes. Or don't peel them. It's your food, and you can do what you want with it. But: Peel them. Mashed potatoes with skins mixed in are perfectly fine, but this is Thanksgiving dinner, here, and you're already getting off easy by bringing the mashed potatoes, and peeling the skins off is the smallest gesture you can perform to indicate that maybe you are not quite the lazy corner-cutting sack of crap that, actually, yeah, you totally are, which is why no one trusted you to bring pie.)

So your potatoes are peeled [stares daggers] and chopped. Cover them with cold water in a big pot and boil the potatoes for a while. Probably at least a half-hour; prod them with a fork every few minutes just to make sure. You're looking for potato-hunks that can be speared with very little effort, but which do not dissolve in the roiling water, because, appetizing though it may seem, a hot potato smoothie turns out to be pretty fucking disgusting, however much riboflavin it may contain.

Taters done boilin'? Good! Drain them in a big colander. Now, working quickly, add some other stuff to the still-warm pot. As much of a stick of unsalted butter as you can force your otherwise health-minded conscience to tolerate, plus a few big glugs of milk (choosing your preferred level of fattiness, here, all the way up to heavy cream if you really wanna ride the lightning—but, please, not the fat-free stuff, which is tasty and refreshing in a bowl of cereal or a glass or poured over a scoop of chocolate ice cream, but which will add nothing whatsoever aside from dour, sad wetness to your mashed potatoes). Dump the hot drained potato-hunks into the pot with this other stuff, and now ...

... get mashiwait no not yet. First you have to add the roasted garlic to the pot. This is accomplished, annoyingly, by either squeezing the softened cloves from their papery enclosures, or prying them out with a small fork. They're very soft; you're very clumsy; you'll probably lose one or two of them on top of the two or three you furtively pop into your mouth. Get as many as you can into the pot. And now ...

... get mashing! Or, well, destroy your potato hunks and roasted garlic and combine them with the milk and butter in the non-thermonuclear method of your choosing, anyway. If you want to mash with a potato-masher or a big fork or even a sturdy wire whisk, get busy; if you have a hand-mixer (go ahead and look around if you're not sure; you'll find it hiding behind the wall and exterior acreage separating your home from that of the nearest insufferably well-adjusted grownup), you can press that into service, here, and wind up with a somewhat smoother, lighter finished product that sticklers for this sort of thing will insist upon calling whipped potatoes.

In any event, mash and mash and mash; when your elbow and forearm and wrist tire from mashing, power yourself through to the finish-line by imagining that the potatoes are officers in the Special Tuber Unit of the Miami Gardens police. Eventually, after a few minutes of this, your potatoes and garlic and butter and milk will have transmuted into a thick white paste with some number of minor lumps in it, or maybe no lumps, depending on your thirst for justice. Season the potatoes with salt and freshly cracked black pepper, mix this in, taste, and repeat as necessary, until suddenly you discover that you are eating entire handfuls of the stuff and cannot stop and this might actually be a little bit dangerous.

There. Mashed potatoes. Please do try to restrain yourself from bathing in them. Transfer the potatoes to a big bowl or tupperware-type thing, cover them, and hie thee to the shindig.

Serve your mashed potatoes with ... y'know, all that other stuff. The Thanksgiving stuff. Pile all that stuff on top of this stuff and let the various flavorful liquids run down into this stuff, and by God if you deliver so much as a thimbleful of these goddamn potatoes to your gnashing maw without some errant shred of turkey or gob of stuffing or goop-bearded green bean embedded in that wonderful white oobleck, your tongue and life and soul are forfeit. Observe how the subtly garlicky potatoes flatter and complement and vivify the other flavors, how the combinations keep your palate interested long after your stomach has fired off its last desperate emergency flare before the fatal rupture—and, observe how the various relations behold you with new and appreciative eyes, wondering if maybe, just maybe, you've finally come around, and next year can be considered for the honor of bringing something more challenging, like a two-liter bottle of grape soda.

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Albert Burneko is an eating enthusiast and father of two. His work can be found destroying everything of value in his crumbling home. Peevishly correct his foolishness at albertburneko@gmail.com, or publicly and succinctly on Twitter @albertburneko. You can find lots more Foodspin at foodspin.deadspin.com.

Image by Sam Woolley.

Maine's famous Zumba-instructor-cum-prostitute Alexis Wright was released from jail today after serving nearly six months. Wright, who videotaped many of her sessions with her unknowing clients, received an early release for good behavior.