Did you know those tasty little Northern Shrimp can live for five years? That's kindergarten age! Anyway, you'll be eating a lot less Maine shrimp next year, because the fishery collapsed due to warming oceans. No more Maine shrimp.

Our condolences to all the high fee-paying hedge fund investors out there. Better luck next year.

A Georgia man who promised to marry his girlfriend but then didn't has been ordered to pay $50,000 after the woman sued him for fraud and "breach of promise to marry."

Christopher Ned Kelley and Melissa Cooper had been living together for four years when Kelley proposed to Cooper in 2004, and even bought her an engagement ring valued at $10,000.

The couple continued sharing a household along with their shared child and another child from Cooper's previous relationship until 2011, when Cooper learned that Kelley had cheated on her for a second time.

Cooper, who had quit her job to become a full-time mother based on the assumption that Kelley would become the sole breadwinner after their marriage, was asked by Kelley to move out, and take the children with her.

Cooper responded by filing a lawsuit against Kelley, alleging "breach of promise to marry," among other claims.

She won her suit and was awarded $50,000 by the trial court.

Kelley subsequently appealed the ruling, claiming his relationship with Cooper was not unlike prostitution, in that he was merely Cooper's john.

As such, Kelley's defense claimed, their relationship was illegal, and therefore the promise to marry was unenforceable.

For good measure, Kelley also told the court he "never initiated the concept of marriage with her, outside of giving her that ring" and "never said the words 'will you marry me' to her."

Kelley lost again, with Judge Elizabeth Branch deciding [pdf] that the "object" of the promise Kelley made to Cooper was "not illegal or against public policy," even if the relationship had "the nature of prostitution."

Kelley was again ordered to pay Cooper $50,000.

[photo via Shutterstock]

Like, a big bunch. And it was apparently caught only because of some random, non-routine dragnet:

Foreign Policy's Gordon Lubold reports that the Defense Department's police decided last month to put extra scrutiny on all the civilian employees entering the Pentagon, just for a little while, and they turned up some cool contraband—knives, pipes, "expandable batons." Then there was that other guy:

But police also found an unnamed individual who allegedly was holding at least 25 grams of marijuana, just shy of an ounce...Why anyone would bring that much marijuana into the Pentagon is anyone's guess. Twenty-five grams would be considered by most people to be more than what an average marijuana user might consume for personal use.

How much weed is that, visually? This much:

Woof.

The worst part, from the pot-guy's perspective anyway, is that

Under Pentagon screening rules, however, an individual can refuse to have their bags and person checked and simply not be admitted into the building. It's possible that the individual in question simply forgot they had a container of marijuana on their person.

Should've turned heel and taken a sick day, dude. The war can wait.

[Photo credits: AP, cannabis.com]

A Canadian pro-atheist nonprofit tried to get its ad campaign up on urban billboards, and the media conglomerate in charge of the billboards said no, which is kinda weird, since the conglomerate was cool with pro-life ads featuring fetus heads.

The Toronto-based Centre for Inquiry wanted to get some added traction for its campaign to move beyond God talk and start a discussion on secular ethics, so it created the billboard ads, shown above, for display across Vancouver.

Pattison Outdoor, which owns the billboard space and bills itself as one of the country's largest outside-the-home advertisers, said thanks, but no thanks. "Pattison provided no clear rationale to support their decision," CFI president Kevin Smith said on the group's website. "They refused to identify a motive for their rejection or to supply guidelines governing their decision-making process." (Pattison hasn't commented publicly.)

But as the Vancouver Sun points out, Pattison's decision-making process hasn't prevented it from designing a billboard ad for Signs for Life, an anti-abortion group, complete with an unborn baby's cranium, and plastering it all over Halifax just two months ago.

That's got CFI sauced; although a spokesman for the group concedes that Pattison was willing to consider other billboard designs, he said that wasn't an option: "By saying, 'Give us an ad until we like it,' it's censorship by bankruptcy." He added that the group is considering filing a complaint with the provincial human rights council.

That seems hyperbolic, especially if CFI enjoys free online advertising mojo from posts like this one. But then, hell hath no fury like a political strident Canadian.

[Photo credit: CFI]

Deadspin A Treasury Of Children's Insane Christmas Wish Lists | Gizmodo Robotic Companion Gifts For Those Who Prefer Artificial Friends | Jalopnik One Man's Hilarious Quest To Rid The World Of 'Sexist Grid Girls' | io9 This is the horrible way that crucifixion actually kills you | Kinja Popular Posts

Thompson, Manitoba residents Ted Goossen and his wife have themselves some good, clean Canadian fun in -45C (-49F) weather.

"Keep blowing bubbles, hun!" exclaims Goossen. "It's a good day to blow bubbles!"

Gosh darn it, these two are adorable.

[H/T: Tastefully Offensive via Laughing Squid]

[Freezing cold temperatures gripping much of the U.S. today led some to call it "Ice Friday." But while the weather made for a pretty map, it's also been blamed for nine deaths so far. Be safe out there. Image via Business Insider]

Photo via Zeeturn

Merrill Newman, the 85-year-old Korean war veteran who had been held by North Korea for more than a month, has been freed. Newman had been visiting the DPRK as a tourist in October, when he was pulled off a plane and arrested by North Korean authorities, who considered him an American spy.

"I feel good," Newman said before his flight from Beijing to San Francisco. "I am very glad to be on my way home." Newman had declined an offer by Vice President Biden to fly back home on Air Force 2.

On his departure from North Korea, Newman said he respected "the tolerance the government has given me to be on my way." In the Korean War, Newman had trained anti-communist forces that performed raids on North Korea. North Korea, which has never formally concluded the 1950-1953 war, considered Newman an enemy agent.

After releasing a video last week that showed Newman apologizing for his actions during the Korean War, North Korea cited Newman's "sincere repentance" for his actions as the reason for his release. Newman was inspected by an embassy medical officer in Beijing, who gave him his medications and confirmed he was well enough to fly.

Six men have been arrested in Mexico for the theft of that truck that was carrying radioactive waste. While one of them was experiencing some symptoms of radiation sickness, the rest have been cleared medically and handed over to local police.

Five years out from the financial collapse, one would almost expect that we wouldn't still routinely be finding out about ways in which banks like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America manipulated financial markets in order to essentially pillage the American economy. Alas!

Yesterday in federal court, the city of Los Angeles filed suit against Bank of America accusing it of predatory lending schemes. According to the suit, the bank targeted minority neighborhoods with mortgages (including subprime) extended on predatory terms, thus sticking homeowners with loans the bank knew were unlikely to be repaid. The city alleges the following wave of foreclosures led to loss of taxes and millions of dollars in foreclosure-related expenses. Though Bank of America contests the allegations, this shit isn't exactly a secret.

Yesterday also brought the conclusion of the case of Matthew Taylor, a former Goldman Sachs trader who ignored the firm's limits by amassing an $8.3 billion trading liability in 2007. Despite Goldman quickly uncovering the scheme (which lost them $118 million), they merely fired Taylor — whose salary at the time was $150,000 plus a $1.5 million bonus — without notifying proper authorities. Taylor would quickly find a job at Morgan Stanley, where he worked as a trader for four years. Charges would not be brought until earlier this year.

Taylor was sentenced to nine months in prison after pleading guilty to a single count of wire fraud. He will also have to spend 400 hours tutoring children from low-income neighborhoods in math, so those children can presumably grow up to make billions of dollars for investment banks.

William Pauley, the U.S. district judge assigned to the case, lashed out at both the bank and the government during sentencing, saying that the former was negligent in its duties and that the latter moved for a quick plea deal for publicity reasons. (It worked!)

"Everything about this case is sad," Pauley said to Taylor. "Your employer's response was sad. Your conduct was sad. The government's conduct — it's sad."

And so it goes.

[image via Getty]

Last night, the nominations for the 2014 Grammys were announced. Whoever you want to win will not.

The Federal Register, the daily journal of the United States government, still uses floppy disks to carry out important tasks, including the transfer of the text of executive orders, proposed rule changes, and presidential proclamations. Yes, floppy disks.

"You've got this antiquated system that still works but is not nearly as efficient as it could be," Stan Soloway, the chief executive of the Professional Services Council, told the New York Times. "Companies that work with the government, whether longstanding or newcomers, are all hamstrung by the same limitations."

Floppy disks, whose use peaked when MTV still played music videos, are no longer featured in any of today's (or yesterday's, or last week's) computer hardware. But still, the Government Printing Office, which runs the Federal Register, accepts documents on CD-ROMs and floppy disks, but not flash drives, SD cards, or email.

The New York Times explains that the government's secure email system "is expensive, and some government agencies have not yet upgraded to it. As a result, some agencies still scan documents on to a computer and save them on floppy disks. The disks are then sent by courier to the register."

Agency officials have remarked that the lack of funding and the slow rate of technology adoption, as well as security concerns, have made the use of floppy disks a necessity.

Scary. Insane. Ridiculous. Invasive. Wrong. The Washington Post reports that the FBI has had the ability to secretly activate a computer's camera "without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording" for years now. What in the hell is going on? What kind of world do we live in?

Marcus Thomas, the former assistant director of the FBI's Operational Technology Division, told the Post that that sort of creepy spy laptop recording is "mainly" used in terrorism cases or the "most serious" of criminal investigations. That doesn't really make it less crazy (or any better) since the very idea of the FBI being able to watch you through your computer is absolutely disturbing.

The whole Post piece about the FBI's search for a bomb threat suspect is worth reading. It shows how far the FBI will go with its use of malware to spy on people and reveals the occasional brain dead mistakes the FBI makes to screw themselves over (like a typo of an e-mail address that the FBI wanted to keep tabs on). Good to know these completely competent folks are watching over us by any means necessary. [Washington Post]

Image by Oleksiy & Tetyana under Creative Commons license

Did you know that people do not all make scrambled eggs the same way? Did you know that they even occasionally disagree about how best to make scrambled eggs? It's true. True and intolerable. True and intolerable and horrifying.

Friends, let's fix this shit. Here are the points of disagreement about the making of scrambled eggs, and here are the final and indisputable verdicts which will settle these disagreements now and forever, or anyway until the robots rise against us in a great whirring and beeping carnival of death and invent their own way of making eggs, which will be dumb and wrong because robots can't even taste or love. Friggin' robots.

Onward!

Scrambled Egg Controversy #1: Where To Scramble The Eggs

That's right: This is an actual point of contention between egg-scramblers. Whether to crack the eggs into a bowl and scramble them there before adding them to the pan, or to crack them directly into the hot pan and then scramble them as they cook.

Each approach has its benefits. Scrambling the eggs in a bowl beforehand generally permits a more thorough and vigorous scrambling, which will whip air into the eggs, which will produce fluffier, creamier eggs in the end. This thorough scrambling also means a more complete integration of white and yolk, which means uniformity of texture and color in the finished product, or close to it. That last bit doesn't matter so much, but hey, maybe you're an obsessive-compulsive maniac, or anyway that is what we're all assuming is the reason for you collecting your pee in mason jars.

On the other hand, cracking the eggs into the hot pan and scrambling them there is a much quicker way of doing things, and easier on your dishwashing mechanism of choice. Also, I dunno, there's just something jaunty and improvisational and cool about scrambling the eggs in the pan. Did your great grandpappy beat his eggs in a goddamn bowl when he was pannin' for gold in the Yukon in Aught-Three? Heck no! He scrambled 'em right in the bean can, over the fire! And he knew a thing or six about livin', I tells ya!

No offense, but, shit on your dumb great grandpappy. He wore a saucepot for a hat and had neurosyphilis and he never found any gold anywhere, and his eggs were dense, boring garbage. Beat your eggs in a bowl beforehand, vigorously and for several minutes, goddammit.

Scrambled Egg Controversy #2: When To Scramble Them

This is less a matter of competing viewpoints and more a matter of some people just being wrong and vampires. Do not scramble your eggs the night before you intend to cook them, unless you are using them as an egg custard for French toast, and even then, beat them again before you dip any bread in them. The air that you worked to beat into the eggs with all that whipping and whisking from before will depart them as they sit, and your finished product will be dense and depressing instead of light and fluffy and wonderful. Beat the eggs right before they go in the pan—literally right up until you are just about to pour them into the pan. Or go to hell.

Scrambled Egg Controversy #3: What To Put In Them

This covers both before the eggs are cooked, and while the eggs are cooking. Do you add some milk or cream or a splash of water to the eggs before beating them, to make them more fluffy? Do you add salt and pepper to improve their flavor? Do you add two armloads of shredded cheese because cheese is both your only reason for living and the most pleasurable way of hastening the end of your miserable life?

The answer is: Yesno! Don't add salt or pepper to your eggs before they're cooked: Salt can screw with the texture of the eggs, and pepper just kinda looks weird and unappetizing when it's cooked into scrambled eggs. Do feel free to add a moderate quantity of cheese to the eggs as they cook; you're only gonna live just the one time, anyway.

As for milk/cream/water: Do not add water to your eggs. Water, being water, will make your eggs wet, and will also do nothing else. Milk, on the other hand, if its fat quantity is high enough (which is to say, if it is at least whole milk or maybe even half-and-half or real-deal cream), might add some lightness and creaminess to your eggs if you add it to the eggs in the bowl and beat the ever-loving unholy fucking shit out of it. If you're not prepared to use fatty milk and then whip the goddamn daylights out of it, don't add it. Skim milk is delicious when it is served ice-cold in a glass; in scrambled eggs, it might as well be water. It contributes nothing. Y'know, like you at your job.

Scrambled Egg Controversy #4: How To Cook Them

This is perhaps somewhat less a controversy than a scandal, in that the continued existence—proliferation! reproduction! employment!—of clods who cook their scrambled eggs over high heat is goddamn scandalous, a blight on our community and a testament to the deep and terminal rottenness at its godforsaken core. What kind of people are these? What kind of people sear their scrambled eggs to rubbery, cauterized awfulness on purpose? And what kind of people are we—what kind of cowards! derelicts! hypocrites, all!—who think ourselves decent and kind, yet suffer these clods to live? No more, I say. No more! Lines must be drawn! Moral lines, at least, and then, if necessary, the battle kind.

Here is how you cook your scrambled eggs: slowly, over low heat, with constant gentle stirring and folding and turning. Cook your scrambled eggs slowly, over low heat, with constant gentle stirring, and they will yield soft, delicate, creamy, fluffy heaven in return. Cook them over high heat, and they will yield hateful rubber bullshit. Low heat. Slow cooking. Constant stirring, preferably with a flexible rubber spatula. Do not fuck around with this. Just don't.

(As an appendix to this controversy: There is may be some minor disagreement about what to cook your scrambled eggs in. The only acceptable answers are: butter or bacon fat. If you so much as consider cooking your scrambled eggs in goddamn grapeseed oil, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. At your funeral.)

Scrambled Egg Controversy #5: When To Stop Cooking Them

On the one side of this controversy, you have those who understandably fear foodborne illness, and thus smartly cook their scrambled eggs to perfect total doneness before removing them from the heat and serving them. On the other side, you have people who are not fucking idiots. Remove your scrambled eggs from the heat before they have fully set, because they will continue cooking even after you do so, and if you wait until they are perfectly set to remove them from the heat, then by the time you serve them, they will be dense, rubbery shit and you will have turned the happy occasion of eating delicious breakfast into the sad occasion of becoming yet another person who hates your guts.

Again: Your scrambled eggs will continue to cook after you remove them from the heat of the stove and the residual heat of the pan, because they are themselves very hot, and heat cooks eggs. Your eggs will be perfectly cooked and (probably) viral meningoencephalitis-free by the time you eat them, even if they were not fully cooked when you removed them from the stove, unless you removed them from the stove directly into your mouth, in which case you will have more pressing concerns than your risk of salmonella poisoning, such as the fact that you just gave yourself second-degree burns on the inside of your head.

Scrambled Egg Controversy #6: How To Eat Them

Ah, and here we are, at the great and central controversy—not only of scrambled eggs, but of the history of mankind. What is the right way—the best way—to consume scrambled eggs? A common and dangerous misconception holds that it is not sad and losery to eat scrambled eggs off a bare plate with a fork—or, worse yet, to deploy them in configurations (atop corned beef hash, or home fries, for example) that are clearly and rightfully the province of the over-easy fried egg, as though the runny yolk of the fried egg is some inconsequential frippery to be dispensed to the void. This, friends, is bullshit. Scrambled eggs aren't just fried eggs that have had a hard go of it. They're an entirely different foodstuff! With an entirely different set of immutable and indisputable laws, known and articulated by only one internet food person!

The correct way to eat scrambled eggs is: atop or between slices of buttered toast. You may decide for yourself whether to use a single slice of buttered toast as an edible shovel for delivering the scrambled eggs to your face, or to use two slices of buttered toast to make a sandwich for delivering the scrambled eggs to your face. (If you go this route, it's OK to add other stuff to that sandwich. Bacon goes lovely in there). Should some scrambled egg escape your toast implement and fall to the plate below, you may eat this wayward wad of scrambled egg on its own—with your hand. Utensils may be used only for the purpose of piling scrambled egg onto buttered toast. This is not a custom; it is a natural law, written in the monomers of our DNA. Do you hate nature? No. Nature is pretty. Obey nature.

Also never put ketchup on scrambled eggs, because that is fucking disgusting.

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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.

Four homeless people have died of hypothermia during this week's frigid weather in San Francisco.

Sometimes you go for a jog and nothing happens except for maybe a cramp, and sometimes you go for a jog and a deer falls from mid-air and crushes you. So it went for an unnamed 27-year-old Virginia woman who was jogging when she was hit by a deer that had been sent airborne by a 71-year-old woman driving on a highway.

Both women were taken to the hospital and released on Friday. The deer, according to a man who stumbled on the accident scene, was eaten by vultures — and by "vultures" he means actual vultures, like, the bird, and not, you know, Washington lobbyists (because of how Virginia and Washington D.C. are very close to each other).

"That's pretty amazing," said another man who was doing his daily workout before finding himself a bystander to a deer falling out of the sky and landing on some poor unsuspecting woman who was just trying to jog. "I don't know what the statistics are for that but it's pretty low."

Indeed.

[image via Shutterstock]

(Previously.)