A mild-mannered man says his life was completely ruined after Google's autocomplete feature convinced the government he was building a bomb.

Though he intended to search the web for "How do I build a radio-controlled airplane," Jeffrey Kantor, then a government contractor, says the search engine auto-completed his request, turning it into ""How do I build a radio controlled bomb?"

Before he realized Google's error, Kantor had already pressed enter, sparking a chain reaction he says resulted in months of harassment by government officials leading up to his eventual termination.

Following the 2009 incident, Kantor says he was under constant surveillance, with his every physical and digital move monitored by the government.

In a lawsuit filed this week in federal court, Kantor claims he was regularly visited by federal investigators who made threatening and anti-Semitic remarks, which only got worse after he complained to the Anti-Defamation League.

Kantor further states that coworkers would also make "veiled death threats" and appeared to have extensive knowledge of Kantor's private life, phone calls, and Internet habits.

"If Kantor ever got angry after his private information was repeated back (by slamming a cabinet or typing loudly on his computer)," reads Kantor's complaint, "the [subcontractor] CRGT and Northrop Grumman employees would tell the same story about how there was a neighbor in their community who seemed like such a nice guy, but then went on a murder suicide."

Kantor says he was ultimately pushed out of his position at Appian Corporation, but continued encountering similar harassment when working for other contractors with federal clients.

Kantor's lawsuit names a who's who of high-profile defendants, including Attorney General Eric Holder, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Rand Beers among others.

As recompense for his hardships, Kantor seeks nearly $60 million in damages.

He also wants the court to order the government to quit stalking him.

While Airbnb funneled some of its $326 million in venture capital toward movie replica conference rooms, a skee ball machine, and corporate myth-making at its shmancy new Soma headquarters, the company's non-profit partner is soliciting non-tax deductible donations from regular shmoes to keep the sharing economy in the margins to which it has become accustomed.

Peers is a non-profit "advocacy group" that launched in July with industry "partners" from the "sharing economy," including Airbnb, Lyft, and TaskRabbit. At the time, CNET said the goal was to "promote and protect the businesses and groups that allow people to share goods and services." Executive Director Natalie Foster couched it as grassroots initiative that focused on "community building," not lobbying:

While Foster has a keen interest in how tech can disrupt politics and encourage social change, she said Peers will not focus on pushing or lobbying for legislation. But, it can't hurt the companies to have a nonprofit advocating for their cause.

That distinction is harder to swallow since Peers cofounder Douglas Atkin, who also happens to be head of community for Airbnb, sent out a corporate plea to New Yorkers directing them to a Peers petition, without mentioning Airbnb's affiliation. That petition is mentioned in an end-of-year email plea from Peers (in full below), along with its success in "changing ridesharing laws in California." Those laws benefit Lyft, which recently instituted minimum fares and surge pricing, instead of "donations."

In the same plea, Peers asks people to "chip in $5" to fuel their work . . . on behalf of profit-driven interests. Columbia Journalism Review recently took Fortune magazine to task for presenting Peers as a for the people, by the people initiative:

"The people" and their "grassroots activism" Fortune's referring to are organized by Peers, the lobbying group founded by big Silicon Valley corporations to protect their fortunes from existing law and regulation.

And even the regular people Fortune refers to here are effectively mini-corporations themselves—ones that skip the taxes and other regulatory requirements competitors face. I'd bet few of these Airbnb activists breaking into groups and heading to Albany to lobby legislators are folks who rent their flat out for a few days a year while they're on vacation. They're much more likely to be people who make serious money doing it. Fortune reports that some Airbnb users bring in more than $400,000 a year in sales.

Airbnb created Peers earlier this year and one of Airbnb's executives is its co-director. Ebay billionaire Pierre Omidyar's foundation is the "major backer," according to this Fast Company story (the Omidyar Network is also a funder of CJR). Omidyar's foundation is an investor in a for-profit Airbnb-like site and Omidyar's eBay has taken up the antitax mantle from Jeff Bezos and Amazon, fighting against an Internet sales tax in a bid to keep his sellers' unfair price advantage over bricks-and-mortar retailers.

The same Fast Company article noted the Omidyar Network's role profiteering off of peer-to-peer networks:

Omidyar Network has been criticized for co-opting and commercializing sharing innovations, like relaunching CouchSurfing, the original lodging-sharing community, as a for-profit company, and promoting for-profit rather than nonprofit models of microfinance lending.

Airbnb, which is valued at $2.5 billion, needs to get those "democratically imposed woes" fixed before it IPOs in order for its VC backers to get the best multiple on their investment, adds CJR:

The so-called sharing economy would be more accurately called the sublet economy, which would be more neutral, to boot. Who could possibly come out against sharing? Subletting, however, is a more complicated term. It raises questions about the rights of neighbors and of owners not to have their building turned into a hotel—not to mention the ability of the government to tax these transactions.

We reached out to Peers to ask whether its well-funded industry partners also donate to the collection plate its trying to pass around and will update the post if we hear back. In July, CNET said: "The businesses don't fund Peers. Instead, they will promote the nonprofit to their users." Without disclosure, it seems.

Russ Choma, a reporter for OpenSecrets, told Valleywag that Peers does not seem to have filed yet with the IRS. "Trade associations (501c6) and social welfare (501c4) can engage in politics, but that doesn't necessarily mean they do," he said. "Considering the background of all the people (Organizing for America and DNC) you'd assume they will."

Eventually, a 990 form will have to detail how much money they have. Until then, won't you lend these titans of sharing a hand?

Here is the full email from Peers:

————— Forwarded message —————
From: Natalie Foster, Peers.org<hello@peers.org>
Date: Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 7:13 PM
Subject: It's been an incredible year - thanks to you, Sam !
To: Sam Biddle <biddle@gawker.com>

Hello Sam ,

Since we launched in July, members like you have turned Peers into a powerhouse through the sheer force of your time, energy, and talents.

When you look at it in one place, it's pretty incredible. We've had a ton of impact so far - from changing ridesharing laws in California, to racking up over 230,000 signatures on a homesharing petition in New York, to hosting 120 dinner parties around the world.

But our work's just begun and we need your help to keep up the momentum. Will you chip in $5 now to fuel future Peers work?

Let's build on the foundation you've created:

You're mainstreaming the sharing economy, so more people are willing to try new sharing services.

• You spread the word - and Peers is now nearly 250,000 members strong.
• You caught the attention of more than 60 media outlets, which called us "a new voice to go up against traditional industries" and "a unified voice for what many have come to regard as a movement".

You're growing the sharing community, so more people can enjoy the benefits of sharing.

• You hosted 120 potluck Dinner with Peers events in 92 cities and 32 countries.
• You were inspired by meeting fellow Peers, you created Peers City Groups to keep the energy and action going.

You're protecting our opportunities to share, and helped make smart progress on new regulations.

• You gathered, more than 200 strong, to walk together to the California Public Utilities Commission meeting that ultimately made ridesharing legal in California. Members like you were an important public voice in shaping this historic decision.
• You helped Peers members Erica and Brian in Grand Rapids, Michigan, gather 1000+ signatures and successfully convince the City Commission to protect home-sharing.
• You're working hard in New York, where Peers member Mishelle started a petition calling on New York lawmakers to fix a poorly written law that puts homesharing in jeopardy. Her petition has more than 230,000 signatures (and growing!). And recently, more than 200 New Yorkers attended a Peers community meeting to discuss how to fix the law and are now preparing to meet with dozens of state lawmakers to spread the word.

We need your support to keep building on this momentum. Will you chip in $5 now to fuel future Peers work?

Peers exists to serve the people that drive the sharing economy — that's you! And you've got a lot of ideas for what we should work on next year. With your support, Peers will realize as many of them as we can.

Here's just a few of the ways your donation could be used:

• To build local sharing guides and host share fairs
• To make sure the media hears more of your stories
• To rally Peers members when a sharing service you depend on is under threat
• To create more videos, images and content that helps demystify the sharing economy —- in a way your Grandmother would understand
• To build a toolkit that makes it easy for Peers members all over the world to lead their own sharing efforts

Every single dollar counts. Please support us in moving this ambitious agenda forward next year!

Enjoy your holidays.

Natalie

Natalie Foster Executive Director

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

Score one for hard-working public university students in the Sunshine State, just trying to get by with a couple of pump-action 12-gauge Remingtons in the trunks of their Civics.

Most Florida state colleges had been trying to limit the availability of firearms on campus by barring students from keeping the weapons in cars parked at school. But Alexandria Lainez, a student at the University of North Florida, said that infringed on her right to carry a gun between her home and the school's Jacksonville campus.

An appellate court agreed, because the state's constitution forbids any constraints on gun ownership and carry that aren't approved by the conservative-controlled Legislature. "There are certain places where firearms can be legally prohibited," the court's decision stated. "But the Legislature has recognized that a citizen who is going to be in one of these places should be able to keep a firearm securely encased within his or her vehicle."

Spring pep rallies should be fun.

[Photo credit: Bigstock Photo]

In the interest of remaining profitable yet not entirely dependent on display advertising, Gawker is publishing a series of gift guides aimed at the target audiences of our seven sister sites. Previously: Deadspin Gift Guide; Jezebel Gift Guide; Kotaku Gift Guide.

The tagline of Jalopnik, Gawker Media’s car culture website, is “Drive Free or Die.” This is a pernicious lie, a distorted theory of human liberty made only somewhat plausible by automobile manufacturers’ indelible stain on the layout and public amenities of American cities. You do not need your own car—which is to say, the ability to drive wherever you want, whenever you want, to drive free—in order to truly live.

Whoa there, you might be saying. How do I get rid of my car? That’s where this gift guide—cultivated by you, dear readers—comes in. What sort of mass-produced consumer goods make it easier to go car-less, or nearly car-less? What sort of item, or gift card, would you be willing to give your car-crazy cousin if you didn’t want to encourage him?

In other words: What makes riding the subway or bus not completely unbearable? Which car-rental service is best? Which taxi-hailing app do you rely on? Suggestions welcome below.

To make this gift guide easy to use (and maximally profitable for Gawker Media), please follow these instructions:

1. Begin with the name of the gift, in bold, followed by the price.

2. If there's a photograph, post that below the name and price.

3. Describe the gift and why the sort of person who reads Jalopnik would like it.

4. Indicate where an interested reader can purchase the gift, linking out to an online retailer if appropriate. Which online retailer? That’s up to you. But if you link out to Amazon.com, a nifty little box will appear allowing readers to click a little thingie and buy it right there, which is pretty neat. Even neater, Gawker will get a cut of the purchase price. Do what you will with that information. Get gifting!

The Paris Review had a party last night celebrating the publication of its winter issue. Their parties are always fun—they have a great office with amazing art on the walls, guests always drink too much, there are books everywhere, but they let people smoke inside and I still smell like cigarettes.

Uzoamaka Maduka (The American Reader)Luke Pontifell (Thornwillow Press)Ariel Schulman (director, Catfish)Hailey Gates (The Paris Review)

A group of high school students from California were arrested this week after allegedly throwing a party in the backyard of a multimillion-dollar mansion without the homeowner's knowledge.

An investigation into the November 23-24 incident by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department resulted in the arrest of 14 minors and one 18-year-old.

According to authorities, after learning about the La Habra Heights homeowner's absence, the home invaders took to Twitter to promote the impromptu party.

At some point during the festivities, attendees broke into the mansion and made off with several high-priced items.

"They just had a free-for-all once the place was broken into," said Lt. Arthur Scott. "Once entry was made, it was like, 'Oh, this is fun.'"

The suspects, who reside in Whittier and La Habra, were taken into custody and booked on suspicion of burglary or trespassing.

The Sheriff’s Department says the home sustained damage and loss estimated at over $1 million.

Several stolen items have since been recovered, including a full suit of armor complete with helmet and shield and a taxidermied snow leopard valued at $250,000.

[photo of unrelated La Habra Heights mansion via Luxist]

It's easy to overlook Harvey Weinstein huffing and puffing and threatening legal action, because it's hard to deny an old man his simple pleasures, but his latest litigious tussle with Warner Brothers over The Hobbit profit participation may not just be Weinstein's audition tape to play Gollum in the final Hobbit film.

Weinstein and brother Bob are suing Warner Brothers over revenue for the latest installment in The Hobbit franchise, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, as well as forthcoming sequel The Hobbit: There and Back Again. The brothers sold their rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books to New Line, owned by Warner Brothers, back in 1998, but retained profit participation for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the first picture in The Hobbit franchise. The Weinsteins allege that their deal with the studio affords them profit participation on all Hobbit sequels, while Warner Brothers maintains that the Weinsteins only have legal claim to profits from the first Hobbit film. Warner Brothers had initiated arbitration against the Weinsteins in the matter on November 26th, before the brothers filed suit in New York on December 10th.

According to a Warner Brothers statement released today,

"This is about one of the great blunders in movie history. Fifteen years ago, Miramax, run by the Weinstein brothers, sold its rights in The Hobbit to New Line. No amount of trying to rewrite history can change that fact. They agreed to be paid only on the first motion picture based on The Hobbit. And that's all they're owed."

However, language from the contract made in 1998 and recently obtained by The Hollywood Reporter may give the Weinsteins a leg to stand on. The "quitclaim" agreemet outlining the profit participation between the Weinstein's then-company Miramax and Warner Brothers outlines that Miramax will receive profits from certain original pictures, but it's the language of how those original pictures are defined that may be the Weinsteins' saving grace.

The "Original Pictures" means with respect to each of the four books separately which comprise "The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again" and "The Lord of the Rings", the first motion picture, if any, based in whole or in part upon such book which is produced by or pursuant to the authority of Purchaser, but excluding remakes. A motion picture shall be deemed to be a picture based on the book "The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again" if either a) the main story line of the book is substantially the main story line of the picture, or b) the events or incidents in the picture are primarily the events or incidents from the book and the picture has both the characters Smaug the Dragon and Thorin the Dwarf (or other characters which would satisfy their story functions) or Bilbo Bagins [sic] as the lead character, or c) the title or subtitle of the picture is "The Hobbit" or "Hobbit" is any part of the title or subtitle of the picture.

Warner Brothers is set upon the fact that since the clause delineates the first motion picture, their obligation to the Weinsteins was fulfilled when they paid near $12.5 million in profits from the first Hobbit film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but given Miramax's delineation of what constitues an original picture (basically anything in author J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit world, excluding remakes), the Weinstein's make a strong case for future profit participation.

Brace yourselves: we now live in a world where Harvey Weinstein may actually be right.

Last September, traffic into New York on the George Washington Bridge got jacked up when a Chris Christie appointee ordered a shutdown of toll lanes. His office said it was for a traffic study. But it may actually have been to score some getback with a local mayor who angered New Jersey's cantankerous governor.

The Port Authority, which oversees the bridge, originally said the human-caused traffic jam was a planned "lane closure to allow for a study of traffic patterns." But for the past month, anonymous workers had grumbled to journalists that there was no traffic study at all, and traffic to New York from Fort Lee was brought to a standstill for no apparent reason.

Well, there was one possible reason: To send a message to Mark Sokolich, the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, whose city residents and motorists were hit hardest by the closures. According to the New York Times:

Last summer, [Sokolich] of Fort Lee, N.J., was expected to follow a lot of other mayors in the state by endorsing Republican Gov. Chris Christie in his easy run for re-election. Mr. Sokolich, a Democrat, refused.

Three weeks later, the traffic stopped in Fort Lee: "Short trips — it was the first day of school — took as long as four hours. The town of Fort Lee was a parking lot." Sokolich wrote an angry letter to another Christie appointee in the Port Authority, calling the closure "punitive" and asking for it to be lifted—which it was, five days later, after Port Authority Director Patrick Foye found out about the closure.

Foye went to the New Jersey statehouse and told legislators Monday that he knew of no traffic study. He only knew who had ordered the closure: another senior official at the agency named David Wildstein.

A loyal Republican politico, Wildstein attended high school with Chris Christie, and his 2010 appointment by Christie to a newly created Port Authority post—"director of interstate capital projects"—rankled agency vets who thought Wildstein had "more experience with campaigns" than "transportation issues."

"He became the watcher of the entire agency," one person told local reporters. "What he was watching for was strict adherence to the Christie agenda."

Could the Christie agenda have included a byzantine retribution campaign against the mayor of a 35,000-resident North Jersey borough? The governor called that that notion "crazy" last week—while adding that maybe little Fort Lee had too many bridge lanes dedicated to it in the first place.

Indeed, it would be crazy for the governor of a state of nearly 9 million people to send oblique political messages with a few lanes of traffic—crazier still for a politician with national stature and a possible interest in running for the American presidency.

It's a bizarre story, one that raises more questions than it answers. Democratic legislators in New Jersey, sensing a chance to pounce on the popular governor, are vowing more hearings, more findings of fact. One person that could probably help them is the Port Authority's Wildstein. But it won't be easy catching up to him: He announced his resignation last Friday.

[Photo credit: AP]

As the investigation into the fatal crash that killed actor and all-around car guy Paul Walker continues, a new theory has surfaced that pins the blame on the plastic dots that line streets everywhere. While the news media has run with this theory, I'm extremely skeptical.

Today, well-sourced gossip website TMZ reported that Walker's family members and certain crash reconstruction experts currently believe the Porsche Carrera GT might have spun out due to Botts' dots — those tiny colored dots that mark the lanes of travel along roads. Here's what TMZ said:

Sources close to Paul's family tell TMZ ... the family has been in touch with stunt experts who have gone to the crash site and come back with what they believe is a solid theory — a speeding car that hits the plastic markers — called Botts' Dots — will hydroplane, causing the driver to lose control.

We've learned the experts have told the family ... a car going speeds approaching 90 MPH will lose traction after hitting a series of Botts' Dots. It's akin to driving on ice — and control is further compromised by the fact that the Porsche was outfitted with special racing tires that have very little tread.

Let's ignore that "special racing tires" remark, and how it's more fearmongering with the Carrera GT, a difficult-to-drive supercar that has been wrongfully made out to be a deathmobile in the last few weeks. We'll instead focus on the claim made by TMZ's unnamed sources say lay blame on how the car reacted when it drove over the road dots.

Right away, I had a hard time buying this, but it has more to do with personal experience than anything else. I have never, ever, ever heard of any crash related to road dots, and thanks to the better part of a decade I spent pre-Jalopnik covering cops for a major Texas newspaper, I've seen and written about just about every way a person can die on the roads. Alcohol? Certainly. Bad weather? Oh yes. Driver error by one or more parties? Most definitely. But deaths caused by road dots are a new one on me.

But my anecdotal experience isn't enough. After reading TMZ's report I went in search of statistics or data on crashes, fatal or otherwise, related to road dots. I could find none.

So I turned to physicist and friend of Jalopnik Dr. Stephen Granade, a man who knows far more than I ever could about traction, bodies in motion and momentum. Not surprisingly, he too was skeptical.

Here's what Dr. Granade told me, in full, emphasis mine:

Could Botts' dots have caused the Carrera GT to lose traction and, in effect, hydroplane around? Well, maybe. Cars don't slide around thanks to friction. The engine turns the tires in a circle, producing torque. The torque will spin the tires freely unless they're gripping the pavement tightly enough that the tire surface can't slide relative to the pavement. If the tires lose their grip, then they spin freely and you don't have good control of the car.

The grip is caused by friction: the force that keeps the tire from sliding across the pavement. Once your tire starts spinning you've got a problem, because the force of friction between two surfaces moving past each other is way lower than when they're at rest. If you push a packing box across carpet, it's a lot harder to start it moving than to keep it moving.

In hydroplaning, you get a sheet of water between the tire and the pavement. That thin sheet of water is slick and so the tire starts spinning. Could that have happened to the Carrera GT? If it happened, the most likely way would be for the tire to lose contact with the pavement as it rode over a dot. Since the dot is slick, the tire spins. The car loses traction, leading to the crash. But for that to happen, the dot would need to be pretty big compared to the part of the tire that touches the road.

Calculating the dots' size is the easier part. Caltrans mainly uses circular Botts' dots that have a 4" diameter, which matches what I saw in the pictures on TMZ and elsewhere. The surface area of a circle is pi * radius^2. So those 4" Botts' dots have a surface area of about 12.6 square inches.

What about the tire's surface area? Growing up, I'd always heard that a car tire's contact patch, the area of the tire that's actually gripping the road, is about hand sized. But we can get better numbers than that with science! (Or at least some math and back-of-the-envelope calculations.)

The air pressure in your tires is a measure of how much tire contact patch you need to hold up the car. If you inflate your tires to 32 pounds per square inch, then the tire can hold up a pound for every square inch of surface area it has pushing on the road. If we figure out how much weight each tire is holding up, then we'll have a good estimate of how big its contact patch is.

To figure that out, we need to know how much the car weighs, what percentage of that weight is on the front tires, and what the tire pressure is. The 2005 Carrera GT has a curb weight of 3000 lbs. There were two passengers, so let's be conservative and add another 300 lbs. The car's weight distribution is roughly 42% on its front tires and 58% on its back, so its front tires will have the smallest surface area. Finally, the car uses Michelin tires that should be inflated to 32 pounds per square inch. With all of that information, we can calculate what the tire surface area is:

Tire surface area = (weight * front distribution)/(number of tires)/(tire pressure)

Take the total weight of 3300 lbs, multiply by 42% to get the weight on the front two tires, divide by two tires, and divide by 32 pounds per square inch. You get just under 22 square inches.

That's almost twice as big as the dot! There's no good way for all of the tire to be on the dot. Since tires have some give in them, the tire would still be in contact with the road even as it was on the dot. That means that this isn't like hydroplaning: the tire's still mainly in contact with the road and benefits from the road's high friction force on the tire.

While this isn't an exact calcuation, we'd have to be way off on our tire calculation to begin to get close to the dot size. The car weight would have to be under 2,000 lbs or the tires inflated to more than 55 psi before the tire contact patch would be as small as the dot.

There are other factors that make me doubt this explanation. The way the dots are spaced, you're most likely to have only one tire on the dots at any time, leaving three perfectly fine tires. The Carrera GT has a traction control system to deal with this kind of an event. Then there's the statistical argument. Caltrans has some twenty million of these dots on California roads. If the dots were this kind of a danger, where are all of the dot-related crashes?

None of these are positive proof that the dots didn't cause some kind of hydroplaning-like event, but it makes me think this kind of event is really implausible. If the dots did cause the crash, I'd bet on the driver drifting into the dots, hearing the rumble, and jerking the wheel too hard. The Carrera GT's reportedly a touchy car to drive, and it has no stability control system. That's just speculation, though. Hopefully the investigation will turn up more and better information.

I'm of the opinion that like any crash, this one will take time to investigate and fully understand, and we should allow that to take place without speculating too much on what happened. And if road dots turn out to be the cause of this crash, well, then there's a first time for everything.

But the "road dot" theory just seems way off to me, enough that I would encourage everyone watching this case to swallow with a gallon of salt. We'll see what unfolds in the coming days and weeks.

Deadspin Back In The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, Reviewed. | Gizmodo My Own Personal Verizon Horror Story | Kotaku The Most Realistic Sailor Moon Lingerie Money Can Buy | Lifehacker How to Use the Office Holiday Party to Advance Your Career | Kinja Popular Posts

I have a house and, like most houses, it's an unfinished work. There are cracks in the paint. There are piles of old clothes and shoes exploding out of the laundry room, which doubles as a storage room because we don't have a storage room. The walls in our bedroom are bare because we haven't had time to hang pictures on them since we moved in 10 years ago. We need a pantry, but don't have one. We just cram cans of food and boxes of pasta into the front hall closet with the coats and shoes because there's nowhere else to put them. We do not have a larder. I don't know what a larder is but it sounds fucking great. It sounds like you keep LARD in it, and that suits me nicely. But for now, this loving house will do, in all its imperfections. I suspect most houses are like this. There's always some goddamn project that needs to get done and never does.

But that is not the kind of home that exists in the Williams-Sonoma universe. The Williams-Sonoma universe is a magical pristine alternate dimension where every room has crown molding and your wife can fart out a perfect red velvet bundt cake in nine seconds flat from her Wolf oven and you are fucking RICH. Just so rich you don't even know what to do with yourself, which is how you end up spending $48 on a tin of peppermint bark. You host fabulous parties with educated neighbors and you eat organic soup out of a tureen hand-crafted by a cedar farmer in Alaska who only makes four of these tureens a year. It's a fabulous world, chock full of copper cookware dangling from stainless steel hooks and a framed picture of Ina Garten in every room, even the parlor!

It is a world designed to make the REAL world feel lifeless and dirty. A thousand years ago, you could have lived in a hut and been happy because you didn't know that life could be any better. But in 21st century America, you are constantly being shown how much better life can be, and that is what makes your life so fucking intolerable.

Anyway, I have received this year's copy of the Williams-Sonoma holiday catalog, and as usual it features a dazzling assortment of shit you can't afford for a house you'll never live in. And yes, there is a fucking chicken coop in here once again (List price: $859 with painted chicken). Let's see what else is inside, shall we?

Item #54-3800760 Williams-Sonoma Snowflake Marshmallows

Williams-Sonoma says: "Fluffy marshmallows are hand cut and individually dusted."

Price: $5.95. Set of four.

Notes: That's six dollars—plus shipping—for four fucking marshmallows. A bag of 50 Jet Puft marshmallows is three bucks at the store. Oh, but these were hand-dusted, which makes all the difference. You can taste when your marshmallows have been dusted by some heartless dustbot. It's a cloying taste, which I why I NEVER serve them at my parties, which are attended by many federal appellate court judges and newspaper barons.

Item #54-5710884 Three Months Of Pork

Williams-Sonoma says: "Includes 2-lb. extra thick bacon steak, 2 lbs. 4 oz. smoked Italian sausage links, and 2 lbs. Heritage Berkshire pork bulk breakfast sausage."

Price: $99.95

Notes: The delivery of these meats are staggered over three months, so you don't really get three months of pork. You get one day of bacon steak, and then one unbearable month waiting for your Italian sausage to arrive. Anyway, it's the holidays, so treat yourself. If you watched 12 Years A Slave, you earned three months of pork. W-S also sells three month "supplies" of steak, cookies, croissants, cupcakes, and espresso. EVERYTHING I NEED FOR MY FALLOUT SHELTER, which is made of tastefully distressed white brick and has an alarm to keep hungry radioactive vagrants out. HANDS OFF MY PORK, OMEGA ZOMBIE.

Items #54-126250 and #54-527879 Butter Making Kit, Rooster Butter Stamp

Williams-Sonoma says: "Just add cream for fresh, flavorful butter in 20 minutes!... A bas-relief rooster image adds a flourish to fresh churned butter"

Price: $29.95 (kit), $9.95 (stamp)

Notes: Oh, just add cream! It couldn't be any easier, except for the part where you spend TWENTY AGONIZING MINUTES churning and churning and churning away like Roger Clemens working his pitching arm down into a barrel of wet rice, just so your stupid dinner guests can have a fresh pat of butter with a fucking rooster crest on it. THE ROOSTER IS MY FAMILY CREST YOU KNOW. Our ancestors were famous for their delicious rooster butter, made from fresh rooster milk.

Item #54-1623164 Monogrammed Steak Brand

Williams-Sonoma says: "Put your initials on your grilled masterpieces."

Price: $39.95

Notes: It's bad enough that the poor cow takes a frat house iron to the ass before being led to slaughter, but now you gotta sign your steak, too? This is what I want to do, and tell me if I'm going overboard here: I want to brand a cow, kill that cow, cook a steak from its carcass, BRAND the steak, serve the steak at a party so that people know it's mine even though they already saw me grilling it, and then I want to eat the steak, shit it out, BRAND my shit with some kind of forged iron shit brand, and mail that turd to the cow's children. You will fear the initials DM, children. They will live in your night terrors.

Item #54-4051199 The Bread Project Assorted Muffins

Williams-Sonoma says: "The Bread Project is a San Francisco nonprofit that trains people with limited resources in the act of baking... Eight muffins."

Price: $49.95

Notes: That's 50 bucks for eight muffins. They're not even monogrammed, which is horseshit. I'm all for helping the destitute, but I could house these poor souls and enroll them at Harvard for less than the price of one of your banana millet muffins. Why did you put millet in my muffin? I don't want to eat a duck pond.

Item #54-5062088 Breville Smart Waffle Maker

Williams-Sonoma says: "With 12 browning setting and an 'A Bit More' button that let you add on time until waffles are cooked to perfection."

Price: $199.95 (two-square), $249.95 (four-square)

Notes: Why do I need the "A Bit More" setting when it already has twelve browning levels? Why don't I just go to the next browning level? OH BUT THIS WAFFLE MAKER GOES TO ELEVEN, YOU SEE. I also own a $300 alarm clock that has a "Just A Soupcon Extra Of Shuteye Darling!" button instead of the standard, guttural SNOOZE button. Please note that W-S suggests you top your waffles with "cranberry-apple compote". You people with your fucking compotes. If it were up to you, everything would be a compote.

Item #54-5873732 Gingerbread Estate

Williams-Sonoma says: "(not shown)"

Price: $249.95

Notes: What the fuck? I can't see the estate? The house itself is 57 bucks. How much larger is the estate? Is it so large that it can't fit within any standard camera lens? Does it have a fucking golf course? I want a gingerbread estate with a chocolate moat and armed taffy guards and maple butter gates, and if someone tries to break in, my peppermint security alarm alerts an elite group of butter toffee SEAL members to come shoot hot caramel right in your fucking EYE. I doubt the wisdom of investing heavily in a gingerbread estate. The gingerbread estate market is a bubble that is bound to burst and send shards of stale icing all over us.

Item #54-1718857 Miele Rotary Iron

Williams-Sonoma says: "Sit comfortably at this machine to press and fold large linens in as little as four minutes."

Price: $1999.95

Notes: Every year, the Williams-Sonoma catalog features gifts that are clearly meant for your help. "Thomas Barrow, my dear footman! Look at what I've got you! Now you can iron my bedsheets in nearly half the time! SURELY YOU MUST BE PLEASED." This thing is the size of a Buick. A regular iron costs thirty bucks. If you have the means to buy a giant robot ironing device, you should save your money and give the difference to ME, because I'll spend that money on more important things. I will fill a pool with snowflake marshmallows and jump into it while stark naked. Two thousand bucks. For an iron. Jesus Christ. Add it to my kid's Christmas list.

Item #54-1758697 Backyard Beehive & Starter Kit

Williams-Sonoma says: "Three-box beehive along with protective clothing and tools."

Price: $499.95

Notes: So I can get live bees delivered by mail? Can I send them to Ethan Hawke? Merry Christmas, Hawke BOOM FUCKING BEES IN YOUR FACE BITCH. There's also a mobile chicken coop here for $1,500, in case you want to take your chickens for a walk around the block or something. Like everything else here, it's worth the money because your neighbors don't have it. THREE MONTHS OF PORK FOR ME, AMERICA.

Drew Magary writes for Deadspin. He's also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at drew@deadspin.com. You can also order Drew's new book, Someone Could Get Hurt, through his homepage.

Art by Jim Cooke

Ryan Loskarn, the chief of staff of veteran GOP senator Lamar Alexander who was put on leave this morning after it was revealed he was being investigated for possessing and distributing child porn, was arrested.

And so it begins: Construction on a highway tunnel beneath downtown Seattle was brought to an abrupt halt Friday after workers encountered a mysterious object of unknown origin lurking underground.

An $80 million, five-story-tall boulder-busting machine named Bertha that was brought in to drill the two-mile Highway 99 tunnel was unable to break through the object and was shut down on Saturday after reaching the 1,000-foot marker.

The Seattle Tunnel Partners contracting team and Transportation Department engineers are working with experts to identify the unexplained obstruction, and are exploring the possibility of drilling down 60 feet into the object from the street above.

The area being tunneled contains a mixture of native soil and fill that was put in place over a century ago.

Speculation as to the object's true identity include an Ice Age-era boulder or a pioneer-era rail car.

"We don't know whether it is man-made or natural," a WSDOT official told the Seattle Times.

Or neither.

[video via KING5]

This, I think we can all agree, is poor teaching. Michael Ciccareli, a history teacher at King City High in King City, Calif., was arrested today after he allegedly broke into a 15-year-old student's home and beat the hell out of the teen.

Why would a high school teacher — who you are supposed to be able to turn to with any and all of your problems — seek out and attack a student? Well, the kid was fucking a female teenage relative of Ciccareli's. I mean, really, what else could it have been?

According to police, Ciccareli noticed that both teens were absent from a wrestling practice on Nov. 21. He then made his way over to the boy's house, where he somehow got inside before literally ripping the kid's bedroom door off of its hinges. There, he found the boy and girl, who are dating, screwing each other — as high school kids do! — and pulled the boy out of bed and assaulted him viciously.

According to a sheriff's office release, Ciccareli "punched John Doe with a closed fist several times in the face, and at one point kicked him in the face while he was on the ground." The boy suffered a broken nose, and either a bruised or inflated ego depending on his temperament.

One day, likely during college, he'll tell this story and no one will believe him, and he'll turn to Google and find this story. So, hey, kid.

And with that, South Park is back in the news. (17 seasons? Jesus Christ.)

On Xtube and Pornhub, where he shared his voyeuristic clips, he called himself "JERKING_BUD." In real life, Seth Thompson was a collection specialist at one of Florida Atlantic University's libraries. And oh, what a collection he had on his university laptop.

Thompson, 40, has been arrested for a spectacular record of workplace video voyeurism, according to the Broward-Palm Beach New Times:

According to the arrest affidavit, the employee, who worked in the library, filmed guys in the facility's bathroom urinating and masturbating. He then posted the clips to porn sites under the JERKING_BUD handle, catchy little numbers with titles like "A college kid and his dad taking a leak at a public bathroom" and "My buddy jerking off in the stall next to me."

Police were tipped off about the whole thing when a student allegedly caught Thompson paying him too much attention in the bathroom one day. Another student came up to the first a few days later. A 30-second clip had been posted on Pornhub.com of the student peeing, he was told. The crime was reported to police.

It's been a rough year for FAU students. But just how many of them seek out a sweet release in the library bathrooms? Thompson's arrest affidavit cites 13 videos, and only one videotapee has been identified thus far—so, says the New Times, "if you're a dude who's spent some time around the FAU library, you might want to do some awkward Googling, see if you, uh, recognize anything."

Also, jerk off at home. Chrissakes.

[Photo credit: Bigstock Photo]

Talking to director Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant, King of New York) is about as close to having a conversation with a human embodiment of pre-Giuliani New York as you can get. It is trying and you have the feeling that you could get attacked at any second. Not that I would have wanted it any other way.

Ferrara was exactly as brash, idiosyncratic, and inscrutable when I talked to him by phone last week regarding the theatrical rerelease of his 1981 exploitation classic Ms. 45 (out Friday). He is the kind of person who says "chick" and "ya dig?" in that thick Bronx accent of his. To indicate that he'd filmed a Ms. 45 scene on the block that I was calling from, he told me, "Look out the fuckin' window, what's the matter with you? You're probably living in the spot she started running in." I don't think he was saying it offensively; I think he was just saying.

The weirdest part came when I asked him about the way Ms. 45's rape content differed from so much of its contemporary ilk (without brutally depicting it, Ferrara's protagonist Thana, played by Zoë Lund, gets raped twice in an afternoon and then, using her second rapist's .45, goes on a spree in which she kills men that threaten her, and then those that she sees threatening others, and then just any men). "Whaddya want? Whaddya want?" he asked me and then delivered a nonetheless thoughtful answer. I still have no idea what he meant.

Ferrara no longer lives in New York, and though the man has undergone a cleaning up of his act similar in ways to the city itself (he's been sober for over two years). He's lost none of his swagger, nor has Ms. 45 (if anything, time has only been kind to Ferrara's movies). You can still fill this film under your fingernails.

Below is a slightly edited transcription of our phone conversation. I have preserved his clause-heavy speech pattern as faithfully as possible, ya dig?

Gawker: What do you think about Ms. 45 in 2013?

Abel Ferrara: Well, you know, I mean, it's cool. It's cool that they're actually putting it in a theatre like that. [In New York, it starts playing the IFC Center on Friday.] Although I started sensing that 'cause in Brooklyn there's that Nitehawk Theatre that's starting to do really well, showing all kinds of shit like that, right? Listen, [there's only] so far you can take watching movies on a telephone or on a screen, ya dig? For whatever the reason is, and the reason is, movies, you know, the traditional movies are a communal experience bigger than life. On a close-up, somebody's eyes, 10-feet tall. And you know, if eyes are the window to the soul, what you get what you get out of seeing the right people, the right way, doing the right—You know, performing. It's something that can't be, y'know, I don't know if you can really get it. I mean, you can't! You just can't. And then on the other side, especially now 'cause I'm rethinking this digital game, I don't know, you still aren't seeing the actual shadow of the silver, because, well, there's a whole thing I don't want to get into. But it's a whole different way of how film is projected. When a real film is projected, shot at 35, projected in 35, it's more of a dreamlike experience. More of a shared dreamlike experience.

And when you're talking about eyes, so much of what Zoë Lund does in Ms. 45 is with her eyes.

Yeah. Well, so much of it is there: who she is, what she is. She's a 17-year-old kid coming into her own. A really, really gifted woman, you know, playing, being. Yeah, it's a powerful appeal, sure. The more we know about her, the more powerful it is.

Yeah. Is Ms. 45 tough for you to watch at this point, given the fact that she's no longer living?

Yeah, the fact that she died the way that she died and I couldn't really help her at the time and… Yeah. It's a tragedy, man. There's no two ways of looking at it. You're shooting up $200 worth of dope a day since you're 23, where are you gonna end up? Dead at 37. I mean, this chick could write. This chick could act. This chick could play music. She was on a music scholarship at Columbia at the time. She's playing a mute [in Ms. 45], but believe me, this chick had a voice like a fucking nightingale, OK? I mean, this was a truly, truly gifted person who fell for this fucking scam that heroin is the elixir of life and the greatest thing in the world and you're gonna live forever and blah, blah, blah, you know. And it's kind of a heartbreak.

It's nice to see the movie get this kind of release because it's been so hard to see for so long. I mean, the uncut version never came out on DVD in America.

I don't even know which one's cut. It's just little bits and pieces. But I know what you're saying. Blockbuster kind of had a monopoly on cassettes. It seems at the time that Hollywood was in this kind of exploitation – for lack of a better word – game. And the ratings board was used to kind of control marketplace that wasn't theirs to begin with. It became 100 percent theirs.

Ms. 45 is less graphic and arguably more feminist than a lot of the films of the time that also dealt with rape.

Whaddya want? (long pause) Whaddya want?

I'm sorry?

I mean, I played the rapist. What are you going to do? You're not going to stick your dick into a 17-year-old actress, right? I was forced to play that part—believe me, I didn't cast myself in it. 'Cause the actor who was supposed to play it actually got a paying job in Kansas City, I'll never forget that. From the point of view of the actor, it's brutal. It is what it is. [Lund] found it funny, and she brought levity to the whole deal, 'cause she was so mature for her age and intelligent. And actually, a lot of the attitude of that film is her. The idea is [Nicholas St. John's] and the script is his, frame for frame, but she brought a very intelligent take on it, ya dig? Her answers, I mean, I'm sure you can look them up on the fuckin' internet, "Oh, it's this, too, there's feminism on that." She goes on and on and on about defining it, but the feminist attitude of that film comes from her heart. The fact that she's a woman who's an intelligent woman who gets it. But filming a rape scene, I mean, we only knew how to film one way, and that's to go for it. So it is what it is. Is it from her point of view? Well, you're in the movie from her point of view. You're watching it from her point of view. So I don't know if that's the camera, that's her power, or if it's being in the audience and conditioned to watch movies from the point of view of the star, or the most powerful presence on the screen.

I know a lot of this era and a lot of your movies that were made in New York are wrapped up in substance abuse issues and stuff like that. But do you at all miss pre-Giuliani New York?

I don't miss getting mugged, I'll tell you that. Do I miss having an apartment that I can afford? Yeah. Do I miss being surrounded by kids who were trying to make it in the world as opposed to [being] millionaires? You know, I don't know how much money you have to make to be broke in New York, but I'm sure it's…it's six figures, you know what I'm saying? So there's things you miss, there's things you don't miss, but you know man, you find it when you find it. What people tell me about New York is it's in Bushwick, Brooklyn, it's fucking outside… It's in Rome. It's anywhere. You feel it, you're looking for it. It's an attitude, you know?

How much has changed is so striking when going back and watching a movie like Ms. 45.

The biggest joke is that there are abandoned buildings. A certain friend came to visit me in New York not long ago and said, "You know, the hardest thing to do in New York is to take a leak." There's not one square inch of Manhattan that you could actually piss in the street on. You know what I mean? That you're not destroying a $5,000-a-month, you know, sidewalk or something, you know what I mean? There's no abandoned buildings. I mean, come on. I was actually living in that lot that she runs across. I mean, can you imagine an empty lot in NoHo?

No, I can't! What do you think about the fact that this movie, even Dangerous Game—Bad Lieutenant, even—they've all sort of grown in respect. Time has been kind to these movies. People respect them more, from what I understand, than they did then.

We were panicking when we were making them. Yeah, sometimes seeing these films right out of the box...people will get, you know, the events around you. It's tough to see Madonna in a movie when she had a number-one book and she was the sex act of the century, you know what I mean? When she was Lady Gaga, the original, you know what I'm saying?

I love your commentary tracks, especially Driller Killer. Do you have any thoughts on those? They are really off the wall.

Well, you know, there's not much to do. How can you watch a movie and talk about it? 'Cause if you're going to talk about one thing, the movie's running 100 miles an hour. Really, whoever came up with that idea is really, it's a nightmare. In the beginning they used to pay you a lot of money. Hey, will you turn down five, ten thousand dollars to watch your own movie for an hour and talk into a microphone? You know, it's ridiculous. You gotta do it, and then there's no tradition of what this is. What are you gonna do? You watch it as if you're sitting next to somebody you're watching a movie with. I mean, if you really want to comment on your film you have to freeze-frame it, stop it, discuss it, write things up, talk about certain things. It'd take you longer to fuckin' do a commentary, properly, than it is to make a movie.

Yeah, yeah. So is there a little satire when you're kind of flippantly commenting like that? Especially on Driller Killer.

I mean, it's a freakin' rip-off! You know it's a stupid thing to do, only you're getting paid for it, and you're gonna do it, and you're a fuckin' drug addict at the time, and who gives a shit, and you do it.

You recently filmed the Dominique Strauss-Kahn biopic Welcome To New York in New York. How was that? Because it seemed like in pre-interviews you were a little bit worried about having to go back to New York with your past and the addiction behind you.

Part of the thing is, you really have to, you know, if you really want to stay well, you've really gotta cut off your ties with everybody. And if every street is a memory, a drug memory, it's kind of tough. But you hang out with the people who are straight, who don't use, you know? You stay with the program and you focus. And for me, sobriety has been a very, very positive mindset. It's like, man, what the fuck was wrong with me? But I know what was wrong with me. But, you know, when you come back for the first time you've gotta deal with it. We stayed cool. With this storyline, dealing with this kind of power and abuse, and the problem is with these films, you've gotta find it in you. I could be making a film about a real person, a make-believe person, a cartoon, probably, whatever it is. But when you're making a film you've gotta find it in you. And it's there. You know? It's there. It's not something you revel in, and it's something you're working on. But this ability to be sexually or any way abusive, and to use power against those who don't have it, and all that. I don't need Strauss-Kahn to know the fucking deal, you know? You know, these films are very… A gift to the mental health, you know? Like, medicinal. They're like, they help you work through shit. You're taking these things on.

What do you think about the notion that all artists artistically peak at some point, and do you worry about that?

The thing is, man, there is no scale. There's no grades, nobody's giving anybody grades, nobody's saying you can make these movies badly. I'm not playing second base for the Mets, you know what I mean? I'm not going to be washed up at 35. The filmmakers I love made their best movies when they were 70, 80, 90, you know what I mean? You gotta worry about, you know, it's just reflecting your life! It's a matter of how you're living your life. That's the key, is living your life. And then these films are gonna just be what they are, you know. It's not like they're gonna judge this movie against that movie, but hopefully you're progressing in some kind of way with your life. You know, the longer you live, hopefully, and then, hey, the movies are gonna be the movies. And they're not meant to be judged, and they're not meant to be put up against each other, they're not meant to be given stars, or anything. They're the experience of the people who made them. And they exist, and that's there. And they only exist in front of the group and the audience that's gonna watch them. Like you say, the audience is gonna see Dangerous Game at one time… You know, I've seen movies – you've seen movies, right, that you've seen ten years later? It's like, "Wow." "Look at that." You never experience a film the same way again. The film don't change. That's the funny part. The film never changes. That's the coolest part about it.

[Photo Credit: Ward Ivan Rafik]

She slides off the road in a wet turn. The car catches in the dirt. She rolls. Does she ever look the slightest bit troubled? Not at all.

The video (which has already racked up 464,380 views since it was posted two days ago) comes with this caption.

A friend of mine had an accident with her car. Luckily, nobody got hurt. Gotta admire how she keeps her cool though, I'd be bummin' had this happen to me. Hell, I'd be dead, since I drive a Renault Super Cinq.

How she remained so calm, I do not know.

Hey, entitled "millennials," with your "organic" this and "artisanal" that and "farm to table" marijuana: you're not the bosses any more. Old folks have taken over American restaurants. Thank the lord.

Florida Today (just like USA Today, but with only Florida stories, so better) reports on the very latest numbers out of Trend Polling Central today, and we're extremely pleased to share this milestone with all of you:

For the first time in the United States, people older than 49 are eating out more than younger diners, according to a study released this year by the NPD Research Group, a market research company...

And restaurants, in turn, are responding with comfortable seating. Large-type menus and good lighting. Health-conscious offerings. Choices that embrace tastes from around the globe but down-home "comfort food," too.

Why have young folks lost their dining edge to the olds? Maybe it was the recession, or unemployment, or something to do with Guy Fieri. Who knows. All we we can say for sure is, "Thank god there will be more large-type menus and good lighting and comfort food because what is this, 'pickle plate,' for twelve dollars? We have a perfectly good jar of Vlasic at home."

Village Inn 4 life.

[Photo: AP]

Plastic surgeon Michael Niccole first operated on his daughter Charm when she was just ten years old. He turned her outie into an innie.

Since then both Charm, now 25, and her sister Brittani, also 25, have gone under their dad's knife several times, augmenting their breast size and reshaping their nose.

The sisters, who were adopted by Dr. Niccole and his wife Penny as babies, also regularly visit their dad's Orange Country practice to get botox touch ups and face peels.

"Every other month I'll get something done to my skin," Charm told Barcroft Media. "I think Botox is important because it prevents you from getting wrinkles. I also get Botox in my armpits, which helps me stop sweating."

The two are more than happy to play the part of living billboards for their dad's clinic.

"Some people say, "Isn't it weird that your dad has seen your breasts?" and I say no," Brittani is quoted as saying. "First of all I'm his daughter and he's seen me naked when I was a baby, so really who cares?"

And the pitch seems to work.

"Almost all of our friends have had procedures done by my dad, whether that's boob jobs, liposuction, Botox or skin peels," claims Charm.

Penny, their mom, was initially reluctant to allow their daughters to undergo surgery, but eventually gave in to their demands.

When the girls began to visit their dad's clinic on a regular basis, Penny says she worried that her daughters "could become addicted to plastic surgery."

"I fought it for a long time but when I saw how much she hated her nose, I gave in again," she said.

Dr. Niccole himself never had such qualms, though he insists he is not the reason his daughters love plastic surgery.

"They have grown up in an environment of beauty," he told Barcroft. "Our cars are always immaculate, our house is immaculate and all our friends are beautiful."

[video via Barcroft TV]