The Information just proved that it's worth the $400 price of admission. On display in an interview with Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham is the clearest picture of Silicon Valley's unacknowledged sexism to ever find its way in print.

Let me preface this by saying that before Graham's comments about founders with "strong foreign accents," he always struck me as affable enough, if a little cranky on occasion. When I worked at Inc. magazine, I fact-checked a profile of him and he came across every bit as smart and supportive of his portfolio companies as the article advertised. Even after digging in his heels about that foreign founder bias, I still felt my stomach drop reading the statements about discrimination in this interview with Eric P. Newcomer.

Given a chance to defend himself and Y Combinator—an accelerator often credited alongside Stanford as a gravitational force in the startup ecosystem—Graham instead exposed hidden assumptions about women and technology shared by Silicon Valley's priesthood. Emphasis mine:

Does YC discriminate against female founders?

I'm almost certain that we don't discriminate against female founders because I would know from looking at the ones we missed. [...]

The problem with that is I think, at least with technology companies, the people who are really good technology founders have a genuine deep interest in technology. In fact, I've heard startups say that they did not like to hire people who had only started programming when they became CS majors in college.

If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us. If we really wanted to fix this problem, what we would have to do is not encourage women to start startups now.

It's already too late. What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that. God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers. I would have to stop and think about that.

Okay. Deep breaths. Still with me? Graham makes clear in this interview that people who do not fit into the archetype of the precocious programmer are routinely dismissed as unworthy. That archetype, of course, is usually attached to a penis. No wonder Graham once said he can be "tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg." If you're a female engineer who found her interest in STEM education squashed early in life by gender norms, but had the guts to try again later, your cred as a coder is questionable. If you've been programming for the past 10 years, rip off your invisibility cloak because Graham has never seen the likes of you. That must be why Graham's wife Jessica Livingston, who cofounded Y Combinator and has been instrumental from the beginning, is the institution's "secret weapon."

Then comes the real twist of the knife. Here is a hacker hero—the figurehead behind Hacker News!—and he has no clue how to get girls to care about tech. Because using and building and enjoying and obsessing over technology is just that anathema to their biological nature—even as apps become the new teenage pastime. No, interest in technology must be a special trait attached to the Y chromosome.

Those beliefs inform the observations he shared when The Information pressed for more details:

How can you tell whether you are discriminating against women?

You can tell what the pool of potential startup founders looks like. There's a bunch of ways you can do it. You can go on Google and search for audience photos of PyCon, for example, which is this big Python conference.

That's a self-selected group of people. Anybody who wants to apply can go to that thing. They're not discriminating for or against anyone. If you want to see what a cross section of programmers looks like, just go look at that or any other conference, doesn't have to be PyCon specifically. [...]

We can't make women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven't been hacking for the past 10 years. [...]

It used to be that all startups were mostly technology companies. Now you have things like the Gilt Groupe where they're really retailers, and that's what they have to be good at because the technology is more commoditized. [...]

It's a combination of startups moving into different domains, that whole software eating the world thing, and infrastructure being more available so you don't have to be such a hardcore nerd even to start a startup, like you used to have to be.

Let's find a picture of PyCon, shall we? What can we glean from an image like this? Pretty much only gender and race—those are the only things an investor can tell just by looking at you. The irony of characterizing any tech conference, and in particular PyCon, as all-inclusive is lost on Mr. Meritocracy. This goes beyond some un-P.C. attempt to tell-it-like-it-is. It sounds more like justifying the status quo.

Once again, the line of questioning doesn't end with a single troubling generalization. No, Graham then goes on to imply that women can now be startup founders because there are shopping startups. Women just feel more comfortable in retail. Bitches be spending.

Do you detect a hint of nostalgia about the good ole days when you had to be a
"hardcore nerd" to get the keys to the startup kingdom? Well, that comes with its own price.

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

[Image via Getty]

A mere eight days after placing Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson on "indefinite hiatus" following his homophobic comments to GQ Magazine, A+E has caved to Internet demand and brought Robertson back to the cast of the popular cable show. The reinstatement comes after a petition at IStandWithPhil.com garnered 259,979 signatures (at the time of publication)—a mere 2% of the show's average 11.8 million viewer audience.

A statement from A+E reads:

As a global media content company, A+E Networks' core values are centered around creativity, inclusion and mutual respect. We believe it is a privilege for our brands to be invited into people's home and we operate with a strong sense of integrity and deep commitment to these principals.

That is why we reacted so quickly and strongly to a recent interview with Phil Robertson. While Phil's comments made in the interview reflect his personal views based on his own beliefs, and his own personal journey, he and his family have publicly stated they regret the "coarse language" he used and the mis-interpretation of his core beliefs based only on the article. He also made it clear he would "never incite or encourage hate." We at A+E Networks expressed our disappointment with his statements in the article, and reiterate that they are not views we hold.

But Duck Dynasty is not a show about one man's views. It resonates with a large audience because it is a show about family… a family that America has come to love. As you might have seen in many episodes, they come together to reflect and pray for unity, tolerance and forgiveness. These are three values that we at A+E Networks also feel strongly about.

So after discussions with the Robertson family, as well as consulting with numerous advocacy groups, A&E has decided to resume filming Duck Dynasty later this spring with the entire Robertson family.

We will also use this moment to launch a national public service campaign (PSA) promoting unity, tolerance and acceptance among all people, a message that supports our core values as a company, and the values found in Duck Dynasty. These PSAs will air across our entire portfolio.

It's unclear which advocacy groups supported the cable network's decision to reinstate Robertson—especially given the fact that his lack of public statement doesn't quite display the values A+E holds dear: unity, tolerance, forgiveness. His family's half-assed apology on his behalf managed to convince the network of his contrition—after all, it had nothing to do with their cut of the $400 million in merchandise fees, did it?

On Friday afternoon, a federal judge in Texas granted an injunction to two Baptist universities claiming that new laws mandating contraceptive coverage contradict their freedom of religion.

Although neither East Texas Baptist University nor Houston Baptist University stands entirely against all forms of birth control, both universities are strongly against the abortifacients covered by the Affordable Care Act. According to the Christian Post, the schools also "believe that the emergency contraceptives their group health-plan issuer ... will have to pay for under the Affordable Care Act's mandate cause abortions." Never mind that science says they don't, no matter how much you want to believe—the schools were granted their injunction under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Said the prosecuting attorney in a statement:

The government doesn't have the right to decide what religious beliefs are legitimate and which ones aren't... In its careful opinion, the Court recognized that the government was trying to move across that forbidden line, and said "No further!"

An exception to the mandate had already been made for churches and religious nonprofits seeking to avoid providing contraception to employees. But now with schools and even for-profit companies wanting to apply their free practice of religion to other people, it seems that one of the simplest of the Obamacare rules will continue to grow more complicated by the day, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

[image via AP]

It's no giant squid, but what the latest discovery in marine biology lacks in excitement for the layperson it makes up for in sheer quantity. Researchers studying the deep waters off the coast of Scotland have discovered four new species. Spoiler alert: they're all pretty slimy.

It's hard to get too excited about the mere existence of sea snails (Volutopsius scotiae), marine worms (unnamed, but from genus Antonbrunnia), and two kinds of clam (Thyasira scotiae and Isorropodon mackayi), even if they are totally new to human knowledge. But even if the creatures themselves are a little mundane, it's hard not to get excited about what they mean.

The species were all found near a "cold seep" on the ocean floor, where methane and other hydrocarbons emerge from the earth into the freezing depths. The gases appear to have resulted in habitats remarkably similar to those found near hot hydrothermal vents. Said the director of Scotland's World Wildlife Foundation branch, if speculation about the similarities is true, "this is no less important a discovery as the much better known hydrothermal vents found in other parts of the world."

So, have scientists finally found the two opposing forces keeping the powers of the earth in check, or is it all just a coincidence? Whichever answer proves to be true, look forward to more slimy sea creatures in the near future.

[image, of a different species of clam, via AP]

Hear that sound? It's the squeal of a million fan fiction writers freaking out at the prospect of finally getting some respect. This week, a federal judge ruled that the world's most famous (and possibly most adapted) detective may enter the public domain.

Sherlock Holmes made his debut 126 years ago in A Study in Scarlet, first published in 1887. Since then he's appeared in pretty much every medium and has been portrayed by everyone from original deerstalker Basil Rathbone to Iron Man to Khan. But through all that, people using Holmes and any number of other series tropes have had to pay licensing fees to the Arthur Conan Doyle estate. Basically, this is big.

The lawsuit was brought by Leslie S. King, who edited a 3,000-page annotated version of the Holmes stories and several other works on the character, including a collection of Holmes stories written by several different authors. Although Holmes should have already entered the public domain, lawyers for the estate claimed that Holmes should remain private for four more years, as his story was not truly complete until the last tale was published in 1927.

It didn't fly. All Sherlock Holmes stories and elements from works published before 1923—including Holmes, Dr. John Watson, the dastardly Professor Moriarty, and even 221B Baker Street—now belong to everyone. Use them wisely.

[image via AP]

Clay Aiken is a bored, rich person so he might as well consider running for office. That, according to the Washington Blade, is precisely an idea the 35-year-old singer has started to put in motion in recent months. From American Idol winner to... the gay Al Franken?

Per the report by Chris Johnson, Aiken — who was born in Raleigh – is considering running for a house seat in North Carolina's second congressional district. He has reportedly made "phone calls to gauge support," commissioned polling, and consulted with a number of "political operatives," including a veteran North Carolina advisor named Betsy Conti.

Of course, Aiken may decide that running to be a rookie representative isn't as nice of a life as being a moderately in-demand legacy entertainer. Alec Baldwin would probably agree with that assessment, though he might bristle at being compared to someone like Aiken.

But if Aiken does run, he might represent the perfect politician in a post-gay marriage America. For the Democrats, he's a charismatic entertainer who would be visible proof that gays can be parents, too. For Republicans, he would be an Acceptable Homo: a rural boy who even middle-aged evangelical Christian couples have fond memories of.

So maybe he would actually be John Edwards if both Ann Coulter and unions were right.

[image via Getty]

It's currently snowing INSIDE Brooklyn's Borough Hall stop. pic.twitter.com/9Qm0gDPDcE

— Jason Feifer (@heyfeifer) January 3, 2014

Good morning! Congratulations on surviving (so far) the blistering winter storm that is not named Hercules. Here's what happened while you were sleeping.

About six inches of snow fell in New York City, where, as of 7:30 am, it's 11 degrees with a wind chill of minus four. Not that the cold weather has stopped the new mayor from clearing sidewalks (helping his son Dante out in the process):

Schools are closed for the day in New York City, Washington DC, and Boston. Hundreds of flights into Boston's Logan Airport have been cancelled and JFK temporarily shutdown this morning. But most other transportation options in New York are open, if running a bit slower.

Boston was slammed with as much as 14 inches of snow, while other parts as Massachusets are under about two feet. Philly and Buffalo got about six inches, and most of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont received between seven and 17 inches. And parts of the Midwest are still covered from storms that began on New Year's Eve; Chicago and Detroit both have about 11 inches, and Indianapolis is at six inches.

As bad as the snow was in some places, the cold has been much worse... pretty much everywhere.

Wind chill values at 6am ET across the U.S. pic.twitter.com/WOhiQ949MW

— Tim Ballisty (@IrishEagle) January 3, 2014

The high in New York City is 17—the low is 2—but with winds as high as 25 mph, the wind chill could drop to minus 13. But that's nothing compared to parts of Maine, where the wind chill will push temperatures below -30.

In other words: Be smart and call in sick today.

[Image via AP]

Deadspin Mike Priefer Denies He Is A Bigot | Gizmodo How Corpses Helped Shape the London Underground | io9 Japan gets to the point and makes straight-up Disney Princess lingerie | Lifehacker How to Beat the Winter Blues When You Work from Home

"For a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana," writes David Brooks, the pop sociology professor of choice for Republicans hip enough to drive Audis. "It was fun." Was it, David? Was it really?

Do you think that all of David Brooks' friends, sitting in their rooms in some hellafied suburb with the door locked, had a lot of fun smoking herb with young David, back in the late 70s? Or might it be more accurate to describe young David Brooks as the sort of friend who you smoked with reluctantly, just to be polite, because he might tend to kill your high? Might this question have weighed on the lifted, paranoid minds of David Brooks' youthful friends, all those years ago: "Will this dude grow up and write a New York Times column about this shit one day?"

Dude. Yes. You think you know Dave, he seems like a fun kid, and then you wake up 30 years later and open the paper and see his byline next to a column about smoking weed with you. "I think those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships," he writes.

That's fucking weird, Dave. Chill.

I think we gave it up, first, because we each had had a few embarrassing incidents. Stoned people do stupid things (that's basically the point). I smoked one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in English class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple phrases, feeling like a total loser.

Ha, I remember that. That was awesome. That was the pinnacle of your popularity, Dave.

We gave it up, second, I think, because one member of our clique became a full-on stoner. He may have been the smartest of us, but something sad happened to him as he sunk deeper into pothead life.

That's a fucked up thing to say about Krugman.

Third, most of us developed higher pleasures. Smoking was fun, for a bit, but it was kind of repetitive. Most of us figured out early on that smoking weed doesn't really make you funnier or more creative (academic studies more or less confirm this).

David Brooks is the sort of kid who would look up academic studies about whether or not smoking weed actually makes you funnier. Dave, dude, you were nice and all, but we all hated getting high with you. Nothing would make you funnier.

Brooks, a weenie, does not quite have the stones to use his powerful personal story of a descent into depravity to argue that weed should not be legalized; he simply says that legal weed makes it "a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be." (Brooks still lives in fear of his stoner friend showing up at his house uninvited.) The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus, on the other hand, makes the following argument, the logic of which could only be followed by someone who is blazed like a motherfucker: 1) She smoked weed, and she'll probably smoke legal weed when she's next in Colorado; 2) Weed is bad for developing young brains; 3) Kids these days are already smoking a ton of weed; 4) Laws against young people smoking weed will inevitably be ignored; but 5) She is, nevertheless, strongly against the legalization of marijuana, for adults.

What these two affluent Caucasians are trying to communicate is: I do not care how many young minorities must have their lives ruined by being arrested for weed. I demand we keep in place a law that I acknowledge is purely for show and that I know will be widely ignored, in order to assuage my conscience about the upbringing of white teenagers.

The weed sucked when they were young anyhow.

[Photo: AP]

Looks like Kim Jong-un was more upset about those clams, crabs, and coal mines than anyone thought: According to a report in pro-China paper Wen Wei Po, Kim executed his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, by feeding him alive to a pack of 120 hungry dogs.

The report said that Jang and five of his aides were stripped naked and tied to railings, at which point the dogs, who had been starved for three or five days, depending on the report, were unleashed. Kim and his older brother, Kim Jong Chol, personally supervised the hour-long massacre along with 300 other top North Korean officials. Jang and his aides were "completely eaten up," according to Wen Wei Po.

As is the case with the majority of news from North Korea, most news outlets weren't able to verify the report, though some North Korean experts found it believable, according to NK News.

"It sounds credible, particularly given the horror stories coming out of North Korean labor camps where dogs are fed by political prisoners," said Dr. Leonid Petrov, of the Australia National University in Canberra.

"The system is built on fear and works only when both the elites and and the grass roots are scared and docile…Uncle Jang was hand picked to serve simultaneously as a scapegoat and a scarecraw for the regime." Petrov added.

While brutal, the punishment isn't that far out of line with Kim's other methods for execution, which, for Jang's lieutenants, reportedly involved being shot to death with large caliber anti-aircraft guns.

Jang, who was once considered the second most powerful man in North Korea, was executed in December after he was found guilty of "attempting to overthrow the state." Those charges, according to a report in the New York Times, stemmed from Jang's control of North Korea's clam, crab, and coal industries, which have become the country's most lucrative exports in recent years.

UPDATE 12:41 pm: It's worth pointing out, as Max Fisher at the Washington Post did, that there are several signs this is an unsubstantiated rumor. Other than Wen Wei Po, no media outlets in China or South Korea have picked up the story, which has been around for nearly a month. And Wen Wei Po ranks 19th out of the 21 papers in Hong Kong for credibility, according to a survey by Chinese University.

[Image via AP]

Analysts say that America's unemployment rate could soon drop by a full half point, representing many hundreds of thouands of people off the official unemployment rolls. It's all thanks to one neat policy trick.

That would be: Congress's decision to end federal unemployment benefits last week for anyone who's been out of work more than 26 weeks. This penurious act against our nation's most desperate citizens is a stunning success, statistically speaking! The Wall Street Journal reports:

The unemployment rate is the share of the total labor force that is out of work but actively seeking employment. To receive jobless benefits recipients need to keep applying for jobs. But once the government deposits stop flowing, they may be less motivated to look for work and thus drop out of the labor force.

By ending benefits for more than a million people, Congress will successfully sap their will and demoralize them enough to stop looking for work entirely—thereby lowering the official unemployment rate. The same effect could be achieved by shooting up the long-term unemployed with Thorazine, or chaining them in basements.

Tough love really works!

[Photo: AP]

Good morning. Is there snow on the sidewalk in front of your residence or place of business right now? Shovel it.

Oh, I'm sorry—you don't own your apartment? You just rent, from a landlord, whom you believe to be responsible for shoveling the walk? Good point. Has he shoveled it yet? No? OK, then shovel your fucking walk. You're right, he should totally have shoveled it. But he didn't. So now you have to.

The store you own in Soho doesn't open until 11? So you're just waiting for the folks who open to shovel when they get in? I guess that would make sense if nothing in the city opened until 11, and no one had to walk on the sidewalk in front of your store. But that's not really the case. I had to walk on the sidewalk in front of your store this morning, along with maybe 2,000 (?) other people. So go there. And fucking shovel it.

When I was a kid, our family dog became old and incontinent. He would just shit wherever. My sister and I came up with a rule that seemed to make sense to us at the time: Whoever saw the shit first was responsible for cleaning it up. But because we were cretins, and because the first one to acknowledge the existence of the big pile of wet dog shit on the living room floor in front of the couch we were sitting on would have to clean it up, we would just pretend it wasn't there and stew in shit-air until our mother got home and asked us what the fuck was wrong with us.

This is what you are doing. When you walk out of your house, through 6 inches of snow, and don't fucking shovel that snow, you are sitting in a room with a big pile of dog shit and pretending it's not there. Except it's not a room, it's a city. And it's not dog shit, it's snow. But you are still a cretin.

So shovel your fucking walk. I don't care that it's not really your walk, or that you did it last time and one of your neighbors should do it. You are looking at it. Fucking shovel it. Now.

[Image via Getty]

The thermometer says it's 15 degrees outside right now. Wind chill of -2. Even inside, I can hardly feel my toes. But you know what I can feel? This nice, warm, crackling fire. Feel that? Mmm. Yes. Hot. I could close my eyes and die of frostbite in its warmth, right now.

A lion is reportedly on the loose in the Tampa Bay area after escaping from a non-profit exotic animal sanctuary. Its whereabouts are unknown, but if it can find a lamb to lay down with, we can get these End Times rolling.

According to a report in the Washington Post based on Edward Snowden-provided documents, the NSA is working to build a quantum computer that would be capable of cracking nearly every type of encrypted code in the world, including files for banks, medical facilities, and governments.

The "cryptologically useful quantum computer" is being developed in room-sized metal cages in a facility in Maryland as part of a program appropriately titled "Penetrate Hard Targets." While Quantum computers are years from completion, the NSA reportedly considers its program on pace with publicly-known projects sponsored by Switzerland and the European Union.

"The geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European Union and Switzerland," one NSA document states, according to the Post.

Basically, quantum computers are much faster than traditional computers—and powerful enough, in theory, to crack the world's most complex encryption tools—but they are also much more fragile. From the Washington Post:

Quantum computing is difficult to attain because of the fragile nature of such computers. In theory, the building blocks of such a computer might include individual atoms, photons or electrons. To maintain the quantum nature of the computer, these particles would need to be carefully isolated from their external environments.

Why would the NSA want such a powerful computer? To spy on other countries before they spy on us, according to the NSA. "The application of quantum technologies to encryption algorithms threatens to dramatically impact the US government's ability to both protect its communications and eavesdrop on the communications of foreign governments," one of the documents states.

But no need to worry quite yet: The NSA is likely years away from fully developing the computer.

"I don't think we're likely to have the type of quantum computer the NSA wants within at least five years, in the absence of a significant breakthrough maybe much longer," Seth Lloyd, an MIT professor of quantum mechanical engineering, told the Washington Post.

[Image via AP]

"To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely," Edmund Burke wrote. Easy for him to say: He was English. Who doesn't love being ruled by a patrilineal order of puffy gilded-crowned pure-breeds? Americans, that's who. But dammit, this anti-monarchism is just killing us, according to Politico Magazine.

This country is split right down the middle, writes Michael Auslin, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. We are being torn asunder like the toga covering Justice, pried apart by culture warriors and partisan judges clutching madly at the coverings of her bosom. To heal our divisions, "we need a person who can sit above politics and help strengthen our commitment to republican values. We need a king, or something like one."

You may have thought we fixed this already, what with the long tradition of American presidential hagiography and its galvanization by our current Kenyan socialist dictatorship. You thought wrong! As Auslin calmly explains, Obama is a political clown who can't lead, or "serve a purpose above politics," because he lied about you being able to keep your crappy insurance, and also he "unleashed a blisteringly critical speech on the budget" once, when we really needed healing.

President Obama has repeatedly referred to his Republican congressional opponents as hostage takers, while supposedly serious commentators call them "political terrorists," a vicious label in a country fighting a decade-plus-long war on terrorism.

How can we win a war, any war, if we don't have a transcendent, universally popular head of state? A dear leader, if you will? You see, in some other powerful countries, there are "kings" and "emperors" and "presidents" who don't actually do politics, or stuff in general, but exist only as a symbol of what said countries are and ought to be.

We have no such safety valve in the United States. Our experiment in self-government has progressed to the point where the differences in our increasingly complex country are now the salient feature of public life... There is, for many Americans, nowhere to turn to find a sense of common meaning.

Sociopolitical heterogeneity is the worst, people. What would make America better is if we had a single completely apolitical icon to stand in for America itself, to be a bastion of its values—values we all know and share and would never, ever, ever disagree on. That would really help us to remember what really matters—America the thing, not America the tenuous ever-shifting political entity—and to shut up about petty differences that cleave us as a people, like who's rich or poor, who hates gays or not, whether women have it worse than men, how to stop mass killers in kindergarten classrooms, or whether the sick deserve help.

What would such a head of state look like? Maybe this guy. No, the guy on the right. Hindenburg. You heard of him? President of Germany? The man in charge, he was.

Or this guy.

It might be helpful to note that American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Auslin is a trained "Japanologist" who's spent his life studying the Far Eastern island empire. That may be relevant to his argument for apolitical quasi-religious monarchs. I don't really know. I wish I had a king to help me sort through all this.

But no matter. What is Auslin proposing? How do we make monarchism consummately American? "Let's call the new national symbol our First Citizen," he writes. Send him to all the public ceremonial outings. Let him be seen. And give him a 15-year term. See? That's not a dictator, that's a calming hand. Think of him (not "her", ha ha) not as a father of the homeland, but as a big brother.

I like the sound of this gig. I dig sporting events and can pardon Thanksgiving turkeys. What are we looking for in a First Citizen, exactly?

Who would be eligible? No current or past politician could be chosen as First Citizen, nor could anyone having a leadership role in any party. No one having served in the position could later be eligible to run for elected office.

Sounds great! We don't want Newts or Bubbas mucking up these holy works.

People who have publicly taken prominent roles in advocating any policy or political position would be ineligible.

Ummmmmm. So, the titular head of state should have no established public opinions on any issues? Doesn't that disqualify all of us and our old racist sexist uncles?

No one convicted of a felony or publicly known for embarrassing behavior or an unsavory personal past will be considered.

Ouch. Sorry, David Brooks.

Someone evidencing a deep knowledge of American history, its guiding principles and its evolution would be a preferred selection. To help ensure the gravitas of the office, no one under 55 could be chosen.

I think I have the perfect candidate.

David Waddell—plumber, city councilman, dedicated conservative—was fed up with all the government bureaucracy in Indian Trail, North Carolina. So he sent the mayor a latter saying he was quitting. Or, more precisely, "chaq DaHjaj QaQ jaj paj."

Waddell told the Charlotte Observer that he'd had enough with "what he saw as runaway development in the town as well as concerns with how requests for public information were being handled." Also, the lone elected representative of the North Carolina Constiution Party wants to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan in her re-election bid. As a write-in, obvs.

So he had only one choice, really: get out of local politics, and get out like a martial, misunderstood member of the Star Trek universe would. Hence the resignation letter to Mayor Michael Alvarez:

The letter—written in "the beautiful, pointy-looking written Klingon language of Kronos," according to CNET—was not well received:

Alvarez called the letter childish and unprofessional. "It's an embarrassment for Indian Trail, and it's an embarrassment for North Carolina," he said.

To which Waddell uttered whatever the Klingon equivalent of "whatever" is. "Folks don't know what to think of me half the time," he told the Observer, so "I might as well have one last laugh."

That's David Waddell for U.S. Senate in 2014. Remember to write in his name in Klingon.

[In this 2009 AP photo, a Klingon groupie (not David Waddell) leaves the California Capitol; resignation letter courtesy of the Charlotte Observer]

Balaji Srinivasan, Stanford lecturer and newest addition to the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital all-star team, does not want to live near you. He believes he and his Silicon Valley vanguard deserve their own place—literally, a separate society. Now, the crazy is crazier: meet the "Inverse Amish."

Srinivasan—who is not some kook on Reddit, but a man with money, a Wired byline, and the means to be taken seriously—is explaining his techie utopia on Twitter. But he wants to calm everyone down: this isn't a plan to secede from the United States, it's just a way to create a completely autonomous zone within the United States, where people like Srinivasan can do whatever they want without the meddling "rules" of the federal government. What's the difference between this and secession? I don't know, ask Quora.

Or, try to comprehend this, posted earlier today:

[...]

You mention Elysium and the Matrix. I would offer a different analogy: the Inverse Amish.

Just like the Amish live nearby, peacefully, in the past - imagine a society of Inverse Amish that lives nearby, peacefully, in the future. A place where Google Glass wearers are normal, where self-driving cars and delivery drones aren't restricted by law, and where we can experiment with new technologies *without* causing undue disruption to others. Think of this like a Special Innovation Zone similar to the Special Economic Zones that Deng Xiaoping used to allow China to experiment with capitalism in a controlled way.

9) In sum: I believe that regulations exist for a reason. And I believe that new technologies will keep coming up against existing rulesets. I don't believe the solution is either to change the rulesets (which, again, exist for a reason) OR to give up on new technology. I think instead we need a third solution: a way to exit (whether to the cloud for purely digital technologies, or to a Special Innovation Zone or ultimately a startup nation), prove/disprove these new technologies among a self-selected, opt-in group of risk-tolerant early adopters, and report back to the mothership on what works and what doesn't.

10) This concept - a Special Innovation Zone - is a new idea. It is really about humility, not hostility. USG is a big thing, it has a lot of responsibilities, it runs a nation of 300M people, and it can't just change federal laws to permit some crazy tech guys to try (say) self-driving cars without affecting millions of people. A new region - like a Special Innovation Zone - can experiment with this kind of thing without bothering anyone who wishes to live under the previous rulesets.

Again: this is complementary to USG's own efforts. I don't see them as competitive, anymore than a startup competes with IBM's research labs.

Take your head out of your hands and let's try to digest.

The United States, Srinivasan says, is something that can merely be "exited," like a Palo Alto coffee shop, or a GroupMe chat. In his mind, this has zero ramifications.

United States citizenship, and its laws, regulations, and constitution, Srinivasan says, are just a "ruleset" that one might opt out of like a Facebook account.

The United States, Srinivasan says, should let a large group of rich, eccentric people take over part of its sovereign territory to be used as a playground for Google Glass and raw, unregulated free market corporate fellatio.

There is no mention of where this "Special Innovation Zone" of "Inverse Amish" will "exist," or who will "build its roads" or "put out its fires" or "prevent its Amish from killing one another" or "teach its children" or "pump its water" or any of the other necessary conditions for modern human existence. The answer is probably some mixture of BitCoin and apps.

Peacefully start an international (1) company, (2) community, (3) currency, (4) country. We are now at step 3.

— Balaji S. Srinivasan (@balajis) January 3, 2014

Perhaps most worryingly, we are very close to the ascension of the Special Innovation Zone, says this John Winthrop of JavaScript. Are you ready? Have you said goodbye to the special makers in your life? Is your face computer polished? Will you embrace the new ruleset? Will the United States be dragged into an inevitable cyberwar between Silicon Valley State and the Inverse Amish Special Innovation Zone?

And for those of us still living in the boring ol' USA, what are we supposed to feel when one of the most lauded venture capital firms of our time is paying a person like him to espouse things like this? It really does make you want to "exit," doesn't it?

Photo: Getty

MC Serch, the more mediocre half of cactus-grabbing golden era hip hop group 3rd Bass, is getting a daytime talk show on CBS, which "will feature real people with real issues, relying on host Serch to use his street smarts and unconventional background to help guests grapple with and resolve their problems."

Yesterday, CBS posted a four-minute clip of the first episode, in which Serch changes the thug lifestyle of a troubled teen who'd been shot several times by hooking him up with a "webisode" deal from Russell Simmons. The clip is gone now. Too bad, because that shit was hilarious. If anyone finds it, please post it in the discussion section below. As a consolation prize, the show's intro clip is posted above.

Pete Nice, the superior MC half of 3rd Bass and erstwhile Deadspin contributor, told us: "Damn, I was hoping Russell was gonna give me a web series, but I only got shot twice."

People don't realize it, but "Dust to Dust" was actually the best album to come out of the 3rd Bass diaspora.

Our congratulations go out to Serch, in any case. It's funny where people end up in life.