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If you've never read Howard Zinn's delightful and fast-paced A People's History of the United States

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If you've never read Howard Zinn's delightful and fast-paced A People's History of the United States, now is a good time to start. Amazon's got the e-book priced at $2.49 today, so do some e-commerce in the service of the coming socialist revolution!


Here's Mayor de Blasio Eating Pizza with a Fork, in Slow Motion

Cronuts and Dom: Crashing a Golden Globes Party at the Chateau Marmont

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Cronuts and Dom: Crashing a Golden Globes Party at the Chateau Marmont

Throughout this weekend writer Ray Lemoine and others will be contributing short bits of coverage to Defamer from the front lines of the Golden Globes party scene. The first dispatch comes from M.R. Herman.

All it took to get into the W Magazine party at the Chateau Marmont was wearing a tux and acting like security for an actress who thought I worked for the hotel. "How do we get up there?" she asked in the elevator. "Push the button," I said.

The door opened into a hallway. A voice whispered "Dom?" as hotel owner Andre Balazs greeted people with wine glasses full of champagne. While he was trying to figure out how he knew me, I was just as confused: why weren't they serving the champagne in flutes?

The room opened up. Marisa Tomei turned around and we locked eyes. She was standing with a crew of older men though she seemed to be checking me out. A true cougar in a loose red blouse.

Respective fame forcefields Cate Blanchett and Kirsten Dunst lingered on opposite sides of the room. Kate Husdon walked in wearing a snakeskin coat, the room seduced by her dynastic glow. A photographer asked Hudson to snap a pic and she obliged.

"Did you just grab my ass?" Hudson asked the guy standing next to her.

"I would like nothing less," he replied.

She laughed, "Kiss me!" They kissed. I never knew it was that easy to get laid in Hollywood.

Hudson's promiscuity on my mind, I again locked eyes with Tomei. I wondered if I should go full Hudson on her and just grab her ass. Actress Cate Blanchett and director Steve McQueen hung in conversation. Blanchett was comparing still photos to moving pictures and McQueen was transfixed. She ended the conversation by screaming, "You know you're winning on Sunday. I hope you know that!" Then Blanchett was disappeared by handlers.

Bradley Cooper showed up in a suit with no tie and looked so bored I felt the need to interject. "Bradley, you need drink, right?"

"What. Me?"

"Uh, yeah you."

"Brad, nice to meet you." We shook hands and he ignored the drink offer. He quickly dissed me to hit on a tall bird in the corner, leaning in for some deep conversation.

The night loosened up. Bret Easton Ellis sat Instagramming Apple billboards and Tomei caught some prey, sitting on the couch with a tween looking dude in a sweet sweater vest. I was thinking that nothing could make the evening better until the soggy Cronuts, shipped in from New York's Dominique Ansel Bakery, arrived. Margeret Cho spilled some Dom on me amidst a Cronut frenzy. "At least it was expensive champagne," she quipped.

Cronuts and Dom: Crashing a Golden Globes Party at the Chateau Marmont

Down the block, Audi threw a party at Ceconni's. Scores of Hollywood cliches crowded a marble bar. It was all like a scene out of Entourage. Then I spotted Angela Kinsey from The Office dancing like a maniac with her boyfriend, who looked nothing like Dwight Schrute. I left to join director Grant Singer and actress Isabelle McNally, daughter of Keith from Balthazar, at a pseudo-dive bar, where I encountered my fifth expensive menu of the evening. Like much of young Hollywood, the Globes meant nothing to them.

We were greeted at our hotel by a rollerblading woman with dreads. After following us into our room, she whipped out some speed. And, like a true Hollywood diva, she demanded we turn off the the fan so she could light her meth pipe. Then, after smoking some ice, she disappeared.

Cronuts and Dom: Crashing a Golden Globes Party at the Chateau Marmont

After a budget battle that raged throughout 2013, Cooper Union's board of trustees voted today to en

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After a budget battle that raged throughout 2013, Cooper Union's board of trustees voted today to end the college's 155-year-old practice of allowing every student free tuition. "[T]uition remains the only realistic source of new revenue in the near future," wrote board chair Richard Lincer in a statement.

Tyra Banks Is Dating Oversharing Uber Investor Shervin Pishevar

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Tyra Banks Is Dating Oversharing Uber Investor Shervin Pishevar

The first and only time I was permitted to gaze (through a Skype window) at the glittering visage of Tyra Banks, the tech-curious TV personality told me she would "love to have invested in Uber." Banks, who launched her own photo app and claimed to spend "a lot of time in Silicon Valley," may have better deal flow now that she's dating Shervin Pishevar, an early investor in the $3.5 billion e-hailing company.

Neither Pishevar nor Banks responded to my questions about their relationship. But for the past couple months, onlookers have been agape over the budding romance between a humble-bragging, attention-grabbing startup financier and the Victoria's Secret model who transformed herself into a booty-tooching household name. The unlikely couple does share a common interest: Banks has already backed a number of apps (including one with Ashton Kutcher) through her own investment firm, Fierce Capital.

In December, Pishevar and Banks were spotted in San Francisco—dining out in SoMa as well as The Battery, the members-only, no-photos-allowed social club constructed with the spoils of an AOL acquisition. Sources tell Valleywag that the couple, who met a few months ago, are now official and even vacationed near St. Barts over the holidays.

Historically, one could count on Pishevar's Instagram or Twitter accounts as a namedrop loop, cycling between rappers, pop stars, and whichever founder was at the top of Techmeme. But at the crack of dawn this morning, Pishevar vowed to hit the mute button on social media, outlining his New Year's resolution in a post on Medium.

You'll find no mention of Banks. Even Pishevar's photos of a tropical retreat over Christmas were left tastefully untagged.

Tyra Banks Is Dating Oversharing Uber Investor Shervin Pishevar

Pishevar recently divorced his wife Anahita "Ana" Pishevar (pictured below, on the far right) after they separated in the spring. As husband and wife, the Pishevars donated campaign funds together when he acted as a bundler for President Obama's last campaign. On AngelList, Ana describes herself as a cofounder and CMO of StyleBee, an "Uber for Beauty" app that launched on Monday. Her ex-husband has also tried to stretch the "Uber for X" pitch deck as far as it could go.

Tyra Banks Is Dating Oversharing Uber Investor Shervin Pishevar

This isn't the first time startup investors have scored a VIP pass to a runway show. Thrive Capital's Josh Kushner has been dating supermodel Karlie Kloss, another Victoria's Secret angel, for almost a year. Last Christmas, Square and Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, a frequent investor, was spotted starboard in St. Barts with British model Lily Cole.

Tyra Banks Is Dating Oversharing Uber Investor Shervin Pishevar

Tyra Banks Is Dating Oversharing Uber Investor Shervin Pishevar

Everyone's a winner on America's Next Top Venture Smokeshow.

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

[Top image: left via Getty; right via Instagram. Middle image via The Next Web.]

Breaking: Ariel Sharon Still Dead

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Breaking: Ariel Sharon Still Dead

Eight years after falling into a permanent vegetative state, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stopped breathing this morning at Sheba Medical Centre in Jerusalem. The former IDF general and politician, nicknamed "the Butcher of Beirut" for his role in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinian civilians, was 85. He is survived by two sons, Omri and Gilad.

A testament to his gargantuan, and often terrifying, influence on Israel's history and course—and his broader impact on Middle Eastern geopolitics—newspapers, wire services, and the cable networks have already commenced an outpouring of obituaries and political assessments of Sharon's legacy. (They've had eight years to put them together, after all.) The New York Times obit, under the headline "A Fierce Defender of a Strong Israel," chronicles Sharon's iron-fisted military command throughout the 1960s and 70s, legendary in Israel, and his later life as a somewhat more moderate state minister:

An architect of Israeli settlements in the occupied lands, Mr. Sharon gained infamy for his harsh tactics against the Palestinians over whom Israel ruled. That reputation began to soften after his election as prime minister in 2001, when he first talked about the inevitability of Palestinian statehood.

Israeli settlers, who had seen him as their patron, considered him an enemy after he won re-election in 2003. In addition to withdrawing from Gaza and a small portion of the West Bank, he completed part of a 450-mile barrier along and through parts of the West Bank — a barrier he had originally opposed. It not only reduced infiltration by militants into Israel but also provided the outline of a border with a future Palestinian state, albeit one he envisioned as having limited sovereignty.

To many, Sharon's legacy will be defined forever by Sabra and Shatila, two refugee camps in which hundreds of civilians were slaughtered by Israeli Lebanese paramilitaries sent in on Sharon's command during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The massacres earned Sharon the nickname "the Butcher of Beirut," as CNN writes:

Many in the Arab world called Sharon "the Butcher of Beirut" after he oversaw Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon while serving as defense minister. [...]

During the Lebanon war in 1982, Sharon, a former army general then serving as Israeli defense minister, was held indirectly responsible by an Israeli inquiry in 1983 for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. He was forced to resign.

(Mondoweiss has more on Sabra and Shatila and media coverage of Sharon.)

On The New Yorker's website, Israeli journalist Ari Shavit's lengthy examination of Sharon's evolving politics and legacy, written just before the 2006 stroke that killed Sharon and left him hospitalized as a vegetable, has been republished:

Sharon was the least messianic of all of Israel's Prime Ministers, much less so than Shimon Peres, for example, who spoke of a post-conflict "new Middle East," of warm comity and interdependent economies. It was Ehud Barak who, at Camp David, undermined the messianism of the left with his failure to entice Yasir Arafat and that of the right by ending the taboo on negotiating the fate of Jerusalem and the rise of a Palestinian state. But it was Sharon who brought to fruition a postmessianic politics. Under his governance, Israel was weaned of the hope for an ideal end. It even came to realize that there would be no absolute peace or victory. Fundamentally, Sharon was a man of process. If he has left a legacy, it is the need for time—lots of time—because there is no way to reach peace with one abrupt act.

Sharon himself has finally found peace. The country he left behind eight years ago has not.

Report: A-Rod Suspended 162 Games, Will Continue Fight In Federal Court

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Report: A-Rod Suspended 162 Games, Will Continue Fight In Federal Court

Alex Rodriguez has been suspended 162 games and it comes as little surprise to anyone, including A-Rod. The suspension was reduced from the original 211 games handed down by Major League Baseball, but A-Rod is still unhappy and continues to blast Bud Selig and MLB's behavior in the Biogenesis investigation.

The report was confirmed by Rodriguez's spokesman, who provided this statement from the Yankees third baseman:

"The number of games sadly comes as no surprise, as the deck has been stacked against me from day one. This is one man's decision, that was not put before a fair and impartial jury, does not involve me having failed a single drug test, is at odds with the facts and is inconsistent with the terms of the Joint Drug Agreement and the Basic Agreement, and relies on testimony and documents that would never have been allowed in any court in the United States because they are false and wholly unreliable. This injustice is MLB's first step toward abolishing guaranteed contracts in the 2016 bargaining round, instituting lifetime bans for single violations of drug policy, and further insulating its corrupt investigative program from any variety defense by accused players, or any variety of objective review.

I have been clear that I did not use performance enhancing substances as alleged in the notice of discipline, or violate the Basic Agreement or the Joint Drug Agreement in any manner, and in order to prove it I will take this fight to federal court. I am confident that when a Federal Judge reviews the entirety of the record, the hearsay testimony of a criminal whose own records demonstrate that he dealt drugs to minors, and the lack of credible evidence put forth by MLB, that the judge will find that the panel blatantly disregarded the law and facts, and will overturn the suspension. No player should have to go through what I have been dealing with, and I am exhausting all options to ensure not only that I get justice, but that players' contracts and rights are protected through the next round of bargaining, and that the MLB investigation and arbitration process cannot be used against others in the future the way it is currently being used to unjustly punish me.

I will continue to work hard to get back on the field and help the Yankees achieve the ultimate goal of winning another championship. I want to sincerely thank my family, all of my friends, and of course the fans and many of my fellow MLB players for the incredible support I received throughout this entire ordeal."

[ESPN]

Photo credit: Getty Images

French President Rolls Up to His Mistress' Flat on Back of Moped

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French President Rolls Up to His Mistress' Flat on Back of Moped

French President François Hollande is in a sticky bit of intrigue, according to Closer, a Paris tabloid that just published exclusif paparazzi photos of Hollande in scandalous liaison with actress Julie Gayet, who is married with two children.

Hollande, 59, has been living with political journalist Valérie Trierweiler since 2006, when he separated from his common law wife, former Socialist legislator Ségolène Royal, to move in with Trierweiler. The pair began dating in 2005, when Trierweiler was still married to her first husband.

In 2006, Hollande separated from his common law wife, former Socialist legislator Ségolène Royal, to be with Trierweiler instead.

In recent weeks, Hollande has threatened legal recourse against Closer's "attack" on his personal life, which has yielded a torrent of media salivation in France in advance of the magazine's publishing the fruit of its expose: seven pages of photos featuring Hollande welcoming himself to Gayet's apartment, as well as Gayet entering an upscale 8th arrondissement flat near the Élysée Palace, where Hollande resides. Two men—Hollande and one of his official bodyguards, both wearing black motorbike helmets—are also pictured entering the flat.

Neither Hollande nor his office have yet denied the authenticity of the photos, which Closer has momentarily removed from its website—though French newsstands still feature the evidence in print. Sky News is reporting that Hollande will address the rumors in a press conference next week.

In 2012, Hollande's presidential campaign featured Gayet in a video endorsement, in which she lauded Hollande as "humble" and "somebody who really listens." These are, in fact, wonderful qualities in a man.


What the Hell Is This Chris Christie Bridge Scandal? An Explainer

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What the Hell Is This Chris Christie Bridge Scandal? An Explainer

Chris Christie is all over your TV and newspaper and internet right now, which is just really unpleasant. What did the governor of New Jersey do and why does it matter?

So... Chris Christie closed a bridge?

Well, maybe. What we know for sure is that a high-level official in his administration worked along with members of Port Authority to close two of the three lanes on the George Washington Bridge connecting to Fort Lee, a Jersey suburb just across the Hudson, in early September.

Who exactly are we talking here?

The order to close the lanes came from Bridget Anne Kelly, who was Christie's deputy chief of staff until the governor fired her on Thursday. Over at Port Authority, two Christie appointees did the dirty work: director of interstate capital projects David Wildstein and deputy executive director Bill Baroni. Both resigned from their positions in December.

Who cares if Christie's people closed a highway?

Well, the GWB, which connects Jersey and Manhattan, is the most trafficked motor vehicle bridge in the world. Closing two of its three lanes essentially ground traffic to a complete halt. The bridge traffic backed up all the way into Fort Lee, making it impossible for some parents to even get their kids to school. Commuters into New York City had to leave their houses four hours earlier than normal. An owner of a café in Fort Lee told CNN, "The bridge is a lifeline here. You take away the bridge, you take away our livelihood." Another called it "worse than a disaster."

Still, this sounds... kinda minor?

Have you ever sat in a car that barely moves for four hours? People in New York complain endlessly if their commutes are delayed even 45 minutes. But much worse, a 91-year-old Fort Lee woman died while paramedics were fighting traffic caused by the lane closures.

Did they think no one would care?

So, that's the funny thing. The lane closings immediately became the most important unsolved incident in New Jersey: a September 17 article in the Wall Street Journal was headlined "Bridge Jam's Cause a Mystery." It was only a matter of time before everything was unraveled.

They must have had a cover up.

You would think! In mid-August, Christie's aide Kelly emailed Port Authority's Wildstein saying "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." But that appears to be the extent of the planning. After the outrage, Port Authority initially claimed they were conducting a "traffic study" (good plan!), but three Port Authority officials testified in December that there never was a traffic study.

Wait a second: testified?

Yep. Immediately, Democrats in the state assumed this was political retaliation for... something. Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, called the lane closures "punitive". His theory was that Christie was punishing him for refusing to endorse the governor in his 2013 re-election campaign against Democrat Barbara Buono. On October 2, Democrat New Jersey assemblyman John Wisniewski announced his committee would be launching an investigation into who exactly ordered the lanes be closed.

So all of this happened because a Democratic mayor refused to endorse a Republican governor?

Maybe. But on Thursday Rachel Maddow presented an alternate theory that the date of Kelly's email (Aug. 13) suggests that the target of closures was not Sokolich, but State Senator Loretta Weinberg, who represents Fort Lee and also is the state's senate majority leader. Christie and the state Democrats had been waging war over state Supreme Court nominees.

Okay, so when did shit really hit the fan?

On Thursday, Christie released emails that showed Kelly ordered Port Authority to muck up Fort Lee's traffic. Further documents show his Port Authority appointees gloating privately over the mess. He then called a press conference to announce Kelly's firing.

Oh, right. That press conference.

Yes, it was totally absurd.

And he didn't cop to knowing about this scheme?

Nope. So, either Christie really didn't know about Kelly's order to close the lanes or he is confident that the exact extent of his knowledge will never leak out. Port Authority's Wildstein did his part this week by pleading the fifth during the entirety of a state senate hearing.

Will anyone face criminal prosecution? Could Christie?

The U.S. attorney is expected to look into the matter and that could open up many other cans of worms. Legal experts don't seem convinced that any serious charges will be brought down because of the case, but civil prosecution — from commuters, business owners, etc. — is another matter.

So, that's it?

As it stands, this will eventually blow over. But if it turns out that Christie conducted an hour plus-long press conference only to lie about what he did, it could derail a rising career over something that should have been incredibly minor.

Oh god, we're entering Anthony Weiner territory...

Yep. Anthony Weiner's political career may be dead, but we must always remember the lessons his dick taught us.

What's Like the Craziest Shit You've Ever Seen

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What's Like the Craziest Shit You've Ever Seen

Usually, I lie. At a party, someone asks the question. It’s someone who hasn’t smelled the rancid decay of week-dead flesh or heard the rattle of fluid flooding lungs. I shake the ice in my glass, smile, and lie. When they say, “I bet you always get that question,” I roll my eyes and agree.

There are plenty of in-between stories to delve into; icky, miraculous ones and reams of the hilarious and stupid. I did, after all, become a paramedic knowing it would stack my inner shelves with a library of human tragicomedy. I am a writer, and we are nothing if not tourists gawking at our own and other people’s misery. No?

The dead don’t bother me. Even the near-dead, I’ve made my peace with. When we meet, there’s a very simple arrangement: Either they’re provably past their expiration date and I go about my business, RIP, or they’re not and I stay. A convenient set of criteria delineates the provable part: if they have begun to decay; if rigor mortis has set in; if the sedentary blood has begun to pool at their lowest point, discoloring the skin like a slowly gathering bruise. The vaguest criterion is called obvious death, and we use it in those bizarre special occasions that people are often sniffing for when they ask questions at parties: decapitations, dismemberments, incinera- tions, brains splattered across the sidewalk. Obvious death.

One of my first obvious deaths was a portly Mexican man who had been bicycling along the highway that links Brooklyn to Queens. He’d been hit by three cars and a dump truck, which was the only one that stopped. The man wasn’t torn apart or flattened, but his body had twisted into a pretzel; arms wrapped around legs. Somewhere in there was a shoulder. Obvious death. His bike lay a few feet away, gnarled like its owner. Packs and packs of Mexican cigarettes scattered across the highway. It was three a.m. and a light rain sprinkled the dead man, the bicycle, the cigarette packs, and me, made us all glow in the sparkle of police flares. I was brand new; cars kept rushing past, slowing down, rushing past.

Obvious death. Which means there’s nothing we can do, which means I keep moving with my day, with my life, with whatever I’ve been pondering until this once-alive-now-inanimate object fell into my path.If I can’t check off any of the boxes—if I can’t prove the person’s dead—I get to work and the resuscitation flowchart erupts into a tree of brand-new and complex options. Start CPR, intubate, find a vein, put an IV in it. If there’s no vein and you’ve tried twice, drill an even bigger needle into the flat part of the bone just below the knee. Twist till you feel a pop, attach the IV line. If the heart is jiggling, shock it; if it’s flatlined, fill it with drugs. If the family lingers, escort them out; if they look too hopeful, ease them toward despair. If time slips past and the dead stay dead, call it. Signs of life? Scoop ’em up and go.

You see? Simple.

Except then one day you find one that has a quiet smile on her face, her arms laying softly at her sides, her body relaxed. She is ancient, a crinkled flower, and was dying for weeks, years. The fam- ily cries foul: She had wanted to go in peace. A doctor, a social worker, a nurse—at some point all opted not to bother having that difficult conversation, perhaps because the family is Dominican and the Spanish translator wasn’t easily reachable and anyway, someone else would have it, surely, but no one did. And now she’s laid herself down, made all her quiet preparations and slipped gently away. Without that single piece of paper though, none of the lamentations matter, the peaceful smile doesn’t matter. You set to work, the tree of options fans out, your blade sweeps her tongue aside and you battle in an endotracheal tube; needles find their mark. Bumps emerge on the flat line, a slow march of tiny hills that resolve into tighter scribbles. Her pulse bounds against your fingers; she is alive.

But not awake, perhaps never to be again. You have brought not life but living death, and fuck what I’ve seen, because that, my friends at the party, my random interlocutor who doesn’t know the reek of decay, that is surely one of the craziest things I have ever done.

But that’s not what I say. I lie.

Which is odd because I did, after all, become a medic to fill the library stacks, yes? An endless collection of human frailty vignettes: disasters and the expanding ripple of trauma. No, that’s not quite true. There was something else, I’m sure of it.

And anyway, here at this party, surrounded by eager listeners with drinks in hand, mouths slightly open, ready to laugh or gasp, I, the storyteller, pause. In that pause, read my discomfort.

On the job, we literally laugh in the face of death. In our crass humor and easy flow between tragedy and lunch break, outsiders see callousness: We have built walls, ceased to feel. As one who laughs, I assure you that this is not the case. When you greet death on the daily, it shows you new sides of itself, it brings you into the fold. Gradually, or maybe quickly, depending on who you are, you make friends with it. It’s a wary kind of friendship at first, with the kind of stilted conversation you might have with a man who picked you up hitch- hiking and turns out to have a pet boa constrictor around his neck. Death smiles because death always wins, so you can relax. When you know you won’t win, it lets you focus on doing everything you can to try to win anyway, and really, that’s all there is: The Effort.

The Effort cleanses. It wards off the gathering demons of doubt. When people wonder how we go home and sleep easy after bearing witness to so much pain, so much death, the answer is that we’re not bearing witness. We’re working. Not in the paycheck sense, but in the sense of The Effort. When it’s real, not one of the endless parade of chronic runny noses and vague hip discomforts, but a true, soon- to-be-dead emergency? Everything falls away. There is the patient, the family, the door. Out the door is the ambulance and then farther down the road, the hospital. That’s it. That’s all there is.

Awkward text messages from exes, career uncertainties, generalized aches and pains: They all disintegrate beneath the hugeness that is someone else’s life in your hands. The guy’s heart is failing; fluid backs up in those feebly pumping chambers, erupts into his lungs, climbs higher and higher, and now all you hear is the raspy clatter every time he breathes. Is his blood pressure too high or too low? You wrap the cuff on him as your partner finds an IV. The monitor goes on. A thousand possibilities open up before you: He might start getting better, he might code right there, the ambulance might stall, the medicine might not work, the elevator could never come. You cast off the ones you can’t do anything about, see about another IV because the one your partner got already blew. You’re sweating when you step back and realize nothing you’ve done has helped, and then everything becomes even simpler, because all you can do is take him to the hospital as fast as you can move without totaling the rig.

He doesn’t make it. You sweated and struggled and calculated and he doesn’t make it, and dammit if that ain’t the way shit goes, but also, you’re hungry. And you’re alive, and you’ve wracked your body and mind for the past hour trying to make this guy live. Death won, but death always wins, the ultimate spoiler alert. You can only be that humbled so many times and then you know: Death always wins. It’s a warm Thursday evening and grayish orange streaks the horizon. There’s a pizza place around the corner; their slices are just the right amount of doughy. You check inside yourself to see if anything’s shattered and it’s not, it’s not. You are alive. You have not shattered.

You have not shattered because of The Effort. The Effort cleanses because you have become a part of the story, you are not passive, the very opposite of passive, in fact. Having been humbled, you feel amazing. Every moment is precise and the sky ripples with delight as you head off to the pizza place, having hurled headlong into the game and given every inch of yourself, if only for a moment, to a losing struggle.

It’s not adrenaline, although they’ll say that it is, again and again. It is the grim, heartbroken joy of having taken part. It is the difference between shaking your head at the nightly news and taking to the streets. It’s when you finally tell her how you really feel, the moment you craft all your useless repetitive thoughts into a prayer.

At the party, as they look on expectantly, I draft one of the lesser moments of horror as a stand-in. The evisceration, that will do. That single strand of intestine just sitting on the man’s belly like a lost worm. He was dying too, but he lived. It was a good story, a terrible night.

I was new and I didn’t know if I’d done anything right. He lived, but only by a hair. I magnified each tiny decision to see if I’d erred and came up empty. There was no way to know. Eventually I stopped taking jobs home with me. I released the ghosts of what I’d done or hadn’t done, let The Effort do what it does and cleanse me in the very moment of crisis. And then one night I met a tiny three-year old girl in overalls, all smiles and high-fives and curly hair. We were there because a neighbor had called it in as a burn, but the burns were old. Called out on his abuse, the father had fled the scene. The emergency, which had been going on for years, had ended and only just begun.

The story unraveled as we drove to the hospital; I heard it from the front seat. The mother knew all along, explained it in jittery, sobbing replies as the police filled out their forms. It wasn’t just the burns; the abuse was sexual too. There’d been other hospital visits, which means that people who should’ve seen it didn’t, or didn’t bother setting the gears in motion to stop it. I parked, gave the kid another high five, watched her walk into the ER holding a cop’s hand.

Then we had our own forms to fill out. Bureaucracy’s response to unspeakable tragedy is more paperwork. Squeeze the horror into easy-to-fathom boxes, cull the rising tide of rage inside and check and recheck the data, complete the forms, sign, date, stamp, insert into a metal box and then begin the difficult task of forgetting.

The job followed me down Gun Hill Road; it laughed when I pretended I was okay. I stopped on a corner and felt it rise in me like it was my own heart failing this time, backing fluids into my lungs, breaking my breath. I texted a friend, walked another block. A sob came out of somewhere, just one. It was summer. The breeze felt nice and nice felt shitty.

My phone buzzed. Do you want to talk about it?

I did. I wanted to talk about it and more than that I wanted to never have seen it and even more than that I wanted to have done something about it and most of all, I wanted it never to have hap- pened, never to happen again. The body remembers. We carry each trauma and ecstasy with us and they mark our stride and posture, contort our rhythm until we release them into the summer night over Gun Hill Road. I knew it wasn’t time to release just yet; you can’t force these things. I tapped the word no into my phone and got on the train.

I don’t tell that one either. Stories with trigger warnings don’t go over well at parties. But when the question is asked, the little girl’s smile and her small, bruised arms appear in my mind.

The worst tragedies don’t usually get 911 calls, because they are patient, unravel over centuries. While we obsess over the hypervio- lent mayhem, they seep into our subconscious, poison our sense of self, upend communities, and gnaw away at family trees with inter- generational trauma.I didn’t pick up my pen just to bear witness. None of us did. And I didn’t become a medic to get a front-row seat to other people’s tragedies. I did it because I knew the world was bleeding and so was I, and somewhere inside I knew the only way to stop my own bleeding was to learn how to stop someone else’s. Another call crackles over the radio, we pick up the mic and push the button and drive off. Death always wins, but there is power in our tiniest moments, humanity in shedding petty concerns to make room for compassion. We witness, take part, heal. The work of healing in turn heals us and we begin again, laughing mournfully, and put pen to paper.

Daniel José Older is a Brooklyn-based writer, editor and composer. Salsa Nocturna, Daniel’s ghost noir collection, was hailed as “striking and original” by Publishers Weekly. He’s co-editing the forthcoming anthology, Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From The Margins Of History and his urban fantasy novel The Half Resurrection Blues, the first of a trilogy, will be released by Penguin’s Roc imprint in January 2015. Daniel’s essays and short stories have appeared in The New Haven Review, Salon.com, Tor.com, PANK, Strange Horizons and Apex. His music, ponderings, and ambulance adventures live at ghoststar.net/ and @djolder. A version of this piece appeared first in the New Haven Review.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Philadelphia Searching For Swiss Cheese Masturbator

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Philadelphia Searching For Swiss Cheese Masturbator

That man you see above is holding a slice of Swiss cheese over his dick. He is currently driving around the Mayfair area of Philadelphia asking women to use the slice of cheese while jerking him off.

The man, who has yet to be identified, is being sought by cops in Philadelphia after a number of women have filed complaints with police stating that he has driven up to them in parking lots and exposed himself while asking to be masturbated with a slice of Swiss cheese.

The Philadelphia Daily News has also talked to a 20-year-old woman named Gabby Chest who claims that the same man sent her a message on OKCupid asking her to "perform masturbation on him with cheese." The Daily News obtained an excerpt from that message in which the man explains the genesis of his fetish:

"I started to compare girls to cheese due to their milky complections [sic], girls are soft, smooth feeling and tend to like dairy products more. That and typical advertising, always using a girl to advertise dairy products. So cheese is what I started to use as a replacement for having sex with girls."

This is what it means to be a woman in America. If a 50-year-old man isn't harassing you online about executing a specific food fetish, he's driving up to you in a parking lot with his dick out and a slice of Swiss cheese literally in his hand.

And here Philly thought its stupid sandwiches were the extent of its cheese problem.

[image via Daily News, thanks Myles]

300,000 People in West Virginia Have Toxic Running Water

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Last week, a chemical company poisoned a major West Virginia water supply so thoroughly that FEMA has been dispatched to clean things up.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has dispatched FEMA to assist West Virginia's clean-up of Freedom Industries' toxic chemical spill on Thursday, by which the specialty chemical-producer released 5,000 gallons (think: an above-ground swimming pool) of 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol into the Kanawha Valley's water treatment intake near Charleston. West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a statewide disaster late last week, mobilizing the National Guard to distribute bottled water throughout the afflicted areas. Supermarket shelves are, for the part, dry.

The spill affects 100,000 households—about 300,000 residents—according to the West Virginia American Water Company.

Above, a recap video about the crisis produced by the Charleston Daily Mail summarizes the emergency response to date. Meanwhile, Freedom Industries President Gary Southern has been sweat-lipped about his company's role in the spill and the timeline of precipitating events.

Authorities warn that the licorice-scented contamination of tap water, though colorless, poses health risks if drank or inhaled in concentrated quantities. According to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, symptoms include skin irritation, drowsiness, prolonged vomiting, and breathing difficulties.

Boiling the tap water will not neutralize the chemical hazard.

[h/t ThinkProgress, The New Inquiry, and @iwasaround]

Whitney Houston's Daughter Officially Marries Adopted Brother

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Whitney Houston's Daughter Officially Marries Adopted Brother

Around the time of Whitney Houston's death, it became apparent that her daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown was dating Nick Gordon, who had been unofficially adopted by Houston after high school. This week, the two announced their marriage on Twitter with a photo of rings on their hands.

Despite the, uh, unusual genesis of their relationship, Brown and Gordon have been open about dating. They have also been quick to combat the backlash from people who have expressed issues with their relationship. None of that has changed: the two made out for the camera when a TMZ paparazzo spotted them outside a convenience store in Atlanta on Friday. Gordon also said that their marriage is what Houston wanted.

Love: sometimes it makes you want to marry your adopted brother.

Following the death of an overworked, epileptic Bank of America intern last August in London, the ba

Disney's O.G. "Wolf of Wall Street"

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Scorsese, I'mma let you finish; but [snorts line of blue raspberry dust spilled from several Pixy Stix] Disney produced one of the most incisive critiques of boundless excess financed by other people's money of all— [croaks abruptly backward into pile of diamond Legos and crusty, unfamiliar underwear.]

"Blank Check," feat. Kanye West and Tone Lōc

(h/t Reddit)


Thirty-two people have sought treatment at West Virginia hospitals for nausea and vomiting symptoms

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Thirty-two people have sought treatment at West Virginia hospitals for nausea and vomiting symptoms possibly related to last week's chemical spill, according to the state's health department. A few of those ER visitors have been hospitalized.

Colorado Stoners Keep Stealing Mile Marker 420

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Colorado Stoners Keep Stealing Mile Marker 420

If stoners are known for one thing, it's their eye for interior design. So perhaps it's no surprise that mile marker 420 on I-70 through Colorado keeps getting stolen. What else would look better on the wall of your living room?

The marker — which you see above via Google Street View — has actually now been replaced by mile marker 419.99 in the hopes that high 22-year-olds will stick to posters of Bob Marley or whatever. A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation calls it "an innovative way for us to keep the sign there."

Naturally, though, it's not the only mile marker Colorado has had to alter recently. At the summit of Cameron Pass just west of Fort Collins, motorists will find themselves driving past mile marker 68.5

[via Denver Post, image via John Ingold]

Tonight, come talk Hollywood awards with us during Gawker and Defamer's Golden Globes coverage—start

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Tonight, come talk Hollywood awards with us during Gawker and Defamer's Golden Globes coverage—starting with E!'s red carpet show at 6 p.m. ET. Caity Weaver, Lacey Donohue, and Rich Juzwiak will also be live-tweeting the whole shebang at @Gawker and @Defamer.

Obama Administration Hires Some Other Company to Fix Healthcare Website

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Obama Administration Hires Some Other Company to Fix Healthcare Website

Next month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will replace CGI Federal, the Canadian IT contractor that botched the construction and launch of the Obamacare website, with Dublin-incorporated tech services firm Accenture to smooth things out.

The federal government's initial contract with CGI expires on Feb. 28.

The website's been broke since October. (I can relate.)

Enrollment snafus aside, Politico cites co-op insurers and health industry experts warning that HealthCare.gov has backlogged payments from customers who have managed to sign-up for coverage through the federal website. Both the administration and the insurers continue to hedge on their publicized deadlines, as new health care consumers fumble through an unprecedented landscape. And while the Obama administration hypes December's online enrollment spike, it's unclear how many of these new accounts will actually submit payments for coverage in January.

Many political observers will welcome this latest rearrangement of swivel chairs in the IT department as the latest step in expanding affordable healthcare access to millions of Americans. Others will pray that finally, never again must we humor a million death knell polemics and Daily Show sketches about web design.

The final season of Mad Men will begin on April 13.

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The final season of Mad Men will begin on April 13. Don Draper will do something. (What happens on Mad Men?)

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