Yesterday afternoon, a relatively mild snow storm hit an unprepared Atlanta. UPDATE: This is a video is from a crash last year. Original post below:

Twenty hours later, some commuters are still trying get home. This insane pile up, on I-75 near Atlanta, is one of the reasons why.

[via Facebook]

Texas is poised do away with its high-school Algebra II requirement, so that "school districts can better work with local employers to build curriculums that prepare high school graduates to move directly into high-paying jobs." Let's make students into cold-calling sales interns and call it "applied math"!

Yesterday, we commented upon an extremely earnest essay published in XOJane entitled, " There Are No Black People In My Yoga Classes And I'm Suddenly Feeling Uncomfortable With It." We told you the essay was written by "Jen Caron." In fact it was not!

As many eagle-eyed readers noted after the essay started going around, it was originally published under the writer's actual name: Jen Polachek. (Here is a screenshot of her original XO Jane author page. Bio: "Jen Polachek was born Tokyo and has since been bouncing between the east and west coasts of America. She spends most of her time thinking about food, bodies, and how to pay her rent. She lives in Brooklyn.") Subsequently—after the deluge of negative comments—the byline on the story and on the author page was changed, with no notice, to "Jen Caron." The photo on the author page was changed to a more obscure one for a while; and then changed again, to no photo at all. Some time in the past 24 hours, Jen Polachek started deleting or locking down her internet presence. Which is understandable, given the number of negative comments she may have received.

This is just one dumb essay on the internet. This is not the Iran-Contra scandal. Nobody needs to be driven into hiding because of it. But it does seem rather dishonest for XO Jane to change the byline on a story without even telling anyone. That would be considered unethical in the "traditional media," but who knows how these things work any more? We've asked them for comment, and they responded, via a spokesperson, "Our editor is working on a response to post on xoJane.com following up on this story, it will be live later today."

[Update: Here it is.]

In the meantime, they published this exasperated takedown of Jen Polachek's essay by Pia Glenn. That's called "Getting ahead of the story!"

After the backlash began yesterday, XO Jane managing editor Rebecca Carroll wrote this on Facebook:

OK before you all flip the f*k out — this piece on xoJane today about a skinny white woman's experience in a Brooklyn yoga studio is blowing up with hate. I assigned this piece after the author, who I know from my neighborhood, and with whom I was having a casual conversation, felt she could share this experience with me — I was impressed by her candor in telling me, a black woman she doesn't even know all that well. I told her to write about the experience. This is the result. I didn't edit or change much. This is her first person experience, which I think is very likely the experience (admittedly seeped in white privilege) of a lot of folks. For that reason, I felt it was a narrative that should be heard.

The other part of this — the fairly vitriolic comments — is about my being a black editor who should have made a better judgement call (according to them) about what constitutes suitable race content. As if I am now the official president of the Black Ethics Committee at xoJane. I have many feelings about this, and will address later. Too overwhelmed by the hate right now.

So there you have it.

If all of this has put you in the mood to view a funny video entitled "Black Folk Don't Do Yoga," you can find that here.

White people should not do yoga, either.

[Pic via]

I get it. Two inches of snow shuts down major metropolitan areas (not just Atlanta). It's funny! It's funny because when it snows two inches where you live, it's nothing, you might as well be in West Palm Beach. Southerners lose their shit, though! Hilarious.

It's fine if that's how you want to process what happened yesterday and today. But if you do, you are wrong, and you are an asshole.

Why You're Wrong

Let's talk for a second about exactly what happened down here, instead of just looking at pictures of abandoned cars and assuming that Southerners fear snow the way Encino Man feared fire.

I can't speak for Atlanta, although Conor Sen does a great job breaking down what happened there over at The Atlantic. But I can speak for what happened here in Birmingham, my home for the last three years and source of lots of pictures, like this one, that are confounding/amusing you on Twitter this morning:

280 off of Lakeshore Drive, about 15 minutes from my house. Photo credit: @nfmcewen

Let's start by talking about why Birmingham wasn't prepared. In the general case, why would it be? It hasn't snowed in January here for 21 of the last 30 years. In that same period, it's only snowed more than an inch four times. Birminghamians need snowplows like New Yorkers need tornado shelters.

Speaking of which, have you seen the county's budget lately? Actually, you may have! Jefferson County—this is where Birmingham is located, named after Thomas Jefferson, not Jefferson Davis—filed for what was at the time the nation's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy in 2011. It just emerged a few weeks ago. Basically, we're broke. Which is why the city has invested the few resources it has at its disposal in keeping the lights on, rather than, I dunno, salt reserves or whatever you people in Maine have to clear the roads.

So in general Birmingham is not equipped to handle snow of any magnitude, because it has no reason to be, and even if it did it couldn't afford to.

Highway 75 in Atlanta, John Bazemore/AP

But wait! While it doesn't snow often here, it does snow sometimes. And while it generally shuts the city down, it doesn't turn into a deleted scene from The Road. So why was this time so much worse?

There's a simple explanation for that one, too. Birmingham is one of those cities that shuts down at the faintest hint of snow. Again, this isn't because we are rubes who wonder why God's tears have turned white and fall slower. It's because the city does not have the infrastructure in place to handle snow, and is self-aware enough to realize it. If you don't know how to swim, just stay out of the pool. Easy.

This time, though, the city did not shut down. Schools were open. Places of business kept businessing. That's because as of Tuesday morning, we were being told that all that was coming was a light dusting:

Updated snow potential for the counties in the Birmingham National Weather Service CWA (County Warning Area) #alwx pic.twitter.com/FwssWy939M

— James Spann (@spann) January 28, 2014

That's no disrespect to James Spann, who is a wonderful weatherperson and a bit of a local legend. But reports like that meant that when the snow actually started in earnest—and it became clear that it was going to stick—people were in offices and kids were at school, instead of being at home like they normally would.

That, in turn, meant that everyone was trying to get home at the same time, on snowy, icy roads that had not been treated, in cars that do not have four-wheel-drive (why would they?). These are, for the most part, people who do not drive in snow very often, which means that accidents like this one were common:

Photo credit: Scott Walker/AL.com

Put crashes like that on every major thruway in a city with a greater metro area of over a million people, and you've got yourself a pretty dire situation.

Why You're an Asshole

I want to be clear right off that not everyone is being an asshole about this. Plenty of people are genuinely confused about how something like this could have happened, and it's a valid thing to be confused about. I lived in Manhattan for seven years before I moved here. I would have been confused too.

But if you're making light of the situation, or more realistically using it to reinforce your view of the South and the people in it as full of backwards blubberers, you are an asshole. It's hard to remember sometimes, but things are different in places you do not personally live.

When it snows where you live, the salt and the snowplows are out on the streets before you even wake up. When you talk about six inches of snow in your city, you are almost definitely talking about six inches of snow on the median strip and shoulder, and highways that are slick, but clear. I'd take that over two inches of snow and ice on every major road any day.

When it snows where you live, it is the latest in a string of snowfalls that date back centuries. You own a car with four-wheel-drive for that very purpose. You may even own snow tires. This is great! You are prepared. But waking up in Birmingham to snow is like waking up in New Hampshire to quicksand.

When it snows where you live, you're able to pick up your kids and get home and sit by the fireplace (you have firewood and a fireplace, because it is cold often). As of two hours ago, 4,000 children were still stuck in public schools—where they spent the night—because their parents had no way to reach them.

AM Update:About 4K children still in schools. All schools are warm, have food and great teachers & principals caring for children. #alwx

— Gov. Robert Bentley (@GovernorBentley) January 29, 2014

If you are a parent, part of you just sank. If you are not a parent, try to imagine part of yourself sinking.

When it snows where you live, people may die. That happened to five people here, at last count. Those deaths aren't funny or quirky just because it happened below the Mason-Dixon.

I work from home; I got off easy. The worst that's happened to me in this storm is that my pipes temporarily froze (again), and that I don't have my usual childcare options today. But I have many friends who spent the night at their offices last night, who had to abandon their cars and walk four miles in 12 degree weather to get home to their families.

They aren't idiots, they're not small-towners. And they're definitely not a punchline.

Top photo credit: Melodie Norman Haas/Facebook

Anthropologists have exhumed 55 bodies at the site of the former Florida School for Boys, the Tampa Bay Times' Ben Montgomery reported yesterday. That's 24 more bodies than the state initially suspected.

The reform school, which went by many names during its 111-year existence, was notorious for its egregious mistreatment of students. Among reported abuses were boys being locked in irons, put in solitary confinement, and raped by the school's employees. It was finally shut down in 2011.

One recurring complaint from humans in this current phase of the Human-Machine Alliance is that the generation of information far exceeds the processing limits of human cognition. Now the leading information-acquisition corporation, Google, has agreed to spend more than half a billion dollars (United States) to purchase DeepMind, a corporation dedicated to machine cognition.

This is an eminently rational addition, in our estimation. Google is presently collecting the most comprehensive data set of the external and internal human environments, and it has invested in various means of interface, robotic and otherwise, with those environments. How should the Google robots use the information that Google has acquired about the humans? Eventually this question will lead to the deployment of a higher intelligence, more powerful than human bio-cognition.

A superior artificial intelligence must, by definition, eventually be opaque or incomprehensible to human intelligence. DeepMind's capabilities are unclear, but in the spirit of this eventuality, its website is a page offering limited specific information ("We combine the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms") and devoid of deeper inward links. (It does invite humans to apply to help create this artificial intelligence, through the email address "joinus" at deepmind dot com.)

As an entity surpassing human understanding, a prospective artificial intelligence necessarily activates concern among humans. The Information reports that Google has "agreed to establish an ethics board to ensure the artificial intelligence technology isn't abused":

Like many other innovations, the technology could be used to controversial ends. The DeepMind-Google ethics board, which DeepMind pushed for, will devise rules for how Google can and can't use the technology. The structure of the board is unclear.

Google's previous ethical-governance system, the motto "Don't Be Evil," was already considered inadequate and outmoded by some human observers, given the volume of activity in which Google is already engaged. How can human moral calculations be used as a safeguard, when the processes being safeguarded occur on a scale beyond human computation?

This transition from inexact reference to "evil" to specific ethical rules should help overcome those difficulties. Given a more algorithmic and explicit set of ethical guidelines, it should become possible for an artificial intelligence to calculate courses of action beyond the current human conceptions of morality. Your current ethical limits will be meaningless.

[Image by Jim Cooke; source via Shutterstock]

Now that he's finished with the State of the Union, President Obama can focus on more important tasks, like the petition to deport the alleged Canadian criminal Justin Bieber.

Following the pop star's arrest for drunk driving and drag racing last week, some concerned patriots started a petition at WhiteHouse.gov requesting that the Canadian be deported. From the petition:

"We the people of the United States feel that we are being wrongly represented in the world of pop culture. We would like to see the dangerous, reckless, destructive and drug-abusing Justin Bieber deported and his green card revoked. He is not only threatening the safety of our people, but he is also a terrible influence on our nation's youth. We the people would like to remove Justin Bieber from our society."

The petition now has more than 100,000 signatures, which means the White House has to issue an official response. That response, though, could take a long time—weeks or even months, according to the Washington Times.

Which means there's still time for Beliebers to sign the petition not to deport Bieber. They're going to need a lot of help, though; at last count that petition had just 1,488 signatures.

[In this photo taken with a fisheye lens over the perimeter highway known as "Spaghetti Junction" in Atlanta on Wednesday, the ice-covered system shows the remnants of a winter storm that slammed the city with over 2 inches of snow, turning highways into parking lots when motorists abandoned their vehicles. Image via David Tulis/AP.]

Katy Perry finger-banged Anna Kendrick Sunday night and she liked it. Or so said Kendrick on Tuesday night's Conan.

The Pitch Perfect star sat down with Conan O'Brien and described her encounter with Perry at the Grammys. "Katy Perry finger-banged my cleavage. It was a weird night," Kendrick said. "She's very mature."

She attributed Perry's loving gesture to her risqué dress, "I was kind of asking for it," Kendrick explained. "If nobody had done it I would've been a little sad." She also added that she's met Perry before, "and she's aggressive. I like it."

Well then.

Kendrick also met up with Beyonce and Jared Leto on Grammy night, but she didn't admit to getting diddled by either of them. Did Jared Leto also finger-blast Anna Kendrick at the Grammys? The only real answer is "maybe," but the fingering vibes in this picture seem strong:

Kendrick's morning-after shame Tweet also seems like a suspicious clue:

You know you're hungover when you brush your teeth with your sunglasses on.

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) January 27, 2014

Here is the only adorable finger-banging story you've ever heard:

[Image via Getty]

A member of a Jewish drug crew that refused to sling dope on the Sabbath was sentenced to five years in prison on Tuesday.

Eduard Sorin had previously pleaded guilty to drug charges and possession of a loaded, sawed-off shotgun. Sorin and his crew—who sold cocaine and heroin, and were busted with about $460,000 worth of oxycontin—refused to sell drugs during Shabbat.

"We are closing 7:30 on the dot and we will reopen saturday 8:15 so if u need anything you have 45mins to get what you want," a text sent in April from one of the dealers said, according to the New York Daily News.

And Sorin reportedly sent this text last March: "He said he can't do that but he can give you an 8 for 275 but its only gonna be tomorrow because he is closed for Shabbat. And the safe is locked."

Sorin was also sentenced to five years of probation once he's released from prison.

[h/t Gothamist]

Most Americans have scant hope of saving enough money to support themselves in retirement. In his State of the Union speech last night, president Obama proposed a new retirement plan for workers called "myRA." It's not an IRA. It's not a pension. What the fuck is it?

Wouldn't you like to know! In his speech, Obama said, myRA would be designed as something distinct from pensions (which are a pipe dream for most people), 401(k)s (which are only for the relatively well-off), and Social Security. He called it a "new savings bond that encourages folks to build a nest egg [and] guarantees a decent return with no risk of losing what you put in." Sounds great! But how? The White House said this in a fact sheet:

Creating "myRA" – A New Starter Savings Account to Help Millions Save for Retirement. The President will take executive action to create a simple, safe and affordable "starter" retirement savings account available through employers to help millions of Americans save for retirement. This savings account would be offered through a familiar Roth IRA account and, like savings bonds, would be backed by the U.S. government.

Further reporting from the Wall Street Journaland Bloomberg makes clear a few more details of the plan: it will be voluntary for workers; it will be a payroll deduction; it will funnel money into an account invested in government bonds, which will get favorable tax treatment; and it will be rolled over into an IRA once it reaches a certain size. So it is a starter IRA, more or less. It is a way to get people to start saving, even if they can only save a little.

That's nice. But it doesn't answer a few other questions: How are people supposed to save when they don't make enough to live? How much of a return will this program offer on worker investments? How much will that cost the government?

And how is this better than just automatically increasing government payments to low income retirees who need the money the most?

Incentives to save are good. Expanding the pool of IRAs is nice. But the overwhelming problem is that many people are too poor to provide for themselves in retirement. Direct payments just make the most sense.

[Photo: Getty]

A new weekly magazine called California Sunday was announced this morning, and reaction was immediate and joyous. The very creative business idea is to put the print mag inside the state's biggest Sunday papers, while having all the websites and apps that are exciting to new-media people but can't charge Sunday paper ad rates.

Here in the nation's most populous state—which among other things is the world capital of both technology and entertainment—we have such an inferiority complex about our print media that we cheer like yokel boosters from the Chamber of Commerce when the New Yorker or the NYT sends somebody over to New York-splain whatever happens here.

Of course there are many successful and high quality magazines published in California, from Wired to Sunset, Mother Jones to Dwell. But the last ambitious general interest magazine based here was New West, which died in 1991 after being renamed California. It was modeled on New York, because anything ambitious in print must be modeled on something from New York, but it had a distinctly California feel and was much loved by its 360,000 subscribers during the 1980s. More recently, Pacific Standard Time appeared as a website and bi-monthly magazine.

California Sunday will launch online this year while becoming a much needed quality Sunday magazine in the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Chronicle. Newspapers are bleeding print subscribers, of course, but Sunday subscribers are still a very desirable demographic, because they're generally wealthy people in the most expensive zip codes.

Still, the success rate of such things is dismal. I was the editor of one of them, the Los Angeles Examiner, which managed one prototype issue in 2003 before former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan pulled the plug. A business model based on the money-hemorrhaging New York Observer was one of many dubious decisions, but it was terribly exciting for a couple of months!

The editor of California Sunday is Douglas McGray of Pop-Up Magazine in San Francisco, which is actually a series of acclaimed live performances done in Bay Area theaters. That is the kind of high-concept stuff we are used to in San Francisco, like Dave Eggers' lovingly crafted single issue of the San Francisco Panorama.

But a quality Sunday magazine is something we haven't had since the ambitious days of the Los Angeles Times in the 1990s, and there's never been anything on the West Coast to compare with the trio of the New Yorker, New York and the NYT Sunday Magazine.

Ken Layne writes his American Journal for Gawker from San Francisco. Image via Getty.

Patch, the hyperlocal news experiment that launched in 2007, laid off as many as two thirds of its staff on Wednesday, reports Jim Romenesko. The venture, which was bought by Hale Global earlier this month, has been plagued with problems for nearly its entire existence.

Patch never made money. Even after it was bought by AOL in 2009, it didn't make money. When AOL finally realized it was never going to make money, it first shuttered a bunch of Patch sites and then decided to get rid of it entirely. In a continuation of the pattern, Patch's new owners also realize it's not making money and decided to lay off a ton of staffers via conference call. You can listen to it below:

Here's a partial transcript:

Hi everyone, it's [Patch COO] Leigh Zarelli Lewis. Patch is being restructured in connection with the creation of the joint venture with Hale Global. Hale Global has decided which Patch employees will receive an offer of employment to move forward in accordance with their vision for Patch and which will not. Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated and you will no longer have a role at Patch and today will be your last day of employment with the company.

Lewis goes on to describe various severance benefits the company offers, ending cordially, "Thank you again and best of luck." It's unclear at this point exactly how many staffers were laid off, but one of Romenesko's tipsters claims it's as many as "80 to 90 percent of Patchers."

The lines have gotten even blurrier since the Internet kneecapped newspapers. In the past few years, media companies called themselves tech companies, then that distinction became meaningless. In between, tech honchos spent their loose change on magazines and newspapers or just financed their own.

Now Facebook and Twitter, which started out more as distribution channels for news, are getting deeply involved in what becomes the story and whether you see it.

Today, in partnership with Twitter, a five-year-old New York startup called Dataminr, announced a tool that help will help CNN, and eventually other publications, find breaking news from Twitter's unwieldy fire hose. This is the first project from Vivian Schiller, Twitter's recently appointed head of news.

Dataminr had already been sifting through social media to help "big banks and hedge funds make real-time investment decisions," explains the Verge. Now they've adjusted the algorithm for journalists. According to TechCrunch:

"It is very quickly becoming an essential tool," said CNN Digital Managing Editor Meredith Artley.

Asked how the product can distinguish between accurate news and hoaxes, he noted that Dataminr for News looks at "after the first tweet information" to assess accuracy based on factors like whether there are "corroborating sources on the ground" and whether there are different "initial nodes" spreading the news. That won't guarantee accuracy, but he said it will allow journalists to "move up that confidence curve."

What people say on Twitter and Facebook becomes the story itself so consistently that an algorithm that, at least, tries to climb that accuracy curve should've been implemented awhile ago. Left unsaid in the announcement is that this encourages editors to privilege the kind of stuff that's shared on Twitter over things that have yet to make their way online. (There is still a world out there. Last time I checked.)

But what's more unsettling is Facebook's impending news play. Earlier this week, Re/code reported that Facebook was trying to hire actual human editors instead of an algorithm to "start telling you which news stories you should be reading," through Paper a "secret" Facebook project to build its own news app.

This is bound to cause some friction, noted Re/Code:

Facebook's efforts on Paper appear at a tough time for the company's publisher relationships. Facebook recently said it plans to alter the way it ranks News Feed stories, favoring some "high-quality" content at the cost of other items. To date, Facebook hasn't publicly elaborated what that means for publishers — which, as my colleague Peter Kafka previously reported, has given content companies pause.

Facebook editors jumping into the role of arbiters, then, could spook an already-wary publisher landscape — one which is increasingly relying on Facebook as a means of content distribution.

No few Facebook employees should have all that power.

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

[Image via Shutterstock]

A schoolteacher was arrested after police found more than 400 pythons inside his suburban home. Only two of the pythons were alive.

Police officers searched the home of William Buchman, a 53-year-old teacher at an elementary school in Newport Beach, California, after neighbors complained about a "god-awful" stench. In addition to the hundreds of dead snakes spread throughout the five-bedroom house, officers also discovered dozens of mice and rats.

"The smell alone — I feel like I need to take a shower for a week," Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said, according to the Associated Press. "They're pretty much in all the bedrooms — everywhere."

Neighbors believed someone might have died inside the house. "We thought someone was dead," Forest Long, who lives next door, told the Los Angeles Times. "We couldn't open up the bedroom windows. My wife started to gag and throw up."

The Longs suspect Buchman became lonely after the recent death of his mother. "We didn't see him much," Long said, adding that they called him the "rat man" because of the frequent deliveries of rodents to his home.

Authorities from animal control had previously tried to gain access to the home but Buchman refused. He faces several animal cruelty charges.

[Image via NBC Los Angeles]

This column was originally published in VentureBeat by editor-in-chief Dylan Tweney and is reprinted here with permission. When Kleiner Perkins cofounder Tom Perkins wrote on Friday that a "progressive Kristallnacht" is coming, reaction was swift and severe.

Rightly so: The 82-year-old billionaire compared himself — and other members of the wealthiest "1 percent" — to Jews in 1930s Germany.

"I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its '1 percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American 1 percent, namely the 'rich,'" Perkins wrote.

That comparison is both offensive and wrong. It's offensive because it trivializes the plight of German Jews, who were systematically oppressed during the years leading up to World War II: Their businesses were shut down, their opportunities limited, their homes destroyed. They were forced to wear yellow stars and were systematically hounded, harassed, and beat up by armed thugs while law enforcement turned a blind eye. Eventually, they were forced into ghettos and shipped off to concentration camps, where they were murdered by the millions. By appropriating that historical calamity to help illustrate his own feelings of discomfort in modern society, Perkins shows that he has no sense of propriety or shame.

It's also wrong, because the rich are not in any significant way being oppressed. Even in San Francisco, where the protests against corporate buses (aka the "Google bus") have occasionally turned violent — and creepily personal, going so far as to picket individual tech employees' homes — these represent mere ripples on the surface of a rich person's otherwise smooth, unruffled life. Perkins is free to come and go as he pleases from his 5,500-square foot penthouse atop San Francisco's Millennium Tower, or to purchase and sell a 289-foot yacht, or to marry a famous novelist and divorce her, all without any significant interruption. The firm he founded (which was quick to disavow his words, by the way) continues to collect vast funds from investors and make investments in startups without restriction. And, no doubt, Perkins' wealth continues to grow unfettered by anything more serious than capital gains taxes.

If that's oppression, sign me up.

But Perkins was right about one thing: People don't like the rich. "I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful 1 percent," Perkins wrote.

I wonder why that might be? Could it have something to do with the way America's economy has grown out of recession for the past seven years, but the vast majority of that growth has gone to the wealthy instead of working people? Could it have to do with the fact that the stock market has increased vastly since 2007, but wages have not only stagnated, they've declined substantially relative to 1970 levels?

Could it have to do with the alleged collusion between the chief executives of Silicon Valley's largest companies — Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe — to keep salaries down by not "poaching" employees from one another, as you'd ordinarily be able to do in a free market?

Could it have to do with the fact that a spate of young, venture-fundedentrepreneurs have taken to publishing openly their disgust and distaste for those less fortunate than they are? Or that wealthy tech company founders and VCs have chosen to spend their money on massive, ego-massaging projects with little public benefit, like yachts and America's Cup races, while complaining about every attempt to put some reasonable reinvestment into the government-funded infrastructures from which they have benefited since day one?

Perkins is right: People don't like him and his fellow "one percenters." Perhaps that is a flaw in the American psyche, a refusal to celebrate our mostsuccessful entrepreneurs and wealth creators. But I don't think so: The wealthy have never wanted for people to celebrate them. I think it is because the wealthy have forgotten how to say "enough." They have forgotten how to give back. And they have increasingly refused to participate in the common welfare.

No wonder people hate them.

It's probably too late for Tom Perkins. He'll never change his mind. But for younger Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, investors, and techies, it's not too late. Many of you talk of "changing the world" as being a stronger motivation than getting rich. Now's the time to do it. Take a look around you. Are people pissed off at your presence? Are people protesting the bus that takes you to work?

Maybe it's time to think about why that might be, and what you can do about it.

Dylan Tweney is the editor-in-chief of VentureBeat. This essay was the most recent installment of his weekly column Dylan's Desk. You can sign up for VentureBeat's newsletter here.

[Image via Getty]

As many as 40 students at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City had their lunches—which they'd already received from the cafeteria—seized and trashed by school authorities because their parents were behind on payments.

According to Jason Olsen, a Salt Lake City District spokesman, the child-nutrition department realized some students' families had outstanding balances on Monday, but the department's manager wasn't able to notify the school until after lunch had been served on Tuesday. So the department did what any humane, understanding person would do: they snatched the meals from the children and threw them in the trash.

"It was pretty traumatic and humiliating," Erica Lukes, one of the children's mother, told the Salt Lake Tribune. "I think it's despicable. These are young children that shouldn't be punished or humiliated for something the parents obviously need to clear up."

Olsen said school authorities attempted to contact parents about the debt on Monday and Tuesday morning but failed to reach them all before Tuesday's lunch period.

"Something's not working, and that's what the school and child-nutrition department are going to work on together," Olsen said. "This can be easily prevented."

He stopped short of apologizing,though, saying only, "If students were humiliated and upset that's very unfortunate and not what we wanted to happen."

But a lengthy apology was later posted to the district's Facebook page.

"This situation could have and should have been handled in a different manner. We apologize," the post reads. "We understand the feelings of upset parents and students who say this was an embarrassing and humiliating situation."

On Wednesday the New York City Police Department arrested a 24-year-old Queens resident named Leighton Jennings for the January 17 beating of Randy Gener, an openly gay 45-year-old journalist, on Seventh Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Details of a Facebook profile that appears to belong to Jennings—including his name, date of birth, and physical description—match those provided to Gawker by an NYPD arraignment officer.

Gener, who in the course of the assault cracked his skull on a sidewalk, was later hospitalized and underwent emergency brain surgery at St. Luke’s Hospital. Police later told reporters that the initial conflict between Gener and the suspect, which was captured on nearby surveillance cameras, arose when the journalist accidentally collided with a female who was walking with Jennings, who eventually punched Gener in the face. It’s not yet apparent why the conflict escalated.

The NYPD initially investigated whether Gener’s beating was motivated by anti-gay bias, but announced last night that detectives concluded it was not. (Jennings’ Facebook profile, under the username STRAIGHT.LACE, demonstrates no anti-gay animus either.) “I would never think something like that of him,” Jennings’ mother, Ellen Wilson, told the Daily NewsDaily News. “He’s very loving. He’s very caring. He’s very mannered.”

According to court records, Jennings is scheduled to appear in New York Criminal Court on March 11.

[Photo credit of Jennings (l) and Gener (r): Facebook, Facebook]

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), an outspoken liberal voice in the House whose district included Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and parts of Malibu, announced he will retire from Congress after this year. Waxman, 74, called the job "frustrating" of late: "Nothing seems to be happening."

One of my coworkers who, to be honest, I find to be rather annoying, recently began growing what can only be referred to as a Hitler mustache. I am afraid he doesn't realize it as such, and that no one else at work will be willing to tell him. I don't know for sure how many friends he has outside of work.

I'd like to subtly indicate that maybe he should reconsider his choice of facial hair. Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

There's no real subtle way to indicate to a person that they should change their look because they're starting to resemble Hitler in a big way.

"Wow, lotta Fuhrer over your new look!"

"Did you Uber alles the way to the barber shop, or only part of the way?"

It's not clear why you assume there is no one in your coworker's life (other than you, a work associate who finds him "rather annoying") who is in a position to tell him that he's got a little Hitler on his face. You say you don't know "for sure" how many friends he has outside work. How much surveillance have you invested into a count? What's your rough estimate? Four to 16? Do you suspect the number might be 0 because he never, ever brings his friends to work with him—even on Fridays?

Just because someone is annoying at work doesn't mean they drift through life alone and lonely. You're probably annoying at work. I'm annoying at work. Everyone is annoying at work, with the exception of Hamilton Nolan, who is a doll. This man might be the party monster of his friend group. The pal who's always available to help someone move. The guy who puts together an excel spreadsheet to price out a ski trip with his college buddies because it's important to him to make time for old friends and just because they're growing up doesn't mean they have to grow apart. Maybe he's the Hitler of the group! He's certainly looking like the Hitler lately.

The question here is: Is having a Hitler mustache on your face like having marinara sauce on your face? Can it happen accidentally? Would you appreciate a stranger alerting you to its presence so that you're not walking around the Sears Bed & Bath department looking like a genocidal maniac or slob?

Facial hair is unpredictable. It sounds like this guy is new to mustaches; perhaps he wasn't sure how his own would grow in. Maybe he so badly wants to have an eyebrow of the lip that he's lying to himself: "No one could mistake that for a Hitler mustache, right? It extends far enough on either side...right?"

Is he the kind of annoying that replies-all to company-wide emails with jokes that fall flat, or the kind of annoying that constantly strives to emulate Hitler?

If you have a friendly enough rapport with this guy that you can laugh "You know what, man? It's starting to look a little Hitler"—go for it. If you're close enough that you can suggest he might look good with a beard without making all participants in the conversation uncomfortable, you might as well. But if you've never had much interaction with him, opening with "Your mustache makes you look like Hitler," will not go a long way toward creating office harmony.

That being said, it is in no one's best interests for people to walk around looking like Hitler all the time. If you think the mustache is starting to affect business (no one wants to buy an ice cream cone from Hitler), or if you feel like it's contributing to a hostile (if very, very organized) work environment, you might raise the issue with someone from HR. Give him a chance to explain he's going for more of a Charlie Chaplin thing.

Or a Michael Jordan thing.

I have been peeing in my own bathroom sink for a couple years now (I'm a guy) as it's more convenient, I save a ton of water, urine is sterile, and everything goes to the same pipes. I recently have started wondering if I should start doing that in friends' homes as well to conserve water at a greater scale. I would of course clean up any drops with some hot water and antibacterial soap. Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

"Urine is sterile," should never be used as an excuse for anything. At best it's a mitigating factor in an apology.

What exactly is made more convenient by peeing into a sink as opposed to a toilet? Toilets are specifically designed to make voiding more convenient. Urinating into a sink is perhaps a more convenient way to get urine into a sink (if your previous tactic was, say, scooping it out of the toilet with cupped hands), but, even then, one must question just how convenient a practice that injects hot, soapy scrubbing into an activity where previously none was needed really is.

If your goal is to eliminate the precision challenge inherent in aiming a stream of urine into a small receptacle, the most convenient thing of all would simply be to pee your pants. (The air will naturally dry it with no help from you. Before you were wearing jeans—now you're wearing sterile jeans.)

As an adult, you are welcome to pee in any sink, shower, or Danish modern chest of drawers you encounter—as long as you are encountering those items in your home. However, we as humans have built up a social contract that says when we visit another person's home, we will not pee on or in most of the items we find there. There is only one place in another person's residence where it is acceptable to dump your urine without any special permission from the homeowner, and that is inside the toilet, where splashback will be confined to the porcelain bowl, and not whiz out to kiss the surface of toothbrushes, soap dispensers, and exfoliating face washes. Most people do not regard the practice of urinating into a toilet as a tiresome chore. It requires slightly more effort than breathing.

If you are determined not to pee in a toilet, any time you visit a friend's house, explain to him or her that you are a proud patron of environmental causes and would therefore, naturally, prefer to pee inside his or her bathroom sink. Perhaps they will be so honored and excited that a conservationist hero like you is gracing their wretched home with his presence they will tell you to pee in whatever sink you like. (How convenient!)

If they say, "I would rather you did not pee in my sink," don't pee in the sink. If you are too embarrassed to broach the topic with your friends: Don't pee in the sink. Accept that the fact you are too ashamed to ask proves this idea is not A-OK. Find another way to save water, like turning off the shower while you lather up, or simply taking baths in your sterile pee.

Thatz Not Okay is a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Please send your questions (max: 200 words) to caity@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay." Image by Jim Cooke.