The head of the National Jewish Democratic Council is "astounded" that the Republicans' new tech startup shares a "fatalist and violent" name with a gun used by Germans in World War II: "The RNC should immediately repudiate the name of this venture, denounce the approach it suggests, and apologize," he said.

Papers and pundits screamed it today, in massive headlines. The conservatives cackled it. "OBAMACARE WILL MEAN 2 MILLION FEWER FULL-TIME WORKERS." It was bullshit, born of the media's oversimplification and the right wing's malicious stupidity. The truth is good news.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report today forecasting the economy's prospects. Much of it dealt with the effects of health care reform. On Page 117, in Appendix C ("Labor Market Effects of the Affordable Care Act"), the CBO offered a single sentence that sent the Beltway into a batshit tizzy:

The reduction in CBO's projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024.

JOBS LOST! MILLIONS OF FULL-TIME WORKERS SIDELINED BY OBAMACARE! It blasted across every major paper's front page and hundreds of conserva-pundits' and Republicans' Twitter accounts. Here's the Washington Post's lede:

The Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of full-time workers by more than 2 million in coming years, congressional budget analysts said Tuesday, a finding that sent the White House scrambling to defend a law that has bedeviled President Obama for years.

Here's the New York Times:

A new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office says that the Affordable Care Act will result in more than 2 million fewer full-time workers in the next several years, providing Republican opponents of the law a powerful political weapon leading up to this year's midterm elections.

But instead of salivating and pivoting immediately to the right-left political impact of the report, perhaps the reporters should have spent more time, like, reporting on the report itself. What did that 2 million figure represent, exactly? Not real workers, but an "equivalent" expression of how many fewer hours we would all be working. TPM's Dylan Scott was the first reporter to notice something amiss, once the hysterical news cycle had expended itself. Here's what the CBO actually said:

CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor—given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive.

When workers no longer have to rely on full-time employers to get affordable health care, they suddenly have the freedom to not work full-time. That could mean people stuck in crappy hourly jobs 40 hours a week at, say, the local big-box store. Or creatives jammed in underpaying urban admin assistant jobs. Indeed, the CBO adds:

Because the largest declines in labor supply will probably occur among lower-wage workers… the impact on the overall economy will be proportionally smaller than the reduction in hours worked.

In other words, people who qualify for expanded Medicaid coverage could choose to scale back their hours at work, could pursue better hourly wages for half-time jobs, could save by keeping the kids out of day care a few more times a week. People will have more time, and the economy won't have much less money for it. CBO again:

The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than a net drop in business' demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation… rather than as an increase in unemployment… or underemployment.

As Scott says, the CBO "specifically undermines" the claims made by the papers and pundits. Obamacare will give more of us more time away from work. This is a good thing.

And yet. Here we are, listening to Lindsey Graham and Erick Erickson bitch about the poor, poor workers that will lose jobs in a flagging economy because of one sentence out of context from a several hundred page report and several complicit reporters but mostly OBAMACARE.

The problem here is truly philosophical. It is ideological. It is rooted in the two Americas' distressingly divergent answers to a simple question: What is a job for?

For pundits and pointy-headed analysts, it's to keep The Economy and Growth flowing. That is its good. That is its end. Workers are the means. For most workers (the vast majority of whom aren't leaving their families and schlepping through megastorms to cubicles or factories for the love), the job is the means to a different, individualized end: the ability to buy one's own way, to keep loved ones fed and happy and healthy, to stave off poverty.

So what the CBO said today, in essence, was that if this Obamacare thing works out, people won't need to work full-time jobs just to keep health care benefits. They may actually be able to spend more time with those families. They may be able to freelance, to split hours between two parents rather than having one stay-at-home parent and one full-time earner. They may be able to take a chance on that novel or Etsy shop, instead of staying at the office until death.

That's not what conservatives hear, though, because that's not what conservatives care about. Their concern for people is subverted by their concern for commercial output, or economic abstractions that appear to impact commercial output. It wasn't always so; the original argument for Adam Smithian, invisible-hand laissez-faire capitalism was that it's the best system for everyone concerned. That is no longer the economics of conservatism; to even hark back to "the good of all" is a marker of socialism now. The new capitalism is Ayn Rand's, based on the principle that government is bad and private enterprise is good. All facts, all figures must be processed through this worldview before being regurgitated onto Main Street.

This paradigm and its macroeconomic lingo are so pervasive that it's now promulgated by an "objective" media on front pages of newspapers as immutable fact. So that the Times, before clarifying that 2 million actual jobs held by existent people won't really be lost, finds it necessary to use the figure, and to add that it provides "a powerful political weapon" to foes of Obamacare.

It does, but only if you're an idiot. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the other media bigs are not idiots. But they're playing an idiot's game.

[Photo credit: AP]

Millennials are shitty money managers.

This morning, the world woke up to two "humbled" letters from two chief executives: Satya Nadella and Mark Zuckerberg. But you didn't need to read their words that closely because the CEOs proceeded to repeat them—almost verbatim—on camera not long after.

The public relations industry is built around myth-making and making important people seem likable. That's nothing new. It's just that the Microsoft and Facebook haven't always been so hot at it. This far cry from pit-stained Steve Ballmer yelling "Developers" over and over or Zuck's (also sweaty!) interview in the AllThingsD hot seat.

In Nadella's memo to employees as Microsoft's new chief executive, he describes himself as smart, but flawed human. Well, sure, he has an insatiable curiosity. But just like you, non-executive, he can't always finish what he starts:

And like anyone else, a lot of what I do and how I think has been shaped by my family and my overall life experiences. Many who know me say I am also defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can complete.

The memo was published by Microsoft and then Nadella submitted to an "interview" on some internal company show called "Microsoft Campus," which was also picked up by the press, where he shared the same humbling confession:

Like anyone else, my experience and how I think has all been shaped by my life's experience. The one thing that I would say that defines me is I love to learn. I get excited about new things. I buy more books than I read or finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can actually finish.

In Zuckerberg's letter celebrating his social network's 10th birthday, he wrote:

I remember getting pizza with my friends one night in college shortly after opening Facebook. I told them I was excited to help connect our school community, but one day someone needed to connect the whole world.

The proud pizza-loving American who wanted to change the world sounds a little different from the dorm room snot describing his users as "dumb fucks" to trust him with their personal info. It's hard to say whether the pizza detail came from Zuck or his "words man" Dex Torricke-Barton. (He's had a ghostwriter for years.) But our national cuisine comes up again when the Today show asks Zuckerberg about the cultural impact he made:

I remember really vividly having pizza with my friends a day or two after I opened up the first version of Facebook. You know at the time I thought someone needs to build a service like this for the world.

To his credit, Zuck pulls it off. That is until he tries to joke with Savannah Guthrie—asking if she's been talking to his mom when the interviewer asks about having kids. Dude, what did they tell you about ad-libbing?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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

[Image via Getty]

A new Grand Jury indictment for Ross Ulbricht, the alleged founder of Silk Road, includes one count each for narcotics conspiracy, running a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, as well as money laundering, but nothing about murder-for-hire.

Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to skip New York's St. Patrick's Day parade, due to the parade's perennial ban on marchers identifying themselves as gay. One-man right-wing publicity shop William Donahue responds: "I do not want to march with a public official who does not want to be associated with Irish Catholics."

An entire terminal in Laguardia, America's worst airport, was evacuated today after a baggage handler reported smoke coming from a piece of luggage. Nothing to worry about, folks. Just a smokin' bag.

It is unclear from news reports whether the bag was, in fact, smoking; according to the NY Daily News, the employee reported that it was smoking, but—according to a spokesman—"When the Port Authority police got there, there was no smoke." By that time, of course, the whole terminal had been evacuated, and some people had missed their flights, and if those people are lucky, they will have their next flights cancelled by the incoming snowstorm.

Safety first.

We here in the city of New York want to assure visitors that there is absolutely nothing at all to fear from any smoking bag that they may or may not see in a terminal in one of our world-class airport facilities. Come on up, bring the family, enjoy a trip to Times Square and the Empire State Building, and don't even think twice about the tendrils of smoke rising incongruously from that mysterious piece of luggage. We assure you that the smoldering valise poses no threat to your life or safety. Simply continue moving, as if you had never beheld the fiery suitcase in the first place.

Have a Cinnabon.

[Photo: AP]

Those creepy Facebook "Look Back" ads that were going around yesterday, where the data-mining concern auto-generated moving short films of your life on Facebook? This is Rob Ford's, probably.

Moses Farrow, Mia Farrow's estranged son and older brother to Dylan, does not believe his father Woody Allen sexually abused his sister. In an interview with People on Wednesday, Moses blames his mother for "poisoning" the children against their father.

"My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister," Moses, 36, told the magazine. "And I hated him for her for years. I see now that this was a vengeful way to pay him back for falling in love with Soon-Yi."

Moses, a family therapist who remains close to Allen and Soon-Yi, then describes his own memory of the day of the alleged molestation:

Of course Woody did not molest my sister. She loved him and looked forward to seeing him when he would visit. She never hid from him until our mother succeeded in creating the atmosphere of fear and hate towards him. The day in question, there were six or seven of us in the house. We were all in public rooms and no one, not my father or sister, was off in any private spaces. My mother was conveniently out shopping. I don't know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother. Pleasing my mother was very powerful motivation because to be on her wrong side was horrible.

Moses, who also accuses Farrow of physically abusing him, believes his father is not a creep and that his sister is suffering from delusion: "It's important that she assert her independence from our mother and not go through life with the false impression that she has been molested by my father."

Dylan, in response to the interview, insists she is telling the truth and claims her brother's statements are "such a betrayal to me and my whole family."

"My memories are the truth and they are mine and I will live with that for the rest of my life," she told People. She also denies that her mother coached her, noting that Farrow initially didn't believe the alleged abuse occurred:

My mother never coached me. She never planted false memories in my brain. My memories are mine. I remember them. She was distraught when I told her. When I came forward with my story she was hoping against hope that I had made it up. In one of the most heartbreaking conversations I have ever had, she sat me down and asked me if I was telling the truth. She said that Dad said he didn't do anything, and I said, 'He's lying.'

She also dismisses her brother's allegations of physical abuse.

Farrow did not respond to Moses' allegations. However, Allen's sister, Letty Aronson, did respond, saying that Allen "feels very badly for Dylan, that she has been so poisoned by her mother."

[Image via AP]

The Northeast may have had its fun mocking the South's recent descent into chaos in the face of snow, but now it's our turn to fall apart. This newest storm has shut down I-84—one of the region's biggest highways—and crippled countless other roads. The culprit? We're running out of salt.

Beginning last night, snow has been hitting the northeastern U.S. hard, leaving up to a foot snow in some parts of New England. Connecticut's non-essential workers have been instructed to stay home, and Chris Christie declared New Jersey to be in an official state of emergency. But the effects of this storm are so much worse than previous not because of how much snow there is. Instead, according to the New Jersey Department of Transportation, it's because this brutal winter has depleted the region's salt reserves.

In a phone call with Gizmodo, Joe Dee, a New Jersey DOT spokesman explained that "it's been a very storm-filled winter, not only here but in the Midwest and New England, too. So there's quite a few states with transportation agencies facing dwindling supplies right now. We've just been using it at a faster rate than it's able to be replenished."

Though the official word may be that demand is simply overwhelming an already limited supply, others believe there may be more to it. In The Jersey Tomato Press, Diane Lilli cites one (anonymous) eyewitness who was given a much more disconcerting response to his request for salt:

"There were 150 -200 big trucks, filled with the salt, our salt," he said, obviously upset. "I asked for salt, and the guy there told me they were too low, and that it was there, on those trucks, headed to Met Life stadium for the Super Bowl."

Lilli goes on to refer back to a December 18 press conference at Met Life Stadium in which officials discussed the extent of their snow preparedness. Lilli writes that the New Jersey DOT Deputy Commissioner Joseph Mrozek "proudly said" that the state had a huge amount of salt in storage—60,000 tons worth, more specifically.:

When asked about a relation between the salt shortage and the Met Life Stadium Super Bowl reserves, Dee told Gizmodo:

Of course [Met Life Stadium] needs salt for their parking lots and roadways leading out of the sports complex. That's something they do every year—purchasing supplies for their needs. But we have salt domes all over the state that we fill in the beginning of he year; vendors bring the salt out to us on scheduled deliveries. It's an established process.

In terms of Met Life Stadium having some vast supply of salt, I'm not aware that that's necessarily true. There isn't some huge supply just sitting there.

While Met Life Stadium routinely stores road salt, it'd be totally understandable to take extra precautions this time; after all, it's not every year Jersey gets to host the Super Bowl. Prior to the Super Bowl, The Advertiser News wrote:

Since New Jersey is hosting the game this year at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, the Road Department has designated a bulk of the state's salt supplies to roads surrounding the stadium in case of a snow storm that weekend, causing slower reactions to snowstorms in the township.

We've reached out to Met Life Stadium for comment and will update as soon as we hear back.

Whether the salt shortage is due to Super Bowl stockpiling or just slow restocking, one thing is for certain: wherever that salt is, we need it—and soon. [The Jersey Tomato Press, Reuters]

Image: Shutterstock/Peter Gudella

Three more Washington Post staffers—Brad Plumer, Sarah Kliff, and Max Fisher—are leaving the paper for Ezra Klein’s forthcoming news website at Vox Media. The trio join former Post staffers Dylan Matthews and Melissa Bell, who followed Klein to Vox in January.

A naked man with "superhuman strength" was shot to death Tuesday night after assaulting a former police officer and biting part of a teenager's face off.

According to Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, the naked man was walking down a road near Delray Beach, Florida when, for reasons that remain unclear, he attacked a 66-year-old former NYPD officer. The retired cop was rushed to the hospital with serious injuries.

Meanwhile, the naked man continued up the road, where he encountered and chased a man walking with his 10-year-old son. Later, the naked man attacked an 18-year-old man, biting his face until the teen stabbed the man with a box cutter or knife. By that time, police officers had arrived on the scene and attempted to Taser the nude man.

"He's obviously delirious on something," Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told the Palm Beach Post. "He is a huge guy. He takes a fighting stance. They're trying to get him on the ground. He starts charging them. The Taser did not affect him."

A deputy then shot the man three times, once in the torso and twice in the lower body. The man died later that night at a nearby hospital.

"We don't know right now if he's expired from the gunshots, or if he's expired because of obviously he's on some type of drugs that have made him act like this," Bradshaw said. "There's no way to know if those are the shots that actually killed him, or if he's died from what they called exited delirium. He's obviously on some type of narcotics to make him act like this."

[h/t Uproxx]

Woody Allen appears ready to publicly address his daughter Dylan Farrow's accusations of sexual abuse. According to The New York Times, Allen has "asked for, and may get, a chance to respond — in an Op-Ed piece." Whether or not the piece will actually be published "comes down to the editing process."

This nation has a very fundamental problem. Its best city—New York City—exists in a northern latitude so extreme that it is a frigid sub-Arctic wasteland for half the year. Why don't we rebuild somewhere down south?

I can already hear the objections. "New York City is not the best city." "We have plenty of good cities in warm places already." "New York City is not even that cold." Please. I would greatly appreciate it if we could conduct this conversation entirely within the realm of reality.

If you don't believe New York City is America's best, grandest, most fully realized city, the beating heart of this nation's art, culture, business, and thought, then fine. Go live in Phoenix or whatever. You don't need to be reading this post at all. (Except for the fact that you have nothing better to do, because you live in Phoenix or whatever.) Are there good cities in warm places? Sure. Some pretty decent ones, here and there. If you put together the most attractive and vibrant portions of Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans, and... wherever doesn't suck in Texas, without all the urban sprawl, you could piece together a single fairly tolerable city. But you can't. And it still would not bear any resemblance to the metropolis that is is New York. America's only real metropolis in a sunny place is Los Angeles, a vast agglomeration of neighborhoods of varying quality sewn together with highways and plagued by a fatal set of geological fault lines and juice stores. The sort of people that live in America's best city, New York, are naturally turned off by the essence of Los Angeles, that's why we live in New York. Los Angeles' weather is ideal. If Los Angeles was as cool a city as New York, no one would live in New York. QED.

The fact that nearly ten million good-looking people tolerate today's sidewalks coated in an ice-encrusted layer of snow covering near-frozen slush lakes is de facto proof that New York is America's best city. If it weren't, we would get the fuck out of here, pronto.

So why, pray tell, did we as a nation allow our best city to be located in such a freezing fucking location? Well, I would begin tracing the line of blame with Henry Hudson, and continue it straight on through to Robert Moses. Piss poor planning is frankly the only way to characterize it. You'd think nobody ever stopped to regard their frostbitten digits during one of the annual ice storms and said, "You know what? Let's pause right here and move this whole act on down to San Antonio or thereabouts."

Fortunately, it is never too late. America is a big country. We own Hawaii. We have plenty of open space. We have a wide variety of microclimates to choose from. We'll pick a nice spot on the water, with plenty of sunshine year-round and a distinct lack of ice storms, slush apocalypses, and "wintry mixes." Fuck winter, and fuck its mixes most especially. Drought, tropical diseases, hurricanes, and/ or earthquakes are a small price to pay for being able to live somewhere that does not cause acute Vitamin D deficiency from persistent lack of sunlight.

Is there already another, less impressive city extant in the spot we choose? No matter. Don't think of it as "San Diego"—think of it as "an area that will soon be bulldozed to make way for New New York City." Gone will be the sprawling detritus of lesser America. In its place we will painstakingly construct a jumbled super-urban metropolis that spreads for hundreds of square miles in all (sunny) directions, like a high-rise-laden squid that has made its inky escape from the Northeast, bringing along all of its charms and none of its fucking ice. Once construction is complete, the residents of New York City will undertake an orderly relocation to our glorious new environs. All future growth in America should be confined to an area south of 35 degrees North latitude. As for the state of New York and the rest of the northeastern U.S., we will leave it to the wolves and the Bostonians. This climate is not fit for humanity.

[Photo: Flickr]

A statue of a man in his underwear has created a scandal at an all-female college in Massachusetts. More than 300 students at Wellesley College have signed a petition to have the statue, appropriately titled "Sleepwalker," removed from the campus.

"[T]his highly lifelike sculpture has, within just a few hours of its outdoor installation, become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for many members of our campus community," says the petition. "While it may appear humorous, or thought-provoking to some, it has already become a source of undue stress for many Wellesley College students, the majority of whom live, study, and work in this space."

According to the Boston Globe, the statue was installed in a busy area of the campus on Monday as part of an exhibit by sculptor Tony Matelli at the college's Davis Museum. The museum's director, Lisa Fischman, defended the statue and its placement on the Wellesley College website.

"We placed the Sleepwalker on the roadside just beyond the Davis to connect the exhibition — within the museum — to the campus world beyond," Fischman wrote. "I love the idea of art escaping the museum and muddling the line between what we expect to be inside (art) and what we expect to be outside (life)."

Junior Zoe Magid, who started the petition, found Fischman's statement unsatisfactory.

"We were really disappointed that she seemed to articulate that she was glad it was starting discussion, but didn't respond to the fact that it's making students on campus feel unsafe, which is not appropriate," Magid said. "We really feel that if a piece of art makes students feel unsafe, that steps over a line."

Most students interviewed by the Globe found the statue troublesome, but at least one member of the Wellesley community appreciated it.

"I find it disturbing, but in a good way," said Sarah Wall-Randell, an English professor at Wellesley. "I think it's meant to be off-putting – it's a schlumpy guy in underpants in an all-women environment."

[h/t Daily Mail/Image via AP]

As the war in Iraq worsened and military enlistments flagged, the Army National Guard began a novel bonus program to recruit more troops. That desperation to hit quotas may have cost taxpayers $100 million in fraudulent bonuses by more than a thousand crooked recruiters, a new investigation shows.

Army officials testifying earlier this week before the Senate said the scandal involved as many as 1,200 recruiters, soldiers and civilians taking advantage of the service's mania to put bodies in green suits as the Sunni-Shi'a civil war accelerated in Iraq and U.S. casualties rose.

The way the bonuses—adopted in 2007—worked was this: Any approved military or military-connected person could sign up to be a "recruiting assistant" and get a cash payment from the Army for every "sale" they registered—every recruit credited to their efforts. The New York Times sums it up thus:

Under the program, National Guard soldiers — and their relatives, as well as other civilians and retirees — signed up to be recruiting assistants and could earn up to $7,500 for each new recruit they managed to enlist. But investigators said that in many cases, high school guidance counselors and even principals with access to their students' personal information took credit for recruiting students who they happened to know were joining the Army.

In the end, according to Maj. Gen. David E. Quantock, commanding general of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command, fraudulent payments that have already reached $29 million could, by the end of the investigation, come close to $100 million.

There were myriad ways to game that system. Basically, the program incentivized recruiters to greedily take the identities of soldiers they'd already signed up and pass them on to an "assistant," who also took credit for their recruitment, generating an extra bonus that the recruiters could split.

"Other recruiters registered an unwitting person as a recruiting assistant, then substituted their own bank account for direct deposit of the fraudulent bonuses," according to USA Today. At least five soldiers pulled in more than $100,000 each using some version of this scheme; one soldier made $275,000 in bonuses.

The "recruiting assistants" were paid by the Army as contractors working for a company called Docupak, the Washington Post reports:

The Guard promoted the program as an easy way to make money, urging prospective recruitment assistants in a flier to sign up online in "two easy steps" that took just minutes.

Formal Army recruiters were barred from collecting the referral bonus, but many soon realized they could profit from the program undetected, according to documents and officials familiar with the investigation...

The bonuses helped the Army meet its recruitment goals during a crucial period, paying out more than $300 million for roughly 130,000 enlistees.

That comes out to an extra $2,307.69 for each recruit—above and beyond what the Army already pays for each one's recruitment and training through regular military channels.

The current base military pay for a new enlisted recruit, by the way, is $1,430.60 per month.

[Photo credit: Straight 8 Photography/Shutterstock]

So you want to poop in Sochi. One of the unexpected highlights of the lead-up to the Olympics has been the discovery that many of the bathrooms in and around Sochi are, shall we say, Russian Unorthodox. If you or a loved one are heading to the Olympics, you may need a primer. Allow us to help.

The Russians, with their fatalist sense of humor, have embraced the chaos. Holding it up as emblematic of corruption or incompetence, Sochi toilets have become something of a meme on Russian social media. (I'm not sure who created the image above, which makes a pun by mashing up Sochi and the Russian word for taking a crap. I found it here first, and if anyone can decipher the signature or point me in the direction of the creator, it'd be appreciated.)

But the Sochi toilet meme has led to confusion. Russians are posting any old photo of bizarre bathrooms and claiming they're from Sochi. So first let us weed out the impostors.

One popular photo making the rounds is not from Sochi, but is from a hastily built facility constructed for last year's University Games in Kazan:

Kazan University on the eve of the Summer Universiade 2013. Image: BBC cameraman Max Lomakin pic.twitter.com/s9PDECpSrN

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) January 21, 2014

The provenance of another, which turns defecation into a spectator sport, is unknown. It first started making the internet rounds in December, and does at least appear to be Russian in origin.

Now that the frauds are out of the way, your first questions will be how to find the bathrooms. That will be easy!

Top signage #Sochi2014 pic.twitter.com/SHU2j3JyIh

— Jonathan Edwards (@JDE66) February 4, 2014

If you merely need to pee, you don't need our help. Just brush up on your aim:

At least I didn't have to share. #SochiToilet #Sochi2014 pic.twitter.com/Vt8BnECCcg

— Rob Elgas (@RobElgasNBC) February 5, 2014

But if you need to go No. 2, you may be confronted with unexpected obstacles. This backward-lidded toilet is located at the main train station in Sochi. The photo was taken by a Russian visitor last week.

If you are from America or Western Europe, you may be confused by a warning on many of the bathrooms. No toilet paper in the toilet?

People have asked me what surprised me the most here in Sochi. It's this. Without question ... it's ... THIS. pic.twitter.com/1jj05FNdCP

— Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) February 4, 2014

This is not weird for most parts of the world, where the pressure in the pipes isn't sufficient to handle paper. (It is another question entirely if a world-class resort, built entirely from scratch and with new infrastructure, should have had Western-strength plumbing installed. Especially for $51 billion.) But you will just have to deal with it, and pray your TP basket is emptied periodically.

You think you're ready to go? Not so fast. There are many other rules for Sochi toilets, some of them logical enough you wouldn't expect to be specifically warned against them, others that you hadn't even considered...until now.

Well that's interesting... Sochi rules in the bathrooms!! #haha #olympics pic.twitter.com/xacSVimwXY

— Sebastien Toutant (@SebToots) February 1, 2014

All set? Great! You may need to bring a buddy with you. The world first became aware of Sochi's double toilets last month, and had a good laugh.

Seeing double in the Gentlemen's Loo at the Olympic Biathlon Centre #Sochi pic.twitter.com/a1HoilU9zn

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) January 20, 2014

But Olympic organizers were quick to point out that the whole story hadn't been told. That restroom was apparently in the process of being converted into a utility closet, and was never meant for synchronized shitting. Here's what it looks like today:

Sochi bathroom is being converted to utility room. It looks like this now. Seriously http://t.co/cBlTNlp5s0 pic.twitter.com/uV0DdXzA52

— Cork Gaines (@CorkGaines) January 23, 2014

That's...still a little weird. But it's an explanation. Except, upon arriving in Sochi this week, journalists and athletes discovered even more double toilets. It's not a bug, it's a feature! You may want to hold hands.

A second side-by-side toilet found at Sochi Olympics http://t.co/GG1uZOuThg pic.twitter.com/SNz1OJtNNo

— Yahoo Canada News (@YahooCanadaNews) February 2, 2014

Прибывающие на олимпийские игры иностранные спортсмены с удовольствием позируют в диковинных туалетах города Сочи pic.twitter.com/NFzUmybHar

— Илья Яшин (@IlyaYashin) February 3, 2014

So you've finally gone, and made a new best friend in the process. But for the true pinnacle of defecation, you'll want to make your way up to Roza Khutor, the resort hosting the alpine skiing events. There you'll find a nice, clean, private stall where you can picture yourself hurtling down the mountain.

Congratulations! You're pooping like an Olympian now.

When we first read over superstar tech capitalist Tim Draper's "Six Californias" plan to make Silicon Valley its own state, we were a little skeptical. Was dividing California into six new states a sound idea? Maybe—let's wait and see. A new government study shows there might be some snags, like forming an arbitrary zone of extreme American poverty.

The Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that Draper just got feedback from the state he wants so badly to crack apart:

The analysts concluded that under Draper's plan, per capita personal income for residents of the proposed Silicon Valley state would rise to $63,288 compared with the $46,477 per-capita number that Californians currently pull down.

From the study itself:

If California is split into six states as proposed by this measure, two of the six states (Silicon Valley and North California) would have PCPI above that of today's California, while the other four states would have lower PCPI based on 2012 data.

Silicon Valley's PCPI—$63,288—currently would rank as the highest among U.S. states ($3,600 above Connecticut, but still below the District of Columbia). Central California would rank as a leading agricultural producer. Its PCPI and that of Jefferson, however, would be notably lower than the PCPI of the other four new states. Currently, Central California's PCPI would rank last among all U.S. states (about $150 below Mississippi).

Anyone who has followed tech's growing obsession with isolating itself beneath layers of organic wool and hubris will find no surprise here: Tim Draper wants to turn Silicon Valley into the richest state in America, at the expense of "Central California," which would become the poorest. Sucks for you, non-techies, I guess.

Luckily for everyone outside of Draper's personal distortion sphere, the study also outlines plenty of reasons why this is a fool's errand, a startup of an over-fattened brain.

Though police suspect he died from an overdose, Philip Seymour Hoffman's autopsy results were inconclusive, the New York City medical examiner's office said Wednesday. Spokeswoman Julie Bolcer told the Los Angeles Times, "We are awaiting results and additional studies."

Women's rights activist and Rush Limbaugh straw-woman Sandra Fluke announced today that she will not be running for Rep. Henry Waxman's open congressional seat—because she's decided to run for the California State Senate.