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A U.K. newspaper has issued an important correction about the fate of humanity in the 21st century: It's not going to be faced with a catastrophic war against goats.

The Brighton-based Argus took a question from a reader obsessed with the fragile truce between man and caprine, and somehow misattributed it to Richard Robinson, the director of the Brighton Science Festival.

Fortunately, the paper was able to avert disaster by running what may be the greatest correction of all time:

.@coreypein wants to post this correction online, but he's banned himself from twitter. cc @CraigSilverman pic.twitter.com/aXsDb8YpbY

— Patricia Sauthoff (@gitagovinda) March 12, 2014

For the record, Robinson refused to take a side in the upcoming clash of man and goat. Here's how he ducked the question:

"I'm afraid I cannot address your problem. I have much more important things to think about just now: sea urchins, hordes of them, with their evil poisoned spines, there in the sea, just out of view, waiting… waiting…"

Brave words for a man who's not under attack by goats.

[H/T: Poynter, Photo Credit: Shutterstock]

If you're looking for a way to peak your heart rate today, Denver area drug suspect Ryan Stone had the city rapt this morning when he led police officers in a three-car carjacking, one which included an unattended four-year-old boy.

The footage, which can be caught in remarkably clear detail below, is a captivating sight. Stone initially stole a car from a gas station while the mother of the child was inside the station paying, and then took off down I-25, driving erratically and bumping into other cars along the way.

He then carjacked a minivan, drove across a grassy bank, and headed the wrong way down the eastbound lanes of I-76. You can see zoomed-in footage of Stone tearing a woman from the third carjacked vehicle after which she decided to lunge after him.

Stone was apprehended by police after crashing the third car. After crossing a parking lot, he was "running so wildly he lost his jacket," and "he struggled to jump a fence before police caught him." Stone was wanted in a drug case.

[Image via NY Daily News]

Taking a page out of the American Renaming Shit Because Your Shit Sucks Book of Pettiness, the EU has moved forward with a motion to prohibit Americans from using traditionally European names for cheeses like Parmesan, feta, and Gorgonzola. No skin off our massively engorged cheese wheel, buds.

The Europeans say Parmesan should only come from the area around Parma, Italy, not from Auricchio's plant or those familiar green cylinders that American companies sell. Feta should only be from Greece, they say, even though feta isn't a place. The EU argues it "is so closely connected to Greece as to be identified as an inherently Greek product."

Luckily, The Americans also have been penning a different book in the 10 years since Freedom Fries slapped the frites right out of their pommes. This book is called We Don't Need Your Shit Because Our Shit Is Better.

So since the EU is asking: what should cheese be called now? The three cheeses up for debate are feta, Parmesan, and Gorgonzala.

Feta:

• crumblixx
• supa-crumblixxx
• omelet enhancer
• omelet detractor
• Gr**k salad toppl'ins

Parmesan:

• jizz from the preservatives wolf
• SALTCHEESE
• cockroach feed
• pizza wig

Gorgonzola:

• blue-and-white brick crumblez
• ferment
• morgue trash

Your suggestions are welcome in the comments.

[Image of cheese banker via AP]

After a London Zoo awareness event called Streak for Tigers took place this past August, the good will of a dozen or so naked runners has apparently worked wonders for preservation. Last month, Melati, a rare Sumatran tiger at the ZSL London Zoo, gave birth to three cubs. There are less than 300 Sumatran tigers left on Earth.

The birth and subsequent babyhood of the young cubs was captured by the London Zoo's Cub Cam and the footage is predictably adorable. Zookeepers haven't yet interfered with the new family, so the sexes of the infants are unknown, but one has been nicknamed "Trouble."

[Image via ZSL]

Five people are still missing after yesterday's gas explosion in East Harlem. The death toll from the blast now stands at seven, with more than 70 injured. Two people remain in critical condition, including a 15-year-old boy.

In light of certain arguments currently taking place on the internet, we would like to issue a gentle reminder of a fact: Twitter is public.

The things you write on Twitter are public. They are published on the world wide web. They can be read almost instantly by anyone with an internet connection on the planet Earth. This is not a bug in Twitter; it is a feature. Twitter is a thing that allows you to publish things, quickly, to the public.

Most things that you write on Twitter will be seen only by your followers. Most things that you write on Twitter will not be read by the public at large. But that is only because the public at large does not care about most things that you have to say. It is not because the public does not have "a right" to read your Twitter. Indeed, they do. They can do so simply by typing Twitter dot com slash [your name] into their web browser. There, they will find a complete list of everything that you have chosen to publish on Twitter, which is a public forum.

If you do not want your Twitter to be public, you can make it private. Then it will not be public. If you do not make it private, it will be public.

Because Twitter is public, and published on the internet, it is possible that someone will quote something that you said on Twitter in a news story. This is something that you implicitly accept by publishing something on Twitter, which is public. That is well within the rights of a "journalist," as well as anyone who clicks the "Retweet" button on something that you published on Twitter. Just because you wish that someone would not quote something that you said in public does not mean that that person does not have the right to quote something that you said in public. When we choose to say something in public, we choose to broadcast it to the world. The world is then able to talk about it. That is how it works. Anyone who has ever publicly spoken or written something dumb (hello), only to have that thing quoted and insulted by others, has probably wished that the thing that they said or wrote was not public. That feeling, while understandable, is only a wish. It does not mean that the thing they said or wrote was not, in fact, public.

Do you find it unsettling that everything you write on Twitter is public? Fortunately, there are alternate means of communication that you can use. If you would like to communicate with someone privately, you can speak to them in person, or call them on the telephone, or write them a letter, or write them an email. If you would like to communicate with a large group of people privately, you can send an email that goes to those people, but that is not published to the public, on the internet.

It is true that Twitter is a very convenient way to communicate with people. It is also a public way to communicate with people. It is true that, instead of calling several people individually on the telephone, it would be easier to simply broadcast our thoughts on a radio network, and have everyone tune in. It is true that, instead of mailing letters to several people individually, it would be easier to simply purchase a billboard, and write our thoughts there, where everyone could read them at their leisure. These examples are illustrative of the benefits and drawbacks that we must consider when deciding whether to use a public or a private means of communication. Sometimes, the public nature of our communications on Twitter draws attentions, plaudits, and praise. This is a nice feature of Twitter. Other times, the public nature of our communication on Twitter allows for people to quote things that we have said on Twitter, in the past. This may not be so nice.

When choosing to use Twitter, it is important to weigh the pluses and minuses of choosing to use Twitter. Because Twitter is public.

[Image by Jim Cooke, source via Shutterstock]

An Oklahoma City Fox station ran a teaser for its nightly newscast during the premiere of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's reboot of Cosmos. No big deal, except that it interrupted Tyson's only mention of evolution in the entire episode.

Here's what the rest of the country saw, and KOKH viewers missed:

"Three and a half million years ago, our ancestors — yours and mine—left these traces. We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder."

The station later apologized on Twitter, calling the mistake "operator error."

Sunday, during @COSMOSonTV, a local news promo was aired over a portion of COSMOS content. This was an operator error & we regret the error.

— KOKH FOX 25 (@OKCFOX) March 12, 2014

KOKH hasn't clarified whether the error was a coincidence or a case of sabotage, and Tyson also hasn't commented.

Evolution is a political issue in Oklahoma, where the state legislature has repeatedly introduced bills that would allow teachers to address "scientific controversies." Although the current iteration of the bill doesn't mention evolution specifically, previous attempts have called out "biological origins of life and biological evolution" as subjects for teachers to criticize.

[H/T: The Wrap]

Bob Odenkirk examines the smörgåsbord of desserts that line a long wooden dining room table—espresso cupcakes, chocolate peanut-butter balls, pumpkin bread, triple chocolate caramel cookies and doughnuts among them. Like everyone else around him, he ignores the chocolate chunk cookies with a white card in front of them that reads GLUTEN-FREE. "You know what really sucks?" he asks. "Eating desserts that aren't good. It's only worth it when it's really good."

The 51-year-old actor/comedian is better looking in person than he was as Saul Goodman, sleazy lawyer par excellence, on Breaking Bad. It helps that Goodman's signature garish combover—as well as his unchecked amorality and polyester attire—remains in Albuquerque, the setting for both Breaking Bad and its upcoming spin-off, the Goodman-centric Better Call Saul. He is also more serious than his flamboyant on-screen personas (e.g., Goodman, super-agent Stevie Grant on The Larry Sanders Show, a suspiciously Robert Evans-esque version of God on Mr. Show).

Odenkirk glances my way, nodding, slightly confused by my notebook, recorder and camera. He grabs a chocolate peanut-butter ball and introduces himself. "Hi, I'm Bob Odenkirk. Do you work here?"

"No," I respond. "But don't you?"

After all, we're at the Odenkirk-Provissiero Entertainment holiday party in the management company's office, a converted home in the Franklin Village section of Los Angeles. In the backyard, TV royalty like Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner and big-shot agents mingle under large heat lamps. Other guests sip the evening's signature gin cocktail, appropriately named "1936" after the number of the address of Odenkirk-Provissiero HQ.

Across the room stands Bob's wife, 47-year-old talent manager Naomi Odenkirk, the Odenkirk in Odenkirk-Provissiero and the impresario behind the evening's festivities and the careers of many in attendance (her husband's included). She clutches a drink and strolls over to Bob, who is leaning against the kitchen sink with desserts in hand. Naomi whispers something into his ear and then turns toward me. "I'll tell you something," she says. "I don't know how you feel about love, but I feel totally satisfied."

Naomi Susan Yomtov first laid eyes on Robert John Odenkirk in 1994. Robert John Odenkirk, however, didn't first lay eyes on Naomi Susan Yomtov—in a romantic sense at least—for another 18 months (give or take a few weeks), making theirs a romance borne out of sluggish fate (or unwavering persistence, depending on your point-of-view—more on that below). Back then Naomi worked as an assistant at William Morris, where she scouted new talent at comedy clubs across Los Angeles.

Among her favorite stops was the UnCabaret in West Hollywood. Every Sunday night, the small room hosted an alternative comedy show during which performers would do 20-minute sets, often without any rehearsed material, usually riffing on personal experiences. One Sunday while Naomi was in attendance, Bob took the stage and sardonically recounted what it was like to grow up in the Midwest with six siblings and an absentee, alcoholic father.

"A week later I was driving around doing errands, and I thought, That's the man I'm going to marry," Naomi says now. "It popped into my head just like that. I was disturbed at first. I wasn't marriage-minded. In fact, I was very career-minded. But I couldn't ignore this thought. I went home that night and told my roommates, 'I know which man I'm going to marry. But I'm embarrassed because I don't actually know him yet.'"

For the next year and a half, she talked about Odenkirk incessantly—to her mom, to her friends, to anyone else who would listen—even though she still hadn't met him yet. "People would offer to introduce me to him, but I didn't want to force it. I would say, 'No, no, no!"'

All the while, she continued to be a regular, if unnoticed, presence in his life. For instance, one evening at UnCabaret, she was on her way to the bathroom when she bumped into Odenkirk and a mutual friend, comedian/director Bobcat Goldthwait. But while she talked to Goldthwait, Odenkirk stared at the floor, waiting for her to pass. "That's how disinterested he was in me," she says.

Finally, a year and a half after first watching Odenkirk perform, Naomi managed to strike up a conversation with him outside a comedy night in Santa Monica. Eventually, he asked for her number, and six weeks later, he called her. "He had no idea who I was, or that I had been to all his shows and that I knew all these other people around him. I don't know why he finally noticed me," she explains. "It's not like I suddenly became his type. I still don't think I'm his type, but we got along great."

Two months later, when they were dating exclusively, she felt comfortable enough telling him that she always knew they would be together (her unwavering persistence revealed). "I told her, 'Stop! Stop! Shut up!'" Bob says. "'I don't want to hear this magic thinking. It has nothing to do with reality, and I don't want it to pressure me.'"

Says Naomi, "He said, 'First, thank you for telling me, and second, thank you for waiting to tell me.'"

Naomi sits in her office looking at the script for a TV pilot called Duty. It's about an ex-jock/bully who ends up joining his hometown's police force, where he is forced to work side-by-side with the man he bullied for years. Naomi is diligently pitching some of her clients for the project. She sucks on a jalapeñolollipop and repeatedly takes her headset on and off to talk to clients and managers who keep calling to discuss The Skeleton Twins, an indie film starring Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, both of whom she represents. It centers on estranged twin siblings (Wiig and Hader, naturally) coping with depression and the death of their father. Naomi found the script with the help of the United Talent Agency and brought it to Hader.

The phone rings again. She picks it up. "Hello, it's Naomi. How are you? Have you heard about Bill and Kristen's Skeleton Twins? I'll send you some reviews. It's been well-received across the board."

She's right. After the movie premiered at Sundance, the Hollywood Reporter called it "a bittersweet but refreshing tonic that will leave audiences with a big, dopey smile on their faces." Rolling Stone gushed similarly. "We knew Wiig had range, but Hader, too?" the music magazine praised. "Nothing's gonna stop them now."

Naomi's office is partly decorated with headshots of her clients—Wiig, Hader, Jenna Fischer from The Office, Casey Wilson from Saturday Night Live and Derek Waters from Comedy Central's Drunk History, chief among them. Analog is her preferred means of organization. As such, little orange sticky notes filled with messages and doodles are scattered around the room. Many of them are in a shorthand discernible only to her. "Mexico," reads one. "Lawyer role," reads another. "Vernon God Little," reads a third.

Naomi first started her career in the music business as a teenager—working, in the following order, at a radio station, an independent record label, Arista Records (as a marketing assistant) and the Shoreline Amphitheater, the purview of legendary concert promoter Bill Graham. At age 20, she belatedly entered college at San Jose State University, where she orchestrated her first comedy show. Upon moving to L.A., she landed her gig at William Morris in 1992, where she spent two years before going to work for husband-and-wife producing team Conan Berkeley and Zane Buzby. Neither stop, however, jived with her sensibilities, so she decided to strike out on her own. "I thought, I'm just going to do what I know I can do. I don't need permission. And I don't need anyone to validate what I know is good."

The first client she signed to her new management company was Stephanie Courtney, best known as Flo from the ubiquitous Progressive insurance commercials. Naomi found her doing standup in New York City on a tip from a friend. She told Courtney that if she came to Los Angeles, she would rep her. Courtney heeded the advice and moved westward, joining the Groundlings in the process.

Courtney and her fellow Groundling Wiig eventually started babysitting the Odenkirks' two children—Nate (now 15) and Erin (now 13). Naomi liked Wiig's work enough that she started booking gigs for her other than babysitting. "Kristen was so talented," Naomi says. "And she felt like family after my kids and I got to know her. I just realized how upset I would be if she was with another manager."

She discovered Hader when he was working as a production assistant on The Frank International Film Festival, an original comedy short that was shot as an extra for the DVD of Melvin Goes to Dinner, Bob Odenkirk's feature directorial debut and the Odenkirks' first major production together. After Hader started a L.A.-based sketch comedy troupe Animals from the Future, Lorne Michaels auditioned him for Saturday Night Live. "It was so great," Hader remembers. "Naomi was jumping up and down, saying, 'I think you're going to get the show!' That's the thing I love about her. There's no bullshit. You can also tell that she has a genuine curiosity and appreciation for comedic actors and good material."

Another call comes in. Someone wants footage of The Skeleton Twins. A few minutes later, Hader checks in by phone. Naomi reads him a poem one of her daughter's classmates wrote called "Disillusionment of the New Saturday Night Live Cast." It's about how boring SNL has become, partly because Hader and Wiig aren't on the show anymore. Hader and Naomi both laugh.

"At the premiere [of The Skeleton Twins], Bob and Naomi were so happy," says Hader. "It's almost like their kids doing well. Bob even asked me to take a photo together!"

For most of his career, Bob was managed not by his wife, but by Bernie Brillstein, a legendary Hollywood figure who repped comedy giants such as John Belushi and Lorne Michaels. Bob, like Hader, got his big break under Michaels, writing off and on for Saturday Night Live from 1987 to 1995, picking up his first Emmy in 1989. He did similar writing stints on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Ben Stiller Show. Yet it was the wildly influential HBO sketch series, Mr. Show, he created with David Cross that established him as a pioneer in the alt-comedy scene that emerged after traditional standup, like that practiced by Jay Leno, waned in popularity in the 1990s.

"I'd never worked with someone so focused and driven [as Bob], almost to a fault," Cross told Marc Maron in 2012. Bob was so uptight, he only allowed himself small windows of relaxation, Cross added. "There was very little room for pleasure in Bob's life. That changed 180 degrees when he met Naomi. He mellowed."

Brillstein's death in April 2008 necessitated further change. Odenkirk turned over his career—as he had done with the rest of his life—to Naomi, whom he made his manager. It had been a decade since Mr. Show ended, and while he found success in acting parts on TV shows and working with Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim of the alt-comedy hit Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, he didn't have a breakout performance like Cross's role as Tobias Fünke in Arrested Development. All the while, he was slow to enlist Naomi to help him uncover such a role.

"I was hesitant to work with her," he says from his office at Odenkirk-Provissiero HQ. (On this day, he's the only Odenkirk on the premises, with Naomi away in Chicago.) "Like I told her years ago, sometimes I want to hear her criticism of my work, and sometimes I just want her to support the energy I have about my work."

"We figured out how to work together," Naomi explained to me a couple of days earlier. "There were a few years where we hadn't figured it out yet, and feelings would get hurt."

"I can be pretty blunt, so I think I've hurt her feelings a few times, especially when I don't like something she likes," Bob admits. "But Naomi has gotten better at her critiques, and I've gotten better at hearing them. That's true with anyone, if you're married to them or not."

Not long after they learned how to handle professional business at home, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan called. He wanted Bob, who had never seen the AMC series before, to play Saul for the show's second season. It was Naomi who pushed him to say yes. "He had to see himself through different eyes," Naomi says. "On Breaking Bad, he just showed up as an actor. He didn't write it; he didn't create it. He had to come to terms with a paradigm shift of his career from a director and creator of comedy. It was interesting to see him embrace an opportunity like that and go with it."

His Breaking Bad character became so beloved that he's heading back to Albuquerque to film a spinoff series, Better Call Saul, which is slated to premiere in November. (It also begat other opportunities, like his role as Will Forte's brother, Ross, in the Oscar-nominated film Nebraska.) The project, however, will take him away for five months from his wife and kids.

And this, of course, is where home and work blur together once again—his manager left alone with his children. "I told him, 'No pressure,'" Naomi says. "'You don't have to do the show if you don't want to, but if you decide to do it, don't worry about me and the kids. I'll make sure we're okay.' That doesn't mean there won't be challenges. I will barely see him the next few months. But we'll figure it out."

Danielle Bacher is a columnist at Playboy and LA Weekly as well as a contributing writer for Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Interview Mag, Esquire, Vice and The Los Angeles Times. Follow her on Twitter @DBacherwrites

This article was originally published on Playboy for iPhone. For more exclusive content and the best articles from the latest issue of Playboy, download the app in the iTunes Store.

Photos by Dan Monick

This past January, Curtis Reeves, a former Tampa police officer, shot and killed a man who refused to stop texting during a matinee showing of Lone Survivor. As it turns out, Reeves was texting from the same theater just before his deadly confrontation with the man.

Reeves' son told police that moments before the shooting, he received a text from his father, letting him know where he was seated inside the theater. Several minutes later, as the son, Matthew Reeves, looked through the theater for his parents, Reeves killed 43-year-old Chad Oulson, who was reportedly texting with his young daughter at home. Oulson's wife was also wounded in the attack.

"Matthew said he did not see the shot directly, but the noise and light drew his attention to the top row of seats," Pasco County Sheriff's detective Aaron Smith wrote, adding that Matthew attempted to save Oulson's life by pressing a t-shirt against his chest wound.

Reeves is being held without bail in the Pasco County Jail on charges of second degree murder and aggravated battery. If convicted, he faces a minimum of 25 years in prison.

[Image via AP]

[From Tim Barber's Instagram]

Benchmark Capital is in ascendance, thanks to investments in Uber, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram. Thus the VC firm can afford to say ridiculous things like: "Our belief that this is more of a guild than a corporation. So, we try to think of it as artisans practicing a craft," as if they were 18th century woodworkers and not financiers hand-carving embellished valuations.

Actually, in the prevailing venture celebrity climate, it's imperative for investors to say asinine things to get attention or risk losing deal flow to some other braying prognosticator . A gimmick helps and "the Boys of Benchmark" did not disappoint in this interview with Kara Swisher at their new office in the Tenderloin. Peter Fenton, the general partner responsible for that artisan analogy above, told Re/Code:

And we picked a particular neighborhood that challenges us to engage with the city's non-technical, non-technology population. and it's at times uncomfortable. This is not a neighborhood that's gentrified and may never be. The Tenderloin, in particular, I think because of the SROs, may never be and we are at peace with that in the sense that it forces us to engage with the city that has a set of challenges that it has to overcome.

Well, as long as the VCs have made peace with it . . .

When Swisher asked the four white men about the need for diversity, Matt Cohler, the former Facebook exec turned investor, said the homogeneity of his general partners was a reflection of the tech industry:

The lack of diversity at this table reflects the lack of diversity in the industry. We're a very small and very focused and very selective partnership. We would love nothing more than to bring that — because I do think we have a lot of diversity, for four white guys. Believe it or not, we're pretty different people, with a lot of common ground between us. Diversity with a shared core we think is the most powerful thing that exists, and we would love to add to that on multiple dimensions and would love nothing more than that.

In fact, it's the other way around—the money men control which founders get funded . But since he's loving it, ladies and people of color, please send your resumes to Benchmark at 1 Edgy Neighborhood Lane.

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

The Mississippi man who woke up two weeks ago in a funeral home's body bag as he was about to be embalmed is actually dead now, reportedly.

Walter Williams passed away, for real, early Thursday morning in Lexington, Mississippi, just 14 days after he awoke, kicking and screaming, inside a body bag after a coroner accidentally ruled him dead.

"Well, they came and got him again around 4:15 a.m (Thursday)," Williams' nephew, Eddie Hester told WAPT. "I think he's gone this time."

After his brush with death last month, Williams told his family he was relieved but prepared for when his time finally did come.

"He told us, 'It's all up in the Lord's hands. Whatever the Lord says, I'm willing to do. Y'all just accept it,'" his daughter Gracie Williams said.

To recruit jihadis, you don't go to the Mall of America. Anyone who thinks a marketing conference is the right place for a pro-privacy speech is equally delusional.

Edward Snowden could've spoken during any other time, on any other screen, before any other audience, but he picked Austin in March for a sympathetic ear. It was a bad choice. For Snowden to speak before an MTV Spring Break crowd would have, at least, been a lot more entertaining for everyone else to watch.

Though SXSW wasn't far off.

The afternoon after Snowden's Google Hangout address to SXSW, I was invited to a beer pong tournament thrown by joke-turned-company Bang With Friends , an app that lets you find out who among your social group might want to fuck. That SXSW is the sort of thing where "Bang With Friends beer pong tournament" doesn't sound at all strange should tell you how ill-suited it was as a hunting ground for converts to Snowdenism.

I stood around with a couple other reporters, BWF CEO Colin Hodge, and a small group of hangers-on, inside what looked like a fraternity house the week after a fire. "Did you catch any of the Snowden talk?" I asked a few partygoers, probably the worst possible conversation topic during a drinking game. I was hoping someone could fill me in, since I'd slept through almost the entire presentation, hungover. Most of my new bedraggled friends said no, they'd missed Snowden, too. A few people remained silent. A guy in a tank top did upside-down push-ups against a wall. Only one woman had watched Snowden—she asked for my email address and forwarded me some notes that a friend of hers had taken. We all sort of went through the motions of caring and being vaguely aware that such a Q&A had taken place, but there was no traction. We weren't sure why we were huddled together in a concrete room in Austin with ping pong balls bouncing, occasionally, but it wasn't to talk about the NSA.

There are really only two things to do during "SXSW Interactive," an outdoor shopping mall constructed in Austin every year since 1999. You can go to "panels," where people with the vaguest of job descriptions read their tweets aloud to a small audience. Or you can eat passed hors d'oeuvres and down open-bar cocktails at a jarringly overlit party. Most people elect to do both, with the latter serving as a palate cleanser for the former, clashing tastes notwithstanding. Between these two poles, an overfed, logo-adorned tide of festival-goers washes in and out among booths of free t-shirts and hashtagged giveaways.

This, a carnival that celebrates the lucrative eradication of American privacy, is where Edward Snowden chose to make a rare duck out of cover and speak to an American audience. To a crowd of junior marketing executives and engineers who want to make it easier to find track your friends on a map, the new great whistleblower of our time said the following:

"I will say SXSW and the technology community - people who are in the room in Austin they are the folks that really fix things who can enforce our rights for technical standards...[the NSA is] setting fire to the future of the internet. The people who are in this room now you guys are all the firefighters and we need you to help us fix this."

This is what everyone came to town for: to give and take freebies, to give and drink beers, to notice and be noticed. SXSW isn't just indifferent to privacy, it's antithetical to privacy, hostile to the very notion that privacy is a virtue to be protected. At every street corner and in every bar was a company whose existence hinges on the commodification of you, your face, your spending habits, and your words. Outside the BWF party, 6th street was closed off for day-drunk pedestrians with conference badges and lanyards, for promotional day-workers hawking free tees and logo-emblazoned USB chargers, yelling at everyone and staring into space.

Every locale was filled with people who wanted to buy and sell you, or by green startup hopefuls drawn to Austin by the fantasy of someday being bought out by one of these privacy-killing machines.

"The people who are in this room now you guys are all the firefighters and we need you to help us fix this," Snowden said. He was wrong. He was a firefighter addressing an arsonists' convention.

A witness to the car crash that killed actor Paul Walker last November is selling a few things he looted from the accident scene, including "a soiled pair of Maui Jim sunglasses" that Walker was wearing when he died.

A listing on the auction site BidAMI tells the tale of how the seller "walked the scene in disbelief and grief" before grabbing everything he could find, including the Fast and Furious star's shades, a fire extinguisher, and some "residual car debris."

BidAMI is donating its 10% cut of the auction to SavingAmericasMustangs.org, in "acknowledgement of Paul Walker's immeasurable charitable contributions."

It's not clear what the seller plans to do with his share of the proceeds from the items he scavenged from the bushes at the site of a man's death.

Perhaps he could give it to Reach Out Worldwide, the disaster relief organization Walker founded to fund first responders and the place where Walker's friends and family asked that donations be directed.

Bidding for the sunglasses is up to $1,572.

Update: Two others were charged with felony grand theft last year after trying to steal parts of the wrecked Porsche and the tow truck that removed it from the scene. The seller in this case claims he tried to show the glasses to police, but they ignored him.

[H/T: TMZ, Photo Credit: BidAMI.com]

There are no cream-colored garments on display at the ENK Children's Club international kids' clothing exhibition when I visit the Javits Convention Center in Hell's Kitchen Tuesday morning, except in those booths whose entire stock is made up of rompers in varying shades of eggshell, ecru, and ivory.

There are playsuits featuring very realistic drawings of tractors, floor length skirts for 8-year-olds covered in shiny, scale-like paillettes, baseball raglans with leering slogans like "Hello, Ladies" splashed across their narrow chests, onesies bearing cartoon prints of untied bow ties (for the baby who is formal yet drunk), and a small white party dress topped with what my notes sensationally describe as "[the] most sequined Peter Pan collar ever."

There's a woman from Chicago selling fabric-covered paper under the brand name "Baby Paper" (tagline: "Because babies love to play with paper!"), and two more from Dallas hawking $24 reversible fuchsia eco-friendly PVC-free faux leather snakeskin print baby bibs. There are hair clips that retail for $3 and very little party dresses that go for several hundred. There are disembodied animal faces peering out from every possible style of shirt.

I have never seen so many things in a place.

ENK has hosted Children's Club, an exhibition of children's clothing, accessories, and gifts, four times annually since 2000. Tuesday marked the final day of the convention's 54th incarnation, held in the Javits Center's massive underground exhibition hall. In theory, exhibitors are showcasing Back-To-School & Fall/Winter 2014 collections; in practice, it is a pan-seasonal orgy of swimsuits, rain boots, and Christmas dresses.

By the time I arrive on Tuesday, most vendors have already spent a full two days tucked into standard 10 x 10 booths (cost to reserve: $4,560) bounded by temporary walls on three sides. More established lines, like Ralph Lauren Childrenswear and Kenneth Cole Reaction, have sprung for airy, sprawling set-ups. They cluster their mannequins not out of spatial necessity, but because clusters of mannequins look tasteful and elegant.

A PR guy for ENK told me later there were "just over 600" brands represented in the 480 total booths. It feels more like ten thousand. I wander up and down the aisles for hours, touching miniature sweaters that are far too expensive to touch and trying to determine which of the 2,000 identical hair ribbon booths is the best (it's this one), until the stiff backs of my shoes feel permanently embedded in my Achilles tendons.

While most of the exhibitors seem to welcome the chance to take a break from their iPhones to breathlessly whisper phrases like "pima cotton!" a surprising number are straight-up rude. "You don't know [upscale children's clothing label]?" asks one incredulous madame, when I visit her in her supersized booth. "I mean...it's all there," she says flapping her hand at a trade magazine open on her table, which happens to feature a short article on the brand.

Others are just cagey: A gray-haired woman wearing a pale green fairy skirt dotted with flowers denies my request to take a photo of the tutus bursting like frozen fireworks from the racks of her booth. A polite woman manning a booth that sells brightly colored [redacted] for children ages [redacted] to [redacted] tells me I cannot quote her on anything.

Over and over again, vendors refer to their products using the feminine pronoun. "She's got a little sparkle," says one woman, of a hair bow. "She was a big winner for us," says another, smiling at a small sneaker.

I ask every single person I talk to to tell me what trends are hot in children's clothing, and what trends are fading away.

"Chevron is a big trend."

"Chevron is popular."

"The circus theme is popular."

"Ruffles are always popular."

"Fall is all about texture."

"A year and a half ago flowers were trending."

"Bows are coming back."

"Older girls are coming back to bows."

"Big bows are coming back, thanks to Zooey Deschanel."

"Big bows are coming back. Like big."

"Chevron is the most popular print."

"Mustaches are perennial."

"Flowers are on the way out."

"Flowers are popular."

"Corals are very popular."

"A popular thing is spring colors for fall. Like coral."

"Quatrefoil is coming on strong."

"That sort of Capezio '80s style is coming back."

"Lots of grays are coming back."

"Brown is totally dead, except for that taupe-y mushroom color."

"Slate gray is big."

"A couple years ago, espresso brown was the new thing. Now it's gray."

"Gray is the new brown."

"No one is asking for brown anymore."

"People like the brown."

"People love bling."

"Less is more."

"We were going to fade out lilac and yellow, but then stores started asking for them."

"People want more clean, sharp lines. Angular. Like chevron."

"Polka dots are on the way out."

"Polka dots are always popular."

"Stripes!"

"We're doing more straight silhouettes on girls' dresses."

"Sneakers can be wild and crazy."

"Kids' clothes can't be too dark."

"Black is the most popular."

"We use a lot of Liberty of London prints."

"We have some Liberty of London-inspired things for spring."

"We stopped doing Liberty of London, because they're everywhere."

"Aztec and Chevron are still going."

"Neons and stripes are stronger than [polka] dots."

"People love muted colors."

"The turq[uoise] is a big hit."

"Acid yellow is big."

"Fringe is not as big."

"We basically do adult pieces, cut down."

"Kids should look like kids."

"Food and candy are hot right now."

"Whites, ivories, and pinks are always popular."

"[Children's clothing is] getting uglier and uglier."

"Everything is getting skinnier for boys."

"Drop waist dresses are coming in for girls."

"The East Coast goes for clean and preppy."

"'80s prep is coming back."

"LA is a little more rocker glam."

"People know about milk proteins."

"Fleshy colors are very big. All champagnes, golds, blushy pinks."

"2014: A lot of sparkle and lace."

"Neutrals."

"A lot of kids have pale complexions."

"Printed canvas is huge."

"Kelly green is out."

"Chevrons are OVER."

In one corner of the vast windowless exhibition hall, a handful of child tastemakers, the eldest of whom looks barely into her double digits, play the traditional bored-kid game of lying on one's back and rolling listlessly from side to side. One thing that is not hot for Back to School 2014: ever having been at school in the first place.

Today in the occasional internet diary blog of Mark Zuckerberg: the cherubic chief executive is cranky with the federal government, and is telling the rest of us about his spat with the president.

Apropos of apparently nothing (latent NSA angsty?), Yung Zuck posted the following today:

[...]

The internet works because most people and companies do the same. We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world.

This is why I've been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government.

The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.

I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.

So it's up to us — all of us — to build the internet we want. Together, we can build a space that is greater and a more important part of the world than anything we have today, but is also safe and secure. I'm committed to seeing this happen, and you can count on Facebook to do our part.

Emphasis added. The passive aggression did not need to be added, yikes—it's safe to say that because SOMEONE didn't behave on the phone, SOMEONE will not be getting an invite to Mark's next backyard BBQ. Unfortunate that things had to turn out this way. Meanwhile, Obama is like, "I'm sorry you feel that way, Mark," and Mark is like "Why can't you just APOLOGIZE instead of trying to twist my words!?"

Friends are worried they'll have to choose sides, Zuckerberg is spitefully changing his profile picture—the one at Obama's dinner party —and will go to sleep tonight still being in charge of a massive, global data-mining operation.

Above photo, during happier times, via Getty

Seth Rogen is taking a cue from the Lindsay Lohan School of Self Promotion and naming names. But instead of listing his questionable sexual conquests, he's revealing the identities of his famous weed-smoking companions.

On Watch What Happens Live Wednesday night, host Andy Cohen ambushed Rogen with the segment "Spill the Herbal Tea." While most of his answers are expected, Rogen manages to shock with at least one non-smoker reveal:

So who's guilty?

• James Franco: "This is really depressing for me to say…I've never smoked weed with James Franco because he doesn't smoke weed. That's why he's such a good actor! It's really sad, actually."
• Dave Franco: "I don't know, honestly. Maybe sometime throughout the years."
• Paul Rudd: "Oh yeah, lots of times."
• Sarah Silverman: "Yes, many times."
• Snoop Dogg: "Yeah, actually I have."
• Barbara Streisand: "No, but we talked about it a lot. She smoked weed with Peter Sellers though. That's the craziest shit ever!"
• Jonah Hill: "Yeah."
• Willie Nelson: "No, but he's here in town, I think."

After shocking the world with the revelation that Franco does not smoke weed, Rogen then moved on to more important topics and addressed his recent tweet calling Justin Bieber a "piece of shit." "In my opinion, Justin Bieber is a piece of s—t," he told Cohen. "He's obnoxious, he's ungrateful, he's insincere. He puts people's lives in danger."

[Image via Getty]

Officials have extended the search for missing Flight 370 to the Indian Ocean, in part because of reports that the plane possibly turned west and flew for hours after losing contact with air traffic control.

A newly published study on people's perceptions of sexual satisfaction in committed, heterosexual relationships reveals that men and women are both surprisingly good at estimating their partners' contentment (or lack thereof) with their sex life .

The study, which was led by University of Waterloo psychologist Erin Fallis and appears in the latest issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, concludes that, if anything, men actually tend to under-estimate their partners' self-reported satisfaction. Women, by comparison, tend to judge their partners' satisfaction more or less spot-on. I've included the full abstract below, but those skimming will find the gist has been emphasized:

Sexual script theory implies that partners' ability to gauge one another's level of sexual satisfaction is a key factor in determining their own sexual satisfaction. However, relatively little research has examined how well partners gauge one another's sexual satisfaction and the factors that predict their accuracy. We hypothesized that the degree of bias in partner judgments of sexual satisfaction would be associated with quality of sexual communication. We further posited that emotion recognition would ameliorate the biases in judgment such that poor communicators with good emotion recognition would make less biased judgments of partner satisfaction. Participants were 84 married or cohabiting heterosexual couples who completed measures of their own and their partners' sexual satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, quality of communication about sexual issues within their relationships, and emotion recognition ability. Results indicated that both men and women tended to be accurate in perceiving their partners' levels of sexual satisfaction (i.e., partner perceptions were strongly correlated with self-reports). One sample t-tests indicated that men's perceptions of their partners' sexual satisfaction were biased such that they slightly underestimated their partners' levels of sexual satisfaction whereas women neither over- nor underestimated their partners' sexual satisfaction. However, the gender difference was not significant. Bias was attenuated by quality of sexual communication, which interacted with emotion recognition ability such that when sexual communication was good, there was no significant association between emotion recognition ability and bias, but when sexual communication was poor, better emotion recognition ability was associated with less bias.

The upshot? This study suggests that good sexual communication is central to understanding how satisfied your partner really is. No surprise there. The other important takeaway is that, even if your sexual communication skills leave a lot to be desired, a keen emotional sense can still give you a pretty good idea of how content your partner is (or isn't) with his or her sex life. By extension, it also suggests that you should probably avoid faking orgasms (or sexual pleasure, in general), unless sexual communication is at a standstill and your partner is totally out of touch, emotionally. Here, have a graph. Sexual communication skills on the X-axis, emotional recognition on the Y-axis:

Let's say you and your partner both have good emotional recognition, and that your channels of sexual communication are honest and open. This puts both you and your partner in Quadrant I. The two of you are probably on the same page when it comes to gauging one another's sexual satisfaction.

If sexual communication is great but your partner sucks at picking up on emotional signs, he or she is somewhere in Quadrant IV. What this study suggests is that good sexual communication should keep your partner's perception of your sexual satisfaction on point, even if he or she isn't good at reading you.

If sexual communication between you and your partner is muddy, but you're really great at reading him or her, you're in Quadrant II. What Fallis' team's findings suggest is that, even if lines of sexual communication are closed, an emotionally perceptive person can still gauge his or her partner's sexual satisfaction pretty accurately.

Quadrant III is where mutual understanding goes to die. For people with poor emotional recognition in a relationship where communication is dead, accurately judging their partner's sexual satisfaction is like trying to fly a plane in heavy fog with no cockpit instruments. It's bad news.

To reiterate: Assuming emotional recognition and sexual communication are the two biggest factors affecting the mutual perception of sexual satisfaction within couples, it stands to reason that the only time you can fake it and get away with it is when sexual communication blows and your partner is totally out of touch emotionally.

Which, sure, sounds like things are going great with you two.

Read the full study at the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

ht Zhana Vrangalova