Last December, exquisitely timed for the Black Friday shopping orgasm, CBS aired a very long, very serious commercial for Amazon and its pipe dream delivery drone. Only a few months later, it's trying to play the skeptic.

Amazon's Christmastime credulity started a media love-fest: virtually every mainstream and niche outlet picked up the Amazon is going to deliver packages in the sky! story, despite the fact that it was very much a story. Maybe Amazon will someday overcome the litany of logistical, technological, legal, and societal barriers making drone delivery possible. Maybe! But this story wasn't presented as a maybe, it was presented as a sensation, perfectly scheduled before the biggest shopping period of the year. It was brilliantly executed—a win for Bezos , and a black eye for 60 Minutes (the December segment followed by the more recent treatment can be viewed above).

But just this past weekend, 60 Minutes aired a new drone segment, which described aerial delivery as what it is—fun fodder for viral videos and, for now, marketing hype. What changed since the holidays? A CBS News rep told me I had it all wrong: the first segment was really "about the way Amazon operates as a business and only at the end, Jeff Bezos introduces the possibility of drone delivery as something in the future that is still years away."

Well, not really.

There are a bunch of restaurants in the world, including some in New York City. But in a city of over 24,000 restaurants, how do you find the best? You begin your search in places that are already popular: New York's hottest tourist destinations. In the new feature The Best Restaurant in New York Is, writers Caity Weaver and Rich Juzwiak attempt to determine the best restaurant in New York.

The best restaurant in New York is

The American Girl Café, located inside American Girl Place.

Menu style

Prix fixe.

Cost, before tip (including 2 glasses of champagne and 1 Shirley Temple a la carte)

$74.58

Caity: I think we have to start with the escalators. Escalators are one of the biggest issues facing American Girl Place today.

Rich: The child in front of us, who took approximately five minutes to muster up the courage to step on, congratulated herself after: “Yay! That’s nice, Mommy!” (I wasn't particularly impressed, tbh.)

Caity: There is also a sign outside the American Girl Café providing extensive text instructions about stepping off an escalator, and informing parents that, if their children are wearing "Crocs™ , flip-flops, or similar footwear," they should not take the escalator.

Rich: It seems ridiculous but I bet there have been incidents. Now, witnessing one would be well worth the price of the meal we ate, but you don't want to be part of that.

Caity: I would not have been surprised if our prix-fixe meal had been accompanied by an escalator-themed dramatic performance. They included everything else. Like dolls! Because we were the only table without one in the whole place.

Rich: When you walk in, they ask, "Table number?" (They assign you a table number when you check in before walking into the dining room, which, let's be honest, is just busy work for everyone.) And then they say, "How many dolls?"

Tell the people what I said.

Caity: You said "Just this one!" and pointed to me. (At exactly the same time, I mumbled "Zero," which undercut the moment a little bit.) It really felt like you were taking me out for a special day.

Rich: It was your special day even if you were not given the crown that said, "It's My Special Day," which they distributed to children who claimed it was their birthday.

The people LOVED when I said that. ("So cute!") I think they thought we were in love.

Caity: I think I did too.

Anyway, my doll was a randomly customized humanoid with brown hair and brown eyes, not unlike myself.

Rich: Mine was supposedly male.

Caity: "I call him Bieber!" the waiter’s assistant said, after you wondered aloud whether it was "a boy or just butch."

Rich: That man was very nice. EVERYONE WAS SO NICE. The place is run with the efficiency and courtesy of a Disney property.

Caity: I thought the same thing. We were treated like first class passengers on the Titanic.

Let's describe the four courses.

Rich:The first thing we had were dainty little cinnamon buns. I’d say Cinnabon-level taste and texture. I finished mine in two bites.

Caity: The sticky buns themselves were fine. The novelty of having sticky buns—AS AN APPETIZER—was incredible. It set a confusing tone for the rest of the meal, but not an unpleasant one.

Rich: Dessert in the front and the back. Party everywhere in between.

Caity: It was sort of the restaurant experience I designed as an 8-year-old when I would make my Nana pretend to eat Play-Doh in her basement: girls only; constant dessert; everyone gets a doll; lots of little gifts to hoard (including a FREE PINK BOW HAIR TIE that doubles as a napkin ring and a doll-sized cup and saucer set).

Rich: The girl sitting directly across from me who was having her special day with just her mom was feeding her doll out of the miniature teacup, and she looked so despondent. Like she was just going through the motions of feeding an inanimate object a drink that wasn't actually there.

Caity: She did look sad! I figured her Mom had brought her as a Sorry-Daddy-And-I-Are-Getting-Divorced treat until the waiter sang "Happy Birthday."

Rich: At least she got a doll outfit, a fake balloon for her doll to hold, and an unbelievable birthday cake.

Caity: I did worry that maybe we were ruining her fun birthday experience by being weird adults eating alone with dolls.

Rich: No way, she got to stare at us without me scowling at her. That's basically the nicest present I've ever given anyone.

There were four men and one boy dining in total, surrounded by let's say 30-40 females. (One man was wearing sweatpants.) The majority of the waiters and their "assistants" (a euphemism if ever there were — next time I'll bring my "roommate") were also male, and made to wear pink aprons that looked like string bikinis. I guess that's feminist? The men serve the women?

Caity: I don't know if string bikini was exactly the shape they were going for, but the aprons were certainly angular. They looked like unflattering dress-length halter tops on both sexes.

Course 2 was Baby's First Weird Little Crudité Platter, which the American Girl website describes as "A family-style platter featuring soft pretzel bread with honey mustard, cheddar cheese triangles, grapes, crisp vegetables with ranch dipping sauce, and chicken-salad cups."

I obsessed over the online sample menu for several days before our lunch date, and I was very excited for the chicken-salad cups. They did not disappoint. About a teaspoon's worth of chicken salad in a tiny tarte shell.

Our platter had no grapes.

Rich: We also got one pretzel bite apiece, which would be infuriating if they weren't so damn caloric. DO NOT READ THE CALORIE COUNT OF PRETZEL BITES AT THE MOVIES IF YOU WANT TO CONTINUE TO ENJOY PRETZEL BITES. I mean they're seriously 1500 calories (sorry for literally spoiling that for you).

Caity: To be honest, that was all the pretzel bites I needed since I had just finished a sticky bun and two chicken salad cups and had a cheeseburger and desserts on the way.

Rich: Funnily enough, pretzel bites came up in conversation, too: The American Girl Café provides small cards with questions to ask your table, which at first I thought was sooooo wack. It actually turned out to be very stimulating. I learned things about you, Caity, and your former schoolmate, Keisha.

Caity: I loved the cards IMMEDIATELY. I wish all restaurants had them. I learned a lot about your childhood. Your dog Ted.

Rich: The relevant question was, "What's your favorite movie snack? What makes it so good?"

Caity: Do you remember my favorite movie snack?

Rich: “Milk Duds” and what makes them good is “the taste.”

I like that we got to debate the worth of grading things like handwriting and gym class performance. These questions were topical and illuminating.

Caity: The cards made our conversation a little more stilted than it is naturally, but we covered conversation areas we otherwise never would have, so I loved it.

Rich: Well sure. It was formal. But hey, we were in a classy place.

If I had to pick a word to describe the American Girl Café, it would be chill. No one threw a tantrum. I think everyone was placated by the commerce that inevitably preceded their trip up to the restaurant. The kids were zonked out on their new dolls.

Caity: And no one on staff acted like it was the least bit strange we were there alone and (initially) doll-less.

Rich: Two normal people eating at a doll store's restaurant and one of them was sipping champagne the whole time. One mother kept eyeing me.

Caity: I felt like I was having lunch with a glamorous Upper East Side mom. (I got a disappointing Shirley Temple and a fantastic pink lemonade.)

Do you think we looked weirder with or without the dolls?

Rich: I think we looked equally weird in different ways, much like the lenticular pictures downstairs that went from photos of the dolls to cartoon renderings of the dolls. One Uncanny Valley to the next.

Staff members asked THREE times how our food was. You loved your burger.

Caity: Yes! On the menu, it was described as a burger with bleu cheese sauce (which struck me as a VERY strange choice for a children's restaurant, and also a VERY blegh choice for any restaurant), so I asked if I could substitute for another cheese. The waiter offered "American." You pointed out later that he could have said “American GIRL,” though it was really not that kind of place, Rich. (I ended up bargaining him up to cheddar.)

Rich: I just wish it were a little bit more of that kind of place. They could have been a little more punny.

Caity: Yes, but American Girl is always going for more aspirational than kiddish These are $110 dolls that are hard to play with. American Girl isn't about fun. It's about American Girl.

Rich: That's true. Hence the cosmopolitan bleu cheese sauce. And speaking of cosmopolitan, I had the pizza, which was cut into 9s like a tic tac toe board. I had the option of pepperoni O’s and pepper X’s, which I refused. I mean, that's for like toddlers.

Caity: I wonder: Would they have provided the ingredients on the side pre-cooked? And let you place them?

Rich: I wonder too. And how many games would I go through before I got tired of the games and just wanted to eat? Probably less than one.

Caity: To be honest, we ordered the most childish items possible. Can this young man please have a PLAIN CHEESE PIZZA? (And two glasses of champagne.)

Rich: My pizza was somewhere between Little Caesar's and roller rink. It was thin but not crispy. Flimsy. Cornmeal on the bottom, which I love, but in this case it added little. The nine squares added up to what amounted to a little more than a normal slice of pizza. But I'm not mad. It was better than at least half the pizza I've had at random places in New York.

Caity: I would say the same of my cheeseburger. I'd order it again because I'm a kid and I hate to try new things at American Girl Place. I want everything to stay the same forever and no one to get divorced on my birthday.

Dessert was buck wild.

Rich: Dessert was the best course. Cupcake with a shortbread cookie in the shape of a heart? Flawless. Mousse in flower pot merch? Flawless.

Caity: "That mousse is buttery as shit!" you exclaimed, SWEARING in the American Girl Café.

"I'm not with him," I told my doll.

Rich: How many “Happy Birthdays” did we count?

Caity: Ten. Isabella, Olivia, Selena, Abby, Giulianna, Jasmine, Gianna, Something-dy, and two that were absolutely unintelligible.

Rich: I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the days of chain restaurants having their own birthday songs. I wanted a "Happy Birthday to You/American Girl" mashup.

Caity: One of the very few things American Girl does wrong is that they don't get multiple staffers to sing the Happy Birthday song the way chain restaurants do. The Happy Birthday song sang by one quiet gay man sounds more like a Happy Birthday dirge.

Rich: You're right. He's singing his life and it feels mad '80s.

Caity: Every rendition we heard was anemic. But, of course, the American Girl Café simply doesn’t have the manpower. With 10 happy birthdays in about as many minutes—all scrunched into the dessert course—you need to keep the performances efficient.

Rich: So, you have to climb three stories to get to this restaurant which means you have to come down three stories to get out, thereby passing a ton of things you can buy. In our 45-minute trip down to the ground, I learned three things:

1. Addy escaped slavery so that she could afford a $90 table-and-two-chairs set that could only fit doll bodies.
2. The American Girls are, largely, middle class and cost at least $110 a pop, which is to say nothing of the outfits, the accessories ($20 doll curling iron — about the price of a real, human, functional curling iron, right?), the hairdos ($20 "ponytail veil" done by an in-store American Girl Doll beautician), the pets, the outfits, the furniture, etc., that you can buy to spiffy up your doll. It costs a lot of money, let's say UPPER CLASS money, to play this middle-class drag game. That's perverted?
3. Girls have so many options. They can carry umbrellas, they can ride bikes, they can play instruments, they can frolic with their friends in the streets of New Orleans.

Caity: American Girl Place really stokes the fires of materialism (which, granted, are always burning at 5-alarm levels) in me. I want to buy all the dolls for myself and for my unborn daughter. I want us each to have our own set of pristine dolls that we never take outside for fear of getting them dirty. I want Rebecca's gold and periwinkle butterfly costume plus "theater accessories."

Rich: That's sick. You are sick.

Is Everything Okay?:

Would you go back?

Caity: It's a bit pricey, but I would definitely go back because it was a fun experience and my cheeseburger had fried onions on it. American Girl Café is my second favorite restaurant in Midtown.

Rich: I would go back if you made me.

Is it a good first date spot?

Caity: Yes! The service is excellent, everyone is in a good mood, and you have instant conversation topics 1) because it's a weird place to be 2) because you literally have them there on the table.

Rich: Yes, especially if the date is between a girl and her gay friend.

Is it a good place to have an affair?

Caity: Possibly. There’s a low chance of getting caught if you go in the middle of the day on a weekday, but if you do see someone you know, there is no avoiding them. There is no way to be inconspicuous at the American Girl Café.

Rich: Also, there's no explaining your way out of it if you’re caught there with another grown up. I would avoid it, especially if your circle includes moms without jobs who live in or near the Upper East Side.

Is it a good place to bring a doll?

Caity: This is probably one of the best restaurants in New York City to bring a doll.

Rich: Dolls eat like kings at the American Girl Café.

[Photos by Caity Weaver]

Lux, the large Himalayan cat who became famous earlier this month when he chased his family into a bedroom and trapped them there until they called 911 , is in trouble. His owners had a county shelter pick him up Monday, and are unsure whether they'll keep the cat.

But Animal Planet's "Cat Whisperer," Jackson Galaxy (no doubt smelling a massive publicity opportunity) is going to intervene in Lux's case. He plans to visit the Portland couple who own the cat, Lee Palmer and Theresa Barker, on the upcoming season of My Cat From Hell.

The show starts up again in April. Meanwhile, Lux's fate is up in the air.

"They are wrestling with the decision whether to keep the cat," said Mike Oswald, director of the Multnomah County Animal Services shelter. The family was supposed to make a decision on Tuesday, but hasn't announced anything or returned reporters' phone calls.

According to Multnomah County, its open door shelter is not a "no-kill" facility, although "adoptable animals are given as much time as needed to be placed in a home or to be transferred to one of our community adoption partner agencies."

The shelter website says Lux hasn't yet been placed up for adoption.

[H/T: UPI, Photo Credit: Oregonian/Multnomah County]

Police have reportedly reopened the investigation into Kurt Cobain's death, nearly twenty years after the Nirvana frontman was found dead in his Seattle home (UPDATE: The case was reexamined but not reopened).

From the Seattle Times:

A Seattle cold-case detective recently took another look at the police investigation into the death of rock legend Kurt Cobain nearly 20 years ago, police said this morning.

However, there were no new findings and the case is not being re-opened, contrary to some media reports, according to police spokeswoman Renee Witt.

"He dug up the files and had another look and there was nothing new," said Witt.

Original post below.

From KIRO 7:

Last month, police developed four rolls of film that had been sitting for years in a Seattle police evidence vault. The 35 mm film was processed by the King County Sheriff's Office photo lab under high security.

Though the pictures have a slight green tint because of deterioration, police say they more clearly show the scene than the earlier Polaroid photos taken by investigators.

The images will not be released to the public, police said, though KIRO claims to have obtained one. That photo, along with more information about the case's new investigation, will be broadcast tonight, according to the station.

Cobain was found dead on April 8, 1994 from an (apparently) self-inflicted shotgun wound. An autopsy also revealed a lethal amount of heroin in his bloodstream. His death was ruled a suicide by the Seattle medical examiner.

[Image via Getty]

Throughout his career, Wes Anderson has set each of his films in an idiosyncratic and highly stylized world. Yet, only one of his eight films is set in NYC: The Royal Tenebaums, widely considered his masterpiece. In celebration of Wes Anderson's latest film The Grand Budapest Hotel, we present eight NYC film locations featured in The Royal Tenenbaums.

1) The Tenenbaum House

The house that Royal Tenenbaum bought "on Archer Avenue in the winter of his 35th year" is on 144th Street and Covenant Avenue in Harlem, just north of City College. Anderson and his location scout found this house before he began working on the script. After a few unsuccessful trips in Brooklyn, the director—who at first wanted to shoot his fictional take on NYC—on a soundstage, begin to conjure up the concept of the film as soon as he walked in. The house was unoccupied at the time of production, so Anderson rented it for six months and shot multiple exterior and interior shots there, transforming it into what we see in the film. The house is now a private residence.

2) Chas Tenenbaum's Summer House on Eagle's Island

Tenenbaum Summer House in City Island (Photo via The Standard Edition)

During the film's beginning, our narrator (Alec Baldwin) informs us of the three Tenenbaum children. Chas Tenenbaum, a math genius, gets into purchasing real estate in his early teenage years. He is so good at it that he makes a deal with his own father to purchase the Tenenbaum Summer home on Eagle's Island. The island does not exist in NYC, however, the house does—on City Island, a small island that's part of the Bronx. The exact address is at 21 Tier Street, as reported by Gothamist.

3) Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House

Anderson shows us an exterior shot of the Alexander Hamilton Customs House, located on 1 Bowling Green. In the film, the place is known just as "The Public Archives" and is where adopted daughter Margot Tenenbaum camps out when she runs away from home with her brother Richie Tenenbaum. The "African wing" where the two survive on nothing but crackers and root beer does not exist, however, the building, originally the Fort of Amsterdam, is now home to the New York branch of The Museum of The American Indian.

4) The Waldorf-Astoria as the Lindbergh Palace Hotel

Royal Tenenbaum and his wife separate during the children's early years. He leaves them the house and continues to live in an apartment at The Lindbergh Palace Hotel for twenty-two years before he is kicked out. No such hotel exists in NYC, but Andersen filmed the exterior shot of Royal leaving the hotel at The Waldorf-Astoria. The world famous hotel, which started as two separate hotels (The Waldorf and The Astoria) that merged into one was the first to actually feature room service, which changed the hotel industry forever. Famous guests at the hotel include: Marilyn Monroe, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Nikola Telsa, and Paris Hilton.

Did you know there is a Secret Train Platform Underneath The Waldorf-Astoria?

5) Battery Park

Even without setting foot in the house, Royal Tenebaum has a man on the inside. The informant Pagoda tells Royal that his wife plans to remarry. This does not sit well with Royal, especially when he learns that the man who proposed to her is none other than her accountant Henry Sherman (played by Danny Glover). The meeting takes place at the southern tip of Battery Park. If you watch the scene, you will notice that Pagoda blocks the Statue of Liberty from view, this confused Hackman who asked Anderson why he decided to block out the statue. Anderson did not want to make it too obvious they were in NYC, so he had the actor block the statue from view.

Visit Untapped Cities to see the rest of the locations from The Royal Tenenbaums.

This post originally appeared on Untapped Cities. It was republished with permission.

Airbnb is about to close a round of funding that will value the company at $10 billion, reports the Wall Street Journal. That's four times as much as the company was valued in 2012, when it raised $200 million. This time, the valedictorian of the sharing economy is raising between $400 million and $500 million led by private equity group TPG.

Low interest rates, bottomless optimism, and venture capital's need for a blockbuster exit have made $1 billion seem like nothing in this town. As Fred Wilson put it, we're "not in a normal valuation environment for high growth tech companies and we have not been in one for a while."

Airbnb is expected to go public this year. Earlier this week, Mark Cuban broke down how the process works:

What Silicon Valley does better than anyone is create exits. They know how to get people who they have made money for to turn over a lot of that money to buy the companies they have invested in. They know how to put on a show to get a company to an IPO. They know how to go out and get hundreds of millions of dollars to bridge companies with 10s of millions in revenues to their IPO and more importantly to make sure the IPO happens.

But if you're going to tack a few unsubstantiated billies on a startup that has not disclosed revenue or profitability, Airbnb is great choice. For instance, I am writing this here blog post in a room in sunny San Francisco that I rented through Airbnb.

The other day my host, who's been doing this for so long she went to early focus groups with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky (pictured above with sharing enthusiast Thomas Friedman), told me how anxious she is about whether she is paying the right taxes. Regulators from coast to coast are also very worried about that. Everyone's confused.

Airbnb is using New York City as a model for battles with authorities. To resolve the tax issue there, Chesky offered to let the hosts on Airbnb shoulder the tax burden .

If that's the case, couldn't Airbnb just lower their cut, my host asked me.

I didn't know how to tell her that's probably never gonna happen. Part of reason that Airbnb is assumed to be worth more than established hotel chains like Wyndham ($9.4 billion) and Hyatt ($8.4 billion) is because Airbnb's costs are much lower. Being an outlaw middleman also makes it easier to scale.

We saw this same thing with Uber—another company that puts scare quotes around the "sharing" economy. First you talk about how much you're helping the little guy , then you break the rules and launch everywhere, then you're indispensable, then regulators shrug, then you win.

Once you're looking at the world from on top of a multi-billion dollar valuation, it's time to start acting like the old guard that you usurped . Just a couple days ago, Chesky told Fast Company he wants it to function more like a hotel:

Chesky has decided that Airbnb will become nothing less than a full-blown hospitality brand, one that delivers a seamless end-to-end experience when its customers travel. "If you ask Brian now what drives Airbnb's growth, it's not that people want to get a cheaper space," says Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, an early investor. "Airbnb could've spread out horizontally into the sharing of power tools and cars and stuff like that. But Brian has decided the growth is in hospitality."

Nice business model, if you can get it.

Update: To clarify, Chesky told the Wall Street Journal that Airbnb is not going to IPO this year. The speculative article linked to above was about how more tech companies are opting for "stealth IPOs"

"Mr. Chesky said that an initial public offering was not in the works for 2014. 'We are not going public this year. We will do it at a time when it benefits the company. When we have a good reason.'"

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

[Image via Getty]

Is your watch broken? Do you need to get your watch fixed? Are you looking for a New York-based watch repair shop? You should probably skip Ron Gordon Watch Repair, because he's so bad at fixing watches, he's threatening frivolous, insane lawsuits against critics.

Brooklynite watch-wearer Matt Brand posted this letter to Facebook, sent to him by Ron Gordon Watch Repair's legal terror squad in response to this Yelp review:

I went to Ron based on the positive reviews here, and while he and his associate are nice people, I cannot recommend them based on my experience. I had two watches to repair - an Ebel and a vintage pocket watch. I was told it would be a week just to get an estimate. This seemed like a long time just for an estimate, but fine. I waited over a week and decided to call and check in - I was already annoyed that they had not called me. The pocket watch, I was told, was too old - the part that was needed was no longer in existence. The Ebel could only be fixed by the manufacturer and would need to be sent out, which they could do (Ebel would take over 8 weeks to repair). When they told me it would be $45 to send it out, I decided against it, and just picked up the watches.

This is where Ron really lost points. I took both watches to a place called Precision Watch Repair, right around the corner, which had good ratings here on Yelp. I met with Eric, who told me first that he definitely could fix the vintage one, and also that he could repair the Ebel without sending it out - all for a good price. The Ebel was repaired in a day. I went from hopeless to happy within a span of 15 minutes. In addition, Eric called me THAT DAY with the estimate, and followed up the next day.

So Ron Gordon loses in terms of creativity, and just overall slowness....which seems appropriate for a review of a watch repair shop.

Not exactly what you'd call a scathing review—he just got better service elsewhere. He's hardly the only one, as there are several other poor reviews of the shop, fulfilling Yelp's purpose of aggregating reviews of places, good or bad. That's why you go to Yelp. But Gordon thinks this is reason to file a defamation suit. Is this just a smokescreen to distract us all from how crappy his shop is (does it smell bad inside, too?) and how terrible he is at providing a watch repair service. Yelp certainly advises people who, for instance, run bad watch repair shops, to avoid this sort of threat:

Nobody likes to get a negative review, and it's even worse if you think it violates your legal rights. But a good lawyer will tell you the truth: defamation suits are notoriously expensive and difficult to win. Worse, they are very public. We can point to countless examples of ill-advised lawsuits that hurt the business far more than it ever helped.

No matter what, Brand shouldn't be worried: Gordon's lawyer, Andrew J. Spinelli, is just as poorly reviewed as Gordon:

Robert Marcus took over as CEO of Time Warner Cable in January. Six weeks later, the company was sold to Comcast. When the deal goes through, Marcus will receive $80 million, "a severance payment that amounts to more than $1 million a day in compensation for the less than two months he ran the company." He earned it.

The University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) announced last week that their scientists are working to develop a system that might be able to predict lightning well before it strikes.

Supported by a two-year research grant from NASA, scientists in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville are combining data from weather satellites with Doppler radar and numerical models in a system that might warn which specific pop-up storm clouds are likely to produce lightning and when that lightning is likely to begin and end.

[...]

While there is no operational lightning forecast system using radar, researchers using the existing Doppler weather radar system can get lightning predictions right about 90 percent of the time, he said, but can only give about a ten to 15 minute lead time.

The average bolt of lightning is often four to five times hotter than the surface of the sun and can carry an electric charge between 30,000 and 300,000 amperes, which is well beyond the fractions of one ampere sufficient to kill a human being.

Given its properties, lightning is an obvious danger to life and property across the world. Between 1997 and 2011, the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) recorded an average of 23,165,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes per year.

As lightning kills over 50 people and injures more than 400 every year in the United States, NOAA embarked on a widely advertised lightning safety campaign, noted for its slogan "when thunder roars, go indoors!"

As the UAH press release noted, when they're able to do so, forecasters can only provide about 10-15 minutes worth of lead time between detecting a developing thunderstorm and the first strike of lightning. If successful, the new system under development could be "the next big thing" in meteorology and help improve warning times well beyond where they currently stand.

While it is currently hard to predict exactly where and when lightning will strike, numerous services exist to the public to help identify threats before they get too close.

Several websites offer free lightning data to the public, including Vaisala, which operates the NLDN. StrikeStarUS is an excellent site that allows users to view quality (free!) lightning data for slightly zoomed-in regions of the country. A joint project between New Mexico Tech and NASA provides lightning data for the Mid-Atlantic region centered around Washington DC (DCLMA), as well as areas in and around northern Alabama (NALMA). Weatherbug's smartphone app also includes a feature called "Spark" that provides information on the proximity of the nearest lightning to the user's current location.

While lightning is an awesome and incredible display of nature's fury and beauty, it's also incredibly dangerous when it strikes you or something nearby. Whether it's predicted or not, using your senses and following the advice of NOAA is always best during a storm: when thunder roars, go indoors.

[Image via Getty]

Russia responded to the new U.S. sanctions by issuing some sanctions of its own; nine U.S. officials, including Speaker John Boehner and Senator John McCain, are now banned from traveling to Russia. "I guess this means my spring break in Siberia is off," McCain said in a statement.

[Visiting U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon shakes hands with President Vladimir Putin during a meeting in Moscow on Thursday. Image via Sergei Ilnitsky/AP.]

In a case that launched a thousand Breaking Bad headlines, an IT teacher at a secondary school in Wales was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison after detectives discovered a sophisticated drug lab worth nearly $1.5 million in his house. He was caught with around $13,000 of cocaine at the time of his arrest.

When he wasn't teaching computer classes, Macphallen Kuwale ran a wholesale coke operation out of his Cardiff home, and was also "involved in street level dealing," South Wales Police said.

Kuwale had accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cutting agents and a pressing machine that gave his coke the appearance of higher-grade product. He also had a phone that he used to arrange deals through coded texts under the alias "Mac." (It's no "Heisenberg," but it apparently got the job done.)

Unsurprisingly, the revelation that Kuwale was moonlighting as a druglord worked against him in a school hearing about whether he should keep his teaching license. He's been banned for life, and has 28 days to appeal.

[H/T: Metro]

Not every programmer who comes out West panning for digital gold hits it rich. But the bottom rung of Startupland can be a fun if you find the right benefactor, reports Re/Code.

Eschewing the mainstream coworking spots, Re/Code's Nellie Bowles stopped by the Founder's Dojo where cryptocurrency miner Dave Grossblatt, very generously "stopped charging rent and started letting the young inventors use his desks for free."

What happens when you're sitting "elbow to elbow" on the fringes—far from the watchful eyes on the corporate campus or venture capitalists? Things get dirty, which could not make these porn scraping cofounders happier.

Raj Shah, 29

Hometown: Houston, Texas

Occupation: GIF porn scraper

Founded: The Worst Drug (NSFW)

"The site was just a one-afternoon side project. All we did was build something that pulls together the most shared GIFs in the world. Literally — that's all our algorithm does. And 99% of it happens to be porn. But we're really proud of our product. I love our site. I love our users. We have about 25,000 a day. What I'm most proud of is being part of this Dojo. Dave's project has something to do with tech, something to do with fairness. We could all go work at Facebook or Google and he gives us the freedom not to. We whistle together every day. It's the most annoying thing in the world, but it builds a sort of camaraderie. I have no experience as a soldier, but this is the closest I have to that I can imagine. Like, we're all on this life-or-death march together. On the worst days, Dave will be like, 'this is what winning feels like, bro.' It's about freedom."

Chris Di Santo, 29

Hometown: Foster City, California

Occupation: GIF porn scraper

Founded: The Worst Drug

"There was an instance when I was on the ramen diet. Dave knew about it. I'd been eating ramen for a year, living on $1000 a month. Dave left me a couple hundred dollars on my desk and said, 'Get some food or get out of my dojo.' The one thing he requires is that you follow your dream. You go to any other office space and say, 'Hey, can I run my porn company out of your office and not pay rent?' And they'd laugh."

God bless America.

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

[Image via The Worst Drug (NSFW)]

Anthony Vincent kicks off his Ten Second Songs project with a cover of Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" in the styles of 20 famous performers, and it's way better than you're expecting.

Some of the voices are more convincing than others, some are better than the Katy original, and one is Jamiroquai.

Jamiroquai.

[H/T: Reddit]

God is love, right? It's sort of a cornerstone of the Christian faith: He "so loved the world" that He gave his son Jesus up to save us all. And if God is love, then a sociopath who pickets dead soldiers with a "God Hates Fags" sign can't really be Christian, right? Well, the answer is complicated.

Fred Phelps is dead . The founder of Westboro Baptist Church, the litigious head of this hateful community, will soon be in the ground, and the media consensus is to be joyful and happy for the misery of a hate group that brought so much misery to others.

In the longstanding furor over their reprehensible tactics—a furor I, too, have indulged in over the years—few commentators have ever taken a moment to come to grips with the WBC's theological foundations. That's a shame, because WBC's belief system is intellectually consistent in many ways that the "mainstream" religious right is not. And it's based in a uniquely American theology as old as the colonies—a Christian paradigm that's influenced our culture in myriad respects, but is seldom addressed by anyone but its most devoted adherents.

The broad theology of WBC can be summed up in one basic statement:

Everybody sucks.

Only awful, terrible, despicable, depraved people would cause a political hatemongering ruckus at a funeral or an elementary school. That's absolutely true. The thing is, the faithful of Westboro Baptist Church would be the first to claim that they're depraved—and so is everyone else. This is the bedrock of their belief system, laid out on their website:

These doctrines of grace were well summed up by John Calvin in his 5 points of Calvinism... Although these doctrines are almost universally hated today, they were once loved and believed, as you can see in many confessions of faith. Even though the Arminian lies that "God loves everyone" and "Jesus died for everyone" are being taught from nearly every pulpit in this generation, this hasn't always been the case. If you are in a church that supposedly believes the Bible, and you are hearing these lies, then your church doesn't teach what the Bible teaches.

Primitive Baptists

It sounds pretty outrageous to an outsider, but there's a lot going on here. Technically, WBC falls under the umbrella of Primitive Baptists. During the Second Great Awakening in early 19th century America, there was a rift among Baptists over how much missionary work they should do. Newly energized Baptists wanted to spread the good news everywhere, and to form temperance unions, Sunday schools, and other missions familiar to us today.

But some conservative Baptists disagreed. They felt that missionary work was wrong for two reasons: First, they represented manmade institutions that distracted people from the Lord's authority. Second, they found it pointless, because they believed in the five main tenets of Calvinism, including predestination—the idea that an omnipotent God must know already who is saved and who is damned, and so your eternal fate is already determined.

As a result of the split, the conservative Baptists began to start their own ministries, identifying as "primitive" or "original" Baptists whose doctrines were closer to God and further from man.

"Five-Point Calvinism"

When people talk about the teachings of the early Protestant theologian John Calvin, they usually fuss over predestination. But he offered four other tenets of the faith that are no less controversial; together they make up the "five points" referenced by WBC:

• The total depravity of man. This one is everything: Human beings' default mode is damnation (thanks, Adam and Eve). We are not merely headed for damnation, though: We are depraved, alienated from God and goodness and unable to return to goodness by yourselves. In short, humans without salvation are all irredeemably terrible. Does that sound bleak? Well, that's the way it is, according to Calvinists.
• Unconditional election. This is the predestination thing. God in His omniscience and in his mercy will save some of you. He already knows whom He will save, and he's not doing it because you're nice or funny or pretty, but because He can. Deal with it.
• Limited atonement. Jesus died to save some people. But not all people. Just the ones God has elected. You can't atone for you sins, and maybe Jesus can't, either, because at the end of the day, maybe God heard your prayers and Jesus', and said "Yeeeeeeeeeeah no."
• Irresistible grace. How do you know if God has saved you? Oh, you'll know. Because he'll touch you with grace, and you won't be able to refuse. No matter what a dirty philandering murderous gay Episcopalian you may be, God might save you, and you will heed His call, because that's how He rolls.
• Perseverance of the saints. Once you go saved, you never go back. Here's the thing about an omniscient God: If He's elected you for salvation, you're getting saved, even if you keep being a dirty philandering murderous gay Episcopalian. That's just how grace works. No takebacks!

Basically, five-point Calvinism boils down to: There's a God who saves some people and screws the rest over for eternity, and there's nothing you can really do about it. If there were, He wouldn't be God, and you wouldn't be a depraved, terrible not-God quivering mass of id urges.

If God really is all powerful in that way, then your good works here really count for nothing. (Although, based on the tenet of irresistible grace, it's considered highly likely that you have God's grace if you suddenly find yourself hating sin and loving the Lord.)

It sounds like a bleak nasty business, doesn't it? As the old Presbyterian joke goes (Presbyterians still take the Calvinist points quite seriously): "God has answered your prayers. The answer is no."

And that's just WBC's point: It's a harsh teaching for a harsh world, distinct from the hopeful Arminianism of most modern churches.

Arminianism

All you need to know here is that Jacobus Arminius, another Protestant Reformer, taught doctrines that diverged slightly but importantly from Calvin's. the main difference was that Arminius wasn't cool with the "limited atonement" idea: Sure, God can save whom He wants, but the idea that he doesn't want to save everyone, or at least make it possible to save everyone, just didn't make much sense to Arminius.

Instead, Arminianism teaches that God's saving grace is available for all, and there's a little more space in there for free will. This is the bedrock of what we in America, churched and unchurched, generally refer to as Christianity—the "Jesus loves you" Christianity of modern Baptists, Methodists, and the like.

Which is great—except for Five Point Calvinists, who are represented in the mainstream U.S. today by Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian and Primitive Baptist churches. They see Arminianism as intellectually inconsistent wishful thinking.

You can see now how this dovetails with WBC's beliefs—basically, that Christianity today has gotten away from its harsh reminders of the differences between man and God, and has essentially been taken over by secular, manmade hopes and fears and beliefs. WBC sees its job as shocking people into the recognition that most of what passes for niceness and faithfulness in the U.S. is nothing of the sort.

Obviously, not all Calvinists are going around being obnoxious pricks at funerals, though. There is, ironically, a cultishness among WBC members that suggests they've become exactly the sort of secularized mission the original Primitive Baptists hated. But hey, that's how the Phelps clan interprets limited atonement.

Consistency

Have you ever wondered why religious conservatives focus on the sin of homosexuality over, say, God's condemnation of mixing cottons and wools in one outfit? Here's where WBC is at least more consistent than most right-wing religious agitators in America today.

Obviously the church is, at least in terms of public rhetoric, monomaniacally obsessed with homosexuality in a singularly cruel and psychotic way. But if you look past that front—which is as much a function of public relations savvy as theology or run-of-the-mill bigotry—you will see that they also profess to hate everyone else equally, too:

We adhere to the teachings of the Bible, preach against all form of sin (e.g., fornication, adultery [including divorce and remarriage], sodomy), and insist that the sovereignty of God and the doctrines of grace be taught and expounded publicly to all men.

You're straight? Not a fornicator? Married and faithful? Good for you. But you're still damned, because somewhere along the way you fuck up and sin, in ways large and small. Remember, you're totally depraved—that is the defining attribute of your humanity!

But WBC's public to-do takes a more focused, expedient approach to provoking spectators. It capitalizes on what's already hot, and hot-button, in American culture: gays and 9/11, mostly, because these are the topics that gain them maximum exposure and evoke the most visceral response from viewers. Or as they put it, engaging "in daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations opposing the homosexual lifestyle of soul-damning, nation-destroying filth."

At the end of the day, being consistent in the limited way they're consistent is enough for the WBC clan. Most of us, though—Christian or otherwise—see that sort of consistency as heinous. Make of it all what you will. I mean, they're still a bunch of folks who call gays "fags" at funerals.

The important thing is that there's a theology behind this. Sincere or not, WBC and its members are part of a far-reaching religious heritage in America. They are, strictly speaking, Christian. That doesn't mean they're nice, or not a cult, or even saved from hell, if you believe in that sort of thing.

So fear not: You can still call them hateful douchebags. After all, you're totally depraved, too!

[Photo credit: AP]

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Twitter is currently "looking into" reports that its service has been banned in Turkey. In the meantime, they've informed Turkish users of a work-around via SMS. This comes after prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened earlier on Thursday to "wipe out" the social media network in the country.

The U.S. Customs department spends several hundred million dollars on border security for our 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Congress may soon increase that amount by many billions of dollars. One thing we know for sure: we are gonna waste the hell out of that money.

I mean, the border is two thousand miles long. Whether you spend a half a billion dollars or tens of billions of dollars, there will still be lots of holes in that border. Walls are expensive! Assuming all of that money won't be spent on highly trained racist dogs, what will it be spent on? The LA Times went to the "Border Security Expo" to find out:

Gregory Schultz, who co-owns a Tucson-based business that manufactures clothing that stops electricity from penetrating a body, said his product, Thorshield, could help save border agents at risk of having their stun guns seized by assailants and used against them.

Schultz covered his hand in the cotton-like material, took up a stun gun and fired repeatedly.

"It's a highly conductive fabric that actually short-circuits stun guns and Tasers," he said without blinking.

It is high time a patriotic entrepreneur solved the problem of U.S. border patrol agents being tased by crafty (and quick-fingered) Mexicans who snatched their stun guns. We'll take $40 billion worth, please.

[Photo: AP]

While Seattle police found no new information in their reexamination of Kurt Cobain's death, they have released previously unseen images from the scene of his suicide nearly 20 years ago.

These two images were released to the media on Thursday afternoon. According to a report from the Associated Press:

One was an image showing a box containing a spoon and what appear to be needles on the floor next to a cigarette and sunglasses. The other showed the paraphernalia box closed, next to cash and a wallet that appears to show Cobain's identification.

After reviewing the case and the previously undeveloped photos, Detective Mike Ciesynski, the man in charge of reexamining Cobain's death, confirmed it was a suicide. "Sometimes people believe what they read—some of the disinformation from some of the books, that this was a conspiracy. That's completely inaccurate," Ciesynski said. "It's a suicide. This is a closed case."

[Images via Seattle Police Department, KIRO 7 and THR]

Director David Fincher says Oscar winner and second-best-Batman Christian Bale is his first (and only) choice to play Steve Jobs in an upcoming Jobs biopic. The still-untitled film was written by Aaron Sorkin, who also wrote Fincher's The Social Network.

Bale doesn't officially have an offer, but Fincher says he won't take the project unless the actor agrees to star.

The script is based on 3 scenes from Walter Isaacson's lengthy biography of Jobs: the launch of the Mac, the launch of the iPad, and the debut of NeXT, the operating system Jobs worked on while in exile from Apple.

Presumably, it will be something like the Ashton Kutcher-starring Jobs, but with less of Jobs' early years and more of Aaron Sorkin.

The Wrap reports that although Jobs only grossed $35 million worldwide, Sony thinks there's plenty interest in a film about the Apple founder "made by and featuring A-list talent" that doesn't involve Ashton Kutcher.

[H/T: The Verge, Photo Credit: AP Photo]