The Office Time Machine, a year-and-a-half labor of love by Joe Sabia, collects every reference in The Office, sorts them by year, and puts them all into video supercuts. This level of obsessive detail has to be see to be believed.

The point of the project is to show how much the art and comedy we love relies on fair use and the ability to borrow from and reference the collective culture. And holy shit, does The Office ever lean on references. Watching a single year of the time machine is enough to appreciate it.

Sabia writes:

The Office is relatable (and hilarious) because it borrows so much from culture, and people get the references. Culture is society's collected knowledge, art, and customs. It's what surrounds us and unites us, and it allows us to collectively laugh at a joke in The Office about Ben Franklin or M. Night Shyamalan. Culture, simply put, is the seasoning in a meal.

It took him a year and a half to rip, organize, and recombine these 1,300 references using DVDs rented from Netflix. Worth it!

If you want to help with the project, here's a video of references Sabia didn't get. Maybe you can fill them in? (That's what she said.)

[H/T: Waxy]

Gwyneth Paltrow may or may not have cheated on Chris Martin with Pete Yorn's brother, but on her website today, Goop and the Coldplay singer announced their separation.

Of their "conscious uncoupling," the message reads:

It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate. We have been working hard for well over a year, some of it together, some of it separated, to see what might have been possible between us, and we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate. We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been. We are parents first and foremost, to two incredibly wonderful children and we ask for their and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time. We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner.

Love,


Gwyneth & Chris

We've emailed her publicist, the great Stephen Huvane , for comment. We'll update when we hear back.

The Catholic League's Bill Donohue is reveling in the attention he has received for announcing that he wants to march in New York's upcoming Pride Parade and then rejecting organizers' acceptance because of mandatory information and training sessions. Flattering himself and letting his fantasies get the best of him, Donohue calls these "gay training sessions," which they are not .

Donohue has written at length about this ordeal on Newsmax, and it's 17 garbled paragraphs of blah blah blah (to be fair, though, "I don't care a fig about 'training' sessions" is a fun thing to read) and then two paragraphs of, "What in the gay hell...?!" In them, Donohue reveals:

One more thing. One of the gay parade rules reads: "Nudity. The law prohibits nudity below the waist. Police will be present at The March and it is assumed that they will enforce the law."

Perhaps gay officials can explain why this is the only parade in New York City that feels compelled to issue such a rule. I know why — I have the pictures from the 1994 march — but that is for another time.

Bill Donohue has pictures of naked men and he isn't afraid to use them. That's one thing he cares a fig about.

[Image via AP]

Hobby Lobby went to the Supreme Court yesterday as part of the craft company's ongoing quest to deny its female employees Affordable-Care-Act-mandated birth-control coverage. And the women on the bench were, as my mother would say, Not Impressed.

Justices Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor repeatedly questioned the arguments of those employers who wish to deny their female employees their mandated coverage of four methods of contraception.

That said: There are six other Supreme Court justices, all of them men. The two whose votes might swing with the women in question, Breyer and Kennedy, apparently didn't ask anything that revealed their stances definitively. Interestingly for the ex-law students among you, it seems like they didn't focus too much on the lunatic issue that was so extensively briefed: whether or not corporations could hold religious rights. Instead they went straight for the heart of this strange artichoke.

Per Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, under the cheery headline, "It Sure Looks Like the Contraceptive Mandate is Doomed":

"Is your claim limited to sensitive materials like contraceptives or does it include items like blood transfusion, vaccines?" asks Sotomayor. Clement replies that contraception is unlike transfusions and vaccines because it is "so religiously sensitive, so fraught with religious controversy." Which is, I suspect, code for "sex."

Jeffrey Toobin at the New Yorker points out that (contrary to my pessimism yesterday) Justice Kagan brought up the rights of women quite directly in her questions:

"Isn't that just a way of saying that you think that this isn't a good statute, because it asks one person to subsidize another person?" she asked. "But Congress has made a judgment and Congress has given a statutory entitlement and that entitlement is to women and includes contraceptive coverage. And when the employer says, 'No, I don't want to give that,' that woman is quite directly, quite tangibly harmed."

At Supreme Court nerdhub SCOTUSblog, Amy Howe holds out a miniature Zippo lighter of hope that Justice Kennedy was persuaded by this argument, before quickly snuffing it out again:

Significantly, that argument seemed to carry at least some weight with Justice Anthony Kennedy, who earlier in the argument had expressed concern that an employer's religious beliefs could trump the rights of female employees. But other Justices were skeptical, asking Verrilli to identify language in RFRA that would even allow courts to consider the interests of the female employees.

Those "other Justices there" are Alito, Scalia, and Chief Justice Roberts, all of whom were indeed "skeptical" for reasons I'm sure they'll enumerate in their opinions.

Most dishearteningly, as Lithwick points out, Kennedy did ask about the Big Bad Voldemort in the room, the spectre of abortion:

And then Kennedy closes by asking whether, in Verrilli's view, a for-profit corporation could be forced to pay for abortions. Roberts clarifies that one: "Isn't that what we are talking about in terms of their religious beliefs? That they have to pay for these four methods of contraception that they believe provide abortions?"

Of course, as Verrilli points out, the present law doesn't require anybody to pay for anybody's abortions. But it's certainly a bad sign that it came up.

[Photo via AP.]

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

Rupert Murdoch “shuffled his media empire’s executives” by promoting his 42-year-old son, Lachlan, to co-chief operating officer of 21st Century Fox. Congratulations to both.

North Korean Dear Leader/monster Kim Jong-Un is now requiring every man in the country to copy his exact haircut. The rule was reportedly introduced in Pyongyang two weeks ago.

Until now, there have been 28 government-approved hairstyles in North Korea—10 for men and 18 for women.

Long hair has been discouraged by North Korean state TV since 2005, when a campaign warned men that too much hair could consume vital nutrients, stunting brain development. The campaign recommended they schedule haircuts every 15 days.

Now the state is going a step further, reducing men's hair options to one: Kim's famous center-parted 'do.

If it weren't mandated, Kim's style wouldn't be particularly popular. Before it was known as the "Dear Leader" haircut, Koreans mostly associated it with Chinese smugglers.

"Until the mid-2000s, we called it the 'Chinese smuggler haircut," a former Pyongyang resident told the Korea Times.

Incidentally, the previous "Dear Leader" haircut, Kim Jong-Il's trademark bouffant, is no longer an option.

Update: NK News is expressing skepticism that the new rule, if it's real, will affect most North Koreans' lives. Sources visiting Pyongyang as recently as last week said they hadn't seen many men wearing Kim's distinctive hairstyle.

And even if the rule were in effect, enforcement wouldn't be particularly strict.

"The fashion enforcers are normally students required to 'volunteer' a couple of times a year and are stationed by bus stops, metro stops and busy street corners," and the worst consequence men would suffer is "a talking-to" for multiple violations, a source told NK News.

[Photo Credit: AP Images]

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is up for reelection this fall, and yesterday he released a campaign ad to much fanfare. It featured some of the things that make Kentucky great, including what were supposed to be highlights of the state's two basketball teams celebrating championships. It didn't work out that way.

At about 1:09 of the video below, there's a shot of Louisville's 2013 NCAA title, and then...well, they're wearing blue and white at least. As first noticed by LEO Weekly's Joe Sonka, instead of the Kentucky Wildcats and their 2012 championship, it's actually a clip of Duke winning it all in 2010.

You don't mess with Kentuckians and their basketball. Residents quickly seized on the gaffe, and McConnell's presumptive opponent even turned it into a campaign promise:

KY, as your next Senator, I promise to never glorify a Duke championship in a campaign ad like @Team_Mitch http://t.co/v7y5FrrQOA #kysen

— Alison L. Grimes (@AlisonForKY) March 25, 2014

(Because Kentuckians are insane, they then fell upon Grimes for not picking either in-state team to win her bracket.)

McConnell's spokeswoman sprung into damage control. "Obviously we were horrified by the error and quickly changed it," she said.

Yeah, about that. In place of the Duke footage, the McConnell campaign hastily spliced in a shot of Julius Randle from this year's team. Here's a screengrab, via Kentucky Sports Radio.

That's a problem, because NCAA rules concerning the use of images of active athletes are particularly stringent. So Kentucky sent a cease and desist letter to McConnell, demanding that Randle be taken out of the video.

"The University of Kentucky consulted with the NCAA earlier today regarding footage of Julius Randle in a Mitch McConnell advertisement. Although the use of the student-athlete's image in the advertisement is not permissible, because it was done without the knowledge or permission of the university or the student-athlete, it is not an NCAA violation. The University of Kentucky has sent a cease and desist letter and will continue to take appropriate measures to ensure improper usage of a student-athlete's name, image or likeness is prevented."

Rather than go through all of this again, McConnell's campaign just pulled the ad altogether. The campaign put out a statement last night. "It was our intention to honor our great Kentucky basketball traditions," it concluded. "Our campaign apologizes for any inconvenience this may have caused."

Sweden has The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and now Norway has The Boy With the McDonald's Receipt Tattoo. He's an 18-year-old from Lørenskog, and he'll always remember exactly what he ate on Monday‚ because it's inked on his right arm.

Some friends who wanted to punish Stian Ytterdahl for being too active with the ladies (uh huh, sure) gave him a choice between a Barbie on his ass or the receipt on his arm. Ytterdahl resigned himself to his fate (and probably wished he hadn't added those 4 extra toppings to his burger).

Sabelink Tattoo said it was the strangest tattoo they'd ever done, and asked Ytterdahl if he'd get their receipt on his other arm—for free, of course. He agreed, and the next session is scheduled for Monday.

"Now I'm a living billboard," Ytterdahl told the newspaper Romereskes Blad, "But I think all this is just fun. Maybe it won't be as fun when I'm 50 or 60 years, but it's my choice."

McDonald's Norway says the tattoo isn't a publicity stunt, but they think it's terrific. "We're obviously talking about a loyal customer," said a spokeswoman.

[Photo Credit: Rb.no]

Today, a Washington, DC resident writes into The Root's "Race Manners" advice column with an important sartorial question. So important that—for the benefit of our vast white readership—we will also attempt to answer it here.

The question-asker, a self-described "white female cyclist in Washington D.C.," writes:

Recently I was given a ["Chocolate City Cycling"] T-shirt, but I feel weird about wearing it in public, especially outside the context of group cycling. I like the shirt and the people it represents (and I doubt they'd have much of a problem with me wearing it on a ride), but it still feels odd and somehow wrong to wear a shirt that asserts something about a racial identity other than my own. What advice would you have on the matter?

HERE IS THE ANSWER, WHITES:

If you have to ask, do not wear it.

(If you don't feel the need to ask, you are either very cool or very stupid.)

[Read Jenee Desmond-Harris's infinitely more thoughtful answer at TheRoot.com. Photo of typical white: FB]

On Monday, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the so-called "Bishop of Bling, " who spent an estimated $43 million renovating his private residence last year.

Last October, Pope Francis suspended the Bling Bishop, better known as Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, the bishop of Limburg, after learning of his extravagant home renovation, which included a $21,000 bathtub and a $1.1 million garden. The approved budget for the renovation was, at $7.5 million, just a fraction of its eventual cost.

Tebartz-van Elst initially defended the project's cost, noting that several of the buildings were under historical protection and therefore more expensive to renovate.

A Vatican inquiry into the renovation found that the subsequent controversy lead to "a situation in the Limburg diocese that prevents Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst from fruitfully carrying out his duties."

The Vatican said Tebartz-van Elst will be assigned another job in the church "at the opportune time."

[Image via AP]

Today in Things You'd Look Up on Snopes if There Weren't So Many Photos, a 2-year-old boy was injured at a park after someone glued razor blades to the playground equipment.

East Moline, Ill., police removed about a dozen of the blades Monday afternoon at Millennium Park, after the toddler's father reported his son had cut himself. The boy wasn't seriously injured, and his dad treated him at home.

"East Moline parks are safe, but it's just a bad situation, bad instance where somebody, or maybe a group of kids, I don't know who did this, but figured this would be a fun prank to do," an East Moline police lieutenant told KWQC.

The blades were stuck to monkey bars, a slide, and the ground with white putty. Officers checked other local parks, but the booby-trapping appears to be an isolated incident.

[Photos: East Moline Police Department/WQAD]

Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon was arrested on Wednesday and charged with theft and bribery. Cannon, a Democrat, allegedly accepted more than $48,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents between January 2013 and February 2014.

Ron Paul and his think tank don't want the U.S. to get embroiled in an overseas war with Russia over its recent annexation of Crimea. That's reasonable. Ron Paul and his think tank suggest that Russia didn't even invade Crimea, really. That's self-blindered hysterical conspiracy theorizin' bull semen.

Dave Weigel over at Slate has the details on a growing libertarian rift regarding how Russia got its new Black Sea appendage. To wit: Ron Paul's recent speeches have been sort of glib about what happened over there. He parroted Russian talking points, praising Crimea's "right to secede" from Ukraine in favor of the big kid on the block. (Paulie shares that perspective with white Southern secessionists here in the States, too.)

Some libertarians think Paul's argument elides a basic truth: Russia invaded Crimea on the thinnest of pretexts, then gamed the entire "self-determination" vote in Crimea—with troops, with organizers, with propaganda—to tip it absurdly in the Russian bear's favor.

That's all true. You don't have to want a U.S. war with Russia to recognize that Vladimir Putin pulled a greedy despotic land-grab. You can condemn another country's action and still be skeptical whether the U.S. should—or could—do anything to change the situation. Just because you have moral qualms about America's great-power counterparts doesn't mean you have to be a neocon.

But that's not ideologically pure, or truthery enough, for "Daniel Adams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity," who wants you to believe that Russia never invaded Crimea, or forced Crimea to vote for Russian integration! That's a neocon "conspiracy theory":

We know what an invasion looks like — it's called shock and awe and it happened eleven years ago this month, in the US illegal invasion of Iraq. It happened fifteen years ago this month over the skies of Serbia, another illegal US attack.

If it had happened earlier this month in Crimea would we not have video? Everyone has cell phones these days.

Surely if the referendum had been taken at gunpoint we would have seen evidence of those on the receiving end. Or does the writer wish us to believe that the Russian military rounded up more than 80 percent of the population and forced 93% of those to vote in favor of joining Russia without having to shoot a single Crimean? That sounds like a pretty wild conspiracy theory.

This insane blather speaks to a larger problem with white-guy-dominated libertarianism: It assumes that coercive power only comes from the barrel of a gun, and not from cultural and extra-institutional pressures.

But the big problem here is that, instead of allowing for a clear distinction between the statements "Yes, Russia did a bad thing" and "Yes, Uncle Sam should kick Russia's butt for doing a bad thing," Paulies would rather take the cranial carry bags containing their God-given intellects and jam them up their own clammy rectums, blocking out the light of truth: that Russia coldly engineered an invasion and annexation of a property that belonged to Ukraine.

I don't want the United States to get involved militarily in Russia's new territorial ambitions. I don't think anybody who's not high on Kristol Meth wants a U.S. intervention in Crimea or Western Ukraine or anywhere else over there. But neither does that mean we should ignore facts, cast our lots in with Loose Change fanboys, and pretend the world is a la-la happy place free of immoral despots, other than the thermite-having 9/11 inside-jobbers.

[Photo credit: AP]

Over the past few weeks, I've heard a few stories about Google or Twitter employees letting it slip that they can check your email or read your DMs—the kind of hushed anecdotes that are hard to prove. But, somehow, Google's statement denying recent allegations makes that NSA-fueled paranoia feel more concrete.

Last night, Google general counsel Kent Walker made the "unusual move" of directly addressing Michael Arrington's claim that that company spied on his Gmail . (After news broke that Microsoft looked into a reporter's Hotmail, Arrington wrote a blog post alleging that a Google employee who leaked information to his Gmail was soon out of a job.)

Walker told Re/code:

"Mike makes a serious allegation here — that Google opened email messages in his Gmail account to investigate a leak," Kent Walker, Google general counsel, said in a statement. "While our terms of service might legally permit such access, we have never done this and it's hard for me to imagine circumstances where we would investigate a leak in that way."

"Might legally permit" and "hard for me to imagine" are not phrases you want to see in the same sentence as a company's denial.

fwiw, over the years friendly former googlers have advised me to avoid gmail for reporting about google http://t.co/ha15hBRM2W

— Eric Rosser Eldon (@eldon) March 26, 2014

Just last week Google successfully jumped a major legal hurdle in a lawsuit that it surreptitiously data-mined millions of student emails through Apps for Education, a suite of tools that "has 30 million users worldwide and is provided by the company for free to thousands of educational institutions in the United States."

Lucky for the $380 billion company, a district judge in California "refused to let the case proceed as a class action," so the plaintiffs need to use their own financial resources to pursue the case.

It's not just Google. Re/code points out that other tech companies are also protected by the rules around using their free products.

It turns out the Microsoft's terms of service allows it to access user communication in order to "protect the rights or property of Microsoft or our customers."

Moreover, the terms of service of Google and Yahoo's free, hosted email services afford it similar privileges.

This concludes your daily reminder that if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. Thanks for playing.

[Image via @TEDchris]

The long-awaited nor'easter is finally cranking off the coast of New England this afternoon, and it really looks about as beautiful as expected on both satellite imagery and surface pressure analysis maps.

The center of the cyclone is down near 960 millibars (give or take a few), which is the typical pressure one would find in a category 3 hurricane. As the storm reaches its strongest point over the next couple of hours, a couple of beautiful features can be noted on satellite.

The first is the well-defined center of the storm, swirling a few hundred miles off the coast of Cape Cod. To the northwest of the center is the solid shield of heavy snow that's going to make a mess of Cape Cod, eastern Maine, and Atlantic Canada. Down to the southeast you can see fields of cumulus clouds following the path of the winds into the center of the system.

Further inland towards the Mid-Atlantic and the Appalachians, you can see two features as the nor'easter's tight circulation brings high winds from the northwest across the mountains and out into the Atlantic.

Over the Appalachians themselves, you can see gravity waves caused by the winds flowing up over the crests of the mountains. The terrain is creating something similar to the ripple effect you would see after you throw a rock into a pond. The wind flowing over the mountains is causing the air to "ripple," creating a wavy effect in the clouds.

Seen in both the above image and the one below, the storm is also creating a pretty cool area of cloud streets off the coast of the southeast.

Starting from around the Delmarva Peninsula straight down the coast to Florida is a prominent area of cloud streets, which I discussed in a post a couple of days ago. As the cool air moves from the United States over the warmer ocean waters, the warmer water heats up the air immediately above it, creating little pockets of convection. The convection creates cumulus clouds, which are then pulled into rows by the stiff northwesterly winds. The cloud street effect is most prominent off the Carolina coast.

This really is a great system — bombogenesis , an incredible satellite presentation, and minimal impact to heavily populated areas. What more could a guy want?

[Images via GOES/NASA/ESO]

Early Wednesday morning, Chief Keef was reportedly involved in a shooting at a home in Northfield, Ill. that left at least one person hospitalized

According to WGN, the shooting took place at a home that might be owned by the 18-year-old rapper's manager. There are also reports that Chief Keef was renting the home.

Chief Keef's lawyer told TMZ that the rapper was present at the time of the shooting, though he wasn't the shooter. Someone called WGN early Wednesday and told the news station that "Chief Keef shot me."

The Northfield police department said the victim is currently in the ICU.

On Tuesday, Keef, who's had legal problems with guns before, posted several photos of himself holding weapons to his Instagram.

Tough: passing a kidney stone. Tougher: passing a kidney stone while on the campaign trail to be a governor. Toughest: passing a kidney stone during a 90-minute gubernatorial debate forum.

Yesterday, Facebook bought a virtual reality company called Oculus VR. Shortly afterward, the internet exploded.

If you've been closely following Oculus and their Oculus Rift VR headset over the past couple of years, you probably already have a ton of thoughts and opinions on all this. But what if you haven't really been paying attention? What's the deal, why is everyone so worked up? Didn't virtual reality already happen in the 90s?

Don't worry, we're here to help. Below is our explanation of what's going on, and why Facebook just paid a cool couple billion for a company that makes a virtual reality headset.

So, what happened?

Yesterday, Oculus VR announced that it was being acquired by Facebook for $2 billion . The deal isn't fully closed yet, but it will be soon, and then Facebook will own themselves a virtual reality company.

What's an Oculus?

Oculus VR is a company that started a few years ago with a 2012 Kickstarter campaign and promise: They were finally going to give us virtual reality like we'd been promised back in the 90s. The company was founded by a tech wunderkind named Palmer Luckey who decided he wanted to play games in VR, tried every VR headset he could find, and wasn't satisfied, so he decided to make one of his own.

Early buzz was extremely strong, and the Kickstarter for their first prototype exceeded its goal by a factor of almost ten—they asked for $250,000 and got nearly $2.5 million.

So that's Oculus the company. What's the Oculus Rift?

The Oculus Rift is the name of Oculus' virtual reality headset. It's the product they'll eventually release to the public. It's a little confusing. Basically, "Oculus" is the company and "Oculus Rift" is the actual product.

Kind of a silly name, right?

I don't know, I actually kind of like it! It's a bit overly dramatic, but then again, this is VR we're talking about. As nerdy names go, it's pretty high-grade.

What is virtual reality, really? What's it like?

Basically, virtual reality lets you put on a headset and look around inside of a virtual world, like you'd find in a video game. The headset has two eyepieces and two small screens, which work together to let you focus your eyes and see a single image. When you move your head around, your "head" in the computer game also moves around, and you can look above, below, and even behind yourself. It puts you in the middle of a 3D world and lets you explore it and move around in an intuitive, natural way. It's a trip.

Why do people get excited about this?

Because it's really cool. It's one of those things that you can't quite "get" until you use it, but the moment you do, it's immediate. I was a doubter as well, until I tried the latest model last week . The effect is right there in a way that few things in tech are. You put it on, and it just makes sense.

Suddenly you're sitting in a room that doesn't actually exist, turning your head around, looking behind you. You immediately start to think of the amazing stuff they could do with this thing—virtual tourism, sitting onstage during a concert, being inside of a movie… and your imagination is off to the races.

For now, I guess I'll have to take your word for it.

Yeah, that's kind of the bummer of VR. It's really hard to report on or describe; it's hard to show it to people without actually, well, showing it to people. But you can read about, say, this Game of Thrones experience that lets you climb The Wall, or the way that the Navy is using the headsets for training, and get a sense of just how much potential the technology has.

Don't people already have Oculus Rifts? I feel like I've seen photos and YouTube videos of people using them.

One of the Kickstarter rewards was that you'd be sent the first mass-produced prototype of the Oculus Rift. Those were sent out in 2013. So, that's what you've seen people using.

The "DevKit 1" prototype is the one that everyone has; it's pretty far from the final specs that Oculus is aiming for, but it's still powerful enough to do some cool stuff. It's the one with the flat rectangular face, it looks like this:

Didn't I just hear about a new Oculus Rift? Is that the final one?

There is a new Oculus Rift, but it's still not the final model. At the Consumer Electronics Show this year in Vegas, Oculus finally brought out a new prototype model with a bunch of enhanced features like a higher resolution screen and head-tracking, which lets you lean closer and farther away from things in the VR simulation. That's still not final, though - it's called the DevKit 2. They demoed that headset last week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco; I tried one out and thought it was really cool.

The DevKit 2 looks like this:

Those headsets look pretty dorky. Just saying.

Yeah, it's hard to be cool when you're wearing a VR headset. C'est la vie.

So, how does the Oculus Rift work? Can I buy one right now and play VR games?

Yes, though the headset isn't a consumer model, so the experience is kinda rough. If you want, you can preorder one of the new prototypes from the Oculus site and have one by July. The Rift works with a PC, and you'll need a decently powerful gaming PC to use it.

What about the games?

There aren't that many official games for the Oculus Rift yet, though some indie developers are making them. However, lots of people have hacked popular existing games like Team Fortress 2, Crysis and Portal 2 to work with the Rift headset. You can download their hacks for your own copy of the game, but you'll need to be comfortable noodling around with your files in order to get everything working. In other words, the Rift is still mostly for game developers who want to make games for it and hardcore enthusiasts who are dedicated enough to put in the time to get it working.

Got it. So, Facebook bought this company?

Yeah. For $2 billion.

That's a lot of money, even for Facebook, right?

It's a lot, but it's not as much as Facebook has paid for other things. To put it in perspective, Facebook bought the successful photo-sharing service Instagram for $1 billion back in 2012. But last month they bought the popular messaging app WhatsApp for a total of $19 billion, and reportedly offered Snapchat $3 billion, which the company turned down. Still, any way you slice it, $2 billion is a lot of money.

Why did Facebook buy a Virtual Reality company?

It's a bit curious. In the past, Facebook's acquisitions have made immediate logical sense. Instagram helped bolster Facebook's already-massive photo service. WhatsApp helps boost their messaging service. Snapchat, had that worked out, would have given Facebook access to a huge, young userbase, many of whom specifically use a service like Snapchat—which doesn't visibly store shared images once you've viewed them—as a less burdensome alternative to Facebook. Those were all software companies, but Oculus is a hardware company, which is a big part of why this whole thing is curious.

Okay so, uh… why did Facebook buy a virtual reality company again?

From the look of things, a big part of it is simply that Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg seems to genuinely think VR is really cool. Which actually isn't such a bad reason! In a statement explaining the move, Zuckerberg said that immersive gaming would still be Oculus' first mission, but after that, well...

After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.

This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.

These are just some of the potential uses. By working with developers and partners across the industry, together we can build many more. One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.

That sounds cool, and kind of vague.

Yeah, it is both of those things. If I had to guess, I'd say Zuckerberg is playing a really long game here, and sees Oculus not just as a company that wants to make a big plastic headset, but as a company that sees VR as a stepping stone to a more seamless, integrated augmented reality experience. And he wants to get in on the ground floor.

So what does this mean for Oculus?

Well, the deal happened yesterday, so it's not really clear yet. Zuckerberg said that they don't plan on interfering with any of Oculus' plans, and that the company will still operate independently. So, the best-case scenario here is that Facebook's massive financial support makes it possible for Oculus to quickly grow and make a better product, faster.

Well, that sounds good!

It's a best-case scenario, but yeah, that'd be pretty cool. There are shades to it, though. This article by Brian Barrett of our sister site Gizmodo provides a pretty even-handed look at the various sides of the situation.

Everyone seems pissed, though. Why is everyone pissed?

Well, it's the internet, so that's part of it. And it's Facebook, so that's another part. Everyone on the internet is kinda pissed to begin with, and lots of people hate Facebook! But of course, there's also more to it.

For starters, there's the fact that Oculus came on the scene as this fresh-faced, out-of-nowhere startup with a brilliant idea. People literally bought into the idea on Kickstarter, gave money to support it, and feel personally invested in the company's progress. And now out of nowhere, Facebook, one of the biggest tech companies in the world, just swoops in and buys the entire kit and kaboodle. People aren't thrilled about that, and a lot of folks are understandably worried that Facebook will impose their will on the company, subvert the original mission, ignore video games in favor of other pursuits, and generally ruin the dream.

What about Kickstarter backers? Didn't they get a say in this?

Not really, and some of them are pretty upset . This is kind of a new thing for a company, to start with a Kickstarter campaign and later be bought out by a company like Facebook or Google. But it's already pretty clear that a lot of people aren't comfortable with the idea of paying a company seed money so that its founders can get rich off of a corporate acquisition shortly afterward.

Wasn't the Kickstarter really just to let people pre-order prototype headsets?

It kinda was, at least if you paid the $300 that it took to guarantee yourself a headset. But plenty of people paid more than that, and whatever the legalities of the situation are, those people probably feel like they had some kind of stake in the company. Think of it this way: If you gave a friend $5,000 to help them start a new business, then a couple years later they sold that business for a couple billion dollars without really consulting you, wouldn't you feel a bit stung?

Yeah, I guess I would. What about game developers? How do they feel?

A lot of people have been working on Oculus games, and I'm sure a lot of those people don't mind and will continue to work on their games. Some indies are probably psyched at the possibilities that Facebook brings to the table.

Some other indie developers, however, have already voiced disapproval of the move. The loudest of these voices probably came from Minecraft creator Notch, who said that he's canceling a deal that would officially bring his super-popular game to the Oculus Rift. He says he's specifically canceling the deal because he doesn't want to be involved with Facebook. He's also bummed about the whole Kickstarter thing. Quote: "I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition."

What are the Oculus people saying about all this?

So far, they're adamant that the new deal won't have any negative affects. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has been on Reddit defending the move against detractors. A lot of what he's saying sounds good, though plenty of people are still upset. According to Luckey:

• Oculus will continue to focus on gaming, though there will continue to be other applications for VR beyond that.
• You will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the Rift.
• Ads won't be included in Oculus hardware, and in-game ads will remain a developer decision.
• The extra money will let Oculus make custom hardware, hire everyone they need, and make "huge investments in content." All good things, in theory.
• There will be "no specific Facebook tech tie-ins."

Luckey also said that they chose to sell to Facebook and not to a hardware company like Apple or Microsoft because he doesn't believe Facebook has any interest in strip-mining the company and taking the tech for themselves. "Why would we want to sell to someone like MS or Apple?" he asked. "So they can tear the company apart and use the pieces to build out their own vision of virtual reality, one that fits whatever current strategy they have? Not a chance."

All reassuring stuff, though plenty of unanswered questions remain.

So, what does this all mean for me?

Well, it could mean very little. In the end it could be a good thing—it could mean that the VR revolution will come sooner and be better out of the gate. But also, for all of Zuckerberg's and Luckey's reassurances, it still could mean that Facebook will strip Oculus VR of all of their talent, gut the company, screw up their direction and let their dream of amazing virtual reality die on the vine.

That's a little intensely negative, don't you think?

Hey, it's just a worst-case scenario.

Well, it's depressing! What happens if they do that?

It'll be okay. Oculus has planted the VR seed, and we've seen enough competitors cropping up over the last year that no matter what happens to Oculus, someone will still make a cool, working VR headset that'll get lots of cool video games.

Oh yeah, I'd heard Sony is making a headset too, right?

Yeah, just last week Sony announced a VR headset program for the PlayStation 4 called Project Morpheus. It's like Oculus in that it's not finished yet, but last week Stephen Totilo and I tried out their prototype and liked it a lot. It's a bit different from the Oculus Rift DevKit 2, but generally comparable, which was surprising.

It looks like this:

Still looks pretty dorky.

Yeah, I know. It's a thing. There are other prototypes out there as well, like the CastAR and Avegant Glyph, neither of which we've tried but both of which look cool.

So no matter what happens here, it kinda sounds like VR is going to get bigger and bigger over the next few years.

Yeah. Though it'd certainly be nice if Oculus could retain their place at the front of the pack. After all, they're the ones with the vision, the ones who started this whole thing.

Well, this was helpful. I think I get what's going on now. Thanks!

My pleasure.

Last question: Is it possible that this is all VR already, and that we're living inside a computer?

Could be. But ask yourself: Would you really care if it was?

Probably not.

Yeah, me neither.

A bankrupt New Mexico peanut butter factory has been bought by a Canadian company. To what extent are you truly "keeping an eye" on our national peanut supply, Mr. President?

Rep. Jackie Speier has announced that she's going to introduce a bill criminalizing "revenge porn" into the House of Representatives next month. If and when she does, it will be the first effort to enact a federal law against revenge porn, or as others put it, "non-consensual pornography."