Locals inspect a boat washed ashore by a small tsunami in the northern town of Iquique, Chile, after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck the northern coast on Wednesday. Image via Cristian Viveros/AP.

Last month, we showed you the newest internal anti-union training video that Target uses to indoctrinate its employees. What do the actors in the video—one of whom is a union member—have to say for themselves? We asked them.

The video, you'll recall, features "Dawn" and "Ricardo," two Target mouthpieces who just want to share the myriad horrors of unionization with their fellow team members. It turns out their first names, at least, are real. The Minnesota-based company found two Minnesota-based actors for their video: "Dawn" is played by Dawn Brodey, and "Ricardo" is played by Ricardo Vazquez. We contacted both of them to find out why they decided to appear in an anti-union corporate film.

Ricardo Vazquez's agent, Susan Wehmann, told us that Vazquez (in connection with his theater work) is a member of Actor's Equity Association, a union representing stage actors. AEA communications director Maria Somma told us that "We are a proud direct affiliate of the AFL-CIO and support all workers' rights to join a union," but that "We do not discipline members for the content of their performances." Wehmann told us that Vazquez is not yet a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, but added "Ironically, these two actors used this video to earn their SAG cards." She also said that "I would like to point out that the Target internal video that you obtained, in no way reflects his personal morals."

If we get a comment from Ricardo himself, we will add it here.

Dawn Brodey, whose character in the video warns that unions would destroy Target's fabled "fast, fun and friendly culture," sent us the following thoughts on her role in the video, in response to our questions:

This video was shot in 2011 and I saw it for the first time on Gawker last week. I did not receive a copy from Target when it was completed because - for reasons I suspect are fairly obvious at this point - they keep such materials fairly close to the chest.

• Are you a member of any union, acting or otherwise?

No - I wasn't when the video was shot and I'm not now. In fact, the production company hired me via a local talent agency that is called 'Non-Union Talent Service'- NUTS for short.

• Do you agree with the political positions espoused in the Target video?

Being a non-union actor doesn't mean I am an 'anti-union' actor. However, while I am big-picture pro-union and a political liberal, Target is within it's rights to produce a video which discourages their employees from joining one.

• Why did you decide to do the video, and how much were you paid?

In the small-market professional acting world, we are often hired to work on in-house videos and live events for all varieties of corporations and entities.

Vegetarian actors have to decide if they'll work for Butterball. A feminist has to decide if she'll work for Maxim...And being an actor in these situations isn't the same dilemma as it may be for other employees who object to the subject their employers espouse. It isn't just about giving your time to an organization or a issue you may personally disagree with - it is to give your face and your voice to it. For an actor it's more intimate, the stakes are higher... sometimes Gawker readers call you names, for example.

People hate, deeply, over this issue and I think it is historically justified outrage. I - a non-union actor in the mid-west, however, am not a great target (he-hem) of that outrage.

All that being said - I didn't know the subject of the video until after I was offered the role. I may or may not have auditioned if I had known what it was - but 'not going for a job' and 'refusing a job' are two different things. The video - although 'cheesy' as you call it - was not incendiary. As a non-union actor, on what ground did I have to throw down my script and storm off set? As it stood I just felt sorta' gross when I got home and hoped I'd never see it...

As for the pay - I'm not going to give you the specific amount. However to give some perspective that may translate both nationally and virtually - it was a little over a month's salary for a two-night shoot.

Thank you for giving me a chance to give my two-cents. May the vitriol be tempered...

Target's previous anti-union training video, which we published in 2011, also used unionized actors.

[Image via and via]

"Write what you know," they say, and Backdoor Teen Mom and New York Times bestselling author Farrah Abraham apparently takes them very seriously. She's working on an erotic romance trilogy called—wait for it—Celebrity Sex Tape.

The first book, In The Making, will be a fictionalized account of Abraham's experiences starring in a reality show and two of the least sexy sex tapes ever inflicted on worldwide audiences. (The same sex tapes she once claimed "ruined her life ," for what it's worth.)

"I was inspired to write a book about someone who went from being 'normal' to a reality star in the public eye. Book One: In the Making allowed me to explore my personal experiences over the last year while also branching out into fiction at the same time," she told Fishwrapper.

Abraham hopefully describes Celebrity Sex Tape as her "first romance series" (in the same way that Vivid Video hopefully described her as "Farrah Superstar") and says she wants to make it a "learning experience" for her readers.

If she's trying for a cautionary tale, she's definitely on the right track.

[H/T: Uproxx]

Last month, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent a letter to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden admitting that the NSA and CIA used a loophole to search the emails and other electronic communications of Americans without a warrant. Clapper defended the searches as legal.

"As you know, when Congress reauthorized Section 702, the proposal to restrict such queries was specifically raised and ultimately not adopted," Clapper wrote in the letter, referring to a 2011 rule change to the FISA Amendments Act. From the New York Times:

A 2008 law, the FISA Amendments Act, legalized the warrantless surveillance program that the Bush administration created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The law permits the government to intercept phone calls and emails without a warrant and on domestic soil, as long as the surveillance target is a noncitizen who lives abroad.

In fall 2011, the Obama administration obtained the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for analysts to search for "U.S. person identifiers" in the repository, enabling them to pull out phone calls and emails involving Americans that had been intercepted because the people involved had been in contact with a foreign target.

Sen. Wyden, who has been one of the NSA spying program's strongest critics, called the tactic "unacceptable."

"It is now clear to the public that the list of ongoing intrusive surveillance practices by the NSA includes not only bulk collection of Americans' phone records, but also warrantless searches of the content of Americans' personal communications," Wyden said in a joint statement with Sen. Mark Udall. "Senior officials have sometimes suggested that government agencies do not deliberately read Americans' e-mails, monitor their online activity or listen to their phone calls without a warrant. However, the facts show that those suggestions were misleading, and that intelligence agencies have indeed conducted warrantless searches for Americans' communications using the 'back-door search' loophole in section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."

The "back-door search" was first revealed last August by the Guardian, who based their report on documents provided by Edward Snowden.

[Image via AP]

Until now, no one adequately embarrassed Silicon Valley on TV. All prior attempts either embarrassed themselves, or fell just short. But Silicon Valley, Mike Judge's HBO foray into the sociopathic pit of Northern California's tech scene is beyond adequate: It gives the fuckers the graceful slap across the face they need.

It's unclear why it's taken this long for Hollywood to skewer its Northern Californian cousins. Just this week, Amazon announced it's passing on Betas, its well-intentioned, online-only comedy series about nerd crisis. Maybe this scene isn't enough to hold attention spans. Judge's Silicon Valley (which premiers on April 6th) takes the same basic shapes—sociopath parvenues, villainous investors, clumsy wantrepreneurs, startup jargon—and builds it into not just a cutting portrait of an industry, but a genuinely funny comedy series. It's not Office Space 2014, but it's still corporate satire in top form.

Other than maybe The Social Network, no film or TV series has really accurately portrayed these new monsters, our mercenary Asperger's overclass. It's not enough to just have a show about "nerds": We've seen plenty of nerds, and freaks, and geeks. But we've never seen a faithful take on the startup goons.

In the very first episode, a group of young men—all white save one—are thrown into a crisis of judgment. In Silicon Valley, of course, that can only mean one thing: money. Our central-nervous-meek-white-guy-programmer Richard (Thomas Middleditch) is offered $10 million dollars for the whole of his "company" (essentially just himself) by one investor, or a relatively modest six figure sum in exchange for an equity stake. These are both very good options for someone living with a bunch of other computer science slobs—the other protagonist dudes of Silicon Valley—and their slob king benefactor Erlich (T.J. Miller), who runs a quarter-assed startup "incubator" out of his house. Unable to decide on which older white guy's money to take, Richard vomits his way to a doctor, who sends him home only after pitching his own a medical care app.

This total inability for self-care, the sad dance of the tech-industry manchild, is what gives Silicon Valley its momentum, and what prevents it from steering it into caricature. Everyone on the show is just barely human, but still humane. It's so easy to believe the worst about this world because so much of it rings true—would we really be shocked if someone in the real Silicon Valley said "If we can make your audio and video files smaller, we can make cancer smaller," as does an investor villain in the show? Silicon Valley's characters can't veer into over-the-top territory (a la Betas) because they're too impotent to even be pricks to each other. When Richard's new investor Peter Gregory—a perfect clone of Paul Graham played by Christopher Evan Welch—tells him he needs to trim the fat at the company, he's forced to question whether he's heartless enough to cut out his best friend. The entire company is suffering from an "asshole vacuum," Erlich scolds.

Hours of these people struggling with their lukewarm dreams ("I just wanted to work with computers and get paid for it") and middling greed could've been grating, but Silicon Valley is never as obnoxious as the geography it's panning. Judge adds in enough quick gags (a stripper with a Square reader, a brainstorming session for silly startup names) to break up the fact that we're dealing with almost uniformly unlikable characters—like Entourage, you might find yourself hooked by how turned off you are by this strange place. You'll find yourself caring what happens to this house of dicks—women are mostly sidelined, true to life—just enough to keep watching. But when the the wilting programmers betray, suffer, and treat each other poorly in the pursuit of change-the-world ambition, you'll relish that too. Just like the wider industry, Silicon Valley is a terrific mix of the goofy and the depressing, the people with genius IQs who still struggle to function. You'll cackle a lot and be glad you aren't there.

Back in November, the Washington Post reported that New York Times columnist David Brooks and his wife of 27 years, Sarah, were divorcing. The unsourced item, under the collective byline of the “Reliable Source” gossip column, rattled a certain portion of the Acela corridor: Here was a leading conservative pundit, a father of three who has blamed single mothers for the country’s “fraying social fabric,” dismantling his own marriage.

The paper, a chief competitor of the Times, even quoted Brooks as saying, some months prior, that “if you have a great career and a crappy marriage, you will be miserable.” The news spurred several writers to accuse Brooks of hypocrisy (which opened a separate debate about the propriety of doing so).

But was the item correct? A spokesperson for the court system of Washington, D.C., where Brooks and his wife, Sarah Brooks, have lived since 2012, told Gawker that neither spouse has filed divorce papers in the four-plus months since the Post’s report. Brooks’s relationship status on his Facebook profile remains “Married.” (Judging from its recent activity, the profile appears to be active.) And residence records maintained by Nexis indicate that the Brookses continue to live together in their $3.95 million Cleveland Park home.

“We stand by the report,” a spokesperson for the paper told Gawker, without elaborating on the report’s sourcing.

Did the Brookses change their minds? Was the original story groundless? Few in Brooks’s fairly wide circle were willing to discuss the discrepancy.

“Now why in hell would I talk to you about a friend’s private life?” said Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic and a member of Brooks’s local synagogue, Adas Israel.* “Check your compass sometime.”

Another possibility is that one or both spouses wish to conceal the details of their separation. Which is very, very difficult to do in the District of Columbia.

“We don’t anonymize names,” the court spokesperson, Leah Gurowitz, said. “On rare occasions there is a motion to seal a case, but the standards for that are very high. I don’t recall any divorce/custody cases that have been sealed and I have been here a dozen years.”

To file for divorce without creating a public record, the Brookses would need to quietly relocate to a state like New York, where uncontested family cases are kept confidential. New York law requires, for divorce cases, that both parties reside there for at least one year—if only one spouse resides there, it’s two years—and there’s no indication that either David or Sarah Brooks has resettled in New York, or elsewhere.

Nevada gives out speedier divorces, but even those require 90 days’ residency, which would mean uprooting the Brookses’ school-aged children. If you fly to Guam, it’s possible to exploit certain loopholes and divorce yet more quickly, but, again, there’s no sign of either Brooks relocating even briefly to the far side of the International Date Line.

Brooks did not acknowledge requests for comment.

* Correction: While Brooks belongs to Adas Israel, a Conservative synagogue, Wieseltier belongs to Kesher Israel, a modern Orthodox one located in Georgetown. Writes Wieseltier: “This is not just a journalistic delinquency. It is also a metaphysical one.” Gawker regrets the error.

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

[Photo credit: Getty Images]

The protests against tech corporation shuttle buses have gone from high production value to gross out gags.

Yesterday's blockade at 24th and Valencia in the Mission consisted of dancers in clown suit onesies celebrating the fake "GMuni" program. But the opposition in Oakland this morning was more crustpunk, less Marcel Marceau.

Protester on roof of yahoo bus vomited on the windshield #techbus #googlebus #vomit #takethattechiescum pic.twitter.com/Midy6WO3JD

— The Red Son (@revscript) April 2, 2014

According to activists on Indybay.org, almost 50 "rebels" blocked a pick up zone for tech buses in front of the MacArthur BART station in Oakland Tuesday morning, including one protestor who supposedly vomited on the windshield from atop a Yahoo bus.

I've reached out to Defend the Bay Area—a more radical coalition which is organizing "a week of action against the destruction" of their home ending April 5th—to confirm whether it was one of their protestors . . . who could somehow magically hurl on cue.

Indybay says the action in Oakland delayed shuttle buses from Apple bus, Google bus and Yahoo bus for more than half an hour, until Oakland police and BART cops "pushed the demonstrators off the street." Photos show demonstrators jumping on top of the Yahoo bus and an activist swathed in black morbidly offering Google employees "a ride to Mountainview [sic] in a hearse."

Last night's vote from San Francisco's board of supervisors leaves the opposition with plenty to barf about. The board denied an environmental appeal designed to stall an 18-month pilot program that would "allow shuttles with permits to stop in certain red zones for $1 per stop per day," Ellen Huet reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Appellants were frustrated by what they saw as preferential treatment from the city toward tech interests.

When it comes to bike lanes, Muni and other city improvements, "we're told: this takes time. We need to complete an (environmental review)," said Tom Temprano, co-president of the Harvey Milk Club, one of the appellants. "But for this project, time is suddenly not an issue."

Tech workers also took to public comment - after almost five hours of waiting - to defend their side.

"The shuttles have definitely allowed me to not drive many miles a day," said one tech worker. "Please, as a resident, let this program go forward."

Opponents of the pilot program dubbed the large charter buses "pirate shuttles" but emphasized that they were against the policy, not against tech workers.

Residents often wonder why the shuttle buses, which reduce car traffic, have become such a lightning rod for the local backlash against unequal treatment. Part of it is because protestors initially demanded the risible sum of $1 billion in back payments for years of blocking public transportation stops. Protestors planned to put the funds towards pressing issues like affordable housing and eviction defense. Part of it is because they are such a hulking target, easier to point at than gentrification. And part of it is because it gets attention for the cause—even if that attention is a visceral aversion to whatever is dripping down Yahoo's windshield.

Update: A representative for Defend the Bay sent Valleywag the following statement:

Defend The Bay Area is a clearinghouse for actions resisting the disastrous effects of the tech industry on the Bay Area. As for this morning, it's pretty clear that someone who felt sick at the sight of the tech buses vomited on one.

We encourage all Bay Area residents to take action against the tech takeover's many manifestations: increased rents, exclusive access to transportation, and the intensified police repression that accompanies gentrification, which is literally killing black and brown residents in their own neighborhoods.

DtBA does not have members and does not organize actions, it is merely a framework for coordination.

h/t @EllenHuet

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

[Top image via @revscript, bottom image via IndyBay.org]

A deaf pit bull puppy is back with his family after being stolen in an apartment break-in last month.

Baltimore County Police have charged two men with burglary and theft in the dognapping of the puppy, whose name is Thor.

Mark Gibson, 37, and William Hudson, 33, were arrested Tuesday in a mall parking lot while trying to sell the dog back to his owners, who had offered a $1,000 reward for his safe return. The suspects are being held on $20,000 bail.

Meanwhile, on the Help Get Thor Home Facebook group, nearly 2,000 Thor fans are celebrating the puppy's homecoming.

Police are still investigating the March 13 burglary. The victims reported that a 55-inch TV, a PlayStation 3, and a MacBook Pro were taken from their Timonium, Md. apartment, along with Thor. None of the electronics have been recovered.

[Photo Credit: WJZ Baltimore]

When Rachel Frederickson won The Biggest Loser last season, her dramatic loss of 155 pounds (over half her starting weight) raised concerns that she was too skinny . That she might have some problems to work through. That a televised weight-loss competition maybe isn't the healthiest way to get in shape?

At 5'4", Frederickson weighed just 105 pounds by the end of the season. But now, about two months later, she's up to 125 pounds, which is, in her words, "my perfect weight."

For context, Frederickson looked like this at the show's finale:

She looks sick not healthy. Worried now. pic.twitter.com/6hzKSjK0xj"#BiggestLoserFinale #rachelbiggestloser

— Christy Johnson (@christyj_37067) February 5, 2014

Now she looks like this:

It's time!! pic.twitter.com/H4Ff1PKChM

— Rachel Frederickson (@RachelInspires) March 3, 2014

She actually seems to appreciate viewers' horror at how much weight she lost during the show. "It started a discussion about body image," she told Us Weekly this week. "That's huge."

It's good that the discussion about unhealthy weight loss on the show finally happened. But should it have really taken this long? The Biggest Loser is a reality-television competition in which overweight people compete to see who can lose the biggest percentage of their starting weight. As a reality show, it puts contestants through a completely unrealistic training program that involves working out all day, strict dietary limitations, and losing an entire person's worth of weight in about 20 weeks.

Frederickson, it would seem, wasn't trying to get to her "perfect weight" during the show. After all, it's a competition that gives contestants all the tools they need to win, not a guide for healthy weight loss. The show demands dramatic change, and Rachel delivered. And now that the money's in the bank, she can get back to where her body is comfortable and healthy.

Shocking that a weight-loss program that makes its money off of corporate partnerships with Jennie-O Turkey and Planet Fitness isn't the paragon of health and self-esteem its promoters want you to think it is.

[Image via AP]

A 68-year-old man has been charged with obscenity after he started masturbating during a yoga session in a public park.

Two female witnesses said Bill Kachle was "holding a yoga pose" when they spotted him near a bike trail in northern Virginia. He waved his arms and shouted at them, then dropped his pants and began stroking his penis, according to a police report.

And that's when things got spectacularly weird. Well, weirder:

Thereafter, the subject then picked up a dead animal, ran into the northbound lanes of travel on the George Washington Memorial Parkway and threw the dead animal at a passing car.

The white-haired, bearded Kachle then walked back to the trail, pointed at the two women, and went right back to jerking off.

The masturbating yogi has been charged with one misdemeanor count of "disorderly conduct/obscene acts."

The complaint against him doesn't specify what type of dead animal he used as a projectile.

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

Though 55% of Americans say they favor legalized weed, a new poll finds that 75% of Americans believe it's "inevitable" that weed will be legalized. Just legalize it already. They'll save so much money on polling.

As tech communities on both coasts grapple with issues of gender inclusion and harassment , casual meetups will be more and more important. But this is definitely one of the worst places you can meet.

Tomorrow night, a group of Stack Overflow users—a sort of tech Q&A social network—will convene at Patriot Saloon in Manhattan, pictured above. Hmm. It should be fun! Likeminded people in similar professions, talking about work, play, and whatever else. A meeting of the minds.

Get excited for the NYC MeetUp! It is 3 days overdue. Let's do this right, let's do this soon.
We are meeting at The Patriot Saloon

So far so good. What else?

We'll have the entire second floor space with pool table, hot eastern European bartender, seating, and specials! $3 Bud, Bud Light and Coors Light $4 Mixed Well Drinks 10% off Food See you there! Bring your friends!

Oh, come on, you idiots. A quick glance at New York magazine's summary of Patriot Saloon indicates this is probably not a "welcoming space" for people who aren't "straight dudes" or even "middle school boys."

Run by the same people who brought us Yogi's—the same people rumored to hire bartenders by putting out a sign reading "Drunk Sluts Wanted"—the Patriot is gloriously, unabashedly, just a little pornographically, all about the boobage. It's a two-story bar bannered in "lost" bras, but the primary décor comes chiefly in the form of various types of mammaries: the massive ones of the bartenders (who appear on a Flickr fan-club gallery, "Ladies of the Patriot Saloon"), the attention-seeking ones on the girls-night-out gangs grooving on the bar-top, and the quivering manboobs on the unshaven peanut gallery wedged up against the bar. Pabst is ordered by the $8 pitcher; all other drinks are superfluous. There are also $1.75 burgers, though nobody seems to be eating them.

Well, at least the burgers are cheap. If you feel like being part of the problem, sign up right here.

Photo via Foursquare

Attention, ladies: Ten months after it was first announced on live television, Vladimir Putin's divorce from his wife Lyudmila is officially final.

A gunman opened fire on Fort Hood this afternoon killing at least one person. According to authorities, the man is still at large.

Multiple injuries have already been reported and at least one person was transported to a hospital. A witness told News 10 the man fired around 20 rounds into a post motor pool, injuring three people.

The army base in currently on lockdown.

All personnel on post are asked to shelter in place.

— Fort Hood (@forthood) April 2, 2014

This is the second mass shooting at Fort Hood in five years—in 2009, Nidal Malik Hassan shot and killed 13 people, injuring 30 others.

UPDATE 6:22 PM: A Fort Hood spokesperson tells KWTX that at least one person has died in the shooting.

UPDATE 7:40 PM: The AP reports the gunman was the sole fatality.

BREAKING: Justice Department internal report: Fort Hood gunman dead of self-inflicted wound.

— The Associated Press (@AP) April 2, 2014

[image via AP]

What's gnarlier than a startup office with a pool and ping pong table five blocks from the Santa Monica beach? Using a nice chunk of the $54 million you raised to inhabit a Venice "fortress" once owned by Anjelica Houston.

Curbed reported yesterday that the anonymous app Whisper—the Facebook to Secret's Tumblr—might be renting this $11.15 million home as its new Los Angeles headquarters. A source confirmed the move to Valleywag. CEO Michael Heyward liked to host theme parties in the old office, which was dubbed "the Chamber of Secrets," to maximize professionalism. (Business Insider also noted in January that a new office was imminent.)

According to Curbed:

The house, designed by Huston's late husband, sculptor Robert Graham, was first listed in 2010 for $18 million, but, despite some pricechops, the property languished. That's not to say there weren't a few close calls: The Hollywood Reporter says that producer/house collector Megan Ellison was in escrow to buy it late last year, and, before that, there was some totally serious, unironic talk of turning the house into a private "gourmet bathing club" with a farm-to-table restaurant and seltzer-water tastings.

"Unironic" will go over like gangbusters with the locals .

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

It's basically the Devil Wears Prada, but with less insight and more drug smuggling.

An anonymous former personal assistant wrote the ultimate blind item for New York Magazine today about a well-known and apparently well-medicated Hollywood actress.

What does a life spent catering to the every need of Hollywood's elite entail? According to the assistant, her hellish duties included:

• Breaking up with the actress's "very prominent movie actor boyfriend" for her, in person.
• Having a cup of Starbucks waiting next to the actress's bed every morning.
• Checking newspaper reviews for good books, and then buying those books.
• Watching the news and then relaying that news back to the actress.
• Going over scripts with the actress.
• Driving people to see the actress.
• Filling prescriptions for the actress.
• Leaving family functions to pick up the emotional actress from a therapy appointment that turned out to be a psychic appointment.
• Buying weed for the actress.
• Unknowingly transporting "stuff" in a checked bag for the actress.

But the straw that broke the assistant's back was when the actress decided to take her boyfriend to an international film festival instead of the assistant, even though she promised the assistant.

Excuse me? "No, there's this guy who I'm seeing right now, and he's just going to come in for a day, instead of the two weeks that you would be there." And she wanted to use my flight to bring him in for one day.

So the assistant quit, but not before she called up a bunch of guys to out the actress's STDs.

I would go pick up her medicine for her, all her pills, and after that I started checking every little thing to see what it was. I was like, Oh my God, I know exactly what she has now. I realized I needed to warn whoever was with her about certain STDs. I called the ex-boyfriend, and I was like, "Hey, you need to get checked out. I don't think she'll ever call you." And he was like, "Oh, shit. Thanks." This was seven months after the breakup. That's just the nice thing to do, to let them know.

Who are these people?

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The answer is "This one from Wednesday's night episode," and the question is "What was the most awkward mid-show interview in Jeopardy history?"

Alex Trebek will rue the day he asked contestant Tom Kavanaugh how he planned to spend his winnings. Turns out Kavanaugh is working on a documentary about sweatshop labor around the world, including "the 8-year-olds who made your fancy suit there, Alex."

"Was that a too low? Was that a low blow?" Tom asked, as Trebek recoiled.

Is anyone else wondering who made Kavanaugh's dress shirt, though?

[H/T: Uproxx]

Faster at liquidating Facebook shares than a speeding bullet, able to leap across the promotional book tour circuit in a single bound, it's Sheryl Sandberg!

CNET reports that "Female Force: Sheryl Sandberg" will hit stands in June, though there is some very bad news: she will be depicted "without a caped crusader costume and any superpowers." It looks to me like she's doing some sort of telekinetic thing with that mouse cursor—and that strange bare midriff thing could be a costume?—but we'll have to settle for a more realistic Sandberg story:

The comic, written by Michael Frizell, details both Sandberg's professional and personal life, from her family to her education to her successful career which has made her famous within the tech industry.

What a snooze—they could have at least had her fighting Magneto or taking urgent calls from Larry Summers on some sort of top-secret SherylPhone. Instead, we'll have to deal with more mundane action:

A call is placed to the Facebook boardroom...

THE ZUCK: Sheryl, someone can't afford a nanny!

The Sandberg: Tell them to... work harder. And buy my book.

THE ZUCK: Earth is safe again.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, have an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican during their one-day visit to Rome on Wednesday. Image via Oli Scarff/Getty.