In 1970, George Lucas needed dozens of actors with shaved heads for his sci-fi dystopian movie THX 1138. He had trouble filling the roles at first, since so few actresses wanted to cut their locks, but Lucas eventually found the extras he needed in a strange utopian community where everyone worshipped sobriety and expressed solidarity by shaving their heads. It was called Synanon, and over the course of three decades it would become one of the weirdest and most vindictive cults of the 20th century.

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life..."

Charles E. Dederich spent the better part of two decades wandering the country as a barely functional drunk. A sales exec from Ohio, Dederich moved to Southern California after his first divorce, and in 1956 gave Alcoholics Anonymous a good faith effort at the insistence of his second wife. She chose to leave him anyway, but the program really resonated with Dederich, who quickly became a sober evangelist for everything AA stood for. Dederich was only dismayed by one fact: AA didn't accept other kinds of substance abusers to their meetings.

Narcotics Anonymous was founded in Los Angeles in 1953, but by the late 1950s (when Dederich was sobering up) the organization was still very disorganized, and NA groups rarely met. So in 1958 Dederich decided to form his own group that, unlike AA, embraced all kinds of addicts. He first called his group the Tender Loving Care club, but soon after renamed it Synanon.

Dederich is credited with a lot of positive innovations early on in his career as a drug rehab guru. He focused on a marginalized group that most institutions wanted nothing to do with. He was said to have coined the phrase "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." He was stern with the people around him, but he believed this tough love was necessary to achieve and maintain sobriety.

But Dederich made it quite clear early on that treating addicts was merely a byproduct of his larger mission. He wanted to create an experimental society that would transform the world. Over the years, the organization grew—it built businesses and started schools—and its goal was no less than a utopian revolution. Synanon was a new way of living, as important to its members as any of the world's major religions.

"This is the kind of revolution that moved the world from Judaism to Catholicism to Protestantism to Synanism," Dederich would insist. "This is a total revolution game."

But as one might anticipate given that kind of rhetoric, a dark side emerged. Not with one single act, but with many small changes that would enable the organization to evolve into something much more dangerous. What was once a small drug rehab facility in sunny Santa Monica would become a violent, abusive and well-funded cult with satellites throughout California and beyond.

The Game Begins

"He was the first person I have ever met that was able to somehow able to cut through the nonsense," one early Synanite said in a film referring to Charles Dederich. "He struck a chord."

That chord was one of supposed honestly, with Dederich's brash and booming voice dominating whatever room he entered. And that booming voice made him a worthy opponent in a brutal form of therapy created by the man himself. It was called The Game.

The Game was most important method of treatment at Synanon. When it came to getting addicts clean, the program rejected any form of pharmaceuticals or tapering of drugs. Everyone went cold turkey, and junkies were left on a couch to writhe and vomit for a few days while they went through withdrawal.

The Game was the medicine administered later, a kind of group therapy invented by Dederich where people sat in a circle to express (and often shout) their frustrations at each other. The confrontational approach was a way to hash out everything that bothered you about others in your group. It was supposed to help you learn about yourself as well. While playing the Game, your frustrations didn't even need to be true. Lying was just one of many strategies in The Game, which could last anywhere from one to 48 hours.

As Rod Janzen notes in his book about Synanon (a book, it should be noted, that's bizarrely sympathetic to the cult and its methods), Dederich's writings suggested that the Game start with a question like "The most boring person in this circle is ____?" or "What really pissed you off most this week?"

On its face, many found The Game to be positive and a constructive (if admittedly unconventional) way to deal with issues within the group. But it would lay the groundwork for the abuse that was to come.

Meeting the Neighbors

Many of Synanon's neighbors in Santa Monica weren't terribly excited to have a drug rehab facility in their neighborhood. The Synanon members faced harassment early on, some of it unjustified and rooted in racism and fear of addicts, some of it seemingly more deserved. In 1961, Dederich spent just under a month in jail for zoning violations and operating a hospital without a license. In this case, he was guilty on both counts.

Those events and persecutions only served to make the Synanites more cohesive as a group, and elevated Dederich to martyr status, suffering unjust incarceration for his beliefs. It also didn't lead anywhere; at this point, the group was firmly committed to non-violence. But it wouldn't be until much later that Synanon would take its revenge. Soon, that would change.

That Hollywood Scene

In the early 1960s, the Synanon house became quite the fashionable hang-out for Hollywood's more cerebral celebrities. Guest speakers in 1963 alone included Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, legendary sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, and the original host of the Tonight Show, Steve Allen. Other visitors included Leonard Nimoy, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, and Milton Berle, among dozens of other curious stars. Synanon had some pretty cool parties, thanks to the fact that so many jazz musicians were around trying to kick their habit.

But it wasn't just the Hollywood elite and L.A. musicians lining up to get a peek at the exciting things happening in Santa Monica. Others who couldn't resist poking their heads in for a look at the program included counterculture drug aficionado Tim Leary, futurist Buckminster Fuller, and labor activist Cesar Chavez.

Politicians also came knocking. Senator Thomas Dodd from Connecticut claimed in 1962 that, "There is indeed a miracle on the beach at Santa Monica." Jerry Brown Jr., the current governor of California, even visited Synanon while with his father in the mid-60s. Synanon was widely held up as a tremendously successful program by countless politicians well into the early 1970s. No wonder, given the kinds of numbers Synanon was reporting.

Dederich's organization insisted recovery rates were anywhere form 80 to 100 percent, though those figures were never confirmed by outside sources for obvious reasons. It simply wasn't true. Some observers claim that fewer than 70 people in Synanon's entire existence—of the thousands who sought treatment—could reasonably have been claimed as rehabilitated, though it's probably somewhere in between these extremes.

It's especially tough to judge rehabilitation rates when a program's founder eventually comes to claim there's no such thing as rehabilitation, and that staying within the organization is the only true path.

Growth Curve

Starting in 1965, Synanon started buying up land in Marin County, California. It would eventually have three sites in the county, comprising just over 3,300 acres in total, making it the largest private property owner in the county.

That year it also reached a high-watermark of public awareness: It got the Hollywood movie treatment. The film starred Edmund O'Brien as Dederich, and was even filmed on location in Santa Monica with the full cooperation of the Synanon organization.

In 1967, Synanon also purchased a palatial new building in Santa Monica called Club Casa del Mar. First built as a hotel in 1926 and then used by the US Army during World War II, the building sat on a gorgeous spot on the beach. Now a hotel again, you'd never know its bizarre history if you walked inside.

At the same time, Dederich himself abandoned Santa Monica, moving north to his Tomales Bay site. By the mid-1970s, his organization had acquired over 2,000 acres in Tulare County.

One reason for the Synanon's rapid expansion? The organization was fast attracting non-addicts into the fold. Aside from the bevy of celebrities that would make appearances, locals who had never been considered addicts (squares, as Synanon called them) also wanted in. They were reluctantly allowed, and by 1967 Synanon broadened its mission to include "research into the causes of alienation and delinquency."

Synanon's ranks were swelling. After starting in 1958 with just 40 junkies in a rundown building, it now boasted 823 members and some incredibly expensive digs to boot.

Circling the Wagons

By 1968, a new type of Synanon membership was established: the Lifestyler. Members of this group were allowed to have jobs outside of Synanon and live outside of the Synanon community, provided they gave most of their income to the organization. This new kind of member allowed Synanon to fill its coffers with outside money that it had otherwise been reluctant to receive. After all, the organization was leaving a lot of cash on the table by declining government-funded grants. Why? Those grants stipulated that there be some kind of independent examination and verification of success rates through drug tests and the like. These were flatly rejected.

This experiment with Lifestylers wouldn't last long, however, as this type of member was often accused of not being committed enough to the cause. Most Lifestylers washed out of the program, though some joined the ranks fully, leaving their homes behind as a show of true commitment.

By 1968, the group was becoming even more isolationist, with Dederich declaring that it would no longer graduate any of their members. This meant that no addict who kicked their addiction would be allowed to "graduate" to a life outside of Synanon. What little pretense the group had about helping addicts rejoin the outside world had been dropped. Synanon was now the only place to be, a narrowly focused utopian experiment that was ready to swallow you whole.

After the massive expansion into all parts of California, not to mention satellite offices in places as far out as Detroit, the business side of the organization was growing tremendously. In 1968, Synanon was bringing in roughly $1.2 million from its various businesses, including gas stations and a manufacturer of branded promotional items. By 1976 it was grossing $8.7 million, with estimated assets of over $30 million.

Raising Kids

Children inside the Synanon cult were raised communally. This was a common practice romanticized by utopian communities of the 19th and 20th century (including in Upton Sinclair's failed Helicon Home Colony), though Synanon took it a step further than most.

Parents had highly restricted access to their children after they reached the age of about 6-9 months. By the end of the 1960s, adult members might only see their kids once a week, even if they wanted to see them more often. The policies dictating how often a given member could see their children became more and more restrictive throughout the 1960s, and by 1972 Dederich had proposed that the children from every California branch be moved to a single site in Marin County. This was quite obviously a way for Dederich to better control his followers. But for many people, it was the final straw. According to Janzen, between 200 and 300 people left the organization after this new policy was proposed.

"Dederich and others displayed a good-riddance attitude," Janzen writes in The Rise and Fall of Synanon. "Those who left lacked commitment to Synanon's new utopian vision, they said." The choice was clear: Your family, or that of Synanon.

LSD and Do As I Say

Synanon was a completely drug-free environment, save for aspirin, caffeine and nicotine. But there was another drug that Dederich didn't consider harmful. In fact, he credited this drug with expanding his mind and allowing him to create the Synanon program in the first place. That drug was LSD.

Early on, Dederich's experience with LSD at UCLA, under the supervision of doctors, was written about with the kind of mythical terminology that you'd expect of a charismatic leader. In 1961, one admirer profiling the group explained that Dederich was not affected by the LSD as some commoners might be:

Chuck was an atypical patient in that he experienced no regression, no sensory enhancement or hallucinations. During the active period of LSD intoxication, his normal traits appeared merely in a sort of caricature. One phrase that came into his mind impressed him: "It doesn't matter, but, at the same time it matters exquisitely." He would go to his room and give way to tears for an hour or more every day. Even with the seeming grief, there was euphoria.

He was seemingly stronger than powerful hallucinogens. And yet he would credit them with inspiring him to start Synanon. Sometimes his philosophy was do as I say, not as I do. Other times, it was explicitly, do exactly as I do.

In 1970, Dederich decided that he should quit smoking for health reasons. Once a safe-haven for nicotine, with centers filled with smoke, Synanon banned smoking for everybody. This top-down control over the lives of Synanites was common, and would ultimately contribute to its violent transition. Dederich would act on impulse, rationalize his behavior, and then claim that had been the plan all along.

A pivotal moment occurred in 1973 when a woman was speaking disrespectfully of Dederich's wife Betty during a session of the Game. This, of course, was part of the Game, but for whatever reason, this time Dederich took it very personally.

Dederich grabbed a can of soda and poured it on the woman. At first, he apologized, but he almost immediately recanted his apology and rationalized his behavior as justified. "I gave the woman a lesson in manners," he explained.

Finding Religion

In 1974, Synanon moved to become recognized as a religion. The organization was running up against troubles with the IRS and had realized, much like other self-help cults of the 20th century, that being recognized as a religion could help it maintain tax-exempt status.

After abandoning drug treatment as its sole mission in the 1960s, Synanon could no longer claim to be simply a non-profit organization. And its substantial for-profit businesses weren't helping its case. Becoming a full-fledged religion was the best way to protect its massive holdings from the tax man.

It didn't work, though. The IRS never officially recognized Synanon as a religion, though it would be at least another decade before it finally stripped the company of its tax-exempt status.

Death and Embracing Violence

At same time it was claiming its religious rights, Synanon stepped up its use of violence within its ranks. Suspected "spies" were severely beaten. Teenagers sent to Synanon to help cure juvenile delinquency were regularly physically abused for insubordination. Everyone in the group started shaving their heads. Things were gradually, but steadily, getting worse inside the sober cult of Synanon.

Dederich was also becoming less interested in having any children around, telling many members that if they wanted to have kids they probably shouldn't be a part of Synanon. "I understand it's more like crapping a football than anything else," Dederich would say about childbirth in 1976.

By January of 1977, Dederich's distaste for children turned into an official policy. Men were pressured to get vasectomies, and women were shamed into getting abortions. These policies instigated another wave of defections, though Dederich's increasingly inward focus caused him not to care. As Rod Janzen notes in his book about Synanon, one member told Dederich, "I'll give you my life, Chuck, but not my balls." Notably, Dederich didn't get a vasectomy himself. Those that stayed, completely beaten and indoctrinated, didn't seem to care that Dederich had become a tyrant who couldn't even pretend that he held himself to the same standard as other Synanites.

Chuck Dederich's wife Betty died of lung cancer on April 19, 1977. After that, all bets were off. Betty, a strong woman in her own right, seemed to dial back some of Chuck's weirder megalomaniacal tendencies. After her death, nothing could temper his darker desires to control people.

By October of that year, only a few months after the death of his wife, Dederich's policies became even more extreme and controlling. He declared that married Synanites should split up and find new partners. He started by breaking up his own daughter's marriage. About 600 couples were divorced by the following year.

At the same time that Synanon was becoming increasingly militant and strange, it was enjoying substantial support from American businesses as a charitable organization. As Richard Ofshe notes in his 1980 paper The Social Development of the Synanon Cult, there were 20,000 businesses and organizations giving to or interacting with Synanon by the late 1970s, "including one out of five corporations in the Fortune 500 who were listed either as donating or as doing business with the organization."

By the late 1970s, Synanon was going from bad to worse in some terrifying ways. The group's reported purchase of over $200,000 in firearms in 1978 raised plenty of eyebrows. If you were on the fence about Synanon's classification as a cult before, you certainly had fewer doubts now.

In 1978, ex-Synanite Phil Ritter would try to extract his young daughter from the organization and nearly paid with his life. Ritter's wife was still in the organization, and had moved with their child to Synanon's Detroit facility. Ritter sought legal action against the cult and in response, the church sent two men to beat him senseless in his own driveway. He wound up in a coma for a week.

Bad Press

During the 1970s Synanon attracted a fair amount of attention from the media, though unlike the positive press it was getting in the 1960s for its drug rehab "successes," the coverage was overwhelmingly negative.

Major news networks had started slowly reporting on the organization, but much of the legwork that went into exposing Synanon as a violent cult was done by a tiny newspaper with a circulation of only about 1,700. The Point Reyes Light in Marin County was dogged in its pursuit of the Synanon story, which involved child abuse, wrongful imprisonment, assault and misappropriation of funds. Despite being constantly threatened for libel action, the paper didn't back down. The Light even won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for its reporting on the organization, something virtually unheard of for a paper of that size.

Members of Synanon didn't take kindly to the criticism. The group lashed out at anyone who dared question their organization; after an expose by NBC in 1978, members sent hundreds of ominous letters to NBC executives, threatening physical harm.

Syanon also spent the 1970s suing anybody who wrote a critical article or aired a negative TV segment about it. In 1972 it sued Hearst Corporation over a San Francisco Examiner article that described the cult as the "racket of the century." When it was finally revealed to the broader public just what a financial and emotional scam Synanon had become, this was no longer considered hyperbole.

The Rattlesnake

The most famous incidence of the organization's violence—and the one that Americans old enough to remember may recall—was a planned attack by Synanon on a Los Angeles lawyer. It's remembered largely due to the bizarre choice of weapon: a rattlesnake.

Attorney Paul Morantz had successfully represented a young woman who had been held against her will by the cult. Morantz came home on October 10, 1978 to his house in the Pacific Palisades and opened his mailbox, only to be immediately bitten by a rattlesnake. The people who had placed the snake there had removed its rattle so as to keep it quiet. Morantz rushed outside yelling to his neighbors for help.

Thankfully they were able to call an ambulance in time, saving his life after quick and extensive treatment with anti-venom. Two men—20-year-old Lance Kenton and 28-year-old Joseph Musico—were charged with attempted murder, along with Dederich for conspiring to commit it.

Dederich's obsession with recording audio came back to haunt him, as the police produced tapes of him talking about violence and specifically mentioning Morantz's address in the Pacific Palisades. All three plead no contest and Dederich entered into a plea deal that included probation, though he didn't see jail time. The other part of the plea: Dederich would have to step down as head of Synanon.

It should be noted that I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI for Dederich's file but was told that he had none.

The Dwindling Game

Synanon's reach was relatively limited, and yet everyone that came in contact with the organization left with battle scars. The cult hobbled along throughout the 1980s, badly damaged from their wars in both the press and the courtroom. Who wanted to be associated with the rattlesnake cult?

Synanon was formally stripped of its tax-exempt status in 1991 and completely disbanded shortly after that. Charles E. Dederich died in Visalia, California in 1997.

Relative to other cults of the second half of the 20th century, Synanon wasn't the worst. But if you stuck around with Synanon in the 1970s, you would've felt right at home in some of the most notorious cults of the 1970s and 80s.

Synanon started with what looked like the best of intentions. And the organization still has defenders today. But no matter what the initial goals of this strange community and its heavy-handed leader, there's no denying what it had become: a dangerous cult ultimately tossed on the scrap heap of failed utopias.

Whether dangerous or benign, the utopian impulse is almost always about control. We strive for perfection with small actions, working toward some greater change in our lives; our own slice of heaven. We blind ourselves to the dark undercurrents of our carefully controlled little worlds.

That's what happened at Synanon. Members ignored the greater sins for the smaller ones. As members became more and more invested in the utopian project's minutiae, it became harder and harder to escape. Ultimately, Synanon collapsed under its own utopian hubris—a tyrant's ant farm masquerading as a grand experiment with the good life. And for some of the bruised and battered left in Synanon's wake, its undoing came none too soon.

Images: Top two photos inside the Synanon organization come from the March 9, 1962 issue of Life magazine; Synanon's Santa Monica headquarters circa 1970 via Synanon.org; 1965 movie poster for Synanon via the Movie Poster Database; Screenshot from the 1971 film THX 1138; Richard Grotsley holding a snake in the October 13, 1978 edition of the Hutchinson News in Kansas; Two Synanites Bonnie Cunningham and Ellen Delgado look over the hair they and other women at a Synanon community in Santa Monica shaved off in February 1975 via Associated Press; Charles Dederich in 1979 via the Associated Press; 1978 CBS News screenshot of Connie Chung reporting on Synanon via YouTube; Kids playing the Game circa 1977 via Synanon.org; 2014 photo of the Hotel Casa Del Mar by Matt Novak

Sources: The Rise and Fall of Synanon by Rod Janzen; Synanon: A Therapeutic Life Style by Curt G. Batiste and Lewis Yablonsky (1971); The Anticriminal Society: Synanon by Lewis Yablonsky (1962); Synanon: Toward Building a Humanistic Organization by Steven Simon (1978); The Social Development of the Synanon Cult: The Managerial Strategy of Organizational Transformation by Richard Ofshe (1980); Social Structure and Social Control in Synanon by Richard Ofshe and others (1974); Child Rearing and Education in the Synanon School by Edward Gould (1975); Synanon House – A Consideration of its Implications for American Correction by David Sternberg (1963); The Phenomenon of Self-perpetuation in Synanon-Type Drug Treatment Programs by Donald Scott and Harold L. Goldberg (1973)

They've shoved health care down your throat, and they've tried to take your cows' freedom of movement away. What will Hussein Obummer and his commissars do next? He'll seize your state's attack choppers and leave you at the mercy of martial law, that's what. Wake up, sheeple!

In the annals of "free to be brain-free," see this gem of an Examiner ramble from their resident tinfoil hat reviewer, a patriotic conspiracy theory bubbling up from the fever swamps around a kernel of news that actually happened:

...the man who once vowed to run "the most transparent administration in history" has just rather inexplicably, ordered the U.S. Army to seize every Apache attack helicopter currently in use by the National Guard.

In all, the Defense Department will confiscate 192 Apaches from National Guard units around the country and give them to the active duty Army.

In fact, the DOD is cutting a lot more than 192 of the AH-64 Apache attack choppers; according to an actual Army aviation officer, the Pentagon is ridding itself of nearly 800 aging helicopters across the board, some dating back to Vietnam. It's a move that's anticipated to save $12 billion and help the force modernize in coming years.

But the National Guard Apaches are sticking in conspiracy nuts' craws especially hard. The financial savings are chump change to this deficit-loving socialist dictator! What's his real game? Let the smart folks tell you:

So, what could be another, more reasonable explanation?

The Apache, which began service in 1986, is armed with a 30 mm M230E1 Chain Gun (with 1,200 rounds), Hellfire anti-tank missiles, and 70 general-purpose 70 mm rockets. In short, it is capable of fending-off any enemy, foreign or domestic.

Obviously, these helicopters could pose a substantial obstacle to say, a tyrant drunk on his own power, with an army at his disposal.

This is not a more reasonable explanation. But do go on.

With the recent, attempted seizure of the Bundy family ranch in Nevada by more than 200 armed federal officers, including many snipers, we know that the Obama administration is not afraid to use force against the American people.

Except that none of the local and federal authorities involved in that bubba-convention last weekend actually used force. Far from it, they carefully backed away from armed civilian snipers like the crazy reckless asshole in this picture and let them have their day in the desert.

Furthermore, considering the unprovoked attacks and murders of U.S. citizens on their own property by federal agents, such as the Ruby Ridge and Waco massacres, we also know that the federal government has no problem suspending due process and using lethal force on its own citizens. Couple that with the as yet, unexplained, massive arms buildup by the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Defense Authorization Act which allows the feds to arrest and detain any U.S. citizen indefinitely without charges, and even the most establishment-minded American should be able to see what is coming.

There are a few governors around the country who would not stand for martial-law being arbitrarily declared by this or any president, but without any teeth (i.e. Apache attack helicopters) what could they use to stop Obama's tyranny?

Hmm, all this raises a good question, actually: What are Apache helicopters used for? For killing ground targets, mostly. We used them to spread so much 30-millimeter depleted-uranium freedom on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Though the conspiracy theorist likes this firepower, it's not exactly clear to me what benevolent use a state governor might have for such a killing machine. He could use it against rogue federal agents or soldiers? Is that what we're going for here? Yes, that's it. THIS IS OUR LAST LINE OF DEFENSE AGAINST TYRANNY. Thank God the usurper-in-chief and his lackeys don't have anything that could stop an Apache.

Oh, for fuck's sake. We got anything that can stop that?

[Photo credit: U.S. Army]

The top Marine who last week told Congress that pay cuts were good for discipline apologized to his troops in a letter for "a mistaken impression that I don't care about your quality of life and that I support lower pay for servicemembers." He then dropped them all and demanded 20 pushups.

Last year, successful startup CEO and Bitcoin community hero Tony Gallippi testified before Congress on behalf of the oft-maligned crypto-libertarian dream currency. Gallippi, head of the virtual payment company Bitpay, explained to a subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee that he believed Bitcoin had the power to transform the way Americans live their financial lives—not just through secure transactions, but by creating an immense ledger of property exchange, "a public record forever, for pennies."

Gallippi didn't bring up his own public business record, from an earlier era of the internet. More than a decade ago—before there was any such thing as Bitcoin, before anyone cared about the name Satoshi Nakamoto, before we ever dreamt of buying heroin through the darknet—Anthony Gallippi was in a business that looks quaint from today's vantage point: Publishing photos of women who weren't wearing very much, including swimsuit and underwear models as young as 13 years old.

The teen models were found on Soopermodels.com, a site that resembled the countless other sexy-photo websites, serving up bland sexual-ish imagery to a public not yet able to stream every conceivable fetish to its smartphones.

But Soopermodels was a particularly wide-ranging variety of tacky cleavage directory. The index page offered a mix of grown-up models, whose galleries included lad-mag-style strategically covered nudity, and teenagers. Some were identified as being as young as 13; others were simply given an age range in the teens.

In some parts of the site, Gallippi's company described itself as a modeling agency, with dozens of "clients" available for "shoots" and "modeling," like any other talent agency. But other sections of the site resembled generic PG-13 JPEG stores, with image "previews" and a members-only section that promised hotter images for paying customers:

ENTERTAINMENT PROFESSIONALS: Please browse our Model Portfolios for sample images, model interests, and booking information.

FANS: Your favorite amateur models never looked so good. Join our members area today!

Swimwear, sport, club, casual, and lingerie: new photosets are added EVERY DAY

Certain Soopermodel girls were spun off into their own pinup properties, like "Emily Angel" or "LoveMae.com." The affiliate advertising on those sites linked out to galleries of photos listing subjects as young as six years old.

Although the Soopermodels site is no longer functional, archived versions of the site as far back as 2002 feature a glamour model called "Bobbi Jo," whose year of birth is listed as 1989. That would have made her 13 years old. Although neither Bobbi Jo nor any of the other underage Soopermodels appeared nude, almost every shot is unsubtly sexualized, dressed and styled to look older, with clearly cited measurements to go along with the pictures.

Tony Gallippi served as both photographer and manager of the entire company. Today, Gallippi's Bitpay is a darling among the Reddit crypto-goon cohort and boasts millions of dollars in venture funding from the likes of Shakil Khan, Ashton Kutcher, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, and the eminent Founders Fund.

I asked Gallippi about running a modeling agency that traded in sexualized photos of underage teens, and received the following comment by way of a Bitpay spokesperson:

"As a freelance photographer I was hired to take all sorts of photos from babies to 60 year anniversary moments in my clients lives and everything in between. Soopermodels was a consortium of photographers hired by agencies to photograph people of all ages, including children, young adults, and adult men and women. When it came to Stare Magazine, a swimsuit publication, I had a strict policy in place that all models were 18 years of age or older and required proof of age."

This makes it sound as if Gallippi was just an employee of Soopermodels—a freelance employee at that. This is false: in October of 2003, this quote appeared right on the front of Soopermodels.com:

"We are a group of experienced, reputable photographers that photograph, develop, and promote models." -Antonio Gallippi, founder

And even though the site itself is dead, Gallippi's fingerprints remain. Domain records for Soopermodels.com show Tony Gallippi as the administrative contact, at 411 Amelia Street in Orlando, Florida—the same address tied to Gallippi for Bitpay's state filing in Georgia, where the payment company is based. State incorporation filings for both Florida and Georgia list Tony Gallippi as Soopermodels' sole officer.

State records and the site itself also give Gallippi the title of "Producer." LoveMae.com's affiliate section, with prominent links to grotesque preteen "model" sites, featured this message: "Webmasters seeking a link should contact my Producer—but your girl has to be HOT!"

When I asked for further comment from Gallippi or Bitpay, I received no reply. From his new perch as an internet money luminary, he probably doesn't really need to reply: His popularity among his constituency is golden, Bitpay enjoys good treatment by the tech press, and it's not illegal to be a creep.

Illustration by Sam Wooley

The latest analysis by the AFL-CIO shows that the average U.S. CEO was paid 331 times more than their average worker last year, and 774 times more than a minimum wage worker. That's a significant increase in the past three years. Keep pouring gas on that fire, fuckers.

Officers stand guard next to a wreath marking the one of the bombing sites on Tuesday, the one year anniversary of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. Image via Andrew Burton/Getty Images.

German customs officers stopped an elderly husband and wife for a routine road check and found €8,000—about $11,000— in the woman's clothes. Then they discovered her husband was carrying a lot more cash in a much less comfortable location.

A patdown revealed he had taped nearly €200,000 ($276,000) in cash, divided into four bundles, to his genitals. The European Union requires travelers carrying more than €10,000 across the border to declare it to customs or face a large fine.

The couple, from the central German state of Hesse, said no when asked if they were carrying more than the allowed amount.

They were stopped near Trier, close to the border between Germany and Luxembourg, which has an international reputation as a tax haven. Luxembourg only last year started sharing information on its famously secretive banking system with foreign tax authorities. As recently as last month, it vetoed EU attempts to close its tax loopholes.

In other groin-based smuggling news, U.S. Customs announced it busted a Trinidadian man trying to smuggle $70,000 worth of heroin through JFK Airport by hiding it in his crotchal region.

[H/T: Fark, Photo Credit: German Customs (DPA)]

That I & most Americans have no idea whether our taxes are accurate tells us something. My annual letter to the #IRS: pic.twitter.com/BFh0AXTvAk

— Donald Rumsfeld (@RumsfeldOffice) April 15, 2014

Mostly, it tells us a lot about why the wars ended up the way they did when he was in charge of the federal government's largest bureaucracy, which ran them. (Also, look for an updated chapter in the next edition of Rumsfeld's Rules: "Does anyone know an accountant?")

Chelsea Handler, despite being mostly horrible, was a frequently named potential replacement for David Letterman. But with Stephen Colbert quickly securing that gig, Handler (and others) will have to shoot for the slot currently occupied by Craig Ferguson. Her interest in The Late Late Show is unknown, but she's certainly winking at our speculation.

Yesterday, Handler posted the above photo to Instagram with the caption "Business meeting" (plus some shit about her dog). It doesn't take a magnifying glass to see that Handler's thumb juuuuust so happens to be revealing a CBS logo on a thick packet of paper.

The obvious implication is that Handler was at CBS to discuss taking over for Ferguson, but a spokesperson for the network says that she was there on other business. The full statement comes via Vulture:

"There are no discussions with Chelsea Handler regarding the network's 12:30 late night broadcast. Her meeting with CBS yesterday was a general meeting with our syndication [division.]"

Handler has landed a show on a major network once before: Are You There, Chelsea?, which she executive produced, was cancelled by NBC after a single season.

[via Vulture]

After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee accepted a position as president of then Washington College. By all accounts, he served the school well and had a nice end-of-life. After his death, Washington College was renamed Washington & Lee.

Now, many black people attend the university that bears Marse Robert's surname, so I guess we won. But a group of black law students at Washington & Lee are getting really sick of the university's consistent, stars-and-bars waving support of Lee's legacy and the whitewashing (no pun intended) of what that legacy represents.

They've got a list of some very specific "demands" for the Washington & Lee administration...

On the one hand, I'm kind of surprised that black students at Washington & Lee are just now threatening "civil disobedience" over the school's longstanding remembrance of the Confederate cause. The thing is called Washington & Lee, not Washington & GRANT. I mean, here's a line taken right from the school's "about" page on its website:

Founded in 1749, Washington and Lee University is named for two of the most influential men in American history: George Washington, ... and Robert E. Lee, whose presidency and innovative leadership brought the University into the national limelight.

Right... the two "of the most influential" people in American history are George Washington and Robert E. Lee. Not Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Not even Washington and John C. Calhoun... you know, the guy who came up with the whole, bollocks secessionist legal reasoning. But Washington and Robert E. "I'd rather fight for my state than combat a great evil for my country" Lee. Lee's logic is akin to me fighting the Orkin Man because the "New York City" rats shouldn't be subjugated to a "national" company, but whatever.

Again, black people could have probably known what kind of university they were getting involved with when they applied to Washington & Lee, but if you want to know what's pissing the black law students off, I can begin to explain in a picture:

The differences between acknowledging history and honoring history and glorifying history are subtle. Look, I'm a Civil War buff, Confederate history is freaking fascinating. Poor farmers with no slaves fighting for a system where rich farmers could buy free labor. Valor and honor on both sides. Military strategy desperately trying to catch up to advanced technology. Confederate history is part of American history, and I think most people can respect the last, desperate charge at Gettysburg ordered by an irrational and wrong Lee.

But that doesn't mean we should glorify it. Not all history is history to be "proud" of. The Confederates fought for the wrong side, mostly for the wrong reasons, and every American alive today should be thankful that they lost.

Now, I don't know if a tomb to a dead general crosses that intangible line from historical preservation to offensive nostalgia. But when you couple those traditions with other things black law students at W&L are complaining about, you can understand their problem. Here is a list of demands from a group of black law students calling themselves "The Committee"

Here is a list of the FOUR DEMANDS:

1. We demand that the University fully recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on the undergraduate campus.

2. We demand that the University stop allowing neo-confederates to march on campus with confederate flags on Lee-Jackson Day.

3. We demand that the University immediately remove all confederate flags from its property and premises, including those flags located within Lee Chapel.

4. We demand that the University issue an official apology for the University's participation in chattel slavery, including a denunciation of General Robert E. Lee's participation in slavery.

If the school does not act by SEPTEMBER 1, 2014 we WILL engage in civil disobedience.

Lee-Jackson Day is the worst. Some Southern states moved it to coincide with MLK Day in '84. 1984, not 1884.

But really, this is a Confederate Battle Flag issue. To me, it's a symbol of racial oppression. To others, it's a symbol of Southern pride. My question to the Southern Pride people is always: what about all the black Southerns? Are they not allowed to be "prideful" of their Southern roots as well? Or are they supposed to wave around a Confederate flag in support of their "state's rights"?

I contacted Washington & Lee about the controversy. Here is the school's statement:

We have received communication from the group of law students who signed the letter and have responded by inviting invited them to engage in serious discussions about the issues that they have raised.

The question of cancelling classes on MLK Day has been discussed on several recent occasions. The law school does not hold classes that day. Any decision on changing the University's undergraduate calendar rests with the undergraduate faculty, which approves academic calendars and adjustments to the class schedule. Washington and Lee does recognize Martin Luther King Jr. each year with a university-wide MLK Legacy Week during the week of MLK Day. This annual observance features a prominent guest speaker. Recent examples are Donna Brazile, Andrew J. Young, and Julian Bond. In addition, panels, symposia and programs are available not only for the university community but also for the Lexington/Rockbridge County community. We have chosen to honor Dr. King's legacy in this way.

In terms of the other issues that the students have raised, we will give them all careful consideration

Yay. Washington & Lee has black friends, so it's all good.

Look, in terms of Washington & Lee, sure George Washington was a slaveholder too. And if W&L is using that flag in order to honor slavery, well, go nuts. But let's just remember that Washington — the Washington who fought and froze and bled for this country, the Washington who was our first federal president under our constitution — would probably roll over in his marble grave to know that a REBEL flag was displayed so prominently at a university that bears his name.

Whatever you think the Confederacy was about, it most certainly involved a violent rebellion against a duly elected president led by people who had the right to vote but could not achieve their political motives through the agreed upon process. The Founding Fathers wanted representation. The Confederates wanted to get their way, regardless of what "voters" wanted in new territories. You think Washington would wave a flag for that?

Washington & Lee has two people in its name, maybe it's time to start listening for the echoes of the other guy.

Since just after 9/11 the NYPD has devoted a specific unit of its force to spying only on Muslims in New York and New Jersey. Today, the department announced that it is doing away with the program.

The unit—known as the Demographics Unit—clandestinely surveilled the Muslim community by eavesdropping on conversations in order to gather intelligence on places where they congregated. A story on the group in New York outlined exactly what that meant:

The routine was almost always the same, whether they were visiting a restaurant, deli, barbershop, or travel agency. The two rakers would enter and casually chat with the owner. The first order of business was to determine his ethnicity and that of the patrons. This would determine which file the business would go into. A report on Pakistani locations, for instance, or one on Moroccans. Next, they'd do what the NYPD called "gauging sentiment." Were the patrons observant Muslims? Did they wear traditionally ethnic clothes, like shalwar kameez? Were the women wearing hijabs?

...

On their way out, the rakers would look at bulletin boards. Was a rally planned in the neighborhood? The rakers might attend. Was there a cricket league? The rakers might join. If someone advertised a room for rent, the cops would tear off a tab with the address or phone number. It could be a cheap apartment used by a terrorist.

The Muslim community felt obviously violated by the constantly peering eyes of the NYPD, and the Demographics Unit eventually became the subject of two federal lawsuits. One of those suits was scuttled a few months ago, when a federal judge ruled that the practice was protected by the law and not in violation of civil rights.

Nonetheless, the damage has been done. The unit uncovered no leads and generated no cases, and further engendered mistrust in Muslims in the New York area. Bill de Blasio—and his police chief Bill Bratton, pictured above—have righted a wrong, assuming the duties of the Demographics Unit are not merely shifted. But one figures it is too little, too late.

[image via Getty]

The anti-capitalist activists behind the Counterforce finally released footage of the protest they staged outside the San Francisco home of Google Ventures investor Kevin Rose. The video confirms that the anonymous people I interviewed were part of the protest, but it's hard to muster much empathy for either side.

It's more like overhearing to a political debate in the hallway of your dorm freshman year. Neither party backs up their argument and you hope it ends soon.

The protest depicted occurred on a Sunday morning on the street outside Rose's house in Potrero Hill. The anarchist group also published what's tantamount to a ransom note demanding $3 billion from Google . . . for reasons that do not get much clearer after watching this video, first published on The Verge.

On a protest flier, the demonstrators said Rose was targeted because of his role directing the flow of capital:

"As a partner venture capitalist at Google Ventures, Kevin directs the flow of capital from Google into the tech startup bubble that is destroying San Francisco," the flyer said. "The start-ups that he funds bring the swarms of young entrepreneurs that have ravaged the landscapes of San Francisco and Oakland."

They later told me that Rose, who also founded Digg, and Google X engineer Anthony Levandowski were singled out because of their approachability:

Both were targeted for the objective functions they perform within Google, the objections to which we have described in our communiques. Unlike Google executives, these two men are perhaps slightly more inclined to speak to us. The executives never would, isolated as they are from reality and normal human behavior.

Susie Cagle, a journalist based in Oakland, told Valleywag that she recognized the young female protestor in the video from Occupy Oakland. The protestor, who is also pictured in this shot from IndyBay, and perhaps others have been activists in Oakland for years, Cagle said.

"Counterforce": The people you didn't take seriously when it was called "Occupy."

— Susie ヽ(*¬*)ノ Cagle (@susie_c) April 15, 2014

When I asked the Counterforce about that, the anonymous proprietors wrote back:

We unaware of any connection to Occupy Oakland. =)

Why do protestors make allusions to Thomas Pynchon, vomit on buses, and fixate on symbols of tech excess like Google Glass and the double decker coaches parked at their Muni stop? Because it gets attention for the cause. TBD on whether it helps the cause itself.

[Video courtesy of the Counterforce]

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

US Airways won't be firing anyone over a retweet of a model plane stuck inside a woman's vagina that went out over the airline's official Twitter account Monday, the New York Daily News reports.

A US Airways spokesperson says an employee copied a link to the photo to report it, but then accidentally pasted it into a reply to a customer. The result was the toy-plane-in-a-vagina seen around the world.

US Airways called it "an honest mistake."

"We captured it, flagged it as inappropriate," the spokesman said, ""We are in the midst of reviewing our processes but for the most part we have an understanding of what happened and how to ensure how it won't happen in the future.

It was a rough week for airlines on Twitter. The "planegina" photo was originally posted by @ARTxDEALER, who is apparently a friend of @queendemetriax_, the Dutch teenager arrested for trolling American Airlines with a fake terrorism threat.

[H/T: New York Daily News,]

A texting motorist who slammed into a bicyclist and injured his spine told police she had some regrets—about the dents in her car.

According to phone records, 21-year-old Kimberley Davis was texting with seven different phone numbers as she drove her vehicle through Koroit, a small town in western Victoria, Australia. According to local police, she used her phone behind the wheel as many as 44 times during the trip.

Around 7:20 pm, she struck a bicyclist from behind, apparently failing to see the warning lights that he had placed on the front and back of his bike. Although she called emergency responders, the cyclist said she refused to render him assistance and left him lying on the side of the road.

According to the Standard, she also had some choice statements for responding police.

"I just don't care because I've already been through a lot of bullshit and my car is like pretty expensive and now I have to fix it."

"I'm kind of pissed off that the cyclist has hit the side of my car. I don't agree that people texting and driving could hit a cyclist. I wasn't on my phone when I hit the cyclist."

Davis was fined $4,500 and lost her license for nine months. In addition to some minor injuries, the cyclist suffered a spinal fracture requiring surgery and the use of a spinal cage.

[image via Shutterstock]

A year after two bombs hidden inside backpacks exploded at the Boston Marathon, police again were forced to evacuate the finish line area to investigate two suspicious backpacks, at least one of which was deposited by a man in a veil yelling "Boston strong."

According to Boston police, a man is now in custody in connection with the suspicious bags.

#BPDPublicSafetyAlert: #BPD confirming a male suspect in custody in connection to the unattended backpacks found at the Finish Line.

— Boston Police Dept. (@bostonpolice) April 16, 2014

UPDATE 9:38 pm: Boston police and bomb squads have detonated both backpacks in controlled explosions. It's not yet clear what was inside them.

[image via CBS Boston]

More than 620 million Indians, or half the country's population, defecate openly outside on a daily basis, a public nuisance and health threat that the country has been trying to shut down. But UNICEF has a plan: an animated fever nightmare of a chart topper called "Poo Party."

The song, written by the folktronic artist Shri, who composed the theme song for Life of Pi, is—spoiler alert—completely about fecal matter. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Hindi lyrics refer to famous landmarks in India that deserve to be clean.

And while the video strives for levity, the poop problem is a serious one—close to 143 million pounds daily.

Open defecation is a serious public-health problem. It can expose people to diseases such as polio, giardiasis, hepatitis A and infectious diarrhea. In 2012, nearly a quarter of all young children who died of diarrhea world-wide were Indian. Constant exposure to fecal germs can also lead to stunted growth, a condition afflicting some 61 million Indian children.

UNICEF says around 28 million children still attend schools without toilet facilities.

The Office was built on referential humor, but its biggest trademark was its signature, silent cutaway shot. So after cataloguing every pop culture reference made on the show, two guys with a lot of time on their hands created the "Stare Machine," a database of cutaways, sorted by every human emotion under the sun.

The database, spearheaded by Joe Sabia and Aaron Rasmussen, was created by manually coding each shot and looping them into themed emotional playlists.

Initially, they didn't think anything of it. But then articles were serendipitously popping up about how facial emotion research broke some new ground recently. After staring at 706 stares, we realized every character from The Office was so perfectly displaying every range of human emotion possible. So, this is for Science! Consider this an impromptu psychology test.

Doing it for science—that's what she said.

Two days ago, an Oregon man named Alan Marion received a postcard sent from Portland. But the postcard wasn't addressed to him: instead, it was meant for his great-grandmother Florence, which makes sense since it was postmarked Feb. 20, 1940.

The postcard actually arrived first at the post office in Butte Falls, Oregon in July of last year, but it took an employee there named Sunny Bryant (with help from a woman named Charleen Brown) almost 10 months to track down a relative of Florence Marion's.

The postcard, which shows a large ship in the Philippines' Manilla Bay, reads:

"Arrived in Portland at 8 o'clock. Having a fine time. Be home sometime Sat. — Blanche."

How it took the postcard 70 years to reach a final destination is unclear, and will probably never be figured out. One postal official theorized that the postcard ended up unopened in a drawer somewhere before being put back into the mail after a housecleaning or garage sale.

So, if you have something you want to say to your great-grandchildren, put a letter in the mail now.

[via The Register-Guard, image via Shutterstock]

Two convicted sex offenders accused of murdering at least four women in California were literally on the government's radar the whole time—police say the men, who checked in with probation officers on a regular basis, were both wearing court-ordered GPS ankle devices.

Franc Cano, 27, and Steven Dean Gordon, 45, were both arrested on Monday and charged with murdering four Orange County women: 21-year-old Jarrae Nykkole Estepp, 20-year-old Kianna Jackson, 34-year-old Josephine Monique Vargas, and 28-year-old Martha Anaya.

Police say starting last October, Cano and Gordon attacked, raped, then murdered the women—charges that could subject them to the death penalty if they are found guilty.

But according to authorities, Cano and Gordon were under surveillance the whole time—both men were checking in with parol officers once a month and wearing court-ordered GPS devices—Cano's from a state court and Gordon's from a federal judge.

Local officers began to suspect the deaths were all related after discovering Estepp's naked body laying on the conveyor belt of an Anaheim trash facility. Based in part on GPS and cell phone signals, police eventually tracked down Cano and Gordon, who were living out of their car.

"The GPS was in fact intact, attached to these suspects during the commissions of the crimes," Anaheim Police Chief Raul Quezada said during a press conference Monday.

Cano and Gordon, who both served time for sex crimes against a child under the age of 14, were required to wear the ankle bracelets as part of their probation. According to reports they met in 2012 when they cut off the GPS devices they were wearing at the time, took a Greyhound to Vegas and lived under aliases. They were rearrested but do not appear to have been imprisoned for the violation.

[image via AP]

At least fifteen people were injured this evening when a firetruck rammed through a Los Angeles dumpling shop.

Around 3:15 pm, two firetrucks responding to a house fire collided in an intersection, sending one truck smashing through the front window of Lu Dumpling House in Monterey Park.

As many as seven firefighters and eight civilians were injured, leaving one person in critical condition, but no deaths have been reported.

[image via AP]