For months it seemed like a quick joke, but now it's concrete. Well, putty, anyway. Hard-chargin' Satanists have a mockup of a monument to the dark lord (and two rapt kids) that they plan to display in front of the Oklahoma statehouse. And other than being evil, it's pretty boss.

The (New York-based) "Satanic Temple" started a campaign to build a statue of the hoary host of the underworld last January, two years after a legislator bought a Ten Commandments monument and had it installed on the green outside the Capitol. The Satanists' efforts went viral, and they ended up with nearly $300,000 in donations.

According to Jonathan Smith at VICE, that was enough to hire a classically trained sculptor, who's about finished with the full-size mold he'll use to cast Baphomet in bronze. The concept is to keep the mold handy "so they can pop these things out like evil, terribly expensive action figures whenever they need a new one," Smith writes.

He got a sneak preview of the mockup and—well, look for yourself:

Smith has a few more pics and significantly more background. The whole legal plan to install Satan in Oklahoma City is stalled at the moment; the state stopped processing license applications for new statehouse displays after the Satanists got their publicity, and an ACLU lawsuit on their behalf is pending. But the group says the'll put the monument up with or without permission because, hey, Satanists.

[H/t VICE]

The Washington City Paper reports that ex-DC mayor Marion Barry wants to make his own biopic about himself before HBO does, because he is "unhappy with how [HBO's screenwriter] planned to portray his arrest at the Vista Hotel for smoking crack."

A bystander throws a tear gas canister that came back from the al-Azhar University campus after it was shot by the Egyptian security forces towards protesters at the school in Cairo on Friday. Image via Mohammed Abu Zaid/AP.

The current bid is $36,000 for this beautiful old Willie Nelson tour bus. It gets 7 miles a gallon. It sleeps 8. It's like a saloon inside, with red velvet and beveled glass. It's got miles of wood paneling. Hell, there may still be a stash in that wood paneling that's worth 36 grand!

Via the Village Voice, some dude on Craigslist in East Texas wants to sell his bus, which was built for the red-headed stranger in the '80s. Interior by Florida Coach, and lots of marijuana. It could be converted into, like, an Uber for working class heroes:

If you're interested, the damn thing runs just fine, thank you very much. But act fast:

Due to the extremely high demand and the amount of offers being thrown at us for this bus. We have decided to take offers all the way to 12:00 AM Central 5/3/2014 for this bus. We are planning to sell this bus this weekend.

Also, no checks or loans, man: "Cash is the preferred method of payment."

Harry Anderson from Night Court is starring in a movie in the best new genre, College Freshman Destroys Atheist Professor. The movie, A Matter of Faith, is produced by the group that runs the Creation Museum. It's out in September.

In a few days, eternally-sad-seeming Nicole Kidman's new film is to open the Cannes film festival. In Grace of Monaco, she plays the sad-seeming-in-retrospect Grace Kelly, the movie star and eventual princess of Monaco. And the sadness is still contagious, apparently, now extending to the film's backers because it's been denounced by the Monégasque (it's a great word) royal family as a "farce."

People reports:

"On the occasion of the upcoming screening of the film Grace of Monaco at the opening of the Cannes Festival on May 14 2014 and its release in theaters, the Prince's Palace would like to reiterate that this feature cannot under any circumstances be classified as a biopic," a press release sent from the palace early Friday said.

The film's trailer, the statement continues, "appears to be a farce and confirms the totally fictional nature of this film. It reinforces the certainty, left after reading the script, that this production, a page of the Principality's history, is based on erroneous and dubious historical references. The director and producers refused to take into consideration the many observations made by the Palace because these called into question the entire script and the characters of the film.

"The Princely family does not in any way wish to be associated with this film which reflects no reality and regrets that its history has been misappropriated for purely commercial purposes," the statement concludes.

It is not clear that the palace's displeasure will make things that much worse business-wise for a film that was already, reportedly, running into serious problems with its distributor. Reports are that the delicate and gentle soul known as Harvey Weinstein was "unhappy" with the final cut delivered by the film's director. His concerns about what he reportedly calls a "pile of shit" seem likely to go beyond its historical verisimilitude, however.

At age 89, Delores Dennison finally got to go to a high school prom. She missed her own prom, back in the 1940s, because money was tight for her family at the time. But this year, her great-grandson, Austin, asked her to be his date.

"He said, 'Grandma, I want you to go to the prom with me,'" Dennison told the Van Wert (Ohio) Times Bulletin. "I had a bad heart attack and stroke. 'I'm not that good on my feet,' I told him."

But Austin, 19, was sincere about his request. He'd been inspired by a story from a government teacher whose brother had asked their own grandmother to prom. Dolores eventually said yes.

They went shopping for a prom dress and picked out the perfect purse to hold Delores's inhaler, and then, on the night of the dance, had Austin's dad drive them to Delores's favorite restaurant, Bob Evans.

At the dance, they promenaded onto the floor with the rest of the couples, Delores drawing some laughs by clearing away balloons with her cane. Although she didn't have the energy to dance much, she did get out on the floor for one special song: Frank Sinatra's "Dolores," which her late husband used to sing to her.

The other couples gave them a standing ovation.

"It was wonderful and I just loved all the girls in their fancy gowns and the gentlemen in their tuxedos. It was quite a night," Delores told Fox News. "Everyone there just could not have been more polite. Everyone got an A+."

[H/T USA Today, photo via: Austin Dennison/Instagram]

After a string of protests has failed to put the brakes on the increasingly hated "Google Bus" network, the San Franciso Examiner reports activists are taking the city to court, along with its cushy tech friends.

The complaint—which you can read in full below—cites the California Environmental Quality Act, railing against the system of enormous, air conditioned, Wi-Fi-blasting commuter shuttles on almost scientific grounds, rather than purely moral ones:

Petitioner and Plaintiff SARA SHORTT is a concerned citizen who resides in the City and County of San Francisco, California. Ms. Shortt presented written and oral comments to the City during the administrative process on the matters being challenged in the Petition. Ms. Shortt is deeply concerned with the impacts of the Shuttle Project, including displacement of low and moderate income persons, air pollution, pedestrian and bicycle safety risks, and interference with MUNI buses. Ms. Shortt urged the City to conduct CEQA review of the Project to analyze and mitigate these impacts.

The activist groups behind the suit contend the social damages of gentrification—displacement, spiked rents, evictions—are just as real as any other environmental pollutant. Suing the city and the companies that've grown so close to it probably won't shutter the bus system completely, but an activist win could seriously disrupt it. Beginning this summer, Google buses will be permitted to use the same public transit stops they were illegally pulling into before—an injunction against the pilot program would force everyone to re-confront that illegality.

Commuter Shuttle Petition by San Francisco Examiner

At least 350 people were killed in a landslide in northeastern Afghanistan, according to the UN. As many as 2,000 people remain missing.

New York City's new 2nd Avenue subway line is a construction project of truly monumental scale. Decades of planning and billions of dollars have led to the near-completion of Phase 1 of the tunnel running underneath Manhattan's Upper East Side. Gizmodo was lucky enough to take a tour through a section of the caverns and passages that will soon be a bustling subway line.

Boring the two miles of Phase 1's tunnels began in 2010, with the project scheduled to be completed in 2016. It will eventually carry around 200,000 riders between 63rd Street and 96th Street. All four phases of the line, once completed, will run from 125th Street all the way down to Hanover Square at the southern tip of Manhattan. This won't wrap up for many years, however, as funding is procured on a phase-by-phase basis.

The tour began at 86th Street, led by president of MTA Capital Construction, Michael Horodniceanu. Members of the press gathered into a small elevator and descended 160 feet down into an expansive cavern. Workers milled about among the surreal site of giant yellow waterproofing liners and dark passageways.

We proceeded to walk south through the damp train tunnel, occasionally stopping to gaze at the shafts of light and mysterious chambers. Eventually the tunnel ended at an abrupt wooden wall, on the other side of which was a huge two-level room making up the mezzanine and platform of the future 72nd St. station.

The new subway stations are meant to be airy and open, a far fry from the cramped hallways that New Yorkers are used to when waiting for the train. The new stations will be completely column-less. It was hard not to visualize the scores of people moving through the station that is still just a concrete shell.

We finally arrived at a slanted platform that would house an escalator bringing passengers up to 72nd St. We had to take the stairs. As we emerged at street-level, the sun was blinding and hot. But, as far as getting around in New York City goes, it certainly beat taking the train.

Here's my journey, from start to finish:

When you check the day's temperature or see if it's going to rain on your way to work, the answer can vary widely depending on where you look. Luckily, the website ForecastAdvisor—which grades the accuracy of U.S. forecasting outlets such as The Weather Channel, National Weather Service (NWS), CustomWeather, and AccuWeather—can help you sort the good from the bad. If you head over to their site you can plug in your zip code and see your local numbers, but they were kind enough to provide us with their raw data for 2013, and the results are pretty surprising.

ForecastAdvisor takes one-day, two-day, and three-day forecasts for 752 locations nationwide, and then compares these predictions to the actual weather; the "accuracy" figure for each service is an average of the accuracy of each of its three forecasts. High and low temperature forecasts count as accurate if they're within 3° F of the actual figure.

If a forecast calls for precipitation, ForecastAdvisor counts it as accurate if there's any precipitation, of any type. For some parts of the country this might be a little oversimplified—the distinction between a rain/snow/sleet prediction can be pretty important—but it makes the figure easy to record and understand.

In addition to the four major outlets listed above, ForecastAdvisor also tracks MeteoGroup and Foreca forecasts for most locations. Both are European and not particularly well-known or used in the U.S., but it's worth mentioning that MeteoGroup was outstandingly accurate in 2013 (you can see their forecasts here). Depending on location you can also find scattered data for Weather Underground, WeatherBug, and Dark Sky.

So what places are stuck with the worst predictions? The map below shows—for the four major outlets—how accurate the most accurate forecasting service was. There are 713 ForecastAdvisor cities in the contiguous U.S.; the map is split into regions based on which one of these cities was closest (apologies to Alaska and Hawaii*). The accuracy range is different between the three forecast types, so in order to keep regional variation visible we had to put each map on a slightly different color scale.

The easiest variable to predict was precipitation, with an average of 82.1 percent accuracy. This is largely because precipitation is simplified to a "yes/no" proposition—predicting clear skies every day would net you 70 percent accuracy in many parts of the country—but also because rain and snow are also fairly predictable across large swathes of the U.S. It rarely rains in the southwest, and the outlets had the most difficulty along the Gulf Coast (where intense thunderstorms are hit-or-miss most of the year) and especially around the eastern Great Lakes, where a large portion of the yearly precipitation falls in the form of lake-effect snow.

Why are there such regional variations in temperature accuracy? For one, the time of day when ForecastAdvisor pulls forecasts means that accuracy is generally better for high temps than low temps. Beyond that, the forecasters seem to have a pretty hard time with the central and northern Plains high temperatures. This section of the country is typically in the path of strong low pressure systems as they form coming off the eastern slope of the Rockies. These cyclones, combined with the flat terrain of the region, allow for some pretty big temperature swings – some locations can experience a 50 degree drop in temperatures in just a few hours.

The regional impact on low temperature accuracy seems to fall on a sharply west/east divide. Meteorologists have a difficult time forecasting lows for mountainous areas of the western United States, while low temps in the southeast – which don't vary much during a large chunk of the year – are pretty easy to predict.

So which forecasting service should you use? The map below shows which of the four major forecasters was the most accurate, for ForecastAdvisor's 713 contiguous U.S. locations:

The Weather Channel—the Atlanta-based weather monolith/broadcaster—blew away the competition in all three predictions. It was the most accurate forecaster of high temperature in 93% of all cities surveyed, and also did the best at forecasting low temperature (winning in 69% of cities) and precipitation (64% of cities).

Despite its national dominance, The Weather Channel has some competition in certain regions. If you live in the West, you might consider using AccuWeather or the NWS—the federal service that relies more heavily on experienced local forecasters—-for low temperatures. If you live in the Midwest or Northeast, NWS seems to do better with precipitation, while CustomWeather performs well in the Mountain West and the Southern coast.

Nevertheless, the data mostly show that The Weather Channel is very good at forecasting the weather. At least when they aren't busy spewing nonsense.

Enormous thanks to ForecastAdvisor for sharing their data. Top image by Jim Cooke.

*This is for space reasons mostly, but also because Northern Alaska a. has a lack of reliable observation locations, to test accuracy, and b. it avoided by some forecasting services outright. This means that, on the map, somewhere like Barrow would be colored by the accuracy of forecasts in Fairbanks, some 500 miles away.

Byron Smith waited in his basement with energy bars and bottled water. When the boy and girl snuck into his house, he stood his ground. Fired. Again. And again. Over their bodies. Over her screams. Then he delivered a five-minute vigilante tirade over the corpses. We know this, because he recorded it all:

Smith, 65, says he was defending his Little Falls, Minnesota, home that Thanksgiving in 2012. His castle. But he crowed gleefully for the deaths of 17-year-old Nick Brady and 18-year-old Haile Kifer, shooting them again after they were down, just to be sure, blotting out her voice with his shots and calling her a "bitch."

On the basis of that recording—embedded below—and the fact that he dragged the bodies into a tarp so as to avoid blood on his carpet, he is now serving life for first-degree murder. And if his actions and words don't make you wonder whether America's penchant for paranoia and armaments has gotten out of hand, nothing will.

Here is who he killed:

Be warned—this is the audio recording of two teens being shot to death, and an armed madman rationalizing his act with every NRA comic-book cliché that ever ejaculated from the mouth of a fatuous wannabe vigilante. It is not easy to hear. But it is important.

Even if you do not listen, read the transcript of Smith's post-killing rant below. But you should listen to the audio.

Via the New York Daily News:

I'm safe now. Cute. I'm sure she thought she was a real pro. I feel a little bit safer. I'm totally safe. I'm still shaking a bit, but a little bit safer.

I refuse to live in fear. I am not a bleeding heart liberal.

I felt like I was cleaning up a mess. Not like spilled food. Not like vomit. Not even like diarrhea, the worst mess possible.

In some tiny little respect I was doing my civic duty. The law enforcement system wouldn't do it, I had to do it. I had to do it.

They weren't human. I don't see them as human. I see them as vermin.

This bitch was going to go through her life spoiling things for other people. Stealing, robbing, drug abuse. It's all fun, cool, exciting, and highly profitable, until someone kills you. Like I give a damn who she is? "Oh, sorry!"

I try to be a good person. I try to do what I should, be friendly to other people, help them when I can, try to be a good citizen, not cheat people, be fair. And because I'm a good person, they think I'm a patsy, I'm a sucker. They think I'm there fore them to take advantage of.

Is that the reward for being a good person? And if I gather enough evidence, they might be prosecuted. If they're prosecuted, it might go to court. If it goes to court, they might be found guilty. And if they're found guilty, they might spend six months, two years in jail, and then they're out, and they need money worse than ever, and they're filled with revenge. I cannot live a life like that. I cannot have that chewing on me for the rest of life. I cannot, I refuse to live with that level of fear in my life.

I don't want this post to read as a defense of kids who do break-ins. Nor is it a denial that people have a right to feel safe in their own homes, and to take reasonable measures to that end. But we have grown so deranged that reasonable doesn't look reasonable anymore.

The rhetoric of self-defense has grown so crude, so kneejerk, so unironically on-the-offensive—along with the stereotyping of petty criminals as all violent leeches whose lives are forfeit—that it's grotesque, and it's time to fix it, on every level and in every way possible. Is listening to this tape hard? So is having the conversation about how we fix our broken, insecure, paranoid society before all of America becomes Inner America, before every man is a heavily armed island citadel.

[Photo credit: AP]

An Oregon ad agency is pretty steamed that comedian John Oliver, whose job description includes skewering ridiculous things, skewered one of their ridiculous things.

Oliver kicked off his new show, Last Week Tonight, with a jab at Oregon for spending a quarter of a billion dollars on a healthcare website before scrapping it and going with Healthcare.gov. And for spending a few million on ad agency North's wretchedly twee, painfully Oregonian commercials.

Here's Oliver's sketch, starring beloved glasses-wearer and member of the Nineteen Nineties Lisa Loeb:

In a blog post titled, "Yes, John Oliver, we are stupid fucking idiots," North principal Mark Ray decried Oliver's sketch as "brutal," "unfair," and "unjust." Ray somehow managed to both distance himself from Cover Oregon ("we have had nothing whatsoever to do with the $200m+ dollars spent to build Cover Oregon's online application portal") and basically call Oliver a jerk for shitting on an agency that believed in a rainbow healthcare dream.

Ray writes,

"Are we, as Mr. Oliver suggests, stupid fucking idiots?

Yes.

Given the world today, you have to be a stupid fucking idiot to want to help activate a legislation so controversial.

You have to be a stupid fucking idiot to suggest a strategy that unites people around a common good before selling them on something as complicated as health insurance.

You have to be a stupid fucking idiot to think advertising can actually help improve the quality of people's lives.

But at North, we welcome stupid fucking idiots. And I'd do it all again just the same, proudly.

Although, next time I'd probably leave the website out of the ads."

Incidentally, Oliver never named North or called the creators of the ad "stupid idiots," he just contrasted their "violently adorable" commercial with a violently unadorable waste of taxpayer money, for which no one is arguing that North is responsible.

Maybe they're actually smart fucking geniuses for riding the HBO coattails to some free publicity. Never underestimate the power of reverse psychology and a headline with a gratuitous "fucking" in it.

[H/T: Adweek]

NBC is seeking a dismissal of George Zimmerman's defamation suit against the network arising from its selective editing of his call to police the night he shot Trayvon Martin. NBC argues Zimmerman can't prove they did it falsely and maliciously. Actually proven: Everyone is horrible.

If you can't birth a genuinely good idea, there's a mounting body of evidence saying you should try the most deliberately stupid idea possible. How about a storage unit company that's calling itself a technology startup?

The convergence of practical joke and multi-million dollar company continues apace: TechCrunch calls New York-based MakeSpace "the Dropbox for physical storage."Dropbox is of course a tech company that uses physical storage as a metaphor for the digital storage it sells. "Dropbox for boxes" is commonly known as "just some fucking regular boxes, you charlatans." But, with a straight face, MakeSpace repeatedly describes itself as a "cloud" company:

We're creating the best way to store your physical stuff in the cloud. We believe storage should be convenient, seamless, and always available on-demand where ever you are.

[...]

MakeSpace Air is your closet in the cloud via mail. You tell us how many boxes you'll need to store, we'll email you shipping labels, and then you send them our way. Now you can "upload" your physical things to the cloud from anywhere in the United States. (APO/FPO locations coming Spring 2014)

In this case, however, the "cloud" you're "uploading" your "old shoes and dusty Dreamcast" is actually not a cloud hosting setup, but a" warehouse...located just a few miles outside of Manhattan." TechCrunch is in on the gag:

Users pay $25/month to get four bins worth of storage. But the key here is that users have on-demand delivery and drop-off of all those items, not unlike a download or upload to a cloud storage service.

Makes sense. Why, just this morning, I uploaded some water into my mouth via cup in my apartment. So, really, this is a storage unit business that's received over $10 million in venture capital backing. I know that $10 million is essentially bee piss in a world where WhatsApp goes for $19 billion, but the idea of "ten million dollars" really need to start meaning something again. Until then: yes, yes, a million times yes—we are in a bubble.

To contact the author of this post, write to biddle@gawker.com

As hard as it is to believe, no one had ever uttered the phrase "sucks balls" on the Late Show until Louis C.K. did it last night, while describing his feelings about Letterman leaving the show.

Thanks to C.K.'s brave pioneering, the door is now open for incoming host Stephen Colbert—who Louie was careful not to accuse of ball-sucking—to say "sucks balls" as often as he wants.

In other news involving Louis C.K. and genitals, this is a supercut of the many, many dick mentions on Louie:

[H/T Death and Taxes]

It is Amazon week here on Gawker.com. In the past two days, we've brought you stories from workers at Amazon's warehouses and corporate offices. Today, we bring you the stories of three different insiders: positive, negative, and nasty.

We've heard from quite a few current and former Amazon employees (both office workers and warehouse workers) this week. We're going to give you one of each here, along with a defense of Amazon from a current employee.

The most interesting takeaway from all this is not what these Amazon employees disagree about, but rather the common threads that run through their descriptions of life at Amazon: a high pressure culture based on competitiveness, obsessive and ongoing measurement of employees, and a commitment to treating people as cogs in one massive, churning retail machine. We've bolded some noteworthy passages below.

From a current Amazon employee [THE GOOD]

I'm a current Amazon employee and I think the dude that wrote you that email was full of shit. This is a competitive culture and unlike companies with huge funding reserves or incredibly high margin business models, Amazon is at heart a retail company where margins are slim by the nature of our business. On account of that we need to work hard: people who can't compete are weeded out the same way they are in any other highly competitive company. Amazon's demonstrated success and explosive growth are indicative of our success in our corporate culture. It seems like this person wasn't cutting it.

That being said, what I've found from working here is that the culture is output oriented. If you are demonstrating success and getting your work done at a high level, they are actually extremely flexible about hours and I've found my quality of life here to be incredibly high. I work hard, certainly, but I also have a well balanced life and I love my job. I've also worked at Facebook and Google and this is by far the most rewarding and enjoyable job I've ever had.

From a former Amazon warehouse employee [THE GOOD AND BAD]

It was 2009/2010 and like many people I was between jobs due to the economy. My experience takes place in Whitestown, IN not too far from where I live currently. Like the original Amazon story here I too came in through Integrity Staffing. I viewed Integrity Staffing as kind of like open tryouts but where you had to possess no skills really. I was also given some general questions but really had no barrier to entry and was then asked what schedule I preferred. To prevent any in fighting between who works weekends and who doesn't everyone works either Wednesday-Saturday or Sunday-Wednesday. This creates a strange overlap on Wednesday so I'm not sure how they figured that out. During peak times (think all of November and December) most people were told to work another day on either end of their schedule. I say "told" specifically. There wasn't an option unless you didn't want to work.

Once I started working there I had selected to be a picker. In retrospect this was probably a poor decision since this is definitely the most physically demanding as you literally run around to pick items as fast as possible. While told not to run everyone does so when they can, occasionally resulting in collisions. It was considered great if you could pick 100 items per hour. This is quite the feat considering most facilities are a million square feet or more. I did that a few times when I was feeling particularly motivated or energetic, but that was the exception as opposed to the rule. I would say average picking per hour was around 70 or so. Other roles like stowers, packers, and QA have similar numbers to aim for but not quite as hardcore. I chose picking because I liked the idea of something keeping me physically fit in the dead of winter. The motivation for picking such numbers were arbitrary gift certificates or other prizes awarded for "Shift Leaders" and if you performed consistently high you could be brought on full time. It didn't take long for me to realize this was a stop on the road for me and not what I foresaw being a desirable permanent role.

Something that really surprised me was the large variety of people who started there. I met everyone from those who were aimless and just worked here seasonaly to make some money then went back to doing nothing or bouncing around between other low paying jobs to people who were highly qualified professionals. I remember specifically a 50s something guy who was a supply chain strategist and used to work at an executive level but was laid off. This created for an interesting employee pool and it was always interesting to see how people polarized and grouped in the break rooms and at the meetings. More often than not it wasn't worth trying to align yourself with anyone because your breaks could be different, they could suddenly disappear (get let go), or people would get moved around on roles as needed too.

As for the actual work it wasn't too bad. It was at it's worst when things were really busy and everyone is running around and your schedule goes from four 10 hour days to five 12 hour days. Once again, there was no choice, it was just required as your temporary role. When things were like that it was quite difficult. And your feet eventually adjusted over a few weeks to no longer be in pain. Myself personally I found it really interesting to see how things worked within the belly of the beast. While there were some older workers this is really a young man's game. If you like a bit of healthy self motivated competition and you like being physically active on the job you might actually enjoy working for Amazon. Some of the frustrating points was just the large amount of arbitrary policies and rules. Like many large companies that are reliant on a temporary work force you're basically treated like cattle (feel free to use other analogies like cogs, and things like that as well). By that I mean that there's an annoying point system that treats you all like children for being late, late with checking in and out for breaks, or other infractions. Also if you couldn't come in to work you needed to call ahead and provide a valid reason. If you claimed to be sick you needed to actually bring a doctor's note. That was particularly insulting. You also could not bring any phone or other electronic device onto the floor. These had to be left in your car outside. So you were basically on communication blackout for 10-12 hours a day, which is less than ideal. Now the reasoning for this does make sense in that someone could easily swap their own device or hide things in it, etc. So I can see it, but still a bit extreme. Why couldn't we just leave them in our bags in the breakroom?

There were a lot of inefficiencies at Amazon as well, which I found ironic considering the number driven atmosphere. Everything is based off of algorithms as for your pick paths but items are literally all over the facility. Usually the set amount of items you pick for a bin (containing anywhere from 10-30 items) were generally close to each other. But it was not unusual to literally go across the facility once or twice within a single pick list. Obviously your numbers go down when you're walk/running several hundred feet between items. And then sometimes you're working in the "big item" area where you're picking things like PS3 or other similarly sized items. Obviously only a few of those can fit in a bit whereas you could fit 30 books or CDs on other pick lists. Once you finished picking your bin you put it on a conveyer. Before doing so you had to count all items in there and make sure it checked against the list you had. This often caused a slow down. But inaccuracy is frowned even more than being slow. Basically the entire system is kind of stacked against you. Like I said for being such an efficiency based company they seem to have a heavy amount of possible human error and don't really give you a lot of ways to help you with that. Not to mention whenever a scanner gun died or had issue that would cause you time as you would have to go find a manager and switch them out. Everything was on your time when it came to bathroom breaks or anything else that might slow you down. In a way you were almost encouraged to not use the restroom or anything else since this would reduce your picks/hour rate. If you had low pick rates there were actually Integrity people who circulated that would come find you and ask you why. I generally dismissed them as I could care less what they think. They needed me for now, and I use them as long as I needed them. As time passed and I found another job I began to care less and didn't try. Eventually I was pulled aside with some other workers, brought into a small room, told how much they valued my service, and then given a small bag of chocolates, and shown the door. I did have something tasty to eat on my way home, so that was nice.

All and all my experience wasn't awful but it was less than ideal. Amazon, and it's employees, really don't care about temp workers despite some of the managers being quite nice and good at what they do. I felt overworked and underappreciated by far but like most there I needed the money and needed the job. I think Amazon knows they have you in a spot that way and mistreats or disregards you accordingly.

From a former Amazon corporate employee [THE BAD AND THE UGLY]

Amazon was, without a doubt, the worst place I ever worked. I finally left, not because I was reviewed poorly or put in a wacky situation like your last corporate poster, but because I could no longer stand seeing some of the best people I've ever worked with abused and because of their ridiculous leveling system (and refusal to promote anyone - especially women - on the business side of certain departments).

My husband got the job at Amazon first. It turns out that Amazon hires a fair number of couples, although it seems like that would lead to more circumstances like mine, where they lose two people instead of one because one gets pissed (me, in this case). I moved to Seattle without a job, and ended up getting a role at Amazon very quickly. The interview process is long and annoying, but not the end of the world. Google's is similar.

When I started, I realized that something was horribly wrong (this is common, apparently): I was hired at a low-level position, despite having 15 years of experience, a top 10 school S.B., and an MBA. I was hired at a level lower than the MBA rotations were, even though I trained them practically from day 1. Amazon's phone tool tells everyone your level, so I'd call people or be sitting a meeting and could tell the moment they saw my level next to my name, because all their cooperative behavior would evaporate. I finally left Amazon after it became clear that I would have to work 7-10 years just to get to the level at which I should have been hired.

My reviews were exemplary, but the review process is a shitshow in itself. I was told in my last review that I was too aggressive. And that I was not aggressive enough. Not sure how that's actionable feedback.

My first boss at Amazon was actually emotionally abusive. I have triggers now that I never did before. I had battered wife syndrome. You know how Amazon dealt with it? They "let" me move to a different team a month before my 1-year anniversary. My boss got to stay a manager, but I had to leave the team. All HR said to me was, "Well, you hurt his feelings too sometimes."

In my second team, I worked less than anyone else on the business side. And I worked 80 hours each week. I'd start at 5am and end at 7pm 6 days a week. This would have been hell on my marriage, but I was lucky that my spouse was doing similar work. They didn't hire anyone in the year I was with that team - at least no one except a new director (who wasn't qualified for his job on paper, although I was, interestingly enough).

So my coworkers were working 100+ hours/week (I couldn't keep up that pace - I kept getting horribly sick, and I was professionally mature enough to push back sometimes, unlike the younger people around me), and they were continuously threatened by Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs). The only people who weren't were people like me (massively underleveled, so we could exceed expectations easily) or people who were so politically evil and self-serving that I could barely stand working with them. I was also told that the only way to get ahead was to become evil, since that's how JeffB setup the company.

At that point, I'd had enough. I left exactly 2 years + 1 day after starting - the moment I wouldn't have to pay my signing bonus back. My husband left as well.

Leaving was the best decision we ever made. Last we heard, our former teams are even worse to work on. What a nightmare.

[If you would like to share your story, email Hamilton@Gawker.com. Photo: Getty]

It's difficult to further debase an annual event commemorating the moral failings of the media industry. But Silicon Valley is nothing if not innovative. Re/code reports that tech companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft are hosting some of the largest parties during White House Correspondents' weekend.

Yep, the dinner has stretched into an entire weekend, so everyone can rest up between whatever ungodly acts they're performing on each other underneath the table. White House Correspondents' dinner is an embarrassment wrapped in a charade wrapped in personal brands. So of course corporations are going to try to get into it.

But it just so happens that these very same corporations are also trying to sell the line that they have become "increasingly defiant" against government authority, instead of "quietly complying" when the NSA used their services to secretly spy on customers.

Read about this six-hour "Bow Ties & Burgers" party that Facebook and Buzzfeed are throwing with Mark Zuckerberg's words about "the damage the government is creating" in mind:

"The whole weekend is about being VIP and hard-to-get-on lists and we wanted ours to be more open," said Ashley McCollum, vice president of development and communications at Buzzfeed. "The juxtaposition of celebrity and serious is very Buzzfeed-y in a way."

It's the first time Facebook has hosted an event during the party-heavy weekend in Washington. Neither Mark Zuckerberg nor Sheryl Sandberg is expected to attend, a company spokesman confirmed. Facebook's top lobbyist, Joel Kaplan, will help host the event, which is expected to draw upward of 700 people throughout the night.

"Co-hosting the party is just another way for Facebook to do what it does best: Connect people. And who wouldn't want to throw a party with BuzzFeed?" said a Facebook spokesman. Party planners are expecting several celebrities to show up, including actress and producer Mindy Kaling and thespian Patrick Stewart.

This doesn't have anything to do with journalism. This, my little marketers, is SXSW.

Twitter opted against a party this year, a spokesman said, although the company is installing a Twitter Mirror at the Washington Post's pre-dinner party Saturday night so guests can instantly tweet out their selfies via @PostPolitics.

Since we're already post-racism, might as well be post-politics.

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

[Image via Getty]

Thursday night was the Gloria Awards and Gala, held in New York City by the Ms. Foundation for Women. The party, which doubled as an 80th birthday party for Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem, featured awards, speeches, and a giant cake.

Among the speakers was Gabourey Sidibe, who gave an eloquent speech on confidence and why you shouldn't put chocolate chips in gingerbread cookies. She explained why it's tough to be a woman of her size in the industry while encouraging her audience to treat their differences as challenges instead of setbacks. You can read the whole thing over at Vulture, but here's an excerpt:

"Gabourey, how are you so confident?" It's not easy. It's hard to get dressed up for award shows and red carpets when I know I will be made fun of because of my weight. There's always a big chance if I wear purple, I will be compared to Barney. If I wear white, a frozen turkey. And if I wear red, that picture of Kool-Aid that says, "Oh, yeah!" Twitter will blow up with nasty comments about how the recent earthquake was caused by me running to a hot dog cart or something. And "Diet or Die?" [She gives the finger to that] This is what I deal with every time I put on a dress. This is what I deal with every time someone takes a picture of me. Sometimes when I'm being interviewed by a fashion reporter, I can see it in her eyes, "How is she getting away with this? Why is she so confident? How does she deal with that body? Oh my God, I'm going to catch fat!"

What I would say, is my mom moved my brother and I to my aunt's house. Her name is Dorothy Pitman Hughes, she is a feminist, an activist, and a lifelong friend of Gloria Steinem. Every day, I had to get up and go to school where everyone made fun of me, and I had to go home to where everyone made fun of me. Every day was hard to get going, no matter which direction I went. And on my way out of the house, I found strength. In the morning on the way out to the world, I passed by a portrait of my aunt and Gloria together. Side by side they stood, one with long beautiful hair and one with the most beautiful, round, Afro hair I had ever seen, both with their fists held high in the air. Powerful. Confident. And every day as I would leave the house... I would give that photo a fist right back. And I'd march off into battle. [She starts crying] I didn't know that I was being inspired then. On my way home, I'd walk back up those stairs, I'd give that photo the fist again, and continue my march back in for more battle. [She pulls a tissue from her cleavage and dabs her eyes] That's what boobs are for! I didn't know I was being inspired then, but I was. If they could feel like that, maybe I could! I just wanted to look that cool. But it made me feel that strong.

[H/T Vulture, image via Getty]

At least 31 people died in Odessa, Ukraine this evening after a building was set on fire during clashes between Ukrainian government supporters and pro-Russian protesters.

The fire broke out in the House of Trade Unions building, which has served as make-shift headquarters for pro-Russian separatists in the city. Eight people reportedly died after jumping from the burning building; the others reportedly died from smoke inhalation.

A local parliamentarian told Reuters that six pro-Ukraine protesters also died in the protests.