Plantiffs in the federal suit over Virginia's ban on gay marriage, Emily Schall-Townley, Carol Schall, and Mary Townley, raise their arms after a hearing on Virginia's same sex-marriage ban in Richmond on Tuesday. Image via Steve Helber/AP.

Canadian astronaut Cmdr. Chris Hadfield is best known as the first man to cover David Bowie's "Space Oddity" while actually in space. But the video of Hadfield's performance, seen 22 million times and counting, will vanish from YouTube today due to copyright complications.

"It has been a year since my son and I created and released the Space Oddity video," Hadfield wrote on Reddit. "We have been amazed and delighted that so many people enjoyed it—and maybe saw what spaceflight can really be like."

"We had permission from David Bowie's people to post the video on YouTube for a year, and that year is up. We are working on renewing the license for it, but as there are no guarantees when it comes to videos shot in space, we thought you might want to have one last look before we take it down."

Hadfield linked to an Economist article that lays out the specific copyright issues, including which jurisdiction applies to a performance on the International Space Station. Fortunately, space law didn't come into it, because the production and distribution of the song on YouTube, with Bowie's permission, took place on Earth.

"Commander Hadfield and his son Evan spent several months hammering out details with Mr Bowie's representatives, and with NASA, Russia's space agency ROSCOSMOS and the CSA," the Economist reported.

But now that the year is up, Bowie would be within his rights to sue in any country where the video is seen on YouTube, so Hadfield will have to take it down.

Not to worry, though. YouTube is a tangled maze of bogus accounts and reuploaded videos, so even if the original copy of the song comes down, bootleg versions will likely persist by springing up more quickly than YouTube can strike them down.

And none of that will be the fault of the first Canadian to walk in space, who graciously secured the rights, followed the law, and gave us one last chance to watch his video before it went away.

[H/T Reddit]

The Fifth Circuit has just granted a stay of the execution of Robert James Campbell. He had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. tonight in Texas. In their opinion, which is unanimous, the Fifth Circuit says it wants to hear Campbell's habeas corpus petition based on his alleged mental disability.

Ted Cruz is an idiot, and the National Review is an idiot enabler:

Here's an NR "post" by Andrew McCarthy, a neocon torture apologist whose greatest achievement is being occasionally confused with a B-actor who fucked a mannequin. Emphasis added:

On Sean Hannity's Fox News program last night, Senator Ted Cruz recapped the Senate debate in which he renewed his call for a joint congressional committee to investigate the Benghazi massacre. He explained that Democrats are blocking action because there has already been enough investigation even as they acknowledge they do not know basic facts about what happened on the evening of September 11, 2012 — like where the commander-in-chief was, what he was doing, whether he was sleeping, whether he took any meaningful action to rescue Americans who were under siege for hours after he was first informed of the attack.

Senator Cruz also opined that a select committee will be needed for the IRS scandal as well...

A couple of things. First, congressional Republicans, who just summoned their own Benghazi investigative panel from the depths of Baal's musty armpit, must get really tired of Cruz bigfooting them all the time. No way they can get to the bottom of this alone! They need Super Ted and his paisley Princeton robe to get some movement on this thing.

Second, yeah, the dearth of show trials is what's kept America from getting to the bottom of the Benghazi and IRS "scandals." I thought these guys hated communists and Nazis? Maybe try a catchy explainer-jingle instead.

Third, what precisely would we learn if POTUS was in fact sleeping while some shit was going down on the Barbary coast six time zones away? Besides, you know, at least he wasn't really wrapped up in a reading of "The Pet Goat"?

[Image via AP]

Conservatives want an exception to a recent federal rule requiring higher pay for fast-food-workers on military bases, because paying Joey 10 bucks an hour to salt the fries will drive BK out of business, and the troops will miss their Whoppers, and why do you hate the troops?

Airbnb is not in the clear yet. In court papers filed today, New York State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the $10 billion rental company and quashed a subpoena for data about illegal Airbnb hosts. However, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman plans to reissue the subpoena this week, narrowing it down to the judge's specifications.

Although reporters are calling it "a big victory" and "safely...a win" for Airbnb, Schneiderman's office isn't backing down.

According to the New York Daily News, the judge thought the subpoena was overreaching. The AG's office said the results of the subpoena might potentially help them figure out unpaid taxes, as well as who was violating hotel laws. Using a study conducted by the travel news site Skift, the Attorney General assumed there were 15,000 illegal hosts, but Airbnb began ejecting bad apples after a settlement with Schneiderman fell through.

"The subpoena at issue, as drafted, seeks materials that are irrelevant to the inquiry at hand and accordingly, must be quashed," Acting state Supreme Court Justice Gerald Connolly writes in court papers filed Tuesday.

The court grants Airbnb's "instant application to quash the subpoena as overbroad" and denies Schneiderman's motion to compel the popular apartment-sharing site to hand over the requested data about its hosts.

Here is a statement from Matt Mittenthal, spokesperson for the Attorney General:

"The judge's decision specifically found evidence that a 'substantial' number of Airbnb hosts may be violating the tax laws and the law that prohibits illegal hotels. This comes as no surprise, given that Airbnb itself removed some 2,000 New York-based listings from its site. Our office is committed to enforcing a law that provides vital protections for building residents and tourists alike. The judge rejected all of AirBnb's arguments except for a narrow technical issue, and we will reissue the subpoena to address it."

The AG's office has some reason to hope a less sprawling subpoena won't get quashed this. For example, the judge seemed suspicious Airbnb was facilitating illegal activity:

"The record before the Court indicates that there are Hosts regularly using their apartments to provide lodging to guests who may not be complying with the state and local tax registration and/or collection requirements."

The judge also didn't buy Airbnb's claim that there was no legal precedent:

"[Airbnb's] assertions that a factual predicate has not been established are without merit as there is evidence that a substantial number of Hosts may be in violation of the Multiple Dwelling Law and/or New York State and/or New York City tax provisions..."

Airbnb is not waiting for the reissued subpoena, which would have to be quashed by the judge again, to celebrate. Here's a statement Airbnb sent to Valleywag about the ruling:

This decision is good news for New Yorkers who simply want to share their home and the city they love. Now, it's time for us to work together. Airbnb hosts and the Attorney General share a common goal: we all want to make New York a better place to live, work and visit. We look forward to continuing to work with the Attorney General's Office to make New York stronger for everyone.

Decision to Squash Subpoena for Airbnb Users

This is a breaking news post, I will update as I learn more. . .

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

It's "Extreme Week" on The Steve Harvey Show, which opens the door for this bit of complete and utter nonsense that aired earlier today. Carla is supposedly addicted to social media ("I feel like I'm a minister of the gospel of Facebook") and unable to do anything without documenting it for the world to see ("If it didn't happen on social media, it didn't happen"). Her segment on this show, though, revealed that the real reason she needs to put down her damn phone is so she can learn how to deliver her lines more convincingly, because this show is apparently more wooden and fake now than Jerry Springer, even.

As if the whole thing weren't ridiculous enough, it ends with Harvey demanding Carla give up her phone-tapping habits and telling her to reach into a tank with tarantulas to retrieve her phone. Carla declines, saying that she won't risk her life for her phone.

What.

Do these people know anything? Did Carla ever get her phone back? Did any of this actually happen before I sent the link to this post through social media?

On Tuesday, the Boynton Beach, Fla. police department released two student-shot cell phone videos that show police officers detaining two sixth graders who'd reportedly just been removed from a school bus. In one video, an officer appears to put a student in a chokehold; in another, an officer kicks a student in the back of the leg, causing the student to fall.

From LiveLeak:

The boys were reportedly pulled off the school bus for some minor behavioral issues, when police arrived. One boy was initially handcuffed and sat on the ground, while police handcuffed the second student. In the first video, the student standing with the officer on the left of screen is allegedly roughly detained.

One of the officers was placed on administrative duty as the department investigates the incident. From the BBPD's statement released to media:

"We are investigating the circumstances surrounding this situation and have placed one of the officers on administrative duty. We are concerned as to the initial appearance of the video, and despite the fact that we have received no formal complaints at this time, we are committed to reviewing the situation in its entirety and taking whatever action is deemed most appropriate at the conclusion of our investigation"

[WPBF]

USA TODAY media critic and Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff is legally married to Cold Spring lawyer Alison Anthoine, from whom he famously separated, in 2009, to pursue a then-28-year-old Vanity Fair intern named Victoria Floethe (pictured above with Wolff). While it’s not clear what happened with Wolff and Floethe—the pair were photographed at a Financial Times party in 2012—the former’s marriage remained intact, at least by the courts. No more.

Five years after separating, Wolff has finally applied for what appears to be an official divorce—but without informing Anthoine, the mother of their three children, who evicted Wolff after his affair with Floethe publicly captivated New York’s media circles.

Last week, Wolff filed a matrimonial action against his wife in the Supreme Court of New York in lower Manhattan. Such actions are kept sealed in New York State. They are, however, acknowledged by a docket entry, listing the names of the plaintiff and defendant, and designated by index numbers that begin with “3.” The index number for Wolff v. Anthoine is 305911-2014.

When reached by telephone, Anthoine said she was unaware that Wolff had filed a matrimonial action against her. “He has not filed for divorce,” she told Gawker. When provided evidence of Wolff’s filing, Anthoine amended her response: “Well, this is the first time I’ve heard of it.”

Anthoine suggested that she and Wolff had recently discussed their marriage. “Neither of us intends to file,” she said, adding, “Both of us intend to resolve this amicably.”

“We don’t speak often,” Anthoine said of her relationship with Wolff. That said, the separated couple do communicate electronically: “We email, we chat, we are in touch.” Anthoine declined further comment about Wolff.

According to records maintained by the New York State Bar Association, Anthoine lives in Putnam County, New York. Her husband lives in New York City, where he frequently writes about the private lives and dissolute marriages of media titans (like Rupert Murdoch) and politicians (like Silvio Berlusconi).

Wolff declined to acknowledge requests for comment, and it is not clear who is representing the critic in his matrimonial action. A former attorney of Wolff and Anthoine’s, John L. Overland, Jr., referred Gawker to Steven Wagner of the New York City firm Porzio, Bromberg & Newman. Wagner did not immediately acknowledge a request for comment.

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

[Photo credit: Financial Times / Flickr]

Are you going to the World Cup next month in Rio? You're probably gonna get robbed. And if you get robbed, for the love of God, don't scream, because you'll just get your damn fool self killed. As one elite cop in the city says: "There is no use crying over spilt milk."

If you want to know what's happening in Afghanistan, read Matthieu Aikins. If you want to know what torturous executing enforcer the U.S. military is working with to keep the peace in Afghanistan, follow Matthieu Aikins on Twitter.

This morning, a new report in the New York Times detailed how the force led by that torturer, Kandahar police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq, likely killed and desecrated a 23-year-old man over the weekend, the latest in his three-year campaign to brutalize perceived and suspected terrorists.

Raziq's reign is a subject near and dear to Aikins' heart; the Polk Award-winning journalist profiled him critically in 2011 linking the chief to mass murder. Yet since then, Raziq has gotten more power and prestige from the U.S. military.

So after reading the Times piece, Aikins vented his righteous, informative frustration in a 12-part "Twitter essay":

1. Who is this man and why does the US military like him so much? Time for a Twitter essay on torture in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/hM8fwjgyfx

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

2. In 2011, I wrote on police chief Abdul Raziq's involvement in torture, executions, and an outright massacre. http://t.co/vvVg9KT773

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

3. I provided photos and eyewitness testimony. For example, I met a young man who had been electrocuted by his toes. pic.twitter.com/G1XmJLgwV5

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

4. Result? Thanks to US military support, he's a Major General. Here he is cuddling with the #2 US general in Feb. pic.twitter.com/hM8fwjgyfx

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

5. Mealy-mouthed reporting hasn't helped. In March, WSJ referred to Raziq's abuses as "sometimes unorthodox methods". http://t.co/owwD0LtFHg

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

6. Under the Leahy Amendment, it's illegal for the US to fund human rights abusers. Kandahar police salaries are mostly paid for by the US.

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

7. UN reported in-depth on torture in Afghan prisons and cites "a persistent lack of accountability" as the problem. http://t.co/owgwvyibtu

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

8. Even State lists "torture and abuse of detainees" first as significant rights problem in Afghan country report. http://t.co/QVgsxu3ajN

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

9. In 2012, I caught NDS and police torturing school girls into false confessions. Yep, torturing school girls. http://t.co/fjEEJB2v7N

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

10. In summary, the NYT piece is just the latest on an extremely ugly problem we’re leaving to the Afghans. http://t.co/gP17vrRQnq

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

11. Any questions?

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

12. Oh, PS: Kandahar's second-most-prolific torturer ended up in a nice house in California, and no one will say how. http://t.co/4XilELcuEP

— Matthieu Aikins (@mattaikins) May 13, 2014

This is a good genre for smart rants. Here's hoping Aikins and more journalists use it.

As for Raziq, our dependence on men like him in Iraq and Afghanistan puts the lie to every jingoist knucklehead's simplistic old saw that we're over there fighting for freedom and right. We may very well may be, but freedom and right don't look quite as free and right as advertised to the American public that sanctions those fights.

[Photo credit: maikins.com]

In this corner, standing 6'7" tall and weighing 215 lbs., undefeated WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder, who has won 31 consecutive decisions by knockout. His opponent: Charlie Zelenoff, a YouTube troll who boasts about his boxing skills and has allegedly been harassing Wilder and his family for three years.

You can already guess how this is going to go.

Wilder squared off against Zelenoff last week after the notorious YouTube loudmouth—known for claiming 28 professional knockouts, but actually having little to no pro boxing experience—challenged him to a fight. Zelenoff's ass was, unsurprisingly, gift-wrapped and handed to him.

Zelenoff's accounts of his fights tend to diverge from observable reality, and this is no exception. Talking to TMZ about his absolute drubbing at the hands of Wilder, he said, "I was caught off-guard. He just got lucky."

The fake boxer admitted to harassing the champ and his family, although he denied allegations that he's a racist.

"A lot of my friends are black," he said, "I just hate Wilder as a person. He's a phony. I'm the best."

Wait, I think you've got that exactly backward.

Zelenoff says he wants a rematch, but Wilder declined, having obviously proven his point.

[H/T Daily Dot]

Hey the Jerk Store called and they were like, "We have a delivery for the middle of New York City while Lizzie Keen holds a gun to Red Reddington's head, is somebody there to accept?" And nobody was, so the plane just crashed right there in the middle of everything! Scattering jerks everywhere! A jerk stepped on another jerk's dead jerk body, and then all the jerks scattered.

Matt Lauer was all, "Did you ever see Con Air? That's what's going on right now." But people just kept jogging and walking their dogs like they weren't under attack by Eastern European escaped criminals! Because they are goddamn New Yorkers, that's why.

The FBI is able to collect some of the slower jerks and they tell a story with—you won't believe me if I tell you this right now, but it's true—an honest-to-God plotpoint about pronouns. They keep saying about how the one man, Berlin who wants to snatch Red Reddington for some reasons we are free to imagine for ourselves, cut off "his" hand but they are not talking about "him" as a second character in the story.

Sorry to ruin the surprise, please do not put me on your personal blacklist, but the second you see who the surviving guard is, none of this matters. It is fucking Peter Stormare that had "his" hand cut off by the mysterious "he" who is also him, and if you have ever seen a movie or a TV show, the second you saw Peter Stormare's name in the credits you would be all like, "Well, that is clearly going to be Berlin."

But I am not mad at you, show, because I love Peter Stormare more than almost anything in this world. So you go on and think you're fooling us, like a tween doing magic tricks, and we will ooh and we will ahh and we will say, "Nice job! I really did think you sawed your sister in half, I was just trying to 'play it cool.'"

Anyway the guard whose hand was cut off by Berlin—which is also true!—falls down in a hospital and waits for when the FBI will come so he can tell them a very long, super weird story about bones among other things.

Red is in custody after Liz sold him out and then decided not to sell him out and then pretended to sell him out, if you recall. Gary Martin is the name of the little man with the little face that has been up in Cooper's biz for a few episodes, and man is he gloaty! Don't gloat at Red Reddington, he will punch you in the throat and then gloat so hard you will be embarrassed at your paltry gloating from a moment ago.

Martin: "Was Liz worth it? Literally nobody thinks she is. Barely even Liz thinks she is."
Red: "Your hair smells like my Dad. Is that Brillcream? He used to apply Brillcream liberally. To his BALLS, Special Agent Walter Gary Martin. Directly. To. His. Balls."

The Post Office is like, "Where did all these dudes come from?" And the answer is, Russia. But Russia—I hate to get political on you because we're just here to have fun—but Russia is horny illiterate teenage boys playing in shit, that's all it is. So they are not about to explain where they got all these wanted perps or why they flew them to the US or anything at all. But then how can we get a manifest that will explain which jerk was Berlin on the plane?

A sexy Russian watches the Today show and does so many pullups his eyebrows completely disappear, and then Tom Keen drops by lookin' superfine and tells him, "Here is a list of everybody on the show that works at the Post Office. Are we going to kill them or what?" And the Russian who I think his name is Milos Pavel Kinsky—which is a lot of damn references in one place I think—just smiles like, "You look pretty, like woman. Yes, we kill."

Red is very happy to see Alan Alda in his little Post Office Box where he lives, because it means that he gets to be smug at Fitch, his very fave. "See, if we were friends like I wanted to be, how happy that would have worked out. Instead, I murdered that old lady at her house that time, and I am in a box now, and even worse for you, you are a laughingstock of the world now because of the jerk plane and your lack of intel on it and your complete fame for that."

Alan Alda is like, "That's true but you have no idea that I already covered for your ass a few weeks ago with my mysterious faction, so let us not tit for tat with each other. I will arrange your escape from the Post Office if you will solve all my problems. PS, I probably will kill everybody in the Post Office, like, probably today but don't hold me to that because I have a lot going on."

They stick Red in a car with Gary and Red pops him in the face so hard he is knocked unconscious, then he strangles everybody else in the car, and then he walks away from a car crash like it is no big deal to him so he can call Lizzie and tell her what the past hour has been like for himself personally.

This part sucked ass. Malik and Ressler go shaking trees at Russia mobster nightclubs looking for leads on how to get to Berlin, and then Malik sees a giant man looking like he wants to kill her so she goes to help him with that. Then her throat is slit like Robb Stark, and then she is dead. Which is dumb, and not because her character was so well-developed or interesting, it's just because she's expendable. Because however little of a character Don Ressler is, she was always even less.

When Luli Zeng died and Dembe was like, ready to follow, I thought, "Huh. That's weird. As a white person I have no problem with Red having minority servants doing all of his whims without even opening their stupid mouths to talk! But now that you are putting it in my face, that is kind of weird." So now, half the season later, we have a situation where the one minority woman is getting killed, seemingly only to motivate some bad-ass behavior of Ressler later, and then Cooper also nearly dies... I'll think it, but I won't always say it, when it happens once. But for the exact same cardboard BS to happen twice in the same way and basically for the same reasons, precisely as these tentpole seasonal events... That's fucked up. It's just fucked up. It's not intentional, it's not racist, not evil, it doesn't make you evil for liking or watching the show, but the point is it's our privilege to overlook these kinds of patterns, until they're pointed out.

Anyway Liz is like, "Red, Meera Malik just got Luli'd," and he is like, "Who is that?" But also that he can't risk any more Post Officers at this point, because he loves both Liz and Ressler now, so he just has to abruptly quit and make the FBI stop looking for Berlin. But Liz points out that this is Tom's fault—since he engineered his own capture to get a look at everybody?—and therefore, everything is about Tom. By which she means, everything is about her.

"And speaking of me, what about my father Sam? Let's talk about that. It has been five whole minutes since last we spoke of Sam."

Red says Berlin was only interested in Sam because of Liz, and Liz because of Red, and Red because of who knows why? And then also, another thing nobody knows is, why bring all these extra jerks if you just wanted Berlin in the US? Anyway, Ressler is able to figure out that at least one of them was supposed to go back to Russia—thanks to his understanding of Russian hand tattoo meanings that he has—so Red finally goes to the ambassador's house to get that darn manifest.

When the ambassador gets home—from what must be a hard job, all perqs aside, being diplomatic on behalf of the grossest thing of all Europe—he finds Red being adorable at his dining room table, eating (and endlessly talking about) the kind of peaches he's eating, which is freestone, and what freestone means when it comes to peaches, and also chilling with the diplomat's Yorkie. Dembe takes away his cell phone, Red eats more peaches, and then abruptly throws a knife into the diplomat's leg and then stabs him a little bit on the midsection, and so now we have the manifest!

Four of the jerks are missing, neither on the scene smoking and getting stepped on by jerks nor in FBI custody. Two of them are just okay, but one of them is way hot. It is Tom's BFF, Kinsky, or the man we think of as Berlin until—yes, you're very tricky The Blacklist—we learn otherwise. So they should go talk to the guard without the hand, and that way their job is only looking for one jerk and not four jerks (over and above looking for all four jerks, of course which is their regular job).

At the hospital, Peter Stormare is like," Hey, how dumb are you?" And it's Liz and Ressler so of course they are like, "On a scale of one to ten we are about a five and a four, but if you would like us to do some close-up magic or terrible hostage negotiating, we are like an eight and a ten on that." He's like, "Perfect. I have a very long, very weird story to tell you." And they're like, "Uh, we are familiar with that concept from working with Raymond Reddington every week."

Berlin was a Russian Army guy turned KGB who was all about sending people to Siberia during the Cold War. His daughter fell in love with a dissident, and was punished, but he helped her escape and got sent to Siberia himself! Among his enemies, thanks Kremlin. But then some mysterious meanie started sending him parts of his daughter's body! (Also a pocketwatch.) Finally when he got her bones, he sharpened them into knives! Deal with that! Because his guards at the gulag sure couldn't, once his daughter-bone knife was up in their guts. And now he blames Red for some part of this or all of it, and here we are.

I generally pretend that "everything," meaning "nothing," that Red says about his adventures is strictly true. But if you pretend all of it is—if you let him Extraordinary Gentleman you with his narrative—then for sure he would have been able to find time in there to be a Cold War Soviet dissident and get some chick killed and her bones mailed to her dad in Siberia. He could do that in the time it would take you or I to microwave a television dinner, or pit a freestone peach.

Anyway they are like, "Thanks for telling us that crazy story! It has been nice getting to know you, and probably we won't see you again since there's nothing special about you except that you know the entire life story of a person that doesn't exist, but so anyway good luck with your no hand."

Agent Martin meets Cooper and he has double shiners from when Red knocked him upside the head, and what he tells Cooper is that everything is okay, and Red and Keen are welcome to start over again like at the beginning of the season, with immunity and BFF powers of just them two. Cooper is like, "What is even going on with you dicks, you've been riding my jock all season about this and now suddenly you are chill about it?"

Gary woggles his Brillcreamed eyebrows at Cooper and is just like, "You are so dumb if you don't get that Diane Fowler worked for Fitch just like I do," but hints around at him about it so maybe he will figure it out. And maybe he would if he thought about it for one second, but instead he gets distracted from getting garroted in his car immediately after this conversation, by that same guy that killed Meera. Two down. Good thing Aram never leaves the Post Office or for sure he would be next.

Boy, now Ressler is really mad! They find the guy who keeps killing people and he gives this mortifying speech about how he used to be "a real Boy Scout" that "followed all the rules," but then he fell in love and a week later he was engaged and a week after that she got killed by ninjas and then the week after that he blew up a man who was dying of cancer that was pissing him off, and nowadays it's just like who knows. "I don't need rules anymore, just the sound of beating your ass into the ground!"

Ressler, red in cheeks and eye! So then he beats his tied-up Russian ass in custody like a real badass that believes in due process and extradition laws to only a certain extent that doesn't interfere with his incredible virility, chokes him out, and finds out the address of one Berlin (but not the real one, even!).

Liz sees Cooper in the hospital and is so desperate to make these two minority attacks be all about her that she starts crying in Red's lap about her dad some more, which is a leap even for her and you can tell even Red thinks she's being tacky. Red explains to her about her father, for the 196,000th time, and that Sam got a visitor in the middle of the night, an old friend who was dropping her off to be raised by Sam, since her dad had died in a fire that night."

Liz is like, "I remember a fire, and this bunny, and my hand, but that's all I remember—as you probably know from the many times I have said all of this," and Red's like, "Yeah because you were a very small child is why you don't remember it so well. Just don't worry about the rest of it because if you ever remember who your dad is, you will be murdered. Your dad died in the fire and Sam is great. PS, I feel bad about killing Sam but I did it for two reasons. One is, because I love him. Two is, because he was going to tell you who is your dad."

You can see her gear up to be like, "Yeah, but who is my dad?" and hope that he yells at her to cut that shit out, but instead Finch sends the fake Berlin's address, and then we have a short sexy montage of Red killing, I would say, six or seven hundred people to get in there.

Fake Berlin is like, "They both kind of have red hair, the man is a strawberry blond and the woman is more of an auburn, but... Yeah, those two assholes. Kill 'em both. We good?" And then Red is like, "I am here to tie you up and torture you for a good ten minutes!" So he does, and tells many a long strange story about many things, but the basics are that he would like to know what Berlin is all about. Why he is here, where did he come from, what is the deal with him doing terrorism, et cetera.

Fake Berlin is a tough customer! Not only will he not tell Red these things or why he is doing all this crap, but he won't even admit he doesn't know any of those things! Finally Fake Berlin is like, "I guess Beirut in 2010 is why I'm so mad?" And Red is like, "Actually that makes a ton of sense." But really he's lying because it doesn't, which is just how Red works. He will keep torturing you even after you embarrass yourself by not being Berlin.

Outside, playing 2048 on her phone and trying not to just die of boredom in Red's car, Liz is surprised by Tom Keen, who slides in beside her in the car. He is so perfect looking that every time comes as a surprise. It doesn't wear off. So she is nearly breathless! But also with fear, because he calls her babe but also there's a gun in his hand. He hostages her up the stairs and into Fake Berlin's house, where they have a commercial-break amount of standoff—Berlin keeps telling Tom to shoot her! But he doesn't want to because he loves her probably!—before Red is like, he just shoots Berlin through the head after shooting him through so many other parts, and he's like, "Now it's just the three of us finally!"

What is the opposite of a family? Is there a word for that?

Anyway, Liz is all scared with a gun to her head and then Tom finally gets jumpy and shoots at Red, just in the arm barely, and Liz responds by plugging Tom in the tummy like, many times. First once or twice, then many times. He falls down on the floor and Red is all set to execute him but Liz says she will do it, which all three of them means she won't.

The second Red's gone, she feels very sorry for Tom and his beautiful body, and he feels very sorry for being such a fucking drag all season and also for their whole marriage being a lie and making her feel crazy and violated, and she's like, "It's no big deal" and then he tells her that her father is alive! And since that's very interesting to Liz because it's about Liz, she drops his hot ass on the floor of this random apartment and heads down to interrogate Red about that. So by the time the FBI shows up to comb the place over, there's just a good deal of Tom's sexy smeared-around blood, but no sexy Tom qua Tom, left on the floor. Excelsior, Tom Keen!

The Post Office is losing personnel faster than the internet is killing their namesake! Now it's just Ressler, Keen and Aram. None of whom are the best to be honest. Finally they figure out how dumb they are that every single jerk was like, "He cut off his hand!" and they were like, "You already told us that, it's fucked up" and the prisoners were like, "Yeah but it's fucked up at like a 99 and you're acting like it's fucked up at a 40-45." It was over twice as fucked up as they were acting, because pronouns: He cut off his [own] hand. Because it had Russian tattoos on it, which would make Stormare obviously Berlin, like he already obviously was.

This part is mostly redeemed by Aram, the smartest guy in the room, doing this hilariously portentous "my heart just dropped out of my butt because I figured out our tragic/fatal mistake of lexical ambiguity" as though it's this complicated thing that you would have to be Einstein to figure out, and not just be a person who can understand normal emphasis and intonation in people's voices when they say things. (Maybe that's why they were Eastern European jerks, actually, so that this could be the big "puzzle" of the finale and they needed some people with, to the Western ear, a flatter affect. I bet that's what it is.)

So they run to the hospital and guess what, everybody is fucking dead. Piles of dead nurses, chopped and stacked, by a knife that maybe it was made from a daughter or maybe just any bone will do, but either way this Berlin guy, am I right? Piece of work.

Red explains that he already knew all of this because of how Fake Berlin said he was after Red because of Beirut 2010, but this ass ache already started way before that. So now everybody "thinks" Berlin is finally dead, but everybody "knows" that he isn't. So Lizzie has a choice: She can quit the FBI and this whole dumb thing and go to therapy forever and ever, or she can drop out and be full-time Reddington Faction and help him solve these things and do revenge and save whatever is left of the Post Office. She is like, "Much like in every episode, I will first say fuck you and then five minutes later change my mind."

Five minutes later, after staring at every picture of Sam there is and also moving out of her house, Liz changes her mind. Just as Ressler is noticing movement in Cooper's left hand that signifies he is going to survive being murdered, she pulls up at Red's house and they reconcile like they always do. Also Stormare shaves and looks presentable, and very much wonderful in fact, for next season. He checks out the picture of his daughter, who Red also has a picture of—he took it from the Stewmaker, the "#79" Polaroid—and I guess probably goes to find more bones to make things out of. I like to imagine him gnawing or carving bones into everything, from Dutch shoes to patio furniture to replicas of smaller bones. Like Lauren Conrad with seashells.

So that is very exciting! Berlin's daughter, blamed on Red somehow. Liz in the wind and ready to live a life of luxury with her pet monster/pretend dad #3, like any normal person would have done on Day One. Ressler overjoyed in his simple mind by Cooper's survival. Meera's orphaned children for no reason. What a great day for everyb... Oh, what's that, Lizzie? You want to... Are you sure? I mean, it's kinda... You know what, go for it.

Liz: "Are you my father?"
Red: "Are you fucking serious right now?"

Nah see because Tom—a person who even their name is a lie—told her one thing, and Red—who has never lied to her and regularly takes fucking bullets and knives for her—told her another. So obviously fact-checking is in order. Whether or not Real Dad is alive is not the problem, Lizzie. The problem is that you are scaring us, neurologically speaking. Anyway he's like, "Next time I will backhand you, how about. Don't make me that kind of Fake Dad."

And then he goes home and looks at the Stewmaker's picture of Berlin's dead daughter, and then he takes off his shirt to deal with Tom's little gunshot wounds on his arm, and guess what: His back is full of burn scars. So that. Is that. At the very least, Red's the guy who dropped her off.

Which I guess means either Raymond Reddington set that fire, or he died metaphorically and was reborn with his whole well-dressed bi vibe intact, or that he loved both her dads—took her from one BFF to another BFF in a single busy firefighting night—which would make him just a regular old dad-lover.

[Image via NBC]

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Nothing weird at all about this, just two normal people with a normal husband/sister-in-law relationship shopping for jewelry on a Tuesday afternoon.

What did they buy? According to TMZ, nothing:

Our sources says Jay and Solange were in Mr. Flawless, where they were looking for women's jewelry for around 20 minutes.

We're told the pair showed no signs of strife, and looked at gems with Mr. Flawless himself. They looked, but tried nothing on. They left the store without buying anything.

Might have been a smart move on Jay's part though.

#wheniwaslittle I tried to kill my sisters teenage boyfriend (not a secret scince she blabbed about it on letterman) I had a GREAT plan. :)

— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 8, 2009

[image via AP]

Two Australian billionaires apparently started punching each other in broad daylight last week when one confronted the other about dating Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr after leaving his wife and children last year.

According to reports, billionaire Australian media moguls David Gyngell and James Packer ended up rolling around on a Sydney sidewalk last Sunday when Gyngell confronted Packer on the street outside his home.

Gyngell, a childhood friend who also served as Packer's best man in 2007, was apparently concerned with the way Packer had been treating his estranged wife since their split.

"He fully accepts that he was the instigator of the incident," a spokesman for Gyngell told the Daily News. "Clearly, had he not turned up at Packer's premises in an angry mood then the confrontation would never have occurred."

The men had to be separated by their respective bodyguards and both were fined $500 for "offensive behavior."

Packer walked away with a black eye but declined to press charges against his childhood friend.

"We have been friends for 35 years and still are," the pair said in a joint statement.

[image AP]

Can surprise hit Playing House keep up the buzzy early-episode momentum? (I don't know about you but I'll always bet on Zach Woods, I love that dude.) And meanwhile, how is it that About A Boy did enough better than Trophy Wife that its season finale is tonight, while the latter show's series finale is postponed until Hulu knows when? Is the "perfectly enjoyable sitcom about a nontraditional family starring equal amounts of high-profile actors and well-known showkillers" market really that saturated? (Mom says: "Yes.") And then we've got what should always be the last-ever episode of that candy-coated nonsensical bullshit fever dream Glee, and the season finale of late-blooming Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

So that's what is up tonight: Consider this an open thread to talk about whatever you're watching. Check for a subthread before starting one, just to keep it tight, and let's see how this goes.

Up at 8/7c. there's the Bad Girls Club premiere, and season finales for Glee, S.H.I.E.L.D., and The Originals. Then at 9, the Duggars are up to something on TLC, something is going on with Dance Moms if you're into that, felt fantastia on puppeteering themes Jim Henson's Creature Shop has its first season finale, RHNY we'll talk about tomorrow, and that show Riot where things are done to celebrities' equilibrium debuts. There's a regular old episode of Supernatural—now in its fiftieth year!—and the Goldbergs finale, which people seem to really like. Maybe I just don't get it. That Eighties humor. And finally at 10 you've got Awkward/Faking It on MTV, and Fargo on FX. Whatever we've left off tonight's list, that's fair game too. Let's talk about it!

[Image via Instagram]

A furniture salesman got attacked outside a karaoke bar by a pair of unknown assailants. A few days later, he realized he could see complex geometrical equations everywhere he looked.

Before Jason Padgett was attacked in 2002, he was a jock and party animal who had stopped taking math after a pre-algebra class. "I cheated on everything, and I never cracked a book," he told Live Science.

But a few days after doctors sent him home from the hospital with a severe concussion and a bleeding kidney, Padgett noticed the world looked different.

Soon after the attack, Padgett experienced PTSD and debilitating social anxiety. But at the same time, he noticed that everything looked different. He describes his vision as "discrete picture frames with a line connecting them, but still at real speed." If you think of vision as the brain's taking pictures all the time and smoothing them into a video, it's as though Padgett sees the frames without the smoothing. In addition, "everything has a pixelated look," he said.

With Padgett's new vision came an astounding mathematical drawing ability. He started sketching circles made of overlapping triangles, which helped him understand the concept of pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. There's no such thing as a perfect circle, he said, which he knows because he can always see the edges of a polygon that approximates the circle.

Doctors studying Padgett, who is now a sophomore in college, say that his mathematical awakening suggests all humans might have the ability to acquire savant skills.

"It would be quite a coincidence if he were to have that particular special brain and then have an injury," Berit Brogaard, a professor with the University of Miami told the Post. "And he's not the only [acquired savant]."

[image via Shutterstock]

Malik Bendjelloul, the director of the Academy Award-winning documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, has died at age 36 in Sweden. His cause of death is currently unknown, but police say they do not suspect any criminal activity.

Video of a scary underwater assault went viral this week after cameras caught a male diver randomly yank out another diver's air supply more than fifty feet below the surface.

Rene Umberger, 53, told Hawaii News Now that she was filming around the coral reefs to document damage when she came across the two divers pictured in the video.

The men appeared to be collecting reef fish, which is legal for permitted divers who follow the state's regulations.

But things quickly took a criminal turn when one of the male divers noticed Umberger with her camera, swam over to her, and ripped out her breathing regulator.

"An inexperienced diver would likely panic. Either panic from the stress of the situation and shoot for the surface. They may panic because their air source is missing and they can't find it. Any of those things causes a diver to shoot for the surface and those incidents often lead to death," Umberger told Hawaii News Now. "Never in a million years. Never in a million years did I think that someone would attack like that, especially from such a distance. It's not like we were close up or in their face."

Umberger was able to replace the regulator, which was damaged in the assault, and managed to slowly surface back to safety.

Umberger told reporters she thinks she knows who the assailant was and intends to press charges. The State Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement are apparently investigating.

Yet another police force is investigating teen nightmare Justin Bieber, this time in connection with an attempted robbery.

According to TMZ, the Bieb's latest legal troubles began Monday night in a Sherman Oaks batting cage.

The woman says Justin and his crew got into an altercation with some guys at the batting cage when J.B. noticed she was going for her cellphone to take pictures. She says Justin demanded to see her phone so he could erase any photos. She says she refused to fork over the phone so he then went into her purse and grabbed the it.

The woman says she began wrestling with Bieber, trying to get her phone back. She says he ripped it out of her hands but couldn't accomplish his mission because the phone was locked.

She says Justin gave her the phone back and demanded that she unlock it to see if she took photos. She obliged and showed Justin she had taken none. She says she told Justin she and her 13-year-old daughter just wanted to say hi, and Justin screamed, "You're humiliating yourself in front of your daughter. Why don't you just get out of here." Her daughter started crying.

The woman lodged a complaint with the LAPD late Monday night, and police responded to her home on Tuesday to determine if a crime actually took place.

"As of right now, no arrest has been made and detectives are currently interviewing the victim," LAPD Officer Rosario Herrera told The Hollywood Reporter.

According to the LA Times, detectives have not yet interviewed the skilled deposition-giver, who apparently spent the evening at a Clippers-Thunder game.

Per Sources: LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division, which handles celebrity & high profile cases, has taken over Justin Bieber Investigation

— Andrew Blankstein (@anblanx) May 14, 2014

Per Sources: Offending photos of Justin Bieber taken at Sherman Oaks arcade next to mini golf course led to attempt robbery allegation.

— Andrew Blankstein (@anblanx) May 14, 2014

[image via AP]