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The Week's Best Tech Gossip Has Been On This New Anonymous App

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The Week's Best Tech Gossip Has Been On This New Anonymous App

Last week I downloaded Tentwenty, a newly launched local message board that displays text and photos from anonymous users according to where they are in real time. Scrolling through my sparse feed at home in Brooklyn, I noticed that initial users weren't from the expected tech set, as well as a puzzling number of posts from Tenafly, New Jersey (not traditionally considered an early adopter mecca).

Once I landed in San Francisco this weekend, however, my TenTwenty feed turned into a startup confessional booth. Just as posters on the anonymous app Secret have been scooping the tech press on the news the industry would rather not talk about, TenTwenty users had some interesting tidbits to pass along from the open floor plans of Menlo Park, Soma, and Downtown San Francisco—even in the scant three weeks since it launched.

Apparently if you offer startup employees pseudonymity, they will still keep talking about work.

Around the same time that Square announced a bunch of rapid-fire attempts to make money—a distraction from the failure of Square Wallet—a TenTwenty user claimed Square was planning on releasing its own credit card. (Visa is an investor in Jack Dorsey's mobile payments company.) In response to questions from Valleywag, the company said: "Square is not releasing a credit card." When I asked whether Square had ever worked towards releasing a credit card or had plans to do so in the future, the company gave the same terse statement.

There are been other industry rumors floating around TenTwenty as well. I asked the human resources startup Zenefits whether they were raising an inside round from Andreessen Horowitz on Wednesday. The company has yet to respond.

The Week's Best Tech Gossip Has Been On This New Anonymous App

A source who seemed convinced that Zenefits was raising funds from Andreessen Horowitz, even if not at that valuation, explained that inside rounds used to signal bad news. Unless your startup expected a "down round," the source said, it was more typical to have a different venture capital firm in the lead at a valuation set by a third party, which theoretically makes the number more fair. An inside round happened when a founder went to his or her investors asking for more runway.

But with winter looming, startups want to stuff their coffers with cash to fight off competitors during the impending capital crunch. In the case of Sequoia and WhatsApp, the firm clearly wanted to double down with more skin (and mostly its own skin) in the game. That helped Sequoia keep its $50 million Series C invested secret until the Facebook deal.

I also noticed a cry for help from an Airbnb employee on TenTwenty, possibly referring to Jonathan Mildenhall, Airbnb's recently appointed chief marketing officer. Mildenhall used to be a marketing and design SVP at Coca-Cola and now reports to CEO Brian Chesky. Airbnb has not responded to my request for comment from Wednesday.

The Week's Best Tech Gossip Has Been On This New Anonymous App

Most of the tech talk, which is still just a fraction of the "normal" posts on TenTwenty, is your standard water cooler stuff. Like this one about Dick Costolo's mandatory tea-time meeting at Twitter HQ yesterday (confirmed by a source), pettiness at Facebook, and the unglamorous side of growth hacking.

Part of the reason TenTwenty attracts Silicon Valley insiders is probably because (a) it is a new smartphone application made in San Francisco and (b) because it was created by LittleInc Labs, which also built MessageMe, a messaging app that got funding from Greylock. Cofounder Arjun Sethi is considered a growth hacker himself, as much as he wants to run from the term. The app, which is still in its infancy, may also have gotten a boost from being featured on ProductHunt, a promotional leader board that's starting takeover traditional Hacker News territory.

It's probably premature to throw another contender in the anonymous app ring with Whisper and Secret. On the other hand, venture capitalists don't need more than a few weeks on the market to justify millions in funding. If you've never heard of Zenefits, you know anonymous apps cannot survive on tech gossip alone/at all. It's too limited, boring, and off-putting those breathing outra-bubble air. Ultimately, TenTwenty's curb appeal may depend on its ability drill down to specific neighborhoods. That seems to be where the swarm is heading.

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

[All screenshots via TenTwenty]


Columbia Announces It Will "Deal With the Issues of Sexual Assault"

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Columbia Announces It Will "Deal With the Issues of Sexual Assault"

Columbia University plans to create a second rape-crisis center on campus and add staff positions to help it "deal with the issues of sexual assault and related misconduct," the school's president, Lee Bollinger, announced yesterday. The university also intends to add Title IX investigators on campus and to create a new position of executive vice president for student affairs, with responsibility for overseeing sexual-assault claims.

The announcement came after weeks of scrutiny of the university's handling of sexual assault, and days after a list of alleged student rapists tuned up on walls around campus—a list that two assault victims told Gawker they believed to be accurate.

In late April, 23 students at Columbia and Barnard College filed a federal Title IX complaint alleging that their claims of having been assaulted had been mishandled. Last week, a student with access to three different campus buildings wrote graffiti and left flyers naming four students as repeat sexual offenders.

The list, scrawled in bathroom stalls in three different campus buildings, named those students as "Sexual Assault Violators on Campus." It was labeled as "counterproductive" by some students and denounced by anonymous students as an anti-male rumor-mill witch hunt.

Columbia isn't the first school to have to deal with such lists. Twenty-four years ago, Brown University had a list pop up around campus for most of a semester, eventually swelling to 30 names and breaking open a debate on campus assaults that was previously off-limits for discussion. Students then saw the list as a mixed blessing, getting results from the administration but fracturing relations between the sexes.

But two women Gawker spoke with, who say they were assaulted by the same man at Columbia and who have joined the federal complaint, said the students on last week's list earned that distinction with their actions, and the list's existence was a logical result of the university administration's failure to make the campus safe for women.

"I personally know women who have been assaulted by every man on that list, including the man who assaulted me. He deserves to be on that list," said Emma Sulkowicz, who related the story of her own rape, and the administration's ham-fisted response, to the New York Times last week. "I know one woman who was raped by two men on that list."

"I can't condone [the list], but I also think it's super shitty that it's gotten to this point," said the other woman, who asked not to be identified. "It could have been some trolly person" making up names on the wall, she said, but knowing that her attacker was on the list "adds legitimacy to it."

And she said that seeing the list was personally gratifying. "I really hate to say it, but I felt some sense of satisfaction, almost. I felt like they prioritized him and privileged him over me in the process so much. I felt impotent."

Both women said the university's existing system was not only demeaning to them, but dangerous to fellow students, who didn't know the identities of accused predators in their midst. "I have always been frustrated with the school about not letting us discuss the names of our rapists on campus and threatening us," Sulkowicz said.

She added that she had seen other women she knew talking to men who had attacked multiple other students, and "I'm not able to tell them, 'You should not talk to that guy, because he's raped someone else.'"

In that atmosphere, the list—and the publicity it produced—seems to have forced the administration into action. "The resentment towards the administration for not keeping us safe has just built up to this point," Sulkowicz said.

"At the time, I felt, Columbia isn't listening to me. No one was listening to me," the other woman said. "Now, someone is listening to me."

Here is the full text of Bollinger's announcement:

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

Before the academic year comes to a close, I want to provide one more brief update on our ongoing efforts to improve our capacity within the University to prevent and address issues of sexual assault and misconduct. Many people on the campus—students, faculty, and administrators—have worked diligently on this critically important matter. The work will continue. Here, then, are some additional changes.

Since my last update, I have charged the Presidential Advisory Committee on Sexual Assault (PACSA) with developing an ongoing, multi-year, comprehensive plan to address sexual assault within our community. There are, of course, many elements already identified and being developed—an annual campus climate survey, enhanced training both during orientation and on an ongoing basis, the release of annual aggregate data after the completion of the academic year, and stronger bystander training.

Over the last several weeks, we have authorized the addition of Title IX investigators and have consolidated the investigative offices to improve the adjudicatory process. The Office of Student Services for Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct will now report directly to the Associate Provost for Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, Title IX Coordinator. We also have facilitated the expansion of the professional staff in the Office of Sexual Violence Response to ensure 24-hour on-call access to professional staff, while keeping fully intact existing access to peer advocates. Furthermore, we have identified an additional location for the Rape Crisis Center in Lerner Hall, which will provide an alternative to the current location in Hewitt Hall. These and other resources are detailed and will be regularly updated on the new website, Sexual Respect, launched earlier this year.

A critical component of reform is the creation of the new office of Executive Vice President for Student Affairs, which, among other things, will help centralize overall responsibility and facilitate better coordination. The search for the person to take up this position is underway. I have retained the services of an executive search firm and very soon will announce the members of an advisory committee of students and other key individuals to assist in the process of identifying candidates. The EVP will then work closely with PACSA to help ensure that our campus culture does not tolerate sexual assault and that our adjudicatory process is responsive, sensitive, efficient, and fair.

Columbia is rightly known as the place of strong and deeply held core academic and community values. We have to deal with the issues of sexual assault and related misconduct consistent with those values.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger

[Photo credit: Cami Quarta/Bwog]

Hero Meteorologist Rescues Kitten from Tornado Rubble in Ohio

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A television meteorologist in Ohio rescued a small kitten from the rubble of a barn after a strong tornado swept through Cedarville, Ohio on Wednesday.

Hero Meteorologist Rescues Kitten from Tornado Rubble in Ohio

While reporting on the damage left behind by the quarter-mile-wide tornado, WHIO meteorologist Rich Wirdzek spotted and then rescued the adorably tiny kitten from the destroyed barn. The family who owns the farm said that the kitten "was one of several born in their barn recently."

The EF-3 tornado caused major damage to several residences and farm buildings in Cedarville, but thankfully there were no injuries or fatalities according to the National Weather Service.

This isn't the first time that a television meteorologist rescued an animal from the aftermath of a tornado.

The Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Bettes, one of the first people on the scene after the devastating tornado that destroyed the southern half of Joplin, Missouri in 2011, rescued a golden retriever from the debris and adopted him soon thereafter. The dog, named Joplyn, has his own Facebook page.

[Image via WHIO, video via Rich Wirdzek's Facebook page | h/t to Jacob Wycoff, thanks!]

Selected Air Force members, men and women, will be able to take three years off from the military to

Sympathy for the Lizard: Godzilla

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Sympathy for the Lizard: Godzilla

I saw Godzilla earlier this week and have thought about it on my own precisely zero times since then. Gareth Edwards' take on the classic is as great-looking as it is dumb. It conveys enormity extremely well, as well should a movie that stars monsters who dwarf skyscrapers. For all of his twitching, nostril-flaring, and saliva-string-producing, Godzilla has never looked more life-like (or zaftig—check out that thick neck, bro). His nemeses, a pair of giant cockroaches called MUTOs, looked real enough to mildly nauseate me.

Though it comes in at 2 hours—relatively lean for a bombastic blockbuster—this movie spends too much time dancing around half-baked human drama. Aaron Taylor-Johnson (as protagonist Ford Brody) is almost as beefy as Godzilla and one of several pretty things to look at in this movie. Ken Watanabe is atrocious, spitting out dazed one-liner after one-liner ("It's done feeding!" "Something responded!" "He's hunting!" "A female!") about as convincingly as an actor in the vintage Godzilla films.

There's not enough to emotionally invest in to make this a classic, but it's decent summer popcorn fare. For a more in-depth analysis, I defer to someone who's much better at sci-fi than I, i09's Annalee Newitz. Read her review below.

Let's Celebrate Sensational Tabloid Journalist Nellie Bly

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Let's Celebrate Sensational Tabloid Journalist Nellie Bly

This has been a depressing week for female journalists, so let's celebrate one at the end of it.

Nellie Bly is practically an American folk hero, I know. Likely you encountered her name in some social studies classes or in the many children's books that have been written about her. If you have not dug any deeper, that kind of vague pop-culture hagiography might give you an image of someone staid and proper and respectable, but Nellie Bly was not those things, not really at all. She was more of a celebrity. As Alice Gregory put it at the New Yorker yesterday,

Her name was, at one time, on the tip of every literate and tabloid-loving person's tongue. Her work changed public policy, her outfits influenced fashion trends, and her adventures inspired board games.

Note the use of the word "tabloid," there, because by any modern standard Bly was a thrill-seeker, her subjects were all on what we now call the trashy side of things: insane asylums, getting herself arrested, working in one of the awful factories in the Lower East Side. She took a trip around the world, she wrote advice columns, she did basically everything you can imagine, sometimes with personal and financial risks attached, since she went from riches to poverty a couple of times over the course of her life.

It meant that she appeared under some killer headlines in her time, like:

Let's Celebrate Sensational Tabloid Journalist Nellie Bly

or

Let's Celebrate Sensational Tabloid Journalist Nellie Bly

In short, Bly was a sensationalist, and as Maureen Corrigan notes in the introduction to a new collection of Bly's work that Penguin has just put out, wrote in a way that rather offends the tastes of the modern, objective, reasonable, tell-both-sides, never-use-I journalist. Here, for example, is Bly on leaving that insane asylum after a few day's commitment:

I had looked forward so eagerly to leaving the horrible place, yet when my release came and I knew that God's sunlight was to be free for me again, there was a certain pain in leaving. For ten days I had been one of them. Foolishly enough, it seemed intensely selfish to leave them to their sufferings. I felt a Quixotic desire to help them by sympathy and presence. But only for a moment. The bars were down and freedom was sweeter to me than ever.

Her dispatches, in other words, were not dispassionate and fair. They were combative and heavily felt. They were "emotional," even, if that's the term you prefer. But their emotionalism recommended them, actually. It was a selling point, the particularity of her personal experience back then.

Her sensationalism was also the only way a woman could break into the industry in her day, according to a hilarious article I dug up from the Washington Post, circa 1889. It is entitled,

Let's Celebrate Sensational Tabloid Journalist Nellie Bly

and it goes on to hold that,

Women seldom succeed in all-round reporting; even more rarely in editorial writing, and practically never in important executive work. Most of those who win fame and a comfortable living, do it either through sensational work of one kind or another or through specialties.

Considering Bly's particular case, the article goes on to say that when she started, "Her English was distinctly bad, but she was pretty, clever, and courageous." And she made of it what she could. There is some kind of hope in that, I think, insofar as her work happened in what we'd now call a cartoonishly bad personal environment for women, clearly, as that Post article on her helpfully concludes:

Newspaper row is haunted by a host of women, young and old, who are the special horror of managing editors. Some are tearful, some coquettish, some shrinking, all persistent. Those who hold on long enough finally gain a footing; but the spectacle of the ordinary woman in the downtown struggle is a thing to make a man's heart ache.

I'm sure it made a few women's hearts ache, too. The best thing to learn from Nellie Bly, though, is that she saw it as a reason to keep going, rather than to quit.

[Image via LOC]

Florida Man can't say "fuck."

​How To Shoot A Documentary In A War Zone

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​How To Shoot A Documentary In A War Zone

Tim Freccia just returned from shooting Saving South Sudan, where he worked in one of the bloodiest conflicts on earth. Here's how he got the work done, even under threat of Ugandan gunships.

Tim's covered crisis and conflict around the world — Haiti, Libya, Congo, Somalia, Kashmir and more — for outlets including Vice, Al Jazeera, the BBC, Der Spiegel, TIME and many others, in both photo and video. He's been doing it since 1989 too and hasn't died yet, so we figured he must know a thing or two about working in war zones.

IW: You're sticking a camera in someone's face while they're sticking a gun in yours. How do you avoid being shot?

TF: I've been covering conflict for nearly three decades. This doesn't mean just grabbing a camera and parachuting into a war zone. I spend a lot of time getting to know my subjects. This means living with them, establishing rapport, trust, mutual camaraderie or fear, whatever. By the time a guy is sticking a gun in my face, I've likely gotten to know him pretty well and evidently know how to talk him into not waving that gun at me.

At the end of this last trip, I actually told a gun-waving kid that if he pointed it at me again, I'd beat him with it and stick it up his ass.

Conflict is dangerous. The biggest risk is being hit by something from relatively far away. A lot of younger shooters and journalists believe that their concern for the victims of conflict will somehow make them bulletproof. It may sound macho, but it's really not: after bonding with me, my subjects really don't want to fuck with me too much.

IW: What do you shoot on?

​How To Shoot A Documentary In A War Zone

TF: I shot all of Saving South Sudan on a Canon 5D Mk3 system and the interviews on an AtomOS 10bit ProRes video recorder. The Canons have full-frame sensors, produce excellent video and are a solid stills platform. I've shot stills and motion pictures together, throughout my entire career; since film. The lenses are sharp — 24mm 1.4, 16-35mm 2.8, 24-70mm 2.8 and a 70-200mm 2.8 — they're built for the environments I work in and they are affordable enough to lose to weather, dirt, destruction and/or theft.

The Ninja recorder is fantastic — it records to hard disk, so there aren't many time limits. It too is rugged and is cheap enough to replace.

I've calculated over the years that a Macbook Pro has an average lifespan of 18 months when used in these conditions. Mine got stepped on by a rebel on this trip and the screen cracked; I'm writing to you on it with that cracked screen and it's pretty much reached its 18 month limit, so I'll be replacing it soon.

I also carry a SatPhone, a Thuraya SatSleeve that lets me do all that important Facebooking and Tweeting from the bush and a satellite modem — a device that allows me to transmit video and images. Other essentials are body armor, a field trauma kit (tourniquet, quickclot, bandage, sutures etc), a couple fake Rolexes to use for bribes, a water purifier, a solid knife, a multitool, compass, instant coffee, DEET, antibiotics, painkillers and cigarettes. Robert became known as "King Rat" on this trip because he always had the last pack of smokes.

IW: How do you transport all that around a war zone while remaining mobile? What do you do about power?

TF: I've been humping a lot of gear around for a lot of years. I've always shot motion pictures and stills, beginning with film, then heavy beta-cams, always with stills cameras hanging off my neck. The newer digital systems are a godsend — I can shoot broadcast quality (cinema, even) motion pictures on the same system I shoot stills with, so that lightens the load a lot. No film to lug, much less develop or find a way to send out. I worked with the original "portable" satellite systems — two heavy briefcases with batteries, etc — all for a whopping 12kbs bandwidth. My BGAN modem now is about the size of a book.

As far as power goes, I carry as many batteries as I can and consider it a primary issue — as important as water. I go through a variety of sometimes MacGyver-ish solutions to top up the batteries. I have to find a generator or truck motor, convince the owner to let me use it, and purchase the fuel at war prices — $20-40 a gallon on this last trip.

IW: Can you insure all that equipment? And, if you do, will they actually pay out?

TF: I don't insure it because really, who'd cover it? The cost of cover would exceed my general overhead. Thankfully, the equipment is cheap enough to replace once it's reached the end of its service life. I have a great Ukranian woman in New York who does miracle repairs on my gear at a fraction of what it would cost to send back to the manufacturer.

IW: Do you go into the trips with an idea of the story you want to tell ahead of time or document what happens around you?

TF: I go after a story with as much an understanding of it as I can. Invariably, the situation changes on the ground and I do my best to document that, adding to the story or creating a new one if necessary.

The process entails a lot of research in advance, spending as much time as I can with my subjects and trying to immerse myself as completely as I can. This usually involves a lot of discomfort, illness, injury and trauma.

​How To Shoot A Documentary In A War Zone

Tim (left) with RYP.

IW: How'd you get linked up with Robert Young Pelton and what's it like working with him?

TF: I've been in contact with RYP since he was booted off a Facebook group page — The Vulture Club — dedicated to the expat journo and aid worker community. I watched an exchanged with him and the group's founder who, to be honest, had become a bit of a fascist. When Robert got banned, I thought, "Hey, this guy is the granddaddy of this stuff, a treasure trove of experience and probably the most valuable source of information for people who are heading into dangerous places." I picked a fight with the admin, got booted and, the next day, founded the New Vulture Club and pretty much the whole population, including RYP defected over. http://indefinitelywild.gizmodo.com/robert-young-p...

Robert and I struck up an online friendship and dialogue and started conspiring. We agreed we should get in on a project together and I started flogging the idea to Rocco at Vice. When South Sudan lit off in December, I started hounding Rocco and Robert got Machot in line. We knew we had something big and set off to do it. We didn't know Vice would run so big on this, and we were busy working on this as a chapter in a much bigger story. Stay tuned for that.

Travelling and working with Robert was quite easy and I enjoyed it immensely. He's an old hand and it was refreshing to spend some time in the field with someone who has a sense of humor, while still being intensely focused on the subject.

Now, there's an interesting thread lighting up on Twitter as to whether my portraits of the White Army, "somehow glamourize and legitimize their violence." My position is that portraits are simply pictures. The viewer will see what they want to see and interpret them in the way they want to.

IW: At any point, did you fear for your life?

TF: Again, I don't want to sound macho, but I haven't feared for my life in a long time. I think it may have to do with knowing the warning signs. On this trip, the only time I got a bad feeling was right after the White Army had sacked Malakal. There was the possibility of Ugandan gunships coming in and catching them all grouped together and that made me a little nervous.

IW: How'd you piss off Machot so bad?

TF: I think he was pissed to begin with. We had a daily fight, I think it had to do with his feeling uncomfortable. He really is stuck between worlds. At one point, I realized I had spent much more of my life in his native Africa than he had. He got us into a series of shitty and shittier deals and I spoke up a few times. I think he looked at me as a person to pin his frustration on. He became increasingly frustrated that I was documenting the whole thing. To be fair, he went off on Robert as much, if not more than me.

IW: What stays on the edit room floor?

TF: Mostly the stuff that Western audiences don't want to see. The real snuff stuff, the unpalatable gore. It's a strange thing to say, but there is palatable and unpalatable gore when it comes to the audience.

​How To Shoot A Documentary In A War Zone

IW: Is being there as gut wrenching as it looks?

TF: To do this work, it's necessary to separate yourself from the subject matter. It's normal human nature to cry, throw up and run away from images like this. If a photographer does that, the images won't be captured.

For me, the easiest way I can describe it is like a light switch. I turn it off, then work. At some point, that switch has to come back on in order to have a normal life and family. I feel obligated to document what I see because I'm able to.

"Life and Death," Tim's exhibition of the White Army portraits opens at the Ricco/Maresca Gallery in Chelsea, New York on July 10.

Photos: Tim Freccia/Vice, all rights reserved.

IndefinitelyWild is a new publication about adventure travel in the outdoors, the vehicles and gear that get us there and the people we meet along the way. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.


Billy Eichner Invented a New Quiz Show for Squirters

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Professional runner/yeller Billy Eichner is on the street again, hosting a quiz show where, if you don't know the answer, you can ask a squirter. It'll just be a few seconds while you both start running down the street yelling at strangers until you find one.

It's just the next logical step in Billy's "let her use her pussy!" campaign.

[H/T Uproxx]

​Your Official Guide To The Fall TV Season

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​Your Official Guide To The Fall TV Season

Today marks the end of a delirious old-timey End Of The World party for advertisers and the swiftly dying ratings system on which they base their careers, called the upfronts, which is an industry term meaning "making TV stars act like carnies in front of suits that don't care because they are drunk." Here's a short rundown of the major nets' fall schedules—the downlow on the upfronts, if you will—for us to chat about:

Sunday
ABC: AFHV, Once Upon A Time* (Galavant), Resurrection, Revenge
CBS: 60 Minutes, Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, CSI* (CSI:CYBER)
NBC: Football
FOX: Bob's Burgers, The Simpsons, Brooklyn 9-9, Family Guy, Mulaney

Monday
ABC: Dancing With The Stars, Castle
CBS: Big Bang Theory* (2 Broke Girls), Mom, Scorpion, NCIS:LA
NBC: The Voice, The Blacklist*/State Of Affairs
FOX: Gotham, Sleepy Hollow
CW: The Originals, Jane The Virgin

Tuesday
ABC: Selfie, Manhattan Love Story, S.H.I.E.L.D.* (Agent Carter), Forever
CBS: NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans, Person Of Interest
NBC: The Voice, Marry Me, About A Boy, Chicago Fire
FOX: Utopia, New Girl, The Mindy Project
CW: The Flash, Supernatural

Wednesday
ABC: The Middle, The Goldbergs, Modern Family, Black-Ish, Nashville
CBS: Survivor, Criminal Minds, Stalker
NBC: The Mysteries Of Laura, Law & Order: SVU, Chicago PD
FOX: Hell's Kitchen, Red Band Society
CW: Arrow, The 100

Thursday
ABC: Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder* (Secrets & Lies)
CBS: (*After football) Big Bang Theory, The Millers, 2.5 Men, McCarthys, Elementary
NBC (2014): The Biggest Loser, Bad Judge, A To Z, Parenthood
NBC (2015): TBA, Blacklist, Allegiance
FOX: Bones, Gracepoint
CW: The Vampire Diaries, Reign

Friday
ABC: Last Man Standing, Cristela, Shark Tank, 20/20
CBS: The Amazing Race, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods
NBC: Dateline NBC, Grimm, Constantine
FOX: Masterchef Junior, Utopia
CW: Whose Line Is It Anyway?, America's Next Top Model

Saturday: College Football on ABC and Fox, 48 Hours on CBS at 10/9c.

* (Changes after football, due to alternating split-seasons, etc.)

Some of the decisions are quite bold! Others are mostly WTF. CBS is adorable, NBC and The CW are sitting pretty with their established flagships, and Fox and ABC are both doing some pretty crazed stuff we've never seen before. Who made the right calls? What are you already programming into your Tivo? Check out the grid, and let's break it down in the comments below.

[Image via Shutterstock]

Morning After is your new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow @GawkerMA and read more about it here.

What Does It Mean To Talk About School Resegregation?

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What Does It Mean To Talk About School Resegregation?

In 2008, Steve Lopez, the Los Angeles Times columnist, asked: "What happened to the days when public education was not just valued, but was seen as a great equalizer in American society, offering a pathway to upward mobility for even the least fortunate students?"

I was headed to UCLA (a public university!) to undergo graduate studies that fall and wondered then, as I do now: has education—or rather, our access to it—ever been an equal playing field? Has upward mobility—and not just for blacks or Latinos (because this is not just a question of race), but for America's poor as well—ever been as simple as graduating high school or getting a college degree?

This Saturday marks the 60th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case where all nine justices voted unanimously to strike down state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students. It was unconstitutional, the justices believed—"separate educational facilities are inherently unequal"—and thus, with their decision, the American school system was forever changed.

Or was it?

The online chatter surrounding the landmark Civil Rights case hit a tipping point this week, as writers from Slate, The New Yorker, The Nation, NPR, ProPublica, and various other media outlets weighed in.

Jamelle Bouie at Slate argues that, in fact, America's schools are becoming increasingly segregated. Despite the "popular narrative" that cements this ruling as an important milestone in America's long walk to equality, the truth is we still live in segregated worlds. Bouie writes:

School segregation doesn't happen by accident; it flows inexorably from housing segregation. If most black Americans live near other blacks and in a level of neighborhood poverty unseen by the vast majority of white Americans, then in the same way, their children attend schools that are poorer and more segregated than anything experienced by their white peers.

We could fix this. If the only way to solve the problem of school segregation is to tackle housing, then we could commit to a national assault on concentrated poverty, entrenched segregation, and housing discrimination. We could mirror our decades of suburban investment with equal investment to our cities, with better transportation and more ways for families to find affordable housing. And we could do all of this with an eye toward racism—a recognition of our role in creating the conditions for hyper-segregation.

Susan Eaton at The Nation offered a similar viewpoint, writing that a "new secessionist movement" taking shape in the South is intensifying school segregation. She provided a real-life example of the widening gap:

The small middle-class town of Gardendale, Alabama, outside Birmingham, voted on November 12 to secede from the Jefferson County school district and then to raise taxes on themselves to finance the solo venture. Then, in March, Gardendale's 14,000 residents finally got their own Board of Education. Soon after his appointment, one new board member, Clayton "Dick" Lee III, a banker and father of two, said he aspires to build a "best in class" school system "which exceeds the capabilities of the system which we are exiting."

As Gardendale officials try to construct that "best in class" system in their prosperous community, they've relied on advice from their neighbors to the east in Trussville, a wealthy white suburb that broke away from the county schools in 2005. Gardendale, where about 86 percent of residents are white, is the fourth district since the late 1980s to secede from Jefferson County's schools. About half the students in Jefferson County's schools are either African-American or Latino, and 57 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch, the standard marker for poverty in public education.

Taking into account the historical import of the ruling, professor and New Yorker contributor Jelani Cobb deemed Brown's legacy "ambiguous," saying:

And yet, sixty years after Brown, the prevailing idea in these debates remains one that is similar to the argument presented in [Plessy v. Ferguson]: that the major, and perhaps the only, problem with ongoing segregation is the way black people perceive and respond to it.

The United States may not be "post-racial," as many claimed in the wake of Barack Obama's election, but it clearly sees itself as post-racism, at least when it comes to explaining the color-coded disparities that still define the lives of millions of its citizens.

All of which leads us to a recent study released yesterday by UCLA's The Civil Rights Project that highlights a growing racial divide in classrooms across America. Key findings from the research include:

  • Segregation for blacks is the highest in the Northeast, where district fragmentation is growing rapidly.
  • Latinos are now significantly more segregated than blacks in suburban America.
  • Segregation is by far the most serious in the central cities of the largest metropolitan areas; the states of New York, Illinois and California are the top three worst for isolating black students.
  • California is the state in which Latino students are most segregated.

What Does It Mean To Talk About School Resegregation?

Erica Frankenberg, Penn State University professor and co-author of the report, arrives at an uncertain, if not altogether bleak, conclusion:

Desegregation is not a panacea, and it is simply not feasible in some situations… It is good to celebrate Brown by revisiting historic sites and remembering the many struggles that led to the decision and the changes in the South. It was a major accomplishment of which we should rightfully be proud. But a real celebration should also involve thinking seriously about why the country has turned away from the goal of Brown and accepted deepening polarization and inequality in our schools. It is time to stop celebrating a version of history that ignores our last quarter century of retreat and to begin make new history by finding ways to apply the vision of Brown in a transformed, multiracial society in another century.

Whether you agree with Frankenberg or Bouie or Eaton is beside the point. What is important, I think, is to understand that when we talk about access to education what we're really talking about is an array of issues: housing discrimination, an attack on America's poor, the availability to quality resources in under-served areas, and prejudice based along racial lines. But even then—at the point we acknowledge that the conversation of education and segregation and how we should fix it is one deeply rooted to America's ugly past— what happens next? How do we turn this rhetoric into action? Or is it just that, rhetoric?

Tomorrow we will mark the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education as "momentous" and a "turning point in America's history," but, as with all topics we engage online these days, the conversation will eventually shift to something else that will take hold of our collective attention—a video of Miley Cyrus fighting Taylor Swift, perhaps?—and we will wonder why nothing is being done, why our schools are worsening still, why we didn't take a stand sooner. Because, after all, isn't that the way we live now?

[Image via AP]

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with local workers at the Dupont Circle Sha

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President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with local workers at the Dupont Circle Shake Shack on Friday in Washington, DC. Obama and Biden met with the workers to discuss increasing investment in re-building America's infrastructure. Image via Alex Wong/Getty Images.

Mike Barnicle--who is a confirmed fabricator and plagiarist, as well as being a toxic race-baiter an

Jaden Smith and Kylie Jenner Explore Arts & Crafts-Based Sex Cult

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Jaden Smith and Kylie Jenner Explore Arts & Crafts-Based Sex Cult

Teens. Always rolling their eyes and making magical pyramids out of fiberglass resin, crystals, and metal shavings in an effort to protect themselves from the negative energies emitted by cell towers. A tale as old as time (itself a construct invented by humans unable to comprehend the concept of eternity).

Radar reports that famous minors Jaden Smith, Willow Smith, and Jaden's rumored girlfriend Kylie Jenner are currently killing time by imagineering a new belief system for themselves. Along with friends like former little guy from Hannah Montana Moisés Arias (the 20-year-old actor who recently was criticized for relaxing in bed shirtless with 13-year-old Willow Smith), the kids have formed a club they call "The Orgonite Society," which describes itself on its public Instagram page as "A Secret Society." The goal of the Orgonite Society: to distribute vibe-cleansing pyramids, hockey pucks, and rectangles in order to "Balance Gaia's Energies."

These the teens make themselves using muffin tins and a total disregard for the value of adult supervision. The resulting scenes of adolescent gaiety are like stills from a Bagel Bites commercial directed by Lars Von Trier:

According to orgonite.info, the .info about these stunning fiberglass paperweights (or "pieces of orgonite") is that they serve to transform negative orgone into positive orgone. (Some people also believe they can repel demons and aliens.) Orgone is a term coined in the late 1930s by the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to describe cosmic life energy. Derived from the word "orgasm," it is roughly equivalent to an invisible physical manifestation of Freud's concept of the libido. The process of throwing or burying orgonite near negative energy sources (like cellphone towers) is known as "gifting."

The finished products are beautiful, like items that would retail for at least $22 + shipping on Etsy.

The kids have also been photographed smelling books by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, or Osho, an Indian guru whose followers famously carried out the largest bioterror attack in United States history when they deliberately contaminated salad bars in restaurants near their Oregon commune with salmonella.

A proponent of group sex and partner swapping as a means to "superconsciousness," Rajneesh was known in India as "the sex guru." At the time of his death, he was believed have the largest privately owned collection of Rolls-Royces in the world, with a stockpile of 93 purchased for him by his followers.

It's possible this pyramid scheme is simply a way for Jaden Smith and Kylie Jenner to practice their love of crystals, rather than a firm conversion to a new religion invented by neighborhood kids.

While the Smith family's relationship with Scientology is well-documented (and funded), its members have avoided labeling themselves followers, preferring instead to identify as "students of world religion." Jaden Smith has previously expressed a belief that "If Newborn Babies Could Speak They Would Be The Most Intelligent Beings On Planet Earth."

[Images via Kylie Jenner and Willow Smith's Instagrams]

Deadspin Guy Dressed As Superman Breaks Up Pathetic Fight At Cardinals Game | Gizmodo The First Full


Utah Lawmaker Attempting to Reinstate "Humane" Firing Squad Executions

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Utah Lawmaker Attempting to Reinstate "Humane" Firing Squad Executions

Following last month's botched lethal injection in Oklahoma, a lawmaker in Utah says he wants to bring back death by firing squad — "the most humane way to kill somebody," he believes — as an option for those sentenced to death in his state.

Republican Rep. Paul Ray, pictured here between a fishbowl full of candy and a fishbowl full of cigarettes, will introduce his proposal during Utah's next legislative session in January. Earlier this year, lawmakers in Wyoming and Missouri proposed similar ideas (Missouri Rep. Rick Brattin explaining in part, "A firing squad would be quick and something we could do at a moment's notice"), but neither succeeded. Ray may be more successful, though, as Utah has a tradition of executing criminals by firing squad, the last being held in 2010. (Utah eliminated execution by firing squad in 2004, but those sentenced to death before that date still had the option of choosing it.)

"It sounds like the Wild West, but it's probably the most humane way to kill somebody," Ray explained to the AP. He continued, "The prisoner dies instantly. ... It sounds draconian. It sounds really bad, but the minute the bullet hits your heart, you're dead. There's no suffering."

Opponents of the proposal, including Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington, D.C.,-based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, point out that a number of things can go wrong when executing by firing squad — the inmate can move, the shooters can miss. "The idea is that it would be very quick and accurate but just a little movement by the person could change that," Dieter said. "Things can go wrong with any method of execution."

Ah. If only there were a better, even more humane way.

[Image via AP]

Boston FD: Woman Hospitalized After Falling Down Fenway Elevator Shaft

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Boston FD: Woman Hospitalized After Falling Down Fenway Elevator Shaft

During a rain-drenched Red Sox-Tigers game at Boston's Fenway Park last night, a 22-year-old woman fell down an elevator shaft onto the roof of the elevator's second floor when the fourth floor shaft doors opened, according to the Boston Fire Department.

In a contribution to the efforts of Fuck Boston, the woman reportedly fell because the doors "somehow" opened. She was rushed to the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an elevator technician was called to the scene to investigate. There are no reports from the hospital on the woman's state.

The Red Sox lost to the Tigers 1-0. Good.

[Image via Boston.com]

Teen's Arm Reattached After Pasta Machine Severing Accident

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Teen's Arm Reattached After Pasta Machine Severing Accident

Brett Bouchard, a teenager whose arm was severed from the elbow down while cleaning a pasta machine at a restaurant in Massena, N.Y. last month, has had his arm successfully reattached.

The 17-year-old's recovery was due in part to his quick decision to apply a tourniquet and recover the lost limb, the AP reports. Bouchard's family has opened a YouCaring fund to aid in paying for the teenager's medical bills. He is in recovery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, where he has undergone four surgeries and can move his arm again after only three weeks since the accident.

Still: may we never clean a pasta-making machine again.

[Image via ABC News]

"World's Biggest Dinosaur" Found In Argentina

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"World's Biggest Dinosaur" Found In Argentina

Scientists in Argentina have uncovered the bones of a creature believed to be the world's biggest dinosaur. The big guy would have weighed 77 metric tons, seven heavier than the previous record holder, the Argentinosaurus. Truly a sad day to be the ghost of an Argentinosaurus.

Scientists who spoke to the BBC believe that it is a new species of titanosaur, which is an enormous herbivore from the Late Cretaceous period, characterized by small heads, long necks, and long tails. Based on measurements of its thigh bones, the dinosaur would have been 130 feet long and 65 feet tall.

After a local farm worker stumbled upon the remains, paleontologists unearthed the partial skeletons of seven individuals, about 150 bones in total, all in "remarkable condition."

The dinosaur doesn't have a name yet, but the researchers told the BBC, "It will be named describing its magnificence and in honor to both the region and the farm owners who alerted us about the discovery."

[Image via BBC]

54 Bodies Found, Potentially 100 Missing In Bangladesh Ferry Sinking

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54 Bodies Found, Potentially 100 Missing In Bangladesh Ferry Sinking

A storm in central Bangladesh caused a loaded ferry to sink in the River Meghna near Munshiganj on Thursday after the ferry's captain reportedly didn't heed passengers' warnings to steer closer to shore. The bodies of 54 passengers have been found, while police fear over 100 bodies are still unaccounted for.

Authorities had initially called off the search for missing passengers on early Saturday after retrieving 40 bodies and towing the ferry to shore, but family members had protested. The recovery efforts are now back on, and while some authorities are claiming only 12 bodies are left to be recovered, the estimate continues to change. Ferry operators in Bangladesh do not usually keep passenger lists.

The ferry sank on Thursday after a storm hit. Sabuj, a passenger who had jumped overboard and swam to shore, claims that the captain had ignored passengers' pleas to stay close to shore as the storm began.

According to the AP, officials are looking into "whether the vessel was overcrowded or had design faults."

Masudul Haque, a rescue diver looking for missing passengers, told the Associated Press:

"We have recovered the bodies mainly from the lower deck and other open spaces, but could not open the doors of the cabin rooms where many passengers took shelter after the storm had hit," Haque said. "I tried to open those doors but could not as huge volumes of sand have buried many of the doors."

According to Mohammad Ali, a director of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, the ferry was overcrowded with passengers and its lower deck was loaded with goods.

Shamsuddoha Khandaker, chief of the water transport authority, says they will continue to look for missing passengers.

"We will continue our search," he said. "We have towed the ferry to the shore, but we will continue to search for bodies in the waters."

54 Bodies Found, Potentially 100 Missing In Bangladesh Ferry Sinking

[Images via AP]

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