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The Story of Slender Man, the Web Myth Invoked in a Brutal Stabbing

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The Story of Slender Man, the Web Myth Invoked in a Brutal Stabbing

Yesterday in rural Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls allegedly stabbed a friend of theirs 19 times and left her to die in a forest. The girl survived, but the reason for her attack remains puzzling. Her accused attackers apparently told police that she was meant to be a sacrifice to a mythical creature popular in the genre of internet-based horror fiction known as "creepypasta"—a character called "The Slender Man."

Hold up: Internet-based horror fiction?

The character that eventually became so important to two girls that they stabbed their friend started on the forums of the humor pit Something Awful. According to the reliable web archive Know Your Meme, Slender Man first appeared in 2009 in a series of images created by a man named Eric Knudsen, who entered two photos into a "paranormal pictures" Photoshop contest. Know Your Meme describes the character thusly:

Slender Man (a.k.a Slenderman) is a mythical creature often depicted as a tall, thin figure wearing a black suit and a blank face. According to the legend, he can stretch or shorten his arms at will and has tentacle-like appendages protruding from his back.

The character quickly became popular on the thread, with other posters making their own Slender Man images while also fleshing out his backstory. Over the years, The Slender Man trickled out to other forums and took on attributes and a personality like any true horror villain.

The Story of Slender Man, the Web Myth Invoked in a Brutal Stabbing

The Slender Man wiki sketches out the two main characterizations:

In total two major types of Slender Man descriptions exist. The original versions depict him as not only malevolent, but extremely dangerous. He will do odd things such as removing organs and placing them in bags, impaling targets on trees, and aggressively stalking targets after a period of time. A contemporary depiction shows Slender Man as being extremely passive aggressive, often letting a person slowly delve into madness at their situation until being unable to cope. If invited to anger, he will typically charge a target down until caught and vanish with them to unknown locations. This version also shows an odd response to electronic equipment and causes massive problems with audio, surveillance, camera, and other various electronic devices with displays or audio. Sometimes an individual can determine if he is near simply by how certain electronics react such as radios, televisions, or cameras.

Knudsen, in an interview with a Slender Man fansite (linked to by by the Daily Dot), correctly tabbed The Slender Man as "an accelerated version of an urban legend." That legend has accelerated all the way up to film, where The Slender Man has become the focus of web shorts, a YouTube series and two feature-length films. One film is titled The Slender Man, and it was funded by $11,012 raised via Kickstarter in 2012.

But the most well-known adaptation of The Slender man is that YouTube series—the sprawling Marble Hornets. The series was created by a Something Awful poster named Troy Wagner, who posted the first "entry" on June 20, 2009, just a few weeks after Knudsen invented the character. He is now on entry number 85—posted just a few weeks ago—and last December Wagner said that he had finished shooting a full-length film adaptation of the series directed by the horror veteran James Moran and starring the actor Doug Jones, who you may know as the guy in Pan's Labyrinth with eyeballs on his palms.

Despite The Slender Man character being elevated to some of our most easily accessible mediums, the Wisconsin girls are said to have stumbled on the character via the wiki for Creepypasta, a database for horror stories of the same name. (Says the wiki: "a creepypasta is a short story posted on the Internet that is designed to unnerve and shock the reader.") There are hundreds of Slender Man stories on Creepypasta, most of which seem to focus on the protagonist being hunted by the tall, cloaked, shadowy figure.

One, written in 2012 by a woman named Raksha Keller, is titled "Slenderman Doesn't Exist." It ends with this sentence:

Slenderman doesn't exist. Sure. But you do. As do the monsters inside….

[top image of original Knudsen Photoshop via YouTube, middle image screencap of the video game Slender Rising]


Church Billboard Quotes Hitler on the Importance of Educating the Kids

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Church Billboard Quotes Hitler on the Importance of Educating the Kids

Pity the youth ministry. It's a real struggle recruiting kids to your cause. You know who else struggled to recruit the young people? Life Savers Ministries of Opelika, Alabama, sure does.

Via the Columbus, Ga., Ledger-Enquirer:

A billboard at the Village Mall in Auburn, Ala., features five smiling kids beneath a quote from Adolf Hitler: "He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future."

According to Lamar Advertising's Montgomery office, the billboard was rented out by Life Savers Ministries, based in Opelika, Ala.

Worse still, the quote—with an attribution, in red, to der führer—sits just above the well-known Bible verse from Proverbs: "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it."

To be fair, Life Savers Ministries—which boasts a KidzBoost leadership academy and cool buses instead of school buses—is not a neo-Nazi group. Just well-intentioned youth pastors filled with spirit and a little naïveté:

The billboard went up Friday and will be taken down Tuesday, per LSM's request.

"We are pulling the billboard and certainly never intended to cause confusion. ... Herbert Hoover would have been a far better one to quote when he said, 'Children are our most valuable resource,'" founder James Anderegg told the Ledger-Enquirer.

Whitney Houston also would have worked, probably.

Anderegg added: "We are a children's organization and had honorable intentions and nothing less."

You know who else had honorable intentions?

[Photo credit: Julie Burns/Ledger-Enquirer]

German Museum Lets You Talk to van Gogh's Regrown Ear

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German Museum Lets You Talk to van Gogh's Regrown Ear

Science has finally done something worthwhile: A museum in Germany has put Vincent van Gogh's regrown ear on display so visitors can ask it questions through a microphone.

Artist Diemut Strebe made the ear at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital using living cells from Lieuwe van Gogh, the great-great-grandson of Vincent's brother Theo. She then used a 3D printer to shape the cells into an ear modeled on the one van Gogh famously cut off his head in 1888.

"I use science basically like a type of brush, like Vincent used paint," Strebe told the Associated Press.

Strebe had plans to use van Gogh's actual DNA but those were thwarted when genetic material lifted from one of his letters turned out to belong to someone else. "The postman messed it up," Strebe said.

If you'd like to ask van Gogh's regrown ear a question but can't make it to Germany by July 6, good news: Strebe wants to bring the appendage to New York next.

[H/T Mark Berman, image via AP]

Robert Pattinson Is Rumored To Be the New Indiana Jones

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Robert Pattinson Is Rumored To Be the New Indiana Jones

We have reached the beautiful zenith of absurd casting rumors: British tabloid Daily Star is reporting that Disney is considering Twilight brooder Robert Pattinson for their new Indiana Jones franchise. May we all be blessed with the vitriol this rumor being proven true will invite.

All told, the Daily Star's report is beyond dubious:

One Los Angeles insider said: "Disney is looking at its long-term options for the Indiana Jones franchise.

"They feel that the series has huge potential on many levels, starting with the films leading to other spin-offs like games which can generate more money than movies.

"Rob is top of the initial list because he has showed his acting stripes away from Twilight."

"But the competition will be stiff."

But we can be certain that there will be an Indiana Jones remake at some point—Disney didn't shell out to buy the rights from Paramount for nothing. (You'll remember that Disney is also the reason we have to have new Star Wars movies.) Bradley Cooper, oddly enough, was first rumored to take up Harrison Ford's whip and stubble, and seems like a much better choice.

Not rumored to be in contention for the role: Shia LaBeouf.

[Image via Getty]

Mass Grave in Ireland Is Thought to Contain 800 Children's Bodies

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Mass Grave in Ireland Is Thought to Contain 800 Children's Bodies

Here's a heartwarming story from Ireland, stemming from the era in which children born out of wedlock (and their mothers) were thought disposable: A local historian from Tuam, Ireland, has documented almost 800 cases of children who died in a former children's home and are likely "buried" in a mass grave behind it.

The children's home in question, called simply "the Home," was run by Bon Secours nuns between 1925 and 1961. It was the kind of place where they sent women to give birth once they were "in trouble." It also took in children who were born to those women. Catherine Corless, the historian who dug up the records, says she herself remembers attending school with some of these children:

They were always segregated to the side of regular classrooms," Corless tells IrishCentral. "By doing this the nuns telegraphed the message that they were different and that we should keep away from them.

"They didn't suggest we be nice to them. In fact if you acted up in class some nuns would threaten to seat you next to the Home Babies. That was the message we got in our young years," Corless recalls.

Bad though this was, apparently many of the children met with an even worse fate, dying in the Home of measles, tuberculosis, and other diseases that result when you pack children into an institution and treat them badly. A government report on conditions there from 1944, cited by the Daily Mail, describes a scene of abject awfulness (which I would describe as "out of Dickens" except, you know, English):

A local health board inspection report carried out in 1944 reveals the conditions the children and their mothers lived in.

It reveals that in April that year, 271 children were listed as living there with 61 single mothers, a total of 333 - way over its capacity of 243.

One 13-month-old boy was described as a 'miserable, emaciated child with voracious appetite and no control over bodily functions and probably mentally defective'.

In the same room was a 'delicate' ten-month-old baby who was a 'child of itinerants', while one five-year-old child was described as having 'hands growing near shoulders'.

Another 31 infants in the same room were described as 'poor babies, emaciated and not thriving'.

The majority were aged between three weeks and 13 months and were 'fragile, pot-bellied and emaciated'.

The oldest child who died there was Sheila Tuohy, aged nine, in 1934. One of the youngest was Thomas Duffy, aged two days.

The death rate of children at the home, Corless told reporters, was more than four times the national average. Her interest seems to have been piqued by the discovery by schoolchildren of the mass grave some time ago. (Reports on this point are confusing, some saying the grave was found in 1995 and others in the 1970s.) When Corless requested the death records from County Galway authorities, she got back 796 certificates, listing name, age, and cause of death.

The story of the Tuam home has been making headlines in Ireland since it broke in the Irish Mail on Sunday a little over a week ago. Ireland's history of running homes like the one in Tuam is hardly a secret. Movies like The Magdalene Sisters and Philomena have made the story familiar to those of us who are not Irish as well. But the breaking of this story reopens some old wounds about the lingering stigma of it all.

There are questions about why, if the mass grave was discovered so long ago, it has yet to be excavated, and no memorial exists. An article in the Irish Daily Mail that is regrettably not online offers a hint at an answer:

Of the mothers who passed through the Tuam facility and who are still alive, none have come forward to recount their own stories in the press because 'they are still stigmatised', said Ms Corless.

'I have tried so hard to get people to speak about what occurred but these woman were stigmatised back then and that stigma still exists with some.' Ms Corless said the concrete tank where the children's bodies were buried was 'full to the brim with skulls and bones.' Ms Corless took action to research the mass grave after a lack of involvement from the local community. She established the Children's Home Graveyard Committee with the intention of erecting a memorial.

However, she is still stunned by the lack of interest in the case internationally or indeed on the part of the Irish Government which has not yet made a statement on the matter. 'If this happened anywhere in the world it would be a scandal. We should be talking about it,' she said. 'Only that way can we help reparation.'

Today reports came that the Irish Cabinet plans to discuss the matter. In the meantime one Irish historian has been posting archival documents and images from the Home on Twitter. The most affecting of them, I think, is this one:

[Image via.]

Mark Deliz and his son Sebastion pause at a piano underneath the Brooklyn Bridge on Tuesday in New Y

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Mark Deliz and his son Sebastion pause at a piano underneath the Brooklyn Bridge on Tuesday in New York City. The grand piano that mysteriously landed on the beach last week has become an impromptu tourist attraction. While it is badly damaged, people venture out daily to test the keys. Image via Spencer Platt/Getty.

The Paucity of the Pro-Inequality Argument

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The Paucity of the Pro-Inequality Argument

After decades of rising income inequality (and a nudge from Occupy and Thomas Piketty), it's finally "cool" to talk about taxing the hell out of the grotesquely wealthy in order to make our world somewhat more equal. Let's examine an argument against this sort of taxation, to see why it is weak.

The place to go for the official response of wealthholders to any perceived populist assault upon their vast wealth: the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page. That's where John Steele Gordon today publishes his argument against high taxes on the very, very wealthy—a policy prescription advocated, in various forms, by Piketty and by many other liberals, economists, and just plain regular people in search of a solution to the wealth and income inequality crisis. Gordon's argument is that today's unprecedented concentration of wealth among a tiny minority of billionaires is just part of a long and healthy process of invention:

The great growth of fortunes in recent decades is not a sinister development. Instead it is simply the inevitable result of an extraordinary technological innovation, the microprocessor, which Intel brought to market in 1971. Seven of the 10 largest fortunes in America today were built on this technology, as have been countless smaller ones. These new fortunes unavoidably result in wealth being more concentrated at the top.

Fine. Rich people today got rich from computers somehow. What's this have to do with a moral or economic justification of wealth inequality? Well, Gordon argues that today's microprocessor fortunes are just the latest version of yesterday's fortunes made on the backs of sailing ships, or railroads, or industrial machinery: cutting edge technology of its day, which improved the conditions of society as a whole and greatly enriched those businessmen who controlled it.

Fine. But where's the justification for all that economic inequality?

The number of new economic niches created by cheap computing power is nearly limitless. Opportunities in software and hardware over the past 30 years have produced many billionaires—but they're not all in Silicon Valley. The Walton family collectively is worth, according to Forbes, $144.7 billion, thanks to the world's largest retail business. But Wal-Mart couldn't exist without the precise inventory controls that the microprocessor makes possible.

The "income disparity" between the Waltons and the patrons of their stores is as pronounced as critics complain, but then again the lives of countless millions of Wal-Mart shoppers have been materially enriched by the stores' staggering array of affordable goods.

That is certainly debatable! But setting aside your feelings on Wal-Mart's effect on communities, the question remains: what is the moral or economic justification for allowing these huge wealth disparities to persist, rather than doing something to remedy them through taxes? Here is the only part of Gordon's essay which actually addresses that question:

Any attempt to tax away new fortunes in the name of preventing inequality is certain to have adverse effects on further technology creation and niche exploitation by entrepreneurs—and harm job creation as a result. The reason is one of the laws of economics: Potential reward must equal the risk or the risk won't be taken.

Aha. And here is where the farcical nature of the anti-tax brigade is laid bare. "Potential reward must equal the risk or the risk won't be taken." Gordon would have you believe that nobody would start a company if the potential reward were not tens of billions of dollars. It is simply not true. No one needs a fortune of billions of dollars in order to be convinced to become an entrepreneur. Tons of people would be happy to do it for far less. And even if people are able to earn billions, taxing away half or three quarters of their earnings over some absurdly high amount will not make them stop trying to make money. Even if only 25 cents of every new dollar is going into the businessman's pocket, it's still going into his pocket. A rational and reasonable progressive tax scheme simply does not stop people from wanting to make things—or even to get rich! People can achieve many things, including vast wealth, without becoming multibillionaires. This line of argument against taxation on the very rich to remedy inequality simply doesn't make sense.

"Potential reward must equal the risk or the risk won't be taken." The people who enlist in the U.S. Army for salaries of less than $30,000 per year might be surprised to hear that. If we can tax billionaires at 80% and give those soldiers better health care, or feed the homeless, or just make society a bit more equal and fair, then we should. The billionaires will still be fine.

[Photo: Getty]

See an Entire Bar React to Game of Thrones' Shocking Trial By Combat

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Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen Sunday's Game of Thrones, don't watch this. These people are seeing a major plot twist for the first time, and so will you.

It was the showdown Game of Thrones fans had been waiting for, foreshadowed episodes in advance. And, at Chicago's Burlington Bar, dozens gathered to watch Sunday's scheduled trial by combat together. You should see the looks on their faces.

The battle was no Red Wedding, but we're still talking about George R.R. Martin here: With the fate of your favorite character hanging in the balance, he'll always find some way to screw you with a startling death.

At least there was plenty of booze on hand.

[H/T Digg]


Sonja's a Mean Drunk on Real Housewives of New York

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Sonja's a Mean Drunk on Real Housewives of New York

It's time for that mid-season transition, when we move from feeling mostly amused and only slightly worried about Sonja to becoming a fair bit worried and…well, still mostly amused. Also, how did Ramona get pegged as the racist this episode when Sonja said her neighbors would assume Cody was a drug dealer?

Maybe Sonja was ACTUALLY making some pointed cultural commentary on the racism of her Upper East Side neighbors, who would assume that any young African-American woman sitting in Sonja's courtyard with bags of Swarovski crystals was up to no good? Too much credit, I know. Also, if the neighbors haven't yet managed to call the cops on Sonja herself, I don't think they're all that reactionary. In any case, poor Cody!

Sonja's a Mean Drunk on Real Housewives of New York

Cody (who is Aviva's creep father George's new and much younger fiancée) and Aviva have come to Sonja's not only so Sonja can get a free manicure, but so she and Aviva can ask a few questions. And sadly for us, these questions are mostly about George's sexual prowess. This is what happens when you let Sonja drive the inquisition! Cody says she's very satisfied with George, adding that he's experienced and knows a woman. She also adds, "Of course!" when Sonja asks if he uses equipment. EQUIPMENT? George apparently doesn't want Cody to have children until she's 35, and plans to freeze his DNA for her in case he's kicked the bucket by then. (FINGERS CROSSED.) And one of my top three moments of the episode is the interview of Sonja in which she drinks a Diet Coke from one hand, holds a Starbucks cup in the other, and marvels aloud that Cody is willing to put George's frozen sperm-pop in her lady parts. Sonja is truly the straw that stirs the drink!

It turns out that Cody owns a chain of very successful nail salons in Miami and, at least to Aviva, doesn't appear to be with George for his money. In sad news, both of Cody's parents recently passed away. This becomes relevant at an engagement party that Aviva holds for George and Cody, which of course takes place at the Museum of Sex. Harry Dubin is Sonja's date, and when she says the museum is for sexual deviants like him, he brings up her request for cherry condoms. Quoth Sonja: "I get hungry, I get nervous, I like to eat things." These two really are meant for each other, as evidenced by the interlude in which Harry gazes upon a photo of a sea lion masturbating and quietly muses, "That's really wonderful."

Sonja's a Mean Drunk on Real Housewives of New York

At the party, George meets Kristen for the first time and sexually molests her, as is his custom. Kristen, Carole and Heather display the mixture of amusement and horror that dictates most reactions to anything involving George, but Ramona comes in ready for a fight. We're reminded of their history, when George grabbed Ramona's arm at a charity event and then called her a trailer turd. Awful senile people say the darndest things! (This includes Ramona.) Ramona thinks that George is a creepy horrorshow (which is 100% correct) and disapproves of the 58-year age difference between him and Cody. Meanwhile, Sonja emphatically implores Ramona to not mention Cody's dead parents under any circumstances.

So of course, within three seconds of meeting her, Ramona says to Cody, "I know you have no parents, right?" Sonja is appropriately horrified, and Cody heads to the bathroom to cry. Ramona has basically pegged Cody as having daddy issues (and quite possibly being a golddigger, though she likes her "aura"). George is pissed, calls Ramona garbage and a bitch, and busts out with, "You know what happens to bitches? They get fucked by dogs." If anyone is going to work his hardest to make Ramona Singer look sympathetic, it's George. When Cody tells the other ladies about the incident with Ramona, Carole simply asks, "Did she throw a glass at you?" Way to put things in perspective!

We then get a short interlude where Sonja and LuAnn go on a bike ride together! Biking with the Countess involves packing a tablecloth for your picnic in the park AND wearing a kicky neckerchief! What a perfectly lovely afternoon!

Sonja's a Mean Drunk on Real Housewives of New York

Sonja recounts the events of the engagement party, saying that Cody kept her composure and no violence occurred. Quoth LuAnn: "You can see how low our standards have gotten with Ramona. It's considered a successful event if somebody hasn't clocked Ramona for something inappropriate." LuAnn wonders why Sonja puts up with Ramona's madness and Sonja, ever pure of heart, simply says, "She's my friend." Despite her forthcoming drunken rage and previous racist remarks (AND the beaver flash she gives us next week, oy), I can't help but love Sonja, truly and deeply. If she ran a Kickstarter to get hot water back in her house, I'd probably donate like fifteen bucks at least.

And then it's time for a trip to Saratoga! LuAnn has invited the ladies to come up and enjoy some horse racing, and happily for them neither Ramona nor Aviva could make it. Sonja has brought her nipple covers and requests a mint julep at 10 a.m., so you know things are gonna get crunk (even though everyone looks totally fly and elegant).

Sonja's a Mean Drunk on Real Housewives of New York

But FIRST things get crunk in the NYC when Ramona shows up at Aviva's house with flowers—once again not in a vase because she never read LuAnn's book!—and apologizes for making Cody cry. George shows up and she apologizes to him too, before saying that if he truly loved Cody he wouldn't allow her to be with his cretinous self. A fair point, I say! She also hopes that Avery is never taken in by some lecherous man like George. Aviva says, "I don't think it's nice that you called him lecherous. That's not a nice word." But it is perfectly accurate and factual and descriptive! In fact, I called him lecherous last week, in the first sentence of my recap!

George then accuses Ramona of being racist, apparently because he hasn't realized that Ramona is just equal-opportunity rude to EVERYONE. And then, because she can't stand being sympathetic for even a minute, Ramona says, "Do you want to rob the cradle? Should we just give you a newborn to do?" To recap: Ramona literally just asked George if he wanted to have sex with a baby. And THEN things get worse when Ramona, upon hearing that Cody may one day utilize George's sperm-pop to have a baby, asks if George even has any sperm left. He says, "Let's try it. You determine how do you want to do it, on your knees or on your back." WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK?

Sonja's a Mean Drunk on Real Housewives of New York

Oh, but there's more! George continues, "Do you know what I'm going to do at your funeral? I'm gonna lick my lips and put my hand on your vagina." It bears repeating: WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK? And to the producers of this show: This is too much. Seriously, this guy has gotta go. I watch Real Housewives for gay pet funerals, not creepy old guys threatening to sexually assault someone after they're dead. It's not cute, it's horrible. END IT. Aviva lamely tries to mediate the situation by saying, "Can you not talk about my friend's vagina? Can you take it back?" There is no taking it back. I REPEAT: END IT.

And then we're back to Saratoga! Sonja loves the hats! The dresses! The elegance! The cash flow! The ladies meet the winner of the Kentucky Derby, which of course segues into speculation about the penis size of short people. Lu generously says that everyone is the same size laying down, to which Sonja replies, "Lu, that little jockey next to you? You'd roll over and kill him!" With her pumpkin head! Can we also just talk about LuAnn's body for a minute? Whatever diet and exercise regimen she's on, I want to know, because she looks freaking fantastic.

Sonja thinks she's an expert on betting at horses and that no one else knows what they're dong. So when the other ladies collectively put down a couple hundred dollars on a particular line-up, Sonja opts out and instead bets two dollars on, like, fifty horses. And then—CRUEL FATE!—the other ladies win a collective $3,340 while Sonja wins bupkis. Her $800 share could have gotten her hot water for a month, or cherry condoms for a year, or like six linger-ee inspired camisoles! It actually made me really sad.

Sonja's a Mean Drunk on Real Housewives of New York

Sonja then wanders off to drink tequila and get betting tips from random burly dudes. The others can't find her and try texting her to no avail, so eventually they come to the logical conclusion that she's probably banging a jockey, and leave. And you honestly can't blame them. Well, I mean, SONJA can blame them. She shows up at the house hours later, completely shitfaced and calling them all bitches for ditching her. She says the word "paddock" a bunch of times and I'm not sure what that means, but what I DO know is that everyone is all set with Sonja being a mean drunk. Sonja gets into it with basically just about everyone, and when Kristen tries to be sympathetic and help her, Sonja tells her to go fuck herself. She gets her finger REAL CLOSE to Kristen's face, which is like a Molotov cocktail for reality TV stars.

Sonja's a Mean Drunk on Real Housewives of New York

Sonja gets VERY Little Edie up in the joint, fixing her messed up hair (…because she was totally boning a jockey) and muttering "I was with all the girls and THEY left" to herself in the mirror. She then packs her things and stumbles out of the house, saying, "I'm outta here. I'm going straight to the Hamptons." But we ALL KNOW that Sonja has no private plane and is just bluffing. Based on the previews for next week, she doesn't stay mad for long and we are treated to the origin story of the infamously depressing tag line, "Sometimes Sonja has to go commando. What can I say?"

[Image via Bravo]

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Racist Stripper: "I'm Not a Racist, I Have a Black Cousin"

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The woman caught on video screaming "nigger" at a black driver in a Western New York parking lot told her side of the story on the radio this morning. You can go ahead and fill in the "I'm not a racist" square on your Racism Bingo card.

Janelle Ambrosia claims that the before the video started rolling, the man who filmed her shouting "you're a nasty fucking nigger" almost hit her son with his car and called her "I don't know what he called me ... a crackheaded cracker." She failed to mention that part of the story to her husband in the conversation we see on the video, instead saying he scared her kids by starting his car.

Before WBLK host Big Rob could even ask the question, she jumped in with "I'm not a racist. I have a black cousin."

Explaining how the term "nigger" entered the equation, she said, "Nigger means an ignorant person, it has nothing to do with race. He pissed me off, I'm bipolar."

She said she doesn't have anything against black people, but when asked what she would say to the driver now, she sarcastically replied:

"Am I supposed to apologize? Oh yeah, I'll apologize for him almost hitting my kid and me losing my temper."

On top of everything else that is terrible about this bottomlessly terrible mixture of racism, mental illness, and YouTube, things just got even more complicated for the children caught in the middle of it. Janelle says her ex has seen the video of her rant and wants to take custody of the kids.

[H/T WBLK]

NBC Reports a "Gustnado" Threatens Millions, Uses Day-Old Weather Map

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NBC Reports a "Gustnado" Threatens Millions, Uses Day-Old Weather Map

What do you do when you're a major news organization that owns the Weather Channel and your social media editors use an old weather map to warn the wrong people that severe storms packing destructive winds and a gustnado are on their way to screw things up? Nothing, apparently.

NBC News experienced a meteorological trainwreck this morning when they sent out a Tweet at 7:30 AM warning people that "Severe storms, destructive winds and a 'gustnado' threaten millions today."

The map they used to drive home their moot point is from yesterday afternoon, and many of the areas highlighted on that map won't even see rain today. Second, a 'gustnado' can't threaten millions. A gustnado is a small spin-up along the leading edge of a gust front produced by a thunderstorm. While they look like tornadoes to the untrained eye, gustnadoes are usually small and weak, and they are more closely related to dust devils than actual tornadoes.

Plus, there was one yesterday. In rural Nebraska.

NBC Reports a "Gustnado" Threatens Millions, Uses Day-Old Weather Map

The article itself, which took two people to write, features Tea Party math in its headline when they say that 35 million people are under a threat for severe weather — according to the Storm Prediction Center, only 20,566,594 people are at risk today.

The rest of the article is accurate for the most part, reporting the severe weather that occurred yesterday while noting that more is possible today in the Ohio Valley.

Weather information is a dangerous thing when it falls into the wrong hands.

[Top image of last night's impressive storm complex via GOES, screenshot via NBC News]

Zany NRA Video Attacks Media For Labeling Shootings as "Shootings"

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Zany NRA Video Attacks Media For Labeling Shootings as "Shootings"

Used to be when a bunch of people got murdered with a gun, it was called a "murder." But now it's a "shooting," because the leftist media lies, except it's not a lie, but whatever. The point, according to this awesome he-hulk in an NRA propaganda video is: Don't watch the news!

"Now they race to label anything with a gun as a 'shooting,'" complains former Navy Seal and NRA Good Guy With Two Big Guns© Dom Rasso in the new video. "Because they know how much more attention they're gonna get with that word."

It's not immediately clear that 'murder' has left the American news parlance. But, you know, a "shooting" is a more precise description than a "murder." And some shootings don't even result in murders! Also, if all murders were shootings, there'd be no need to call them shootings. But since some do involve knives and bolos and frying pans, it's nice to distinguish murders by tools that did the murdering. Which probably explains why the NRA uses "shooting" to describe shootings all the time in their Twitter feed!

But let's not get too granular just yet. Back up a minute—back up to the beginning of this glorious video, with its generic hard-rock guitar-riff intro, its "PROPAGANDA" graphic emblazoned over a statue of Lenin, and Dom's opening words, superimposed on the screen as he reads them, you know, for maximum inculcating effect and minimum irony:

PROPAGANDA: Ideas or or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, or a government.

That sounds a lot like what I see every single day when I actually waste my time to keep up with what the news media is saying.

Don't waste your time with that media propaganda, Dom! Spend more of your time making paid videos for one of the nation's most powerful industry-funded political lobby groups. Videos that encourage viewers to discount and ignore information that doesn't account with what you teach in said videos. What I'm saying is, score one for the anti-propagandists here, who have no power whatsoever, except for the slick videos and the political scorecards, oh and also all the guns.

If you or someone you know wasn't actually on the "X," then you're getting third-party information. And we all know what happens when "he said, she said."

"He said" usually wins? Right?

Dom goes on to complain about the media's obvious propaganda aims by attacking early reports (he never calls out any specific ones) on the Navy Yard shooting that identified the killer's weapon as an AR-15 assault weapon, when it was in fact a shotgun.

Weirdly, while pressing for accuracy in reporting, Dom never points out that the shotgun in question was a Remington 870—which, like the AR, is popular with military and law enforcement units, and which the Navy Yard killer illegally sawed off into a more concealable weapon for, you know, assaulting people.

But let's don't stop to discuss facts, Dom is on an anti-propaganda roll:

Is there an emotional attachment to the word "AR," or assault rifle, or weapon of war? Of course there is! And that emotional connection is 100 percent created by the media.

Except the part that's partly created by the makers and sellers of said weapons, to sell lots of those weapons:

Zany NRA Video Attacks Media For Labeling Shootings as "Shootings"

Zany NRA Video Attacks Media For Labeling Shootings as "Shootings"

Seriously, though, Dom makes some excellent points:

Think of the media for what they are: an entertainment business. What sounds better for them: Two random, tragic acts of violence a few months apart, or connecting those isolated events by hyper focusing on the scary looking gun used in both?

There is an entertainment aspect to a lot of media. And there is a yearning for coherent narratives. And you know, it's a pretty coherent narrative to consider that more than half of American mass killers in the past three decades have used assault weapons, hi-capacity magazines, or both in their killings. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

Thank God that, unlike us crass propagandists, the NRA and its supporters don't try to oversimplify the facts with overblown connections.

Zany NRA Video Attacks Media For Labeling Shootings as "Shootings"

Zany NRA Video Attacks Media For Labeling Shootings as "Shootings"

Zany NRA Video Attacks Media For Labeling Shootings as "Shootings"

Zany NRA Video Attacks Media For Labeling Shootings as "Shootings"

Fuck it, let's forget all this and go to the range.

NYC Is Actually Building These Radical Storm-Proofing Systems

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NYC Is Actually Building These Radical Storm-Proofing Systems

Nearly two years after Hurricane Sandy tore into NYC, the city's still not much more prepared than it was then. So news that the Federal government has doled out $540 million to fund a handful of flood-proofing infrastructure projects this week is a welcome surprise. Not to mention that the systems look pretty damn cool.

A few months ago, we wrote about Rebuild by Design, a competition that looked for proposals to retrofit the city and the surrounding region for a stormy future. This week, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan announced the winners of the competition, and meted out more than half a billion dollars to build them. Let's take a look at what's coming.

A 16-Foot Barrier Along Manhattan's Edge

The big winner in the announcement was a proposal called the Big U, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, which imagines a massive barrier of dikes, berms, and other barriers around Manhattan. HUD awarded the group $535 million to build the first stretch of the eight-mile-long ring. The 16-foot-high section will protect the fragile Lower East Side from storm surges with a tall grass escarpment.

NYC Is Actually Building These Radical Storm-Proofing Systems

NYC Is Actually Building These Radical Storm-Proofing Systems

An Underwater Oyster Shelf

HUD also awarded $60 million to rebuild an underwater stone shelf and oyster reefs that will protect Staten Island's South Shore, one of the hardest hit areas in the entire region during Sandy. New "micropockets" of finfish, shellfish, and lobsters will slow surges and bring ecological complexity back to the coastline. "The proposal is going to create a living breakwater that will reduce wave action and erosion and lower risk from heavy storms," said Donovan.

NYC Is Actually Building These Radical Storm-Proofing Systems

NYC Is Actually Building These Radical Storm-Proofing Systems

Protecting NYC's Most Vital Food Source

Hunts Point could be the most important place in the city, though you may not realize it. This peninsula in the Bronx is the critical hub that supplies most of the city's food. During Sandy, it was hit particularly hard, drawing attention to the risks involved with it being shut down.

Donovan has awarded $20 million to study the feasibility of the project—it's not starting construction just yet—which will protect the market with a series of levees, parks, and other flood-mitigating systems. There will also be a new pier, designed to keep functioning regardless of storms.

NYC Is Actually Building These Radical Storm-Proofing Systems

NYC Is Actually Building These Radical Storm-Proofing Systems

We still don't know when work will begin on each project, since HUD only just awarded the money, but it's likely we'll be hearing more soon. And New Jersey and the surrounding New York region also received some of the cash, too, funding the construction or study of three other flood-proofing proposals.

All in all, $920 million ended up being awarded this week. And though it's been more than 20 months since Sandy struck, that's a pretty quick turnaround for the hulking federal and state governments involved in the process. We'll have more updates when construction begins.

Let's Match Drugs to New York Times Op-Ed Columnists

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Let's Match Drugs to New York Times Op-Ed Columnists

Today's New York Times op-ed section features Maureen Dowd's rousing report of trying a pot candy bar in a Denver, Colorado, hotel room. The experience was, shall we say, not a salutary one:

I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn't move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn't answer, he'd call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

Great news though: Dowd survived, and shall no doubt live on to write many columns that leave us all questioning her relationship to (sober) reality.

The column raises a question for regular op-ed page readers: what kind of drugs should the other stalwarts of the quasi-respectable pundit game be encouraged by the page's editors to ingest?

Charles Blow on blow (cocaine, for those of you with innocent eyes and ears) is an obvious candidate.

But what about David Brooks? Frank Bruni? Ross Douthat? Thomas Friedman?

Puns are not only allowed, they are encouraged. Please give some indication of your reasons for a match.

[Image by Jim Cooke.]

Here Is the Second Video of a Young Justin Bieber Saying "Nigger"

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Earlier today, the British paper The Sun said they had obtained a second video of Justin Bieber making racist jokes, including using the word "nigger." They declined to post the video for whatever reason, but here it is, courtesy of TMZ.

In the video, Bieber—who is said to be 14 years old at time—sings the chorus of his then-single "One Less Lonely Girl," except he swaps out the word "girl" with the slur. He continues to freestyle about joining the Ku Klux Klan.

TMZ says that Bieber and his camp have known about the existence of the video for years but have continually refused to pay anyone any ransom money to keep it offline. TMZ also says that Usher also served as some sort of emergency quasi-history teacher around this time.

We're told years ago Justin told both Usher and Will Smith about the videos, saying he knew almost immediately it was a stupid thing to do ... Usher took him into a room and showed him historically racist videos to drive home how hurtful these words can be.

Just what Usher thought he'd be doing when he agreed to be Bieber's mentor, I'm sure.


Where You See a Fist, Inside Amy Schumer Sees a Comfortable Chair

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Where You See a Fist, Inside Amy Schumer Sees a Comfortable Chair

Season two of Inside Amy Schumer ends exactly as it should: with an audience member gleefully hollering into the mic in his face, "What I gotta do to get that dick in my mouth?" The rest is mist and dew, shadows and whispers. Ah, life!

Watch this sketch, where Congresswoman Amy Schumer denies allegations that she tweeted a "perfect puss pic" to @HungAsFuck (her Korean doctor, available only by DM), texted interns "Your dick, my mouth, right now," and sent a guy a Facebook invite to her pussy. It's good, you'll like it.

Then, because we've seen this type of press conference enough to know where the money is, watch it again, focusing on her husband the whole time. Amy's not ashamed of any of what she's done and will almost certainly continue to do, but our boy Trentman's face is three cats of shame and revulsion fighting in a burlap sack of composure. The details are funny (I especially loved Damone, her buttersmooth "Campaign Manager" with one perpetually raised eyebrow), but a good straight(ish) man, even a silent one, elevates the whole witch hunt.http://morningafter.gawker.com/inside-amy-sch...

I'll be running down the rest of the episode's sketches in the comments, sharing my li'l thoughts and pulling choice nuggets. What did you dig? What didn't gel for you? Is my notepad's autocorrecting "queefing 'gangnam style'" [outtake gold] to "queering 'gingham style'" a victory for LBGTQ prepsters? Let's talk it out.

[Image via Comedy Central]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow us at @GawkerMA and read more here.

Some Guy Filmed President Obama Working Out In a Polish Gym

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For whatever reason, video of President Obama apparently working out in the gym of the Marriott Hotel in Warsaw, Poland has leaked.

He's in the country to reaffirm U.S. support for central and eastern European countries against Russia.

Photos and video were first posted by Jean Ekwa on his Facebook page, which depict Obama, clad in a dark blue track suit, headphones in, lifting weights, doing lunges, and using the elliptical. At one point, he pauses to yawn.

Some Guy Filmed President Obama Working Out In a Polish Gym

The Secret Service confirmed to The Hill that the video is real, and that other hotel guests taking photos and videos of his workout is not a problem: "Hotel guests were not asked to leave the gym during this off the record movement, nor were they asked to refrain from taking pictures," agency spokesman Ed Donovan said.

The Hill also notes that these "off the record" excursions usually involve impromptu photo-ops with voters/citizens of countries he is visiting:

A spokesman for the Secret Service said the situation at the gym was "no different than if the president visited a restaurant off the record and other diners took pictures of him."

Obama regularly poses for pictures with diners or bystanders when he makes unscheduled stops during trips, although the view into his workout routine is rare.

Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, for one, is concerned about these kind of leaks. She posted the following to her blog, Gretawire:

THIS IS SO DANGEROUS!!! What is WRONG WITH THE SECRET SERVICE???!!??? If Polish tabloids can get these pics (and video) with a camera lens, is there anyone who doesn't think the President is vulnerable to someone armed?

Update: Now with GIFs, via the Daily Mail.

Some Guy Filmed President Obama Working Out In a Polish Gym

Some Guy Filmed President Obama Working Out In a Polish Gym

[Image via Jean Ekwa]

Watch The Mountain from Game of Thrones Deadlift Almost 1,000 Pounds

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Before he was the third actor to play Ser Gregor Clegane—"The Mountain That Rides"—on Game of Thrones, Hafþór "Thor" Júlíus Björnsson was already making heads explode with his performances in strongman competitions.

Björnsson, the second-strongest man alive, stands 6'9" tall and can bench press 500 pounds, squat 770 pounds and "raw" deadlift 925 pounds. In this video from the 2014 Arnold Strongman Classic, he handles an insane 994 pounds in the hummer-tire deadlift.

After placing second in this year's World's Strongest Man competition—losing by just half a point—Thor was tapped for the Mountain's most important scene despite never having acted before. He doesn't play football, either, but that didn't stop the Indianapolis Colts from considering drafting him.

[H/T Buzzfeed]

Child Next to Queen Passes Out During Speech; Queen Don't Give a Fuck

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A ludicrously dressed child tasked with ensuring the safe transport of the back of Queen Elizabeth II's dress into and out of the House of Lords on Wednesday appeared, tragically, to die of boredom earlier this morning when he collapsed in the middle of the Queen's speech to Parliament. Fortunately, he had only fainted.

Cameras in the chamber picked up the loud thud of the boy's fall a split second after the Queen declared the government "will work towards a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran." The Queen, more concerned with giving her speech than a fuck, continued reading from her prepared remarks without pausing. Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, who were seated directly next to the pageboys, looked mildly alarmed.

The BBC reports that the boy, who was one of four young pages attending the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament, was carried out of the chamber.

A House of Lords spokesman told the organization, "We can confirm one of the pageboys did faint slightly but he is now fine."

At the conclusion of the Queen's speech, the three conscious pageboys carried her train out of the chamber without incident, an indication that perhaps four was overkill in the first place.

[Video via C-SPAN2]

There's a megachurch in Texas, 90 percent of whose 4,500 members are LGBT.

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There's a megachurch in Texas, 90 percent of whose 4,500 members are LGBT. And it's been officiating gay marriages for like 40 years. Give us that old-time religion!

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