Did you go to the movies this Fourth of July Weekend? Because not a lot of people did! At least according to box office prognosticators, who say this past weekend was one of the worst in decades. Sales were down about 43 percent from 2013 and Transformers: Again won the weekend.

Box office nerds speculate a few reasons for why sales were so bad this year, which includes the World Cup, bad weather, and the most likely reason, there wasn't anything good playing. Per BuzzFeed, this weekend's box office "was the lowest grossing 4th of July weekend since the 1980s, when adjusting for inflation:"

Because July 4 falls on different days of the week each year, it's difficult to make direct box office comparisons for Independence Day weekend: July 4 fell on a Friday this year versus a Thursday last year, for example, meaning many adults had just one day off in 2014 versus two in 2013. Still, Transformers: Age of Extinction dropping 63.6% from its debut weekend, with just $36.4 million over the holiday weekend, does not bode well for the long-term health of the franchise. In fact, it is currently tracking well behind the domestic grosses of the first three Transformers films.

And Variety reports that this year's Fourth falling on a Friday (2013's was on a Thursday, encouraging "more mid-week moviegoing"), and Hurricane Arthur on the East Coast, also proved problematic for ticket sales.

Of the non-franchise, non-horror films released this week, Melissa McCarthy's Tammy did best, pulling in $21.2 million over the weekend, bringing its tally up to $32.9 million since opening July 2. Box office number crunchers are calling Tammy's totals "just OK."

[Image via AP]

One of the more popular floats at this year's Fourth of July parade in Norfolk, Neb. was of a ghoulish, skeletal figure propped up against an outhouse that had ""OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY" emblazoned on the side. According to the committee that approved the float for the parade, it was purely "political satire."

From the Lincoln Journal-Star:

Parade committee member Rick Konopasek said the float wasn't meant to be any more offensive than a political cartoon would be. The only restriction for entering a float is that it can't be considered morally objectionable. That basically translates to a ban on nudity to sexually explicit messages, Konopasek said.

"We don't feel its right to tell someone what they can and can't express," he said. "This was political satire. If we start saying no to certain floats, we might as well not have a parade at all."

"I'm angry and I'm scared," Glory Kathurima, who was at the parade, told the Lincoln Journal-Star. "The float was not just political; this was absolutely a racial statement." Further from the Omaha World-Herald:

The World-Herald also received several emails from people expressing concern. One email, from a person who said she had grown up in northeast Nebraska, called it disrespectful that such a display would be allowed in a parade that celebrates America's history. The Nebraska Democratic Party also issued a statement, calling it one of the "worst shows of racism and disrespect for the office of the presidency that Nebraska has ever seen."

Norfolk City Councilman Dick Pfeil also voiced his displeasure with the float.

"The City of Norfolk doesn't condone that," Pfeil said.

The councilman noted, however, that it was up to the Odd Fellows to approve the floats. A representative of the Odd Fellows did not return a phone message from a World-Herald reporter Saturday evening.

"It's obvious the majority of the community liked it," Konopasek told the Lincoln Journal-Star. "So should we deny the 95 percent of those that liked it their rights, just for the 5 percent of people who are upset?"

The Associated Press reports that parade organizers plan to meet this week to discuss the float and "whether any policy changes should be made for the future."

[Image via Omaha World-Herald]

A wedding hall operator in Japan forked over $5,400 for a bunch of 30 Ruby Roman grapes, which are apparently the most expensive grapes in the world. These grapes, the wedding hall says, will be served to couples who have their weddings at the venue in Kanazawa. It is unclear if couples would be allowed to eat the grapes of if they will just be permitted to look at them.

From Agence France-Presse:

The bunch of around 30 grapes weighed some 800 grams (28 ounces), and individual grapes can reach 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) in diameter, according to public broadcaster NHK.

The top notch grapes — costing around $180 a pop — will be served at the wedding hall in the central city of Kanazawa, in Ishikawa.

"I was surprised to see a higher price than I had originally imagined, but I would like bridal couples to savor them and have a great memory," the hall owner told NHK.

But do they even taste good?

"They're delicious—sweet but fresh at the same time, very well balanced," Japanese agricultural official Hirofumi Isu told the Associated Press in 2008.

So, maybe?

[Image via Japan Times]

A couple in Saskatchewan, Canada got a better backdrop than they bargained for when a tornado touched down a couple miles down the road from the wedding. The photographer took full advantage of nature's fury and took the most badass wedding photos ever taken.

The Canadian Prairies have seen several tornadoes over the past couple of days, most of which occurred over unpopulated areas and produced minimal damage. Luckily for the couple, the tornado seen in the pictures was a safe distance away and the thunderstorms did little more than blow over a tent at the reception, according to CTV.

The photographer, Colleen Niska, posted the pictures to her Facebook page with the caption "I've dreamed about a day like this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Could NOT wait to post these! Pretty sure this will only happen once in my lifetime!"

This isn't the first time a tornado photobombed a newlywed couple's shoot. A tornado touched down against the sunset at the wedding of a couple in Kansas back in 2012, giving them a pretty awesome backdrop as well.

[Images by Colleen Niska via her Facebook page]

The chief meteorologist for WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan lost his left eye in a serious fireworks accident this past weekend while he and his family were on vacation in Iowa. Dave Rexroth will undergo surgery this week and "begin the process of receiving a prosthetic eye," according to his employer.

The accident is just one of the dozens of reports filed across the country documenting the annual tradition of Americans losing body parts in celebration of our country's birth.

• A Detroit man died when a firework exploded and shrapnel caused a fatal wound to his chest.
• A fireworks display in Comanche, Texas exploded last Thursday, killing one person and injuring four others.
• A collection of fireworks exploded inside a Florida home, killing a woman and seriously injuring her son.
• Four people were seriously injured in San Francisco after fireworks exploded on or near them. One man sustained serious eye injuries, while three others saw lost digits or, in one man's case, lost both of his hands.
• A firework accident in Ohio resulted in a man losing his foot at the ankle.
• A Maryland boy sustained "critical burns" after a sparkler ignited his shirt.
• An unidentified New Hampshire man received "severe hand injuries" as a result of a firework.

The news reports fail to mention the countless number of fresh fruits destroyed in the fruitless effort that safety officials put forth every year to warn Americans of the dangers that fireworks pose.

[Image via AP | h/t Stephen Uzick]

A 34-year-old California man has been arrested for dressing up as a county fair employee and trying to recruit teenage girls for his porn business, "Big Pimpin' Inc."

A 16-year-old girl named Justice told reporters that the would-be porn producer, Aaron Gimbert, handed her a card at the Alameda County (Calif.) Fair and told her she'd make a great porn star.

"He like asked if I was 18 and I was like no I'm 16, and he kind of thought about it, and he was like call me when you turn 18," Justice told KTVU.

The business card advertised a bonus for girls who sign on their 18th birthday.

Gimbert was allegedly wearing a fair employee shirt while conducting his big pimpin' business. The fair denies that he's an employee, and claims it runs background checks on full-time staff.

Management didn't specify whether Gimbert was a part-time worker or just some guy with an Alameda County Fair shirt and a very strong interest in the future of the porn business.

[H/T Uproxx, Photo: KTVU]

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finally recovered from her bad trip and she's back in the opining business. In this weekend's Sunday Review, she bemoaned the loss of American exceptionalism. But one bright-eyed demographic doesn't share her bad attitude:

Young people are more optimistic than their rueful elders, especially those in the technology world. They are the anti-Cheneys, competitive but not triumphalist. They think of themselves as global citizens, not interested in exalting America above all other countries.

"The 23-year-olds I work with are a little over the conversation about how we were the superpower brought low," said Ben Smith, the editor in chief of Buzzfeed. "They think that's an 'older person conversation.' They're more interested in this moment of crazy opportunity, with the massive economic and cultural transformation driven by Silicon Valley. And kids feel capable of seizing it. Technology isn't a section in the newspaper any more. It's the culture."

This is what happens when you only remember the 90's.

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

[Image via JohnWelbourn]

Marc Andreessen made his fortune founding Netscape and investing millions into speculative startups, but his father-in-law is the man who made "Silicon Valley" possible. And ugly.

Before tech began pouring out of Stanford University, Santa Clara Valley was thriving as one of the most bountiful farmlands on the planet. But where people saw flowering orchards, John Arrillaga envisioned miles of grotesque office parks lining 101. And 50 years ago, he began pivoting the valley to match his vision.

In a profile of Arrillaga, Fortune takes a look at how he turned himself into a Bay Area technology land baron:

He and business partner Richard Peery are the real estate developers who had the foresight in the 1960s to buy up the Valley's fruit orchards and turn the farmland into thousands of acres of low-slung office parks and campuses that have come to house Intel, HP, Apple, Google, and more. All told, the duo have erected more than 12 million square feet of office space and sold or leased tens of billions of dollars in property–an effort that has made Arrillaga, worth more than $2.5 billion, perhaps the richest man in Silicon Valley who didn't make his money by starting a tech company.

Fortune spends most of its article cheerleading Arrillaga's real estate empire as some sort of benevolent godfather of the Valley. But even Fortune struggles to be enthusiastic over the aesthetics of his developments, beyond their ability to sprout fortunes:

For all of Arrillaga's involvement in the minutiae of bathroom tile and landscaping, his projects are not quite things of beauty. His buildings, like much–or even most–of the office space in Silicon Valley, are simply utilitarian. But as an economic indicator of sorts, the team's developments are a thing of beauty and clarity.

But the magazine isn't the only one proud of the developer. Andreessen, who married Arrillaga's daughter Laura in 2006, is even more reverential of the real estate tycoon. He routinely seeks Arrillaga's business advice and lauds him for not taking on debt and self-financing his projects. Most prominently, he admires his "faith" in Silicon Valley.

Arrillaga, those close to him say, believes [Silicon Valley's real estate] climb has much further to go. The demand is now coming overwhelmingly from businesses like Google, Apple, and LinkedIn–huge tech companies that are expanding their businesses and increasing employee headcounts, pushing the companies into a continual hunt for space. They are making gigantic bets on expansion in a way the developer (again, to hear colleagues tell it) has never witnessed, even during the 1990s dotcom boom.

"John just sees that as a very powerful thing," says Andreessen. "He has a deep and abiding faith in the Silicon Valley phenomenon."

Thanks to that "phenomenon," Andreessen sits on two fortunes: the one he made and the one he married into. I guess it's easy to tweetstorm about the poors when you're going to die rich no matter what.

Photo: Getty

The Ugandan government is starting to worry about donors who have stopped or redirected aid to the country in light of the anti-gay bill passed in February. The government said today that the law has been "misinterpreted."

Ugandan leaders said in a statement, "[The law's] enactment has been misinterpreted as a piece of legislation intended to punish and discriminate against people of a 'homosexual orientation', especially by our development partners." Since the law was enacted, the United States has cancelled some aid programs and military exercises with Uganda. The World Bank, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands have also stopped or redirected aid to the country.

The Ugandan government claims the law is not intended to punish anyone for being homosexual, but the law is specifically written to do just that. Gay people can be punished with life in prison if they're convicted of "aggravated homosexuality," which includes having sex while HIV positive. There's nothing to misunderstand — gay Ugandans can be charged and punished with life in prison if their sexual orientation is revealed. The law also makes not reporting someone as gay a criminal offense.

[Image via AP]

Cannabis remains illegal in our nation's capital, despite House Republicans' best misguided efforts to the contrary. An initiative that's likely to appear on November's ballots in D.C., however, could change that.

This morning, an organization called the D.C. Cannabis Campaign submitted a 55,000-signature petition for a legalization ballot measure to the city's election board. If the group is successful, D.C.'s voters will decide whether to legalize possession of up to two ounces of weed for recreational use. According to the Associated Press, the initiative has twice the number of required signatures to reach the ballot.

Earlier this year, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray signed a bill that would make pot possession punishable only by a $25 fine. In an effort to block the measure, House Republicans passed a spending bill that forbids the city from using any funds for decriminalization.

If the so-called Harris amendment goes into effect — and it's unclear whether it actually will, as the Senate has not yet created a companion bill — it would stymie the ballot initiative, as well. According to a Washington Post poll, eighty percent of D.C. residents are in favor of decriminalization or legalization.

[Image via AP]

Radio stations across the country hit sweet, psycho ex-girlfriend paydirt last week when they dug up this article about "the most extreme case of stalking ever recorded in the history of the country." According to the story, one Linda Murphy was arrested in New Mexico after calling her ex-boyfriend 77,639 times in one week. "Can you imagine all the energy drinks she must have consumed to have all those sleepless nights?!" asked San Francisco's 99.7 NOW, failing to first ask if the totally bogus article was fake.

"I do not show any record of Linda Murphy having been arrested," an Albuquerque Police spokesperson told Gawker via email. That's not too surprising given the original article came from World News Daily Report, a self-described "political satire web publication." In real life, the mugshot is of Oklahoma City's Cierra Steed, who took to Facebook to clear her maybe-not-so-good name.

Steed has previously made headlines for crawling through a McDonald's drive-through window, getting arrested again later that same day and admitting she was a murder witness on Facebook. "This dude I was I guess sorta dating stabbed his aunt to death like two bedrooms away from me," Steed said on the website back in 2012. Interested suitors will be disappointed to learn her relationship status is currently listed as "Married."

[Image via NewsOK]

In the past 20 years, the caloric intakes of Americans and the composition of their diets have not significantly changed. But obesity rates have steadily risen. Why? Probably because motherfuckers are not working out.

That's the conclusion of a new study published in the American Journal of Medicine, which bases its findings on the following basic data points:

1. People are eating about the same as they did 20 years ago.

2. People are getting much less physical activity than they did 20 years ago.

3. People are getting fatter.

4. Maybe it's the lack of physical activity.

To be specific: "researchers from Stanford University discovered that the number of US adult women who reported no physical activity jumped from 19.1% in 1994 to 51.7% in 2010. For men, the number increased from 11.4% in 1994 to 43.5% in 2010. During the period, average BMI has increased across the board, with the most dramatic rise found among young women ages 18-39."

Sure sounds like the problem is: "no physical activity."

There are many sociological, economic, and cultural reasons for the decline in physical activity among Americans. We acknowledge that even as we acknowledge that those reasons do not matter in the long run because your health will still decline even if you have a perfectly good reason for not working out. So try to go work out.

Hardcorely.

[Photo: Flickr]

Last month, crowdfunding site Kickstarter loosened its strict(ish) guidelines for projects, allowing users to ask the internet to pay for basically anything that's not illegal. So Zack Danger Brown was well within the rules when he asked for $10 to make potato salad, and his 1,700 backers didn't violate the site's terms by giving him $23,000 and counting.

His project began last Thursday with a simple mission: "I'm making potato salad. Basically I'm just making potato salad. I haven't decided what kind yet."

He offered rewards like a bite of the potato salad or the chance to pick one potato-salad-friendly ingredient to add to the dish, and people just ate it up. (Sorry.)

What started as a ridiculous gag has now turned into an effort to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a simple side dish. Brown will spend some of his thousands renting a venue and turning the creation of the meal into a live event. He's also paying to broadcast it live online.

Brown jokes that making the meal could take weeks, because for each type of potato salad he makes—the project has expanded to include multiples recipes—he'll be saying every backer's name out loud.

Why not just make the original potato salad and donate the huge excess of cash to charity? That's actually against Kickstarter's terms, because it could result in backers inadvertently funding causes they don't agree with.

So, instead, we get what may be the most expensive potato salad in the history of the world. Congratulations, internet. You did it.

[H/T The Verge, Photo: Zack Brown/Kickstarter]

Richard Mellon Scaife is dead, and conservatives are sad. Long before the Kochs became infamous, Scaife pumped millions into a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to nail the Clintons for... whatever. But Scaife's admirers forgot his love of Planned Parenthood and change of heart toward Hillary and Bill.

First, the background: Scaife—who, yes, is a Mellon of the filthy rich oil and steel variety—was worth an estimated $1.4 billion and owned, among other things, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review before dying of cancer at 82 over the long weekend. His political involvement started with a failed bid to bring Barry Goldwater into the White House in 1964, but by the 90s, he'd pushed support for conservative candidates on the back burner to try something that was still novel: steering millions of dollars through various nonprofits into opposition research on politicians he loathed.

The main focus of his ire was Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary; Scaife's fortune bankrolled the paleoconservative American Spectator's Arkansas Project, dredging up muck on Bill's sexual escapades and trying to make something out of Whitewater. Scaife also used his newspaper to suggest the Clintons had White House adviser Vince Foster killed. (Foster was later determined to have committed suicide.)

The hijinks didn't stop there; Kenneth Starr, the "independent" government counsel appointed to investigate Clinton—and who later became famous as the Monicagate inquisitor—was offered a job running a new public policy school at Pepperdine University in California—a school that Scaife, a university regent, had bankrolled and helped found. (Starr declined the job amid public pressure, but ended up becoming Pepperdine's law dean after the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment had run their course.)

For all this, Scaife was lauded as a hero by arch conservatives over the weekend. He "was an indefatigable warrior in what he called the Battle of Ideas," according to idea-deficient Islamophobe and Breitbart contributor Frank Gaffney:

On July 4, 1826, two of America's founding fathers – former Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – passed away. Their myriad contributions to the character and direction of this country have long survived them.

The same will surely be true of a man who passed away this Fourth of July, a founding father in his own right: Richard M. Scaife. Few have done more than Dick Scaife to give life to and build the modern American conservative movement which has, in turn, played an outsized role in shaping our nation over the past fifty years.

The National Review's John Fund gushed similarly:

It was fitting for a patriot such as Richard Mellon Scaife that he died on the Fourth of July. Dick Scaife loved his country, and as a philanthropist, political activist, and newspaper publisher he helped to make it and his hometown of Pittsburgh better.

"There would be no conservative movement as we know it today without Dick Scaife," says Chris Ruddy, the owner of the popular Internet and cable-TV outlet Newsmax.

I'll go ahead and disclose here—since Fund doesn't—that Scaife was reportedly the second-biggest shareholder in Newsmax, behind Ruddy with 40 percent of the company's holdings. What Fund does disclose is that, to his mind, Scaife was "a benefactor of the causes of liberty."

Scaife's causes, though, apparently included the liberty to terminate pregnancy, live more or less religion-free, contribute liberally (no pun intended) to public TV, and eventually even support the political futures of Bill and Hillary Clinton—all anathema to most of the conservatives lionizing him over the weekend.

Newsweek wrote in 2007 about the rapidly evolving "mutual admiration society" between Scaife and Bill Clinton:

Last July, the former president sat down with a billionaire impressed with the William J. Clinton Foundation's campaign against AIDS in Africa. The two men chatted amiably over lunch for more than two hours, and the visitor pledged to write Clinton's foundation a generous check. But there was something unusual, if not plain weird, about the meeting. NEWSWEEK has learned that the billionaire so eager to endear himself to the former president was Richard Mellon Scaife—once the Clintons' archenemy and best-known as the man behind a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton said was out to destroy them.

By the following March, Scaife had penned a cheery endorsement of Hillary for the Democratic presidential nomination. He'd grown smitten with her, as with Bill, after a series of social and philanthropic encounters and a long editorial Q-and-A session about her candidacy. "I have a very different impression of Hillary Clinton today," he wrote. "And it's a very favorable one indeed."

As for Scaife's support of abortion, it was unequivocal. He was a longtime financial backer of Planned Parenthood, even allowing his pro-choice op-eds to be used as PPFA advertisements during the 2004 election—when George W. Bush and most Republicans were running as ardent anti-abortion candidates:

"If not for Margaret Sanger's vision and bravery, many poor Americans would have no place to turn for birth-control measures and counseling or for other health-care services," Scaife wrote of the Planned Parenthood founder, a friend of his grandmother—in language that would get a female speaker denounced as a slut by Rush Limbaugh today.

Then there was the $1 million Scaife gave to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which Republicans have tried to kill for years now.

This may not all be news: Scaife's positions are certainly not a secret, as the links above attest. But neither are they advertised by most fawning conservatives today. ("He later mellowed and reconciled with both of the Clintons," Fund dolefully drops like a rotten grape in the middle of his bunch of laudatory sentences.) The sole exception seems to have been Paul Kengor at the American Spectator, which Scaife funded so lavishly:

Conservative friends and associates who learned of my relationship with Scaife (I didn't tell many people) usually brought up two things: For one, they knew he was a big pro-choicer on the abortion issue, having supported Planned Parenthood in the past. They knew I was just the opposite. The subject did come up, and Dick told me flatly, "I'm in favor of abortion."

The other elephant in the room was his faith. He was widely believed to be an atheist. "Talk to Dick Scaife about God, Paul," friends urged me. "This man is a walking scandal. He has led an immoral life. He has some serious sins on his soul, and he doesn't believe in God."

Scaife assured Kengor that he was a Bible believer, just not the kind that goes to church, which seemed sufficient to Kengor—at least, preferable to "people on the Religious Left who were sympathetic to or duped by atheistic-totalitarian communists," whatever that means. In any case, bully to Kengor for mentioning the real elephant in the Republican money room.

Not every political fellow traveler agrees on every issue. But the relative silence from conservatives—excepting Kengor—on Scaife's deviations from right-wing orthodoxy holds a higher lesson. All things being equal, Scaife's orneriest ideas would be unwelcome in the conservative rank and file. But fortunately for the billionaire, all things were not equal.

For all the sway ideological purists have gained over Republicans' policy and messaging, there's plenty of room for mavericks under the big tent—as long as you're the guy who paid for the tent.

[Photo credits: AP Images]

The New Yorker website, not to be confused with the New Yorker print magazine, is thinking about status today. In an item on its "Currency" vertical, the online New Yorker introduces us to researchers who have gained fascinating insights into how people police the abstract status identities they've constructed around their preferred "brands"—or else (maybe?) how people who have attained the factual condition of attending Harvard or of running long-distance obstacle courses disdain people who claim to have done those things without having done those things:

The authors focussed on athletes who partake in Tough Mudder events—multiple-mile obstacle courses that can include crawling through mud, swinging on ropes, and scaling up walls—to find if there were similar concerns of outsiders spoiling the Tough Mudder brand name. There were. They enlisted eighty-three participants who had earned their way into the Tough Mudder community by completing a race, and presented them with an imaginary spectator named Mike. One group of participants was told that Mike planned on buying a twenty-five-dollar ticket to attend both a Tough Mudder event and its related after-parties to associate with Tough Mudders and give the impression to friends and family back home that he, too, was one of them—even though he had never entered a race. The other group was told that Mike wanted to attend simply to witness Tough Mudders in action and applaud their dedication. Again the results found that while participants thought a Brand Immigrant stance posed a potential threat to the brand's integrity, a Brand Tourist attitude could enhance it.

People who pretend to have run endurance races without running endurance races are "Brand Immigrants" who pose "a potential threat to the brand's integrity." Or, you know, they're assholes who lie to people. Perhaps treating everything as a "brand" is not always the clearest way to understand human activity?

[Image via Getty]

Kansas City's Schlitterbahn water park has been testing a massive 17-story water slide with heavy sandbag for months, and now the 168-foot Verrückt is finally ready for human test subjects. And of course, they took the plunge with cameras on, so you can pee yourself vicariously from the comfort of your home.

Verrückt, German for something like "go insane," was originally supposed to open for the media on Memorial Day weekend, but test rafts hit some glitches that stopped them just before the ride's largest drop—about 50 feet.

There were also rumors that entire rafts full of sandbags were tossed into the air at the end of the ride—which turned out to be true, making the whole thing even more terrifying.

Here's the raw GoPro footage from the first drop, so you can experience the run with no background music and more "whoa, shit!" from the riders.

The slide doesn't have an official opening date, and park representatives have said they'll keep pushing it back until they're confident it's ready. Safety netting has already been added to the length of the slide to protect riders as they descend at a a reported 65 MPH.

[H/T Daily Dot]

An inflatable bouncy slide was sent hurtling some 300 feet by a dust devil during an Independence Day party in Sparks, Nevada.

Fortunately, unlike some previous scary incidents involving big bouncy stuff, nobody was actually on the slide when it was picked up and tossed around by the 60-70 mph winds, which also snapped light poles and destroyed several fences.

Two bystanders did suffer injuries due to flying debris in the incident.

Eyewitnesses say that a child had just gotten off the slide when the dust devil struck.

"I was thinking 'Oh, my God. I hope there are no children in there,''' witness Derek Smith told KOLO-TV.

The owner of the slide, George Dolivo, said that it was tied down with half-a-ton of weight, but it clearly didn't do much good.

"It just lifted it off the ground. Broke tethers, just lifted the tethers right up, ripped it right off," said Dolivo.

Image via KOLO-TV

Deadspin Grading ESPN's World Cup Coverage | Gizmodo Popcorn Time's "Netflix for Torrents" Is Coming to Chromecast | Jalopnik 'Comedians In Cars Getting Cocaine' Is What Hollywood Is Really Like | Kotaku The Diversity Question | Kinja Popular Posts

Tonight we've got chefs, robot babies and people under a dome; many, many single ladies looking for a special connection; and ninjas with something to prove.

At 8/7c. there's the usual love (and frequent grimness) of The Bachelorette and Love And Hip Hop Atlanta, class-based family antics on ABC Family's Switched At Birth, and the Top 15 Chefs mastering each other and more importantly themselves on Masterchef. I feel like each week I say that and it's just a random number. "Sometimes seven, sometimes 34 chefs compete, on some episode of Masterchef." I remember a summer spent at my grandparents' house, during which every day I would cut out the Mary Worth comics so that at the end of the summer I could read them all in a row and determine once and for all if they were a sequential story, or—as I'd long suspected—just random unconnected images of an old lady bitching at people.

At 9/8c. you've got 24 and the American Ninja Warrior Venice Beach Finals, or if you're more into lowbrow there's an HBO documentary, Dangerous Acts Starring The Unstable Elements Of Belarus, about political art in Minsk. The best show on television, The Fosters, has a new episode on ABC Family, The CW's Beauty And The Beast has its season finale for some reason, and the Real Housewives Of Orange County are: Buying puppies and robot babies in bulk, and looking to vengeful chthonian shrieker Vicki Gunvalson for advice about how to be married and other human activities, "Come For The Robot Baby, Stay For The Suicide Pact" being of course Bravo's official tagline for this season of flagship docudrama The Real Housewives of Orange County.

At 10/9c. you can either pretend to watch Under The Dome if irony's your "bag," Mistresses and/or Ladies of London if you love to see crazy ladies doing crazy lady things, or Longmire if you yearn for the sweet embrace of oblivion. Or if you actually enjoy life and excellence, I might recommend to you the exuberant and informative Teen Wolf, which is about teens most of the time, wolves only sometimes, and lately, a beautiful jaguar lady who will magically turn you into a teenager and molest you just long enough so her friends—who are giant bears, wearing giant bear costumes—can steal all of your stocks and bonds.

[Image via Bravo]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. What are you watching tonight? What are we missing out on? Recommendations and discussions down below.

Google has been taking heat for clogging San Francisco's housing supply with their employees. Now neighbors in their corporate hometown are grumbling that the company's $600 million real estate "shopping spree" will ruin the cozy suburb.

According to The Oakland Tribune, Google has bought up 24 office buildings around Mountain View since 2011. The buildings are mostly "nondescript and low-slung"—atypical purchases for the company. However, city officials are considering a zoning change around the Googleplex which would allow high-rise redevelopment of the properties.

[Commercial] real estate industry experts say the company is focusing its purchases in areas where the city is considering high-density development that would yield taller offices, expected to be five to 10 stories high.

And were Google able to redevelop just 20 of its sites with modern offices of 100,000 square feet each, that would be 2 million square feet of new space with room for 10,000 employees. That would be one-fourth of the estimated 39,000 people who work in downtown San Jose.

As one observer told the Tribune, "Mountain View is running out of land." There's no choice for Google but to build up.

Google's neighbors are not stoked with the upwards expansion. Fearing "expensive housing and clogged streets," Mountain View residents are already considering a ballot initiative to block high-rise growth.

If the city doesn't meet their wishes for balance in new jobs, homes and traffic, the Campaign for a Balanced Mountain View, a group that includes [the executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight], said it may pursue a referendum to reverse the looser development rules.

Efforts to block high-rise development have been successful in nearby San Francisco and Marin counties. If Google hopes to avoid a similar fate in Mountain View, they better start threatening to move to Cupertino now.

[Photo: Getty]