About a year ago, millionaire tech investor and adult-sized baby Jason Calacanis proclaimed a simple message: if you're not successful in this country, you're not working hard enough. Every bias and bigot-ism is just an obstacle to hop over. This week he's at it again. Why is anyone still listening?

Calacanis reaped his money long ago by flipping a network of blogs for $25 million from AOL. Since then, he's spent his time launching failed companies (Mahalo), failing companies (Inside.com), a popular conference series, and angel investing in the successful companies of others. This last gig is key: Calacanis is fatuous like a fox, the kind of man who'd have three too many beers at a bowling alley and show off how easy it is to put some spin on the ball. But he's writing the checks, and cashing checks from others. He's the one with the power.

Being a white man with money in Silicon Valley—what else is there? What more could anyone need to hear? If you're raising cash for your startup, the fool's check is cashed as easily as the sage's. In the past year, Calacanis' ignorant comments—"If you want to break into tech journalism you only need to blog every day for three years, there isn't a race wall in tech"—haven't seemed to haunt him much. Maybe this lack of any consequences is why he's still flapping hs mouth the same today:

@anildash @BrandonLive @DrPizza @zigdon however, I also believe anyone in this country can rise up, educate themselves, get skills & win big

— jason (@Jason) July 18, 2014

@anildash @DrPizza @zigdon that doesn't mean my career was given to me by 'white privilidge' — that's racist.

— jason (@Jason) July 18, 2014

@anildash @DrPizza @zigdon I'm the new club, which is people from the street who fought their way in against all odds. Don't sleep on me.

— jason (@Jason) July 18, 2014

@raread i grew up on the streets, i fought my way in and they tried to stop me every step of the way. did other's have it worse? sure.

— jason (@Jason) July 17, 2014

It's a childlike view of American structural prejudice, in that there's no structure at all. There are racists out there, and boy, is that a shame! But if you try hard enough, you can be a venture capitalist, too. If you're not a wealthy venture capitalist yet, it's because you merely aren't trying hard enough.

This is an argument so stupid, it cannot be disproven. When people point out how Calacanis has benefited from being a white man in the United States, he dismisses that as "racism." He's from "Brooklyn," remember? When others object that trying simply isn't enough for many who aren't white and male, he encourages them to go to the library, or stream startup-organized video lessons on YouTube. It's that simple. You're still not a CEO? Get off your ass or stop whining.

If Jason Calacanis were just another confused Twitter user, muting him would be enough. One more bloviating tech-type, sadly, isn't going to register on many meters.

But Jason Calacanis isn't your run of the mill web dunce: he commands tens of millions of dollars in investing power, and the ear of countless influential figures in the industry. And he's a power broker with a very warped, dangerous definition of power, one that puts all responsibility on the have-nots, and none on himself and his friends. When he babbles about trying harder and reverse-racism, people listen—and at a time when inclusion in tech is wretchedly low, people who could make a difference are now off the hook. Just learn to code! Somewhere, in Palo Alto, other men nod. They star the tweet espousing software Horatio Alger-ism, they close the tab, and they move on. They've done their part in making the system work for everyone.

I'm going to start this real slow and lay out the facts: Knotting is a popular trend in fan fiction. It involves men having sex with men like wolves. And it often leads to male pregnancy, which leads to male delivery. And the people giving birth to feces-covered babies are often members of One Direction.

I first learned about Knotting (which is part of the Alpha/Beta/Omega universe — more on that in a bit) when I read about the failure of Dash Con, a tumblr-related fan convention that just went horribly wrong. Among the myriad of issues at the con, one was that minors were being allowed into a panel title "Can You Knot?" which was supposed to be 18+ only. Not familiar with the term, I googled it, expecting to see something about people asphyxiating each other, but what I found was something much more interesting: Fictional characters from music, movies and TV fucking smelling each other's glands and biting each other's essays. And, of course, having anal intercourse that results in the creation of more heirs ready to do the same. And because I know about it, now you have to know about it too.

The term knotting is a reference to the reproductive organs of canid animals. If you're not familiar with these reproductive organs, it's really pretty simple: The wolf penis has what's called a Bulbus Glandis, commonly known as a knot, that swells when the wolf is aroused and allows the animal to lock their penis inside an orifice immediately after penetration. Unlocking occurs only after the wolf has completed sexual congress. In the animal world, knotting is a biological mechanism necessary for breeding. In the fan fiction universe, it's something completely different.

Knotting exists in a world called the Omegaverse where humans follow the hierarchical structure of wolf packs: Alphas are dominant, sexually aggressive, and able to breed, betas are submissive but may possibly breed omegas, and omegas are the lowest-ranking characters in the pack, existing to be bred. In this universe, Alphas may form special bonds with betas and omegas and the pairs (or groups) may form special relationships or telepathic powers. In addition, the omegas are sometimes prized because there are either few of them or because they are good breeders. Sometimes, omegas can be found in breeding camps. For instance, the omega Sherlock Holmes' mother found him to mate with in Mummy, No Thank You came from such a camp and was brought specifically to help Sherlock A) solve mysteries and B) breed with one of the Holmes brothers. Here's an excerpt:

Sherlock pauses. "The case. I need data. You have it. I need to smell your gland, and see it, too, if I can." He says this like it's the most obvious fact in the whole world.

"You're leaking out so much. Is that unusual?" Sherlock asks. His voice is deep, controlling, but it isn't steady. John can hear the ferocious edge to it. He wants to know if anyone's ever done this to John before.

"I—I—" John catches his breath. "I don't know. No one's ever—not like this." Sherlock presses even harder, and John cuts off with a groan.

"By eyeballing it, I think you might have filled a ten millilitre graduated cylinder. Maybe more."

According to Fanlore, knotting became prevalent in Supernatural fan fiction (due to the werewolf aspect) but has found its way into many other fandoms. And while it's still not as popular as other fan fiction out there, it certainly has a following. For instance, statistics show that knotting stories make up less than one percent of the stories on A03 (a popular fan fiction site), but A03 encompasses 15,688 fandoms and has an archive of over a million stories.

So why knot? According to those who read/write this type of fiction there's an element of loss of control that's not possible in other situations. Since the knot won't release until the alpha has finished and can't be controlled by either party, the sex has to go on until it's done. There's literally nothing anyone can do.

Many stories involving knotting fall under the heading of "dubcon," an abbreviation of "dubious consent." Both parties may be willing, but they might also not be. But no one can stop the sex and who really knows who wants what? And then there's the power imbalance. Due to the hierarchy, the alpha is always in control. As one user puts it "I like a certain amount of power imbalance in my porn, so I kind of like the 'I'm gonna fuck you hard and afterwards you're gonna stay impaled on my cock for a good long while' idea."

Here's an example of dubcon fiction from the Teen Wolf universe:

He resisted as hard as he could, but the change overcame him after a second, ripping his skin. As soon as his teeth had grown, he sank them in the meat of Jackson's shoulder, blood surging into his mouth, too much, slick spilling out around his lips. It tasted like the ripest part of Jackson's body.

Derek's cock started to fill, and Jackson moaned, sated and agonized at the same time, trying to shrug off Derek biting him, with no conviction.

"Derek— Derek, what-" he could barely grasp words, "-what're you doing, oh fuck, what're you—"

Derek just bit harder, until he'd knotted and was coming too, forcing himself in deep.

But it's not always like that. One Direction knotting fiction, while no less explicit, is often consensual. For instance, here's an example of a multi-chapter story about Harry and Louis.

"God, Harry so big, knot me –" Louis groans, arms collapsing from underneath him so he falls into the pillows. "Fuck – splitting me open on your cock-" he cries, as Harry nails into his prostate, his knot swelling further, catching on Louis' hole as he draws back.

"Wish I could knot you all the time, just stay in you, knot you over and over," Harry chokes out, "Keep filling you with my cum, my babies."

Harry tugs Louis up so his back is flush to Harry's chest, slick skin pressed together. He puts one possessive hand over Louis' pregnant belly, the other reaches around to tug on Louis' cock; dripping with pre-cum. He draws back once more, before circling his hips, forcing his knot through Louis' hole, locking them in place as he starts to come. Louis keens high in his throat as he comes moments after, Harry's fingers getting slicker with the ropes of Louis' cum.

If you're wondering what this pregnant belly business is about, you have to know that mpreg (or male impregnation) is another popular trope of knotting. And while that deserves a whole post on its own (it exists both inside and outside the world of knotting and fan fiction) its connection to knotting can't be denied. And while the power dynamics inherent in mpreg deserve their own post (the omega who's been impregnated often comes across as weak and helpless while the alpha remains in control), it's just another reason why the world of knotting is so fascinating — professionally if not personally.

Of course knotting isn't as visceral in the same way something like extreme pornography may be due to the fact that it's not only fictional but also (technically) impossible. But fiction of this nature is also becoming a mainstream staple of internet culture, which always bears discussion. Today it's a panel at a failed convention; tomorrow it might be the subject of a semester-long university course.

Image via Shutterstock

The rolling mountain scenery and lack of an obvious crater can sometimes make it easy to forget that Yellowstone National Park sits inside an active volcano.

So occasionally the massive but mostly quiet volcano does weird and random things as little reminders of where you are and what it's potentially capable of doing.

Things like, say, melting a damn road.

Park officials say that the ground under a section of Firehole Lake Drive got so hot that it turned the asphalt into a sticky goop, forcing them to close the popular road during the height of the summer tourist season.

The 3.3-mile road, which loops around several geothermal features about six miles north of Old Faithful, reopened earlier this week after crews repaired the damaged asphalt and used a mix of sand and lime to soak up the pooled oil.

But before everybody loses their collective shit and fills your Facebook feed with paranoid gibberish, it's important to note that this sort of thing isn't uncommon in Yellowstone. The same massive chamber of molten rock beneath the park that drives the famous geysers and hot springs can also cause earthquakes and soften up roads, and it's fairly routine for new thermal features to pop up in parking lots or under roads and boardwalks—creating steaming potholes that rangers mark off with cones.

"We see this kind of thing quite a bit," a park spokesman told USA Today.

Park officials also say that some unusually hot weather—at least by Yellowstone (average elevation around 8,000 feet) standards—in the mid-80's helped the volcano turn the road into an oily soup.

But officials did warn people not to go hiking in the area, as scalding hot water could be lurking beneath a thin crust of rock and soil.

Park geologists say that despite the softened road and a recent swarm of earthquakes in the area, there remains no evidence that the Yellowstone supervolcano—which last had a major eruption about 600,000 years ago—was in any imminent danger of erupting.

Image via National Park Service

The Associate Press reports that an Atlanta-based entertainment company is suing Tyler Perry for allegedly working unfairly with government officials in order to obtain a former military base to turn into a movie studio.

Ubiquitous Entertainment Studios, an entertainment company in Atlanta, Georgia, filed the federal lawsuit this week against Perry, also naming the US Army and "a government authority working to redevelop Fort McPherson" as defendants. From the AP:

Ubiquitous says its CEO met with the authority's chairman in December 2011 to share its vision of creating a movie studio and entertainment complex at the site. The company says Perry tried to persuade the authority to negotiate a similar deal with his company instead.

Attorneys for Ubiquitous Entertainment Studios told the Atlantic Journal-Constitution that the company had been planning to build its movie studio on the site for years. They believe the McPherson Implementing Local Redevelopment Authority's actions violate its by-laws, and are, according to the AJC, asking for a declaratory judgment and damages:

"In effect, MILRA [McPherson Implementing Local Redevelopment Authority] confirmed an exclusive franchise or property interest in the Ft. McPherson property to Perry and [Tyler Perry Studios] on a non-bid, non-request for proposal basis, with no advance public notice to give UES and other potential property developers an opportunity to compete for this real estate development. These acts and omissions of MILRA in this regard were arbitrary and capricious government conduct."

[image via Getty]

The U.S. Supreme Court is not composed of scientists. We've seen this before. But they do end up hearing a lot of cases that involve science, and are forced to describe the concepts and technology before them. They do not always rise to the challenge.

In general, the issue tend to be a bizarre mix of over-complication — they take 43 words to explain what e-mail is — and oversimplification along the lines of "DNA is important." And if the issue is trying to make sure future generations know what they were thinking of when they made the decisions, you end up in a reductive argument about what needs to be easily defined. Internet but not computer. Telephone not at all. They even give up at some points and admit that they're dealing with "mysteries."

But they save the best quotation ever for porn, as it should be.

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997)

While some allowances must be made for the fact that this case was in 1997, and the Internet wasn't the ubiquitous monster it is now, you cannot help but laugh at this decision's summation of the Internet and its various uses, delivered in Justice Stevens' majority opinion:

The Internet is an international network of interconnected computers.

I've made fun of this before, and was snottily informed by a clerk that they write these opinions "for posterity," i.e. for the future to understand what they're talking about. But in what universe will someone not know what the Internet is but know what a computer is? Or, in what universe will someone reading Supreme Court decisions and trying to understand them not have access to a dictionary for words they don't understand?

Of course, for anything we don't know now, we just google it or look it up on Wikipedia. On the Internet.

Later, the Court explains, "The Internet has experienced 'extraordinary growth.'" WHAT. WHY DID NO ONE SAY ANYTHING?

I will agree that this case is a wonderful historical document, as the Court describes the Internet in the manner of explorers finding their way through a strange new land:

Anyone with access to the Internet may take advantage of a wide variety of communication and information retrieval methods. These methods are constantly evolving and difficult to categorize precisely. But, as presently constituted, those most relevant to this case are electronic mail (e-mail), automatic mailing list services ("mail exploders," sometimes referred to as "listservs"), "newsgroups," "chat rooms," and the "World Wide Web." All of these methods can be used to transmit text; most can transmit sound, pictures, and moving video images. Taken together, these tools constitute a unique medium—known to its users as "cyberspace"—located in no particular geographical location but available to anyone, anywhere in the world, with access to the Internet.

No one tell them about blogs, that may break them.

Here, they tackle e-mail:

E-mail enables an individual to send an electronic message—generally akin to a note or letter—to another individual or to a group of addressees. The message is generally stored electronically, sometimes waiting for the recipient to check her "mailbox" and sometimes making its receipt known through some type of prompt.

Because "electronic mail" was not explanation enough.

U.S. v. American Library Association, Inc. (2003)

Addressing the problem of filters on library computers:

But there is also an enormous amount of pornography on the Internet, much of which is easily obtained.

This is a quote that induces so much laughter, that one will forsake food and water, unable to stop laughing until the body is reduced to a dry husk that blows away in the wind.

Sony v. Universal City Studios (1984)

Tell us, Supreme Court, what did we used to use to record television before the DVR?

Some members of the general public use video tape recorders sold by petitioners to record some of these broadcasts [of television programs], as well as a large number of other broadcasts.

It's even better than you think: this case involved Betamax, which they never define and is something a lot of us could actually use a definition of.

MGM v. Grokster (2005)

Respondents, Grokster, Ltd., and StreamCast Networks, Inc., defendants in the trial court, distribute free software products that allow computer users to share electronic files through peer-to-peer networks, so called because users' computers communicate directly with each other, not through central servers.

There are a lot of terms that are very technical and need long definitions. "Peer-to-peer" is not one of them. "Peer-to-peer" means exactly what it sounds like it means.

Dolbear v. American Bell Telephone Company (1888)

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum come the cases about the telephone patent, where the Court explains that the patent:

embraces the art of transferring to or impressing upon a current of electricity the vibrations of air produced by the human voice in articulate speech, in a way that the speech will be carried to and received by a listener at a distance on the line of the current.

Well, everything's clear now. I now know exactly what a telephone is and why it should be patented. Yes, it is hypocritical to complain when the Court is too technical and complain when they're overly simplistic. But, there has GOT to be a middle ground between explaining earnestly that there's porn on the Internet at technobabble.

Burrow-Giles Lithographic Company, Sarony (1883)

Have you ever wondered what a photograph is?

It is insisted in argument, that a photograph being a reproduction on paper of the exact features of some natural object or of some person, is not a writing of which the producer is the author.

The Court eventually decided that a photograph is a "writing" and the photographer can copyright it.

Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad (2013)

Similar to the earlier struggle of the court to understand the Internet, we now bring you to last year's attempt to grapple with genetics:

Changes in the genetic sequence are called mutations. ... Some mutations are harmless, but others can cause disease or increase the risk of disease. As a result, the study of genetics can lead to valuable medical breakthroughs.

"The study of genetics can lead to valuable medical breakthroughs." Oh, Supreme Court, now you're just being cute.

While the Court may have gotten the correct result in this case, they really struggled to understand molecular biology in order to decide whether genes could be patented. And came to the incorrect conclusion the cDNA isn't a natural product.

And we have to include Justice Antonin Scalia's concurrence, where he says that he can't agree with any part of the case that actually describes molecular biology:

I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I-A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature.

Emphasis ours. He can't even believe in the finer points of DNA. HE CAN'T BELIEVE IT. He admits to not being an expert in the details of the science, which is nice. But then he can't just believe what's he's told about it. Antonin Scalia is a Catholic who can believe the tenets of that religion, but his beliefs cannot extend to the explanation of molecular biology provided by experts.

Maryland v. King

In 2013, the Supreme Court upheld a Maryland statute which allowed the taking and analysis of the DNA of anyone who is in custody, without a warrant. Why? Because it's imperative that police officers be able to identify the people in their custody and what other crimes they've committed.

Here, the Court once again lavishes praise on molecular biology:

The advent of DNA technology is one of the most significant scientific advancements of our era. The full potential for use of genetic markers in medicine and science is still being explored, but the utility of DNA identification in the criminal justice system is already undisputed.

Now, DNA has been a boon to criminal justice. But you've got to love the Court both acknowledging that the science is still ongoing and that it's utility is undisputed. And then the Court sees into the future, to defeat the question of the length of time it takes to process a DNA sample:

the delay in processing DNA from arrestees is being reduced to a substantial degree by rapid technical advances.

In case you were wondering, Scalia remains consistently against DNA. He, along with Justices Giunsberg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, dissented.

Funk Brothers Seed Company v. Kalo Inoculant Company (1948)

This case decided that the use of a natural phenomena could not be patented, which is the important part. The specific process at issue? Well:

Through some mysterious process leguminous plants are able to take nitrogen from the air and fix it in the plant for conversion to organic nitrogenous compounds. The ability of these plants to fix nitrogen from the air depends on the presence of bacteria of the genus Rhizobium which infect the roots of the plant and form nodules on them. These root-nodule bacteria of the genus Rhizobium fall into at least six species. No one species will infect the roots of all species of leguminous plants. But each will infect well-defined groups of those plants. Each species of root-nodule bacteria is made up of distinct strains which vary in efficiency. Methods of selecting the strong strains and of producing a bacterial culture from them have long been known. The bacteria produced by the laboratory methods of culture are placed in a powder or liquid base and packaged for sale to and use by agriculturists in the inoculation of the seeds of leguminous plants. This also has long been well known.

It's long been well known. And is also mysterious. I'll take their word for it.

Images: Free Internet by hobvias sudoneighm/flickr/CC BY 2.0; Old telephones, Milton Keynes Museum, Buckinghamshire by Snapshooter46/flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0;Visual DNA by Richard IJzermans/flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The above mugshot seems shocking until you know that the man above was caught allegedly sexually abusing a young boy by the boy's father. Then, really, it more or less makes sense.

The man is 18-year-old Raymond Frolander. According to Daytona Beach police, the boy's father left Frolander—who is a member of the family—to babysit the child Friday afternoon. But at some point the father returned to the apartment where he left the boy and saw this:

The child to investigators that Frolander asked him to sit on his lap, and not too much later, took the boy into the back room of the apartment.

According to the police report, Frolander disrobed the child, and began sexually battering the victim. While the attack was taking place, the boy says, his father walked in.

In an interview with cops after the incident, the boy—who is under the age of 12—said that Frolander has been sexually assaulting him since he was eight years old. In his interview, Frolander reportedly admitted to the assault that resulted in his face looking like a smushed blueberry pie as well as a prolonged sexual relationship with the boy, telling police, "I'm guilty."

The father does not appear to have been charged, and one figures there won't be a movement to change that.

[mugshot via Daytona Beach Police via News 13]

When it comes to threatening workers into accepting poverty wages, a new billboard erected in San Francisco knows just how to do it. The advertisement, prominently displayed on a downtown building outside Pando's offices, warns workers that they'll be replaced by iPads if San Francisco's voters approve a $15 minimum wage in November.

Their claims are bullshit, really: iPads won't replace janitors, cooks, doormen, or any of the other low-wage jobs out there. At least, not anytime soon. But it's just the sort of technological bullying that Silicon Valley specializes in.

The billboard is being put up by the Employment Policies Institute, an organization masquerading as a Washington think tank with deep ties to a restaurant industry public relations firm. The organization's president, Richard Berman, tactics has earned him the nickname "Dr. Evil" from 60 Minutes. EPI is also advised by Kevin Murphy, Silicon Valley's go-to corporate fixer when firms fuck over employees.

So keep smiling while you struggle to feed your families, minimum wage workers of the world. Or else your employers will replace you with a luxury Apple product assembled by people working for slave wages in Asia.

[Photo: Pando]

The average man's ignorance could fill a bowl the size of the whole world. "Well, how would you make a bowl that big?" wonders the average man. Exactly.

The koan: "My Heart Burns Like Fire"

Soyen Shaku, the first Zen teacher to come to America, said: "My heart burns like fire but my eyes are as cold as dead ashes." He made the following rules which he practiced every day of his life.

In the morning before dressing, light incense and meditate.

Retire at a regular hour. Partake of food at regular intervals. Eat with moderation and never to the point of satisfaction.

Receive a guest with the same attitude you have when alone. When alone, maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests.

Watch what you say, and whatever you say, practice it.

When an opportunity comes do not let it pass by, yet always think twice before acting.

Do not regret the past. Look to the future.

Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

The enlightenment: The people of America embraced all of Soyen Shaku's teachings, except the food one, and the sleeping one. The incense one remains a niche practice. It never caught on in the mainstream. The warning against hypocrisy is not one that Americans can truly be said to embody. The balance between timidity and rashness advocated in these teachings is not one that we have figured out yet. It could be said that we have given up on that one. America continues to be wracked with regret. We have succeeded in loving heroes, and loving children, but not both at the same time.

America will never forget Soy Shake Shack.

This has been "Zen koans explained." Crumbs in the fur, brushless.

[Photo: Shutterstock]

James DeMonaco's The Purge: Anarchy has a high concept, and it is in over its head. The film is set in 2023, picking up one year after the events of last year's highly profitable The Purge ($89 million global gross, versus a $3 million budget), which DeMonaco also wrote and directed. As that flick did, Anarchy is set during a government-sanctioned annual event in which violence is legal and emergency responses are shut down between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.

The last movie focused on an affluent family sequestered in their house, whose security system was no match for hungry Purgers. This one focuses on people too poor (or otherwise unfortunate) to be protected very much at all. The faces have changed, but the hassles are just the same—namely, the hassle of possibly being gunned down by a random guy shooting an M60 out of the back of a truck.

The theory behind the Purge (and, apparently, its movies) is that 12 hours of cathartic mayhem will tide people over for the remaining 364.5 days of the year. Violent tendencies are something you can turn on and off like a faucet. The result is a peaceful society with an unemployment rate that is less than 5 percent. If the so-called New Founding Fathers who established the Purge in 2017 looked into the way they run things in Longyearbyen, Norway, they'd see even more impressive statistics. But then that purge would be of homeless people, and that movie to many would read to many more like fantasy than horror.

Even a dumb horror movie needs a sharp premise, and that of The Purge seems no less reasonable than a serial killer who stalks you through your nightmares or a VHS tape whose contents are fatal. The problem with The Purge films is that they are pretentious, operating under the assumption that they have something coherent to say about race and economics, something that wasn't already said by better movies that came before like George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Eli Roth's Hostel. Something that isn't already obvious. Something that didn't feel like the product of reading a thumbnail sketch of CliffsNotes on Herbert Spencer.

The Purge: Anarchy is a movie that imagines people would so slavishly follow the rules of government-sanctioned violence that they would put down their guns during a standoff when the bells sound to announce the end of the Purge. Pay no attention to that adrenalin behind your amorality, people. The government says so. Even worse, when a survivor of said standoff makes his way to the hospital the morning after the Purge, it appears to be empty, as though there wouldn't be throngs of maimed people and piles of dead bodies from the mass carnage that just occurred.

The idea that a year's violent impulses could be compressed to 12 hours is foolish, but The Purge: Anarchy seems to believe it. There is no sense of a bigger picture here—that violence begets more violence, that human beings might not be patient enough to sit on their hands for a year to exact revenge for whatever indignities they believe they have suffered, that a night of mass carnage would create societal effects that would ripple out for months after, if not years. There's just an empty hospital parking lot, like a head without brains, like a movie without a fully conceived premise.

The world of The Purge: Anarchy is divided into two halves: those who Purge and those who wait it out, hoping to be spared. Few question the way of life that was imposed on them just six years before. There are no shelters for those who can't afford proper security, there's no seeming social movement in response to the Purge. The Purge: Anarchy introduces a YouTube revolutionary named Carmelo, apparently one of the few human beings left on Earth who can distinguish between the law and morality. Except...no, he can't. His ultimate way of fighting the Purge is to Purge. "Get ready to bleed, rich bitches," he announces before fighting gunfire with gunfire.

Rich people indulge in the Purge by purchasing the poor (sometimes via other poor people) to ceremoniously murder or make a game of hunting. The latter scenario gives us the movie's most memorable scene, in which a pack of wandering anti-Purgers are captured and auctioned by an old woman with silver hair, pearls, and a blue gown. It's dollar-store David Lynch. The resulting hunt is porno-parody Hunger Games without the naughty bits.

The Purge: Anarchy is too plodding to be scary. It's both overly pessimistic (people are sheep who will do exactly what the government says) and overly optimistic (once the Purge is over, everything goes back to normal, or in fact, better than normal). Its only good use, I think, is providing a scenario in which it would make sense for civilians to arm themselves with automatic weaponry. It's too bad it doesn't give them more meaningful things to do with it.

Igor Girkin, the Russian separatists' top commander in eastern Ukraine, suggested today that Ukrainian authorities somehow killed the passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 before it was shot down. He told the pro-rebel website Russkaya Vesna that "a significant number of the bodies weren't fresh" at the crash site.

Girkin, who says he got his information from people at the crash site, also noted that the bodies were "drained of blood and reeked of decomposition." Girkin says he can't verify his information — of course — but notes that "Ukrainian authorities are capable of any baseness."

Girkin's aide offered other misinformation this morning, claiming the rebels had recovered eight of 12 black boxes at the crash site. Rebel leader Aleksander Borodai later contradicted him. (Planes typically only have two black boxes.)

[Image via AP]

Reddit user throwwwwaway29 has a husband, and her husband is fed up. He is so fed up that this morning he sent her an email that contained the above spreadsheet, detailing all the times she has denied him sex over the course of the last month or so.

The wife explains:

Yesterday morning, while in a taxi on the way to the airport, Husband sends a message to my work email which is connected to my phone. He's never done this, we always communicate in person or by text. I open it up, and it's a sarcastic diatribe basically saying he won't miss me for the 10 days I'm gone. Attached is a SPREADSHEET of all the times he has tried to initiate sex since June 1st, with a column for my "excuses", using verbatim quotes of why I didn't feel like having sex at that very moment. According to his 'document', we've only had sex 3 times in the last 7 weeks, out of 27 "attempts" on his part.

Look man, every marriage is different when it comes to settling on an acceptable fucks-per-month quota. But it's never a good idea to voice your displeasure at where that fucks-per-month number currently sits via a passive aggressive email and a spreadsheet detailing your wife's alleged frigidity.

Good work italicizing all the yeses in there, though. We can almost hear the echos from you high-fiving yourself when you typed those in.

[Reddit]

Everyone is guilty of a little procrastination sometimes. If you're a writer, you might screw around for an hour before actually putting together a blog post; if you're a mechanic, perhaps you let a few repairs pile up before handling them. Funeral directors are no different: sometimes you just have to fill a storage unit with dead bodies until you get around to a proper burial.

Joseph O'Donnell, one such man, was arrested in April on larceny charges after he was unable to give a burial service and couldn't return the $12,000 in pre-paid fees the family had paid him. Last night, police found 12 dead bodies in a Weymouth, Mass. storage unit leased in O'Donnell's name.

Police do not believe the bodies were the victims of violence, Reuters reports. Said Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley:

"Our top priority right now is determining the identity of the remains we've discovered. We've seized records and documents that could help us locate those people's families, but this will be a time- and labor-intensive task."

Earlier this week, cops found cremated ashes in another storage unit rented to O'Donnell in Somerville, Mass. He is currently being held on April's larceny charges.

[Image via AP]

As is the case with many tragedies, details are short and speculation is long in the aftermath yesterday's Malaysia Airlines crash, creating ideal conditions for the spread of viral bullshit. So which of the photos currently racing through social media are authentic and which are just opportunistic fakes? Read our rundown below.

FAKE

As previously covered by our friends at Gizmodo's Factually, this photo—one of the first depictions of the crash site to go online—is completely fake. In reality, the picture is a screenshot from Lost that some asshole photoshopped his watermark and the Malaysia Airlines logo onto, as you can see below:

REAL

Before boarding MH17 yesterday, Dutch musician Cor Schilder—known in his home of Volendam as Cor Pan—posted this photo with a caption that translates as "If the plane disappears, this is what it looks like," apparently referencing the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The bitterly ironic nature of his post caused it to quickly go viral, but some doubted its authenticity, as the pictured plane appears to bear the letters "RC" on the landing bay doors, the aircraft registration suffix of a different plane entirely. Sadly, Dutch news outlets confirmed this morning that Schilder and his girlfriend Neeltje were indeed on the doomed flight, with friends and neighbors in Volendam already publicly mourning the couple.

FAKE

Pictures of this supposed Malaysia Airlines ad first popped up after the disappearance of MH370, but started to spread online again following yesterday's disaster. As many noted back in March, the fake ad doesn't depict a 777 at all, but one of the Airbus A380s recently added to the airline's fleet. As you can see below, the source of the manipulated image is an advertisement for the A830 that doesn't bear the ironic slogan:

FAKE

Yesterday, Twitter users posted this image supposedly showing a young girl named Amy before boarding MH17 for her "first vacation ever." Luckily, Twitterer @CedJLo was able to debunk the hoax picture before it spread very far, using a reverse image search to source the photo to a blog post titled "Flying with Kids" from over two years ago.

Super Typhoon Rammasun made landfall in southeastern China earlier on Friday with winds of 155 MPH, making the storm equivalent to that of a borderline category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. Satellite and radar imagery coming from the storm are downright impressive, showing Rammasun's nearly-perfect structure.

Rammasun killed more than 50 people as it moved through the Philippines on Wednesday, causing heavy damage from winds and major flooding (pictured above). The super typhoon made landfall in China's Hainan Province around 3:30 PM local time on Friday, making the storm the strongest to hit China since 1973's Typhoon Nora.

The VIIRS sensor on board the Suomi weather satellite took the following visible and infrared images of Rammasun on Friday, shortly before it made landfall in Hainan Province:

The storm is nearly perfect, with a textbook structure and about as close to symmetrical as one could look for in a tropical system.

Tropical weather expert Brian McNoldy posted the following radar image to his website this afternoon, showing a radar loop of Rammasun as it made landfalls in both Hainan and Guangdong Provinces before continuing northwest towards mainland China.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects Rammasun to make its fourth and final landfall near the Chinese/Vietnamese border around 0600 UTC (200AM Eastern Time) as a powerful cyclone with winds between 140 and 145 MPH.

The typically-active western Pacific typhoon season is staying true to form, with another tropical storm gathering strength to the east of the Philippines. The system will strengthen into a typhoon before threatening Taiwan and mainland China early next week.

[Images via AP, Colorado State, Brian McNoldy, JTWC]

According to The Wrap, Warner Bros. has acquired feature films rights to the 100-year-old (give or take) arcade game "Space Invaders," and producers Akiva Goldsman, Joby Harold, and Tory Tunnell have already signed on. That leaves us to wonder: which actor (or actress!) will take the role of our laser cannon hero?

For those of you who need a quick refresher on what "Space Invaders" is all about before throwing out casting suggestions, The Wrap sums it up nicely:

"Space Invaders" doesn't feature a rich mythology in terms of narrative, as the video game simply featured several rows of aliens (or their ships) firing lasers at the hero, who must take cover behind blocks that slowly disintegrate.

The hero, of course, being the laser cannon.

I'll make my suggestions first, but please feel free to leave your own thoughts in the comments.

Benedict Cumberbatch?

Hmm. Benedict Cumberbatch is hot right now and he certainly has the right voice for the job—powerful, fearless—but I'm not sure Laser Cannon shares Cumberbatch's confident, controlled movements. Who else?

Kerry Washington?

Yes. Kerry Washington would be perfect in the role of Laser Cannon in the unthinkable feature-length movie version of the 100-year-old plotless arcade game "Space Invaders."

Mark Ruffalo?

Some might say Mark Ruffalo is too old to play the part of Laser Cannon, but to them I say this: the arcade game is 100 years old. How old is Mark Ruffalo? Older or younger than 100?

Cast of Sex and the City?

What better group of women to join forces and re-enter the public eye as one cohesive Laser Cannon? "Now it's the alien's turn to get Carried Away..."

Michael B. Jordan?

I do think this would be the best choice, to be honest.

So. Anyone I missed or did I get 'em all?

[images via Getty]

It's sunny, the weekend is here, and there's a new UrbanBaby.com thread about a mom who secretly despises her kids. Life's not so bad sometimes.

Remember, kids: Through the palate and into the brain. And tell the police you learned it from former hitman (and acclaimed director of Slacker and Boyhood) Richard Linklater.

This PSA was created by the Alamo Drafthouse, the same Austin, Tex. theater that once kicked out a texting asshole and then turned her angry phone call into the best pre-show announcement ever.

Seriously, though: Don't talk and text during movies, even in USA Magnited States of America. Don't make Richard Linklater kill again.

[H/T Digg]

Today, the American Cornhole Association will crown a new world cornholing champion in West Virginia. Do you love cornholing as much as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.)? Because he really loves it. Like, a lot.

But so does Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). A loving focus on the cornhole is bipartisan.

Even Twitter employees love cornholing.

cornhole on the roof deck pic.twitter.com/6GavNowS

— Jake Donham (@jakedonham) September 24, 2012

Of course, not everyone has the makeup to be a champion cornholer. There can be only one world champion of cornholing. Skill only goes so far. You have to live and breathe cornholes.

Good luck, fellas. We all feel as passionately as you do.

[Photo credits: AP Images]

It's open season on open floor plans, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. At least two startups reported break-ins costing thousands of dollars of electronics. One of the companies, BuildZoom, caught the female burglar on tape.

David Petersen, the founder of BuildZoom, posted the video on YouTube, promising a $1,000 reward for her apprehension:

The BuildZoom office at 650 Mission Street in San Francisco was burglarized on Sunday, July 6th, at 7:02 am.

This person has burglarized at least two other offices in SOMA, and was spotted attempting to break into our building about 2 weeks ago by our cleaners. We believe that she had a copy of a key to our unit.

I will personally pay $1000 to the first person to identify this woman. If you have any idea who it is, please email david@buildzoom.com. Thank you!

She came back 20 minutes later to steal more, but our alarm went off and scared her away:

p.s. Thanks Dropcam

The Chronicle says Demand Local, which has an office a few blocks from BuildZoom, also has surveillance footage of their break-in. A police spokesperson told the paper there was no increase in reported incidents in the Financial District and SOMA. But after comparing the footage, one Demand Local employee "wondered if both showed the same person."

The real mystery, however, is why San Franciscans are still wearing bootcut jeans.

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

[Image via YouTube]

This weekend's TV concerns itself with La Toya Jackson's chattier body parts, Nate Silver and Bill Maher discussing absolutely nothing controversial going on in the world this week probably, and the provocative (and procreative!) lives of the Amish.

FRIDAY

At 8/7c. you've got two choices: Another set of Korra episodes on Nickelodeon, and the third episode of Girl Meets World. I love the former and have not seen the latter, but I do know that getting prettied up for the club still takes me back to college, Topanga and Sabrina teaching us how to do witchcraft of all kinds as we prepartied. Thursday college tip: Turn the dorm fridge up to a thousand, cram the bladder out of a box of white wine in there, and 36 hours later, as Boy is meeting World, you are meeting the night.

At 9/8c. after What Would You Do?, There's Bill Maher welcoming Nate Silver and George Takei as he offers his classy, take-no-prisoners comedic take on hilarious shit like domestic violence and homosexuality. Meanwhile the pirate show of NBC, starring John Malkovich as a pirate, continues unabated and unchecked.

SATURDAY

At 7/6c. there's another Kid President on The Hub, and at 8/7c. something called Expecting Amish on Lifetime, which I'm guessing is some people throw a dinner party and the Amish guests are late—what are they, gonna call ahead?—and then while this is going on, someone is sexually assaulted, and there is a murder, and a child is kept in a box somewhere damp. And all the time, where are those Amish? At 9/8c., Bad Teacher continues its slow grapevine toward the "Detention" that we call simply "death."

At 10/9c. is when things get awesome: Almost Royal on BBC America hits DC, LMN details the Haunting—no shit—of Wayne Newton, Life with La Toya is this week entitled "If My Heart Could Speak To Your Heart..." (not my ellipse), and TLC's Sex Sent Me to the ER is tantalizingly called, "Stuck On Me." When that happens to dogs you just turn the hose on them. I don't know what it is when it's people. Or well, I guess you go to the Emergency Room, apparently. Then at 11/10c. another two episodes of naked real estate television program Buying Naked, which is already "over" in my opinion, but one of the episodes is notably called "Broadcast Nudes," which shows a certain spark I think. A sass.

SUNDAY

At 8/7c. the hot ones are Big Brother and Real Housewives of New Jersey, but if you don't like watching animals trapped in cages slowly turning on themselves and each other like abandoned zoo animals you can watch Wipeout—which if you weren't aware, is the exact same show as American Ninja Warrior, just without the refinement and cultural cache—and on HGTV the always hilariously titled Beachfront Bargain Hunt's "Dustin And His Sister Explore Cabo To Find A Beachfront Home That His Pregnant Wife Will Approve Of."

Dustin And His Sister Explore Cabo To Find Nazi Gold And Discover A Cursed Lazy Susan, Laden With Jewels. Dustin And His Sister Explore The Limits of Human/Sea Mammal Telepathic Communication That His Pregnant Wife Will Approve Of. Dustin And His Pregnant Wife Explore Their Sisters To Find A Beachfront Home That Cabo Will Approve Of. Dustin And His Sister Rediscover Their Childhood Bond In The Absence of His Judgmental Pregnant Wife. Dustin And His Sister Explore Cabo To Find A Beachfront Home That Is Not Riddled With Insecurities.

At 9/8c. Endeavour finishes its second season on a network you can guess based merely on the title of the show (hint: Not BBCA), more grown-ass women embarrassing themselves on Bravo as is the custom of our day, Last Ship and Musketeers continue brusquely forward into the future and our past respectively, and Oprah continues trying to figure out Where Is Sheila E Now. There's also Ray Donovan, which I think could be getting better this season, and True Blood, which has always been and will always be the greatest program television can offer.

At 10/9c. we move into The very excellent Leftovers and Masters Of Sex and the Children Of Men-nish pilot of Lifetime's new drama The Lottery. There's also more Botched on e! and Oprah receives a Master Class from, get this, Billy Bob Thornton. ("Today we are learning about why you shouldn't eat in front of black and white movies, why it's best to fingerbang drag kings at bowling alleys for the majority of your sexual release, and what it is that makes antiques so evil.") Otherwise you can learn more of the manufactured backstory of that Duck Dynasty trash on "Behind the Quack" (which...), or watch The Strain, whose pilot was the worst goddamn thing I have seen in a long time.

Or you could just wait for John Oliver at 11/10c., and spend the rest of the day in silent contemplation. Sounds like a plan to me, man.

[Image via Showtime]

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