After selfies at funerals and selfies with homeless people, it seemed like the potential for teens taking horrible self-shot photos had finally bottomed out. But that was before someone took a smiling selfie at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, a site where one million Jews (at a conservative estimate) were experimented on and executed, and then punctuated it with a cheerful emoji, because 2014.

The Twitter backlash against @PrincessBMM, identified by the Daily Mail as Breanna Mitchell, has been loud and furious. She's (unfortunately) far from the first to take a selfie at a concentration camp, but the insouciance of that smiley struck people as especially galling.

Mitchell claimed on Twitter that those attacking her have it all wrong: She wasn't ignorant of the history of Auschwitz. In fact, she said she had studied it with her father, who has since died, and they had hoped to go there together. She says she was smiling because she finally made that trip and the image and emoji were taken out of context when it went viral.

"He died a year ago, so that trip actually meant something to me and I was happy about it," she tweeted.

But she also retweeted hundreds of her supporters who didn't understand why the image would upset anyone (even when they really didn't help her case):

.@1201ThirdAvenue @chzbizman @PrincessBMM pic.twitter.com/pZ1C2Ezsz2

— Matt-chew (@TheTXCowboy2500) July 20, 2014

@PrincessBMM don't listen to those pressed jews! they're ugly and anorexic!

— Honey Boo Boo Stan (@thecuntclassic) July 20, 2014

@oliviamarieee_ My point. Fuck them. Just blowing up my notifications for no reason

— Princess Breanna (@PrincessBMM) July 20, 2014

My nigga has made it on the internet, for a picture that meant no harm. Turn up bisssshhhh 😜 @PrincessBMM

— Broookie B. ✌ (@kbb_2014) July 20, 2014

And although she initially asked people to stop sharing and commenting on the photo, she hasn't taken it down. Instead, she's shifted to tweeting about how hugely viral her hugely virulent photo has become:

Over 2000 retweets on a pic that wasn't supposed to get this much attention

— Princess Breanna (@PrincessBMM) July 20, 2014

I'm famous yall. pic.twitter.com/okB3ueKnGG

— Princess Breanna (@PrincessBMM) July 20, 2014

@oliviamarieee_ over 150 retweets. Turnnnnnn uppppppp

— Princess Breanna (@PrincessBMM) July 20, 2014

It appears her supposedly respectful study of World War II history has mutated into an exercise in unexpected infamy. She could be the bigger person and apologize, maybe even salvage a learning experience from this sad situation. But, in the words of the great poet Lil Jon, "Turn down for what?!"

[H/T BroBible]

On Friday, Popular Science, the Daily Mail and others reported that the 40-inch "world's longest dinosaur poo" was going up for auction later this month, available to well-heeled scat lovers for an estimated $10,000. That works out to $250 per inch, which is really pretty reasonable, or at least would be if the fecal fossil were any of the things those outlets claimed.

Dated to the Miocene epoch, the specimen is at least 40 million years too young to come from any dinosaur, a margin of error equal to 165 billion showings of Jurassic Park. To their credit, Popular Science and friends mostly corrected this mistake, but failed to note the arguably more important fact that the turd-olith was probably never shat at all.

Found in southwestern Washington's Wilkes formation, the legitimacy of this and other "coprolites" (the scientific name for poop fossils) from the area was first challenged over 20 years ago by Whitman College Professor of Geology Patrick K. Spencer. Speaking with Gawker, Spencer affirmed that his examination of the objects turned up nothing to "suggest an organic origin" and noted that in 80 years not a single vertebrate bone had been found at the site.

In 2000, Western Washington University's George Mustoe reached a similar conclusion, attributing their formation to geologic processes. As Mustoe told Gawker, some of the alleged coprolites "would require defecation by a turtle the size of a 1958 Buick."

The largest confirmed dinosaur coprolite ever found was a T. rex dropping 25 inches long. Sorry, scat fans: it's not for sale.

[Image via Mirror.co.uk]

Earth broke another all-time heat record again. "We are living in the steroid era of the climate system," one researcher says. Together, there's nothing we can't do! Except for reversing global warming.

A new study says that producing beef causes far more environmental pollution and uses much more water and land than producing other kinds of meat. Damn! Better eat that chicken! Or better yet, a motherfucking eggplant!

The ex-wife of the Florida cop fired for his alleged KKK ties said neither she nor her ex-husband really belonged to the Klan. According to her, the couple joined as part of an undercover operation in 2008 to out another cop in the KKK. The police chief at the time flatly denies this.

Ann Hunnewell, whose ex-husband George was fired last week, told investigators she and George allowed themselves to be recruited by former officer and KKK recruiter James Elkins in 2008. (Ann was a police department secretary until 2010.) ABC News has the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's report:

Ann Hunnewell said in 2008 through 2009, she and her ex-husband successfully infiltrated the [United Northern and Southern Knights] chapter of the KKK in an undercover capacity ...

She claimed [former Police Chief James] Isom "received allegations" about an officer in the department, James Elkins, was involved in the supremacist group and she said Isom "assigned George and Ann Hunnewell to follow up with the matter." ...

"Ann Hunnewell stated her ex-husband did not share the KKK ideology, but agreed to join in the spirit of the undercover investigation," the report states.

Elkins did quit in 2009 after photos of him in Klan regalia surfaced, but Isom denies he ever ordered the Hunnewells to track him.

Deputy Chief David Borst also quit last week after the FBI discovered evidence of his KKK ties. Ann Hunnewell didn't indicate if he was a part of the supposed undercover operation.

[Image via WPTV]

RadiumOne and Gurbaksh Chahal issued a joint statement today in order "to bring an end to all disputes they have had." RadiumOne fired Chahal as CEO after he pled guilty to domestic violence. Chahal threatened to sue his board for encouraging him to take a plea rather than fight the 45 felony counts he was facing in court so that the company could file for an IPO.

The charges were based on footage that allegedly showed him hitting his girlfriend 117 in half an hour, which was ruled inadmissible. After the plea, Chahal wrote a series of unhinged blog posts and tweets insisting that he had been victimized. In order to appease Chahal, RadiumOne sticks to the same line that Chahal was the injured party:

The Board knows that many people, including Gurbaksh and his family, have suffered tremendously. The Board did not intend to hurt Gurbaksh or his family by its decision, and recognizes that Gurbaksh's termination made an already difficult situation for Gurbaksh and his family worse.

Although Chahal was ousted as CEO—a decision made difficult by the amount of equity in the company he had as the founder—he retained his board seat. He's been sending emails from board members congratulating him after the plea to various news outlets. In the since-deleted announcement about his new startup, Gravity4, Chahal threatened to release "hundreds of other documents providing perspective on the greed, deception, and betrayal behind my termination." Considering that Chahal's board only soured on him after public outcry, he may well have some damning evidence.

Along with the threat, Chahal included a link to a Dropbox account. Digiday got a look at the documents:

Chahal's post included a link to a Dropbox with select emails from his case, including congratulatory and supportive emails from his board. It also, interestingly, included an email that board member Steve Westly sent to former San Francisco Mayor and California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, requesting Brown speak to the district attorney about the case — and making note that RadiumOne could not file for an IPO and create more jobs until the case was resolved. In his blog post, Chahal wrote of Brown that "the board was pressing him on my personal matter."

According to TechCrunch, today's statement points to a possible settlement between RadiumOne and Chahal:

Though it's not explicitly stated here, the language suggests that this could be connected to some undisclosed settlement behind the scenes, such as RadiumOne agreeing to compensate Chahal for his termination.

Here is the joint statement:

From its inception in 2009, RadiumOne grew tremendously, and quickly became profitable and valuable, under the leadership of its founder and last CEO, Gurbaksh Chahal. The business priority last year was to continue to build a great company and prepare it for a potential IPO. When allegations were brought against Gurbaksh in August 2013, the Board maintained full support of an expedited closure of the legal process. RadiumOne board members along with many others supported Gurbaksh's decision to accept a misdemeanor plea instead of continuing the long court process for full acquittal for the sake of the company, its employees, and its customers.

The Board had always intended Gurbaksh to lead the company, and recognizes the enormous contributions he has made to RadiumOne. The Board knows that many people, including Gurbaksh and his family, have suffered tremendously. The Board did not intend to hurt Gurbaksh or his family by its decision, and recognizes that Gurbaksh's termination made an already difficult situation for Gurbaksh and his family worse.

Gurbaksh accepts the Board's statement. To the Board and the hardworking, dedicated employees that have helped RadiumOne become the force that it is today, Gurbaksh extends his best.

Both the Board and Gurbaksh are thankful to have had this opportunity to resolve their disputes. Gurbaksh wishes the company the continued success that he knows is possible, and RadiumOne wishes Gurbaksh success in his pursuit of new opportunities.

This is a breaking news post and we will update as we learn more. RadiumOne has not returned a request for comment sent earlier this afternoon.

[Image via Getty]

After a TV report alleging that a Chinese food supplier used meat that had fallen onto the factory floor and mixed expired goods in with the new stuff, McDonald's and fast-food conglomerate Yum Brands have vowed to cease ties with the company. Now, they promise, all the steaming trash they serve you will be totally fresh.

Shanghai Husi Food Co. was shut down by local regulators yesterday after Chinese station Dragon TV aired a report documenting its fun, laid-back approach to sanitation. Today, McDonald's and Yum—which owns KFC and Pizza Hut, as well as non-affected restaurant Taco Bell—apologized to customers. From Reuters:

"We will not tolerate any violations of government laws and regulations from our suppliers," said Yum China, which required all of its KFC and Pizza Hut restaurants to seal up and stop using all meat materials supplied by the Husi factory.

The division, Yum's No. 1 business unit, had just seen its KFC restaurants bounce back from the double whammy of the food safety scare and a bird flu outbreak.

"If proven, the practices outlined in the reports are completely unacceptable to McDonald's anywhere in the world," a China-based spokeswoman for McDonald's told Reuters.

The company supplied food to the two companies' Shanghai-area restaurants.

Shanghai Husi is a subsidiary of OSI Group, an American company based in Aurora, Illinois. According to Reuters, Starbucks, Burger King, Papa John's, and Subway all use OSI as a supplier in China. Starbucks told the news wire it does not currently work with Husi, and the other restaurant companies did not immediately comment.

Correction: An earlier version of the post identified taco bell as a recipient of bad meat. While Taco Bell's meat is definitely not good, only its fellow Yum Brands restaurants Pizza Hut and KFC received meat from Shanghai Husi. The post has been updated to reflect this error.

[Image via Flickr]

The campaign to split California into six smaller states in order to benefit Silicon Valley isn't just nuts—according to a California politico, it's illegal, too.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports Steve Maviglio, former congressional staffer and press secretary for California Governor Gray Davis, has filed a complaint with Secretary of State Debra Bowen (attached at bottom). I spoke with Maviglio, who said he's aware of around "a dozen" instances of apparent voter fraud like the one we reported last week, wherein signature-gatherers misrepresented (or straight up lied) the petitions being handed out.

If true, this means Six Californias (and its backer, Tim Draper) have broken state law. Maviglio tells me he's not expecting much from Bowen's office in the way of intervention, but if the Six Californias initiative does make it to ballots, he'll consider taking them to court. You would hope it'd take more than a single concerned citizen to stop a venture capitalist from gaining traction with his plan to destroy and reorganize an entire state, but here we are.

Conan O'Brien, Dave Franco, and their prowler van full of duct tape joined Tinder last week. It was a success for at least one of them, and slightly uncomfortable for everyone involved—including the audience. And we hadn't even seen the weirdest parts.

Here are the bits Conan didn't use, where he and Dave—remember, this is the less-creepy Franco brother—debate the youngest women they can right-swipe without this whole thing turning sketchier than it already is.

They also break the first rule of Tinder photos, debate whether they're DTF, and reveal what else they had in that van.

In retrospect, the segment that actually aired only scratched the surface of "things got weird."

[H/T Conan]

A new study shows that national parks and monuments boosted the economies of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho by a combined $1.15 billion last year. But if you think the river of tourism dollars alone would be enough to protect them from mining and timber exploitation, you might be wrong.

The study released on Friday by the National Park Service shows that the majority of that amount, $723.3 million, went to Wyoming where GOP gubernatorial candidate Taylor Haynes says that he wants to open up the state's biggest tourism draw—Yellowstone National Park—to mining and logging.

It's fair to say that Haynes, a 68-year-old retired urologist and rancher from Cheyenne, really hates the federal government. In fact, he hates the federal government to the point where—if elected—he says he would have federal officials who try to administer federal laws in the state of Wyoming arrested and thrown in jail.

According to an interview with the Casper Star-Tribune, Haynes says that if elected, he would send federal agencies a certified letter inviting them to a meeting where he will explain his plans. They would then all have to be gone from the state of Wyoming by the day he takes office in January, 2015 or risk being jailed for "impersonating a law enforcement officer in Wyoming."

Haynes backed off a bit in a primary debate against popular incumbent GOP Governor Matt Mead last week, claiming that he said that he'd open up the national parks for drilling and grazing just to get some attention. But he followed that up by saying that the government should look at tapping the park's geysers and hot springs for geothermal energy, and reaffirming his intention on arresting federal officials who try to enforce federal regulations in Wyoming.

"I think it's a poor way to get attention to say you'll drill in Yellowstone National Park and then say you don't intend to," Mead said.

Haynes, Mead and state Superintendent of Public Education Cindy Hill—who did not attend last week's debate—are squaring off in the GOP primary set for August. The winner will face Democrat Pete Gosar in November's general election.

In the debate, Haynes also said that he opposes resettling refugees in the state claiming that as a Christian his heart goes out to them, but they could carry HIV or Ebola—or even worse—could be terrorists.

"I think they're groups of people brought in to kill our labor and undermine our culture," he said.

Now, of course most of Haynes' plans are either illegal or unworkable horseshit (he claims to be a constitutional scholar but apparently hasn't gotten to the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause yet, to say nothing of the clause in the Wyoming State Constitution in which the state gave up all claims on federal lands in perpetuity in exchange for statehood) and he's running against a relatively popular incumbent in Mead, who touted his own lawsuits against the federal government but also said that he works with the feds when he thinks it's beneficial to Wyoming.

But Haynes' brand of anti-federal, xenophobic brand of conservatism is catching on among many conservatives across the state—which has a population of roughly 580,000 (or just a bit less than the population of Milwaukee) spread across an area larger than the United Kingdom, is home to GOP stalwarts like Alan Simpson and Dick Cheney and which hasn't sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1977 or to the U.S. House since 1979.

When Haynes first ran for governor as an independent in 2010, he received 7.3 percent of the vote as a write-in. This time he thinks he can win.

"This is not a symbolic campaign," Haynes told the Powell (Wy.) Tribune in March. "We've received tremendous encouragement and support during this exploratory phase. We're certain that we can win by the grace of almighty God."

That appeal to faith—and his willingness to mention his it at every opportunity—has drawn in a number of conservative voters this time around.

"If we get the first priority right, I think the rest of the things fall into place," Haynes supporter Gary Raymond told the Casper Tribune.

But Haynes' statements about opening up Yellowstone, Grand Teton and the other national parks and monuments in the state to exploitation—attention grab or not—may be one the thing that actually costs him the election.

The biggest industries in Wyoming may be mining, drilling and timber, but tourism's not far behind—at least as long as the state resists the urge to dig up or cut down the scenery. And despite a growing anti-federal streak across the west, polls show that most westerners tend to support environmental protections.

In a "Props and Disses" editorial last week, the Jackson Hole Planet probably summed it up the best for the majority of the state, saying that Haynes had their support right up until he said he would open up the entire state to drilling, mining and grazing:

The strict constitutionalist is calling for limited federal government involvement in Wyoming. On the surface, it sounds like a platform right up our valley.

"People want to be left alone more or less, to have their personal liberties, to enjoy their lives with a minimum of government interference or government overreach," Haynes told the state paper back in April.

Keep talking, Taylor.

In a political climate where states are increasingly becoming keen on taking back more power from Washington, Haynes' diatribe found purchase with 13,796 Wyoming voters in 2010. As a write-in. That's better than Libertarian candidate Mike Wheeler did (5,362).

Haynes thinks Wyomingites are tired of higher taxes and would like more flexibility when it comes to school choice.

Preach on, Taylor.

On Sunday, Haynes likely lost every potential vote in Teton County when he announced he would consider opening the entire state to drilling, grazing and mining, including Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Haynes believes the feds should surrender all state held land and vacate it by the time he would take office if elected (January 1, 2015) or he will arrest federal government employees for "impersonating a law enforcement officer."

Stop talking, Taylor.

Image via AP

Megalomaniacal internet retailer Amazon began as an online seller of books—as CEO Jeff Bezos once explained it to a horrified Kansas City bookseller—because it allowed the company to gather data on affluent, educated shoppers. Their latest customer is the entire intelligence apparatus of your democracy. Checkmate!

News of this $600 million contract with the CIA broke over a year ago, burbling ominously to the surface last August, when Bezos just up and decided he'd buy the Washington Post for a bargain bin $250 million. (At a net worth of $32.8 billion—placing him not simply in the .01 percent, but in the nation's coveted 1.0e-5 percent—this purchase was all so much gas station Snickers® to Jeff Bezos.)

But this summer, the Airborne Toxic Event arrives. The CIA's private Amazon Web Services cloud—a dark, humming conflict of interest, brand new to American journalism, and shielded from the public behind a wall of National Security—becomes operational.

The fact that the cloud's $600 million budget will be parceled out from the CIA kitty over the next ten years, in some ways, confuses the issue. All 17 agencies that comprise the U.S. intelligence community will be making use of Amazon's cloud, including, selected at random, the NSA, the DEA, the Department of the Treasury, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and Coast Guard Intelligence—which you'd think you would have heard of by now. Like: there should definitely already be a CBS procedural or at least a USA Network original series about Coast Guard intelligence agents, given how much old people love boats and mysteries.

This may come as a shock, but with an annual revenue of $74.5 billion in 2013, Amazon actually dwarfs the CIA whose fiscal year 2013 budget (as disclosed by spy kid Edward Snowden) was a mere $14.7 billion. Amazon was larger that year than the entire government budget for non-military intelligence by more than $20 billion. It is far-and-away the more powerful actor in this deal: the very reason that the CIA contracted them in the first place, to "buy innovation" in the words of Atlantic Media's execrable online magazine Government Executive and "catch up to the commercial cycle."

Jeff Bezos, who originally wanted to call his company relentless.com, lords over Amazon with "ice water running through his veins" according to Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Brad Stone. "He's ruthless. He identifies competitors and he can crush them"—always managing to lead with his famously insane, bellowing laugh, (compiled brilliantly by BBC Two in the montage at left). Arguably, the CIA's ten-year partnership with Amazon will turn out to be the most Faustian bargain the agency has made since Allen Dulles brought in Reinhard Gehlen's network of Nazi spies after WWII.

When Amazon decided to initiate a program of exerting pressure on vulnerable book publishers for better shipping terms and higher promotional fees, it was known internally as the Gazelle Project after Bezos decreed "that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle." As Amazon's in-house book critics and literary bloggers were forced to compete for their very survival against the algorithms of a new "personalization team", their rivals posted a sign that simply read "PEOPLE FORGET THAT JOHN HENRY DIED IN THE END."

In Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, the conditions at one of Amazon's main warehouses and distribution hubs was so bad in the scorching summer heat of 2011 that the company hired Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have ambulances and paramedics on stand-by. An emergency room doctor at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest reported Amazon to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) after having had enough of treating their employees for heat-related injuries. Air conditioning did not arrive at the warehouse until it also started to store and ship groceries.

And beside these known inhumanities lays an unmapped territory shrouded in corporate secrecy. Amazon is infamous for routinely showing publishers, shareholders and clients numberless charts and graphs and refusing to disclose even basic things like their employment numbers or Kindle sales figures. The floor in their Seattle headquarters devoted to the Kindle is known as Area 51, because it is forbidden to anyone not working on the project. They've hired former NSA employees and have been accused of rerouting shipments to aid the agency's surveillance programs.

An outgrowth of this rapaciousness and secrecy for Amazon has been historically a business strategy of forward-thinking ulterior motives, nested like Russian dolls. Publishers begrudgingly accepted when Amazon wanted to scan their titles for its new "Search Inside This Book" feature only to discover later the lengthy head start they had given the company, once it began moving into e-readers and digital publishing.

There's almost assuredly a long view with Amazon's CIA data center, too terrible to contemplate, ideas pinging around, brainstorming sessions on how best to leverage a dense mass of black op debriefs and decrypting moments of human intimacy; whole communities reduced to metadata-hyperlinked dossiers; transcripts of interrogations that decent people would call torture; dark truths and useless junk all hanging shapeless in a steady breeze of electrons behind Langley's firewall. (It will certainly be an advantage in Amazon's Cloud War against Google.)

To imagine Amazon's dark black breathing machine communicating regularly with the NSA's yottabyte data center outside Bluffdale, extracting and calcifying this vast containment facility of our past lives, is to cry out in anguish over a grim new understanding of what it truly means to be governed.

It is hard to state the urgency of this problem. There will be no Upworthy headline too hyperbolic. Like climate change, the anxieties it produces are not of the kind provided for by instinct.

Martial law and internment camps are not the inherent dangers here. This control will penetrate, seep, reveal itself in the birthing of twee youth movements no more radical than lemonade stands; cultural critics addressing only the pettiest grievances of consumer choice; a, fluid, oppressive, and soul-worrying continuity between high school, state, and federal elections. Cheesy crap, basically. A national conversation that forever tastes like a Whopper Jr. exiting your mouth.

Remember that this is the company that paid the author of The 4-Hour Workweek to write a cookbook; a company founded by a man who once said that Simon & Garfunkel's "America" was his favorite Beatles song.

An example should be made of Amazon like no American company since the corporate trusts of the Gilded Age. It should be hounded tirelessly for any and every legal infraction that it is surely committing. With the healthy funding and broad latitude of Elliot Ness and the Untouchables, the IRS, OSHA, the FTC, the SEC, every relevant government body, should descend on Amazon's offices, labs and "fulfillment centers" like they were Prohibition-era speakeasies, interrogating employees and handcuffing managers.

As Bezos has told his shareholders and employees countless times, "This is Day 1 for the Internet."

"It's All About The Long Term."

[photo via AP; GIF created via BBC Two footage]

To contact the author, email matthew.phelan@gawker.com, pgp public key.

If Ron Paul never runs for president again, he can always get an anchor gig on RT. The patriotic American's latest "Texas Straight Talk" column is a Putin paean to all the ways in which the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was America's fault.

Of course, Paul and his conspiracy-minded cohorts have rushed to Russia's aid before, most recently in denying that there was anything untoward or undemocratic in Russia's invasion and annexation of Eastern Ukraine. But now he's onto some level one Alex Jones stuff.

"While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event, there are a few things they will not report," Paul wrote yesterday, before launching into a heartfelt tirade that mirrors Russian government propaganda quite nicely:

They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without US-sponsored "regime change," it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.

Well, Yanukovich—the Putin ally who lived in this manse and once poisoned a rival presidential candidate in another election he'd rigged and ultimately was forced to concede—was elected, in the sense that he staged an election. Which was the proximate cause of the popular rebellion in Kiev, which led to a regime change (which, yes, the U.S. and European Union let happen). Also, this did lead to the Malaysian Airlines "crash," in the sense that the 1815 Congress of Vienna led to a European partitioning that would ultimately result in World War I, whose conclusion would radicalize a young corporal named Adolf Hitler.

The media has reported that the plane must have been shot down by Russian forces or Russian-backed separatists, because the missile that reportedly brought down the plane was Russian made. But they will not report that the Ukrainian government also uses the exact same Russian-made weapons.

They won't? We did. We also explained why it's far-fetched that Ukraine shot down that plane and highly likely that pro-Russian separatists did shoot it down with a BUK launching system provided by the Russians or stolen from the Ukrainians. We explained it here, and here, and here, and here.

They will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according to OSCE monitors, killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June, including 20 killed as government forces bombed the city center the day after the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and together they roughly equal the number killed in the plane crash.

Nope. Nobody reports that. Except here's a gripping VICE interview with some victims of the bombing campaign aimed at separatist rebels, as well as some interviews with the rebels and pictures of Ukrainian troops they've killed... again, in Ukraine.

Everybody is killing people, and everybody is horrible. But Ron Paul apparently thinks that since the numbers of deaths of pro-Russian civilians and Amsterdam-based air passengers are roughly equivalent, what's the big deal now?

They will not report that neither Russia nor the separatists in eastern Ukraine have anything to gain but everything to lose by shooting down a passenger liner full of civilians.

Well, that's true. Which explains why all the Russians and separatists who discuss the shootdown on this now-authenticated tape (save for one scary Cossack) sound contrite and regretful about doing it. Nobody really has much to gain from killing 300 innocent air passengers. But it did happen. In the same vicinity where a bunch of Ukrainian warplanes were shot down in previous days, and where separatists bragged about downing another aircraft before realizing it was a passenger jet.

They will not report that the Ukrainian government has much to gain by pinning the attack on Russia, and that the Ukrainian prime minister has already expressed his pleasure that Russia is being blamed for the attack.

This is impeccable reasoning, which is probably why Holocaust, 9/11, and global warming deniers use it all the time.

They will not report that the separatists in eastern Ukraine have inflicted considerable losses on the Ukrainian government in the week before the plane was downed.

Well, yes, yes they will report on that. If by losses you mean "the separatists in eastern Ukraine had been shooting down a lot of planes in the week before this plane was downed."

At this point it would be unwise to say the Russians did it, the Ukrainian government did it, or the rebels did it. Is it so hard to simply demand a real investigation?

Good point! Why is it so hard to simply demand a real investigation?

They will not report how similar this is to last summer's US claim that the Assad government in Syria had used poison gas against civilians in Ghouta.

Oh, fuck me.

[Photo credit: AP Images]

The building at the corner of 23rd and Bryant in San Francisco is proving to be poison for tech companies. Its landlord originally displaced an arts collective to turn the space into startup offices. Bloodhound was was initially lured into the high-rent building, but was bled dry within fifteen months. Soldsie similarly fell for its charms, and now their future looks doomed.

Soldsie is a service for merchants that lets them peddle their products directly on Facebook or Instagram. Users see a product photo they want, write "SOLD" in the comments, and Soldsie processes the transaction. It's a novel idea, and one that has attracted $5.6 million in venture capital money from the likes of 500 Startups and First Round.

But Facebook unveiled their "Buy" button last week, rendering the startup's business mostly obsolete.

Soldsie's CEO Chris Bennett tried to cast the news as a good thing, telling Valleywag "We were not surprised by Facebook's announcement" and insisting "it will be good for the market and everyone in the ecosystem will benefit."

In parallel, we continue to expand our offering to other networks. We already offer Instagram selling. That's been the plan all along. Some obvious candidates down the road include Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat, among others.

Except that Twitter also launched a buy button and Pinterest is moving towards e-commerce. Bennett does have one reason to be optimistic though: Soldsie moved out of the Bryant Street office in June. Maybe they escaped the curse?

To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.

J.J. Abrams saves the best news about things that won't suck in Star Wars Episode VII for his charity videos. The first time he put out the word about the UNICEF-benefitting Force for Change, he showed us a creature built with practical effects. Now, breathe another sigh of relief as you get look at this X-Wing.

Although some fans thought it looked like a Z-95 Headhunter, the official Star Wars Twitter account confirmed the ship you're seeing here is a new iteration of the most famous rebel fighter. (Cue the sound of thousands of lightsabers retracting simultaneously.)

@CDCanimation It is in fact an Episode VII X-wing, not a Z-95.

— Star Wars (@starwars) July 21, 2014

Earlier leaks from the set also indicated that Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, a one-of-a-kind modified Corellian light freighter, would also be making an appearance in Disney's first Star Wars sequel.

So far, so good.

[H/T Variety]

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Tonight we've got Frida Kahlo references, a countdown to a Vassar grad's leg-throwing tantrum, a royal birthday, and unstoppable techniques.

At 8/7c., probably you will just be on the edge of your seat for a full half-hour waiting for Prince George's first birthday party on E!. But if you would like to distract yourself from that world-shaking event with some television, the "men" are "telling all" on The Bachelorette, Masterchef's down to Top 13, and this week's Switched At Birth is titled "Girl With Death Mask (She Plays Alone)," so that should probably be super fun. My favorite horrible asshole thing I ever saw in my life was the simple—in some ways perfect, perhaps—Tumblr comment: "Frida Kahlo: Not so easy on the eyes." I still think about that every day. Some guys just wanna see the world burn.

At 9/8c. you've got the St. Louis finals for Maxine Hong Kingston vanity project American Ninja Warrior, VH1's Hit The Floor is even more "Unguarded" than usual, CW's shitty new comedies are back and you should avoid them, there's a special episode of Killer Kids on LMN called "Satan's Disciples," and Hotel Hell's second season starts on Fox. At my house we will be watching The Fosters, the best show on television, and maybe later Real Housewives Of The OC. (Only one more night until NY's Aviva throws her leg!) I love Chef Hell because his face looks like a sexy angry delicious macaron, but I'm starting to think our Venn diagrams will never overlap. If he were to make a show about yelling at kids to be better kids, or yelling at cyclists to be better drivers, then maybe.

At 10/9c. Mistresses is up to its usual tricks with the confused and confusing title, "An Affair To Surrender"; there is by the way a show on the Cooking Channel called Bite This With Nadia G, I don't know what it is or who this woman is but I just thought you should know this; and then there's the usual: Dome Jokes For Dome Jokers, Teen Wolf, Ladies Of London, and Longmire. Alternately, NGC is airing two episodes of Going Deep With David Rees, in case you want to know how to dig a hole or flip a coin, two activities for which his techniques are sure to be unstoppable.

Finally, 11/10c. brings us the LMN Special Murder-In-Law, which makes me curious but not that curious.

SPECIAL TYRANT ANNOUNCEMENT

A new episode of FX's Tyrant will air 29 hours from the time this post goes live. Please email me at Jacob (at) gawker.com for more precise updates on when exactly the next episode of Tyrant will air. If you are starting to panic that Tyrant will not air, remember that a new episode of Tyrant will be airing at its usual time, which is 29 hours from right now. Halt And Catch Fire, however, has been cancelled, along with Fargo and Mad Men, to make room for a brave new strategy at FX wherein the whole channel is just going to be episodes of Tyrant from now on, in an endless scintillating loop of episodes of Tyrant, beginning with its next airing, which is in 29 hours.

[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.

A toddler strapped into its stroller rolled off the platform and onto the subway tracks at the Archer Avenue station in Jamaica, Queens this morning.

The child's mother, who had stepped away momentarily to throw away some trash, quickly jumped down onto the tracks, spraining her ankle. According to the New York Daily News, a maintenance worker was able to hop down and help save the two before any trains came barreling down the tracks.

"The mother was throwing out a bottle in garbage, and she didn't put brakes on stroller, and carriage went back," Diane, the subway cleaner who helped the mother and child, told CBS New York:

Other Good Samaritans joined in afterward. An official with the Transit Workers' Union said Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers took steps to stop the next train — using flashlights.

"And they stopped the train operator while he was proceeding into Parsons and Archer," said union vice president Nelson Rivera.

Fire officials told NBC New York that the child was taken to the hospital with minor bruises.

[H/T Daily Intel // Image via NY Daily News]

More than 15,000 people have fled the town of Damboa, a trading center in northeast Nigeria, after a series of attacks by Boko Haram. More than 40 people were reportedly killed in raids on the town this past weekend, in addition to attacks the group launched on six neighboring villages.

The Nigerian government is denying reports that Boko Haram have taken Damboa. From Reuters:

Abdulkair Ibrahim, a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in Borno, said the agency had records of 15,204 people who had fled Damboa and the six villages — Kimba, Madaragrau, Mandafuma, Chikwar Kir, Bomburatai and Sabon Kwatta.

Addressing press in the capital Abuja on Monday, Defence spokesman Major-General Chris Olukolade appeared to deny that Boko Haram had taken over Damboa and the surrounding areas, when asked about reports that the military had fled and the insurgents had hoisted their black flags in the town.

"We are not conceding any portion of this country to any terrorist group," Ibrahim said. "Our patrols are active and they are stepping up their activities to reverse any insecurity there."

Vigilantes defending towns and villages from militant attacks, however, tell the BBC that Boko Haram has indeed taken over Damboa, further fueling arguments that the Nigerian government has proven incapable of defending the country from attacks.

Boko Haram's flag had been hoisted outside the home of Damboa's traditional ruler, and the town's entrance, he said.

The group had also seized the military barracks, which government soldiers had abandoned after an earlier attack by the militants, the vigilante leader added.

As Al Jazeera reports, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Nigeria this year in Boko Haram-led attacks and an estimated 750,000 people have left their homes in fear for their safety.

[Image via AP]

Yahoo has a knack for bailing out bombing businesses. This time, they're saving Flurry: a mobile analytics startup that just took on $10 million in debt as it struggled to find an exit.

Selling to Yahoo would once have been inconceivable. Rumors of a Flurry IPO began circulating in 2012. And last fall, the company's CEO Simon Khalaf told Business Insider that taking the company public was "inevitable."

There has been gossip about a possible Flurry IPO for months now. Large adtech companies are often aimed specifically at IPO "exits," so that their venture capital funders can get a payback on their investments. [...]

When we asked Khalaf about an IPO exit, however, he was refreshingly direct: "I consider an IPO an entrance," he tells us. "We don't have a choice, our volume is too high and our scale is too big for anyone to absorb us."

Yet Flurry is being absorbed, and for far less than Khalaf promised.

According to TechCrunch, the company originally wanted to be sold for $700 to 800 million, possibly to Amazon. But the company was ultimately purchased by Yahoo for a rumored $200 to 300 million—a markedly low amount, considering venture capitalists sunk $73.3 million into Flurry since 2007.

TechCrunch credits the app Secret for breaking news of Flurry's sale. However, another secret posted in late June could help explain the company's firesale price.

We reached out to Flurry for comment on the layoff rumors but never heard back. However, SEC filings from May of this year confirm that Flurry was sniffing around for more money. A Form D shows that Flurry closed $10 million in debt financing, presumably because the $12.5 million equity round they raised just five months prior didn't stretch as far as they hoped.

Despite Flurry's failure to hit it's "inevitable" IPO, Khalaf celebrated the sale on the company's blog.

Six years ago, during the worst financial crisis since the great depression, we started working with mobile app developers. They were "the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers." At a time when many were questioning­­ the viability of the US economy, let alone the tech sector, these developers left stable jobs and started companies to build mobile applications. [...]

Today, Flurry is entering a new phase of its life. I am excited to announce that we have reached an agreement to be acquired by Yahoo and expect to be joining Yahoo very soon. [...] Yahoo is committed to being a part of consumers' daily life on mobile.

Why not celebrate? He just became the next David Karp.

[Photo: Getty]

Pro-Russian separatists that had taken over the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH 17 in eastern Ukraine have turned over the plane's recording boxes, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced Monday. The militants have also reportedly sent the bodies recovered from the site on trains to Kharkiv, a city controlled by the Ukrainian government, where six Malaysian representatives were on hand to oversee the transfer of the bodies to Dutch authorities, among others.

"Here they are, the black boxes," senior separatist leader Aleksander Borodai said as he turned over the recorders at the Donetsk People's Republic headquarters. The Russia-supported separatists' decision to relinquish the boxes and the bodies comes after days of the group obstructing access to the crash site, exacerbating international accusations—including from the United States—that the separatists were responsible for the missile attack that downed the plane and killed 298 people. More from the New York Times:

European leaders threatened new sanctions on Russia as soon as Tuesday, suggesting they were increasingly open to the harder line being taken against Moscow by the United States, which has accused Russia of providing the surface-to-air missile system that brought down the jetliner, training rebels how to use it, and perhaps even supplying experts who helped fire it.

Mr. Putin issued a brief statement early on Monday saying that Russia would work to ensure that the conflict in eastern Ukraine moved from the battlefield to the negotiating table. He said that a robust international investigating team must have secure access to the crash site, but also accused unspecified nations of exploiting the disaster in pursuit of "mercenary political goals."

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/armed-ukraine-...

"The Russian-backed separatists who control the area continue to block the investigation," President Obama said from the White House, Monday. "The separatists are removing evidence from the crash site. All of which begs the question: What are they trying to hide?"

[Image via AP]