A Pittsburgh-area father has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after his daughters were crushed and killed by a dresser on the 4th of July. David Beatty, 28, allegedly waited 10-15 minutes before checking on two-year-old Brooklyn and three-year-old Ryeley after hearing a crash.

Beatty's wife, Jennifer, has been charged with child endangerment because the "deplorable" conditions of their home, according to the Associated Press. CBS Local notes that there were "used diapers on the floor of multiple rooms as well as human fecal matter on the floors."

Police say if Beatty had checked on the girls immediately, they would have survived.

[Image via CBS Local]

There is a five bedroom, four bathroom three-story condo at 5517 Oakwood Cove in Austin available for the price of $389,500. One of the bathrooms is pictured, and you can see that some changes need to be made. The wallpaper could be scrapped. The fixtures could be updated. Oh, and the dude with his dick hanging out could probably move out of the way.

Here is the uncensored version of the photo, sent to us by a generous tipster:

The seller describes the condo thusly:

Beautiful three story condo located in central Austin, backing up to a wooded greenbelt. This condo had several windows that overlook the gorgeous greenbelt that is full of large trees. The windows have custom plantation shutters. Each story has its own deck as well as its own central air/heat. The condo is also equipped with a central vacuum system.

He neglects to mention that there is a massive bathroom mirror for photographing your own dick, but sometimes showing is more effective than telling.

Previously on "Is This a Dick or What?"

On Monday, totally fake and not real "satire" news site National Report published an article claiming they had obtained a leaked script of the upcoming Superman Vs. Batman [sic]: Dawn Of Justice, one that portrayed the Dark Knight as "an out-and-proud homosexual." Naturally, Internet bigots treated the report with their typical level of caution and skepticism, going completely bat-shit over the bat-rumors.

Of course, to answer J's question, the place where homosexuality was in the comics was everywhere, Batman's gay subtext first noted 60 years ago in Fredric Wertham's infamous Seduction of the Innocent. In fact, Batman's supposed homosexual outing wouldn't even be the first time the character was played as gay onscreen, should we believe George Clooney's self-congratulatory claim that he "made him gay" in 1997's Batman & Robin.

Asked to respond to National Report's Superman/Batman slash fiction, Warner Bros. declined to comment.

[Image via Flickr/kapten]

Today's second-most frightening news story involves a number of porcelain dolls, each crafted to resemble a young girl living in the same Orange County neighborhood.

The dead-eyed figurines, KTLA reports, mysteriously turned up in front of the girls' family homes this week. All of the targeted girls are near 10 years old, and all live in a San Clemente residential development called Talega. Jeff Hallock of the Orange County Sheriff's Department told KTLA the case is under investigation.

No other information is available yet, according to the network. If you're some smitten 10-year-old boy trying to win the affection of a few of your classmates, you're doing it all wrong.

[h/t Edgar Moscoso, image via KTLA]

Nickelodeon actress Jennette McCurdy is best known for two things: Starring alongside Ariana Grande in the recently-cancelled Sam and Cat and having her lingerie selfies leaked online. The 22-year-old isn't naïve; she's aware she's got some fans who aren't just interested in her acting abilities and her Wall Street Journal blog posts.

She gave the silent, horny segment of her fanbase a little shout-out on Instagram yesterday, tagging an underwear shot "#datass #fapfapfap #eww #boysaregross."

Sad to say it, but she's got her audience pegged. Within hours of the photo going up, her various, uh, admirers on Reddit were already calling for "x-ray" photoshops of her shirt.

Hey, gross boys: Eww.

[H/T Uproxx]

Last night on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon answered a fan's fondest wish, bringing together the most wonderful thing on Broadway, superstar Audra McDonald, and the most wonderful thing on the internet together into a clash of titans. Josh Charles was also there, summoned probably by the sheer greatness energy being generated.

On a related note, does anybody know if there's a spell to turn you into a mermaid that actually works? Because I am fucking sick of getting scammed on this.

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

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As E! News reports, a disgruntled nanny recently escaped from the Gosselin Circus in order to warn our mere mortal selves of the dark grimoire whose existence threatens the very fabric of our universe.

"We always had to refer to the manual because it listed her pet peeves..."

Among those peeves listed in this modern day Necronomicon? Gravity, sound, the existence of shoes and the proliferation of dust—in the cultural imagination once mostly composed of human skin, much like the pages of this so-called "manual"—in the home. You know, those very rare contingencies that probably won't even come up. She's no stickler!

"You couldn't put anything on the ground. You had to put shoes in a certain spot. You couldn't close doors loudly. You could only vacuum during certain times of the day if she was home."

But what happened during these long days, of things hovering inches and sometimes yards in the air like eerie phantasms? Of shoes migrating from location to location, wandering without a sense of place, like tiny Serena van der Woodsens. Of doors caught forever in the no-place state of being, like Schrödinger's optimistic/defeatist water glass, both open and closed, never becoming, never completing closedness. Of vacuum cleaners lurching nervously around each corner, wondering if mistress might pop into the room with a single upraised, rageful finger.

And what of the chapter titled "Punishment," in this twitching, shuddering Book Of Shadows?

"When the boys were in trouble, they were made to go outside, in their giant yard, and pull weeds."

Oh, the weeds in the Giant Yard. Never knowing when the sky would go dark and the ground begin to shake underfoot. "Fee Fi Fo Fum! I smell the blood of a long line of insane control freaks!" he would sometimes say, before learning to understand the value of sharing via barely concealed Christian allegory. "I smell the Drakkar Noir of a biological father in Peter Pan free fall!"

But all was not so strictly gendered in the Monster Manual: Once, the voracious book of justice demanded that the children build a gingerbread house and then guard it from themselves. Having partaken of the gingerbread of good and evil, knowing only shame (but not the taste of gingerbread) until their soon to be former nanny took pity on them, for the first and last time in their lives.

"They had to stare at it every night during dinner," she said. "I finally just let the kids eat it."

For this infraction we are not told the consequence; one imagines either because it is difficult to read and to bear, or difficult to comprehend, to understand. We may not, in our human language, understand what fiery-sword justice might be meted out for letting the children eat things. But we do know when that shit could be expected to stop:

"At nine o'clock, everything was done... Even if I was halfway through dishes, at 9 p.m. you had to stop. She told me her day ended at 9 p.m, no matter what was going on."

We stood like statues. We did not blink at certain times, or in certain locations. Dishes hung sharply in the air, like unrung bells. A hush across all Gosseland. We would put the children to bed beforehand, watching what is creepily called their "favorite thing to watch," but is clearly the only thing they know of: Old episodes of Jon And Kate Plus 8.

And of them all, what chilling eldritch arts might be introduced on the rare occasion that Ed Hardy-sporting deadbeat dad, Jon "And Kate Minus Kate" Gosselin, might ring?

"You are Kate, so always listen in on the phone calls," the nanny remembers Kate saying, recalling the occasions on which she would lose time, returning to herself only hours later to find her body exhausted and suddenly empty, the taste of bile lingering behind: We hung there in the air—shoes in a certain spot, nothing touching the floor—hearing her close the door, very fucking softly, behind her.

We had been Kate, once again.

[Image via Getty]

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

The latest tech boom has been inflating commercial rents all across the Bay Area, but nowhere have the impacts been as acute as in San Francisco. The increases are certainly welcome news to the city's commercial landlords, but non-profits, small businesses, and startups are getting pushed out by rents they can't afford.

The Information reports the real estate turnaround began in 2010. Now, just four years later, San Francisco's office rents are approaching dot-com bubble territory.

In 2010, when the average rent for top grade office space fell to $34.02 a square foot, there were 22 blocks—real estate lingo for office spaces of 100,000 square feet or more—on the market. The city scrambled to alter its local tax laws to keep Twitter in town and generally worked to make itself more attractive to tech companies.

Today, with San Francisco displacing Silicon Valley as the location of choice for many tech companies, the average price per square foot for so-called Class A office space in San Francisco is $64.45, according to the real estate company CBRE. That's close to the dot-com bubble peak of $67.20 in the third quarter of 2000.

San Francisco's office vacancy rate has plummeted to 7.8 percent as tech firms have gobbled up available real estate. According to a report from Cassidy Turley, a commercial real estate firm, just six companies are accountable for the bulk of leasing activity. Google, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Twitter, Dropbox, and Uber have all signed leases in the past six months for two million additional square feet of space—offices that could house more than 12,000 new employees.

Non-profits are being especially hit hard by the increases. Around San Francisco's Mid-Market neighborhood—a longtime home to non-profits serving the disadvantaged—landlords are cashing in the area's tax breaks and tech charm.

One non-profit, the In-Home Supportive Services Consortium, recently had their rents raised from $18 to $45 per square foot. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the only way for the organization to stay in the city was to move into a basement with no windows.

"They are turning our old offices into tech space. I get it - everybody wants to be across the street from the Twitter building," at Market and 10th streets, [Deputy Director Mark Burns] says. "As much as we hate to be underground, I feel fortunate to be here for the next 10 years."

The problem is only expected to get worse, despite a wave of new commercial construction slated to open in late 2015. Most of those units are already pre-leased by tech's biggest companies. And because of that, Cassidy Turley anticipates the vacancy rate will fall to 5.0% by early next year—only causing rents to climb higher.

Before everyone knew them and loved them, way back in 1999, Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch starred in a two-woman show called Dratch & Fey.

The acclaimed show ran at Chicago's Second City and New York's UCB from 1999-2000 and (though it was known in certain comedy [nerd] circles) was internet-unseen until earlier this week. Now, we can all watch the poor quality VHS upload together—gratefully.

[h/t Vulture]

Tonight we've got sacred cows, horny aliens, trenchant opinions about game shows, and gingers taking the "M" outta MPDG, with a vengeance.

At 8/7c., Black Box finishes up with a two-hour season finale and is never heard from again, because dumb and mean is a bad look on anybody. Shame, because the pilot was fantastic and the actress is marvelous, but oh well. Try harder. Hell's Kitchen names its twelfth winner on Fox's finale, and Lifetime starts a night of Project Runway programming with the usual casting special.

Hollywood Game Night seems to involve Jane Lynch hosting herself? Kind of a lonely party to have to watch, but I guess if anybody could make one-person boardgaming a riot, it would be one Constance Carmell. Meantime I'll be watching my beloved Defiance on Syfy live, no longer time-shifting, because that shit is crazy this season.

At 9/8c. there's Rectify, and the third week of Welcome to Sweden and Working the Engels on NBC, Dominion gets yet more intricate, Dating Naked maintains its current level of nakedness, and Honey Boo Boo premieres two episodes hopefully highlighting the delightful new presence of Uncle Poodle in Chickadee's old room.

There's also the next eviction on Big Brother, which if you aren't aware is just as fascinating this year as it was last year. The house is so off-balance from the lopsided Nice Guy bullshit perpetrated by the dumbest person there that the sheer angry needy entitlement of one tiny man's tiny little boner is warping literally everything around them like a Lovecraft story.

You've got gay sociopaths and bi-curious psychopaths holding hands with each other and the hero of the entire season is identical to the King In Yellow and one girl is fully dressed as a frog, but still the only thing anybody can think about is: How long it will be until Caleb tries to kill Ronald Reagan for Amber or strangles her with her own hair or whatever he is going to do that represents the bottom line of how crazy Caleb is going to get, and then also for some fucked up reason they are all wondering how much to blame Amber for it.

It is a fucked-up mess but because the entire house is a dutch oven that never lets up, it also represents America and what it is like to live always with the constant downward pull of artificial gravity that is straight guys thinking their entitlement into reality by sheer force of will and the rest of us helping them do it. Amazing.

At 10/9c. there's an hour of the Leah Remini show, which I have no idea how that turned out; the second week of Married/You're The Worst on FX, and if that's not depressing enough for you the Last Comics Standing are engaging in the venerable and not at all dumbass tradition of doing a roast, or what I like to call "Nasty Christmas For Nasty People."

Of course in other nasty-people news, there's also Maron and on VH1 there's LeAnn and Eddie. So it's nasty people pretty much all the way down, at 10/9c. You can put a cherry on that sundae at 11 though, if you want, with another mystery episode of WWHL, but I'll probably be in bed by then.

Am I wrong about roasts? It just seems like some bygone bullshit to me. Like in 2051 we'll tell our own grandkids "Yeah, there were people whose entire job was just to go to this place and say super shitty things about each other and pretend they were having fun," and our kids will just be like, "But why? Had you not invented passive-aggression at that point in human history, that you need to make it an institution? Did you not know what actual fun and pleasure were like yet?" And we'll be like, "It was sort of punk rock or something?" and they'll say, "Either way I just wish Joan Rivers would die already. What a useless old bitch." And we'll agree with them, but we'll keep quiet. Just like always.

[Images via CBS]

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.

Welcome, fashion lovers, fashion haters and reality-show junkies, one and all! A new season of Project Runway kicks off tonight at 9 Eastern, and we're live-blogging the premiere episode in the comments. Join us!

This is actually a reunion of sorts (or a revival, maybe?), since we held Project Runway chat parties like this for many years on Gawker (which I hosted under the name "MisterHippity"). Jacob Clifton has agreed to let us try it out on Morning After for tonight's episode, so I'm dusting off my old chat-hosting hat and ready to give it another go. Should be fun!

Because this is a season premiere, we can engage in such traditional first-episode activities as:

• Playing "spot the token straight male designer." There's usually one each season. My early guess is that it's this guy.
• Playing the Project Runway Drinking Game. Starter rules include drinking whenever Tim Gunn says "I'm concerned," "this worries me" or "make it work"; Nina Garcia says an outfit looks "cheap" or "inexpensive"; or anyone says the words "challenge" or "designers." (I threw in that last rule just to be sure we get to drink more than just a few times an episode). Feel free create more rules as we go!
• Inventing nicknames for contestants. (For example, "Eraserhead" for this guy.)

Here's a quick look at a few of this season's more interesting-looking designers, based on my perusal of Lifetime's contestant info and videos:

• Carrie Sluetskaya, this year's "quirky girl with bangs," claims she decided to be a designer after reading a Japanese comic book — which probably explains her anime-style blue hair. She is an avid cosplayer — here are pictures of her attending cosplay conventions as Nyan Cat and "vocaloid" pop star Hatsune Miku.
• fäde zu grau is a German-born Floridian whose name means "fade to gray." Things he doesn't believe in include capital letters (judging from the way he presents his name) and God (judging from his "Happy Atheist" label). At 45 he's the oldest contestant, and seems destined to play the "eccentric middle-aged designer" role this show's producers love so well.
• Kristine Guico is a witty, kind of spacey 26-year-old who seems older, probably because she's dyed her hair a geriatric shade of gray. She claims her nickname is "Panda" — which is weird, because Carrie Sluetskaya claims to have "Panda" as a nickname too. Is calling women "Panda" some hip new Brooklyn thing? (They're both from Brooklyn.)
• Hernan Landor is a likeable, ponytailed Dominican who I predict will become a fan favorite. His accent makes him sound like Hank Azaria's Agador Spartacus character from The Birdcage, so I've already decided to nickname him "Agador."
• The Mitchell Perry is a designer so egotistical that he styles his name with the word "The" at the beginning. Maybe if things work out right tonight, he'll be able to expand his name to "The Mitchell Perry Who Got Eliminated on the First Episode."

I'm eager to chat about these people, and many other things, when show gets started. So I'll see you all down in the comments! As Heidi would say, bis bald!

(A quick procedural note: I recommend staying in the "Ned Frey's Discussions" view during the show, since I'll be starring everyone's comments in a way that will —hopefully — make them appear there in chronological order. In the "All Replies" view, new comments may be harder to locate, since Kinja doesn't sort them chronologically.)

[Image via Lifetime]

Tom Greer, an 80-year-old man from Long Beach, California, told KNBC-TV this week that he fatally shot a woman in the back while she and a male accomplice ran away after attempting to rob his home. He reports that she said, "Don't shoot me! I'm pregnant!"

Greer confirms with KNBC-TV multiple times that he has no regrets about shooting the woman, after catching her and a man attempting to break into the safe in his home in the upscale neighborhood Bixby Knolls. The man and woman reportedly tackled Greer, whose home has been burglarized before, but he was later able to grab his gun and chased them outside. You can watch him explain the whole event here. He describes the shooting:

"The lady didn't run as fast as the man so I shot her in the back twice—she's dead but he got away. ... She said, 'Don't shoot me! I'm pregnant! I'm going to have a baby!' and I shot her anyway."

After being asked if he was sure she was dead, Greer says, "She was dead. I shot her twice, she best be dead."

The Long Beach Press-Telegram reports that the Los Angeles County coroner was performing an autopsy that would confirm if the woman, whose name has not been released, was pregnant.

According to KCBS-TV, police are investigating whether or not the shooting was in self-defense.

[image via KNBC-TV]

The first person I meet on PuffPuffChat lives in Scotland. It's dark, so I can't really see him, but he looks like he's freaking out a little, and he doesn't seem that interested in talking to me. Our conversation goes something like this:

You [0] are now chatting with a [9] Person

[9] Person: u baked man

You [0]: lol

You [0]: not at all

You [0]: will be in a little bit

[9] Person: i'm kipping haha

[9] Person: where u from

You [0]: brooklyn ny

You [0]: you?

[9] Person: SCOTTLAAAND

[9] Person: FREEEEEEDOM

You [0]: whoa awesome

You [0]: hahah

You [0]: what's up in scotland

You [0]: what time is it there?

[9] Person: like 11.38om

[9] Person: pm

[9] Person: fuck all here mate

[9] Person: sweet fuck all

PuffPuffChat is Chatroulette for stoners. Upon entering the site, you're asked whether you'd prefer text or video, then paired in an anonymous chat room with a random weed-smoker somewhere in the world. The little number next to your name is supposed to signify how high you are: In the conversation above, I, a zero, am sober. My Scottish friend, a nine, is "kipping."

People on PuffPuffChat like weed. A lot. Enough to log on to a chat room devoted to it. But they're also united by a higher-minded purpose: unlike the dick-showing, a/s/l'ing hordes that populate similar sites, they are out for smart, civilized conversation. One person I talk to tells me PuffPuffChat is good for having "spontaneous intellectual discussions without the context of 'self'"; another says that the people you meet "are intelligent enough to hold conversations and not just put stupid things up like Chatroulette would, such as =====D." The conversations I have over the course of a few days using it—about music, and shitty jobs, and drugs, lots of talk about drugs—are engaging and funny a little more often than they're not. PuffPuffChatters, like stoners at large, are an affable bunch. (There's an apparent demographic unity, too: Everyone I talk to who offers up such information is a man aged 18 to 25 or so.)

The site launched in May of this year, and has slowly picked up steam since then. On Reddit, users are wondering whether the golden age is already over, which seems like a good sign that the community is thriving. And as the Daily Dot points out, users sadly search for PuffPuffChat missed connections on another dedicated subreddit. (Sample post, sic throughout: "Nora from Louisiana this is Brett fron Louisiana. You were 18 im 16 we talked about Kelsey and the importsnt things in life." No responses.)

According to 22-year-old founder Eric (just Eric), that focus on the importsnt things in life in intentional. He said in a recent interview with AdWeek:

I feel that high conversations have a unique quality to them. Whenever a friend and I sit down for a smoking session, it seems our communication occurs on a brand-new wavelength. We both feel a heightened sense of camaraderie and openness, and the conversation flows effortlessly and into novel and unexpected territories. PuffPuffChat was created to enable the people of the cannabis community to share these magical sessions with people from all around the world.

The second person I meet on PuffPuffChat is a friendly college student from California with a pair of comically oversized sunglasses on his forehead. We talk, out loud this time, about his upcoming trip to Las Vegas, my recent visit to the dentist ("Oh, sounds like you do need some weed, man!"), his writerly ambitions ("After I read The Old Man and the Sea I got really into that scene,") and a vacation he once took in New York ("I think I fell in love 32 times or something. It was great.") He offers me some unsolicited advice about sex and fingernail hygiene, and we awkwardly say goodbye.

Feeling confident after my first real conversation, I fire up PuffPuffChat again, and see a familiar, smiling face—giant V. Stiviano shades and all. "Awww, dude!", my new friend exclaims. "Same person!" He gives me a tip: potheads can be a socially anxious folk, duh, so people tend to chat text-only rather than use video. If you opt for face-to-face, you'll probably run into the same few people over and over. I switch to text.

California is right: talking face-to-face is high-pressure, and it requires a lot of attention. The beauty of being high on the internet is that every time your mind wants to change directions, you've got a railroad switch readily available, and with PuffPuffChat set to text and tucked away somewhere in your browser, it's just one of many distractions available to you on your journey. Feel like warm vocal harmonies and fuzzy VHS recordings? Just follow the track marked "Fleetwood Mac performance videos" and send your chat buddy some vintage Second Hand News. Want to learn a thing or two about Swedish Americans while you're at it? The Wikipedia page for this vibrant and exciting demographic group is only a tab away. Did you know James Franco has a little Swede in him?

Also Swedish, but Swedish-Swedish: the third person I meet on PuffPuffChat, a 20-year-old living near Stockholm whose unflappable positivity makes me feel warm and tingly all over (Or maybe it's just the weed?). A representative excerpt from our conversation:

[6] Person: yeah same, have you noticed the clouds up on this page

[6] Person: they express my mood so perfectly

You [0]: hahah

You [0]: how so

[6] Person: im listening to jazz and sitting on my most comfy chair

You [0]: fluffy and peaceful?

[6] Person: i cant believe how nice it is

He's just sitting in a chair listening to music, and he can't believe how nice it is. By the time he mentions that he's always wanted to visit New York, I'm so smitten I almost invite him to stay at my apartment.

Then we start talking about work. He's a student, and he works "as a cleaner at a mental hospital lol," a job he describes, accurately I'm sure, as "trippy as shit." He spends his day among "lunatics," "addicts," and "little girls that are so skinny it just breaks my heart," he says, but his most intense story involves a naked grandma.

[5] Person: i got chased by a naked grandma last month

You [1]: hahahahaha

You [1]: are you serious?

[5] Person: hahah yeah, didnt know what to do

You [1]: that's insane

You [1]: was she prompted by anything to chase you?

You [1]: or just out of nowhere

[5] Person: they imagine stuff sometimes, and she thought i did something and started chasing me. i dropped everything and started backing slowly while screaming for the nurses working there. they came pretty quickly so i was lucky, i didnt get to second base

[5] Person: well i was never on first base

Some other people I come across: a factory worker who likes to get high before going on the night shift, a rowdy group of American college kids (One is wearing a Rush t-shirt, and another visually threatens to pull his dick out), a Phish-fan wine salesman, a smoked-out philosopher who talks about third eyes and rediscovering life.

PuffPuffChat, like stonerdom itself, is a place where silliness rubs shoulders with serious talk, or at least the pursuit of it. An indicative exchange comes near the end of my conversation with the Californian college student. He's studying astrophysics, and tells me in a moment of disarming candidness how Neil DeGrasse Tyson inspired him to pursue the field: "If he's brown, and I'm slightly brown, it works out, right? It's possible?" I ask what he sees himself doing with his life after he graduates, and he answers in his best Nate Dogg voice: "Smoke weed every day."

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Rob Lowe was the real life Prince of Perfect Male Hotness in the 1980's so his translation into Nagel art makes a visceral sense that cannot be denied. The whole sensibility of this teaser is so sexy yet ridiculous (sexdiculous?) that I am speechless except for a prayer of thanks that Comedy Central is doubling down on animation that both looks and sounds so gorgeous.

Moonbeam City

What are the odds the Lowester can bring in Robert Downey Jr. for a cameo appearance? Charlie Sheen? You can trust and believe, Sheen is down for anything.

[ Video, image via Comedy Central]

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

Not every teen on Vine can become an instant viral superstar by sticking his dick in a microwaveable food product. Some have to be, well, more inventive. Enter Brandon Bowen, a 16-year-old from Georgia whose goofy rap-inspired videos are arguably the greatest thing on Vine. Everybody, grab your plastic spoons.

The kid is basically what it would be like if Bobby Hill from King of the Hill listened to Atlanta hip-hop. I could totally see Hank Hill suddenly walking into Bobby's bedroom to find him doing this.

Those two videos—let's call him the Hater Blocking Diptych—are probably his best. But, like some of Vine's other Top Teens, he also makes his own bizarrely catchy little raps.

Here is one about mini-tacos.

Which someone else turned into a remix of Drake's "Trophies" that will probably be better than the real remix of Drake's "Trophies."

Bowen also does little comedy sketches that are often pretty funny.

One of these kids is going to end up on Saturday Night Live one day.

[via Buzzfeed]

Let me tell you a story. You will, won't you? Of course. You fail to realize that your passive "letting" of me is akin to a fierce tiger allowing itself to be led by a leash. And that is where our story begins—inside the urethra of a tiger.

The koan: "Reciting Sutras"

A farmer requested a Tendai priest to recite sutras for his wife, who had died. After the recitation was over the farmer asked: "Do you think my wife will gain merit from this?"

"Not only your wife, but all sentient beings will benefit from the recitation of sutras," answered the priest.

"If you say all sentient beings will benefit," said the farmer, "my wife may be very weak and others will take advantage of her, getting the benefit she should have. So please recite sutras just for her."

The priest explained that it was the desire of a Buddhist to offer blessings and wish merit for every living being.

"That is a fine teaching," concluded the farmer, "but please make one exception. I have a neighbor who is rough and mean to me. Just exclude him from all those sentient beings."

The enlightenment: "Really now. What are you— a child?" said the exasperated priest.

"You seem to be exasperated," replied the farmer, smiling beatifically. "Which of us is truly enlightened, I wonder?"

The priest's eyes widened. "Are you the Buddha?"

The farmer faced the camera and made a goofy face. "I don't know, am I?" The audience laughed. (He wasn't.)

This has been "Zen Koans Explained." Flower leave.

[Photo: Shutterstock]

Now that she's free from the bonds of her Nickelodeon overlords, Sam and Cat star and subject of furious fapping Jennette McCurdy can finally say what she's wanted to say since her (actually pretty tame) sexy lingerie selfies leaked earlier this year: "I am not a role model."

The 22-year-old actress took to the Reddit forum dedicated to her—/r/jennettemccurdy—to address the young fans who idolize her and the gross boys who, she understands, masturbate to her photos.

I am not a role model. xo (http://t.co/tNjsFNHMZb)

— Jennette McCurdy (@jennettemccurdy) July 24, 2014

In her letter, McCurdy bids farewell to the cutesy TV idol she once was and reminds everyone that it's impossible to be perfect under the harsh light of celebrity. If you would prefer a role model who never texts racy photos or shares pics of #datass on Instagram, she invites you to look elsewhere.

Here's the entire text of her message:

I am not a role model.

I don't claim to be, I don't try to be, and I don't want to be.

There was a time when I tried to live up to the aggrandizing title, that pedestal of a thing. Maybe it wasn't so much that I was trying to live up to it. Perhaps I thought I could and I thought I was supposed to, so I gave it my best shot.

It's fine, I can admit it. Back in my adolescence, I was more amiable, bubbly, and on lightly humid days, maybe even flouncy. I was role model material and then some.

Fast forward a few years, I've grown up a bit (emphasis on "a bit"). I might not be any wiser, but I like to think I'm more honest.

With the growing I've done, I realize that to attempt to live up to the idea of being a role model is to set myself up for foregone failure. Sure, I've made some mistakes, but even if I hadn't, people would have found invisible ones. This world is one seemingly most keen on judgment and negativity, despite all the hearts and smiley emoticons.

To remove myself from the role model battle, the falsified standard set by the bubblegum industry, is - in my eyes - to remove myself from the counterintuitive battle of attempting to be something perfect while being glaringly aware of my imperfections.

Sure, I still love my teddy bears. I still love a heart emoji (the white heart in the pink box is my favorite) and I still have a soft spot for American Girl dolls. I still love a cute dress, a good pop song, and a vanilla-scented candle. But these things don't define me or determine that I am any kind of a role model. What defines a person as a role model is the way they live their life. And no offense, but none of you know how I live my life.

Now before you start thinking I'm some sort of derelict that leads a life of crime, let me clarify. I am proud of the way I live my life. I am proud of my choices. I am proud that no one can call me fake or say I don't stand up for myself. I am proud that my friends and family would say that I'm a good person.

But in order to be thought of as a real, true role model, I believe you have to know a person and their actions, inside and out. Calling a celebrity a role model is like calling a stranger a role model. The knowledge you have of a celebrity is no more than a caricature drawn by media tastemakers specializing in selling you an image you're dying to buy. It's good to have heroes, but you have to look for them in the right places. They say don't look for true love in a bar, well I say, don't look for role models on screens.

For those of you who do consider me a role model, I hope you don't read this and cringe. I appreciate you. I appreciate you so much! I appreciate that you believe in me, support me, and in some way, hope to live your life like me. But please, I encourage you to find role models in the people around you, the people in your everyday life, the people that are your friends and family. I encourage you to base your idea of a role model off of someone you know well enough to see purely, not in the light, cameras, and actions of Hollywood.

xo Jennette

Now that she's cleared that up, McCurdy (who's on reddit as curmudgeon457) returns to her #beachdayyy, already in progress.

[H/T GossipCop, Photo: Instagram]

Last night, Gawker got a tip from a longtime reader: "I get a lot of emails for a different person with the same name as me," the message said. "Someone who works in some capacity in the government. I don't know if this one I just received about Israel, missiles, etc is even a thing." Yes, it's a thing.

Our reader appears to have received internal Army correspondence regarding the U.S. military's ongoing agreement with Israel to sell and maintain Patriot missile systems. We've embedded those messages below; click to enlarge.

The messages seem to pertain to a collection of aging Patriot missiles that are slated for "demil," defusing and dismantling in favor of newer weapons—perhaps the Army's upgraded PAC-3 Patriot missiles.

The emails start with a request from a worker in the Army Missiles and Space Program Executive Office; that's the office that manages all the high-tech missile hardware needs for the U.S. military.

He communicates with another civilian in charge of Patriot missiles at the Army Security Assistance Management Division—the department that oversees foreign military sales to U.S.-friendly governments—as well as a contractor at Wyle Laboratories, which provides rocket science to Uncle Sam.

"Israel had stated that they want to take a couple of these and use for MADF training," he asks his counterparts, referring to training on the Patriot program's missile assembly and disassembly facility procedures. "We could drill holes in the warhead shell and consider them DEMIL'ed so they could use them for this purpose." Then he adds that "the 29 to be destroyed" can be pillaged for spare parts, including safety devices and guidance systems, if the Israelis "still wish to do this."

He gets an answer in the affirmative, presumably after the plan has been approved by "Major Brener" of the "IAF"—possibly the Israeli Air Force.

At some point, he asks the contractor from Wyle for the email address of another player who needs to be looped into the Israel deal. That's when she apparently CC'd the wrong email address for that player, accidentally forwarding the thread to the Gawker reader.

The Patriot system, which became famous as a "Scud buster" during the first Gulf War, is a defensive array that can intercept incoming enemy ballistic missiles and aircraft. It's no secret that the U.S. sells those systems to at least 11 friendly nations, including Israel, which has a clear interest in defending its territory against air attacks. Via the Israel Defense Forces, here are some pictures of IDF Patriot missile soldiers working with their U.S. Army counterparts:

And here's footage of a U.S.-built missile battery in place, reportedly near Haifa, Israel:

It's unclear whether this is a routine request or is related to a higher military operational tempo arising from Israel's operations in Gaza, but the former seems likelier. The rockets being launched at Israel by Palestinian militants are too small a target for Patriot missiles; instead, Israel relies on newer defense systems like the vaunted "Iron Dome." But it keeps Patriots around for bigger airborne threats that might come from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, or elsewhere. (The Patriots and Iron Dome systems are both built with help from the same U.S. defense contractor, Raytheon.)

Even if it's a routine request, the email thread offers an interesting window into how much bureaucracy the U.S. military dedicates to serving its allies' weaponry needs.

And also, how easy it is to email that data to some Gmail user who reads Gawker.

For a bonus, here's one of the slides the U.S. Army shows its counterparts from friendly militaries when trying to sell them Patriot missiles. Very straightforward.

Also, here's the email thread in text form.

From: "Looney, Mary" <mary.looney@wyle.com>

Date: July 24, 2014 at 2:36:52 PM PDT

To: "Turner, Ronald L CIV USARMY PEO MS (US)" <ronald.l.turner22.civ@mail.mil>

Cc: <—-@gmail.com>

Subject: RE: Israel DEMIL

________________________________________

From: Turner, Ronald L CIV USARMY PEO MS (US) [ronald.l.turner22.civ@mail.mil]
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2014 4:18 PM
To: Looney, Mary

Subject: FW: Israel DEMIL

Mary,

I don't have ——'s email address

We need to put together a quick modification to the Israel demil plan

See option a and b below

I need a real quick turn around on this one if at all possible

Thanks

Ronnie

——-Original Message——-

From: Duncan, James E CIV (US)
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2014 1:02 PM
To: Turner, Ronald L CIV USARMY PEO MS (US)
Cc: Spencer, Billie E CIV (US); Boyett, Georgia D CIV USARMY PEO MS (US); Duncan, James E CIV (US); Vargas, Luis D CIV USARMY PEO MS (US)

Subject: RE: Israel DEMIL

Ronnie

MAJ Brener would like to phrase it that Israel would like to have:

a. The option to harvest S&A devices, Radomes, CAS, or exit nozzles with IAF notifying LTPO of any parts that were harvested from SN missiles.

b. The option to convert 2-3 missiles to training rounds as you discussed below and provide the SN to LTPO

JAMES DUNCAN
AMSAM-SAP-MN
USAAMCOM
Redstone Arsenal, AL 35895
COM 256-955-4086
DSN 645-4086

——-Original Message——-

From: Turner, Ronald L CIV USARMY PEO MS (US)
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2014 11:17 AM
To: Duncan, James E CIV (US)
Cc: Spencer, Billie E CIV (US); Boyett, Georgia D CIV USARMY PEO MS (US)

Subject: Israel DEMIL

Jim,

I have the draft approval letter in Wendi Weavers office for the PM to sign.

Questions - Israel had stated that they want to take a couple of these and use for MADF training. We could drill holes in the warhead shell and consider them DEMIL'ed so they could use them for this purpose. Do they still wish to do this? If so, I could draft up a modification to the DEMIL letter.

Also, the 29 to be destroyed has S&A devices that have never been recertified. We could also remove them, any Radomes or exit nozzles they may need for future programs. If they still wish to do this I could also include that in the draft modification.

This could all be done rather quickly and not hold up the LPTO approval.

Let me know

Ronnie

Know anything more? Add your tips and insights below.

[Photo credits: IDF Blog]

Innovation did not die with Steve Jobs. Apple has quietly installed data discovery software, including a file-relay tool that can bypass backup encryption, in around 600 million iPhones, iPads, and other devices running their latest iOS. You are correct to surmise that this has been a boon to law enforcement.

Jonathan Zdziarski, known in the the iPhone development community by his hacker name NerveGas, delivered a detailed analysis of the software tools at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE/X) conference in New York last weekend. From ZDNet:

What's most suspicious about the undocumented services (and the data they collect) is that they're not referenced in any Apple software, the data is personal in nature (thus unlikely to be for debugging) and is stored in raw format, making it impossible to restore to the device (making it useless to carriers or during a trip to the Genius Bar).

Zdziarski further pointed out in his HOPE/X talk that these services are available without a "developer mode," ruling out "developer tool" as one of their potential purposes.

These kinds of point-by-point refutations are going to become integral to the greater public discourse on this suspicious impropriety, as Apple has already started issuing obfuscating public statements on their skullduggerous toolkit. Earlier this week, for example, to the readers of Macworld:

"We have designed iOS so that its diagnostic functions do not compromise user privacy and security, but still provides needed information to enterprise IT departments, developers and Apple for troubleshooting technical issues," an Apple spokesperson told Macworld. "A user must have unlocked their device and agreed to trust another computer before that computer is able to access this limited diagnostic data. The user must agree to share this information, and data is never transferred without their consent."

The company also reiterated its stance that it doesn't compromise its systems for the purpose of providing those access points to the authorities: "As we have said before, Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services."

Exercising an abundance of caution, it would appear that, or (if you prefer) it seems like, Apple is lying.

As Zdziarski (pictured at left) points out in a follow-up to Apple's press release, the programs he discovered—which have names like house_arrest, pcapd, file_relay and lockdownd—operate whether or not user's have switched on "Send Diagnostic Data to Apple." They also operate regardless of whether or not the device has been set-up for corporate oversight by some enterprise management policy.

"There is no way to disable these mechanisms," he writes. "As a result, every single device has these features enabled and there's no way to turn them off, nor are users prompted for consent to send this kind of personal data off the device. This makes it much harder to believe that Apple is actually telling the whole truth here."

Granted, mobile phone and internet-ready gadget manufacturers are all required to meet requirements set by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), by putting systems in place to permit law enforcement limited access for wiretapping. (Warranted wiretapping.) However:

"I think Apple has exceeded any requirements the CALEA law has with these tools," Zdziarski told reporter-boffins at UK's The Register. "The existence of these interfaces exceeds anything that law requires. It could be that there's some kind of secret court order requiring this, but if there is then the public needs to know about and understand that."

In presumption of just such a secret court order, some commentators have hyperbolically lept to the conclusion that Apple—celebrated makers of the iPod music pod—plotted to insert this software in formal cahoots with the National Security panopticon of the United States. Not so. At least, not provably so, at this juncture.

"Please remember my talk was titled 'iOS Back Doors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms', NOT 'iOS Back Doors Written for NSA'," Zdziarski clarified on his blog. He further elaborated on these fine distinctions to Black Bag via email:

Apple's claim is "diagnostics"; I'm not saying I agree with them. Diagnostics doesn't need to hand over so much personal information… but at the same time jumping straight into conspiracy theory isn't completely fair either. While I haven't personally ruled that out, it could very likely be extremely sloppy engineering too. If we could get Apple to show us these alleged tools that they use to deliver AppleCare service to customers, maybe it would help understand why they need my complete photo album or SMS database to provide tech support.

Cold comfort (though precision is always appreciated), given that the NSA's Tailored Access Operations division has been working on methods of exploiting these kinds of attack points since, at least, 2008. That was the year dated on classified documents about the NSA's DROPOUTJEEP iPhone software implant, published last year by Der Spiegel from (all together now) the trove of documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden:

While the tools that Zdziarski has discovered would require jumping certain nontrivial hurdles to gain access (namely pairing the iOS device with the hacker's computer), further retaining access could be achieved via wi-fi and potentially cellular networks. Pair keys from trusted computers could also conceivably be lifted to gain entry to the iOS device, maybe even through the efforts of skilled laborers in the intelligence field whose job it is to tailor access somehow.

Beyond government actors, Zdziarski's presentation very alarmingly points out that several private companies specializing in forensic software, Cellebrite, AccessData, and Elcomsoft, are now profitably making use of these hidden services, selling their wares to law enforcement agencies at a generous mark up.

Cellebrite's products were at the center of a minor constitutional crisis between the ACLU and the Michigan State Police over the legality of using their data-sucking capabilities at traffic stops without a warrant. (The practice was later deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in an unrelated California case.) Over a decade ago, Moscow-based Elcomsoft attempted arguing in court that it could not be tried for violating DMCA copyright violations, because neither the Internet, nor Russia, is part of the United States. So, to be frank, the people profiting off of Apple's intentional iOS vulnerabilities are weirdo data pirates operating out of some pretty cyberpunk legal grey areas.

@csoghoian I've been told iPhone 5 and above can't yet be cracked by popular Cellebrite. How are Apple helping crack iPhones?

— Ben Grubb (@bengrubb) July 14, 2014

@matthew_d_green @n1nj4 @csoghoian @bengrubb The reports I've heard suggest that Apple has a black box from Foxconn for crypto chip debug

— Jonathan Zdziarski (@JZdziarski) July 14, 2014

"What more can you tell me about Old 'NerveGas' Zdziarski," the lay reader may be wondering, "whom you quote with such reckless confidence throughout this piece?"

Well, Jonathan Zdziarski is a digital forensics and security researcher, specializing in iOS, who has authored five iOS-related O'Reilly books including "Hacking and Securing iOS Applications." He has participated in red-team penetration tests, probing IT security for financial and government sector clients; consulted law enforcement agencies on high profile cases, as well as trained and assisted federal, state and local agencies internationally; he worked on the dev-team for several of the early iOS jailbreaks. This may be overstating the case, but he seems like some kind of original badass.

It will be interesting to see how They deal with him.

[photo via iDesignArch; Jonathan Zdziarski giving his talk, Bayesian Noise Reduction, at a 2005 spam conference via Gerald Oskoboiny; DROPOUTJEEP document via Der Spiegel.]