Andres Carrasco reached a settlement with Adriana's Insurance Service, Inc. this past June following a lawsuit he filed in 2012 in which he alleged an employee of the company physically assaulted him. The company paid his settlement with a check but also, his attorney claims, in buckets of change that amount to more than $21,000.

Carrasco's attorney told NBC Los Angeles that eight Adriana's Insurance employees pulled up in a van to his office and unloaded multiple five-gallon buckets full of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. Carrasco, 73, had just undergone surgery for a hernia, and was still too weak to lift any of the buckets of change.

"Adriana's Insurance, is this the way you treat everyone?" Carrasco said in a statement. "Why don't you like your clients?"

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution points out, Adriana's Insurance's Yelp page has been attacked with negative reviews. From one review:

I wish I could've given them NO stars from the way they treated my uncle Andres C. How dare you call yourself a place of business. These people are nothing but money hungry idiots. They care only for money and not any of their customers. My advice, go with someone else. These crooks will get their karma in due time.

"I am disappointed by the way Adriana's treats their customers and the elderly," Carrasco said in his statement. "We might be poor, but we are people too."

[H/T Raw Story // Image via NBC Los Angeles]

A Russian crime gang is in possession the largest known collection of stolen passwords, user names, email addresses, and other online credentials. That's one of the worst collections a Russian crime gang can have other than, I don't know, rocket launchers and dirty bombs.

Milwaukee-based security research firm Hold Security says that the Russian hacking ring holds over 1.2 billion user name and password combinations and 500 million email addresses. They reportedly used a series of botnets to trawl the web, eventually collecting over 4.5 billion records (though many overlapped, so there were 1.2 unique combinations).

The New York Times consulted other experts for more information; what they found is scary:

At the request of The New York Times, a security expert not affiliated with Hold Security analyzed the database of stolen credentials and confirmed it was authentic. Another computer crime expert who had reviewed the data, but was not allowed to discuss it publicly, said some big companies were aware that their records were among the stolen information.

But just because companies are aware doesn't mean they've fixed the problem and your information is safe:

"Hackers did not just target U.S. companies, they targeted any website they could get, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to very small websites," said Alex Holden, the founder and chief information security officer of Hold Security. "And most of these sites are still vulnerable."

So what can you do? Change up your passwords and usernames, or at least your passwords. It appears the crime gang, which is based in south central Russia and is thought to be run by men in their 20s, has not sold the information. Instead, Hold Security believes they're using it to spam people on Twitter.

Hackers are continuing to outpace the digital security precautions of so many companies and organizations that it's starting to feel like a losing battle. Hold Security is working to develop a tool people can use to check if some grubby Russian Millennial has a copy of their information, but until then, there aren't many practical steps people can take besides changing their information regularly. [New York Times]

Image by lolloj/Shutterstock.

A woman walks across the deck of MS Turanor PlanetSolar moored in Athens, Greece. The ship is the largest solar-powered boat in the world and will take part in an archaeological mission to find the one of the oldest human settlements. Image by Thanassis Stavrakis via AP.

New York Times writer Nick Bilton used to cover technology. He wrote about the "internal struggles" at Twitter. He wrote articles challenging the FAA so people could use their phones on planes. He wrote about the Apple iWatch. Important stuff. Sure. Why not. Last month, he became a columnist for the paper's Styles section. He has quickly distinguished himself, both as among the paper's most-emailed columnists, and also as a worse columnist than even Frank Bruni.

When columns shoot up the most-emailed list, it's often difficult to tell if it's because they've hit a nerve with some invisible, elderly Middle America that feeds on Maureen Dowd jokes or if it's due to their sheer topical inanity. Bilton seems to be falling into the latter trap quite easily. His columns are focused on the "impact of technology on society and culture," a topic for journalists and old people, and he seems quite comfortable staying in his comfort zone.

His first column was about breakups in the digital age. Should he delete his Facebook profile after a divorce, or no? I know, I know, you are nervous about what might happen to his Facebook profile. So I will not tell you explicitly what he does, though I may subtly reveal it in a later example. But he did offer this keen observation:

Breaking up in the age of social media sometimes proves too much for people, and for that and other reasons, they delete their accounts altogether.

In his second column, he wonders if Hemingway would have written Moveable Feast if he had Twitter (probably? who cares?). Then he makes a resolution to try out some old technology.

For me, I'm making a change — albeit a small one. Last month I decided to try my own Facebook experiment. Rather than wake up in the morning and get lost on social media for an hour or more, I've started spending the early hours of my mornings reading a book.

Wow. Brave. For his third column, he couldn't find a pen.

After backtracking to figure out when I last saw a pen in the house, I realized it had been more than two months.

His fourth column was about cell phones at weddings. Nick Bilton goes to a lot of weddings. How does he have time to write a column.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in matrimony," the priest, rabbi or minister says. "The bride and groom have asked you to use the same hashtag on photos shared to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook."

I've experienced variations of this at several recent weddings. Other times, hashtags are written in the wedding program, on table arrangements or whispered down the aisle.

And for his fifth column, posted today, he takes on Twitter arguments.

Go to a social website and offer even the slightest morsel of opinion on something. You can pick from Gaza, Israel, Justin Bieber, Orlando Bloom, Jay Z and Beyoncé, the N.S.A., President Obama or any other esoteric topic. Then watch what happens. One person says one thing and then the digital mob is upon you.

Esoteric topics, indeed!

Nick Bilton is not funny. Nick Bilton is not a good or inspiring writer. His stories are not interesting or relatable. He mansplains. He bores. His columns are trite and stupid. He is the worst New York Times columnist, but for the grace of Arthur Sulzberger we get to write about him every week. Frank Bruni, you have been unseated.

Shortly before noon today, a Michigan jury retired to deliberate in the case of Theodore Wafer, the Michigan homeowner who shot and killed Renisha McBride on his porch when she approached his house after a car accident. The trial lasted just seven days.

It seems to have raised few questions about the raw particulars of the case. On November 3, 2013, around 1 a.m., the 19-year-old McBride crashed her car. She walked away from the accident. More than two hours later, she ended up on Wafer's porch in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. He shot her in the face with his 12-gauge shotgun, firing through a locked screen door. She was totally unarmed, and died instantly. Her blood alcohol level was high. Wafer was later charged with second-degree murder.

In their closing statement, prosecutors reportedly pointed out that Wafer told police later he was full of "piss and vinegar" when he approached that door. The prosecution theory is that this anger was not really triggered by anything McBride did (they're not even totally sure she was knocking on the door)

He wanted a confrontation. He wanted the neighborhood kids to leave him alone ... and he went to get his shotgun, in his words, to show it to them and scare them away.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor said, McBride "just wanted to go home."

The defense, meanwhile, claims that Wafer was acting in "self-defense." Per that reporter at m-live, to heighten the dramatic effect of this implausible theory — that self-defense is a legitimate excuse by the only armed party in the dispute — defense counsel adopted the first person. She says that McBride was banging on the door so loud, the floors were vibrating, and he was frightened.

If you still aren't convinced by that, join the club. It's obvious that the defense is hoping, as Syreeta McFadden put it at The Guardian the other day, that the "narrative of the inherent criminality of black kids" will play in their favor with the jury regardless. The court did get in the way of that story, somewhat. The judge excluded cellphone pictures that showed McBride with marijuana, guns, and cash. And there are four African Americans on the jury. But now, we simply wait.

[Photo of Wafer at his arraignment via AP.]

The other night, I was going to the launch party for my new book, but the hosting bookstore happened to be on the other side of town, in Los Feliz, while I meanwhile was a new resident of Venice, an hour's drive away—or more in mid-afternoon traffic—so I considered my options.

I could drive, but my wife couldn't join until later, owing to a daughter and a bed-time, a difficult objective to nail precisely, doubly so because a babysitter needed to arrive concurrently, so I wanted her to have our one car. I suppose I could have biked to the store, but I imagined appearing winded, sweaty, and wearing a helmet, frightening the few people who choose me over the Clippers. Walking would take too long. A book launch—it's an odd situation, one you've perhaps waited for your entire life. Of all the options, I took the bus.

For five years, I lived in the Middle East, where war, calamity, and violence were the norm, where you (or at least I) expected the worst things to happen. I often felt vulnerable over there. So it was with great relief and expectations that I was back in a place like America, where I could feel safe. I have lived in Beirut, Istanbul, Riyadh, New York, Boston, Jakarta, Phnom Penh, Miami and now Los Angeles.

So committed were we to L.A. that we even bought a house—right near the beach!—which we could afford primarily because we lived across the street from a bus depot. At all hours of the night, buses beeped merrily as they backed up, are tuned up, have tires inflated, or were just joyously rubbed down in a hot mess of bubbles, so that each vehicle may be clean and functional for a ride, for instance, from Venice all the way to Los Feliz.

Since moving back to America, I'd been dazzled by a county fair and a rural Wal Mart, but I'd also begun to trust and like the police—an example of great personal growth, because I'd once had a young American's natural inclination to dislike them, a feeling made more intense by a half-decade among uniformed men in foreign countries who enjoyed a great deal of power over myself and my family.

With this same spirit of community and adventure, I wanted to enjoy taking the bus. I'd done so in L.A. only two other times: once to an interview and secondly to my daughter's school, both during times of relative duress, so I was still a bit shaky on how much or in what format one can pay. Outside, on the day of my book launch, the heat mounts and I check and recheck the website: The fare is $1.50, but it's unclear if you can pay with paper, so I crack open my daughter's piggy bank and count out twelve quarters, because I am horrible.

The 33 is scheduled to depart at 3:13 pm, seventy-five paces from our front door. The driver wears a uniform and talks on his phone, gesturing for me sit on a bus that is not only empty but not even running. Sitting there, I rehearse how I will ask about a transfer. Meanwhile, the driver guffaws, holding his cell phone with a hand that is sheathed in a cool black fingerless glove. He snaps closes his clamshell phone and I admire his restraint—who needs more than a clamshell, anyway?—and then he eases himself with a gloved hand into his chair, which is on some kind of hydraulic system, and I inch toward him, six quarters in my hand.

"I'm going to Los Feliz," I say. "Can I transfer?"

"Nope," he says, and he turns the key and hits the gas and the bus lurches into motion, forty-five stops to go before it arrives at Vermont Avenue. Through the window, I see a liquor store, where a bunch of shirtless dudes are tipping back paper-bagged bottles. I envy their good taste, if not timing, because a police cruiser is creeping up. The bus stops just past Windward Circle, where earlier this spring a homeless encampment was removed with jets of bleach water and a giant dump truck.

"Where you headed today?" says the driver, addressing a guy in a wheelchair, his hair tangled with leaves and sticks and he's wearing a kind of grey sweat-suit that has taken on a deep brown undertone. He looks like white Taliban, or Christopher McCandless, the boy who walked into the Alaskan wilderness and died. On his feet are dirty pink house slippers. "Hello" says one; "Kitty" the other.

When I was in high school, I took a city bus nearly every day, a three-hour round-trip from a house in south Miami to a magnet school downtown. At first, I cherished that freedom, the power of an unlimited pass and a city alive with a network of transportation stops. Later I came to love the infinite possibility of boarding a bus, the feeling that perhaps violence or insanity or something sad or meaningful could happen at any moment.

Next to me a tattooed lady gets on wearing a pair of sleek white panties and a lacy bra. It's alarming, to see a woman wearing nothing but her underwear, and then she takes a seat like it's no big deal. I blush. A bunch of kids alight from Venice High School, founded in 1910. Morning and afternoon, the grassy meadow out front is peopled by photogenic youth under palm trees. The campus was site of films like Grease and Heathers. Crispin Glover attended, as did Harry Snyder, founder of In-N'-Out Burger.

On an L.A. city bus I think about the lady in her underwear, her nonchalance and courage, and beside her is a male companion. He's wearing clothes, but on his arm, there is a substantial tattoo of a woman. In the tattoo, she too is wearing sheer panties and a lacy bra. The pair slurp from a plastic bag filled with kimchee. They seem happy, as if they might in the future have more photos of each other tattooed on their skin. In the back seats, a row of tiny Asian women hold umbrellas and frown. The Venice High students stand in knots, like an international rainbow of surly Sally Drapers with smart-phones and buck teeth.

We pass a billboard for a Channing Tatum movie, under which a white guy in denim shorts bares his teeth and slams his head against the roof of his car, which is a Kia. A gallon of regular that day is $4.49. The African-American gentleman seated behind me has a two-seat slot all to himself. He's got his legs splayed wide, which is typically rude or at least selfish and usually seems to betray the life decisions of a psychopath. He hums loudly, smoothing the creases in an all-yellow satin suit.

Then the wheelchair guy pushes his way to the front of the bus, nearly hurtling through the windshield when the driver stops short for a light. A compact Latina beside me reaches over to slam the seat back into place. Outside, another man—his belongings lashed to a shopping cart, his shoes attached by duct tape, his clothes positively shimmering with filth—can be seen merrily chatting on a cell phone that might work. The man in the wheelchair glides by him, face turned to the sunlight.

At this moment, headed to my book launch, I think this: L.A. is marvelous. Life is beautiful. I can't believe we're allowed to do this: ride among our people and sit there and stare and enjoy the air-conditioning and come to various conclusions. A few years living in another country and America makes me feel like a wet-brained softie. But am I wrong? Anything can happen.

A man boards with three pristine zippered cases. He's on the phone, conducting business, trying to sell someone on a package of vitamins to take before dental surgery.

"Where do you live?" he says. "I want to look in your mouth."

The bus pauses in traffic and I'm not looking with envy at two guys who emerge from an office building in tailored suits. It's that, from the city bus, the pair seem like they're from another less surprising world. Get on the bus, dudes! Who cares if your Porsche is faster than my Porsche? It's getting real on this bus.

"I'm not in front of my computer," says the vitamin salesman, and I'm ecstatic about this fact, that I'm not at my desk, that I'm out in the world, that I'm en route to my book launch. It's one of a few unfortunate realities of life in L.A., that in our cars or on our bikes or even walking, there's no crush of humanity, like in New York or Beirut or Jakarta or any of the world's great cities, where by function of geography and economy there's a requirement that we be close to each other. It's why I love the Venice boardwalk, home to an all-day pedestrian madhouse.

"I wanted that stop," bellows the yellow-suited African-American. He frowns, scratches his belly, glares at the driver. He starts humming again. Outside, an old Asian lady outside staggers through the heat, a map over her face, as if she can't bear the sight of where she's headed.

We hit Vermont, where I'll pay for that new bus, and I dash into a Laundromat, seeking a restroom, but there's just a pale security guard with a gun in his lap, gasping for breath, half-asleep. Through the mirrored windows I see it pulling up—it's a double-length acccordioned beast and I don't want to be late—so I sprint across the parking lot. A woman on a bench sucks deep on a Pall Mall. The bus pulls away and in a fog she flashes a toothless grin.

We pass the Islamic Center and a super-relaxed dude on the bus looks like Snoop, bopping his head, wearing a shirt that commemorates the 1882 birth of a place called Ontario. A woman gets on with two screaming kids, and into their faces she installs juice boxes. An ancient man in a bike helmet snoozes against the window, flattening a powerful mustache. The sun blazes.

The bus hooks a right on Wilshire and I hop off and it's like someone is fanning me with a blow dryer. A few minutes before I'm supposed to go on stage, I walk around the block to calm my nerves. Will anyone show up? On the sidewalk someone has scrawled, "Tell her you love her," and I imagine my wife stuck in traffic. It's been nearly fifteen years.

"He said my lymph nodes look okay," says a woman in overalls and sandals, walking down a sun-drenched sidewalk, around the corner from a bookstore where I plan to tell my life story. I run after her, wanting to see what she'll say next, and instead I'm confronted by a different woman, who walks up to me, apologizing for talking to her self. In a nearby apartment, an old song by Charlie Parker plays and there's the staccato chatter of someone chopping vegetables. It's so hot fruit has fallen from trees. I walk into the blinding light of late evening, en route to my big night. In front of the bookstore, I shield my eyes and open the door.

Nathan Deuel is the author of Friday Was the Bomb, an Amazon "Best Book of the Month." He lives in Los Angeles.

[Illustration by Jim Cooke]

Hurricanes Iselle and Julio continue to churn towards Hawaii at this hour, and most of the state's major cities are preparing for a period of dangerous weather conditions tomorrow and Friday. Here's what to expect as both storms threaten and impact the country's 50th state.

5:00PM Update: Hurricane Hunters are finding winds of 100-105 MPH at the surface in Iselle. This means that Iselle is strengthening as opposed to weakening. In response, the CPHC has upgraded the Big Island to a hurricane warning.

The Basic Setup

We have two hurricanes running back-to-back towards the Hawaiian Islands right now. Hurricane Iselle is the closest, and it's starting to feel the effects of a huge slug of dry air that's tearing the storm apart. The above water vapor imagery shows Iselle struggling against the dry air (yellow and orange colors). Behind Iselle we've got Julio, a newly-minted hurricane that is going to follow a similar but more northerly track than Iselle.

The biggest threat to Hawaii right now comes from Iselle.

Where is Iselle going?

Iselle looks to be on a direct path to make landfall on the Big Island on Thursday night, with the center of the storm passing to the south of the rest of the Hawaiian islands during the day on Friday and Saturday.

The islands are still in the cone of uncertainty, and tropical storm force winds currently extend 140 miles away from Iselle's center. The new forecast as of 11AM HST brings upgrades Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai, and Molokai to tropical storm warnings, and the Big Island is now under a hurricane warning.

How strong will it be when it hits?

The latest advisory from the Central Pacific Hurricane Center shows Iselle packing sustained winds between 75 and 80 MPH by the time it makes landfall, with higher gusts possible. Provided that the center stays close to the forecast path and makes landfall on the Big Island, the eastern side of the island will take the brunt of Iselle's energy.

Again, if the center tracks south, the storm will have less of an impact, and it if tracks further north, the strongest winds could impact more heavily populated islands.

What are the greatest impacts?

Aside from the potential for 75+ MPH winds, Iselle's impacts will also include heavy rainfall, high surf, and rip currents. The heaviest rain is likely to fall over the Big Island if the current forecast track holds, but the entire state of Hawaii is under a flash flood watch in anticipation of very heavy rainfall. As always, mountainous terrain will enhance any precipitation that falls, creating extremely heavy rain that will bring with it the threat for flash flooding and mud/landslides.

For reference, the latest National Weather Service forecast for Hilo shows maximum wind gusts reaching 87 MPH along with about 5 inches of rain.

What about Julio?

Behind Hurricane Iselle we've got Hurricane Julio, which is following a similar track to Iselle but further to the north. The latest forecast from the National Hurricane Center brings Julio north of the Hawaiian Islands, but keeps them within the cone of uncertainty. It warrants close attention towards this weekend just in case the storm shifts to the south of its current forecast track.

Hawaii is usually lucky when it comes to escaping intense tropical cyclones; Iselle will be the strongest tropical system to hit the state since Hurricane Iniki back in 1992.

[Satellite image via GOES / maps by the author]

Kids are annoying no matter how you slice it, but if they are crying their heads off and yelling "I want fucking pie!" when you're in line at a Burger King, the only natural recourse is to then buy every single pie in sight so that the kid just has to fucking deal. One man, a Gawker hero, claims on Reddit to have done just that.

In a Reddit thread labeled "offmychest," one user spins a compelling tale of buying 23 Burger King apple pies when he heard a young crybaby behind him yelling at his mother about wanting some fucking pie. What happens next will surprise and gratify you!!!!!!

From his Reddit confession:

It turns out it was so slow because they had 1 trainee on cash during the lunch hour rush. All I can think of is how the people behind me ruined my splurge and gave me this headache. I then decide to ruin their day. I order every pie they have left in addition to my burgers. Turned out to be 23 pies in total, I take my order and walk towards the exit. Moments later I hear the woman yelling, what do you mean you don't have any pies left, who bought them all? I turn around and see the cashier pointing me out with the woman shooting me a death glare. I stand there and pull out a pie and slowly start eating eat as I stare back at her. She starts running towards me but can't get to me because of other lineups in the food court. I turn and slowly walk away.

The man with the most pies and least crying kids in his face wins.

[h/t Eater]

Welcome back to Midweek Madness, in which Callie Beusman visits ye olde newsstande and buys the latest issues of Ok, In Touch, Life & Style, Star and Us so that together we may attempt to find love in a homeless place. This week: Kimye's marriage is fake; Jayoncé's marriage is fraught; Gwyneth's new boo is technically married to his old boo.

Ok!

DRAMATIC DELIVERY

Mila Kunis has not yet given birth, but she and Ashton are "consumed with panic!" because she had a bout of cramping and rushed to the hospital. It's unclear why "pregnant and panicking" — a phrase used inside — was not the coverline. Other words in this story include "paralyzed by fear" and "source of anxiety" and "bundle of nerves" and "on edge" and "break down because of all the stress." You get the picture. Thesauri are cool. Also inside: Blake Lively asked Gwyneth Paltrow if she could bounce some ideas off of her for her new website, Preserve, and Goop was like no you fucking copycat ripoff. (Paraphrasing.) Seal has banned his daughters from modeling after finding out Heidi Klum was shopping around for agents. The Selena Gomez and Cara Delevingne are-maybe-lesbianing-together item includes the words "sometimes friendship turns to love when you least expect it," and insinuates that they are lovaaaahs now. Finally, a Kardashian story called "Kris Dumped By Her Daughters!" claims: "her kids have all been ignoring her for weeks." The first wise decision they've ever made?

Grade: F (sex on a dirty-diaper-filled garbage dump)

Life & Style

I CAN'T LIVE WITH A CHEATER

Beyoncé and Jay Z are having marriage problems. Thus, Life & Style has graciously summarized a lot of gossip and hearsay that you all already read on the Internet two weeks ago: Jay cheats! Bey looked at apartments alone! Divorce is imminent! (Beyoncé cannot live with a cheater because she would like to be a strong role model for Blue Ivy, says a source). Moving on: like a cartoon villain bested by a mischievous and youthful ne'er-do-well, Orlando Bloom is shaking his fist at the horizon and plotting to get Justin Bieber next time. Once he gets that little imp away from his body guards, he will punch him for real, pledges Orlando. Best of luck, man. In other news, Bachlorette Andi and her new friend Josh have not yet implanted a fertilized egg in her uterus, which is... troubling? I guess? They met like a month ago. So. Elsewhere in the mag, Kim Kardashian is "practically homeless" because she put one big-ass mansion on the market and is currently living in another one that belongs to her mom. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL, as evidenced by Fig. 1 (Kim crying in her car). Apparently, her mom is getting sick of "her freeloading" (she doesn't help with any of the bills! Come on, Kim!). Much drama. Finally, Sofia Vergara is thinking of unfreezing her eggs to mix 'em up with Joe Manganiello's man-juice and create a very handsome baby. 60% of Life & Style readers think they are moving "too fast" as a result of this extremely dubious rumor.

Grade: D (making out in beef slaughterhouse)

InTouch

EXPOSED!

Kim and Kanye's marriage is nothing more than a business deal, as evidenced by this very familiar photo of Kim crying because she's crumbling under the weight of living a lie (Fig. 2.) — an image we were PREVIOUSLY told was related to her practical homelessness (see Fig. 1). The main points of this shocking investigation: the Kimye marriage is a sham; Kim is just in it for the money; although her rep denies rumors that Kim and Kanye haven't slept together in weeks, um, a "source" says they totally haven't; Kim isn't even a good mom ("It's not that she doesn't love North; she just loves herself more."). Oooookay. In other news, Kristen Stewart stole Jennifer Lawrence's man, Nicholas Hoult (according to the magazine, she both "got her hooks" and "sunk her fangs" into the helpless fellow, who seemingly had no choice in the matter). We know that they are dating because they are starring in a movie together and got sushi on at least one occasion. Also, the magazine alleges that Jennifer "was smothering him and frankly driving him right into Kristen's arms." In this fictional universe, men are passive agents who are driven into the sex-hooks of infidelity by neediness. Elsewhere in the magazine, Bachlorette winner Josh cannot trust Andi because she sexed some other dude in the sex room. Uh-oh!!!!! Also, Ramona Singer from the Real Housewives of New York City kicked her husband out; he cheated on her, it seems; Kendra Wilkinson has met with lawyers and will probably divorce Hank Baskett, who cheated on her with a model. K.

Grade: D- (fellatio in foul gas station bathroom)

Us

RAISING MY PRINCESS

This "Kim Exclusive" is mostly comprised of pix from Instagram and fanfiction about how expensive Baby North's possessions are. There is no exclusive information in here. We do learn that the baby is "very musical," that she's "already developed a signature style" and that her earrings are half-carat diamonds. Also, she likes playing in a plastic kiddie pool. Lots of mysteries going on in that infant-head. In other news, Jay Z and Beyoncé are "avoiding each other," which must be difficult because they're currently on tour together and married with a child. A source says that they're staying in separate hotel rooms. INTRIGUE. Elsewhere in the mag, Us Weekly has printed the most beautiful piece ever penned about the Bieber-Bloom Bloodfeud. Some sample sentences: "the 'Boyfriend' singer [was] doing shots of Jagermeister and throwing bread rolls with his entourage"; "While DiCaprio calmly puffed on an e-cig, some bystanders clapped"; and, the crown jewel of this article: "If Bieber and Bloom were the boxers, then DiCaprio served as referee." Brings a tear to one's eye. Moving on, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult split amicably, because long-distance was not working for them, and Nicholas Hoult is not romantically involved with Kristen Stewart. No sex-hooks in this account of the break-up :( The rest of the issue is devoted to "Celebrity Moms," none of whom I've ever heard of, answering questions such as, "What's In My Diaper Bag?" and "How is it having teens?" Wish the Bieber-Bloom article had been 15 pages longer.

Grade: C (getting felt up at the fish market)

Star

HOMEWRECKER!

Gwyneth Paltrow spent the weekend of July 25 at the Amanngiri resort in Utah with Brad Falchuck, who is the co-creator and executive producer of Glee. According to the mag, these two first started a relationship when she was a guest star on the show, and it moved from friendship to something more even though both were married. His wife, Suzanne Buknik, a producer on According to Jim, filed for divorce (after 2 kids and 10 years of marriage) in March 2013, but the divorce has yet to be finalized; Goop's "conscious uncoupling" (after 2 kids and 10 years of marriage) happened in March of this year. Anyway! A Utah eyewitness says Gwynnie and Brad were spotted having dinner one night, and then another day they were seen lying next to each other, sunbathing by their private pool, and she was topless. It's unclear how she is the homewrecker, if there are two people in the relationship and if they are both separated from their spouses, but hey, you know. Tabloids. Also inside: Mischa Barton is $100k behind on her mortgage, since things haven't been very flush for her since The O.C., and she faces foreclosure. Maybe she'll move to Chino? Moving on, Kris Jenner's cookbook is "counterfeit" because she only really ever makes grilled cheese and "everyone who really knows Kris knows the cookbook is a huge joke." In other fakers news, Kim Zolciak digitally slimmed her waist — causing the windows behind her to curve all wonkily — in a bikini pic she posted on Instagram. And the house LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian "live" in on their VH1 reality show is not actually their house, it's a prop-house. A set. In uh-oh news, Emma Roberts and Evan Peters had an "explosive fight" at a Comic-Con party, where she "flew into a rage" and "pushed his chest." As you may recall, she was arrested last year for physically attacking him, leaving a bloody nose and bite marks. A "friend" who has a knack for stating the obvious says: "Their relationship isn't healthy." More relationship news: "Miley's Shocking Threesome" is about how Ms. Cyrus has sleepovers with Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne and his girlfriend Katy Weaver, where they "bond over music and drugs" and Miley "worships him like a cult leader." Ah, youth. Bachelorette Andi and her fiancé Josh were shopping in NYC when she accused him of checking out some chick and "went ballistic." Meanwhile! Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are in therapy because they're excited and terrified about the bun-in-the-oven sitch. The best story in this issue has got to be the one about how the actress (who was in a zillion random 80s/90s movies) Rae Dawn Chong discovered Chris Pratt: He was waiting tables in Hawaii and saw her and introduced himself as an aspiring actor; she was directing a film in LA and coincidentally needed a "hunk." The nailed an audition, so she flew him to California, he appeared in Cursed Part 3, and the rest is history. Finally, in this thing looks like that thing: Star's Bieber-Bloom chart seems familiar. (Fig. 3)

Grade: C+ (sex in the alley behind a biohazard waste disposal facility)

Addendum

Fig. 1 and Fig. 2

Fig. 3

The American West has a long and colorful history of men killing each other over the some of the stupidest reasons imaginable.

For instance, one of my own ancestors–a cold-blooded gunfighter and alcoholic psychopath named John Wesley Hardin, a confirmed killer of 27 men but who claimed to have killed 42 men in total—gained immortality (thanks to Time-Life Books) as "a man so mean he once shot a man for snoring too loud."*

I suspect then that Great-Great-Great-Uncle John would have found a kindred spirit in 63-year-old William Earl Cunningham of Laurel, Montana, who is facing deliberate homicide charges after allegedly slashing the throat of another man in a booze-tinged argument over which branch of the U.S. military was better—the Army or the Marines.

According to the Billings Gazette, Cunningham was at a picnic at a friend's house last Saturday night when he started arguing the relative merits of the U.S. Army over the U.S. Marine Corps with 40-year-old Nathan Horn.

Cunningham claims that as the service branch argument became more heated, Horn took a swing at him. Yellowstone County prosecutors say that Cunningham—whose blood-alcohol level was over measured at 0.217 percent, or well over twice the legal limit to drive in Montana—then decided it was a good time to become Army Strong and pushed Horn back before slashing the man's throat with a 3 1/2-inch folding knife.

"I did what the Army taught me to do," said Cunningham, according to court documents.

Authorities say that Horn suffered a deep cut to the left side of his neck and another deep wound to the cheek, and died about an hour later.

On Tuesday, a Montana judge set Cunningham's bond at $500,000. He has not yet entered a plea in the case.

Authorities say that they can't confirm if either man had actually served in the military, but say that both Cunningham and Horn did have prior criminal records for "unspecified violent crimes."

*After a 17-year stretch in prison, Hardin (who, incidentally, was not highly-regarded in our family) did the most natural thing imaginable—he passed the Texas bar exam and briefly became a lawyer before being shot in the head while playing dice in an El Paso saloon in 1896. Seventy-two years later, Bob Dylan curiously decided to title his first Biblically-themed album after him–albeit misspelling his name as John Wesley Harding.

Poet-director-actor-writer-playright-photographer James Franco responds to our article about (The New York Times’ portrayal of) his relationship with actor Scott Haze. Screenshot via Instagram.

The Swiss parliament has suspended a secretary whose nude selfies and amateur porn photos, sometimes posted from inside the Federal House in Berne, made her a national sensation. The anonymous woman, referred to in the Swiss media as A., had more than 11,700 Twitter followers before she deleted her account this week.

In a press release, the government confirmed that the woman was a staff member, and that she had been suspended. It's unclear at this point whether she's still being paid, or whether parliament services intends to fire her.

A.—or someone pretending to be her—restarted the Twitter account today under the name "Adeline Lafouine," and linked to a Twicsy page that still hosts several of her photos. A number of them match up to the collection of A.'s images published by Swiss site Blick.ch.

There's also a since-deleted "Adeline Lafouine" Facebook profile, which used a photo matching the Twitter avatar from the Twicsy page, and listed "amateur pornstar" as an occupation.

La fouine, in French, means a weasel, and can be slang for a snoop, so it could be a real name, but might also be a clever porn alias.

The links that the new "Lafouine" has posted to Twitter all use an ad-based URL shortener, so all we know for sure about whoever's behind the account is that they're looking to make a quick buck using A.'s nude photos.

A. initially claimed she hadn't broken any rules because tweeting the photos was "part of her private life," but the Swiss Federal Personnel Office recommends employees only post images on the Internet "that you would at any time show your colleagues, employees or superiors."

When Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung asked her whether she was worried her coworkers might find her Twitter account, she said, "The issue is on my mind almost constantly."

Although NZZ reported A. posted nude photos "regularly," a spokesman said the government didn't know about her risqué side project until it became national news on Wednesday.

[H/T RT, Photos: Twitter via Blick.ch]

Before Warby Parker came around, you had to build your own glasses until your hands bled—remember that? Now, buying corrective lenses is fun and (relatively) cheap, and Warby sells the startup chic de rigueur. So chic, it appears, they can get away with paying crappy salaries.

Warby Parker isn't just a corporation that sells goods and services in exchange for money—it's a "B Corporation," a sort of shambling creature, halfway between the dictates of the free market and the whims of philanthropy. "B" firms like Warby Parker agree to place some sort of emphasis on social good in addition to the ol' profit motive, and are technically beholden to this in addition to their shareholders. The New Yorker charitably details the arrangement in a writeup this week:

Why would any company tie its hands this way? Neil Blumenthal, one of Warby's co-founders, told me, "We wanted to build a business that could make profits. But we also wanted to build a business that did good in the world."

This is why Warby Parker donates a pair of eyeglasses to someone who can't afford them for every pair of eyeglasses a Westerner with money buys. That's great, and commendable on its own, but allows for some profound HR advantages:

Dave Gilboa, another Warby co-founder, told me that, at the operational level, having a social mission can offer distinct advantages. It's an important way for a company to attract and retain talented employees. Survey data show that workers—especially young ones—want to work for socially conscious companies, and will take less compensation in exchange for a greater sense of purpose.

Here are a lot of words that mean one thing: like Vice, Warby Parker, which paid a model to pretend to stand and read during a Soho launch party, thinks it can pay its employees less because of its image. One Valleywag reader provided me with a copy of his signing contract, showing he will make only $12 an hour for full-time sales work:

Granted, it's a temporary position of six months, but one with all the obligations of a full-time staff spot. "Associates aren't eligible for benefits," my source complained, "but still have withholdings taken from their $12/hr paychecks." Even well above the New York State minimum wage, $12 per hour is a difficult amount of money to get by on within range of Warby's West Village HQ.

A look at employee reviews of the company on Glassdoor, a site that aggregates feedback and salary information, shows widespread complaints of stinginess:

Although the job is fabulous, the pay is lacking a bit, especially compared to other startups of similar size in NYC.

If you're not at a high level title, there is very little compensation for experience regardless of tenure..You can't have the senior positioned individuals be the only employees who can afford to live comfortably. The average low end rent in NYC is 30K/yr. You're asking people to spend more than half their income on rent.

Salary growth doesn't exactly match what the company seems to be making, and that is frustrating.

The pay is on the lower side...

Advice to Senior Management – Increase salary.

And so on. It's simple to see why young professionals would flock to "B" startups like Warby Parker, where they can reap the benefits of a "hot company" and still feel good about themselves after work. But the difference between Warby Parker, which tries to do good while chasing profits, and a non-profit, is ample. The former is not a philanthropic endeavor, no matter how you slice it—and any company valued at half a billion dollars shouldn't use helping strangers as an excuse to not do right by its own people.

To contact the author of this post, write to biddle@gawker.com

CBS News published an article this afternoon reporting on a super rare "sideways tornado" spotted in Maryland. The only problem is that there is no such thing as a sideways tornado, and apparently CBS has no meteorologists (or elementary school graduates) on its payroll to fact check this sideways article.

The report quotes the boater, who insists that he's not a meteorologist (and I believe it!):

Horizontal tornadoes, although not unique are pretty rare, and the likelihood is that they spin off from a more common vertical tornado and do not last very long,according to Livescience.com.

But Roman is not a meteorologist, he just runs a tugboat and he's happy he was able to get such a rare photo.

That comes thanks to weather patterns that Roman and others working on the Baltimore waterfront see normally before most others do.

The livescience article to which CBS links is an explainer on how individual vortices within a larger, violent tornado can break off from the main funnel and twist and turn in all different directions. The only other thing that comes close to a "sideways tornado" is rope tornadoes like those one would commonly find on the Plains, which bear no resemblance to what the boater photographed in Baltimore.

What is that in the picture, then? It's a shelf cloud much like the one pictured above. One of the first posts to appear on The Vane was an explainer on how shelf clouds form. They have nothing to do with tornadoes. In fact, storms that create shelf clouds are usually pretty hostile to tornadoes.

Shelf clouds form when a "bubble" of cool air from a thunderstorm moves across the surface of the earth, lifting warm, moist air above it. As the warm air rises up and over the cooler air, the water vapor condenses into a shelf-shaped cloud.

Here is another example of a shelf cloud. And another. And another. Oh, and one more.

It's always fun when news organizations force reporters who know very little about the weather to write about the weather.

UPDATE: CBS pulled the story from their site, but as Gawker's resident debunker informed me on Twitter, nothing ever really goes away on the internet.

UPDATE 2: CBS republished a corrected story (same URL as previously linked) after consulting a meteorologist for a CBS affiliate. The story includes this note:

Editors Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to a weather phenomenon as a "sideways tornado" when it fact it was likely a shelf cloud. CBS News regrets the error.

[Screenshot via CBS News, shelf cloud photo via Melinda Swinford on Flickr | h/t Jordan Tessler, thanks!]

In 2014, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and plausible but fake Internet garbage. A recent viral video of a bird pooping on Russian President Vladimir Putin falls into that last category, seemingly too mundane to even be worth faking.

And yet here we are.

This weekend, the video hit Reddit (the primary source of web journalists worldwide), resulting in write-ups from Vox, The Washington Post and Time on Monday. Incredibly, it wasn't until serial up-fuckers The Independent got on the case that someone finally challenged the video's authenticity, linking to clips of both the original, sadly poop-less video and a side-by-side comparison revealing the fakery.

Afterwards, all three publications acknowledged their error and issued corrections. The Post's was by far the funniest, with the article now titled "Vladimir Putin gives speech on dangers of military aggression" bearing the caveat "Correction: A bird did not defecate on Russian President Vladimir Putin during a speech on Friday."

Of course, all parties really should have known better, Putin being a famous bird ally with an active role in the avian independence movement.

[ Image via Imgur]

Antiviral is a new blog devoted to debunking fake news, online hoaxes and viral garbage. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and send your tips to hudson.hongo@gawker.com.

There are two things Megan Fox is no longer putting in her body. Can you guess what they are? (One is a penis!)

Megan Fox is no longer having sex with her husband Brian Austin Green. Oh no! While promoting her new film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles earlier this week, she explained to Entertainment Tonight why sex with him is "nearly nonexistent." From E! Online:

"Brian doesn't get any intimacy whatsoever," she told Entertainment Tonight. Fox isn't kidding, either. During an appearance on The View Tuesday, she said, "My [2-year-old son Noah] sleeps in bed with us, so there's really no way."

A beautiful superstar and a guy who used to be on TV, or whatever, join forces and they still can't afford two beds?! It's so sad, the way some people have to live. It looks like Megan can't even afford carbs anymore!

"I cut out all bread and those sort of carbohydrates. No crackers, no pretzels, no chips. Nothing unhealthy." ... "It's like giving up smoking. I gave up smoking cold turkey. I'm one of those people when I'm committed, there's no stopping me. So, I did it and after about a week, it repulses me. Like, there's bread over there and never again would I put that in my body."

So that makes two things Megan is not putting in her body. Is there anything that she's still gettin' in there?

"The worst thing I put in my body is coffee, once a day."

The actress notes that she doesn't have any "cheat" days (because she can't afford them, or...?!), but if she did she would have "pizza or cake."

Bless her beautiful heart.

[image via Getty]

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A new, disturbing, and vitally important report from The Intercept has revealed documents proving that more than 40 percent of the U.S.'s Terrorist Screening Database, or 280,000 people, had "no recognized terrorist group affiliation." This is news. The fact that it came from a mysterious "New Snowden" is not. Right?

Like a golden retriever staring intently at his master's finger, which admittedly maybe smells of bacon, instead of retrieving the ball that finger points to, a cute but frustrating preponderance of American reporters have focused on the juicy speculative fragrance of a Hot New Whistleblower rather than face, contextualize, or report this new scandal. (Is this new leaker a boyish young man? Does he have a lithe dancer as his girlfriend too?) A representative, but not exhaustive sampling:

• The Verge "US officials say someone else is leaking documents in the wake of Snowden"
• Vanity Fair "There's a "New Snowden" Leaking National Security Information"
• Breitbart "Snowden 2.0? Another Mole Disclosing US Government Secrets"
• Business Insider "Glenn Greenwald Won't Say Whether He Has A New Snowden"
• Bloomberg View "Snowden Copycat Is No Surprise" (Cool. Thanks!)
• New York magazine "The U.S. Government Has a New Edward Snowden on Its Hands"
• The New York Post "Another national security leaker may be spilling government secrets"
• Politico "New leaker exposing national security docs"
• CNN "Does Snowden's celebrity breed copycats?" (!!!)
• The Atlantic Wire "U.S. Officials Say There's a Second Snowden Leaking Security Documents"
• Newsweek "The US Government Has Another Leaker After Snowden"
• Time "New Post-Snowden Leaks Reveal Secret Details of US Terrorist Watch List"
• The Hill "A second leaker in addition to Snowden?"
• The Daily Caller (heh) "Government Officials Suspect New Intelligence Leaker Revealing US Secrets"
• The Daily Beast "Government: There's a New Snowden"
• Mediaite "US Officials: There's A New Person Leaking Classified Documents"

Only two publications currently seem to have ran with the actual news in the story, National Journal and The Hindu.

You know how, sometimes, when you have something important to do, you sometimes start deleting promotional emails from your inbox instead? Or do something semi-productive like clean the fridge, or drive all the way to the Michaels to pick up some puffy paint and blank sweatshirts for a gift you have been meaning to make for your mom or grandmom?

This is sort of like America's vaunted Fourth Estate doing just that.

Now, imagine that the important thing that you are ignoring by driving an hour to the Michaels is that your baby is dying of fucking pneumonia.

Speaking about the evidence found by The Intercept, Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project said, "We're getting into Minority Report territory when being friends with the wrong person can mean the government puts you in a database and adds DMV photos, iris scans, and face recognition technology to track you secretly and without your knowledge."

That sounds pretty dangerous and important to know, yes? As a voting citizen in an ostensible democracy?

"The fact that this information can be shared with agencies from the CIA to the NYPD, which are not known for protecting civil liberties, brings us closer to an invasive and rights-violating government surveillance society at home and abroad," Shamsi added.

Please go read this important new article at the Intercept.

[Snowden playing card gif via flipswitchMANDERING]

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

Tonight there is a plethora. But of what? Dolphins fucking, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Rachel McAdams checking into her divine Canadian heritage, and Big Brother: The good stuff.

At 8/7c., the Top 10 people in America who currently Think they Can Dance will perform, and some number of them will be disabused of that notion. Penn and Teller continue with their particular brand of Bitcoiny, ponytailed know-it-allism on a new Fool Us ("How To Saw A Woman In Half"), and PBS ends its experiment in x-treme anthropomorphism with finales for My Wild Affair ("The Seal Who Came Home") and Sex in the Wild ("Dolphins").

At my house it is Big Brother time, because what else even is the point of summer? I'll tell you what it is not: Filthy fucking dolphins and their gross sex secrets, that's what. There is no season where that shit is appropriate. Listen, there are a lot of things to love about dolphins: Their sparkly DNA, their massive brains that contain telepathy, their ability to make up nicknames for each other. Just because somebody is good at math doesn't mean they're good at football, and just because dolphins keep rainbows as pets and can speak the Enochian language of your guardian angels doesn't mean they aren't nasty as all hell in the sack. Look it up.

At 9/8c. there's the results of last night's America's Got Talent on NBC, a new Suits, a VH1 special on the Fabulous Life Of Divas, and most importantly TLC will be asking Rachel McAdams Who in the hell she Thinks She Are. I hope she finds out she's an honest-to-God fairy princess with a billion krugerrands and bearer bonds in a safe deposit over at Gringotts, for she deserves no less in this life. Have you ever seen Slings & Arrows? Or The Family Stone? Bless her. Who do you think you are? I think I'm a person who thinks Rachel McAdams is a person that is tops.

At 10/9c. Richard Blais will challenge Marcel Vigneron to just make a hamburger already on Top Chef Duels, there's new Wilfred on FXX and Teen Mom on MTV for if you are into bummers, and I am really myself personally behind on Extant, which I presume I still like as much as the last time I actually saw it. In shows people who are presumably better people than me will be excited to hear about, The Bridge and Graceland are airing on FX and USA respectively tonight, at their usual times.

At 11/10c. you should be in bed! What are you, a heathen? But if you can't sleep, there's a new Virgin Territory on MTV and on Bravo, Mark-Paul Gosselaar will join Scary Spice and Andy Cohen to Watch What Happens: Live. If past shows with these guests is any indication, what will Happen: Live is that Andy Cohen will get a little giggly. But don't hold me to that.

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.

This ol' world changes so fast these days, it feels like there's nothing you can count on anymore. You go to bed on Monday feeling good because you dropped everything to watch a baby seal on a surfboard, and your life—vis. surfing animals—has pretty much peaked. And then someone's gotta go and teach a pig to surf, too.

Unlike that baby seal, Kama the pig is a trained, experienced surfer. He's been taking lessons from his owner, Kai Holt, ever since he fell into a pool as a piglet. Now he's a total pro who gets bored unless the waves are huge.

So, who you got? The wild seal pup with a charming lack of pretense, but no actual surfing skills to speak of, or the microcelebrity pig who seems born to ride the waves?

For a while there, it was all so simple.

[H/T Uproxx]