CNN's Jake Tapper was on the scene in Ferguson, Mo., Monday night, where violence continues to escalate even as the state's National Guard has taken over policing the town of 21,000. Since protests started last weekend, there's been a disparity between the level of violence from some protesters (looting, reportedly throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks) and the "militarized" response of police, armed with semi-automatic weapons and clad in armor and riot gear and firing tear gas.

In this clip, Tapper walks a major Ferguson throughway, the camera sweeping the gathering of protesters and then following Tapper to do a pan of the police, assembled as if they're ready to mount an offensive—for battle.

"Absolutely there have been looters, absolutely over the last nine days there has been violence, but there is nothing going on this street right now that merits this scene out of Bagram [Afghanistan], nothing." Tapper says. "So if people wonder why the people of Ferguson, Missouri are so upset, this is part of the reason. What is this? This doesn't make any sense."

[Video via CNN/@Jose3030]

As images of various police forces dressed in military uniforms attacking citizens in Ferguson, Mo. continue to play out across all of America's screens, the enforcement-industrial complex needs is to showcase its human side. Thankfully, an LAPD cop has written a column telling us that the one way not to get assaulted or killed by the police is do exactly and only what they say.

The cop's name is Sunil Dutta, and he is a professor at Colorado Tech University (real school), an LAPD officer of 17 years, and an amateur troll for various esteemed publications (so we at least have one thing in common). His most recent article, published in the Washington Post, is titled "I'm a cop. If you don't want to get hurt, don't challenge me." I will now challenge Sunil Dutta—if he kills me, please tell my mother I loved her.

If we skip the part where Dutta assures us that "cops are not murderers"—which is demonstrably false!—we get to the main point of his argument:

Sometimes, though, no amount of persuasion or warnings work on a belligerent person; that's when cops have to use force, and the results can be tragic. We are still learning what transpired between Officer Darren Wilson and Brown, but in most cases it's less ambiguous — and officers are rarely at fault. When they use force, they are defending their, or the public's, safety.

There is an implication here that informs the entirety of Dutta's argument, which is that cops never are the aggressors in situations, and instead only operate from a place of reaction. A really bad time to make this argument would be right this very second, when every night America gets to watch Missouri policemen shoot endless canisters of tear gas at peaceful crowds of protestors and journalists.

It also would have been a bad time to make this argument two weeks ago, after America watched Eric Garner get strangled to death by a NYPD officer for selling untaxed cigarettes off the street, which is in no way harmful to the safety of police or the public. (That is, unless Dutta would like to argue that selling cigarettes is harmful and those that do so must be attacked, in which case I have an idea of where police could start.)

It's a bad time to make this argument when the death of Eric Garner has brought the deaths of people like Patrick Dorismond—who was killed by an undercover NPYD officer who badgered him for drugs—and Sean Bell—who was killed after the NPYD sprayed 50 bullets into his vehicle the night before his wedding—back into the spotlight.

Dutta's language here—"in most cases it's less ambiguous"—gives him as much wiggle room as he needs—#NotAllCops!—but he seems to fail to acknowledge that the incidents that fall outside of "most cases" are more than enough to engender the suspicion of police that he is so quick to dismiss as childish.

Then there's this:

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don't want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don't argue with me, don't call me names, don't tell me that I can't stop you, don't say I'm a racist pig, don't threaten that you'll sue me and take away my badge. Don't scream at me that you pay my salary, and don't even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

"If you don't want to get shot just do what I tell you" is a purely insane thing to say. That is not how human interaction is supposed to work, regardless of whether an "authority figure" is involved or not. Later in his piece, Dutta notes that "an average cop" merely "tries to control every encounter. An "average cop" should be able to control an encounter even if they are being argued with or being called a racist. Cops can deal with hurt feelings without beating people up, just like the rest of us.

Dutta's solution is to do whatever a cop says in the moment—up to and including an arrest that may or may not be lawful or warranted—because you can just go ahead and sue cops later.

Save your anger for later, and channel it appropriately. Do what the officer tells you to and it will end safely for both of you. We have a justice system in which you are presumed innocent; if a cop can do his or her job unmolested, that system can run its course. Later, you can ask for a supervisor, lodge a complaint or contact civil rights organizations if you believe your rights were violated. Feel free to sue the police! Just don't challenge a cop during a stop.

I can only address this argument if I believe that Dutta really thinks that people are supposed to have faith in internal and external investigations of cops, but I don't think he does.

He ends his piece by arguing that America's view of cops has been distorted by entertainment:

An average person cannot comprehend the risks and has no true understanding of a cop's job. Hollywood and television stereotypes of the police are cartoons in which fearless super cops singlehandedly defeat dozens of thugs, shooting guns out of their hands.

Yes, where would people begin to construct stereotypes of police. Certainly not in the pages of the Washington Post.

[image by Jim Cooke]

Kids these days, right? When the punks aren't selfie-ing their Kardashians on Facebook, they're trying to put honest street dealers out of business by buying their dope online. So when National Report published the article "Facebook Drug Task Force To Begin Monitoring All Messages October 1st" on Monday, Generation "High" (as in on drugs) was understandably shaken.

If you do any type of drug I urge you to look at this yo! http://t.co/VavXx1DAMo

— Fabian Burse (@FabianBurse) August 19, 2014

How in the fuck am I going to buy drugs from Facebook now? http://t.co/CuqJlohSl3

— Apollo_ (@GodofSloths) August 19, 2014

According to the report, next month Facebook will begin implementing a task force "designed to arrest those who buy and sell narcotics" monitoring "all postings and messages created by its users."

Within 24 hours, over 100,000 people had shared the shocking news, Facebook page Hemp Vision TV going so far as to issue a rare, oxymoronic "STONER ALERT."

Fortunately for the Internet's atypically alert stoners, the story is completely bogus. Speaking to Gawker via email, a Facebook spokesperson called the article "spectacularly false," pointing out the Facebook hotline number listed in the report connects to the Westboro Baptist Church.

Of course, just because the story is fake, that doesn't make talking about drugs on Facebook or any other public website a good idea. So sorry, teens, it's probably time to retire the #weedforsale hashtag.

[ Image via covermyfb.com]

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.

Before a full house at the Bryant Park Hotel's screening room last night, singer/songwriter/reality TV genius K. Michelle told the crowd that she wanted to find an "over-the-top" way to commemorate the first anniversary of her debut album, Rebellious Soul. Her solution was Rebellious Soul: The Musical, a 30-minute hip-hopera that interpolates songs from her album and weaves them into a narrative about a stripper who falls in love with one of her clients. Like most of her output, this is based on K. Michelle's story (early on in her career she financed her demos via dancing).

Rebellious Soul: The Musical, which premieres tonight on VH1, is as furiously emotive as what we've come to expect from the Memphis-bred 30-year-old. It out-melodramas Trapped in the Closet, the pop opera from K. Michelle's mentor R. Kelly. We have perhaps never had a public figure as simultaneously suited for R&B and reality TV alike as K. Michelle. On screen and on the record, she is an explosion of feelings punctuated by sharp wit—she dominated the first two seasons of Love & Hip Hop Atlanta (also on VH1) with annihilating originality. I fell in love with her a little bit more when I heard her describe her co-star Joseline Hernandez as someone who "looks like she sleeps on beds without sheets."

I met up with K. Michelle yesterday at the VH1 offices in midtown Manhattan to discuss her hip-hopera, her injection of humor into R&B, her time on reality TV, and maintaining her edge. She was as quick as I expected, routinely answering my questions before the last word was out of my mouth. Below is a condensed and edited transcript of our conversation.

Gawker: How did this hip-hopera come to be?

K. Michelle: I wanted to do something that was very creative, and something that was innovative. Music is very boring at this time to me, and if I'm bored, I don't stick around, so it's good for me to do something that's different. We have the hip-hopera Carmen from a while back, we have Trapped in the Closet, but no one has ever taken their own album and turned it into a conversational piece. That was very, very important to me. So I went into the studio and started the process.

Speaking of boring, one of the most striking things about your music is its sense of humor. There is not a lot of humor in contemporary R&B. Isn't that weird?

Yeah, well, I grew up listening to country music. In country music, there were songs like Deana Carter's "Did I Shave My Legs for This," and Toby Keith's ["Tired"], where he was rapping. You can have humor and still make good music. You just have to sing what people are thinking. I don't like anything boring. I don't want to be in a box. I feel like they're really trying their best to box me and with this [upcoming] album, I rebelled against that a lot. You're not gonna make me be the little black girl crying the blues, and, "Oh my life is bad." I haven't always had the best times in life, but my life is not bad, and you're not gonna put me in those shoes because you feel like it's time for them to be filled.

Who's "they"?

The consumers, the bloggers, my old management. I just got brand new management. When picking managers, I wanted to pick someone who had artists that could touch all formats. The management team I'm with now, Atom Factory, they're responsible for Gaga, John Legend, John Mayer, and Miguel.

You remind me a lot of Millie Jackson, too.

Oh, I've heard that before. I did something called "The Coochie Symphony" and she did "The Fuck You Symphony." I looked to her because I kept hearing that my attitude was a lot like hers. Also, people have said that the attitude of me was that of Nina Simone.

How did you hook up with Idris Elba?

We're friends. I was telling him about my projects, and he was like, "I'm in. I always wanted to do a musical, so let's just do it." The approval was super quick. VH1 was so supportive that I did not even have to give them a treatment. I went right in, I said, "Idris is doing this with me and you know that I can pull it off." And after that, it was the next day. They said, "How much money?" And Atlantic matched it.

The setup is simple—it's basically just a stage, and you're on it.

Idris didn't want me to have the regular setup. He got this amazing, huge soundstage. The way it's shot is so clean. The texture of it, I just love it. I thought I was going to do every scene [on location]. He was like, "No, that's boring, that's done, let's just bring it to the stage. You want a musical, so do it." I trust his eye.

Do you feel like you have control over your career at this point?

I do. I feel like I have a lot of control. There was a decision I was going to make today and it might not have been the best, because it was an emotion, and that's what management is for: to shut it down. So they shut it down, and I'm very happy that I did not.

What I gather from your music is that you're extremely emotional, but also that you need to be that way.

Yeah. That's a gift and a curse. The thing that makes me is also the thing that breaks me at times. I'm very emotional. I wear it on my sleeve. I can't hold my mouth about it. But when I get in the booth that's what needed. A lot of artists just sing and you don't feel what they are saying.

I have watched you on Love & Hip Hop Atlanta and wondered, "Does K. Michelle have a filter at all?"

(Laughs) I'm trying!

Are you?

Yeah! [To woman who had accompanied her to interview] What are we doing...reflection? Yeah, reflection! She be like, "No, woosah, reflection!"

It seems that in the same way that you need to tap into this well of emotion while making music, you also need to do that with reality TV. You're there to put on a show.

You have to. And if I had gotten on TV with, "Reflection," I wouldn't have been where I'm at right now. I would have just been another character. But I was so, "Whoo!" But it was me. It was amazing to see people get in an uproar about little old me. I've been talking and doing this all my life.

Does it feel like self-expression to be on a reality show? Is there that creative satisfaction there?

You know what? I'm still on the fence about these reality shows. I feel like my fans need to really see me. My [forthcoming Love & Hip Hop spin-off] has been a journey and a struggle, and VH1 and I have spoken about it. It's been a struggle trying to find a balance in what the show is and what it's supposed to be. I'm a perfectionist. I want it right, but I don't think you can all the way tap into it like you do [in music]. I feel like my emotions show, but there's just something about music.

Some of the stuff you come up with is ingenious, like when you said that Joseline looks like she sleeps on beds without sheets. That's so specific.

But that's what I think!

It amazes me. When I watch you, I feel like I'm watching an artist whose medium is reality TV.

I was at an event, and Jamie Foxx, I didn't even know he would know little old me, he walked up to me, and said, "K. Michelle, you are the funniest woman on earth. I promise you you're going to be a huge actress." I said, "No. I'm a singer." He was like, "Yeah, until you see an acting check." He brought up a sitcom—I was originally and still might do it with him—he was like, "No more reality, you have to do scripted." He turned to [Love & Hip Hop creator Mona Scott Young], and was like, "No. She got to do scripted. This is her calling." Idris also said, "You need to do comedy." It's difficult to get opportunities for black actresses, so I'm just gonna create my own.

What was your reaction to the outcry against Love & Hip Hop and its portrayal of black women?

I hate to hear that. I hate to hear this high and mighty, "Oh my God, we're killing black women! And we're killing the world!" No. What are you saying? It's not our responsibility to fake our lives so that we can raise your child. That's your job. If this is my life, that is my reality, and that is what I have to live through, and if this is how I act, you're not going to judge me and say, "Oh you're destroying all African American women," because all of them relate to me. Some of them relate well to me. I think some people just like to talk to hear themselves talk.

That's for damn sure.

I think they be talking because nobody listened to them, and their mother didn't take good care of them. I think they just need that so they're going to fight against anything to get any response.

Is it ever hard to go back and watch yourself?

No.

Never? You stand by everything?

I mean, everything isn't perfect. I didn't even watch Love & Hip Hop all the time when I was on it, because I already knew what was going on with the cast. I didn't really watch it then, I don't really watch it now. I watch some things because some things concern me.

Do you miss being on it? [K. Michelle left LHHA after Season 2, and only made a cameo appearance on the show's current third season.]

No.

Is it stressful to be in that situation?

Yes. It's like you're fighting for your life. No one wants to get embarrassed on TV. It's like a war every time the cameras start rolling. It's a lot of pressure, it's like going to work. It's like a fight.

It seems like you're less embarrass-able than most people, even in your music.

'Cause I'm going to tell on myself. I'm going to say what it is. I'm not perfect. I feel like you fall higher from grace when you are faking and putting yourself on this pedestal of perfection. So I'm very open in saying, "This is what I do wrong. I shouldn't do it but I do it anyway." I'm just honest with it.

That honesty is a huge part of your brand. I'm not trying to box you in, but if you look at Mary J. Blige, that was the same case, and then over the years, she became more and more mainstream. She ironed out the kinks, and she lost some of her edge. Do you worry about losing your edge, and if you do worry about that, what will you do to keep your rawness?

I think with Mary, we grew with her. You change when you get older. Now we look at her as this legend and icon and we're grateful for the edge and the growth of her. We're happy about that. I think for me, I don't think I'm ever going to lose my edge because it's just...it's just me. Because of the honesty of Mary, I get that comparison. I'm always going to be honest in my music. With this album, I get to focus a lot more on me playing instruments and me doing the music I love. I grew up on country, so I have a country song on this album, I have records that can play in all formats. I think people will start to know who I am. Nothing wrong with being compared to a legend, but you still want to have your own identity.

With the instruments...

...and [I] can read music...

...you see very few female R&B singers who are playing their own instruments.

I've never pulled it out. People don't understand that I've been brought up in this. This wasn't something I just did because.

Does it frustrate you that people don't understand that?

Yes. It hurts.

Do you feel underrated?

Everybody says I'm underrated, even people that don't like me. I think you have to focus on the good. This year, I was nominated for three different awards, I won two. People never thought I would win Best New Artist [at the Soul Train Music Awards], Best New Artist at the NAACP Image Awards. It's a step. It's a process. There are artists who did good, and then they did great. You have to keep working at it and keep showing people who you are. That's why I'm so happy that VH1 allowed me to do this because they do get to see another side of me.

You have said variations of, "I could give two fucks what you think about me." But your paycheck depends on what people think about you, right?

No it doesn't.

How not? You have to sell records, right?

My paycheck depends on the music, but the thing is people want music. We are in need of music. I have had several people be like, "You know what? I don't like when you did that, but I love your music." That type thing.

So when you say "me," you mean you the person...

You don't have to like or agree with all of my actions, but you will respect my music.

Your personality is so tied to your music as a brand, though.

Yeah, but... The biggest problem people have with me is my opinions about others and my opinions about things. I tend to voice that.

And will never stop.

Nope.

Do you see any other musicians as your peer in terms of honesty?

Pink. The Dixie Chicks, Natalie [Maines]. She'll say anything.

She paid the price for saying anything.

She sure did.

Are you willing to pay the price?

I'm doing it now. I'm always paying the price. If you pay attention, the greats who are really great took the biggest risks for the biggest payoffs. People say to me that to stray so far from my demographic with this sophomore album is a really tricky thing. "It could go really good or really bad—what are you gonna do?" I'm gonna be me as an artist, and musically I didn't put color or what you think it should be on this album. I didn't go in to create anything for another race, I just went in and did what I've been doing.

Are there deviations besides the country song?

Yeah. I still have R&B there. We're picking the single tomorrow. The one I really love is a rock song. It's rock and it has some R&B to it. It's really good.

When you talked about the greats, the one thing that they didn't have to deal with until recently was social media.

Yeah, I wish we didn't. It's good and bad. It's my downfall a lot. I wish we could still just be artists. I get mad at my comments, but I'm like oh my god, it's like that with all artists if you read their comments. It's just really bad.

It seems like that amount of feedback—good and bad—could be terrible for your work.

Well, now I don't read the comments. I put out a statement last week saying, "No longer." Because you're not going to ruin my day.

It hurts you.

I'm out here trying to do better. I'm a single mother. People don't ever talk about the fact that I go to shelters and talk to women. I'm out here doing things, and you're under my comments, trying to bring me down. I never understood the world was that miserable until social media. I did not know that many people were that unhappy.

[Image via Getty]

A New Mexico woman who became ill with flu-like symptoms after returning home from West Africa earlier this month is now under quarantine at an Albuquerque hospital where she is being tested for the Ebola virus.

Authorities at the University of New Mexico Hospital say that it's unlikely that the unidentified 30-year-old woman, who worked as a teacher in Sierra Leone, is infected with Ebola. But given the disease's nearly 90 percent mortality rate they say they're acting out of an abundance of caution.

"Returning from overseas with a fever could be a lot of things," said UNMH epidemiologist Dr. Meghan Brett. "It could be routine."

Hospital officials say that the woman did not have any known exposure to the virus while she was in Africa, but they have sent a sample of the woman's blood to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta for analysis.

The results should be available by the end of the week.

"There really isn't a risk to the public at this point," Dr. Robert Bailey, associate dean for clinical affairs at the University of New Mexico's School of Medicine, told the Santa Fe New Mexican. "The risk of Ebola is not having the patient in the hospital — being in a situation like the folks in Africa are experiencing right now with folks getting sick in rural villages and nobody recognizes it."

The virus cannot be spread through the air, but through direct contact with contaminated bodily fluids and objects.

Ebola symptoms include severe headaches, fever, diarrhea, vomiting and muscle pain followed by internal and external bleeding and organ failure, and can show up between two and 21 days after contamination. There is no known cure for the disease.

The woman returned to New Mexico from West Africa on August 4th and started to show symptoms last Friday.

According to the CDC, the Ebola virus has so far killed over 1,100 people in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria.

Image via AP

In a statement today, Ferguson's police department announced that it is committed to buying vest cameras for its officers. When it finally happens, it'll be a great first step. And it'll happen even faster if we ditch the bloated, expensive wearable cam tech cops use today for something accessible to every U.S. precinct.

It seems likely that if the officer who killed Michael Brown had been recording his own actions, some key questions about why and how the unarmed teenager was shot might be answered—or it may not have happened at all. So the announcement that they're finally going to get them is very good news. And they'll be hopefully joined soon by police departments nationwide; citizens and journalists have voiced their support for putting more cameras on police. There's a petition up at Change.org signed by over 100,000 people asking the Obama administration to require all law enforcement to wear them.

It's not a far-fetched dream. In London earlier this year, the city's police department put cameras on 500 cops as part of a pilot program. A New York ruling in April recommended that NYPD officers wear cameras which they'd be required to activate when conducting investigations. The mayor of the city of Hawthorne, which is located in South L.A., wrote a moving statement about why he is introducing an mandatory camera ordinance later this month. And the LAPD reportedly plans to buy 600 cameras later this summer. A study by the Police Executive Research Forum says about 25 percent of U.S. police departments use cameras already.

Feedback from the field has been mostly positive so far. In the city of Rialto, which is near L.A., citizen complaints against cops dropped from 24 to three, and police reported that use-of-force incidents went from 61 to 25, according to the Wall Street Journal. Similar results were found in an eight-month study in Mesa, Arizona, where 50 cops wearing cameras received eight citizen complaints and the 50 without received 23 complaints. LAPD Sgt. Dan Gomez described a situation to the Daily News where just the act of seeing an officer wearing a camera seemed to immediately calm an antagonistic person. "All of a sudden, the whole thing started to de-escalate," he said. "They were able to deal with whatever the situation was, and no additional enforcement action was needed."

But while dashboard cameras in patrol cars have become commonplace, especially for recording routine traffic stops, the body camera has not been as swiftly adopted. The biggest reason is price. The cameras that are being purchased and used by police today are like the tanks that rolled into St. Louis's suburban streets: expensive, bulky, and heavily militarized.

The cameras most police forces use today are egregiously expensive, especially for a civic agency that's historically subject to budgetary woes. Take the AXON Flex by Taser, which is becoming the industry standard for "on-officer video" and is the model piloted in London and Los Angeles. It retails for $600.

Take a look at this thing. First of all, it's HUGE, like wearing a walkie talkie from WWII. Plus it's made by Taser, which makes, you know, tasers. Accordingly, it's marketed like a weapon. The video doesn't really communicate that this is about protecting the public. It's about fear. And Terminator ripoff graphics.

While I get that you might want the camera to be ultravisible so criminals can see it, that thing looks incredibly awkward and unnecessarily intimidating. You can get a totally decent action camera for $300 (we tested six of them earlier this year) that's far smaller and could be easily adapted to be worn in the same way as the Taser one on the shoulder or eyeglass frames. In fact, the glasses-mounted model works very well for police, which is why some departments have been discussing providing Google Glass for their officers. Better yet, how about we see Google working with police to have them help test future prototypes for free?

One point raised by critics is that even when police cameras are rolling, there's no guarantee that anyone will ever be able to see the footage they capture. According to San Diego reporter Sara Libby, who writes about her local police department over at CityLab, officers were wearing cameras during two controversial shootings earlier this year, yet the department has claimed that the video is not admissible as official public records. Libby's request for the footage was denied. Just because cops will have vest cams doesn't mean we'll ever see the footage.

And that's just one concern among many. When should the camera be on? The entire time an officer is on-duty? Only during an arrest? Isn't being recorded by cops a violation of our privacy? Those answers we'll find through the course of doing. What we shouldn't do is wait, when there could be lives at stake.

If we want to exercise our freedom to record our interactions with cops, there can't be a double standard. As more civilians are empowered to record police activity, this gives police the opportunity to provide their own documentation. And this should be as affordable, and accessible as a cheap cellphone.

When virtually every American is carrying a device they can use to capture the every move of law enforcement and upload it immediately to Twitter, this small piece of technology will allow cities to tell both sides of the story on our streets. Money shouldn't be a barrier to the public good, and in this case it doesn't have to be. Let's help our police do it in a way that's as easy as possible. Ferguson is as good a place as any to start.

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

Nathan Fielder's Instagram account is mainly known for photos of him smiling, eating food, and sitting in his car. Also, hidden photos of old naked dudes. On Conan last night, he discussed how his private business keeps "accidentally" ending up on social media.

Nathan is just as deadpan and committed to the bit in interviews as he is in Nathan For You, and this one is an absolute master class in keeping it together while everyone around you can't stop laughing. You almost feel bad for him, and he's the one who pranked you with old man porn.

[H/T TastefullyOffensive]

ISIS militants released gruesome video footage this afternoon of the beheading of American photojournalist James Wright Foley as a message to the U.S. to stop intervening in Iraq. Foley, a freelancer who contributed to the Global Post, was first captured in Libya in 2012, released, and then kidnapped again around Thanksgiving 2012 by unidentified gunmen in Syria. He was 40 years old.

The (extremely disturbing) video can be viewed here. @Mujahid4life tweeted stills from it, which are (aside from the one below), sickeningly graphic.

The Global Post reported the circumstances of his disappearance last year, after attempting to keep the news quiet for fear of Foley's safety:

Foley had set off toward the border in a car about an hour before his capture. A witness, a Syrian, later recounted over the phone to a journalist in Turkey that an unmarked car intercepted Foley. The witness said men holding kalashnikovs shot into the air and forced Jim out of the car.

The witness said he noticed nothing that would indicate whether the aggressors were rebel fighters, individuals looking for a ransom, members of a pro-government militia, or a religious-based group with other motivations.

He was held captive for 635 days.

In the video, ISIS claims that American journalist Steven Sotloff will be next, pending President Obama's "decision." Sotloff went missing in Syria last August.

In 2013, Foley's family set up a Find James Foley website for him, which states that he's the oldest of five children. His friend, journalist Clare Morgana Gillis, wrote about him for Syria Deeply last year:

Jim sees the good in nearly everything and everyone. He is a master motivator. "You got this, dude!" he'll say. "That story's great, just file it already." ...

Everybody, everywhere, takes a liking to Jim as soon as they meet him.

[Images via Twitter, Foley website]

Advanced conspiracy theoretician and herbal tincture entrepreneur Alex Jones has had two of his reporters and one cameraman live on the ground in Ferguson, Missouri since last week. The results—predictably insane, punctuated by long intervals of horrible sanity—defy easy categorization. "Difficult" is a start.

In the above video, Jakari Jackson, an Oklahoma native who has been with Infowars since winning a journalism submission contest in 2012, can be seen covering last Wednesday night's police assault on protestors. It is quite simply an amazing video. You can watch Jakari fleeing from flash-bang grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullet fire, then stopping to criticize a man for tossing a molotov cocktail into a trashcan. Jackson then harangues another person (or the same person?) for re-throwing that molotov at a nearby residence. He basically stays on the issue, until a like-minded protestor puts the fire out and they share a nice moment of solidarity.

Then, an Infowars bumper says that all American media is "state-run" and your swelling heart starts sinking back into despair.

By turns useful, amusingly moronic, gut-wrenching, offensively moronic, life-affirming, and infuriating, the footage produced by Jones' Infowars team in Ferguson evokes something like the range of emotions one might feel watching a new Jurassic Park where half the main characters are Creationists.

These people, on-screen, are not your kind of person. Their beliefs are risible to you, provoking a derisive laughter that slides easily into octaves of contempt and outrage. Then, suddenly they are in mortal danger and their humanity overwhelms you. You want them to be OK. In the heat of the moment, their flashes of Christian charity and pious selflessness endears them to you.

Then one blurts out, "Satan is testing us. These velociraptors are his work."

Part of this thorny entanglement stems from the fact that Ferguson's police force, and lately the Missouri state police, have really brought the Big Totalitarian Mountain to Alex Jones' Paranoid Loon Mohammed.

"I've been the police state guy," Jones says in a remote segment, "and notice now that everyone is getting concerned, even mainline conservatives, libertarians, you name it: Wall Street Journal, New York Times."

Well. That is true. It's interesting certainly.

Then, of course, because he's Alex Jones, he says that those shadowy Globalists are "trying to sell the police state right now [...] and trying to get a civil war going" by allowing the looters to loot, and by demonizing the protestors—prima facie a pretty stupid thing to say, much less believe. (However, if true, it'd actually be pretty great. No one in America seems to be buying the police state after Ferguson, after all. The cabal's evil scheme has failed! Hooray!)

Riffing on that theme, repellently, Jones continues, "We're watching Fox News here, and they're basically saying that you [the rhetorical African American protestor] are a New Black Panther which is literally—literally—as bad or worse than the Klan, as bad or worse as La Raza [which, trust this Mexican-American commentator at the L.A. Times, La Raza is just not racist.]" rant, rant, "horrible, horrible, horrible" gravel-voice demagoguery, somehow the New Black Panthers have "major Justice Department connections." Eric Holder. Obama. Doggie whistle.

Here is a report on how the New Black Panthers have been comporting themselves in Ferguson, from an Associated Press story in the Star Tribune:

As the curfew approached late Saturday night, New Black Panther Party leader Malik Shabazz roamed the street with a bullhorn, encouraging people to leave for their own safety. Many appeared to follow his suggestion.

"C'mon you all, let's roll out," Shabazz said through his bullhorn. "Let's roll out of here, get some rest and come back tomorrow."

Crowds that were in the hundreds prior to the curfew had dwindled significantly in the final hour.

Let's submit, then, that Shabazz's actions Saturday night were, in fact, the exact opposite of the kind of racial fomenting one would presume of Alex Jones' nightmare vision of the New Black Panthers.

It goes on like this. These Infowars Ferguson videos.

Here is a totally sane interview with an Al-Jazeera reporter, Ash-har Quraish, whose obviously journalistic video remote segment, complete with spotlights and large cameras, was tear gassed by police.

Pretty Normal.

Then, when the police very brazenly released information about an alleged robbery involving Michael Brown, Lee Ann McAdoo, an Infowars Nightly News anchor (they have those now) said, "It's this huge PSYOP to basically try and justify for the world now, who is watching this scene unfold, [to say to the world] 'This is why we need this militarized police force.'" Few things in the world right now, could be more unhelpful than conflating shitty public relations tactics with a military-grade organized PSYOP, and it is beyond frustrating to watch Infowars do this during a national tragedy of this scope. (And, yeah, they do this sort of thing regularly to everything. Noted.)

Ugh, but then agian, here below is harrowing, newsworthy footage from the CS riot gas incident this past Saturday night, in which you can see Jakari Jackson struggle to breathe as he runs away from the police tear gas bombs.

The viewer's emotional roller-coaster continues: In a follow up, a few minutes later, Infowars correspondent Staff Sergeant Joe Biggs ruins the video below with some idiotic grandstanding about how CNN lied to the public about the police use of tear gas.

Somehow, maybe just because this Jakari Jackson guy seems relatively sane, Infowars has not been the absolute stupidest news media outlet reporting on the ground in Ferguson, when by rights it really and truly should have been.

That honor goes to the Huffington Post, thanks to this guy:

I believe these are rubber bullets, can anyone confirm? #Fergurson pic.twitter.com/iCsFi6qoIa

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 17, 2014

I retract that suggestion, they are earplugs. Apologies.

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 17, 2014

[videos, obviously, via Infowars. Their livestream is here.]

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

In yet another shining example of good information falling into uninformed hands, a rumor is spreading through Facebook that a tropical storm could hit southern California in the next couple of days. Thankfully (or not, given the crushing drought), there is a 99.5% chance that it will not happen.

The rumor in question started with a routine weather model image published by Wunderground a couple of days ago. The product in question is called a "spaghetti model plot." Forecasters have quite a few weather models at their fingertips, and a good number of them can be used to track tropical cyclones. When one looks at a weather model to track the path of the center of a tropical cyclone, it can be hard to eyeball subtle differences between the forecast tracks produced by the different models.

Spaghetti model plots show users the forecast track for the center of a tropical system produced by many different weather models. The end result looks like a handful of spaghetti thrown on a map, hence the name. Spaghetti models show how much consensus (or lack thereof) exists between the models. All of the lines close together shows a strong consensus in the models that a tropical cyclone will move in that direction, and lines that are fanned out in all different directions show low consensus. A great example of low consensus is from 2010's Tropical Storm Lisa, a spaghetti model forecast for which is posted above.

For the most part, the causal user of weather information sees spaghetti models in three places:

1. Checking Wunderground
2. Watching The Weather Channel
3. Following weather geeks on social media

I still haven't been able to find "gossip zero," so to speak, but when the rumor began sometime on Sunday or Monday, the image people kept posting was an ensemble spaghetti plot chart from Wunderground, much like this one (which is current as of this post):

You may be familiar with the "big" weather models such as the GFS (American global model), ECMWF (European model), and the NAM (North American Model), but few people outside of meteorologists and hardcore weather enthusiasts have heard of "ensemble" models. An ensemble weather model is basically a smaller, slightly different run of one of the bigger models.

An ensemble model changes the starting parameters fed into the model to arrive at a different result. Think about it like this: you're on your way to work and there's a big car accident on the interstate. You decide stop for gas and that decision puts you square in the traffic jam. If you'd left home ten minutes earlier, you'd have missed the crash and gotten to work on time. If you'd left four minutes earlier, the man texting his wife while combing his mustache might have hit you instead of someone else.

By slightly changing the starting condition (what time you left home), the results could be dramatically different. That's basically what an ensemble weather model does; it changes the starting conditions to see how much that change affects the end result. In the ensemble model that people are talking about, there were two out of ~20 ensemble runs that showed something hitting California. It didn't show what — a hurricane, a depression, remnants, sharknado — but it showed that the starting conditions fed into two of the ensemble runs wound up sending the system into California. The rest join every other reliable model, as well as the National Hurricane Center's official forecast, in sending it out to sea.

It's overwhelmingly likely that Lowell will continue out to sea and no landmass anywhere will even see a cloud from the storm.

As a general rule, the water is just too dang cold off the West Coast to sustain a tropical system. In the unlikely event that a tropical system or its remnants are forecast to hold together long enough to have any major impact on the state, you can bet that more people than your best friend's 15-year-old cousin would be talking about it.

Only two tropical systems in recorded history have hit California: a tropical storm made landfall near Long Beach in 1939, and a hurricane came very close to making landfall in San Diego (but ultimately missed by a hair) back in 1858. The state can and does see the remnants of dissipated tropical cyclones, though, and those are still dangerous as they can bring heavy rainfall.

[Images: author / FSU / Wunderground]

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Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul got the old band—and by "band" I mean "crystal meth operation"—back together for a fake pawn shop reality show to promote the upcoming Emmys. 2013 Best Actress in a Comedy Julia Louis-Dreyfus also appears, playing 1996 Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Really, the only things you really need to know about "Barely Legal Pawn" are: 1) It has Elaine and those guys you liked from Breaking Bad, and 2) It's basically an elaborate 6-minute setup for one perfect one-word punchline.

[H/T Vulture]

Tonight on TV there's the last of the summer's bad girls, an investigation of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the historical real world, Jon Hamm introducing Daniel Radcliffe to manhood, and some low-level wizards.

At 8/7c. we bid a fond adieu to those ladies of the Bad Girls Club in a poignant episode entitled, "Smell Ya Later!" in which perhaps some girls are smelled by other girls or perhaps this activity is postponed indefinitely, but either way I would not want to smell the Girls in that particular Club. ABC's Extreme Weight Loss introduces us to a former Marine and a lady from Vegas who seems to have had an impossibly tough life so far; one of them will be kicked off the show for "bad behavior." That show seems rough altogether, doesn't it? The "extreme" is for the amount, but I guess also for the hardcoreness. How much trouble can a 410-pound Marine get into is a question to which I hope I never learn the answer for myself.

There's also the Candid Camera reboot on the zombie network for zombies, TV Land, and a cute SAHM battles the chefs of Food Fighters on NBC. Otherwise it's a PBS Special on Josiah Henson, "the Man Behind the Story of Uncle Tom's Cabin," or the penultimate Pretty Little Liars, in which Spencer's unbelievably cagey sister Melissa finally fesses up to a thing or two about the various secret societies, fake pregnancies, and evil twins she's been covering up 'til now.

At 9/8c. there's the usual Rizzoli & Isles, Royal Pains and America's Got Talent; Sisterhood of Hip Hop's second episode on Oxygen, and an episode of the toxic Dance Moms with the dubious title of "Abby-Phobic." Slightly less creepy: the "Sideshow Murders" episode of ID's Evil Kin. Finally, there's the seventh (!) episode of runaway hit Married at First Sight. (Which kind of sideshow would you rather be involved in?)

At 10/9c. there's Tyrant, Covert Affairs and the midseason finale of Perception; a new show on Syfy called Wizard Wars that is not actually about wizards (just dorks); and Ovation's second season of short-run series A Young Doctor's Notebook, in which Jon Hamm travels back in time to bother Harry Potter and do heroin. Apparently it's good, but I have to admit it does not seem like my kind of thing at all. The second Singles Project on Bravo and a new Finding Carter on MTV are closer to my kind of thing, but I mean: It's obviously Drunk History and the Nathan For You finale, at least in this house. The former's got Winona Ryder back and the latter involves weird kid Nathan Fielder being himself weird to kids. Done. Easy.

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.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry turned himself in this afternoon at the Travis County Jail in Austin. He was indicted on two felony charges late last Friday stemming from allegations that his office maneuvered to force Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg to resign from her position.

"This prosecution would seek to erode the power of all Texas governors — Republican or Democrat — to veto legislation and funding that they deem inappropriate," Perry told reporters after the ten minute-long booking process. "This indictment is fundamentally a political act that seeks to achieve at the courthouse what could not be achieved at the ballot box."

Silicon Valley loves reviving the dead. Whether it's propping up publishing or resuscitating mobile app incubators, investors are hellbent pumping money into yesteryear's financial fiascos. And no where is that Culture of Resurrection quite as apparent as it is in the on-demand delivery market.

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson is wary of backing the new breed of delivery startups, the New York Times reports. As one of the investors who got burned by Kozmo's crash during the dot-com bust, the New York-based financier is not confident the numbers are in favor of startups such as Postmates and Instacart.

And yet, the delivery "space" has returned as Silicon Valley's current obsession, with fresh-faced wantrepreneur's scrambling to stake-out some "Uber for X" turf. Now you can get all of life's essentials, from weed to pizza, shipped to your door within minutes by way of a bespoke app—delivery fees gladly subsidized by speculative investors in the name of "user acquisition." Even Kozmo is threatening to make a comeback.

It seems the Valley is rallying for ruin. But, as the New York Times reports, the delivery business model has shifted since the days of the dot-com frenzy:

John A. Deighton, a Harvard Business School professor who wrote a case study on Webvan, likes to compare the delivery business to shining shoes. "You make as much profit on one shoe as you do on a thousand shoes," he said. "There's just no scale." In years past, it was difficult for Deighton to even teach his students about Webvan, because its fatal flaws were so obvious. They didn't understand how the euphoria of the dot-com boom could have obscured its shortcomings. But in the last year, he has been asked to teach it three times. "Something has changed," he said.

That change is the shift from distributor to middleman. Whereas Webvan built out massive warehouses, Instacart shops at existing markets. Apps like Push for Pizza don't have to worry about furnishing their own kitchens: Instead, they simply facilitate an order with an existing restaurant, and scrape a few quarters off the top of the bill.

But the cost of delivery remains high, even if the rate charged to customers is low:

Instacart charges as little as $3.99 for grocery shopping and delivery. Yet [Instacart's general manager Aditya Shah] said its shoppers make about $20 an hour, plus tips, which makes profitability seem unlikely, even with the smartest algorithms routing shoppers through grocery stores and city streets. When I told him that, he sounded a lot like Borders back in Webvan's heyday: "We're really well funded, so that is not something we're as worried about," Shah said. "Growth is the most important factor."

To charge that little, Instacart has relied on $54.8 million in outside funding to maintain it's operations. It's hard not to wonder if another economic downturn will quickly extinguish money-burning startups.

According to the Times, it's exactly that fear keeping Wilson from investing in more delivery startups. No one quite knows how much people will pay to be lazy, and if they'll pay enough for delivery apps to turn a profit. "I wish we knew the answers to these questions," he told the paper. "But we don't."

If one of the most prominent investors in tech can't figure out if on-demand apps can ever become profitable, and endless rounds of investment are necessary to maintain operations, why is no one listening?

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

Photo: Dan Paluska

When we last checked in on Backdoor Teen Mom Farrah Abraham, she had started working at an Austin, Tex. strip club as "research" for some unannounced book or movie she may participate in at some point in the theoretical future—just like Jennifer Aniston! Well, it's apparently not just research anymore: Both Farrah and the club report she's signed six-figure contract as a celebrity dancer.

"It benefits everybody," BeBe Montgomery, manager of Palazio Gentleman's Club said, according to Radar. "It's really fun ... I hired Farrah as a waitress about a month ago and then we talked about it. She decided to switch to dancing. And then we talked again and came to an agreement for six figures. We're really happy and excited."

According to Farrah, the deal is worth $544,000.

Starting August 22, customers will be able to pay $2,500 for an hour-long dance from the former teen mom, or $500 for 10 minutes. The young backdoor entrepreneur says she plans to invest the money in her frozen yogurt business.

Is stripping as profitable as having anal sex with James Deen? Probably not. Although rumors of a $1.5 million payday for Backdoor Teen Mom may have been exaggerated, Vivid Video paid Farrah six figures for that video, and a royalty check obtained by TMZ shortly after its released showed she was initially making around $60,000 a month on the back end.

[H/T HuffPo]

It's been a busy day for Uber. In addition to adding a presidential mastermind to the payroll, the company also began an "experimental" delivery service called Corner Store "rolling out first to DC area customers." According to ThinkProgress, those customers all have something in common. (Spoiler: they're white.)

The defining characteristic was first noted by Twitter user @DonnyBridges, who attracted the attention of Uber's D.C. unit, which responded with a cheery "Stay tuned!"

@DonnyBridges Thanks for your interest in #CornerStore! We're excited to test the service in other areas in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

— Uber DC (@Uber_DC) August 19, 2014

It's the exact same response the company tweeted at other complaints about who gets access first.

@msager Thanks for your interest in #CornerStore! We're excited to expand service for our little experiment in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

— Uber DC (@Uber_DC) August 19, 2014

ThinkProgress sees this as another instance as Silicon Valley willfully reinforcing the status quo:

The practice of "redlining" has been utilized for decades by industries ranging from supermarkets to banking. But if brick and mortar stores engage in a kind of quiet discrimination by simply choosing not to opt in to low-income or minority neighborhoods, companies like Uber, which are highly scalable and inherently mobile, make conscious decisions to purposefully opt out of entire neighborhoods from their service areas.

The press sometimes paints Uber as a solution to the longstanding discrimination that black people have hailing a cab, as well as issues with cab drivers reluctant to serve customers in "bad" neighborhoods. This Washington Post article, for example, thoroughly investigated the corruption behind taxi medallions, but readily bought Uber's claims about the fixing power of data:

Technology at the same time could change not only how people get around, but also how cities monitor companies that provide that service. Uber's chief product isn't really rides; it's data. Uber keeps a GPS trace of every ride in every neighborhood, of every driver and passenger.

If a driver on call repeatedly ignores certain pickups, Uber knows that in a way that Yellow Cab does not. If a neighborhood perpetually has passenger demand but no driver supply, Uber's data reveal those patterns, too.

To see those patterns, however, Uber has to care and want to look.

Whoa. Ever since I added my picture to @Uber_NYC, drivers have canceled on me...

— Megan Rose Dickey (@meganrosedickey) May 28, 2014

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

[Image via @DonnyBridges]

The Late Show was off last week when news of Robin Williams' death broke, so last night David Letterman dedicated a portion of his show to remembering his close friend of 38 years.

Letterman first met Williams—who would end up appearing on Letterman's show about 50 times—at the Comedy Store in Hollywood in the 1970s when both comedians were trying to break into the scene.

"In those days we were working for free drinks," Letterman said. "What you would do is you would go onstage and do your little skits and then you would come offstage and if there was a new guy coming on, you'd want to stick around and make fun of the new guy."

But when Williams—who told everyone he was Scottish—came on, everything changed.

"It's like nothing we had ever seen before, nothing we had ever imagined before," Letterman said. "We're like morning dew, and he comes in like a hurricane."

It wasn't until Letterman got his own show, however, that they became friends.

"He was always so gracious, and we would talk about the old times and never did he act like, 'Oh I knew you guys were scared because I was so good,' and it was just a pleasure to know the guy, and he was a gentleman and delightful, and even in the old days, he was kind enough to ask me to appear on his Mork and Mindy show," Letterman said.

Now this was a double-edged sword, because he did it only because he was trying to help other fledgling, starting out comics. The other side of the sword is I had no business being on that show—I have no business being on this show. But he was nice, he gave me a job. And in those days, jobs were hard to come by. And there I was, and I was on "Mork and Mindy" and I can remember between the dress rehearsal and the actual taping of the show, the director of the program, Howard Storm, comes up to me and he says, "Well, you've been trying all week. This is your last chance.'"

So even to the detriment of the show, Robin was kind enough to invite me to come on because he thought, "Why can't I spread this around and have some of my friends share in my success," which is exactly what he did.

"Beyond being a very talented man and a good friend and a gentleman, I'm sorry, like everyone else, that I had no idea that the man was in pain, that the man was suffering," Letterman said. "But what a guy, Robin Williams."

[h/t Gothamist]

NEMA hadn't even opened before the luxury apartment complex became the recipient of San Francisco's collective scorn. The complex, which is conveniently nuzzled between the headquarters of Twitter, Square, and Uber, attempted to rename the poverty-stricken Mid-Market neighborhood "New Market"—ostensibly to help its posh residents forget they were paying $3,388/month for a one bedroom outside of homeless camps. Now NEMA is erecting an art piece entitled "Promised Land" along Market Street.

The piece, which appears to be tech's answer to Plymouth Rock, intends to celebrate California as a "destination to create one's fortune as a pioneer in a land which has traditionally embraced innovation."

To commemorate Promised Land's imminent unveiling, NEMA, which once hired dancing monkey men to entertain guests during their lavish open house, wants to hear about their residents' trying journeys to reach techie nirvana.

We would like to hear what Promised Land means to you and the journey you have taken to find your place in California / San Francisco / NEMA.

So dust off your Stanford admissions essay, NEMA residents. The best entry in the contest will receive a $500 gift certificate to Alta CA—the restaurant across the street funded by venture capital.

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

Ray J, a person who managed to turn having sex with Kim Kardashian into a years-long career, may now be famous on his own merit—for allegedly assaulting a woman at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and kicking out the window of a police car.

The recording artist and sometime-sex-haver was arrested back in May, according to Rolling Stone:

The Beverly Hills Police Department said in a statement that officers were called to the hotel on Friday after receiving a report that Ray J, whose real name is William Ray Norwood, had inappropriately touched a woman at the hotel bar. After investigating, the officers found that the contact was "incidental" and Ray J initially agreed to leave the location.

Ray J apparently changed his mind, however, as police say that he then refused to leave and became unruly. After police took him into custody, he reportedly kicked out the window of a patrol car, shattering the glass. Police also say that he spat at an officer.

On Tuesday, 'J pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual battery, vandalism, battery on a police officer and resisting a peace officer, the AP reports. He's due back in court at the end of the month, and somewhere, deep in the bowels of Paris, a dour faced Kanye West just learned how to smile.

[image via AP]