Grab your towel and prepare to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

An ultra-rare "super mega-pod" of dolphins was spotted last week off the coast of San Diego by passengers aboard a whale watching tour boat.

According to the boat's captain, Joe Dutra, the pod was some 7 miles long by 5 miles wide, and consisted of some 100,000 common dolphins.

"They were coming from all directions, you could see them from as far as the eye can see," he told NBC 7. "I've seen a lot of stuff out here… but this is the biggest I've ever seen, ever."

While the formation of super-pods officially remains a mystery, marine mammal expert Sarah Wilkin believes the dolphins were attracted to the "abundance of food in the area," and added that it was "not unheard of" for multiple schools of dolphins to "come together."

No word from the tourists if there was any attempt on the part of the dolphins to communicate gratitude following the conclusion of the feast.

Correction: This post previously featured a video that was misleadingly tagged as having been captured during the dolphin sighting described above. It was, in fact, captured during a dolphin stampede which occurred last year.

[photo via Antonio Ramirez via NBC 7 via @nycjim]

Alec Baldwin: regular asshole, or racist asshole? This is the question raised this morning by the New York Post, and a photographer in its employ who claims that Baldwin called him a "coon," a "crackhead," a "drug dealer" and "Ralston":

Actor Alec Baldwin allegedly called a black Post photographer a racial epithet, a "crackhead'' and a "drug dealer'' during a confrontation on an East Village street yesterday morning, prompting police to intervene.

He then called G.N. Miller—a decorated retired detective with the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau and a staff photographer for The Post—a "coon, a drug dealer,'' Miller's police statement said.

In a now-deleted tweet, Baldwin called Miller "Ralston, the ex-crackhead 'photographer'" (last year, Baldwin called a black photographer "Rodney," for reasons unclear) and Tara Palmeri, the reporter accompanying Miller, "one of Murdoch's nieces." According to Palmeri, Baldwin also told her "I want you to choke to death."

Everyone agrees that Alec Baldwin is an asshole. A talented asshole, sure: but an asshole. But is he a racist asshole? Baldwin—surprise!—denies that he used the racial epithet, accusing the Post of "magical thinking" and telling Gothamist that Miller started the confrontation:

Baldwin said he was returning home from the gym when the altercation took place. "This guy was right up in my face as I crossed University Place," he told us, saying the photographer-who may have been following him due to the recent lawsuit against his wife-was acting aggressively. "I get to the other side of the street, and he bumped into me." He believes it was a very deliberate provocation: "He banged into me with his shoulder, because he was right on top of me with the camera," he added. "In my mind, it was deliberate. I've had that happen before. It happens sometimes, because they want to bait you, they want you to do something."

No charges will be filed, in either direction, and the question of the exact flavor of Baldwin's abusive assholishness may never be conclusively resolved.

[NYP, Gothamist, image via AP]

13 years into the 21st century, President Lincoln is still abolishing slavery.

Back in November, Dr. Ranjan Batra, an India-born resident of Mississippi, went to see Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, and it piqued his interest.

What became of the 13th Amendment after December 6th, 1864, when it received the two-thirds' vote necessary to pass?

Researching online, Batra made an startling discovery: His home state, which initially rejected the measure, never officially ratified it.

It was true enough that Mississippi became the last state to vote in favor of ratification back in 1995, but according to Batra, "because the state never officially notified the US Archivist, the ratification is not official."

After passing along this information to his University of Mississippi Medical Center colleague Ken Sullivan, Batra went on about his day.

But Sullivan delved deeper into this seemingly egregious oversight, and decided something had to be done. He contacted the office of Delbert Hosemann, Mississippi's Secretary of State, and notified them of the filing error.

The proper forms were promptly forwarded to the Office of the Federal Register, and, on February 7th, Mississippi officially became the last of the Civil War states to ratify the amendment abolishing slavery in the United States.

It remains unclear why the resolution wasn't forwarded to the Federal Register in the first place.

"What an amendment to have an error in filing," former Mississippi Secretary of State Dick Molpus said. "Thanks to Ken Sullivan for being a good citizen in bringing this oversight to light, so it can be corrected."

[still via Lincoln]

It's a classic American hero story: PepsiCo was flagging, so it did a lot of research in its top secret BEVERAGE LAB, and started spending more money on ads, and now it's doing better. What could be more American than that? High fructose corn syrup water, ads, corporate earnings—it's everything that symbolizes this great nation. But does PepsiCo need even more rebranding in order to achieve its goal of "A Sierra Mist in every hand, and a Frito in every mouth?"

In 2008, Pepsi introduced a very slightly tweaked logo redesign, on which it spent several hundred million dollars. The following year, they spent millions more on a now-classic "Breathtaking" rebranding document that revealed that Pepsi is the pinnacle of the entire universe's evolution up to this point. This sugar water company has invested a lot in rebranding over the past few years, in other words. (As it should, considering the fact that they are selling carbonated sugar water at fantastic markups. They are in the branding business.) And now—despite strong gains in fourth quarter profits—some analysts are suggesting that the company needs to change its name entirely. Via the WSJ:

"With 60% of Ebit from snacks and less than 25% from brand Pepsi, isn't it time to change the name?" ...

A note on PepsiCo PEP +1.94% from CLSA today says just 11% of the company's earnings before interest and tax (ebit) come from its North American soft drinks business. Is it time for the company to re-brand as CheetosCo?

Fair enough point, as far as it goes: snaxxx are bringing in most of the cash, so why not name the company after the snaxxx division? "ChemSnaxCo" has a nice ring to it. The only drawbacks to this idea are, A) PepsiCo has invested BILLIONS OF DOLLARS into branding and marketing itself as PepsiCo, and a name change would necessitate spending BILLIONS MORE DOLLARS on branding, for no apparent reason, and B) renaming your international conglomerate after its most successful division would mean changing the name again and again whenever a different division became most successful, necessitating BILLIONS OF DOLLARS on branding spending over and over again.

The branding industry strongly supports changing PepsiCo's name, in other words. As far as patriotic Americans are concerned, though, there's no need to go wasting all that money. We're fine with the name of our favorite sugar water company just as it's always been: Coke.

[Pic via]

The ongoing beef between Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney and pop idol Justin Bieber escalated over the weekend when Carney decided to change his Twitter handle to "Justin Bieber" just to mess with Bieber's fans.

The two began feuding last week after Carney touched a sore spot on Bieber's ego, poking fun at his lack of a Grammy nomination.

"Grammys are for like music, not for money... and he's making a lot of money," Carney said, prompting Bieber to respond that Carney "should be slapped around."

Taking the unlikely rivalry to the next level, Carney renamed his twitter account "Justin Bieber" and started reaching out to Beliebers as their false god.

According to NME, Carney kicked off the troll by linking to the "world premier" of a new Bieber track — only to send fans to DEVO's "Recombo DNA" instead.

The Bieber Army soon started freaking out on Carney, sending him increasingly nastier tweets that mostly revolved around where Carney stick various sharp objects.

Unfazed, Carney began tweeting back at Bieberheads, posing as Bieber himself.

"this iz not acceptable u r a grown man u have zero swag vibe stop dis," tweeted on enraged Bieber groupie. "Haha lol i can't swag this," replied Carney's Bieber.

Carney eventually went back to being his own three-Grammy-winning self, but he is still retweeting priceless reactions from the Bieber Crusaders.

For instance: "How could you hate on justin for not getting a Grammy while your sitting there like a faggot ass playing cheap ass drums like bye."

Quite.

[screengrabs via Uproxx]

Like most of us, writer Jon Millward has spent the last few months thinking about porn on the internet. He's been crunching numbers taken from 10,000 profiles of porn stars on the Internet Adult Film Database, compiling the data—heights, weights, and bra sizes; roles, movie titles, and sex acts; names, races and birthplaces—into an impressive infographic that finally answers burning questions like what is the average age of a "MILF"? and what is more popular, butts or boobs?

The answers may surprise you! Or they may not. Or you may find yourself wondering how accurate the information at IAFD.com is, and how comprehensive it is as a survey of porn stars—very, on both counts, Millward believes, though statistics like number of films and length of career may be skewed by performers whose foray into pornography is so brief no profiles are ever made.

But it seems fair to assume that some of the more basic demographic information is right. Among the things we might learn from (the processed data of) 10,000 porn stars:

• The most common bra size is 34B, and most female porn performers are brunettes.
• The top porn star-producing state is California, which has birthed four times as many porn stars (939) as its next-closest rival Florida (at 216). (After Florida come Texas, New York and Ohio.)
• Internationally, Hungary and the Czech Republic follow the United States as the most common birth places of porn stars.
• The most common role for women in porn: "teen." Followed by: "MILF," "wife" "cheerleader" and "nurse."
• The average age of performers playing "MILFs": 33. Only 7 percent are over 40 years old.
• "Butts," and its synonyms, appear in porn titles twice as frequently as "boobs" and its synonyms. Peak butts was reached in 2006.

The full infographic is below. (Mildly linguistically NSFW.) You can read Millward's analysis of his data at his blog here.

The Sunday Styles section of the New York Times exists to make folks mad, to be sure (and to sell handbag ads), but it is not really worth getting mad about this past weekend's paired section-front irritants—a profile of BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith, and a trend piece about people forsaking Brooklyn to hipsterize towns in the Hudson Valley—at least not at face value. Each hits the obvious flabbergasting or infuriating notes as it is designed to: OMG LOL BuzzFeed b/w Aren't Hipsters Awful. As far as the intentional content goes, there's nothing to do but roll one's eyes and move on. Let's go ahead and do that, shall we? First BuzzFeedBen:

"‘Thirty-three Animals Who Are Disappointed in You' is a work of literature," Mr. Smith said defiantly, referring to an April Buzzfeed post that has so far received 2.5 million views. "I'm totally not joking." The author of the piece "spent like 15 hours finding images of animals that would express the particular palette of human emotion he was going for and wrote really witty captions for them," he added. "And that in some ways is harder and more competitive than, say, political reporting."

*Rolls eyes.* (Although, honestly, this is correct analysis. More thought does go into a half-decent animal slideshow than into any Jim VandeHei/John Harris production.) And but now the people moving from Brooklyn to "hipsturbia" ("hipster" + "suburbia"):

He wears his hair in a top bun and bears tattoos with his sons' names, Denim and Bowie, on his forearms.

*Rolllllllllls eyes.* OK! Now. What really underlies and unifies these two pieces is a telling, unexamined conceptual error on the part of the Times. It is the same thing that leads the paper to treat such well-established forms of human behavior as having children and writing about it or getting rich and hiring a decorator as novel phenomena—a weird, pervasive denial that young people turn, at a steady and predictable rate, into adult people, and even into middle-aged ones.

Again and again, the Times keeps asking the reader to be surprised by something that is not a surprise at all on its merits. So here the Times offers up Ben Smith, "the Boy Wonder of Buzzfeed." Ben Smith is a married, 36-year-old father, who after performing well in a series of journalism jobs for more than a decade has become the editor-in-chief of a fairly new publication. Less a disclosure than a statement of fact: I used to work with Smith at the New York Observer. He was diligent, productive, talented, perfectly pleasant, and ambitious. Why wouldn't (let alone shouldn't) he be successful by now?

Particularly, why does the headline writer suppose there's something unusual about his age? Plenty of people have been editors in chief in their 30s, especially at publications that aren't clogged up with a lot of seniority. Harold Hayes was 37 when he took over Esquire. Harold Ross was 32 when he started the New Yorker. Henry Luce, a genuine boy wonder, founded Time at 24.

Gradually descending from journalism's Mount Olympus or Mount Rushmore, David Remnick and Anna Wintour were both under 40 when they took their current jobs. Janice Min became editor in chief of Us Weekly at 33; Josh Tyrangiel was 37 when Blooomberg chose him for BusinessWeek; Jon Meacham was 37 when he took over Newsweek; Arial Foxman got Cargo at 30.

(John Cook, the new editor-in-chief of Gawker.com, which is like BuzzFeed a native online publication, is 39.)

Nor does Ben Smith have any of the affectations commonly identified with "youth"—an unusual hairstyle, a flamboyant substance-abuse habit, colorful athletic shoes, and so on. If he did, those things still would not actually make him young, but he does not even try. He is a grownup who has a grownup job. Take away the false implication of precociousness, and what's left is the news that BuzzFeed exists, and that someone has to run it. You might think that the Times, busily purging its employees over age 50 to save money, would be more comfortable with the notion that people in their 30s can do things.

That same confusion about age and status is behind the "Creating Hipsturbia" story. People who have been living in Brooklyn are now moving up the Hudson ... why? Here's why:

The couple had enrolled their oldest son into the gifted and talented kindergarten program in the local public school, but they were disappointed by the school's overcrowding, unruly students and bureaucracy.

Not wanting to shoulder $20,000 a year or more for private schools, the suburbs seemed like the best option, she said.

Trend alert: These people in their 30s are heading for commuter suburbs because they are looking for better schools for their children. Also they have found that they are able to afford more living space outside the city than they can afford in the city.

(Intermission! Giorgio Armani has a tight, squared-off handbag in what looks like crocodile. Ralph Lauren has a big sloppy handbag in blue leather. Bottega Veneta has a woven handbag with a sort of sinister fringe around the top. Louis Vuitton has checkered handbags of yellow and white or tan and white or black and white. Coach has a $258 handbag, with tassels, slung right over the model's crotch. Now back to the non-handbag content.)

Why are they seeking better schools and more living space? They are doing this because they are in their 30s and have children. Same reason generations of people born in Queens made their way further out onto Long Island. But these people, and Sunday Styles, believe they are doing this in a different cultural register. They are moving to "culturally attuned, sprawl-free New York river towns" with "bearded mixologists, locavore restaurants and antler-laden boutiques." Here's a 36-year-old acupuncturist:

"When we checked towns out," Ms. Miziolek recalled, "I saw some moms out in Hastings with their kids with tattoos. A little glimmer of Williamsburg!"

Let's assume this is just ambiguous punctuation, and the children are not the ones with tattoos. So we have tattooed mothers, out in public. Just like Williamsburg, or Orlando, or Duluth. Tattoos are ordinary and conventional things, in this country and this time. There is no contradiction between being the kind of person who wears tattoos—or grows a beard, or drinks artisanal cocktails—and being the kind of person who moves away from the city for middle- or upper-middle-class comforts.

If you plucked a young white-flight family out of the '70s and dropped them into Hastings-on-Hudson today, the father would throw away his Norelco forthwith and the mother would start making gin infused with the lawn clippings, because that's what adults do aspirationally now. The reason that the Times finds "Dutch-style bicycles" and "monofloral honey" and gluten-free red-velvet cupcakes available on Main Street is that it is currently possible, or at least seems possible, to support a commercial lease in a Hudson Valley commuter town by selling those things to the kind of people who live there. Is there vinyasa yoga available now in Hastings-on-Hudson, as the lead announces? Wonderful. It's catching up to Omaha.

Or, if you turn it the other way, it captures a certain magical-thinking overemphasis among Brooklyn dwellers on the question of by which bridge or tunnel one happens to enter Manhattan. But. Humor the Brooklyn side, in this case.

The current ex-Brooklynites portray themselves as fleeing their old borough's high costs, rather than escaping crime and danger. But even in the bleakest days of American urban decline, white flight always considered itself a flight toward something. The antidote to muggers is the antidote to bankers who buy lofts with cash: space and distance. And the result—"the relative lack of racial diversity," as the Times puts it, delicately and low in the story—hasn't changed much either. Who is moving to the suburbs? The same folks who have always been moving there.

Today is technically George Washington's Birthday (or Presidents' Day if you're a car salesman), which means that some people have the day off.

But many others don't, and coupled with the fact that today also happens to be Monday, those poor souls need diversion now more than ever.

Enter: This six-minute compilation of the cutest animal videos the Internet has to offer.

Just watch the video above on repeat for the next six or so hours, and the day will be over before you know it.

(Oh, and check out the video below for the compilation's one glaring omission: The Namaqua Rain Frog of South Africa.)

[videos via TheHumpyObserver via Clip Nation, MeFi]

Japan-based university student Sharla and her BFF Mira attempt to demonstrate how to properly consume "Japanese Condom Ice Cream," and inadvertently capture "the highest number of unintentional sexual innuendos you'll ever find in one place."

For the record, the treat is actually called "Egg Ice Cream" (which is still kinda euphemistic) and, according to Sharla, is "actually pretty delicious."

That's what she literally said.

[H/T: MSN Now]

Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic medalist who was charged last week with the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, may have beaten her with a cricket bat before shooting her four times through the bathroom door—an attack said to have been spurred on by a text from an ex-boyfriend, the rugby player Francois Hougaard.

According to police sources who spoke with South Africa's City Press, police are currently running tests on a bloodied cricket bat they believe may have been used to beat Steenkamp, whose skull was "crushed." (Alternately, they speculate, the bat may have been used as a defensive weapon by Steenkamp, or as a battering ram to knock down the door behind which Steenkamp was hiding—either of which possibility would undermine Pistorius' contention that he mistook Steenkamp for a robber.) The City Press article reports several new details about the case:

One cartridge was found in the bedroom and the police suspect Oscar may have "chased" her and fired the first shot before Steenkamp could lock herself inside the toilet.

"The suspicion is that the first shot, in the bedroom, hit her in the hip. She then ran and locked herself in the toilet. She was doubled over because of the pain. He fired three more shots. She probably covered her head, which is why the bullet also went through her hand," said a source. [...]

In anticipation of a possible argument that he experienced "roid rage" – extremely aggressive behaviour associated with taking large doses of steroids – the police insisted that the athlete's blood be tested for any foreign substances.

Another piece of evidence is emerging, alongside the cricket bat, as "intrinsic" to the case: Steenkamp's iPad. Today, the Mirror reports on a rumor that Steenkamp and Pistorius had been fighting over Francois Hougaard, a close friend and ex-boyfriend of Steenkamp who plays rugby for the South African national team—according to Die Berger, Steenkamp had received a text message—possibly on her iPad—from Hougaard the night she was killed. Here's a photograph of Steenkamp and Hougaard (below right), tweeted by mutual friend Justin Divaris.

With Washington having recently become the first of two states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, the local government has been tasked with determining how high a person can be before they are considered to be "driving under the influence."

To test how arbitrary the legal limit of 5 nanograms truly is, KIRO-TV, a Seattle-based CBS affiliate organized a driving test for stoners with the help of a local Sheriff's department, a drug recognition expert, and a driving school instructor.

Oh, and some sweet and juicy Blueberry Trainwreck nugs.

Despite the fact that one of the volunteers was already three times over the legal limit before the start of the test — and all three volunteers were over four times the legal limit after their initial toke — they were still doing fine behind the wheel.

It was only after the subjects had smoked nearly a gram of pot that they were too stoned to drive.

Well, almost: Medical marijuana patient Addy Norton — the volunteer who was already buzzed going into the experiment — was "borderline" according to the officer observing the obstacle course.

Norton only became a hazard after inhaling another half a gram of pot — but by then even she knew she should not be on the road in her condition.

"(I'm) way more stoned. Way more stoned," she said. "Definitely shouldn't be driving."

[H/T: Brobible]

The person whose job it is to tweet about Burger King is probably having a worse day than usual. Hackers dropping shoutouts to seapunk icons and indie rappers have taken over Burger King's Twitter account and turned it into a McDonald's ad, claiming, "We just got sold to McDonalds! Look for McDonalds in a hood near you."

It's all speculation now, but tweets bearing the handle "@DFNCTSC" seem to suggest that the culprits behind the hack belong to the Defonic Team Screen Name Club. DFNCTSC is perhaps best known as the hacking crew that once housed the teenager convicted of cracking into Paris Hilton's Sidekick.

Update: The Burger King Twitter account has been suspended, but not before 20,000-plus new people started following it to watch the hack play out.

The Instagram account of an Israeli soldier has been thoroughly scrubbed after a photo posted recently generated significant criticism both from the soldier's followers and from the Internet writ large.

The photo appears to show a child's head positioned in the center of a sniper rifle's crosshairs.

The Guardian has confirmed that the boy in the photo is Palestinian, and that the soldier who uploaded the photo to Instagram is a sniper.

However, Mor Ostrovski claims he did not personally take the photo, but rather found it online and reposted it to his Instagram account.

Nonetheless, the website Electronic Intifada, which was among the first to notice the photo, called the image "tasteless and dehumanizing," adding that "it embodies the idea that Palestinian children are targets."

The IDF released a statement saying Ostrovski's actions "are not in accordance with the spirit of the IDF or its values."

The incident will reportedly be investigated by the 20-year-old soldier's commanders.

The IDF has had to deal with similar occurrences in the past, most recently in December when another soldier posted a photo of himself licking a red substance off a knife alongside the caption "fuck all Arabs their blood is tasty."

Two years ago, after a female soldier gained International infamy for posting Facebook photos of herself standing next to handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees, the IDF vowed to discipline those who post such content on social networks.

But the Guardian points out that in all incidents since a short stint in military prison "was deemed adequate and criminal investigations dropped."

[photo via Instagram]

A cocaine bust doesn't typically cause much of a stir in the porn industry. But when news broke last week that Peter Acworth, CEO of upscale San Francisco fetish porn giant Kink.com, had been arrested for cocaine possession, it came as a surprise to many. Though it produces some of the more extreme hardcore porn on the internet, Kink.com has built a reputation as a kinder, gentler porn company. Now former employees and models are speaking out to Gawker about drugs, guns, and mistreatment at Kink, suggesting that the operation that ostentatiously bills itself as a progressive sexual shangri-la is in fact just another shady porn company.

Peter Acworth, 42, was arrested on February 1st and charged with one count of cocaine possession. More than the drugs, the backstory of the arrest has raised eyebrows: Police were sent to investigate Kink's castle-like headquarters in the old San Francisco Armory after a short video was posted to Facebook that apparently showed a bunch of guys firing a handgun in a decommissioned firing range in the basement.

The scandal threatens to derail the remarkable mainstream respectability Kink and Acworth have achieved through hardcore BDSM porn. San Franciscans who in 2007 protested Kink's purchase of the old San Francisco Armory in the heart of the Mission District for $14.5 million now more often say it boosted the area, thanks to Acworth's generous donations to local charities and general neighborliness. There's even been talk of converting the Armory's massive "drill court" into a youth center, where kids could play basketball just feet from the shooting of Kink's next extreme device bondage scene.

Kink's progressive sexual politics and intellectualism—Peter Acworth founded the company while a graduate student at Columbia—has also been seized on by those in the mainstream as an antidote to the piggishness that undergirds much of the porn industry. If the "vanilla" porn churned out by mainstream porn companies is Starbucks, Kink is the ethically-sourced indie coffee shop. A 2007 New York Times article shows Acworth driven by a "social mission" to increase the acceptance of BDSM in the mainstream. Kink.com, Acworth told the Times, would help those with alternative sexual proclivities "realize they're not alone and, in fact, that there's a big world of people that are into this stuff and that it can be done in a safe and respectful way." Kink has most recently been embraced by countercultural-courting actor James Franco, who produced Kink, a fawning documentary about Kink.com that premiered last month at Sundance.

In the wake of Acworth's arrest, BDSM model, activist, and former Kink performer Maggie Mayhem has been telling a different tale: She wrote a much-discussed and lengthy blog post (NSFW) detailing what she says is a historically exploitative and unsafe workplace.

"Kink.Com negotiates in bad faith and does not treat its staff ethically or fairly," Mayhem, who worked at Kink from 2009 to 2011 wrote. "It's time they're held accountable and make change beyond press releases and promotional copy." The blog post has been shared widely among the tight-knit BDSM community online, and Mayhem's points were echoed by a number of former employees and performers I spoke to.

"I think there's a lot of mythology about Kink being 'better' than most [porn companies] because of the studio and its San Francisco chicness," Mayhem told me in an email. "The working folks behind the scenes are awesome and they're great to hang with." But, she added, "just because it's better than another kind of bad situation doesn't make it a good situation."

Other porn performers have spoken out about their positive experiences working with Kink since Acworth's arrest. The porn star Aiden Starr has been working with Kink since 2006 and only had good things to say when I called her in Los Angeles. She said she'd never experienced a more "sex-positive" shooting environment than at Kink, where orgasms aren't faked and models fill out forms before shoots that list in detail exactly the sorts of stunts they're agreeing to, from bondage, to whippings, to being shocked in the genitals.

"I have never experienced an unsafe environment there," said Starr. "I have never been exploited there. It's safe, fun, everything's negotiated."

But Acworth's arrest has resurfaced criticisms that Kink's progressive image obscures a business with a very old-fashioned tendency to exploit its workers. Last year, Kink sparked controversy and the threat of a class-action lawsuit when it eliminated minimum payments for webcam performers, which some criticized as an effort to pressure models into stretching past their limits, then allegedly fired webcam performer Maxine Holloway when she complained. The company also took flak in 2011 when it advertised the "deflowering" of virgin performer Nicki Blue using sexist tropes. (Acworth quickly apologized.)

"There were...sketchy things that they did," one former performer told me. "Like misrepresent employees as independent contractors (which I got screwed over by), unsafe sanitation, wild parties, poor maintenance of equipment (that somewhat hilariously once ended with a fucking machine exploding and catching fire during a live show)."

Acworth told me in an email that there had never been a serious injury in Kink's 15 years. But Maggie Mayhem claimed in her blog post that "people have most certainly been hurt inside the Armory." Injuries, she says, have been hushed-up. She told me in an email about how chained-up webcam performers were forced to pee in a bucket because "unlocking you on your 3-6 hour graveyard shift would be inconvenient."

For Mayhem, the apparent gunplay is just another example of Kink higher-ups treating workers with disrespect. "You don't get the right to decide for the employees in your workplace that it's OK for people to just bring guns to work because it would be fun to shoot them in a decommissioned armory," she wrote in her post. "It's still a place of work and it employs more than directors and models."

Former Kink workers told us this was not the first time guns had been fired in the Armory. "They did fire guns down there and I was actually down there when they did," said Aaliyah Avatari, the new stage name of Nicki Blue, who lost her virginity on camera for Kink in 2011. "It was fine because I'm a weirdo and I'm also from the south and I'm OK with guns."

Acworth dismissed concerned about firearms, and said Avatari's recollection was "untrue."

"This talk of guns is a red herring meant to cause alarm," he wrote in an email. "Please be assured that employees do not use that shooting range for shooting guns, and we don't maintain any guns here on the premises." 

Acworth defended Kink's safety record and treatment of employees: "We work closely with our attorneys and other safety professionals to keep our facility safe, complying with all appropriate safety regulations, and we take the safety and well-being of our models seriously," he wrote. "Models are covered by our workers' comp insurance policy, and there has never been a serious injury in 15 years and literally thousands of productions. While there may be a few former models who were not completely happy with their performance experience at Kink, we stand by our history of fair treatment of all models."

This is not likely to be the end of the controversy. On Twitter Maggie Mayhem is now accusing Acworth of asking her to carry his baby while she was a contractor at Kink. Acworth, meanwhile, defended himself in a post on the BDSM social network FetLife suggesting that Mayhem's dissatisfaction springs from his refusal to allow her and her partner to marry in the Armory, and the fact that Kink no longer books her. He promised that he will be releasing a detailed response to Mayhem which "delves into some of the challenge of running a live cam business as well as some other issues raised."

In the end, this scandal will not likely erase the years of goodwill Kink has built up. The progressive alt-weekly, The San Francisco Bay Guardian said this week they're still "fans... of the work Kink has done to bring alternative sexuality into the spotlight." Even though that spotlight has revealed some blemishes as well.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

I never realized how not pregnant Beyoncé might have been until the Saturday premiere of her HBO documentary, Life Is But a Dream. Since announcing her pregnancy at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards (in August of that year), there have been naysayers, referred to with tongue in cheek as "Beyoncé birthers." There was that footage of her apparently pregnant belly folding in on itself when she made an appearance on Australian TV in the fall of 2011. Months later, Beyoncé addressed it with a pithy explanation: "It was a fabric that folded - does fabric not fold? Oh my gosh, so stupid."

Life Is But a Dream covers a...period of time before the supposed birth of Beyoncé and Jay-Z's daughter, Blue Ivy. It's hard to say exactly how long because particulars like where and when are barely telegraphed – there's not a single explanatory chyron in the entire film. Cynically, I wonder if this is a sign of co-director Beyoncé's egocentrism; she assumes that we've been following her closely enough to know what she's talking about without bothering to explain certain key facts. Or maybe she thinks we can read her mind. Or maybe she's just not that great of a memoirist.

Regardless, it makes sense that given the time examined, Beyoncé's movie would chronicle Beyoncé's pregnancy and the controversy it birthed. The problem with Life Is But a Dream's treatment of her pregnancy isn't that it protests too much – it protests too weirdly. We never see a full, clear shot of Beyoncé's pregnant, swanlike body. Instead it's presented in pieces, owing to the limitations of her Mac webcam. When her body is shown in full, it's in grainy, black and white footage in which her face is shadowed.

Why, though? If you're going to present an image of your pregnant self to prove the naysayers wrong, why do it in such an obscure way? Why bother? The footage seems to exist to be described as "beautiful." Is it just art, or more lies?

That question could apply to the whole of Life Is But a Dream, in which the notoriously tight-lipped Beyoncé consciously unveils parts of her life and, in the process, reveals nothing. On firing her father, Matthew Knowles, as her manager, she says, "It was a stressful, sad, difficult time." Gee. Imagine. On her general feelings, she says, "If I'm scared, be scared, allow it, release it, move on." On her humanity, she says, "I know that people see celebrities, and they seem like they're so perfect - they seem like their life is so great, and they have money and fame. But I'm a human being. I cry. I'm very passionate and sensitive. My feelings get hurt. I get scared and nervous like everyone else." This last quote, by the way, came from a video message she recorded for journalists attending a listening session for her I Am...Sasha Fierce album in 2008. Prefab on top of prefab.

Much like in Madonna's Truth or Dare, there is a great sense of performance in Life Is But a Dream. Beyoncé Knowles is Beyoncé Knowles. But unlike Madonna, who got off on being bad and pushing buttons, Beyoncé's aesthetic is perfection. She lives to be admired, and the supposed grittiness in Life Is But a Dream exists so that we admire her more. Look at how critical Beyoncé is of herself when she watches herself! Look at how pretty she looks naturally! (Never mind that her several made-under looks clearly required makeup.) Listen to how well she articulates herself when presented softball questions by an interviewer that she hired for a movie she is orchestrating and directing!

Again, I wonder: Why bother? Is it all for money? Is the point to promote a brand? To keep fresh in minds for her imminent upcoming album? Maybe. But if you read Life Is But a Dream as sincere expression, it becomes something far weirder, the product of an extraordinarily talented, extraordinary bland person who is never not stilted. What if this were an accurate depiction of Beyoncé's limited, surface-level capacity to express herself in daily life that reaches savant-like highs only through her art? That is a fascinating life worth capturing.

Like the black-and-white footage of her supposedly pregnant self, all of Life Is But a Dream provokes more questions than it answers. We leave knowing nothing and talking and talking and talking, essentially doing the heavy-lifting for the privileged star. "All I need is not me, because I can't do it by myself," says Beyoncé on the makings of Beyoncé. It takes a nation to fuel a machine this big.

Conservatives argue that black people should oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants, since immigrants can be expected to take low-wage jobs from black people. The WSJ's editorial page says that minorities should oppose a minimum wage hike, because it will end up costing them jobs. (They treat this as a simple economic fact, which it is not.) There's nothing like the hint of a new liberal policy to cause widespread concern for the welfare of poor minorities among Republicans.

It should go without saying that a higher minimum wage will help poor people. And it should go without saying that people who have historically been discriminated against, and who have had to fight for their own civil right in America, should be particularly predisposed to support civil rights for other members of the current underclass, like immigrants. And, of course, it should go without saying that if the sorts of people who are ideologically aligned with the National Review and the WSJ editorial page genuinely cared about improving the welfare of poor people and minorities, they would be clamoring for the government to institute measure to reduce economic and social inequality in this nation—in other words, they would not be ideologically aligned with those outlets in the first place.

(Sadly, these things do not, in fact, go without saying.)

Usually, watching Republicans trot out their own heartfelt proclamations of their commitment to civil rights and equality is just a mild comic interlude, like when the conservative white Congressman from the suburbs has to give a few awkward remarks at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. day breakfast. But when it becomes a transparently false excuse to oppose policies designed to help the very people that Republicans are purporting to care about, it becomes something more repulsive. The dead giveaway here is that while social and economic conservatives will rush to speak up against proposals like amnesty for immigrants and raising the minimum wage—ostensibly because they believe those policies would hurt the poor and marginalized people they care so much about—there is no rush at all on their part to make alternate proposals that will actually help these people. So: don't offer amnesty to immigrants, because that would take jobs away from black people, and don't raise the minimum wage, because that would make it harder for minorities to get jobs—but also, do not support a highly progressive system of taxes, and do not raise taxes on the wealthy, and do not support any type of preferential hiring or admissions for member of marginalized demographics, and do not support public health care, and in general do not support any government programs of any sort designed to mitigate the social and economic inequality that runs rampant in America.

"We are staunchly opposed to anything at all that might help you," Republicans say to the poor, "and we're here to tell you that these policies that you should clearly support will actually not help you. Trust us. Nobody knows as much about not helping you as we do."

America's biggest unions are preparing to throw their weight behind immigration reform, with an eye towards organizing a new generation of immigrant citizens. This is an example of people working together in a mutually beneficial manner. Unions need members. They can use their political influence to help pass immigration reform. People who came to America illegally can become citizens. They can organize. Their presence will make unions stronger. These stronger unions will be in a better position to actually help these new members—as well as those who are already members. The working class, of all races. These stronger unions will help support political candidates who favor measures that help working class people. Measures like immigration reform, and raising the minimum wage.

This is an example of a political plan that actually benefits poor people, and minorities, and immigrants. The Republican opposition to these measures is an example of a patronizing attempt to protect the interests of the overclass by tricking the underclass into voting against itself. All that post-election soul-searching by the "New Republican Party" is not producing very impressive results so far.

[Photo: AP]

An ordinary Valentine's Day outing ended in bloodshed for one Illinois man after his girlfriend allegedly "bit off a large portion of his tongue" when he went in for a kiss.

According to prosecutors, 51-year-old Elaine Cook of Skokie and her 47-year-old boyfriend of 10 months got into a lover's spat after returning home from a date on Valentine's Day.

Cook eventually asked the unidentified man to leave, at which point Assistant State's Attorney Eve Reilly says he put on his shoes and headed for the door.

Before leaving he made one last attempt to patch things up.

"He told her they should stop fighting and went to kiss her," Reilly said, "and she bit off a large portion of his tongue."

The victim took off toward the sink with Cook just behind him. After she removed his tongue from her mouth, Cook tossed it on the counter and her boyfriend stuffed it into a bag with ice. He then phoned 911.

Unfortunately, doctors at Evanston Hospital were unable to reattach the tongue, but it seems the man is still capable of speech.

The Chicago Tribune reports that "most of the right side" of the man's tongue "is missing."

Cook, meanwhile, was arrested and charged with aggravated domestic battery. Her bail has been set at $100,000.

[mug shot via Chicago Tribune]

Fresh off a $75,000 windfall from a winning lottery ticket, two brothers who sought to celebrate with copious amounts of meth and marijuana ended up blowing up their house instead.

Local police say one of the brothers was in the kitchen, emptying out large cans of butane lighter fluid into butane torches they planned to use as bong lighters.

"The butane vapor reached the pilot light in the furnace, and as you might expect, ka-boom," said Wichita Police spokesman Sgt. Bruce Watts.

"That took care of that celebration real fast, I guess," joked next-door neighbor Mary Jewett.

The bong-refueling brother sustained multiple second-degree burns and was hospitalized in serious but stable condition.

According to the Wichita Eagle, the 27-year-old "was wearing a lottery T-shirt during the explosion."

The other brother was arrested a short time later after admitting to possession of marijuana and methamphetamine.

[screengrab via KWCH]

"Geeks on a Plane" is one of those sponsored clusterfucks rampant in the tech industry where the rich and near-rich gather to disruptify their apps and incubate their engagement strategies over drinks. But this one is mobile: Google, PayPal, QualComm and other major firms shell out for American investors and startups to meet up around the world so they can "gain insight into local markets, demographics, [and] business models," and "meet cool people, new ventures, have fun on planes, trains, buses."

What you're not supposed to do: Publicly share your friend's stumbling-drunk penis.

Venture capital bigwig Dave McClure founded GOAP, which organizes trips three times a year, with money from a host of corporate sponsors (travelers pay their own airfare; sponsors underwrite all the "connecting"). He bills it as a sort of mega-nerdy season of Real World; the Winter 2013 trip to India officially kicks off tomorrow, when participants fly to India for a spirit quest of capital:

[We] travel by planes, trains, and automobiles to the most exciting international startup scenes with the sole mission of uniting geeks and exploring cross-border opportunities. The result: a lifelong bond with fellow travelers, a wealth of new friends and business contacts in exploding technology markets, and a stronger appreciation for the cultural and economic ties that bind us globally.

But two GOAP participants got a head-start on the bonding. Forbes contributor and Inc. 30 Under 30 entrepreneurial list-makerJesse Thomas runs JESS3, a social media advertising firm that's also a GOAP sponsor. Thomas arrived in India a few days early with his girlfriend for some time at the beach, along with his pal Matt Monahan (seen above), the CEO of AlphaBoost—one of the many, many companies that helps other companies try to sell you things on Facebook. Monahan also works as an advisor for Wildfire, a Google subsidiary, and pitches in at McClure's VC firm, 500 Startups. And JESS3 is one of AlphaBoost's clients. You'll have to imagine a Venn diagram of whose money is feeding into whose on your own. Thomas told me via email that the three "sat on the beach and laughed about life and whatnot," but it looks like the lovefest devolved quickly.

Money-lusting geek-bros love to get wasted. And when Monahan, as bros will, got drunk as a freshman at India's Surya Samudra private beach resort and stripped down, struggling to stay upright with his hands over his crotch, his pal Thomas was there with his phone to record the moment for posterity.

And because this is a social web and all, Thomas didn't have any qualms about posting a minute-long video of Monahan's nude romp on Facebook and Twitter ("bahahahahahahahaha #goap"). Highlights include Monahan moaning "turn it off," Thomas shouting "You've got a small-ass dick, yo," and Thomas' horrified girlfriend sitting in the middle of it all.

Thomas still wasn't satisfied, and proceeded to publicly upload pictures of Monahan's naked implosion on Instagram and Twitter—from the official JESS3 company accounts. Feedback from Thomas' tens of thousands of followers and subscribers were generally of the Wow, you're a real asshole variety, and Monahan's partner at AlphaBooks shot over an incensed Facebook message: "We're trying to run a business here." Thomas then defiantly posted that message on Instagram. So much sharing.

Monahan admitted to me that the "video does not reflect well, was out of context, and Jesse has deleted it. He thought it was funny at the time but realized that late nights as friends have don't have a place in the public stream." The money behind the money also realizes the weekend R&R doesn't reflect well: a 500 Startups rep told me the drunk dev and his shamer "mistakenly used the #goap hashtag." Drunk to the point of using the wrong hashtag is too drunk. We'll follow #goap and see if any other entrepreneurial dicks surface in Mumbai.

Update: In a case of just really cosmic timing, Monahan is in the process of trying to sell his company right now.

An eyewitness says a man who tried to break out of his own bedroom using a rope made of bed sheets is lucky to be alive, having survived a harrowing seven-story drop onto a pile of snow.

Yekaterina Horoshko, who caught the entire incident on camera, told the local press that she spotted the 35-year-old man climbing out of his 8th floor apartment in the Estonian capital of Tallinn using a makeshift rope made from bed sheets that he tied together, Hollywood jailbreak-style.

"He succeeded climbing one story down, but the sheet didn't withstand the weight at the seventh story," Horoshko told Postimees.

According to Horoshko the man was able to walk away from the fall thanks to the large amount of snow that had accumulated on the ground beneath him.

A local police spokesman later confirmed the details of the incident, adding that the man was apparently attempting to flee his apartment after having been locked in the bedroom by his possessive wife.

"He said his wife locked him up," Officer Ilmar Kahro is quoted as saying. "Desiring to go meet friends, he decided to get out using a rope he made out of bed sheets. The rope proved too weak, landing the man in the house side bushes."

There is no word on the man's present condition, but the police official said he was able to enter the ambulance on his own after being helped on his feet by paramedics.

[H/T: Daily Picks and Flicks, photos via Facebook]