Julian Assange is the founder of Wikileaks. A wanted man, he recently began his third year living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. He joins us now to answer your questions about his new book, When Google Met Wikileaks.

Under Assange's leadership, Wikileaks released a stream of leaked classified material that gave an unprecedented look at the conduct of the U.S. government during the height of the "war on terror." Currently, he remains in legal limbo in the embassy, while his lawyers are appealing a Swedish court ruling that calls on him to be questioned by Swedish police over allegations of sexual assault in 2010.

The new book focuses on a 2011 meeting between Assange and Google chairman Eric Schmidt, and expands on the philosophical differences that arose over the future of the internet and society. Quoth the publisher: "For several hours the besieged leader of the world's most famous insurgent publishing organization and the billionaire head of the world's largest information empire locked horns. The two men debated the political problems faced by society, and the technological solutions engendered by the global network—from the Arab Spring to Bitcoin. They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with US foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to American companies and markets. These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet's future that has only gathered force subsequently."

Julian Assange will answer your questions in the discussion section below beginning at noon Eastern time. Ask your questions now.

[Photo via AP. You can purchase Assange's book here.]

Clemente, a gravedigger in Guardamar del Segura, was making room in a grave for the body of woman to buried alongside her husband, when he apparently agreed—at the behest of the woman's niece—to pose for a photo with the 23-year-old corpse and his alleged nephew by marriage. Haha?

According to the Local, after snapping the photo, the niece apparently messaged the photo to another family member on WhatsApp, where it quickly made the rounds on social media. The photo eventually made its way to local authorities, who recognized the blue polo shirt Clemente is wearing in the photo, which bears the town's coat of arms. He has since been suspended.

"It was silliness with no justification whatsoever and we will have to take a decision," a spokesperson told the Local.

[Image via Twitter]

When Rene Lima-Marin was 20 years old, he committed two gunpoint robberies that got him sentenced to 98 years in prison. In 2008, he was released on parole because of a clerical mistake, and for the next six years, he lived as a free man with his wife and children. Now, he's being sent back to jail.

Lima-Marin, who has not reoffended in his time since leaving prison, appealed the order to finish his sentence last week, alleging that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, the Associated Press reports:

He did not reoffend and lived openly in the same community where he committed the crimes, his attorney, Patrick Megaro, noted in the filing to the Colorado Court of Appeals.

"Lima-Marin functioned as a member of society, no different than his neighbors, entirely unaware that Colorado would someday rip him from his home and family and upend a life he took years to build," Megaro wrote.

The Arapahoe County district attorney's office claims that Lima-Marin knew he was released in error and should have brought the mistake to the authorities' attention. Megaro, his attorney, argued that such an interpretation "ignores reality," which, considering the circumstances, sounds about right:

"To conclude (Lima-Marin) should have insisted that he was being wrongfully released from prison ignores reality," Megaro argued in the appeal. "No rational individual would question the motives or correctness of his jailers and insist that they remain in prison for the rest of their life."

"By putting me back in prison, you're also sentencing three people who have absolutely nothing to do with this," Lima-Marin told the AP. "I don't want them to be without a father."

Saturday Night Live has finalized a lot of cast changes in the last week, but there's some good news for at least one person: this season's newest (in fact, the only new) Featured Player, Deadline reports, is one 20-year-old Pete Davidson, formerly of MTV2's youthful improv series Wild 'N Out and Guy Code. Pete is known for his Staten Island accent, for being adorable, and for wisdom beyond his years, which number twenty.

You'll get to meet Pete when the show's 40th season—Saturday Night Live being exactly twice as old as Pete Davidson—debuts September 27, but until then here are three of his most fiercely comedic clips:

Most Embarrassing Career Moment (Slash Childhood Moment):

Three Years Ago (When Pete Was 17):

Looking Sort of Broken & Fucked Up Having Dropped Out of College:

Pete joins last year's sexiest (and in fact, only returning) Featured Players Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett and Sasheer Zamata. The remainder of 2013's freshmen class have returned to the sea.

[Image via Comedy Central]

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

According to a report from the International Organization for Migration, 500 migrant workers are feared dead after their boat was rammed and sank off the Malta coast last week. The workers were Syrian, Palestinian, and Egyptian nationals "seeking a better life in Europe."

The Associated Press reports that the boat was rammed by human traffickers in another vessel. There are only nine known survivors. Two of them spoke to the AP, explaining that there was "a violent confrontation between the migrants and the traffickers."

The IOM notes that this tragic incident brings the toll close to 3,000 for migrants who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean sea this year.

[2013 photo of migrants off the Malta coast via AP]

A four-year-old girl in Norway reportedly sleepwalked more than three miles Sunday night after dreaming her house was on fire. The girl, who was being watched by her aunt while her mother was on vacation, wasn't discovered until 6:30 Monday morning, wearing only her underwear and a pair of boots.

From the BBC:

The girl apparently remembers dreaming that the house was on fire, putting on her boots and unlocking the front door, her aunt says. She probably went first to a nearby fish factory and then walked through an 800m (2,600ft) tunnel to get to Honningsvag. "She must've been out for several hours," the aunt says. "And in this weather, it's been really cold and miserable. The house was rumbling in the night, there's been such a strong wind."

The child's aunt was shocked to hear from police that morning, expecting that the little adventurer had been sound asleep in her bed.

[Image via Wikipedia]

Want to hate Robin Thicke even more than you already do? OK, here you go: The Hollywood Reporter got its hands on transcripts of his and Pharrell Williams from their preemptive lawsuit against Marvin Gaye's children, who threatened to sue over the sonic similarities between Thicke and Williams "Blurred Lines" and Gaye's "Got To Give It Up." In his testimony, Thicke admits that he was "high on Vicodin and alcohol" during the creation of the song, and that he received undue credit (he's listed ahead of Williams as a songwriter).

From the Hollywood Reporter's piece:

The singer says under oath that after writing and producing six albums himself, "I was jealous and I wanted some of the credit... I tried to take credit for it later because (Williams) wrote the whole thing pretty much by himself and I was envious of that."

Thicke soon gets more specific:

"Q: Were you present during the creation of 'Blurred Lines'?

Thicke: I was present. Obviously, I sang it. I had to be there.

Q: When the rhythm track was being created, were you there with Pharrell?

Thicke: To be honest, that's the only part where — I was high on vicodin and alcohol when I showed up at the studio. So my recollection is when we made the song, I thought I wanted — I — I wanted to be more involved than I actually was by the time, nine months later, it became a huge hit and I wanted credit. So I started kind of convincing myself that I was a little more part of it than I was and I — because I didn't want him — I wanted some credit for this big hit. But the reality is, is that Pharrell had the beat and he wrote almost every single part of the song."

Thicke says he was just "lucky enough to be in the room" when Williams wrote the song.

Thicke previously characterized the song's origin story to GQ like this:

Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye's 'Got to Give It Up.' I was like, 'Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove.' Then he started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about a half hour and recorded it.

As to why Williams let Thicke take the credit, it's just business as usual according to his testimony:

"This is what happens every day in our industry," said Williams during his own deposition. "You know, people are made to look like they have much more authorship in the situation than they actually do. So that's where the embellishment comes in."

I always wonder, too, just how much of a song was actually written by the superstar who's credited as its writer. Now we know.

There are tons of amazing tidbits from the transcripts. Thicke says he "didn't do a sober interview" in 2013. When asked if Gaye was an influence, Williams replied, "He's an Aries. I respect him."

The case is set to go to trial in February 2015. Say the Gayes:

Thicke, for his part, now claims he made all of his statements while drunk or on drugs, none of them true, and he mentioned Marvin Gaye only to sell records. He also actually testified that he is not an honest person. This complete contempt for the judicial system, and their obligations to tell the truth, can best be summed up by Thicke's ultimate admission, while under oath, that he "[does not] give a fuck" about this litigation.

[ Image via Getty]

The Minnesota Vikings just released a statement regarding Adrian Peterson's status with the team. After being deactivated for the team's Week 2 game following his indictment on child injury charges, Peterson will be back practicing with the team this week and in line to play on Sunday.

Here's the full statement from the Vikings:

Today's decision was made after significant thought, discussion and consideration. As evidenced by our decision to deactivate Adrian from yesterday's game, this is clearly a very important issue. On Friday, we felt it was in the best interests of the organization to step back, evaluate the situation, and not rush to judgment given the seriousness of this matter. At that time, we made the decision that we felt was best for the Vikings and all parties involved.

To be clear, we take very seriously any matter that involves the welfare of a child. At this time, however, we believe this is a matter of due process and we should allow the legal system to proceed so we can come to the most effective conclusions and then determine the appropriate course of action. This is a difficult path to navigate, and our focus is on doing the right thing. Currently we believe we are at a juncture where the most appropriate next step is to allow the judicial process to move forward.

We will continue to monitor the situation closely and support Adrian's fulfillment of his legal responsibilities throughout this process.

The Vikings play the Saints on the road on Sunday.

[Vikings]

Attention Ken Jeong and Ken Jeong fans! There is life after Community, of a sort.

Hollywood Reporter has announced a new MTV comedy pilot called Ken Jeong Made Me Do It. Created and written by (the clearly pseudonymous) Andy St. Clair and Paul O'Toole, the show follows a kid in his early twenties who gets life advice from Ken Jeong, the actor (played by Ken Jeong, an actor).

Does this sound not-horrible to you, somehow? Listen, I have no problem with sweet licensed physician and former violinist Ken Jeong—despite his involvement with the similarly one-note Community, the problems of which Jeong and Jim Rash are merely emblematic—and I do think that it's kind of harsh to judge a person for doing the job they pay you for (even if that job is embarrassing and weirdly unreconstructed for taking place in 2014, like it does).

But then it's like, other movies in which Ken Jeong has played a fictionalized version of usually the same person include Pineapple Express, Role Models, The Hangover, the very excellent All About Steve, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son in which he played a mailman, Zookeeper, The Hangover Part II, "Jerry Wang" in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and the Punch Teacher in The Muppets movie. In 2013, Jeong was in Pain & Gain (as "Jonny Wu"), The Hangover Part III, five cartoon movies, and is currently filming Ride Along 2.

So I guess if you look at it that way, this is happening right on schedule. It's like that old song: "What would you do if your son was at home, crying all alone on the bedroom floor because he's hungry, and the only way to feed him is to play yourself in a TV pilot called Ken Jeong Made Me Do It?" And the answer is, of course, you have to go for it:

Hangover VI? Done. Reprise the inspired Michael Bay character "Jerry Wang" in another Transformers movie? Don't have to ask me twice! Follow Dan Harmon to Yahoo!, which is basically a nonsense phrase that will nevertheless end in blood? You betcha. God forbid this well dries up and you have to go back to being a dumb old doctor.

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

Wagons are being circled, tizzies are being thrown and children are being thought of in Oklahoma City, as the state's religious leaders are urging the faithful to pray like they've never prayed before in preparation for the most eagerly-anticipated religious event in the history of the city—one which the Catholic Diocese of Oklahoma claims could engulf the city with satanic evil via dry ice and a bucket of fake piss.

The Oklahoman reports that the black mass set for September 21 at the Oklahoma City Civic Center's City Space Theater has officially been sold-out, with all 88 seats snapped up by Satanists or the satanic-curious.

Event organizer Adam Daniels (aka "The Dark Lord"), the leader of the satanic group Dakhma of Angra Mainyu Syndicate, says that the event has been sold out for about a week and a half.

"I'm very glad that we get the opportunity to share with people what Satanism really is and not Hollywood portrays it to be," Daniels told the Oklahoman. "They like to say Satanists get together and sacrifice animals and people, and that's not what we do."

The venue—conveniently located in the basement of the Civic Center—officially seats 92 people, but officials say that Daniels kept four tickets to hand out himself.

(Those unfortunate souls with a Mephistophelian bent but without a ticket to the big to-do can and should stick around Oklahoma City another week for a special presentation of "The Music Man in Concert" instead. Great tickets are still available!)

Naturally enough, the idea of a black mass has not set well with Oklahoma's large Catholic community—who have been working curiously hard since the previously hyper-obscure event was announced to make sure that virtually everyone in the world is aware of the horror about set to be sprung on the previously quiet and virtuous streets of Oklahoma City.

The Rev. Don Wolf of St. Eugene Catholic Church says that the event—a mockery of Catholic Communion that traditionally involves peeing and naked ladies, but which Daniels has said will be toned-down to comply with local decency laws—could evoke the actual Devil himself into making an appearance.

"To engage in this is to open the window up to the presence of forces that are not to be trifled with," Wolf told the Oklahoman.

Oklahoma Diocese Archbishop Paul Coakley has scheduled a prayer service and procession for the afternoon of the 21st, just prior to the black mass.

Coakley has also asked his parishes to conclude each Mass with a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel (who, if you remember your Sunday School lessons, defeated Satan and flung him back to Earth in the Book of Revelations) through September 29th—or the day The Music Man opens in Oklahoma City, which should be great musical fun for the whole family assuming the Civic Center isn't engulfed by perdition's flames.

Oklahoma's Republican Governor Mary Fallin even stepped into the argument—albeit while condemning the wrong satanic organization.

In August, Fallin got her satanic groups mixed up and said she was outraged that "a group of New York City 'satanists' would travel all the way to Oklahoma to peddle their filth here."

The Satanic Temple of New York City demanded an apology from Fallin, noting that they aren't involved in any way with the Oklahoma black mass. The group has been involved in Oklahoma politics in other ways, though—having worked to get a remarkable monument to Satan erected in the Oklahoma statehouse.

It's worth noting that the previous Daniels-organized black mass event booked at the theater—and which was virtually ignored by the Catholic Church—drew the sum total of zero attendees, city officials have said.

Daniels—a convicted sex offender and former prison guard whose events have been essentially disavowed by other satanic groups across the nation—says that there will be dimmed lights, electric candles, dry ice instead of incense and vinegar instead of urine to comply with public safety and decency laws.

It may sound like the makings of either a bad stand-up prop comic act or perhaps a low-budget pro wrestling intro, but Daniels assures everyone that a blasphemous time will still be had by all.

"As far as the script, the amount of blasphemy and the amount of sacrilege will remain the same," told the Oklahoman, although one thing it won't include is an actual consecrated Eucharistic host after the Diocese of Oklahoma filed a lawsuit claiming that it was stolen.

A consecrated Eucharistic host is essentially a cracker that Catholics believe turns into to the actual body of Christ in your mouth. According to the ever-vigilant Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, the evil Okies planned to corrupt the holy cracker with sexual fluids.

Under church canon law, a consecrated Eucharistic host is considered a legal possession of the church, and if any unauthorized person has possession of one it's considered to be stolen property.

Daniels denied the host was stolen, claiming that it lawfully obtained from a actual Catholic priest in a foreign country—but in August eventually he backed down and returned it to the Diocese.

Daniels, incidentally, says that his planned desecration of the host was a bit more subtle than Donohue's imagined jizz party, and mostly just involves yelling and smashing.

"We would proceed to do the satanic consecration by forcing Jesus into the bread. At that point there will be things yelled at the bread, talking about how it's a worthless chamberlain who doesn't do its job and all it does is sleep, doesn't answer any prayers and allows for its own people to be hurt, and because of it it has killed millions of our brethren, meaning pagans and Satanists alike throughout the centuries. At that point it will be dashed to the floor, and the deacon and subdeacon will be smashing it and stomping on it."

The event—which, just to restate, drew zero attendees until the Diocese of Oklahoma curiously decided to publicize it—has also sparked a petition drive to try and convince the city to cancel the event.

According to the Catholic News Agency, the petition has garnered some 86,000 signatures from people calling on the city to only allow happier events at their public facilities.

"We should be having more positive things going on on public property and not such negative things," attorney Michael W. Caspino, who led the fight to have the allegedly stolen cracker returned to the Diocese, told CNA.

Officials with the Civic Center—which charged the Dakhma of Angra Mainyu $420 for five hours use of the facility—have said that they cannot legally cancel the event, noting that they can't deny use of the facility to any group based solely on their content.

Image via YouTube

On Saturday, the eighth-ranked LSU Tigers beat the Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks 31-0 in a drama-free home game. Far more exciting than that shutout was the frat-boy showdown that one attendee documented outside.

The video above, posted to Reddit with the title "When White People Fight" and spotted by BroBible, shows a gaggle of Vineyard Vines customers scuffling with a dude in a purple t-shirt. At the front of the frame, our cameraman looks on, bemusedly raising his cigarette, the human personification of "lol smdh."

The white-shirted guys, a Redditor named Fanntastic points out, are probably fraternity pledges:

This is on the parade grounds at LSU at a tailgate before the ULM game this weekend. The parade grounds are the spot where all the fraternities set up their tailgates and it appears one house's pledges (the kids dressed nicely) had a problem with someone.

I don't know how drunk or naive the guy in purple was to think he could pick a fight with one pledge in front of all his brothers and not expect it to turn out that way...

This looks to be facing toward memorial tower so my guess would be Pi Kapp, Pike, or Phi Psi maybe?

Good luck to all those fine, upstanding fraternity gentlemen. I hope they get in.

Today's genre books are full of future dystopias, which only have one weakness: teenagers. And everybody knows that most dystopias are kind of contrived. But here are 10 lessons from real-life rebellions against repressive regimes, that we wish the creators of fictional dystopias would pay attention to.

10. The Enemy of Your Enemy Is Not Your Friend

Politics makes strange bedfellows. It even makes some unacknowledged bedfellows. Any repressive government — any government at all, for that matter — will prohibit something. It could be hard drugs, or it could be booze, or it could be untaxed salt, or it could be books. It has been all of those things, at one time or another. And even though smugglers who deal in that contraband may seem to oppose their government, they're actually part of a stable system. Once a book isn't banned, there's no money in printing it abroad and getting it across the border. When salt isn't taxed, there's no money in bringing it from a low tax area to a high tax area and selling it on the black market.

So that merry band of smugglers isn't always going to be on your heroes' side. At the most, they could be on the heroes' side when the heroes are rebels, distracting government forces and making things easier for the outlaws. When the heroes are winning, and have every chance of dissolving the outlaws' main source of income, things are going to change.

9. The Top Guy Isn't Always the Problem

The evil dictator is great for aesthetics and narrative. The Death Star explodes, the Emperor goes toppling down a chasm, and the rebellion triumphs. There's nothing wrong with the sort of mythic story in which defeating one evil dictator frees a people. But the top guy isn't always the problem. Louis XVI, known today as the husband of Marie Antoinette but known in the 1700s as the king of France, was not a great ruler, but he did have some good ideas. At the very least, his ministers had the good idea that the French people might feel a bit more kindly towards him if he stopped taxing the peasants so much and started taxing the nobility a little. When he tried putting the policy into effect, the nobility blocked him at every turn.

There were, and are, plenty of dictators who brutally check every attempt at reform. There have also been kings who supported the cause of justice and attempted reform, only to be stopped by a large group of people who had enough power and wealth to topple the monarchy more quickly than peasants could. A lot of fight-the-power books ignore this. It's so much easier to write a narrative in which the heroes defeat the Final Boss and then "win." Trying to subdue a huge class of people, while sorting out byzantine tax law, is tough to describe in prose. Also, as much as popular culture likes nonspecific rebellion, genuine calls for class warfare tend to make a lot of readers irate.

8. Sometimes Making Concessions Leads To Rebellion

While we're on the subject of Louis XVI and the French Revolution, at one point during the process, it became obvious to everyone that something had to be done to calm the people down. There was a policy in place to do just that. The Estates General was an ancient body, comprising the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. It hadn't been called - or at least the commoners part of it hadn't been called — since the 1600s. When the population was told they would get a voice in government, there was general rejoicing. There were also demands. Some of those demands were met. When the "third estate" cried out for more representation, their ranks were doubled.

Soon it became clear that some of their demands weren't going to be met. No matter how many members were part of an estate, each of the estates counted as one vote. As the clergy and the nobility were against the commoners, the commoners had little more power than they'd had before. They did, however, have the power to organize and the power to freely express their views. People from all over the realm started seriously thinking of what they wanted out of their government and communicating it to each other. That alone set a framework for the Revolution.

There's plenty of talk, in modern dystopian fiction, about how any crack in a dictatorship's absolute control will precipitate disaster. And very little of it feels real. Authors are concerned with making dictators frightening, rather than frightened. Remember that sometimes a "reasonable response" is not actually a reasonable response. Dictators are morally wrong — but they might be, practically speaking, right not to compromise.

7. Two Downtrodden Groups Will Usually Be Fighting Each Other

The American Civil War is now called a rebellion, and some even claim that their ancestors were "rebels." Today, rebellion is a cool concept. At the time, "rebel" was an insult. Citizens of the Confederacy saw themselves as a sovereign nation, and believed they were conducting a revolution, much like the American Revolution. For the first two years, both the North and the South rode high on patriotism. By the third year, after a horrifying death toll, people weren't so eager to volunteer.

Both the Union and the Confederacy passed conscription acts. Exceptions to both conscription acts were contingent upon wealth. Those on the Union side could pay to keep from joining the army. Confederate men were excused as long as they owned a certain number of slaves. Wealth was, then as now, tied to political power, meaning that the wealthy people had steered the course to war in the first place. The wealthy also had a say in the parameters of the conscription acts. The war itself would yield unequal benefits to the rich and the poor. For the Union, holding the United States together most directly benefited the powerful and wealthy, whose dealings crossed state lines and depended on the integrity of the nation. The Confederacy was formed to ensure the continuation of slavery (Yes. Yes it was.), and only the wealthy could own many slaves. As the saying at the time goes, the Civil War was "a rich man's war but a poor man's fight."

Most dystopian fiction has their heroic rebels and revolutionaries battling robots, or brainless clones, or elite fighting forces made up of the privileged. But a lot of wars consist of their respective sides poorest, most powerless, and most downtrodden populations being forced to kill each other. A lot of heroes will be fighting people as miserable and unwilling as they are.

6. Never Neglect the Practicalities

Standing up for the freedom to express oneself, or the desire to resist constant surveillance, or the cessation of a grievous abuse of human rights, is important. Having something to eat is also important. Women rioting for bread got the ball rolling on both the French and the Russian revolutions. During the French revolution, women marching to Versailles forced the king and the royal family to semi-imprisonment in Paris. The second bread riot snowballed into an insurrection which forced the Tsar to abdicate. Over a thousand miles and a hundred years apart, people needed the same thing. Science fiction novels tend to focus on ideals and advanced techonology because authors want to draw parallels with the problems they see in their own societies. Surveillance and freedom of expression and privacy are hotter topics than bread. Maybe they shouldn't be.

5. New Regimes Come With Crazy Ideology

In order to work, a revolution has to bind together a large group of people. Although they may all share the same core ideals, they will all interpret those ideals in different ways. This is why new regimes don't just come with a new way of distributing wealth or running the government. They come with a whole host of ideas that must have seemed like a good idea to some lunatic and his lunatic buddies. In some cases, these ideas are confusing but funny, like when the new citizens of France decided to change to metric time, or to hire a poet to name each day of the year after concepts. They ended up with days like, "fog," "pasture," or "germination."

Sometimes these radicalization plans are horrific, like China's Great Leap Forward. The program was meant to modernize the nation, but was planned and executed by non-experts. As a result the modernization plans included asking farmers and urban neighborhoods to make steel in "backyard furnaces," build aqueducts with no training, and kill every sparrow. The resulting insect plague and irrigation disaster caused a food shortage that resulted in between 18 and 45 million deaths.

Whatever new group of ragtag rebels inhabit your book, they will come to power with more than just a plan to pass out more money and change the drapes. They're trying to remake the world, and they'll have a lot of ways they want to do that. Some of them will be funny. Some will be tragic. Some will just be strange.

4. Revolutions Take Place on a World Stage

When Americans rebelled against Britain, they didn't do it alone. The French enacted devastatingly effective naval warfare against the British, committing 32,000 sailors to the cause. They also contributed soldiers, supplies, and money. Which made it awkward when France underwent its own revolution, and both the royalists and the republicans expected the United States to be on their side. France's revolution, and the excesses of the Terror, caused Catherine the Great of Russia to reject not just French political overtures but the concepts of the French Enlightenment, becoming more of a conservative despot in her own country. And America, of course, has become infamous in the modern era for either suppressing or instigating revolutions in East Asia and South America.

When one of the most repressive and extreme dictatorships in a world is about to topple, or an intergalactic empire hangs in the balance, consider what this means to the world outside of that dictatorship. Does no foreign government have cause to arm the rebels? Does no corporation have a stake in continuing the status quo? Is no bank anxious about the idea that they'll be left holding a lot of cash in the currency of a country that no longer exists?

3. Violent Conflicts Keep Cropping Up From Within

Every revolution starts out by employing the "we are all brothers and sisters" ideology to get people on board. It's not that simple. Revolutions include earnest student intellectuals, middle class dabblers, workers, the desperately poor, those persecuted for religion or ethnicity, and, of course, women. Many of these groups never have encountered each other before and will have seriously differing points of view. Of course they're going to fight. And they'll continue fighting as long as the political situation keeps changing. This effects not just them, but everyone around them. As one group rises and falls in power, half a nation can rise and fall with them.

This can result in far more bloodshed than the original revolution. Wenguang Huang describes in his book, The Little Red Guard, his life in Communist China in the 1970s. His father would go to work, every day, at a factory where people from different factions would literally commandeer different buildings and shoot at each other. As a student, Huang laughs at his father's concern when his father begs him not to get political and make waves. Different groups have disagreements, but reprisals don't happen anymore, Huang explains. Except, as soon as the internal balance of power shifts again, he learns that they do.

2. Fear Alone Can Precipitate the Explosion

It doesn't always matter what the rebels or the establishment do. Sometimes it only matters what one thinks the other is going to do. And it's not always the establishment that strikes first. The French revolution was exported from Paris to the provinces because peasants, coming off a bad harvest and looking forward to a good one, were worried that their local nobility would sabotage their food supply in retaliation for the goings-on in Paris. Terrified, they took to the country houses, demanding food, cash, and rights. They took the Revolution nation-wide not because any particular event sparked retaliation, but because they feared it soon would.

1. Afterwards There Will Be Mythology for the Losing Side

There are very few regimes so terrible that they can't be romanticized. This is especially true after they have been defeated. It's easy to be sentimental about something when nobody has to deal with it anymore. Sometimes regimes can even come back. There is a British monarchy today because, after executing the British king and establishing his own supremacy, Oliver Cromwell died and left management of the land to his ineffectual son. A royal family began looking pretty good.

And if a whole family can't be deified, perhaps one member of it can. The myth of the young Anastasia surviving the deaths of her royal family lingered for decades - and spawned multiple impostors and multiple movies so people could ooh and ah over the lost world of Russian royalty.

Even if there's no single person to rally around, there can be a "cause." The idea that the Civil War was fought over "states rights" and not slavery resulted from a sort of PR campaign that began only fifteen years after the end of the war. Aware that they were on the wrong side of history, advocates explained that it was never about subjugating people, but about interpretations of the Constitution. And about hoop skirts and languidly sipping a mint julep on the veranda.

If a dystopian story ends with triumphant dancing in the streets as the statues topple, the lingering ghost of the past isn't going to be an issue. But if a story continues past the first day of victory, someone is going to be pining for the opulence, the elegance, the wildness, or perhaps just the supposed ideals of the horrifying regime that the band of rebels desperately thought to topple.

[Via The Civil War's Common Soldier, Liar Temptress Soldier Spy, The Great Famine, The Franco-American Alliance, The Little Red Guard.]

In response to hedge fund Starboard Value's scathing 300-page slideshow about everything from the size of the carb kingdom's asparagus to the lack of salted water for their pasta, Olive Garden released a relatively concise report of their own. In 24 pages, the restaurant basically says, "Hey, man, we're in the business of providing Italian generosity, capisce? You pickin' up what we're puttin' down?"

The unlimited breadsticks, which Olive Garden has become inextricably linked to like a brick tied to a note that says "Hey, vaffanculo, Starboard Value," thrown through the window of a certain hedge fund, Olive Garden says it isn't so sure the criticisms are warranted, making sure to note that their "salad and breadsticks have been an icon of brand equity since 1982." Starboard Value had declared Olive Garden's breadstick distribution lacking in control.

Via the AP:

Darden's 24-page response doesn't specifically address each of Starboard's criticisms, but states that the company is already implementing a variety of strategies to improve Olive Garden's performance. The company says it has introduced new menu items to underscore value, for instance, and is testing new ordering technologies using table-top tablets.

While Olive "Madison Square" Garden is attempting to lure in carbophiles with locked-in promotions and enough breadsticks to roof a municipal building, Starboard Value's critiques still stand. But are unlimited breadsticks a sign of Olive "Secret" Garden's Italian heritage or are they the sign of the inevitable decline of a once-great culinary destination full of class, prestige, and esteem?

[Image via AP]

If you're a weather geek and have a few bucks to burn, there are quite a few excellent weather radar programs available for download. Trying to judge which one is the best can be tough, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Let's take a look at the best (and the worst) weather radar programs.

The Best: GRLevel2 Analyst

GRLevel2 Analyst (or GR2A) is a program produced by Gibson Ridge, and it is the cream of the crop when it comes to weather radar programs. The program is so powerful that even the National Weather Service uses it as a supplement to their own suite of software.

The software is what I use to post radar images here on The Vane, and GR2A is just as awesome as it is powerful.

Cost:

A $250 one-time fee.

Features:

The biggest feature that comes with GR2A is its ability to display super-resolution Level II radar data, which is a resolution four times higher than Level III data (which is what you commonly see).

GR2A also features a cross-section tool that lets you slice features in half and view their internal workings. This is great for supercells and other storms of interest.

The coolest feature in the program is the volume explorer, which takes into account all 13-15 radar sweeps and extrapolates the precipitation down between the layers. The result is a three-dimensional look at the storm, and the product is often extremely interesting (and useful in a forecast setting).

The powerful features included in GR2A, along with its Landsat backgrounds and extreme level of customization, makes this program the best of the best. It's a bit pricey at $250, but it's well worth it.

GRLevel3

GRLevel3 is GR2A's less expensive and less powerful twin. The program uses Level III radar data, which has a much lower resolution than Level II data but comes with a few more products.

Cost:

A $79.95 one-time fee.

Features:

In addition to being able to see NEXRAD storm attributes (including storm tracks), users can also view rainfall estimates (in one-hour, three-hour, and storm total increments), composite reflectivity (which combines all radar sweeps into one image), as well as low-resolution dual-polarization data.

To help you visualize the different in resolution between Level II and Level III radar data, take a look at the images I used at the top of the GR2A and GRLevel3 sections. They're of the same storm in Nebraska earlier this week. Here's another example using a shield of rain over western Iowa:

Smoothing is generally frowned upon by purist weather geeks, but it's necessary in GRLevel3 in order to look past the pixelated precipitation.

Overall, the Gibson Ridge programs are the most powerful on the market, and if you're willing to drop a chunk of change for GR2a or the cost of a new video game (plus a pizza) on GRLevel3, your inner weather geek will be more than satisfied.

StormLab

While it's the most popular, Gibson Ridge certainly doesn't have a monopoly on weather radar programs. Another popular piece of software weather enthusiasts use is called StormLab. Out of all of the programs on this list, StormLab is likely the closest and most powerful behind the Gibson Ridge products.

Cost:

A one-time fee of $100 for Standard and $179.95 for Supercharged. However, as of this post, both versions were on sale with Standard going for $75 and Supercharged for $130.

Features:

StormLab Standard is similar to GRLevel3, featuring Level III radar data and some barebones tools to track precipitation. The cool thing about this program is that it comes with audio alerts to warn users when the a storm gains certain attributes (hail or rotation, for example). The program also features an "auto-archive" feature, which their site claims to save radar imagery to your computer when you're away.

StormLab Supercharged is similar to GR2A, using super-resolution Level II data to give users a better look at storms than the cheaper version. While you can't take a vertical cross-section or create a 3D rendering of storms, the Supercharged version comes with a "pathcast" much like you would see on the local news. The pathcast—the cone and blue box shown in the snapshot at the top of this section—allows you to use the storm's motion and speed to determine at what time that part of the storm will reach cities in the cone.

Although it's a bit pricier than it's worth, StormLab is a pretty good program for people looking for solid radar software without all of the fancy analysis tools that Gibson Ridge provides.

WeatherStudio

WeatherStudio is a neat little program that uses lower-resolution Level III data in conjunction with satellite and model data imagery in order to provide users with a complete analysis tool rather than just a look at radar data.

Cost:

A $79.99 one-time fee for personal users; $249.99 one-time fee for commercial users.

Features:

In addition to the radar, this program allows users to add model imagery from the NAM (North American Model) and GFS (American global model), as well as forecast data from the National Weather Service, Storm Prediction Center, and National Hurricane Center.

In other words, the program is flush with data. It's data overload, almost. The only problem I had with the program is that it ran really rough on my (somewhat powerful) computer once I loaded the radar with model data. I hate to keep comparing other software to Gibson Ridge products, but WeatherStudio is very, very similar to GREarth for those who are familiar with it.

RadarLab HD

RadarLab HD is a barebones subscription service provided by WeatherTAP that lets users access radar imagery through the company's website rather than downloading software onto your computer.

Cost:

$7.99 per month or $83.95 per year.

Features:

While RadarLab HD isn't fancy, it does show Level II radar data with accompanying map overlays. Overlays include severe weather watches, warnings, lightning data, and several other features that enhance the radar and maps with additional information. It's not the best—the website is pretty laggy—but it might be ideal for users who want to spend $21 on a slight radar upgrade for just the springtime severe weather season without having to commit to a hefty one-time software purchase.

Weather Defender

I saved Weather Defender for the end because it's my least favorite of all of the reputable radar programs. This piece of software is largely aimed at corporate users who need to keep tabs on storms for stuff like outdoor events or shipping—their website proudly boasts that Kellogg's uses Weather Defender (and thinks it's grrrrrrrreat!).

Cost:

They make it extremely hard to find a price on their site — it's virtually nonexistent unless you commit to downloading it and jumping through hoops. According to CNET, the program costs $21.95, but it doesn't specify if that's a one-time fee or a recurring monthly or yearly subscription.

Features:

Warning and watch polygons, Level III radar data, lightning plots.

Bonus: RadarScope

RadarScope is an excellent program for users of Apple products (computers, phones, and tables) as well as folks who have phones that run Android. It's an app that provides smooth, useful Level II radar data.

Cost:

$9.99 one-time fee on both iTunes and Google Play

Features:

Since RadarScope is an app, it doesn't have bells and whistles, but it's powerful and useful for any severe weather situation. The app comes with Level II radar data and warning data from the National Weather Service, and users can use their AllisonHouse subscriptions for extra addons (such as lightning data).

[Top image of a NOAA Doppler radar site in central Illinois via Dan on Flickr, screenshots via their respective programs]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

Another week, another ultimately meaningless free speech controversy on an American college campus. Should Ayaan Hirsi Ali be allowed to speak at Yale? If only there were some simple way of settling these nonstop arguments.

Colleges invite prominent people to give speeches. These prominent people are too conservative, or too liberal, or too foreign, or too fascist, or too counterrevolutionary for some student faction or other. Students protest. They petition. They wave signs and send letters and yell and maybe occupy a building. The college withdraws its invitation to the speaker under pressure. The speaker is mad. The students are triumphant, but mad. The college is cowed, and looks stupid, as well as cowardly. Then all of America's most boring pundits wring their hands over tolerance and diversity and The Kids These Days. Nobody wins in this process: not the schools, not the students, not the grownups who wanted to talk to the students, and certainly not the average reader of the average pundit, who is forced to listen to moralist pontificating that is undoubtedly more unbearable than any fascist imperialist political idea that the worst campus speaker could ever put forward.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali says mean things about Islam sometimes. She's already been invited and disinvited as Brandeis University's commencement speaker this year. Now she has been invited to speak at Yale. Oh no! Protests! Upsetness! Much hand-wringing! Whatever shall be done? Inside Higher Ed quotes a statement from Yale's Muslim Student Association:

"We sympathize with the unfortunate circumstances that Ms. Hirsi Ali faced in her Muslim household as a child and we recognize that such experiences do exist in many countries, including Muslim-majority ones," the group wrote. "Our concern is that Ms. Hirsi Ali is being invited to speak as an authority on Islam despite the fact that she does not hold the credentials to do so."

Naturally, the calls for rejecting her invitation to speak, or for adding speakers to the program who will say the opposite of what she says, drew their own objections.

Since this sort of thing will continue to happen forever, allow us to suggest:

A SUGGESTED FRAMEWORK FOR FREE SPEECH ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

1) People who have controversial, objectionable, or even wrong opinions will be allowed to speak on college campuses.

2) Those who disagree with these people will be allowed to wave signs and yell and protest them and put on their own events with their own speakers with different views.

3) That's all.

No revoked invitations! No cowardly excuses! No need for droning punditry from left and right! And no need to deny anyone the right to make an idiot of themselves in public! This is what free speech is all about. It is not all that complicated.

(I would also add: 4) You are allowed to run up and put a pie in the face of a particularly objectionable speaker IF you are willing to be punched in the face hard in return. Fair is fair.)

[Photo of a good all-purpose protest sign: AP]

Rich: I thought we were going to use the actual spa and I wondered what it would be like to be topless around you, Caity. Would it change things? Would it bring us closer or push us away from each other? I guess we'll have to figure that out on another day, when we go to water slides.

Caity: You and I probably look about the same with our shirts off, so I think it would be like looking in a mirror. (Terrifying.)

The best restaurant in New York is

Restaurant Matryoshka at Wall Street Bath & Spa

Menu style

À la carte.

Cost before tip

$41.70

Rich: We entered the spa to a woman at the desk ranting on the phone about how Wall Street Bath & Spa's payments are not being processed. She was petite with an attitude several times her size. I got the point: don't fuck with her, she's Russian.

Caity: Our interaction with her was interesting. Without directly acknowledging us or breaking her stream of complaints into the phone, she removed a long narrow metal box from a wall of long narrow metal boxes and placed it in front of us. After about 20 seconds, when we made no move to fill it, she finally looked up and asked if we were coming in. We told her, yes, for the restaurant, and she put it away. What were we meant to put in the metal box?

Rich: Our souls. She shrugged as we headed to the restaurant, figuring that she'd just have to get them some other time.

She was, plausibly, just a very modern witch. The kind you meet in a club, who roofies your drink because it's easier than casting a spell. Actually, Restaurant Matryoshka reminded me of a facsimile of a fairytale. Like a school play production of a Russo-Finnish fairy tale.

Caity: I didn't like that Matryoshka was almost entirely windowless, except for a few fake wooden windows which "looked out" onto jolly sauna scenes, also carved into wood. It truly was like eating inside a Matryoshka doll. That restaurant had more wood than a forest.

Rich: There were lots of pictures of duos. Starting with the bear and the fox mosaic at the entrance. I said, "that's us!" at that one, and then thought it in my head at every picture of a duo that I saw after that.

That's us!

That's us!

That's us with a friend!

Caity: Rich :/ That mosaic you are talking about was a bear and a bull because the spa is located on Wall Street.

Rich: Oh right I just thought it was cute animal time. What kinda animal do you like to be at a spa? I'm a fox!

Caity: The economy was driven to the brink of climax today, thanks to a foxy market.

Rich: Speaking of climaxes, I am not entirely convinced that spas like this aren't just an elaborate setup for public masturbation. Every time I've ever been in a public sauna, basically, someone has masturbated at me. It's all I know. I don't mind so much, different people have different ways of saying hello.

Caity: Did that happen to you at lunch? We did pass a nearly nude man in a sauna on our way into the restaurant. Also: Two empty tanning booths, pay at front.

Rich: Yes! I saw another nude man while we were eating. He was very stocky, but young and supple. Nice side dish.

Caity: My favorite thing to study while we were eating, no offense to your face, was the television behind us, which was playing—at a considerable volume—a channel called AWE: A Wealth of Entertainment. Prior to our 90 minutes living in Russia, I knew nothing about this wealth-themed TV channel. Now I only regret that so much of my brain is occupied by facts and opinions and ideas that are not about AWE: A Wealth of Entertainment.

When we entered the restaurant, the TV was playing a program about the ancient city of Persepolis. ("World Heritage Persepolis.") Then it switched to a show about cars ("Wheels Full Throttle: Sixty Years of Corvette.") Just before we left, it switched to a show about wealth on the water ("Wealth on the Water.")

Rich: I thought the network was Russian, no offense to Russians. It was flashy and cheap at once.

Caity: In fact, the channel is based in San Diego. And despite dedicating itself to getting the word out about the concept of wealth, it was easily the cheapest-looking programming I had ever seen. CNN has higher production values.

Rich: It wasn't even about luxury, but literally about having a lot of money. Wealth porn, down to the resolution, which was very late-90's porno—so bright it was surreal and nauseating.

Our waiter was alone and serving about 10 tables. He was the kind of guy you refer to as "the poor guy." The poor guy was so slammed!

Caity: He was slammed but he performed his duties with indefatigable grace.

Rich: The poor guy barely had time to take our order, but he was kind. When he was cleaning up my mess after the meal he said, "Sorry, sir." Sorry you're such a pig that you eat off your plate as though it's a trough. I will try harder next time.

I got the Lunch Special #1, for which I chose a salad (tomato salad), a soup (mushroom barley), and a main course (cheese blintzes).

The tomato salad was good, as far as giant bowls of chopped tomatoes go. There were a few long carrot shavings that looked like tapeworms. I've always wanted a tapeworm, thank you, Matryoshka!

Caity: I considered getting a lunch special just so I could have chicken and French fries, but that felt childish. So instead I got blintzes with salmon roe...and French fries.

Rich: You say childish, I say fairy-tale wonderment. It would have felt appropriate. I wouldn't have held it against you. The caviar seemed fucked up, no offense. A giant gravy boat of caviar.

Caity: As a public representative for AWE: A Wealth of Entertainment, allow me to state for the record that salmon roe isn't proper caviar. I thought it looked fine, which is also how it tasted.

Rich: Bursting in your mouth.

Caity: We also each ordered Diet Cokes, which our waiter poured out of a can table-side. He took the cans though. Is that a classy move? Not like it's wine. Was he trying to prove that they had not been tampered with? Hadn't even crossed my mind but, in retrospect, you should never eat or drink anything anyone gives you.

Rich: I didn't like that there was no ice involved in the sodas. Where were we? Europe?

Caity: That's probably the thing I hate most—IN THE WORLD. If I wanted a soda with no ice, I'd take one off the vine.

Rich: If I wanted soda with no ice, I would shoot myself because what kind of monster would I be? Your fries arrived gleaming with the grease they were just cooked in, which I thought was unpretentious.

Caity: They were so hot. It was like: Chill out, guys. They were served alongside a heavy silver gravy boat of ketchup, which made me feel like a princess.

Rich: And you ate the whole gravy boat of ketchup, like the dainty princess you are.

My mushroom barley soup had giant, throat clogging pieces of portobello in it. I ate all of it without incident.

My blintzes were extremely special, although after I gushed about them, one bite tasted A LOT like Coca Cola and I wondered if that was the source of their sweetness.

Caity: Oh my gosh. Like they put soda in them?

Rich: At first, I thought they were sitting in a small amount of syrup, but then, I tasted Coke. You know what? I accept whatever it takes to make something delicious.

Caity: They tasted GREAT. I think soda should be the secret ingredient in more or maybe all things! This broccoli's great. What's the sauce? That's just some soda I poured on top! Delicious.

Rich: Anyway, these blintzes were sweet and savory at once, the place where bagel cream cheese meets cheesecake cream cheese. A++, thank you Mr. Coca Cola.

Did you like the eggs bursting in your mouth, Clarice?

Caity: I did! They were salty! Probably all full of soda. God knows there was already a lot of soda in my mouth to begin with (I had 2 cans’ worth.) Overall, I would say my meal was good. I loved the fries. But it also made me feel like if I lived in Russia, I would tire of the food very quickly. Man cannot live on salmon eggs and soda alone.

Rich: If you lived in Russia, you would have gotten one of those eggs and a picture of a gravy boat on your placemat, if you even got a placemat.

There were lots of people in this place that were speaking Russian or other Russo sounding languages. Also a woman behind me was talking about a "Fashion Week party" when you went to the bathroom, so she seemed very busy and important. Just spaing at Wall Street to take a break from the hectic demands of Fashion Week.

Caity: There was a woman seated to your right who had beautiful skin. When she sat down, I leaned across the table and mouthed to you “THAT... WOMAN... HAS... BEAUTIFUL... SKIN.”

Rich: I believed you, but I didn't really see it. I will say that the restaurant's lighting, not unlike that of AWE, was fluorescent in a way seemingly designed to make people look porno, and so if she achieved THAT in THERE, bravo lady.

Caity: A final note on the decor: As one might expect from the name, Matryoshkas sprouted up like weeds from every available shelf.

Rich: They were arranged expertly, in gorgeous patterns. Big to little; little to big to little; little to big.

Caity: There were also a few stray Christmas ornaments hanging from metal fixtures. A blintz full of soda. A warm wooden box stuffed with naked old men. A bleak Christmas wonderland.

Is Everything Okay?

Questions about the Dining Experience

Would you go back?

Rich: Yeah. This place was great and those Coke blintzes were as compulsively edible as I imagine coke blintzes would be.

Caity: I would go back, but not for no reason.

Is it a good first date spot?

Rich: It would be a good date if you are some sort maligned person who just met the royal figurehead who will save you from your life of squalor and under-appreciation from your step-relatives and/or if you are a young person who followed a trail of breadcrumbs to the restaurant.

Caity: I think going to a slightly creepy spa located in a Soviet time capsule is a really funny first date idea. The atmosphere was not romantic, but the temperature of the fries cannot be overstated.

Is it a good place to have an affair?

Rich: Yes, especially if your "thing" with your "lover" is eating out of gravy boats after you have just mutually masturbated in a spa.

Caity: Yes. It seems like a place where everyone would be great at keeping secrets. The interior is very labyrinthine. The food service extends to the pool area.

Is it a good place to bring a doll?

Rich: No. The nesting dolls are way more impressive than whatever rags you're carrying around, I'm afraid. They would make her feel inadequate or AT LEAST provoke her to ask you several questions about what's inside of her and why can't she have dolls inside of her and where do dolls smaller than her come from and that would be so annoying and awkward.

Caity: Yes! This is probably the second-best restaurant to bring a doll to! She would probably love the chance to hang out with her friends. And a doll's favorite food is soda, which this restaurant has in spades.

There are a bunch of restaurants in the world, including some in New York City. But in a city of over 24,000 restaurants, how do you find the best? You begin your search in places that are already popular: New York's hottest tourist destinations. In The Best Restaurant in New York Is, writers Caity Weaver and Rich Juzwiak attempt to determine the best restaurant in New York.

Previously: The Best Restaurant in New York Is: El Museo del Barrio; The Williamsburg Urban Outfitters ; The Central Park Boathouse; The Tommy Bahama Store; The Bronx Zoo; The Armani Store;The Crown Cafe at the Statue of Liberty; The Campbell Apartment inside Grand Central; The U.N. Delegates Dining Room; Play at the Museum of Sex; Le Train Bleu inside Bloomingdales; LOX at The Jewish Museum; The American Girl Café

[Images by Rich Juzwiak and Wall Street Bath & Spa]

Bill Gurley, the Benchmark Capital investor who backed Snapchat and Uber, is uber-bullish when it comes to his own portfolio. But the rest of Silicon Valley, he says, is not nearly frightened enough: "No one's fearful, everyone's greedy, and it will eventually end."

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gurley explainshow "excessive amount of risk right now" will lead to that pesky popping sound that most current day founders have never heard.

1. Companies raising exorbitant amounts of venture financing are compelled to set that money on fire as fast as possible:

There's a phrase that I love: "discounted risk." Do people discount risk? Right now you've got private companies raising $200, $400, $500 million. If you're in a competitive ecosystem and you raise that amount of money, the only way you use it—because these companies are all human-based, they're not like building stores—is to take your burn up.

And I guarantee you two things: One, the average burn rate at the average venture-backed company in Silicon Valley is at an all-time high since '99 and maybe in many industries higher than in '99. And two, more humans in Silicon Valley are working for money-losing companies than have been in 15 years, and that's a form of discounted risk.

2. Wall Street is there at the end of the IPO tunnel, chanting "Burn, baby, burn!":

In the software-as-a-service world, where the risk is potentially among the highest, Wall Street has said it's OK to lose tons of money as a public company. So what happens in the board rooms of all the private companies is they say, "Did you see that? Did you see they went out and they're losing tons of money and they're worth a billion. We should spend more money." And there are people knocking on their door saying, "Do you want more money, do you want more money?"

3. Like a trust fund kid, CEOs might not even know how to make do with less:

Right now, the cost of capital is super low here. If the environment were to change dramatically, the types of gymnastics that it would require companies to readjust their spend is massive. So I worry about it constantly.

4. If the other startups jump off a bridge, you have to too:

That's really difficult because if you have a competitor that's going to double or triple down on sales and you just decide, "Oh, well I'm not going to execute bad business decisions, I'm just going to sit back," you lose market share. So, choosing not to play the game on the field doesn't work, so you're left with trying to advise someone to be pragmatically aggressive with some type of conservative backdrop or alternative strategy in case the world shifts. But it's hard.

5. A "world shift" means Silicon Valley will look less like 1999 and more like the 2000:

I do think there is a high likelihood that we'll see some high-profile failures in the next year or two. I actually think that could be healthy for the ecosystem. You remember in March when the IPO window closed for like three weeks and everyone thought that the world was coming to an end? Like you really have to work hard to remember it because it reversed itself so quickly. I think having events like that can lead to sanity.

Yo, Bill Gurley just called you crazy.

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

[Image via Getty]

What in the "Dear Mr. Jesus"/"Christmas Shoes" hell is this tripe? I can hear Joan Rivers going, "Ugh!" over and over in her grave in response to this treacly tribute from Kristin Chenoweth on today's episode of The View. Chenoweth sings her own "Borrowed Angels" ("They can't stay forever / 'Cause they're heaven sent / And sometimes heaven needs them back again") to rhapsodize a woman who made being a devil her life's work. At least Howard Stern's "dry pussy" bit was tonally consistent with Rivers' output, if not plausible. Does anyone really think that heaven needed back Joan Rivers?

Whatever, though, it made Rosie O'Donnell cry, and she was apparently good friends with Rivers, so what do I know?

O'Donnell rejoined The View cast for today's Season 18 premiere. She spent the first segment in bare feet on account of her sciatica. The real star, though, was the show's other Ro, Rosie Perez, who dazzled with her story about getting so into listening to Beyoncé that it caused her to fall off a treadmill.

Perez also asked fellow rookie host Nicolle Wallace (who served as George W. Bush's communications chief and a senior advisor for the McCain–Palin campaign) these three questions during Wallace's "Ask Me Anything" segment: "One, what was it like when you first met her? Two, did the winking get on your nerves? And three, when did you just want to pop her?"

I looooove Rosie Perez. Why don't you just give her awl the money?

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook pranked the entire iPhone-toting world with a gratis copy of U2's new album—"Songs Of Innocence"—beamed directly to everyone's phone, without asking. Today, it's letting you undo this dark magic.

Like a bad dream, iPhone owners woke up to a U2 record on their phones that came without explanation or any clear means of deletion:

This U2 album needs to fuck off.

— Samin☯ (@saminyazdan) September 15, 2014

Wait... This U2 album is actually in my library.. I'm not stoked on this. Fuck you ITunes.

— Tony Hamlin (@tony_hamlin) September 12, 2014

Yeah so why the fuck is U2's whole album on my phone ready to be downloaded from the cloud?? This is getting creepy..maybe I do want a razr.

— Erica Lanning (@EricaGenevra09) September 15, 2014

I can't even delete this U2 album, can they fuck the fuck off pls.

— jaisus (@ODDJACKS) September 12, 2014

how the fuck do you delete this damn U2 album off your phone? it's not wanted, fuck offfff

— lauren (@av0nsaussie) September 15, 2014

Recode reports Apple is now humanely providing instructions to delete the music, which was automatically inserted into everyone's album collection as part of an iPhone 6 promo.

This is perhaps the crummiest instance to date of Apple's notorious reality distortion mentality—the company has long operated as if it knows best for the American consumer, regardless of what anyone truly wants. When it got rid of keyboards, it was right. When it gave everyone a U2 album, it was very wrong.

For some reason, Steve Harvey is considered a relationship expert, even though his research involves only his own experience and that of his parents, and his ethos is based on gender stereotypes. He frequently backs his claims with, "We're men!" and leaves it at that. He offers common sense (of a certain discipline) for the senseless (and the insecure).

Harvey has teamed up with Oprah Winfrey for a month's worth of weekly Oprah's Lifeclass episodes, the perfect platform for a blowhard. On last night's show, a woman asked Harvey about being referred to as a "friend" by the man she has been dating for four months. She said she was too timid to ask him about it because she wanted to let him be the man. In response, Harvey said:

So, all you need is a title. And that's what we do. When we love women, and the way we show our love is we protect, we profess, and we provide. The professing part is a title. 'Cause we want people to know. For example, if we go to a party with our girl—wife, fiancé, whatever it is—and we're standing in a group, and she wants some punch and I'm going to get her some punch, a guy makes the announcement to everybody standing around, "Hey man, let me introduce you. This is my fiancé." Or, "Hey man, let me introduce you, this is my baby's momma." Or, "Hey man, let me introduce you, this is my lady." Because we know we have to mark this territory...

And then he used those words, a phrase most commonly used to denote the act of an animal pissing on a thing to claim ownership of it, again.

And then Oprah said, "That is fantastic, that is like a dog sort of lifting its leg!"

Yeah! Fantastic! Love is: pissing on a woman not for her but for you.

And then Oprah lifted her leg. Even more fantastic!

"Don't make us have to urinate on your leg!" Harvey said. You hear that, women? Don't make men piss on you because they will.

Steve Harvey, ladies and gentlemen.