Things are finally heating up again in primetime, between Transparent and the Shonda Rhimes triple-header, so if you have gotten used to this feature alerting you to every airing of The Ghost Inside My Child and shows like that, you might be disappointed. Actually no, I'll keep yakkin' about The Ghost Inside My Child and Young Hot & Crooked regardless of when or even whether they're airing, but I mean in general. Those weird reality shows about aliens and whatever. It was a cruel summer in some ways. We all learned a lot.

FRIDAY

At 8/7c. the new seasons of CBS's Amazing Race and ABC's Shark Tank premiere, the latter over two hours of shark-tankin' action. There's this week's Friday edition of Utopia on Fox, and CW's Masters of Illusion has the hopefully puntastic title of "Evil Met His Match." Finally on the Disney Channel, speaking of titles: This week's Jessie is called "No Money, Mo Problems," so deal with that for a second before moving on to Girl Meets World's "Girl Meets Crazy Hat." Have you seen Girl Meets World since it debuted? I can't imagine doing that but I do like to imagine what it's like. Is there any Rider Strong to speak of? That's absolutely a selling point but nobody seems able to tell me for sure.

At 9/8c. it's the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on CMT, Dog with a Blog on Disney—"Guess Who Gets Expelled?" makes me think the dog with the blog gets expelled, but then it's like, that's probably exactly what they want you to think—and Travel's Mysteries at the Museum explores the Love Canal, the Duquesne Spy Ring, and "Survival in the Colonies." Big week for Mysteries at the Museum, all things considered. Lots of important mysteries rattling around in there.

Otherwise it's the fifth season premiere of Hawaii Five-0 on CBS ("a'ohe kahi e pe'e ai," which as we all know means "Nowhere to Hide") and on PBS, a live Lincoln Center performance of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street with the New York Philharmonic. That sounds very awesome! I don't like musicals generally but I've seen that one a few times, and I think going that big with it would be pretty overwhelming and cool.

At 10/9c. it's the Blue Bloods premiere on CBS, also beginning its fifth year, while over on CMT there's a bonkers-sounding Crossroads with John Legend and Lee Ann Womack, so watch out for my girl Chrissy Teigen, hopefully we can spot her. In addition to the usual Friday fare, The Knick on Cinemax, Z Nation on Syfy, a particular hot and crooked episode of ID's Young Hot & Crooked called "The Real Wolf of Wall Street," you're welcome to Naomi Klein, Charles Blow and Alexander Pelosi on HBO's Real Time.

However, if aliens and documentaries about them as if they are real things are more your kind of deal, your choices will be uniquely difficult tonight due to the fact that H2's In Search of Aliens ("The Mystery of the Nazca") has once again been placed opposite DA's Unsealed: Alien Files ("The Next Wave") in what can only be described as a niche-base counterprogramming battle to the death. Who knew the market for netlet docs about alien life forms could get so cutthroat? I mean, it's Friday night so it's prime real estate, but still. Give the very specific people what they very specifically want, that's what I say.

SATURDAY

At 9/8c. BBC America's got you covered with a new Doctor Who (followed by Intruders) entitled "The Caretaker" and written by the same person who wrote some of the standouts from Davies Era ("The Lodger," "The Unicorn And The Wasp," "The Shakespeare Code") as well as the somewhat inferior followup to "Lodger," "Closing Time," both starring the dreamy and soon-to-be-ubiquitous James Corden. I don't know about you but this is my favorite season of Doctor Who in a long while. Watching Moffatt reverse-engineer Davies concepts and then applaud himself for inventing them will never get old, but it's the fact that he's gotten so good at it that's made it enjoyable again.

What else. CMT's Dog & Beth Birthday Special, if you roll like that, or if you are into trains in a big way there's always Hell on Wheels. Hallmark has a Cinderella-based MOW called Midnight Masquerade that looks fairly bonkers (and more importantly stars Taylor Townsend), Outlander has its Fall Finale if you want a different kind of fairytale, and Iyanla is going all out with Iyanla Fix My Life: "Fix My Out Of Control Family!" Meanwhile on Travel there's an episode of Ghost Adventures: Aftershocks about Lizzie Borden and San Antonio's Black Swan Inn.

At 11:29/10:29c. is the fortieth! season premiere of Saturday Night Live starring Chris Pratt and Ariana Grande, so that should be weird.

SUNDAY

Round about noon when your appetite's a-pokin' atcha pokin' atcha, that's when the tenth episode of Real Housewives of Melbourne drops in to say g'day. Then at three it's an hour of recap specials on ABC (#TGIT, about the Thursday night Shondalution, and a catch-up on Resurrection).

At 7/6c., just as Football Night in America is beginning, all over America but specifically the NBC part of America, there is a one-hour recap/lead-in to Once Upon a Time's Frozen-centric season premiere.

At 8/7c. also you have CBS's Madam Secretary, which I got way more into after panning it last week, the second-season premiere of PBS's The Paradise which is about what it's like to work in an old-timey store when you are horny literally all the time. Real Housewives of New Jersey leads into the 11pm episode of Watch What Happens: Live with Jacqueline Laurita, who could be really cool or could be absolutely crazy depending on what's up with her tonight, and LMN has a MOW called Runaway starring Sherry Stringfield and focusing on a person who has run away.

Fox's comedy block also starts! At 8, it's the Simpsons Season 26 premiere ("Clown in the Dumps"), then Brooklyn Nine-Nine's second season, and then at 9 the one-hour Family Guy crossover with The Simpsons. (And before you ask, Bob's Burgers comes back next week in the 7:30/6:30c. slot—and Mulaney debuts next week after Family Guy, for good or ill—but remember that The OT fucks everything up, so if you want to see Bob's Burgers and don't want to wait for it on Hulu and can't watch it live, you have to Tivo like the entire night. Tina's worth it, you know this to be true.)

Also at 9/8c.: The Good Wife and Boardwalk Empire, the finales of the current Miss Marple on PBS and Ray Donovan on Showtime, an episode of Witches of East End called "Poe Way Out," which I wanted to mention to you as a fact of our real lives, and the premiere of Resurrection on ABC.

At 10/9c. it's the finales of Masters of Sex and #richkids of beverly hills, two titans of storytelling, and an hour of TLC's Angels Among Us. The latter half of which is titled, "It's All About Familia," so the hope is that the Angels in particular Among Us in that one are because we are in Olive Garden, and it turns out that Olive Garden is Angel HQ here on earth, and that's why the hospitaliano never runs out, and why they got a guy back there with just two breadsticks and half a Caesar salad and yet they keep bringing it out, endlessly, and that's where Chanukah originally came from actually, if you look at the historical record. The quality of hospitaliano, they say, is not strained.

There's the finale of Lifetime's hottest fertility thriller The Lottery, new Manhattan and The Strain on WGN and FX, "Awkward Moments" from Discovery's Naked & Afraid in case you were wondering if anything awkward has ever happened on that show, and DA's Ghost Asylum visits St. Vincent's Mental Home. In premieres there's Original CSI and an episode of Revenge called simply "Renaissance."

I fuckin' love that show—in particular Conrad Grayson, about whom I'm terribly worried at this time—but one thing I find really cute is how every year, without fail, Revenge is all bad boyfriend like, "No I swear this is the year I get it together." Every single year. And every year it's like, "Stop trying to impress me and just do you, boo. I make my own money, it's got nothing to do with why I love you."

At 10:30/9:30c. PBS has a special investigation into Agatha Christie, who is apparently mysterious ("How she write all those books?" PBS asks) and at 11 it's either John Oliver or the aforementioned WWH:L, also with Rita Wilson who is great. Then at 11:30/10:30c. more episodes of Mr. Pickles and Squidbillies on Adult Swim, and that's a wrap on the weekend.

Next week there's a bunch more premieres, which is exciting, particularly the documentary about JCVD called Jean Claude Van Damme: Behind Closed Doors which is a Belgian phrase meaning, "All other television shows are now redundant." Have a great one and don't forget to watch Transparent, if you please.

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. What are you watching tonight? What are we missing out on? Recommendations and discussions down below.

A professor at Swarthmore has decided to embark on a biography of the still-living (at least at last report) novelist Jonathan Franzen. One can only imagine the anticipatory salivation at Oprah's Book Club headquarters.

Per Alexandra Alter at the New York Times, our good professor has had only a two-hour interview with Franzen; most of the personal details in the biography will be drawn out of the author's autobiographical essays. It will be entitled Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage. As for the rest:

An announcement of the deal on the industry website Publishers Marketplace promises that the book will explore "Franzen's metamorphoses as a person and as a writer — from his ultrasensitive childhood through his Swarthmore years, his troubled marriage and his tumultuous self-reappraisal during the 1990s, up to his arrival on the mainstream cultural scene as a literary icon."

What could be more fascinating than reading another man's regurgitation of Jonathan Franzen's personal essays?

Though if he's taking requests, I do hope the good professor explains to us, at minimum, what on earth was going on with this mid-1990s choice of hairstyle.

[Image via Getty.]

An Uber driver has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon and battery with serious bodily injury for hitting a passenger in the head with a hammer in Bernal Heights, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The 26-year-old driver, Patrick Karajah pled not guilty in San Francisco Superior Court today and was released on $125,000 bail. According to the Chronicle, which broke the news:

Karajah allegedly picked up the victim and his two friends from a bar at about 2 a.m. Tuesday. While driving the two men and one woman to their destination, he got into a dispute with the victim over the route he was taking, according to court documents.

Karajah, who was driving for the basic UberX service, stopped near the intersection of Ellsworth Street and Alemany Boulevard and forced the victim and his friends to get out, according to documents.

Once the alleged victim was out of the vehicle, Karajah struck him on the side of his head with a hammer, and then drove away, authorities said.

The victim suffered severe fractures and trauma to the head.

Yesterday the district attorneys from San Francisco and Los Angeles sent Uber and other ride-sharing companies a legal threat and possible injunction over inadequate background checks for its drivers and false marketing that implies otherwise.

SFWeekly has the company's comment on the charges:

Uber has issued its own press statement, saying it has suspended Karajah's account, as it would for any driver facing serious allegations, per company policy. "We stand ready to assist authorities in any investigation," spokeswoman Eva Behrend says.

Update: During a press conference this afternoon District Attorney George Gascon said that the driver is also facing attempted murder charges, according to ABC7's Cornell Barnard.

DA George Gascon says an Uber driver is facing attempted murder charges after attacking passenger w/ hammer. #mapit pic.twitter.com/tm2pPchyko

— Cbarnard (@CornellBarnard) September 27, 2014

Gascon is the San Francisco district attorney who sent the legal notice to Uber this week. SFWeekly says Gascon "has emerged as an outspoken critic of these companies." His office charged UberX driver Daveea Whitmire with misdemeanor battery for allegedly hitting a passenger; Whitmire had prior felony convictions.

This story is developing and we will update as we learn more.

[Image via Getty]

Back in the Bush era, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency provided the Pentagon with a list of 5,200 employees suspected of viewing child pornography. Five years later, the Boston Globe discovered that 1,700 of those cases had yet to be investigated. We filed a FOIA. Their investigation is still "open."

In many ways, we all owe Senator Chuck Grassley a debt of gratitude for bringing this oversight to the attention of America back in 2011. The Republican senator from Iowa—despite being a part of that spooky Christian cult The Family (the one that Harper's exposed years ago; the one that pushes things like "free-market theology"), and despite being hilariously bad at Twitter—turns out to be a pretty good senator.

Sorry Agatha I misspelled your name in last Tweet. Thx Agatha Fenech of Cedar Falls 4 work 2 educate ppl abt where food comes from

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) September 19, 2014

As the Boston Globe reported over three years ago now, it was Grassley who was pressing for answers regarding Pentagon efforts to investigate the troubling allegations brought to light by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency's "Operation Flicker" in 2006. Grassley demanded answers from then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the DoD's then-IG Gordon Heddell.

"These cases were not considered a priority by the Defense Department in the first place, and they should have been,'' Grassley told the Globe.

The Pentagon reportedly reviewed 3,500 of the 5,200 cases submitted by ICE, arguing that many of them were not in fact affiliated with the DoD "as an employee, a contractor, a retiree or a DoD dependent." However, the IG's office did uncover something like 302 defense and intelligence agency employees who allegedly had viewed child pornography on their computers, according to the Globe's investigation. The Pentagon said that they wound up pursuing 70 of those cases, resulting in only a handful of prosecutions. Many cases, they said, were dropped due to a lack of evidence—however they also told the Globe that the previous leadership had not treated the child pornography allegations as a priority.

Facing the burst of negative press from Grassley and the Globe, then-DoD IG Heddell assured the paper that his office was "conducting an aggressive pursuit of anyone implicated in Operation Flicker and that it is a key investigative priority.''

That was 2011. This past summer, because it is Black Bag's mandate to pursue any and all evidence of elite Satanic child ritual abuse cults, and more jejune forms of evil, we filed a FOIA request seeking an update on the DoD IG's progress.

We were denied these documents, broadly on three grounds: Firstly, that certain materials would "constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy"—a legitimate concern for closed cases in which no wrongdoing was found and disclosure of the investigation's details could needlessly trouble an innocent party; Secondly, the usual sources and methods sort of thing; thirdly, and most importantly, because "additional documents responsive to your request are currently part of an open investigation." In other words, they are still not finished with these "key investigative priority" cases.

You can see their response to our FOIA below. One thing you will notice—after the fact that I doodled all over it during an unrelated phone call—is that the Pentagon didn't need to actually disclose this last fact, because the FOIA request explicitly requested only those documents pertaining to the "closed cases investigated." So, either someone was really asleep at the wheel processing this FOIA request, or someone kinda wanted America to know that this mess still hasn't been fully cleaned up yet:

Perversely curious readers can dig into the previously released closed case files pertaining to the Pentagon's "Project Flicker" investigations here and here.

Even more perversely curious readers may be wondering how 3,500 alleged child pornography cases submitted by ICE whittled all the way down to 70 cases worth pursuing. One answer may lie with the strange, broadening definition of child pornography, following legal precedents similar to the 2006 case against photographer Jeff Pierson arguing that photos of clothed minors in leotards, in poses deemed lascivious, would constitute child pornography. Another, may lie with cases, like the March 14th, 2007 investigation detailed on page 12 of this DoD IG report, in which ICE referred cases to the Pentagon that (um) merely turned out to be petite barely legal adult performers whose disquietingly innocent visages ICE failed to run against the National Child Victim Identification Program. One could certainly also get away with attributing some percentage of this winnowing from 3,500-to-70 to whatever institutional culture has permitted all those sexual assaults scandals to proliferate over the course of our Global War on Terror. One could also get away with just blaming the patriarchy. No one is gonna stop you. You could probably even stick your neck out really far, along with conspiracy freak oracle David Icke, and attribute this to some demonic sex orgy rituals performed by our elite global leaders and the inter-dimensional reptillian aliens with whom they share their bloodlines. Most people will honestly be too depressed by the substance of these child porn allegations to actually fight you on your "analysis."

In any event, we now have a definitive answer to the question we posed last July: No, we did not finish looking into those 1,700 Pentagon child porn cases.

[photo by the U.S. Air Force, via WIRED.]

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

Marc and I are full of love, awe and gratitude as we celebrate the birth of our daughter, Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky.

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) September 27, 2014

Though many at Gawker HQ thought with certainty Chelsea Clinton would name her firstborn Joffrey, Clinton announced late Friday night on Twitter that her baby—a girl!—was given the name Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky.

Mazel tov to the new family—Charlotte was a decent though boring choice. (There's still hope for the second child, however, so consider this our official Joffrey bid.)

A bus carrying the North Central Texas College softball team through Oklahoma was struck by a tractor-trailer late Friday night, killing four and injuring fifteen. The tractor-trailer had allegedly crossed over the center median of highway I-35.

Oklahoma Highway Patrol Captain Ronnie Hampton spoke with the Oklahoman regarding the accident:

"What we do know is that the semi (truck) was headed north on I-35 when he departed the roadway and entered the southbound lanes," he said.

"When it impacted the bus, it just kept going and went off the side of road. ... We knew we had a two-vehicle accident by what we saw at the scene. ... But it took about an hour before we found the semi," he said.

The team had been returning back to Texas after a scrimmage with Southern Nazarene University. One witness described the destroyed bus as being "opened up like a sardine can."

Hampton told the Oklahoman that both drivers will be tested for drugs and alcohol, saying that the accident "is being investigated like a homicide." North Central Texas College is expected to hold a press conference this morning regarding the accident.

[Image via AP/the Oklahoman]

After a three-day search, authorities have arrested an Idaho man accused of a crime most fowl: ransoming a trailer carrying 37,000 pounds of frozen chicken and then leaving it to rot at a Montana truck stop.

According to the AP, truck driver Christopher Hall, 42, was picked up Friday afternoon by the Greater Idaho Fugitive Task Force on a parole violation apparently unrelated to the abandoned chicken, originally valued at $80,000.

The semi-trailer, described as dripping "rancid juices" and attracting flies, was discovered at Missoula's Flying J truck stop on Tuesday but may have been there for more than a month before that, The Seattle Times reports. Dixie River Freight Inc. first reported Hall's truck as missing on August 27th, after the driver sent his employer texts demanding money for the return of the semi and its carrion cargo.

On Friday, the trailer was towed to a nearby landfill and dumped into a freshly dug pit after having its leaks properly plugged. "People don't want rotting chicken juice all over their cars," a health department official told KECI-TV, a truth if there ever was one.

[Image via AP Photo/Nampa Police Department]

A traveler at the Sydney Airport in Australia caused a security scare that resulted in the evacuation of an entire terminal because he was too busy looking at his iPad to notice he'd walked into the terminal without passing through the appropriate security screening.

The man had reportedly been too enamored with his iPad screen (Candy Crush? Twitter? porn?) to realize what he'd done. He'd entered the terminal through a passage marked "EXIT" because man, iPads are captivating, have you seen the new operating system, ooh a new Facebook notification. His image was then picked up on security cameras, which caused staff to go on the alert.

The terminal that the man entered was evacuated, causing an hour delay and forcing other passengers to be rescreened before boarding their flights.

[Image via AP]

On Friday, Fox News host Eric Bolling apologized for the sexist, nonsensical "boobs on the ground" joke he made earlier this week at the expense of the UAE's first female fighter pilot, telling The Wrap in a statement, "My remark was not intended to be disparaging of her, but that's how it was taken."

Bolling also apologized for his initial apology, made on Thursday's episode of The Five, which he called "inadequate," saying:

I am sorry for what I said. I believe that [UAE Air Force pilot] Major al Mansouri is a hero. She is courageous, brave, and she deserves our praise, not inappropriate jokes. I appreciate that she is fighting the extreme radicals that threaten all of us. She has my admiration and my very, very sincere gratitude.

Though it might not always seem like it, even Fox News has its standards, Rule #1 being you support the troops, even Islam-ish, lady ones. Bolling and co-host Greg Gutfield broke that most sacred commandment on Wednesday, when they followed up a nice, only slightly xenophobic segment about Al Mansouri's airstrikes against ISIS with quips like "Would that be considered boobs on the ground or no?" and "The problem is after she bombed it she couldn't park it."

Gutfield released his own statement on the incident, saying, "The UAE should know that I did not mean to slight their progressive move in having this great woman lead the war on terror, blowing up those heathens. She's pretty awesome."

As of press time, Bolling has yet to apologize for being a holy war hawk who doesn't know his air support from his infantry.

[Image via Fox News]

A USPS postal worker who reportedly struggled with alcohol addiction and depression was caught hoarding over 40,000 pieces of undelivered mail that were intended for the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. over the course of ten years.

The postal worker, 67-year-old Joseph Brucato, admitted to stashing the 2,500 pounds worth of mail in his car, his home, and in his locker at work. When postal agents went to remove the mail, it took almost five hours to remove the letters from his apartment.

Via the New York Post:

A postal supervisor became suspicious that Brucato was up to something weird when he noticed his personal car was stuffed with undelivered letters, the complaint said.

Investigators pressed Brucato about the letter cache, and he copped to hoarding more than a ton of mail — a total of 2,500 pounds — over the past decade.

The haul included priority, first-class and regular mail that had once been headed for Brooklyn businesses and residents in Flatbush, according to court papers.

Brucato admitted to hoarding the mail since 2005 and has been suspended with pay until the case is settled.

A spokesperson for the USPS said that the organization will undergo the daunting task of delivering Brucato's stash, so if you've been waiting for that Pottery Barn catalog since 2005, it might still be coming. Don't give up hope.

[Image via Shutterstock]

At around 12 p.m. local time today, Japan's Mount Ontake erupted, trapping some 150 climbers on the volcano, the BBC reports. One of those caught in the disaster was YouTube user Kuroda Terutoshi, who uploaded this video showing the eruption's enormous ash cloud overtaking the hiker and his party.

According to Reuters, at least one person has died and over 30 have been seriously injured since the volcano began raining ash on central Japan this morning. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the military to rescue the remaining hikers, telling reporters, "I instructed to do all we can to rescue the people affected and secure the safety of the trekkers."

[h/t Uproxx]

For the first time, filmmakers in the forests of Borneo's Mount Kinabalu have documented the so-repulsive-it's-captivating behavior of a large, red, worm-guzzling predator. While it remains unclassified by science, the animal is known to the area's tribespeople, fittingly, as the "Giant Red Leech."

Allow me to introduce this brief but unsettling clip, recently captured by BBC filmmakers for the new series 'Wonders of the Monsoon,' by stating the obvious: Nature can be gross. Some of us appreciate this fact more than others. Speaking as someone who maintains a steady diet of strange, violent, and/or noxious nature footage, it usually takes a special kind of grotesquery to make me squirm. With that in mind, be apprised that this 90-second clip of a Giant Red Leech consuming the entire 70-cm length of a plump, glistening, iridescent earthworm had me making this face pretty much the entire time.

For more info, we turn to Sarah Knapton at The Telegraph:

The Giant Red Leech is one of the biggest in the world. The specimen captured on camera was around 30cm long but experts believe they could grow larger.

They have grown so big that they no longer simply suck blood but now actively hunt giant blue worms and suck them down like spaghetti. The worm it is eating is a whopping 78cm.

The new footage shows the leech detecting a worm's trail and following the scent like a sniffer dog.

When it encounters its prey it quickly latches on and moves its lips up and down the iridescent blue body.

"It was either searching for an end to grab, or was working out whether it was too big to eat" said documentary director Paul Williams.

"When it found an end it started to suck. It was incredible."

That this ambitious leech is roughly half the length of the worm it's eating only makes the footage more impressive.

A big thanks to Paul Williams and the Giant Red Leech for this fascinating footage – and for ruining spaghetti for everyone, forever.

BONUS: Compare the end-on technique of the Giant Red Leech with the side-bite employed by this Japanese Mountain Leech:

[The Telegraph via artiofab]

Every young woman I know was violated when the nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and other successful women were posted on the internet for public consumption against their will. Some of us reason that these young women deserve to be sexually and publicly violated because they created these images. We reason that we have a right to their naked bodies simply because the images exist somewhere in the ether. That is to say that the mere existence of a woman's body is justification for its violation.

This has nothing to do with celebrity. Or revenge. Notwithstanding the fact that a victim of revenge porn or a hacking created those images within the confines of an intimate relationship or for herself, we believe she deserves to be punished. We seek to punish her for her immodesty. For being a sexual creature in the first place. That type of girl deserves it. Hell, she probably benefits from it. This line of reasoning releases the voyeurs of any responsibility, as they sexually violate a woman who has not consented to the viewing of her naked body.

It is an exercise in victim-blaming as old as time itself and as relevant as ever. But what those of us who view these images may not understand- or are apathetic to- is the impact of these "leaks" on the young women we love.

Each time these images are leaked, it makes me feel that I have lost control over my own body and destiny. It makes me believe that merely existing as a female in this world makes me vulnerable and subject to violation. It makes me shrink, to become invisible. It makes female success feel dangerous. It demonstrates to me that the power of influential women is limited and that all women are ultimately reduced to mere sexuality. It teaches me that despite my whole personhood, my sexuality is the most powerful and obvious tool to shame me. I am shameful.

But I also come from a generation of young women who were taught that their physical appearance and sexuality are directly linked to their success. We are the generation that was taught how much the world had changed and how much more we could achieve than those who came before us. But when we open our eyes and look around it is unquestionably clear that it is more advantageous to be seen as sexual creatures. Society is talking out of both sides of its mouth to young women and it is confusing and dangerous. We are expected to walk the finest of lines along this false binary of womanhood in all aspects of our lives.

We have produced a generation of terrorized and terrified women. We are the generation of women who are afraid to be intimate, to explore our sexuality in safety, to take private pictures of our bodies, to walk to the parking lot, to dance. We are the women who won't walk alone after dark. Think about that. That means that for much of the year, we spend half the day afraid to walk down the street without a companion. We are constantly calculating which is the safest path and whom to trust.

It means that when I want to go for a run after dark, I won't. It means that in law school, I would often leave the library early with a friend so that I would not have to walk to the parking lot alone at night rather than focusing on my studies. It means that when I spend the night with a new partner, I scan the room for hidden cameras rather than looking at my lover. It means that I will hesitate to go out with my friends at all if I know I will have to cab home alone at the end of the night. It means that as a young professional woman I continuously regulate my behavior, both in my personal and my professional life. I have done so since I was 15 years old. If I wanted to be respected, to succeed, I could not be that type of girl. The onus was and remains entirely on me. We are taught and then self-teach to make minor adjustments to every aspect of our lives. These are the solutions we are given to avoid being victimized. To become smaller, more dependent, more afraid.

The corollary to these tools is to blame a victim who fails to use them. What was she doing walking alone at night like that? Why would she take those pictures if she didn't want them seen? She shouldn't drink so much if she doesn't want to be treated that way. Protect yourself because we, society, are ravenous. We cannot control ourselves and we cannot be held accountable for our actions if you remove your veil and exist before us.

The fact that the conversation is centered on nude photos rather than on consent is a powerful reflection of how our society regards violence against women. We are not concerned with what it means to violate a young woman by viewing her unwilling naked body. We see hacking a computer as a crime but viewing the hacked image as a misdemeanor rather as an act of sexual violence. We absolve ourselves of the crime. We pretend we are not causing harm in fulfilling our role as the intended audience.

When society fails to object loudly to its sexual abuse of victims of "revenge porn" and continues to perpetrate sexual violence with every click on their naked bodies, it illuminates how we value consent in other forms of sexual abuse. It tells other young women about the protection they can expect against sexual abuse in light of the absent outrage at what amounts to a young woman's societal gang rape. It tells us we are not worthy of protection. It tells us we were asking for it. It tells us we bear responsibility.

During my first year at law school, my criminal law professor stood before us and surveyed the class. He said that according to the statistics, anywhere between 50 and 80 percent of the women in that lecture hall would have been survivors of a sexual assault, in most cases by people they knew. I didn't believe him at the time. Later that year, a classmate was sexually assaulted. After that, I discovered how a staggering number of my friends had their own stories of sexual assault. Later still, I recalled my own story. It's not that I had forgotten. I simply didn't know where to place it. Naming it caused a tremor in the core of my being that released the fear, shame, helplessness, and fury that had been lying dormant and yet affecting everything.

Almost none of us had gone to the police. Many of us had not spoken about it until that time. Mostly this was because we had not categorized it as rape even though our bodies and souls had known exactly what it was. We didn't call it rape because we were drunk. Because after we said no and he wouldn't stop, we gave in. Because we couldn't remember all of it. Because we were afraid no one would believe us. Because we didn't believe ourselves. Because we blamed ourselves. Because this couldn't happen to us. This only happened to that type of girl.

Reut Amit lives in Vancouver, British Columbia where she works in commercial litigation. She holds a M.A. in Diplomacy and Conflict Studies from the IDC Herzliya and a J.D. from the University of Victoria. She writes essays about feminism, politics and public policy. Follow her on Twitter @reutamit.

[Illustration by Jim Cooke]

Stacey Rambold, a man sentenced to 31 days in jail after raping his 14-year-old student, was resentenced to 10 years in prison on Friday, in accordance with an April ruling by Montana's Supreme Court, which declared the judge's earlier sentence illegal.

Montana judge Todd Baugh drew widespread criticism and outrage last year when he sentenced a man to just 31 days in jail for raping his 14-year-old student, saying the victim was "older than her chronological age" and "as much in control of the situation" as her then 49-year-old rapist.

Under Montana state law, the rape of a victim under 16 carries a mandatory minimum sentence of two years, a statute clearly violated by Baugh's bizarre, victim-blaming judgment. "I think that people have in mind that this was some violent, forcible, horrible rape," Baugh told reporters last August, "It was horrible enough as it is just given her age, but it wasn't this forcible beat-up rape."

Rambold's victim was unable to see her rapist brought to justice, having committed suicide before the trial.

For his part, Baugh was censured this July by the Montana Supreme Court, which determined he had "eroded public confidence in the judiciary and created an appearance of impropriety," suspending the judge for 31 days.

[Image via AP Photo/Matthew Brown]

In what has now become a weekly occurrence, several new celebrities' private photos leaked Friday afternoon on 4chan and Reddit in the newly minted "The Fappening 3." This round of photos reportedly features Cara Delevingne, Anna Kendrick, and more images of Jennifer Lawrence.

The photos quickly began circulating on Reddit and 4chan yesterday, and became available through download links at register-only sites. This leak follows last weekend's breach of privacy that featured private images of Rihanna, Amber Heard, Kate Bosworth, and Hope Solo, among others. Photos of Emma Watson, however, were not leaked, after a threat to unveil private photos of the Harry Potter star was revealed to be a hoax.

In this wave of photo leaks, 55 new photos of Jennifer Lawrence were posted, as well as 87 photos of Anna Kendrick, though the actor is clothed in all of them. The remaining stars to have their photos leak in this round are Misty May-Treanor, Alexandra Chando, Kelli Garner, Brook Burns, Lauren O'Neil, as well as a video of Briana Evigan.

"The Fappening 3" comes nearly a month after the first round of celebrity nudes hit the web, and has since been punctuated by a beginning FBI investigation and a statement from Apple, who says an iCloud security breach is not the responsible for the leaks:

We wanted to provide an update to our investigation into the theft of photos of certain celebrities. When we learned of the theft, we were outraged and immediately mobilized Apple's engineers to discover the source. Our customers' privacy and security are of utmost importance to us. After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet. None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple's systems including iCloud® or Find my iPhone. We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved.

As has been the case from the beginning of the breach, private photos of male celebrities have been few and far between.

[Image via AP]

The Associated Press is reporting that former Ohio representative and convicted bribe-taker James Traficant has died, apparently from injuries he received this week "after a vintage tractor flipped over on him as he tried to park it inside a barn." He was 73.

For almost 20 years, the flamboyant Traficant represented Ohio's 17th district as a Democrat, famous for eccentricities like his strange pompadour (which he often joked was cut with a weed-whacker) and the congressional catch-phrase of "Beam me up," which he used to end his speeches on the House floor.

In 2002, Traficant was expelled from Congress after being convicted of 10 different felony corruption charges, including racketeering, bribery and tax evasion. Traficant served seven years in federal prison, winning 15% of the vote in 2002 when he ran for his former office from his cell as an independent candidate.

Traficant has been in the hospital since Tuesday, when police say his 1943 Ford tractor "hit a steel blade and flipped over," trapping the ex-congressman underneath.

[Image via AP Photo]

George Clooney is married.

Great, you made it down here without collapsing. George Clooney, a man notorious for being handsome and desirable for all 53 years on His Earth, is now married to a woman who most agree is better than him, Amal Alamuddin. The pair had their intimate and obsessively photographed nuptials at the Aman Canal Grande in Venice, Italy on Saturday evening. To quote People magazine, "Congratulazioni!" to the happy couple.

Pure, earnest love between a man who has malaria and a successful barrister and author will always be beautiful, but today it could never be quite as stunning or waterproof as the wedding's real stars: a mess of boats puttering about in the canals of Venezia. Molto bellissimo, Giorgio! Where'd you get dem boats?

From the beginning of the festivities, which kicked off on Friday as the happy pair arrived to Venice together, the camera focus had not been on Clooney nor Alamuddin's gorgeous heads of sea-salty hair. The shellacked sides and low-riding bums of a few dozen boats were the real stars: a fleet of motoscafi, transporting guests from place to place, like really, it's no big deal. Figurati! Boss boats, just doing their jobs.

Celebrities of all stripes and relative popularity attending the Clooney wedding—Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Anna Wintour, Bill Murray, Cindy Crawford, a person named Bono—but not one person was able to navigate the canals in scuba gear. God bless those boats. There'd be no wedding without them!

"I'm going to hold my camera up high so I can catch the back of this boat."

Bill Murray embraces a boat:

From a wide angle:

Bono (a person??) hugs his boat ever tighter; also, an unlicensed boat driver.

Though no photos have yet been released from the ceremony itself, we know that Matt Damon's wife wore a lilac dress.

[Images via AP]

For many crypto-Marxist Americans, ragging on Republicans is a cherished pastime, but what do we really know about our conservative brothers and sisters? For instance, what even are Republicans? According to a new ad campaign by consulting firm Glass House Strategies, Republicans are people, primarily the kind that pose for stock photos.

They're also, it turns out, Prius drivers, beard and tattoo-havers and, most crucially, humans who care and have feelings. "On social media, I've been called every name in the book," Glass House founder Vinny Minchillo told the New Republic. "It's become socially acceptable to talk about Republicans in the most evil terms possible and that doesn't seem right."

To combat this discrimination against the party of discrimination, the former Romney strategist has taken his "Republicans Are People Too" campaign to social media—the ultimate marketplace of ideas—where it's fared, well, not so hot, really. As Vocativ documented earlier this week, Minchillo's #IAmARepublican hashtag has been co-opted by liberals to criticize conservatives, a move that could have only been anticipated by anyone.

But it's not all bad news for GOPers. After all, as Minchillo's ad points out, they can still do fun Republican stuff, whether that means tattooing sweet beards on their electric cars or just talking about their feelings.

[h/t Vocativ]

Ferguson, Missouri, police officer was shot Saturday evening, St. Louis County Police spokesman says. The officer was not killed.

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) September 28, 2014

Update:

MORE: Tim Zoll of Ferguson Police Department tells KSDK-TV that officer was shot in arm http://t.co/wP26k3wQxa

— The Associated Press (@AP) September 28, 2014

Chris Pratt hosted the generally enjoyable season premiere of Saturday Night Live last night, with musical guest Ariana Grande. The premiere brought with it the introduction of the wonderful Michael Che as Weekend Update's new co-anchor and a new cast member that was born in the year 1993. One year before Kurt Cobain died. Let's enjoy the good sketches together!

Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett's "Roommates" sketch was absurd and fantastic:

Aidy Bryant really sold her "Booty Rap" sketch with Chris Pratt, who will plow through your panties like you're running on diesel:

Cecily Strong returned to Weekend Update as "That Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started A Conversation With At A Party."

Michael Che and new cast member Pete Davidson made their Weekend Update premieres:

"Marvel Can't Fail" previewed new Marvel films with heroes such as random words from the dictionary, four random people they found on a bus, a pastry chef, and an office chair:

And, of course, Ariana Grande's good side performed "Love Me Harder" with the Weeknd:

[image via NBC]