At the 41st Berlin Marathon on Sunday morning, Dennis Kimetto beat the world record for the fastest-run marathon, shaving off 26 seconds of the original 2:03:23 record. "The fans made me confident and I thought I could do it," he said.

While no fans are cheering us on when we miserably hit the treadmill, Kimetto seemed understandably pleased with his 2 hour, 2 minute, and 57 second run time.

Via the AP:

The 30-year-old Kenyan knocked 26 seconds off the record of 2:03:23 set by compatriot Wilson Kipsang in Berlin last year to become the first man to complete a marathon in under two hours, three minutes.

The Berlin marathon was run by 40,004 people from 130 nations, the AP reports. Kimetto took almost a full minute off of his own personal record, which he'd hit last year to win the Chicago Marathon at 2:03:45.

When asked if he could beat this new record, he simply replied: "Yeah." Us too. Easy.

[Image via AP]

The man who is accused of beheading a coworker in a Moore, Oklahoma Vaughn Foods processing plant has regained consciousness and was interviewed by detectives on Friday.

30-year-old Alton Alexander Nolen lost consciousness and was hospitalized after his alleged attack on two female coworkers ended with an Oklahoma County reserve deputy firing on him several times. CNN reports Jeremy Lewis, spokesman for the Moore police department, said Nolen was interviewed by detectives on Friday in the hospital. Police have not yet released what was said in the interview.

The AP reports police say Nolen will be charged on Monday with first-degree murder and assault and battery with a deadly weapon. He may also face federal charges.

[image via Moore, Okla. Police Dept.]

Authorities are still searching for two suspects after a cop in Ferguson, Missouri was shot last night. Though there were protests about shooting of Michael Brown happening around the same time, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said there was no reason to believe the shooting was linked to the protests "in any way, shape, manner or form." The officer was taken to the hospital and is expected to survive.

Protests that began peacefully late Friday night in the semiautonomous city of Hong Kong escalated on Sunday when riot police fired tear gas into the sitting crowds in an attempt to clear protestors from the government center.

According to a report in the Associated Press, protestors had begun organizing around government headquarters on Friday in order to begin a dialogue about democratic reforms and freedom from Beijing.

Students and activists have been camped out since late Friday on the streets outside the government complex, located just a few blocks from Hong Kong's downtown financial district. Students started the rally, but leaders of the broader Occupy Central civil disobedience movement said early Sunday that they were joining them to kick-start a long-threatened mass sit-in to demand that an election for Hong Kong's leader be held without Beijing's interference.

The protests reportedly became chaotic on Sunday, causing clashes between demonstrators and riot police. After tear gas was fired into the crowd, many fled away from the scene, but then reportedly came right back to continue the protest. Police have issued a statement asking that protestors leave "peacefully and orderly," threatening that if they remain, force will be used.

College students were behind the initial protests, boycotting classes for a week and claiming they will continue the fight until their demands are met, "which include reform of Hong Kong's legislature and withdrawing the proposal to screen the election candidates," the AP reports.

As of Sunday morning, 78 people had been arrested. The protest can be streamed live here.

[Images via AP]

On Sunday morning's edition of Brian Stelter's Reliable Sources, Stelter's guest Jim Miller, who had come on the show to discuss the ongoing saga of Bill Simmons' suspension, was instead the focus of a hilarious fashion faux pas. Stelter and Miller were dressed like twins.

"Jim, I think we must have color coordinated here this morning," Stelter remarked.

"It's a good thing we texted last night," Miller said in return. A reliable source (me) would like to add that this was one hell of a fashion goofup. Back to you, Stelter.

[h/t @blippoblappo]

Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader are making the promo rounds for their new film The Skeleton Twins, which recently brought them in front of Denver entertainment reporter Chris Parente. Though he gave it his best shot, poor old Parente just could not pull off pretending he'd actually seen the movie.

The interview falls apart when Parente references Kristen Wiig's Skeleton Twins nude scene, which, ahem, does not appear in the movie The Skeleton Twins.

As Wiig notes, "This was great."

[h/t Uproxx]

Mount Ontake, a volcano that spontaneously erupted in Japan on Saturday, has left dozens of hikers presumed dead near its peak, a spokesperson for the Japanese police said. The mountain continues to spew dangerous smoke, making rescue efforts difficult.

The New York Times reports that 31 hikers were discovered by the peak of the mountain, though officials were reluctant to declare the hikers dead until confirmed by doctors.

Via the New York Times:

The spokesman, Naofumi Miyairi, said that a perfunctory check by rescuers on the mountain indicated that their hearts and lungs appeared to have stopped, making it all but certain that they were dead. Mr. Miyairi said rescuers had found the fallen hikers near the top of Mount Ontake, a 10,062-foot volcano that erupted in a spectacular geyser of ash on Saturday, when the mountain was busy with climbers who had gone to see the first signs of autumn.

Helicopters were finally able to break through the thick ash on Sunday morning to assist in rescue efforts, and a number of hikers had hidden in shelters to avoid being hurt in the explosion.

According to reports, there could have been at least 250 hikers on Mount Ontake at the time of its eruption.

[Image via AP]

Police in Bucks County, Pennsylvania say a man accused of firing a gun at a neighbor's house, breaking a window, said the reason he fired the gun was because it was the only way he knew how to unload it.

According to the Bucks County Courier Times, 31-year-old George Byrd IV, who is prohibited from possessing a firearm after being found guilty of felony burglary when he was 17, at first denied firing multiple shots at his neighbor's house.

During his arraignment, however, Byrd reportedly admitted to shooting the gun because, according to the Courier Times, he is "unfamiliar with guns and didn't know how to unload ammunition."

A search warrant for Byrd's home was obtained and police reportedly found various handgun ammunition, a .357 revolver, a 12-gauge double barrel shotgun, and an M77 long rifle.

No one was injured in the shooting, and Byrd is being held on a $20,000 bail.

[h/t NYPost, image credit: Simeon Chatzilidis, Shutterstock]

Police in Miami report that fifteen people have been injured in a shooting at a Miami nightclub early Sunday morning. The injured ranged in age from 11 to 25 and at least one person is in critical condition, the AP reports.

According to the Associated Press, when police arrived to a nightclub called The Spot at around 1 a.m. on Sunday morning, the venue was in chaos:

Rescuers found wounded people inside and outside the club, some too hurt to flee, Miami Fire Rescue Capt. Ignatius Carroll said.

He told The Associated Press that the first emergency crews arriving on the scene were warned to use caution "because there was still active shooting taking place in the area."

Investigators are still unclear on what spurred the shooting and are in the process of going from hospital to hospital to interview witnesses. Police still don't know why children as young as eleven were permitted at the nightclub at such a late hour, but are hoping to learn more through their investigation.

[Image via AP]

Jennifer Lopez and Leah Remini were struck by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run accident in California on Saturday. And they were in Jennifer Lopez's new car! (A new Fiat, I assume.)

Page Six reports Remini was driving the car, with Jennifer Lopez in the passenger's seat and her two kids in the backseat. They were hit by a drunk driver in a pick-up truck who quickly sped away, but was caught by cops in Malibu after they got his description from Lopez and Remini.

Jennifer Lopez wrote about the incident in a post on Instagram:

Sitting at a light, Riding high right before some drunk fool rear ended us in my new whip!!! Thank god everyone ok!!! #GRATEFUL #THANKYOUGOD #DontdrinkandDrive!!!! #cursedthatfoolout #theBronxcameout #dontmesswithmycocnuts #mamabear #leahstayedcalm #thatwasweird

#DontdrinkandDrive!!!! indeed.

[image via Instagram]

A group of marine biologists recently lucked into filming—possibly for the first time—a pod of killer whales trapping and eating a tiger shark near Costa Rica.

Researchers have known for years that whales have the ability to study their prey and formulate specific attack plans, but video of the underwater assaults is rare, if not nonexistent.

So a diving team was thrilled when they chanced on to a pod of killer whales living up to their names. According to Barcroft TV, Caroline Power and Nicholas Bach were on a diving trip following the pod when a tiger shark made the grave error of swimming by. The whales apparently forced the shark to the surface, flipped it over, and then went to town on it.

The divers apparently ended up opting for the safety of the boat, so the video isn't perfect, but there's enough on the tape to make you seriously reconsider ever jumping in the ocean again.

Style blogging prodigy Tavi Gevinson, the world's busiest 18-year-old, is starring in a play with Kieran Culkin and Michael Cera. But she still can't leave the blog life behind: We hear she's dating David Shapiro, the Tumblr blogger behind "Pitchfork Reviews Reviews."

Despite her packed schedule—Gevinson is still listed as the editor-in-chief of Rookie, the magazine she founded, and undertaking at least most of the eight weekly performances in a revival of Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth—sources tell us Gevinson has been quietly seeing 26-year-old Shapiro, a law student and the author of You're Not Much Use to Anyone, for a few weeks.

Shapiro and Gevinson first met in 2011, at the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago. He immortalized their second meeting in a party report for the Awl:

Then I come over and say, "Hi, I'm David, we hung out at Pitchfork," because Tavi was my friend Angelica's +1 at the Pitchfork Festival in July and the three of us hung out one afternoon there. I don't know if she'd remember me because she meets thousands of people, and I don't want her to not remember me, but I don't want to introduce myself as if we've never met before because then she might think I am doing that thing where you knowingly introduce yourself to someone you've already met and pretend you don't remember them to show them that they're not important to you and consequently you are cooler than they are. But Tavi was really friendly at Pitchfork, and also, she is 15.

Image via AP. Gawker is a gossip blog; we love gossip. If you have any, shoot me an email: max@gawker.com.

Last season of Revenge ended with Emily Thorne getting the most revenge of anyone who has ever revenged. In any other story, that would be the end, but Revenge is never ending. Revenge is double infinity.

Previously on Revenge: Victoria Grayson ended up getting committed, silver fox Conrad Grayson ended up dead, David Clarke ended up being alive, and Emily Thorne ended up getting everything she ever wanted. So where does a show go from there? It continues the vicious cycle of revenge, while also finally admitting that the master revenger is really just an addict, plain and simple: The irony of a season premiere of a series that spins its wheels as much as Revenge does being titled "Renaissance" is lost on no one.

The premiere takes six months after the events of "Execution," and oh how things have changed. Emily is living in Grayson manor, Victoria is still institutionalized (with the show's new best character, Phyllis, played by Yeardley Smith), Conrad Grayson is confirmed dead, Daniel and Charlotte are poor and too lazy to get jobs, Jack is a cop, Margaux (and her superfluous brother) still exists, and Nolan has the hair of a mad scientist. All of this is simply the calm before the storm, but the storm itself isn't anything these characters haven't faced before. They're miserable people who should really come to expect all of this by now.

At least Emily can finally accept the fact that she's a revenge junkie.

"That thirst has become a part of me. I don't know who I am without it. Maybe I don't want to."

It really is the only thing that can explain why Emily Thorne continues to live this sham of a life and stay in the Hamptons. The woman is a billionaire, and yet she can't move on. Six months after completing her goal, she's pulling revenge jobs for absolute strangers who don't even ask for or want her very particular set of skills. Sure, it's a way to keep things interesting in a world of cocktail parties full of nondescript faces, but it's certainly not the most healthy hobby. In fact, it's a categorically unhealthy hobby.

So while Emily comes to grips with the fact that she is addicted to revenge and it is unfortunately all that she even has left thanks to the Graysons, the season's "spin" comes into play: This is the season of Victoria's revenge on Emily for all she did to her, Pascal (never mind that was all Conrad), and her family.

However, this twist on an old classic requires the show to ignore the very real problem of having Victoria exact her revenge simply because it needs a way to keep the show's promise of revenge alive and well: The Graysons deserved everything they got, and just because Madeleine Stowe is a highlight of the show with her delicious scenery chewing, that doesn't make Victoria the victim in this situation.

The problem with characters like Victoria—or even Daniel or Charlotte —getting their revenge on Emily is that they don't deserve it. Victoria, especially, doesn't deserve it, for her cowardly role in the framing of David Clarke as terrorist, but as each season has progressively shown, Daniel and Charlotte are just as awful as their parents. The only difference is, they have half the IQ points and entertainment values of their parents: That's why watching Emily destroy their lives is so entertaining, while watching them try to respond in kind is like watching paint dry. Victoria may match Emily on an intellectual level, but the righteous indignation just isn't there.

It's not just on the revenge front that the show can't seem to move on. Outside of those who revenge, the series still pretends like characters like the aforementioned Grayson children, Jack the cop, and Margaux are actually worthy of the screentime they take up. All of these characters could use a shovel to the face or at least to be put in the show's past, where they belong. But because Revenge can't move on, they remain thorns in the sides of the audience.

Both Daniel and Charlotte have become such insufferable brats—and considering the amount of bad things that have happened to both of them, it's quite the feat for them to both remain impossible to like or enjoy—that if they were to get the Declan, blown-up-in-a-building treatment in episode two of this season, it would be a cause forcelebration. Jack as a cop makes about as much sense as Jack's other choices, and it looks like he'll never make it to Haiti. Margaux...still exists. (Seriously, she is so unnecessary on every level.)

DAVID CLARKE CAME BACK TO THE DEAD, THAT'S HOW MUCH NO ONE ONE THIS SHOW CAN MOVE ON.

The only main characters who have moved on, four seasons in, are Conrad (to the afterlife...allegedly) and Nolan (from a good haircut). That doesn't look much like a renaissance.

[ Videos via ABC]

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

If you're from Philadelphia, your preferred non-Yuengling beverage is wooder. If you're from New York City, your greatest enemies are the bridge-and-tunnel crowd from Lawng Island. If you're from Los Angeles, you respond to people who hop on the 405 at rush hour with a pained "Whyy-ee?"

No matter who you are, you all sound disgusting.

American accents are changing and and flattening. The brash Philadelphia accent, the distinct Texas twang, and even the ballsy New York squawk could soon disappear, mating with blander vocal patterns in neighboring regions.

This may be a gift to our ears, but it comes at a cost. Where will we be when Georgians no longer sound Suthern and Scrantonians can't protest the konsteetooshun?

Before we lose the drawl that makes Texans Texans and the lazy slack that makes yinzers yinzers, we're presenting one chance to revel in and celebrate the title of America's Ugliest Accent.

Sixteen American cities have been chosen and seeded according to an authoritative and scientific evaluation of ugliness. The reward for the winner of the accent tournament (your city/region/if you self-identify as that accent-haver) is not only pride and a pat on the back from me at the Gawker office, extended through a very long pole. You will also be entitled to calling the cell phone of editor-in-chief Max Read for one twenty-four hour period until the entirety of Ulysses has been read into his voicemail inbox. We will preserve your accent on a CD-R and bury it in a time capsule in an undisclosed location beneath the New York City streets, to be discovered by our alien Californian ancestors far in the ugly future.

This week's round of 16 kicks off with two terrifying battles: Boston (1) vs. Baltimore (16) and Los Angeles (9) vs. Chicago (8).

Vote in the Polldaddy Poll below each matchup. After 24 hours, the winner by vote will advance to the next round.

Boston

If you've ever caught the major motion picture The Departed or heard a local Beantown resident say—lol—that they'd like to park the car in the Harvard Yard, you know that Boston has a serious problem and it isn't just that it sucks. Boston is our number-one seeded ugliest accent because not only does it remind us of Ben Affleck (get a load of this guy), it's impossible to understand and sounds like fucking your cousin at a little league field.

Seed: 1
Notable Boston accents: the Kennedys, Joey McIntyre, Rocky Marciano
Example sentence: "Ah final ahs just disappeah, but wheah they go we've no idear."

Baltimore

Anybody who has watched even one season (the good one) of The Wire has an ear for the beautiful Bawlmer accent. Unlike Boston's The Departed and Filelfia's Silver Linings Playbook, the accent work in The Wire has been lauded for its close likeness to how actual Baltimore residents speak—like warshing an Ole Bay stain out of your shirt in the baffroom during an Oh-ree-oles game. Still ugly, unfortunately, even when it's coming out of Idris Elba's pretty mouth.

Seed: 16
Notable Baltimore accents: Tom Clancy, Muggsy Bogues, Duff Goldman, Brandon Novak
Example sentence: "Get dem highgeranium plants in 'fore dey freeze."

Los Angeles

Many people would say that Los Angeles doesn't have a distinct accent. Between Kim Kardashian's statements-phrased-as-questions and the immortalized Valley Girl squeal, getting annoyed about having traffic on the 405 really does come with its own slowed-down uptick that isn't so far off from the spot-on characterization on SNL's The Californians. Blend all that with an overdose of sunshine and a dismal vocal fry and you won't be able to miss the whine in "I really wishhh Rob heeyyyyrree?"

If you want these kind of dreams, it's Californication. And hey, vocal fry ain't so bad.

Seed: 9
Notable L.A. accents: the Kardashians, every broadcast journalist in TV news, Kathleen Hanna
Example sentence: "Like, there is nyothing wrongggg with the LA accent?"

Chicago

Beautiful, wonderful Shi-Kaw-Go. Home to infamous fashionista Kanye West and that hot dog place where they yell at you, the Windy City had its accent's crowning moment in the ongoing SNL sketch Bill Swerski's Superfans. Natives replace "the" with "da" and add long "ah"s to make words like "hockey" come out as "hahckey." The Chicago accent is deep (like a pizza) and bad (like the Cubs).

Seed: 8
Notable Chicago accents: the Belushis, your college roommate's mother
Example sentence: "My brotheh Bahb is lookin' to get tickets fer da Bears game."

[Image by Jim Cooke]

According to an Associated Press report, Ferguson, Mo., officials are apparently using exorbitant fees to discourage news organizations from requesting documents through the state's freedom-of-information Sunshine Law.

In theory, the law, like the federal Freedom of Information Act, allows reporters and other citizens to access things like police reports, memoranda, and intra-government emails, which would otherwise remain behind closed doors. If such information is deemed relevant to public interest—like, say, if it pertains to the summer's biggest national news story—the state permits that it be given away for free. That's evidently not happening in Ferguson:

In one case, it billed The Associated Press $135 an hour — for nearly a day's work — merely to retrieve a handful of email accounts since the shooting. That fee compares with an entry-level, hourly salary of $13.90 in the city clerk's office, and it didn't include costs to review the emails or release them. The AP has not paid for the search.

In another particularly egregious instance, the city asked for "nearly $2,000" to pay a consulting firm for help with finding requested emails on its own servers. BuzzFeed and the Washington Post told the AP they also encountered higher-than-expected fees.

As freedom-of-information activist Rick Blum notes in the AP report, gouging on fees "is a popular tactic" for getting nagging reporters to give up and go away. It's almost like Ferguson wants to keep this stuff a secret.

[Image via AP}

Suppose you gave a global march and nobody came? Last Saturday's worldwide marches against the weather-slash-population control conspiracy theory known as "chemtrails" were sure to shake The Man's global power structure to the core...until nobody showed up.

The groups that sprang up on Facebook promised thousands upon thousands of attendees to these protests, but as it turns out, clicking a "join" button on social media is easier than actually leaving your home to put your money where your mouth is.

If you're not in-tune with the conspiracy, 1) lucky you, and 2) it's a growing movement that falsely believes that the trails of condensed water vapor (called contrails) that follow behind high-flying aircraft are really toxic chemicals being sprayed into the atmosphere to control the weather and make us sick.

After hoisting their cardboard freedom high in town squares the world over, a handful of distraught activists took to Facebook begging people to explain to them why the truthy keyboard commandos didn't follow through with their online bluster.

A gentleman named Bob asked a popular conspiracy page a pressing question:

why was i the only one to show up at todays protest in rhode island?

The protest in Louisville, Kentucky, got a comparatively earthshattering attendance:

There were 4 of us in Louisville. We got mostly positive responses and beeps and felt good about spreading awareness. :)

The lackluster performance of the chemtrail protests brings up a good point about how the internet works. The internet makes it easy for you to take up causes without actually having to put forth the effort to make a difference. How many of your friends and relatives fall for that "one like = one pray" junk on social media? Changing your profile picture to combat disease is like retweeting a picture of spaghetti to combat child hunger. Similarly, six thousand people virtually agreeing that they'll join a protest to scare The Man into caving in to your demands sounds great, but when those thousands of people materialize in real life as just a few dozen, your cause looks more comical than serious.

Of course, it is comical, because there is no "there" there. Chemtrails don't exist. It's a conspiracy theory born in the 1990s and continues to grow today because people enjoy creating science fiction more than they care to understand science itself. The reason scientists and science writers have to keep addressing the issue is because they have a ton of sway with people. While nobody may turn out to protest these conspiracy theories in person, if tens of thousands of people keep repeating a lie, that lie will start to sound like truth to thousands (and possibly even millions) more.

I made an argument a few months back about why I write about the chemtrail conspiracy theory on this blog so often. People enjoy telling writers to stop writing about these conspiracy theorists because they're just like children; if you ignore a child throwing a temper tantrum, he'll eventually give up. Conspiracy theorists thrive when nobody pays attention to them. Their whole shtick is that nobody with an audience will give them the time of day, so they have to scream louder and get more people to join in their cultish worldview to force The Man to listen. When we write about (and make fun of) these conspiracy theorists, it takes away their motive. We're listening! And we think you're crazy.

In addition to shining light on the conspiracy, people don't realize how dangerous some of these folks can be. Every other week, I'll run across a particularly impassioned conspiracy theorist who advocates shooting down airplanes that are creating condensation trails. Think about that: they're so deep into the conspiracy that they're advocating mass murder over something that doesn't exist! These conspiracies are not just some harmless internet fan fiction. Some people are dead serious about this stuff.

It's a never-ending battle because it's easier for people to accept a conspiracy theory than it is for them to accept reality. They don't want to accept that we landed on the moon. They don't want to think that one person can kill the president. They don't want to accept the terrifying reality that nineteen misled extremists can carry out a world-changing terrorist attack. They don't want to accept that tornadoes and hurricanes and volcanic eruptions just happen.

Conspiracy theorists want to believe that there is something more sinister and complicated behind major world events because, quite frankly, it's scary that bad things can just happen. Taking the time and effort to understand science takes the mystical nature out of many unexplained events, but fiction plays better than education.

Maybe this past weekend's dud-of-a-protest will give these slacktivists some pause about their faulty understanding of how the world works, but it's doubtful.

[image via Facebook]

You can follow the author/world government operative on Twitter or send him a shillmail.

The key to sound like an informed, annoying Silicon Valley insider for Fall '14 is owning an invite-only Ello account. Talking point: it's like Facebook, but it puts people above companies. Except, exactly like Facebook, brands will run the show.

From Ello's social media manifesto:

Your social network is owned by advertisers.

Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that's bought and sold.

We believe there is a better way…We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate—but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.

Grrr, advertisers. Ello is posturing as the social network that doesn't give a damn about branded entities, that will treat you like a real customer and not merely a consumer.

If that sounds naive and impractical, it's because it is naive and impractical—as one George Kerrigan found out over the weekend (and relayed to me via email):

I realize that people are signing up for this site ello. I'm pretty weary of twitter at this point, so I jump on board.

I like to cause a little trouble now and then, so I snag the clickhole username, with the intention of being a parody of a parody.

I made a few listing style posts, start following people then I suddenly get an email titled "Abuse!" from ello.

Soon after setting up the account, Kerrigan received these messages from the site:

oh no, what do i do pic.twitter.com/Omcu5QKmAX

— complete fucker (@gewqk) September 27, 2014

this is bullshit pic.twitter.com/aeSfSfnxLL

— complete fucker (@gewqk) September 28, 2014

I guess expecting a venture-backed corporation to side with humans against other corporations was asking too much.

Contrary to popular belief, journalists take couture very seriously. In journalism school,* young journalistos and journalistas are educated on appropriate fashion choices—garments they can move and be comfortable in, in case they have to run from a cop, attend a lengthy court hearing, or sit and blog for nine hours.**

One can see evidence of this fashion sense in behind-the-scenes shots of Spotlight, which stars Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo as hardened journos who uncover a pedophile scandal in the Massachusetts Catholic Church.

Check out McAdams and Ruffalo on the streets of Boston like they stepped off the plane, fresh and cool from Paris Fashion Week:

McAdams has chosen to drape herself in the finest of cerulean polyester. This is a fabulous color for journalism. It says: I can detect a blue not found in nature. The shapelessness of her top, and her refusal to tuck it in, is a rejection of bodycon styles that have ruled runways for the past few seasons. And to pair a pleated trouser with that is very avant garde. The high-heeled loafer tells the world: I am a woman in a man's shoe-world. The hay-colored hair says: I once wrote a story on a horse.

ruffalo dressed exactly like a real journalist pic.twitter.com/hbRcPVxrHR

— max read (@max_read) September 29, 2014

Considering Ruffalo's sartorial voice, he must have been to New York City once or twice—how else would he know that all black is a slimming, if not intimidating, look? His bangs have been cut to a monk-like length, in step with Comme des Garcons FRTW 2008. A leather coat is not just a coat, but armor—against the weather, and the world. Doc Martens, those punk bulwarks, help a man navigate the mean streets of Beantown. If he falls down, fine. If his black jeans rip, all the better.

What we have here are two-truth seekers dressed in fabrics that enable truth seeking: cheap cottons, musty leathers, and big-ass oxford shirts. This, America, is what enrobes our Fourth Estate.

*I dropped out.

**It should be noted that, until the rise of the personal brand®, journalists were discouraged from wearing too much "personal flair" (bowties disincluded). A journalist, the thinking went, should blend into the crowd, so should try to be white and male.

[Top image via Shutterstock]

It's a classic British tabloid love story: An aspiring model with government-funded fake tits falls for a con man posing as a famous soccer player, and only realizes her mistake 18 months later as she's about to give birth to his baby.

Josie Cunningham, 24, became a British sensation in 2013 after getting the National Health Service to cover the cost of her $8,000 36DD breasts. She's known for stirring up controversy, bragging "sticks and stones may break my bones, but taxpayers will always fund me" on Twitter.

Already a mom of 2 boys, Cunningham milked her 15 minutes by selling tickets to the birth of her third son—who she said she had previously considered aborting so she could appear on Celebrity Big Brother. Cunningham sold 4 tickets, making almost $50,000 in the process.

But that's far from the strangest thing about the circumstances of this baby's arrival.

Just hours before going into labor Sunday, Cunningham revealed that the baby's father, who she said she had known for 18 months, was not the famous soccer player he claimed to be.

She said she met the man on a dating site, and he told her he was Hull City captain Curtis Davies. Although she had her suspicions, and even asked him to "write a pin number on his cock and send me a pic with his face in" to prove his identity, the impostor looked enough like the real Davies to fool her.

"I feel so dirty, ashamed and devastated. I've been completely manipulated by a man for 18 months pretending to be a Premiership footballer," Cunningham tweeted.

"I feel physically fooled by him and had sex with someone who claimed to be someone he wasn't."

"We wasn't in a full blown relationship, so I didn't see him too much, thats how he managed to keep the lie going. I know I'm not that clever," she added.

Cunningham hasn't revealed anything about the man allegedly pretending to be Davies, leading some to suspect her stranger-than-fiction story about the father is actually made up.

The Daily Mail reports that the real Davies, who most likely had no inkling he was being impersonated, lives with his girlfriend, 25-year-old Laura Dearn.

[h/t OpposingViews, Photo: Rob Cooper/Twitter]

"Medieval" is a term we've heard more and more frequently over the years to describe Islamist militants such as Al Qaeda and now ISIL. Given the cruelty of their tactics, it's understandable. But it's also a misleading label that obscures the ideology and motivation of what are, in fact, modern political movements.

Historians of the Middle Ages will tell you that ISIL bears little resemblance, in words and deeds, to actual people of that era. The Islamists' particular brand of religious fundamentalism is a recent phenomenon. And their brutal executions are carefully choreographed spectacles, created to take full advantage of spreading terror through contemporary viral media.

As professors Clare Monagle and Louise D'Arcens write in a recent essay, the tendency to describe Islamist terror as "medieval" lies in the longer history of how the Middle Ages came to be perceived in Western cultural imagination:

First deployed in the Renaissance, the term "medieval" was invented by scholars who wanted to celebrate the progress of their own age in contrast to the preceding centuries….Since then, whenever modernity has found itself in crisis—when the shibboleths of rationalism, secularism, capitalism and the nation-state seem to be coming apart at the seams— fantasies of the medieval have suggested a mostly frightening, though sometimes alluring, vision of what the alternatives to modernity might be.

When commentators and politicians describe Islamic State as "medieval" they are placing the organization outside of modernity, in a sphere of irrationality. The point being made is that they are people from a barbaric and superstitious past, and consequently have not matured into modern political actors.

A Modern Ideology

But the militants have little compunction about embracing the tools that modernity provides. Their purported medievalism has not deterred them from effectively using the Internet and videos to mobilize the faithful.

Jason Burke, one of the foremost experts on Al Qaeda, has written about how Islamist movements owe more to the 20th century than the 7th century:

At the ideological level, prominent thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb and Abu Ala Maududi borrowed heavily from the organizational tactics of secular leftist and anarchist revolutionaries. Their concept of the vanguard is influenced by Leninist theory. Qutb's most important work, Ma'alim fi'l-tariq (Milestones), reads in part like an Islamicized Communist Manifesto. A commonly used Arabic word in the names of militant groups is Hizb (as in Lebanon's Hizb Allah, or Hezbollah), which means "party" — another modern concept.

In fact, the militants often couch their grievances in Third-Worldist terms familiar to any contemporary anti-globalization activist….Egyptian militant leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has decried multinational companies as a major evil. Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers, once told a friend how angered he was by a world economic system that meant Egyptian farmers grew cash crops such as strawberries for the West while the country's own people could barely afford bread. In all these cases, the militants are framing modern political concerns, including social justice, within a mythic and religious narrative. They do not reject modernization per se, but they resent their failure to benefit from that modernization.

Likewise, ISIL's desire to carve out a state in the form of a revived Caliphate is a decisively modern one, which has its origins as much in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia as it does in the history of Islam. Such sovereignty is completely absent in medieval culture, with its fragmented world and multiple sources of power.

In fact, within the context of Islamic observance, these militants are not considered traditionalists, but radical reformers, because they reject the authority of the established clergy and religious scholars, and instead demand the right to interpret doctrine themselves. That view was recently condemned in a letter, signed by more than 120 Muslim scholars.

As the Huffington Post reports:

The Muslim leaders who endorsed the letter called it an unprecedented refutation of the Islamic State ideology from a collaboration of religious scholars. It is addressed to the group's self-anointed leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, and "the fighters and followers of the self-declared 'Islamic State.'"

But the words "Islamic State" are in quotes, and the Muslim leaders who released the letter asked people to stop using the term, arguing that it plays into the group's unfounded logic that it is protecting Muslim lands from non-Muslims and is resurrecting the caliphate — a state governed by a Muslim leader that once controlled vast swaths of the Middle East.

"Please stop calling them the 'Islamic State,'"said Ahmed Bedier, a Muslim and the president of United Voices of America, a nonprofit that encourages minority groups to engage in civic life. "They are not a state and they are not a religion."

Nor are they medieval peoples, trapped in a future world. They're the product of the same modern ideologies and tactics that we experienced in the west, and that made the 20th century the bloodiest in history. And that's what makes them the ultimate embodiment of 21st century warfare.