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Explaining Microbursts, One of Nature's Most Dangerous Wind Storms

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A major wind event known as a "microburst" leveled thousands of trees in Easthampton, Massachusetts this morning. Microbursts can create more damage than a weak tornado, and they're responsible for many lethal airplane crashes. What is a microburst and how do they form?

What Are They?

Microbursts, also called "downbursts," are a sudden downward burst of wind from the base of a thunderstorm. The air can rush towards the ground at speeds of 60 MPH before impacting the surface and spreading out in all directions. Winds at the surface can exceed 100 MPH in the strongest microbursts, often causing extensive tree and building damage.

Explaining Microbursts, One of Nature's Most Dangerous Wind Storms

As the name suggests, microbursts tend to affect a small area, no larger than a few square miles in most cases. The intense damage these wind events leave behind can cause residents to think they had a tornado. While weak tornadoes and microbursts can produce similar amounts of damage, there is a marked swirl in tornado debris on the ground when viewed from above, while microbursts produce damage in a starburst pattern, with straight-line winds radiating away from the point of impact.

How Do Microbursts Form?

Explaining Microbursts, One of Nature's Most Dangerous Wind Storms

Thunderstorms have two main components: an updraft and a downdraft. The updraft feeds warm, moist air into the storm, while the downdraft exhausts rain-cooled air with precipitation out of its base. It's important to note that downdrafts and downbursts (microbursts) are two different things. General, run-of-the-mill downdrafts occur over a much wider area and their winds usually don't reach severe levels.

Microbursts occur through two processes: dry air entrainment and water loading. Dry air entrainment occurs when dry air mixes in with raindrops within a cloud. The dry air causes the drops to evaporate, lowering the air temperature through evaporative cooling. This area of cooler air begins to sink through the thunderstorm and gains speed as it falls. If there is a steep lapse rate (large and steady change in temperatures) beneath the storm, the cool bubble of air will sink faster because the air around it will grow warmer (and less dense) closer to the ground. This rapidly-descending column of air will eventually slam into the ground and spread out in all directions with winds of 60+ MPH, creating the microburst.

Another process that can help to create a microburst is called water loading, or the weight of the raindrops in the thunderstorm. It goes without saying that water is heavy; when combined with dry air entrainment, the incredible weight of millions and millions of gallons of water falling out of a thunderstorm can help drag the cooler air to the surface, creating a microburst.

Two Types of Microbursts

There are two types of microbursts—dry microbursts and wet microbursts—each native to certain parts of the United States.

Dry Microbursts

Drier climates, such as Denver, experience dry microbursts. Dry microbursts hit the ground without any precipitation, making them virtually impossible to see unless they kick up dust and dirt at the surface. Dry air entrainment is basically the only process driving these wind events.

Explaining Microbursts, One of Nature's Most Dangerous Wind Storms

The above image is an incredible example of a dry microburst. You see no precipitation falling from the storm—the only clue that severe winds are occurring is the dust radiating away from the base of the microburst.

Wet Microbursts

East of the Rockies, especially in the southeastern United States, wet microbursts are dominant. Wet microbursts form from both dry air entrainment (causing cold air to sink towards the ground) and water loading (weight of the rain dragging the air). Seen from a distance, wet microbursts look like an upside-down mushroom cloud—a narrow rainshaft extending from the cloud to the ground, with a large burst of wind-driven water and dirt puffing away from the point of impact at the surface.

Explaining Microbursts, One of Nature's Most Dangerous Wind Storms

Here's a photo from NOAA showing a wet microburst as it falls from a thunderstorm. You can see the bubble of water and air as it's falling to the ground. When it hits, it will burst and spread out in all directions, much like a water balloon.

Here's a great video from Oklahoma showing a wet microburst (and an annoying child) as it happens. Skip to 1 minute 35 seconds in the video if it doesn't do so for you when you click play. Winds of up to 82 MPH were measured in Norman when this microburst occurred.

Danger to Aircraft

Up until a few decades ago, microbursts were one of the leading causes of weather-related airplane crashes in the United States. Since microbursts happen suddenly, airplanes that are taking off or landing are especially vulnerable to these severe winds.

While an airplane is landing, it has to fly slow enough to safely land but just fast enough that it doesn't stall. If an airplane unwittingly flies into a microburst, the plane's instruments will indicate a sudden spike in airspeed, followed by a sharp drop in forward speed, leading to a stall and possibly a crash.

Here's an example from NOAA of how most microburst plane crashes unfold:

Explaining Microbursts, One of Nature's Most Dangerous Wind Storms

The aircraft is on final approach into the airport, going slow and low to the ground (stage one). At stage two, the aircraft experiences a sharp spike in indicated airspeed as the airplane's forward speed meets the oncoming rush of air from the leading edge of the microburst. If the pilots don't know what's going on, they'll reduce the throttles to slow down. As the aircraft flies into the microburst, the winds will push directly down on the aircraft, causing it to rapidly lose altitude. The pilots will increase the throttle and try to pull the aircraft back up to a safe altitude. In the last stage, the plane now experiences a strong tailwind, greatly reducing its airspeed and causing the aircraft to stall and crash.

All commercial aircraft and many commercial airports in the United States and around the world now have wind shear detection systems to alert aircraft to the dangers of microbursts. Thanks to better training and major advances in technology, the last commercial airplane crash in the U.S. attributed to a microburst was USAir Flight 1016 back in 1994.

Microbursts are a dangerous severe weather phenomenon that can cause great amounts of damage with little or no warning. The best way to protect against microbursts is to pay attention to severe thunderstorm warnings issued by the National Weather Service. Meteorologists are able to forecast environments capable of producing microbursts, and using weather radar, they can often issue warnings some minutes before one potentially occurs.

[Images: NWS and NOAA]


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Living Being Needlessly Dies of Ebola—Wait, Keep Reading, It's a Dog

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Living Being Needlessly Dies of Ebola—Wait, Keep Reading, It's a Dog

An innocent four-limbed creature succumbed to Ebola this afternoon after days of intense public outra—wait, wait a second, we're not talking about an African person here. Open that tab back up. Can you hear me? It was a dog. A DOG. A poor, adorable, defenseless pup who never did anything wrong in this cruel world.

Excalibur, the dog of a Spanish nurse infected with Ebola, was euthanized by authorities there over concerns that it, too, had Ebola and might pass it on to the nurse's husband or others. The fate of Excalibur was in limbo until this afternoon—the regional government in Madrid had obtained a court order to put the dog down, but protests in the city led some to believe that his life might be spared.

"Save Excalibur! Pet Lovers Unite to Protect Ebola Patient's Dog," shouted an NBC News headline about the protests. The upheaval was particularly strong on Twitter, where the hashtag #SalvemosAExcalibur was tweeted over 400,000 times yesterday.

The world will soon return to tweeting about saving the humans infected with Ebola, just like before a dog maybe or maybe not caught the disease. Just kidding that hasn't happened.

But let's not lose focus on what's most important here: mourning the true face of the Ebola epidemic.

May #Excalibur rest in peace, but let his soul and spirit live on forever.

[image via AP]

"FEMA Coffins" Are the Key to Obama's Ebola-Themed Gun Grab

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In the Pythagorean formula of Ebola alarmism, WorldNetDaily columnist and one-time Dallas actress Morgan Brittany has established herself as the square of the hypotenuse. Witness her latest insane scrawling, titled: "What If the Conspiracy Theories Are True?"

Brittany, seen above in her recent appearance on Celebrity Ghost Stories, had some stiff competition in the Ebola-blather competition this week from Fox News germ-splainer Elisabeth Hasselbeck and political scat singer Gretchen Carlson. But only Brittany can bring you the unvarnished truth about Ebola, "60,000 illegal children," government ammo stockpiles, "and the $1 billion worth of disposable FEMA coffins supposedly stored in Georgia."

Our fair scene begins with Brittany at an L.A. dinner party. Not with conservative rednecks, either, mind you, because this is L.A.! Rather, her company was "upper middle class—baby boomers and 'yuppies' who would never want to be thought of as conservative, but as more libertarian in their political views." So, you know. Typical Angelenos.

Naturally, the men's conversation turned to how the gub'mint seemed determined to kill them:

The men were bringing up the fact that in the past few years, everything that has come out of Washington has been misleading or an out and out lie – from Obamacare, "if you like your doctor," to the Department of Veterans Affairs allowing vets to die waiting for an appointment. They said that they were viewing the reassurances about Ebola coming from the CDC with a skeptical eye. Their biggest question was: Why is there no urgency to stop the disease from entering the U.S.?

After a few more rounds of discussion about "the incompetence permeating our government," Brittany and her cohort conclude it's just too much incompetence... so maybe it's not incompetence at all:

One of the men brought up the fact that Washington has known for months if not years that we were at risk for some sort of global pandemic. According to a government supplier of emergency products, the Disaster Assistance Response Team was told to be prepared to be activated in the month of October for an outbreak of Ebola.

Because if there's a reliable source for news of disease outbreaks, it's going to be "a government supplier of emergency products."

Hmm, that's just like the fact that they knew 60,000 illegal children were going to be coming across our southern border eight months before it happened.

It—what?

Questions were then brought up about the stockpiling of ammunition and weapons by Homeland Security over the past couple of years and the $1 billion worth of disposable FEMA coffins supposedly stored in Georgia.

Neither of these things is true. The Homeland Security ammo theory is a trumped-up perennial that blooms in batshit, and the "FEMA coffins" were concocted out of thin air in 2007—before Barack Hussein Obummer, even.

Why was there preparation being made for FEMA camps to house people in isolation? These were the questions being seriously discussed.

Ah yes, FEMA concentration camps. Why are FEMA concentration camps not "being seriously discussed" by more people?

Many lessons could be drawn here. One valuable lesson for Brittany might be that her upper middle-class friends are certifiably insane. But apparently other conclusions are possible:

My fear is that this has all been orchestrated from the very beginning. Who knows? Maybe the current administration needs this to happen so martial law can be declared, guns can be seized and the populace can be controlled. Once that happens… game over.

This is serious. We need to get serious, people. We need to ask serious questions. Also, before the martial law comes, seriously make sure to order your copy of Brittany's new book, What Women Really Want (AS SEEN ON FOX & FRIENDS).

[h/t MMFA]

Louis C.K. Is Not at All High as He Explains Earth's a Martian Graveyard

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Louis C.K. Is Not at All High as He Explains Earth's a Martian Graveyard

Louis C.K. has a feeling he's discovered "the origin of the basic despair that we all feel in the pit of our being, that one thing we all share." And it's not, as he previously posited, the knowledge that each of us will be forever empty and alone. It's that Earth is a Martian graveyard, and we're all "seeded by marsian corpse DNA."

As Louis explained over a couple of hours on Twitter, it all started with a civilization of people-things fleeing a globally-warmed Mars and trying to take refuge in the Earth's orbit:

But then: disaster! The Martian moon/spaceship collided with the planet that would eventually be called Earth, killing billions of Martians. And from that Martian graveyard, humanity eventually arose.

Seems like a plausible feeling. Haven't we all wanted a moon-spaceship at some point or another, to take us away from our failing planet to somewhere that feels more like home?

But what if the moon isn't the ship? What if the ship is something even bigger?

It's tempting to dismiss this stuff as weird for the sake of being weird, but Louis's entire body of work is about the baseline level of pain that comes with existing in contemporary society and interacting with other people as they attempt to exist also. Is it so farfetched that he would have these feelings of (literal) alienation and turn them into a bit on Twitter?

A week ago, he said he seriously couldn't think of anything to tweet, and stopped posting. Maybe he's spent the past few days working out this feeling and how best to express it.

On the other hand, maybe he was just high.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[h/t Uproxx]

Silicon Valley Now Has a Fantasy Venture Capital League

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Silicon Valley Now Has a Fantasy Venture Capital League

Thanks to the meritocracy that is Silicon Valley, any doofus with a bloated bank account can become a venture capitalist. But you no longer need the right net worth to get in on the excitement of making speculative bets on startups!

That's right, Twitter engineer Buster Benson spent his free time making "Valleyball": a fantasy venture capital league that lets everyone bet how much startups with be "worth" in a year.

The problem with venture capital, according to Benson, is that investing in startups isn't a "very fun game." So Valleyball takes out all the pesky annoyances out of investing—namely, access and being ridiculously wealthy—and brings financing back to its roots: dreaming about how much your investments will grow in value.

Via Valleyball's homepage:

Venture capital, as a system, is designed to incentivize you to keep your special access to yourself. That didn't seem like a very fun game, so this is a fantasy VC league without the built-in unfairness, secrecy, and competitiveness. Instead of rewarding your ability to horde access and capital, this is only about your ability to predict the future.

Use all the information you have at hand (each company page links to the public Crunchbase page for you to begin your research), and make your best guess about the company's current and future valuation. All guesses are public, tied to your Twitter account, and timestamped. [...]

We'll finally be able to learn who's actually good at picking the winners. Is it you?

What is clear from Valleyball's dashboard of dreams is that no one's having a nightmare. Every company on the league's homepage, with the exception of three obvious turds, is expected to rise or maintain its value.

Let's take a look:

Silicon Valley Now Has a Fantasy Venture Capital League

League members believe Slack, a wildly-popular group chat startup that just got caught exposing sensitive customer data, will have its valuation climb to $400 million in one year. This is one of the more sane predictions, considering Slack is already "worth" a quarter billion bucks.

Silicon Valley Now Has a Fantasy Venture Capital League

Right around the time Airbnb locked in its $10 billion valuation earlier this year, venture capitalist Fred Wilson couldn't help but notice that we're "not in a normal valuation environment for high growth tech companies and we have not been in one for a while." But that didn't stop league players from betting up Airbnb's value to $20 billion in 2015. In fact, some players predicted it could climb to $30, $50, and even $100 billion by then.

Silicon Valley Now Has a Fantasy Venture Capital League

Now we're getting into crazy territory. Clinkle was a startup with vast hype and major financial backing, but the app it released was a dud. It will be a miracle if the company hasn't managed to burn through the rest of its funding by next summer, and yet Valleyball players see it holding onto its value.

Silicon Valley Now Has a Fantasy Venture Capital League

Same.

Silicon Valley Now Has a Fantasy Venture Capital League

And of course, Product Hunt, the current darling of App Store fanboys, is expected to see its Nas-endorsed bulletin board rocket to $40 million in worth.

Unfortunately, fantasy VC leagues aren't an entirely new concept. From the sounds of it, tech journalists have been running their own pool for a while.

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

Image: Shutterstock, with expert Photoshop treatment from Kevin Montgomery

N.C. Cops Pepper Spray Black Teen Inside His Own Home

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N.C. Cops Pepper Spray Black Teen Inside His Own Home

A black teenager in Fuquay-Varina, N.C. was pepper sprayed by police inside his own home earlier this week after neighbors reported him as a burglar.

DeShawn Currie, 18, has lived with his foster parents, Ricky and Stacy Tyler, who are white, for about a year. Monday afternoon, Currie was walking into his home's unlocked side door when a neighbor spotted him and, believing he was breaking in, called 911. Police quickly responded and confronted Currie inside the house.

"They was like, 'Put your hands on the door,'" Currie told WTVD. "I was like, 'For what? This is my house.' I was like, 'Why are y'all in here?'"

From WTVD:

DeShawn said he became angry when officers pointed out the pictures of the Tyler's three younger children on the mantle, assuming he didn't belong there. An argument ensued and DeShawn said one of the officers pepper-sprayed him in the face.

In a statement, Fuquay-Varina police claim they pepper sprayed Currie after he became "threatening and belligerent." They also mentioned rash of recent break-ins in the neighborhood.

Stacy Tyler said the incident has left her family outraged and confused.

"My 5-year-old last night, she looked at me and said, 'Mama I don't understand why they hated our brother, and they had to come in and hurt him,'" she told WTVD. "He's my baby boy just as much as my other three children are."

"Everything that we've worked so hard for in the past years was stripped away yesterday in just a matter of moments," her husband Ricky added.

For his part, Currie said the brush with police has left him feeling unwelcome in his own home. "I had moved into my room, and I'm feeling like I'm loved," he said. "And then when they come in and they just profile me and say that I'm not who I am. And that I do not stay here because there was white kids on the wall, that really made me mad."

Paul Feig Is Making a Ghostbusters Movie Starring Hilarious Women

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Paul Feig Is Making a Ghostbusters Movie Starring Hilarious Women

Rumors that Bridesmaids director Paul Feig was set to direct a female-led Ghostbusters 3 started ramping up in late August, and today Feig confirmed on Twitter that it's really happening.

The Heat and Parks and Rec writer Katie Dippold will co-write, and "hilarious women" will star.

As for which hilarious women, Bill Murray suggested some in a recent interview: Bridesmaids stars Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy, Linda Cardellini (who was great in Feig and Judd Apatow's Freaks and Geeks), and Emma Stone.

Stone was said to have passed on the project, but that was last year, before Feig was involved. At the time, Ghostbusters 3 was still trapped in the years-long process of Dan Aykroyd writing and rewriting scripts in an effort to get Murray on board.

Aykroyd and original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman are rumored to be involved with the new film, probably as producers.

[Photo: Getty Images]

Controversial: Should Workers Be Paid For Time They Spend at Work?

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Controversial: Should Workers Be Paid For Time They Spend at Work?

The Supreme Court heard arguments today in a case about whether or not Amazon employees should be paid while company security people search them after their shifts. Paid?? When being searched by company security is so fun?

I am attempting here to use sarcasm to communicate the absurd nature of this case. Yes, of course, if your employer forces you to stand in line and be searched before you leave because they think you might steal from them, you should be paid for that time. If you are doing it for your employer, and you are not doing it for yourself, voluntarily, for fun, and it is a mandatory part of your job, you should be paid for it. To the average worker, I hope that this case sounds absurd.

The workers who are suing an Amazon staffing company say they wait up to 25 minutes a day for these screenings. Here is a direct quote from the lawyer for the workers: "It's work because you are told to do it." Shocking! Outrageous! Forcing companies to pay American workers for things they are told to do? It's just a baby step to full socialism, from there. If you are a good Democrat, you may be shocked to learn that the Obama administration's Labor Department does not agree that the workers should be paid. And it does not sound like the judges are very favorably disposed to them either, because these screenings do not qualify as a "principal activity" of the job, which is, for some fucking reason, the legal standard. Via the AP:

Justice Antonin Scalia said the security check "is not indispensable to taking care of the activity in the warehouse."

"You wouldn't pay anybody just to come in and go through security," said Justice Samuel Alito.

How about: pay them, or don't make them do it.

[Photo: AP]


Even Jimmy Carter Thinks Obama Is Weak in the Middle East Now

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Perhaps in hopes of revising his image as an ineffectual peacenik, or to bolster his grandson's chances in a tight gubernatorial race, or simply because he's an opinionated 90-year-old South Georgia peckerwood, ex-president Jimmy Carter today criticized Barack Obama for dropping the ball on ISIS.

In an interview with the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, Carter—who is best-known for "losing" the U.S. embassy in Iran and giving a speech about "malaise" in America—opined that Obama has been too weak and hesitant on the ISIS and other Middle East threats, but those extrajudicial drone killings are just terrible.

"First of all, we waited too long [on ISIS]," he said, echoing criticisms leveled by Republican hawk John McCain, among others. "We let the Islamic State build up its money, capability and strength and weapons while it was still in Syria. Then when [ISIS] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn't object to their being there and about a third of the territory in Iraq was abandoned."

It was hard to tell what Obama's policy was in the Middle East, Carter said, suggesting that Obama president must be doing something wrong if two of his ex-defense secretaries were willing to write critical tell-alls in retirement.

"Sometimes he draws red lines on the sand in the Mideast and then when the time comes he doesn't go through with it," Carter said, adding: "If we keep on working in Iraq and have some ground troops to follow up when we do our bombing, there is a possibility of success."

After intoning on the productive possibilities of U.S. bombing—with assistance from ground forces—Carter attacked the drone program: "I really object to the killing of people, particularly Americans overseas who haven't been brought to justice and put on trial."

Nevertheless, Carter added, he supported Obama in both of his elections and said of the president's critics: "A lot of it is based on racism."

"Troll-Hunting" Site Shuts Down After Hunters Bag a Troll

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"Troll-Hunting" Site Shuts Down After Hunters Bag a Troll

Despite the fact that British toddler Madeleine McCann disappeared seven years ago while on vacation with her family in Portugal, the heavily covered British tabloid case still captivates a certain subset of Twitter trolls. This weekend, one of these alleged trolls was found dead in a hotel room after information about her was exposed online.

According to Channel 4 News, the wiki "McCann Hate Exposed," which contained dossiers of information about 27 McCann trolls, was shut down this week in the wake of 63-year-old Brenda Leyland's death, whose information was reportedly compromised.

The wiki, apparently managed by supporters of the McCann family, was dedicated to exposing Internet users who have ceaselessly spewed hate the at the McCanns on Twitter. Though Gerry and Kate McCann were cleared of wrongdoing when Portugal's attorney general closed the McCann case in 2008, many trolls believe the parents are still somehow at fault. Leyland, for example, allegedly tweeted about the McCanns more than 4,200 times under the username @sweepyface (now deleted), one time suggesting that they should suffer "for the rest of their miserable lives."

Last week, Sky News TV, possibly using information obtained from the wiki, confronted Leyland outside her home. Shortly thereafter she disappeared from her neighborhood and was found dead in a Leicestershire hotel room days later. Cops aren't treating her death as suspicious.

Leyland's son, Ben, defended his mother to the Daily Mirror, saying that "no one has a clue" what she was really like. A neighbor described her to the Mirror: "She must have been a sick woman. Trolling was her hobby, sadly."

The McCanns haven't commented on Leyland's death. Cops are currently investigating the "McCann Hate Exposed" dossiers.

[Photo of Leyland via Sky News]

This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

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This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

Welcome to Midweek Madness, in which a small-brained baby who has not looked inside a tabloid magazine for six years takes a deep dive into Star, US Weekly, OK!, Life & Style and InTouch. This week, Bruce Jenner wears a B-cup, Kim worries that Kanye is going to hook up with Cara Delevingne, Blake Lively spits out the first of her litter (her words) and my MFA program revokes my degree.

This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

InTouch

FEARS FOR TERESA: ATTACKED IN PRISON!

My primary context for the face I see on this cover is the IKEA monkey and it seems very unfair that she would be put in jail for going to IKEA, which I think happened a long time ago, let alone getting "beaten senseless for being famous." It's not her fault that coat was so cute! Okay: LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian throw away their undergarments once they have become soiled. We know this because their former nanny is suing them for wrongful termination and her lawyer says "they just threw her out like dirty underwear." Why not wash the nanny? This just in, Bruce Jenner is a B- or even a C-cup. The question of why he is wearing a bra is the magazine's "mystery of the week." I bet we can solve this: Brucie just doing Brucie. In animal news, Olivia Benson, not the television detective but the cat of Taylor Swift, is now a Keds model. The specific model of shoe is called "Sneaky Cat." In the news of that which is beyond repair, Amanda Bynes thinks she has a microchip in her head and would like "a dollar a day from every person who [is] reading my mind." An anonymous insider has offered InTouch the information that Bynes "does the drug Molly"—you don't say? On October 5th she got on a CitiBike and rode straight into traffic. In prison, Teresa Giudice will have to do landscaping all day for 12-40 cents an hour. Her husband may be deported back to Italy. THE TWEENS ARE NOT ALL RIGHT: Selena Gomez left Paris two days early after finding out that her boyf Justin Bieber had ditched her to hang out with Kendall Jenner. Apparently Selena already hated Kendall because her sister Kylie had hooked up with Justin this past Coachella. "When I think I'm alone I have God," Selena said on Instagram. Mariah Carey is referring to herself in the third person: that seems reasonable. Finally, KFC made a keyboard where all the keys are covered with fried chicken stickers and the only visible letters are K, F and C.

Grade: KFC (KFC Fucking Ceyboard)


This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

Star

KATE'S BABY SURPRISE: TWINS!

Someone call the gender police: Bruce Jenner keeps his nails in a French manicure. Someone call the police police: Bethenny Frankel's boyfriend made her dress up in her four-year-old girl's pajamas as a sex thing. Someone call the portmanteau doctor: John Mayer is manorexic. I am laughing a little right now at this caption about Katy Perry's "rumored new boyfriend, DJ Diplo." I thought that's been happening, though? They ordered pizza to the club, which is just classic DJ Diplo. Kanye wants to "mentor" Cara Delevingne and Kim's paranoia is at an "all-time high" about it. The magazine says that Cara has "a life that Kim could only dream of," because she is "taken seriously by Hollywood." Gwyneth Paltrow is delaying signing her divorce papers because she doesn't like that Chris Martin is with Jennifer Lawrence now. Apparently J-Law won't be photographed with Chris while he's still married, even technically? Doesn't that conscious uncoupling press release count? TWINS FOR KATE, TWINS FOR KATE. Twin girls for Kate! Little actual princesses! In this definitely not true story, Kate has known this since August because she has been having dreams of "two tiny babies." How tiny, like gummy bear size? Kate's also been chugging kombucha, regaining her appetite, and craving "tuna and sweet corn." Her mom is moving in with them and the Queen is "furious" about it. Name candidates include Margaret, Elizabeth, Diana, Florence, Charlotte and Alice. THIS IS SO EXCITING I HOPE THEY NAME BOTH BABIES DIANA okay hold on everyone in the chat room just told me that tabloids are fake? WHY AM I READING THEM THEN? Amanda Bynes is going to apply to Columbia and NYU. "I do hope that I too can change the world," she said, writing her essay with a Black & Mild dipped in foundation. Joe Giudice has a history of getting caught in public with his hand in a cookie jar. "Each time, it was with a sexy, younger brunette." Pretty big cookie jar to fit two hands in it! You think the cookies were big too or? Ariana Grande wants everyone to die because she is the product of a broken home. Star got copies of her parents' 2002 divorce papers, including an alimony request with a $1000 monthly line-item for Ariana's clothes (we must presume that all of that money was stockpiled for fake ponytails).

Grade: Second (same grade as Ariana)


This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

US Weekly

WE DESTROYED OUR FAMILY

Good tidings and great joy: Ellen Pompeo had a surprise baby. Not a surprise to her, though; about the surrogate, she says "I was there when they inseminated her and we held hands." Same. Kelly Clarkson has a 3-month-old named River whose hands look like Wario. I mean that as a compliment. An unnamed intruder came to Keanu Reeves' home on September 15th, swam in his pool and also took a shower. THE SCOURGE OF JOHN CHEEVER LIVES ON. Ciara has lost 60 pounds in four months and only some of that weight was a baby. Remember when George Clooney got married to a real-life superhero? She gave him "two 3-month-old cocker spaniels" as a wedding gift. They are hiding out on a private island in England, the wifi at their mansion apparently sucks, so they are using their cocker spaniels as routers. Gwyneth wants to hang out with Jennifer Lawrence and thinks "they'd probably get along." I can imagine this but only if they are both totally, totally hammered. Hayden Panettiere is seven months pregnant and she went to Miami and had an orangutan make her a painting. STARS THEY JUST LIKE US. I am still not totally sure who Teresa and Joe Giudice are, but I now know that Teresa and Joe Giudice have hired a crisis manager whose past clients include Lindsay Lohan and Justin Bieber: I don't know if that makes her the worst, or the best crisis manager in the world. Kate Middleton is at war: with boredom. "It's been so difficult," says an insider. After she has her first artisanal baby, Blake Lively wants to "spit out" a "litter." She also says that she can't pick between her favorite types of pastries because it would be "like asking someone who their favorite kid is." I think Blake Lively is confused. I am worried that she is going to eat her babies.

Grade: 30 (the LITERAL number of babies that Blake Lively has gone on record as wanting to have)


This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

Life & Style

INSANE & ON THE RUN

This cover photo is also making me think of the IKEA monkey. "Former child star goes on a cross-country spree of madness," says the subhed. "Begging strangers for their shoelaces & twitching nonstop." IT'S A MONKEY, GUYS, LEAVE HER ALONE. Paris Hilton left a $47,000 tip on a $230,000 bar tab at a bar in New York City. *refills MetroCard $10 at a time* I'm fine, everything's fine. Kylie Jenner is dating Tyga. I hope she writes her next YA novel based on "Rack City." Jessica Alba recently indulged on "meatballs" and "rice balls." Which balls do you think were bigger? Amber Rose and Kim Kardashian have the same birthday. How hard you think Kim gonna watch the PHONE (hehe) this October 21? Jennifer Love Hewitt once got Matt Damon an Aerobed to cheer him up and he never got her a thank-you note. He told her that "all his dreams were coming true but he didn't feel that he had a bed of his own." Clearly he did though, clearly he did. Oh, here comes another Amanda Bynes story, which is actually amazing. At a Williamsburg salon on September 24th Bynes (1) smoked weed (2) asked somebody to give her their shoelaces (3) stripped naked (4) tried on clothes (5) spilled a bottle of pills on the floor (6) all while doing standing leg lifts because she wants to lose 10 pounds. She then went up to the customer whose shoelaces she wanted and asked them to book her a flight and also drive her to the airport. OH MY GOD HERE IS ANOTHER STORY ABOUT THESE GIUDICE PEOPLE WHO I CANNOT CONTEXTUALIZE NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I GOOGLE THEM. LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian have "dealt with plenty of soiled laundry in their time." Congratulations to the happy couple for being super good at laundry. Jason Derulo broke up with Jordin Sparks over the phone. Pretty cold after three years! ♫ JA-SON DERULAO ♫

Grade: military (like Amanda's weed)


This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

OK!

I'M HAVING CHRIS' BABY

Shouldn't it be "Chris's"? WILL IT BE A "COOL" BABY? SMH at internalized patriarchal pressure forcing young babies today to drink beer, love diapers and never get mad. Denise Richards has a three-legged dog named Beagle and she puts it in a stroller. RT if would trade places with Beagle for a day. Miranda Lambert wants to have babies but husband Blake Shelton went on Ellen and said he doesn't want babies at all. Miranda is sad because her buddy Carrie Underwood is pregnant and Blake could have at least just said "We'll see." If this happened to me I would immediately go out and buy a baby. Angelina Jolie is mad that Leonardo DiCaprio, Victoria Beckham and Emma Watson have all signed on as Goodwill Ambassadors. She's worried that they're those bandwagon goodwill ambassadors. Aaron Carter missed Nick Carter's wedding because of a plane delay. BUT WHAT WAS HIS HORNY LEVEL? Chris Martin is thinking about proposing to Jennifer Lawrence as soon as his divorce papers are finalized. Jen is "not ready to be a stepmom" and has not met Chris and Gwyneth's children yet, but she is "talking engagement, babies, the whole nine yards." Recently the pair went on a date and drank daiquiris. Chris Martin liked this daiquiri outing because Gwyneth literally exploded into a billion pieces every time she looked at refined sugar. Cool cool cool cool. Also SELENA GOMEZ IS DESTROYING HERSELF FOR LOVE. Her "increasingly provocative image is only leaving her with low self-esteem." Her social life "revolves entirely around Justin's crew of rappers and models." She is ADDICTED 2 JUSTIN.

Grade: three-legged dog named Beagle (me)


Addendum:

This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

Fig 1 InTouch

This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

Fig 2. InTouch

This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

Fig 3. Ok

This Week In Tabloids: Someone Put a Microchip in Amanda Bynes's Brain

Fig 4. Us Weekly

NJ High School Football Team Hazing Included Fingers In Butts

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NJ High School Football Team Hazing Included Fingers In Butts

Daily hazing on a New Jersey high school football team allegedly involved seniors shoving fingers up the rectums of younger players, NJ.com exclusively reports. Sayreville War Memorial High School's entire football season has been cancelled as a result, Sayreville's superintendent, Richard Labbe, told the press on Monday night.

The allegations in detail, shared through NJ.com:

It would start with a howling noise from a senior football player at Sayreville War Memorial High School, and then the locker room lights were abruptly shut off.

In the darkness, a freshman football player would be pinned to the locker-room floor, his arms and feet held down by multiple upperclassmen. Then, the victim would be lifted to his feet while a finger was forced into his rectum. Sometimes, the same finger was then shoved into the freshman player's mouth.

Sayreville War Memorial—Jon Bon Jovi's alma mater—has won three state championships in the past four years, NJ.com reports. The football team's head coach has declined to comment on the allegations.

Many parents, however, feel conflicted about the cancellation of the season, claiming that the players shouldn't be punished for something that adults should be responsible for monitoring:

Madeline Thillet, speaking at Tuesday night's board of education meeting, said her son was one of the members of the team interviewed by investigators. She downplayed the hazing while protesting the cancellation of the season.

"I was at the police station with him when they were questioning him," she said. "They were talking about a butt being grabbed. That's about it. No one was hurt. No one died. I don't understand why they're being punished. I think that the forfeited game was punishment enough."

According to the report, freshmen players would rush to locker rooms to change quickly before the butt stunt was pulled. Local police and prosecutors are reportedly investigating.

[Image via AP]

In his most recent dispatch, The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks with Lucia McBath about the deat

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In his most recent dispatch, The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks with Lucia McBath about the death of her son, Jordan Davis. "It's very difficult to know that it doesn't matter what morals you instill in your children," she said. "That there are certain people who will never see the value and known who they are."

Open-Carrying Guy Has His Brand-New Pistol Stolen at Gunpoint

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Open-Carrying Guy Has His Brand-New Pistol Stolen at Gunpoint

An Oregon man taking advantage of the state's open carry laws had his new semiautomatic pistol stolen at gunpoint early Saturday morning, and apparently didn't put up a fight.

Gresham, Ore., police say former gun owner William Coleman III was talking to his cousin on the street around 2 a.m., openly displaying the Walther P22 he had purchased Friday.

According to the Oregonian, Coleman told cops a 20-something man walked up to the two and asked for a cigarette. When he noticed Coleman's gun, the stranger pulled his own pistol from the waistband of his sweatpants.

"I like your gun, give it to me," Coleman says the robber told him. He complied, and the man walked away with the gun.

Open carry is legal in Multnomah County with or without a concealed weapons license, but even gun rights advocates think Coleman made a huge mistake by flaunting his new firearm.

Vocativ points to the discussion over at Bearing Arms, where blogger Bob Owens wrote that Coleman had "the situational awareness of a pickle," and commenters overwhelmingly agreed Coleman needed more training before concealed-carrying—let alone displaying—a gun he'd never fired.

[h/t Vocativ, Photo: Shutterstock]

There Will Be Blood... In Your Veggie Burger

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There Will Be Blood... In Your Veggie Burger

A recent story in the Wall Street Journal (subscription only) touches on a new breed of startups that aim to make eating in the future an easier, healthier, and more vegetarian experience for you. Hold up, techies! What about those of us who still want to eat delicious meat?

The biggest development in lab-engineered food comes from a startup called Impossible Foods, founded by biochemistry scientist Patrick Brown, where engineers and scientists are experimenting with how to make replica "plant blood" ooze from a veggie burger, similar to what you'd get if you were eating real cow's beef. Mmm! Impossible Foods has amassed $75 million in venture capital, including support from Bill Gates.

Via the WSJ:

A large bulk of that money has gone into Mr. Brown's manufacturing facility in Redwood City, Calif., a sort-of Willy Wonka lab for fake meat where white-coated lab technicians dump large vats of fresh spinach leaves and other plant matter into a giant blender that breaks down the greens into plant proteins.

Elsewhere, machines rapidly cook raw ground meat and send blasts of smells to scientists, who carefully log the characteristics and strength of each smell. And all across the lab, several tests are happening concurrently, some dedicated to improving the flavor, texture and smells, and others designed to improve the cost efficiency of its processes.

What Brown wants to discover with his venture is not just a better veggie burger, but the science behind what makes meat taste the way it tastes and what makes it smell so delicious and good and why we want it so much. How do you convince a person who doesn't want to eat anything but meat to eat a stupid substitute?

One of the most important findings was the role that heme plays in meat flavor. That molecule unlocks flavors when it is exposed to sugars and amino acids, giving cooked meat its distinct taste.

The resulting patty apparently looks, smells, and tastes (no way) like a real burger, blood and all. Well, maybe more like a turkey burger, the WSJ exclusively reports.

The result is a dark red patty that looks and feels like raw ground beef and transforms as it cooks. During a demonstration with the Journal, the patty gradually browned and caramelized on the grill, releasing oil from fats and producing the smell of cooked meat. In the mouth, the patty pulls apart the way burger meat does. The taste isn't perfect, though—arguably several rungs below a gourmet burger, and more akin to a turkey patty.

[Image via Wall Street Journal]


​Wednesday Night TV Is Not Seriously Considering Satellite

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Halloween is so fun, and science is so fun too, and when you put them together and add some teachers from Hogwarts, that is the most fun. On TV tonight we have some high hopes, some lowballs, and some middle-American good times.

At 8/7c. you've got the reflected middle-class halo of The Middle and The Goldbergs, a new Mystery of Laura on NBC, lucky thirteen is the number of Hell Chefs in Hell's Kitchen, there's the penultimate Legend of Korra which is now airing at even more random times than ever before, and the highly anticipated Arrow premiere...

Which regretfully will remain unseen by yours truly, due to the mortifying last five minutes of The Flash premiere last night, which was likeable if not my particular thing right up until those last five minutes, when I retroactively unliked the things I'd previously liked about the hour, as though Will Smith had held up a strange object before my eyes and sent a laser into my brain. As though The Flash were the engram of a thetan that was keeping me from becoming Clear, and only Will Smith could zap it out of me and back into its space volcano of origin.

At 9/8c. you've got an SVU with the cheeky title "Producer's Backend," you have a new Couples Therapy and Criminal Minds, and Red Band Society on Fox. The Modern Family/Blackish block seems to be doing well for ABC, although in sadder news Tyler Perry's For Better or Worse is tonight titled "The Divorce Papers," which seems to indicate the answer is: Worse.

Legends comes to a close on TNT, with no one the wiser as to what that is, and on Direct TV I just have to say that there is a show most of us will never see called Kingdom, the first episode is called "Set Yourself on Fire," so far so good, and it stars three of my faves (Frank Grillo, Matt Lauria, Kiele Sanchez) along with Nick Jonas—whom when he is naked he is very naked, as of late; he has grown into nakedness—and what the show is about is, the imaginary sport known as Mixed Martial Arts, or as I like to call it, Post-Modern Mixed-Media Ass-Beat Dancing. (Call me MMAybe, Frank Grillo. And tell Nick Jonas to put some goddamn pants on.)

At 10/9c. it is finally, finally the 90-minute premiere of American Horror Story: Freak Show, about which you can read here (and here). There's also new Chicago PD, I Heart Nick Carter, Stalker, and The League followed by Ali G on FXX. There's a new Nashville on ABC, South Park ("The Cissy") and Key & Peele on Comedy Central, and the notably baroque title of this week's Teen Mom 2, Teen Mom 2 Season 5B Finale Special Check Up With Dr. Drew Part I.

Otherwise it's the Top Chef Duels finale, about which I can't seem to get any info at all at presstime, so maybe it will be a big splash of some kind, but then how could you compete with the Watch What Happens: Live airing thereafter, with guests Hilary Duff and Giada de Laurentiis, two people I would say deserve their level of success, whatever that is, but in very different ways. I am no stranger to the music of the Duffs, and I feel like I basically understand what Giada's face is trying to do, but I feel like all of that at once is pretty huge. Andy Cohen can for sure handle it, though, luckily. He can get his brain around all kinds of stuff most of us will never be able to understand, I've seen it happen.

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.

Deadspin Report: N.J.

Reddit Users Want Jennifer Lawrence to Fund Encryption Software

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Reddit Users Want Jennifer Lawrence to Fund Encryption Software

Jennifer Lawrence spoke to Vanity Fair recently about having dozens of nude selfies stolen and put on the internet. You will be surprised to find out that the users of Reddit had obscenely dense reactions to this interview.

A link to the interview was posted to r/TheFappeningDiscussion, the celebrity hacking clearinghouse that is the slightly less seedy spawn of r/TheFappening, where the original nudes were first dumped for the greater world to see.

Here are some of the things written in the Lawrence interview thread. There is, of course, performative misogyny:

Reddit Users Want Jennifer Lawrence to Fund Encryption Software

There is non-performative misogyny:

Reddit Users Want Jennifer Lawrence to Fund Encryption Software

There is Reddit users getting miffed at being implicated in violating Lawrence's privacy:

Reddit Users Want Jennifer Lawrence to Fund Encryption Software

There are false equivalencies:

Reddit Users Want Jennifer Lawrence to Fund Encryption Software

There are claims of REAL HYPOCRISY:

Reddit Users Want Jennifer Lawrence to Fund Encryption Software

There are, perhaps most absurdly, calls for Lawrence and other victims to create a foundation that will fund the development of "truly powerful local encryption software":

Reddit Users Want Jennifer Lawrence to Fund Encryption Software

And there are, to be fair, plenty of dissent to these opinions across the thread.

But if you were wondering, generally speaking, if the unwashed boys of the internet have had their minds materially affected by the fallout from the nudes hack, the answer is probably what you thought it was.

Man Killed by 800,000 Bees Hiding in the Attic

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Man Killed by 800,000 Bees Hiding in the Attic

An Arizona man died and another was injured when a swarm of 800,000 angry bees escaped an attic and began attacking them.

According to KGUN9, the men—both landscapers—were working on a Douglas, AZ home when the bees attacked. One man was killed and another was transported to a nearby hospital, where he remains in critical condition.

Beekeepers that later examined the home said the bees had maintained a hive there for at least ten years.

It's the second major bee attack in Arizona in the last month—about 10,000 bees swarmed into a Surprise, AZ couple's home in September, forcing firefighters to douse the house in foam.

"This (outdoor) heater had been blown over and was lying through the bushes down in there," said Dan Norlin told KPHO. "I got it up and along with it came about 10,000 bees."

[image via Shutterstock]

The Messy Story Behind YouTubers Taking Money For Game Coverage

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The Messy Story Behind YouTubers Taking Money For Game Coverage

Before Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor's release, a curious thing happened: critics on YouTube (and some in the traditional press) tried to obtain early PC copies for review, but couldn't. And yet, YouTube entertainers were able to—if they agreed to terms like, "videos will promote positive sentiment about the game."

These sort of brand deals, as they're known, are hardly anything new in the YouTube/Twitch game scene. They're not always super well-publicized, but they've been happening for years. The gist? Video-makers agree to sets of terms to more or less promote a game, and in exchange they get access to said game and also, crucially, a paycheck that is typically based on views or subscribers.

Brand deals are, however, a difficult subject, as they often require video-makers to sign contracts that bind them into saying positive things about games and acting as promotional voices—not evaluative ones. In places like the US and Britain, it's legally required that these deals be disclosed, but often that takes the form of a footnote, and many viewers are none the wiser. In other places, no disclosure is required at all. That's tough, given that YouTubers have become, in many ways, a "voice of the people." They're trusted to give honest opinions about stuff, to speak their minds just as you or I would while sitting on the couch gabbing about a new game with a few friends.

Mordor, She Wrote

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor's brand deals—there were multiple variants from multiple marketing firms, some less strict than others—however, presented some especially worrisome issues, which critic Jim Sterling broke down in this video.

Here are the most concerning portions of one variation on the contract YouTubers were offered—the one Sterling discusses in his video—which sources offered the deal who chose to remain anonymous have told me is the vanilla version (i.e. pre-negotiations):

"Videos will promote positive sentiment about the game. Videos must not show bugs or glitches that may exist."

"Maximize awareness for the Shadow of Mordor video game during the 'Week of Vengeance' through gameplay content, key brand messaging, and information and talent usage on Twitch channels. Persuade viewers to purchase game, catch the attention of casual and core gamers who already know and love Middle-earth."

"Requirements involve one livestream, one YouTube video, and one Facebook post/tweet in support of the videos. Videos will have a strong verbal call to action, a clickable link in the description box for the viewer to go to the game's website to learn more about the game [and] to learn how to register and play the game. Twitch stream videos will have five calls to action. Videos will be of sufficient length to feature gameplay and build excitement."

"Videos must include discussion of the Nemesis System. This really should take up the bulk of the focus, such as how different the orcs are, how vivid their personality and dialogue are, gathering intel and domination abilities, exploiting their strengths and weaknesses. Videos must include discussion of the action and combat that takes place within the game, such as brutal finishers, execution moves, and wraith powers. The company has final approval on the YouTube video… at least 48 hours before any video goes live."

YouTubers presented with this contract also weren't allowed to mention The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit in their videos (books or movies), a curious omission that might have had something to do with this effort on WB and developer Monolith's part to avoid having the game mistaken for another rehash of a story we've read or watched a thousand times.

The short version, though, is that those terms are exceedingly restrictive, going so far as to put the kibosh on any negative sentiment and laying out a list of talking points video-makers had to cover at risk of not getting the marketing company's approval—which they were also required to have in order to run their videos.

The Messy Story Behind YouTubers Taking Money For Game Coverage

It should be noted that most of this was handled by outside marketing firms on the YouTube side, while traditional games press like Kotaku went through Warner Bros. PR. We were offered no such terms and received both console and PC review copies of the game shortly before release. Moreover Kotaku does not accept any sort of deals like this, and our site ads are handled by a sales team that has nothing to do with editorial. In many cases, unfortunately, YouTubers don't have that privilege, instead being forced to juggle their own white-hot opinions in one hand and oftentimes fragile relationships with game companies in the other—a tenuous balance where dropping the ball on either side could shatter everything. Only the biggest YouTubers/networks tend to have separate teams that handle money stuff.

Troubles For Your Money

YouTubers were divided on the Mordor issue, especially when it became apparent that more critical voices in the community weren't being offered early PC copies at all. Some, like Sterling and popular PC game critic TotalBiscuit, tackled the issue head-on and decried it as heinously wrong and disingenuous. "The problem is that you can't review, first impressions, critique or whatever this game on PC prior to launch or even on launch (unless you weaseled your way in as we did) if you don't take a deal that specifically says 'you can't say bad things.' You don't see a problem with that? It is the worst case scenario in which a company withholds review copies to maximise potential exposure while keeping critique at bay, it's about as anti-consumer as it gets," TotalBiscuit wrote.

The Messy Story Behind YouTubers Taking Money For Game Coverage

Others, however, accepted the terms or negotiated their own. While some opted to only quietly disclose that their content was sponsored, certain YouTubers—like Steven Williams, aka Boogie2988, sometimes known as his character "Francis"—decided to be very upfront about it. On his blog he explained that he doesn't consider himself a reviewer in the traditional sense, and that so long as he's transparent about how he views his work and the intentions behind it, he believes this sort of thing is OK.

"For someone like PewDiePie, RoosterTeeth, or even myself this isn't a terrible thing," he wrote. "None of these people are going to tell you to 'buy it now!' None of these people are going to give it a review score. They're likely to just play the game, show you the fun parts they experienced, and then tell you to check out the game for yourself.

"For someone who REVIEWS games this is a fucking impossible situation. They are not only giving you a fair and unbiased version of their opinion but it's the cornerstone of what they do. They are DIRECTLY steering you into one direction or another most of the time."

Williams explained to me via email that he also vets these deals very closely. In the case of Shadow of Mordor, he got a close look at the game earlier this year and decided he dug its blend of decapitation and confusing feelings for the things he decapitated. Moreover, he made sure that if he decided mid-way through playing the game that its orc-clobbering antics weren't for him or his audience, he could back out.

"Due to my need to maintain my integrity and because of reasons of my health I make sure every contract I ever sign has a back out clause," Williams told me. "I can never guarantee delivery on a game I haven't played yet, and I simply will NOT lie to my audience."

Another popular YouTuber who accepted the Shadow of Mordor brand sponsorship deal, Ryan "Ohmwrecker," agreed that these contracts should always be (and usually are) negotiable. "Perhaps there are YouTubers out there that just sign contracts as is, but I'm absolutely not in that pool," he told me via email. "Even then, nearly all of deals that I have personally heard about and/or seen have avoided putting overbearing conditions over the creator's heads."

The Messy Story Behind YouTubers Taking Money For Game Coverage

He noted, however, that in the case of video-makers—whether they consider themselves reviewers, entertainers, or something in between—deals through marketing companies are often the only way to obtain pre-release copies of games. Game companies don't view them as professional critics, so they rarely get treated that way.

"We find ourselves in a position where we're approached by marketing departments instead with opportunities relating to early access, much like other influencers in other spaces, like celebrities, musicians, athletes, etc," Ohmwrecker said. "Given that most entertainment focused YouTubers won't be granted early access to big releases via PR we're typically limited to getting early access via the marketing route mentioned. This obviously doesn't apply to the small number of popular YouTube critics, but for the vast majority of YouTubers that's the reality."

Williams (Boogie2988), meanwhile, told me that most marketing contracts along these lines have a backbone with three major vertebrae: 1) The sponsored video or stream requires you to create a positive sentiment about the game, 2) the sponsored video or stream requires you to not show bugs, and 3) the sponsored video must be approved by the company.

The central problem here tends to be that there's a big gray area between video reviewer and video entertainer, and audiences—at least, at first blush—can't always tell the difference. Moreover, people on the review side of video-making have been known to do deals as well, and their stances on disclosure have proven inconsistent.

A Tough Call

Williams and Ohmwrecker, however, argue that these deals are also becoming a necessary part of the job due to the increasing difficulty of making money by way of ad revenue or any other means. Even YouTubers who don't necessarily like it are running low on alternative options—at least, if they want to maintain the amount of money they were making previously.

Williams released a video breaking down the issue point-by-point.

Ohmwrecker concurred, further explaining: "We've seen things like our monetized views, [cost per thousand views], etc shrink year after year. More people are watching videos via their mobile, tablets, or even their new consoles. That, or they are running Adblock when they browse YouTube, or are in regions where advertisements aren't targeted, leading to a situation where we're lucky if our channel growth offsets the ongoing declines.

"When I first made the jump to YouTube in 2012 I saw a little over half of my views go monetized, whereas today in 2014 it's around 34%. As you can imagine it is pretty alarming. For some YouTubers, occasional brand deals are just another way to try to offset the situation."

He added, however, that sponsored deals are still fairly rare outside the largest channels and networks. "Out of my 1,260 videos," he said, using himself as an example, "only 35 are sponsored, each with disclosure."

It's still kind of a mess, though. Right now, standards—both for YouTubers and marketing companies—are inconsistent, which leaves viewers in a confusing spot. Meanwhile, some YouTube networks have taken part in borderline-illegal non-disclosed deals while others (like the exceedingly popular Yogscast) even angle for revenue sharing deals with companies that make the games they cover. And even though many video-makers on both YouTube and Twitch prefer to be called "entertainers" instead of reviewers, they still tend to offer critical impressions of games.

Even TotalBiscuit doesn't claim to be a reviewer, though he is very adamant about flying the banner of "critic" atop his iconic UK flag. Many people—tremendous numbers of them, going by view counts and subscriber numbers—rely on YouTubers' opinions to help make their purchasing decisions. The situation is, in other words, murky.

The Messy Story Behind YouTubers Taking Money For Game Coverage

"The trouble here, of course, is that the line between 'critic' and 'entertainer' is so blurry when it comes to video that even if [one of the marketing firms that handled Shadow of Mordor] Plaid went after the latter [with a sponsorship deal], any number of them could count as the former," Escapist reviews editor and YouTube critic Jim Sterling said to me via email.

Blurry lines. That's the big problem here. And as all of us—from journalists and video-makers to gamers who just want to know what's worth their time and money—try to navigate through the cloudy waters of YouTube ethics and paid coverage, total transparency may be the only way to stay afloat.

In researching this story I reached out to multiple other companies and sources, including both Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor publisher WB and marketing firm Plaid Social Labs. As of writing neither of them had responded to my requests for comment after two days.

To contact the author of this post, write to nathan.grayson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @vahn16.

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