Last night, a three-year-old boy was shot in the leg by another toddler as the two played with a shotgun they found inside a Baltimore home. Further details are scant, but one takeaway is clear: it wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a gun in the house.

Local news outlet WBAL reports that the shooting happened on Pen Lucy Road in Southwest Baltimore. The victim was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. According to the Baltimore Sun, he is in stable condition.

The two toddlers were playing in the victim's bedroom when the gun went off, the Sun reports. It isn't yet clear whether anyone will be charged with a crime.

[Image via lanych/Shutterstock]

Every member of the cast of Bravo's Euros of Hollywood, which premiered Monday night, is singularly delightful. Obviously there is no better American than an American who recently immigrated here, and the "Euros" are all ecstatically patriotic and sincerely optimistic in a way that's weirdly galvanizing? ("They're right...the world IS at our feet here in the US...especially in terms of pop-music recording options!") They are a rag tag, international crew of unlikely heroes earnestly chasing the Hollywood dream with full hearts, fat wallets, and adorable accents.

I have to say Massimo's American accent, above, is way better than my Italian accent, or my Southern Italian accent, plus I can't speak Italian. Though his face when Bleona banged on the door of his dinner party was way more expressive than words in any human tongue:

I don't know if he or really any of us was ready for Bleona, the self-described "Madonna of Albania." She has come to LA to drive around a gold car with the license plate "Bleonaire" and drink the tears of customer service workers and studio engineers.

She's loud! She's brassy! She's aggressive! And apparently with good reason: she started supporting her family at the age of 14 after civil unrest cost her father his job, and hasn't stopped since. She has that "Beyonce effect" where when she's on screen everyone else just seems like a backup dancer.

Bravo is probably not the ideal platform from which to chase her dreams of Legitimate International Pop Star status, but in terms of becoming a reality TV icon, Bleona is right on track. She's got the fight and she's got the perfect frenemy, nay, frenemesis ready to help fuel a season's arc of fighting, the very sensual Fawni.

Oh yes. This is what we call a very solid start, Euros of Hollywood. Welcome to LA and also to the land of my DVR "series record" setting. You'll fit in just fine.

[ Videos via Bravo]

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

As part of his ongoing very light effort to understand video games, Clueless Gamer Conan O'Brien shrieked his way through the new Call of Duty game, Advanced Warfare, last night.

Like previous Call of Duty games, Advanced Warfare involves a lot of running and shooting things, interspersed with dialogue full of military tough-guy clichés. But unlike previous installments, it also features Kevin Spacey. That's how you know it's advanced! (Not that advanced, though: Spacey's character still has the lifeless eyes of "a carp that's been in the refrigerator for three days.")

Another Advanced Warfare advancement is the ability to hold down the X button to pay respects at the coffin of the best friend you just watched die. The internet has already had a field day with the "pay respects" scene, and Conan does too.

"Okay, here I go. This is a very emotional moment for me," he deadpans, proceeding to test the limits of how creepy the game will let you act at a funeral.

Then there's almost 2 full minutes—that's after editing—of Conan trying and failing to cross a street without getting run over by a bus. (To be fair to him, though, he's not the only one who had trouble with that scene. It's apparently annoying as hell.)

If I had to condense Conan's review of the game into some kind of overall numerical rating, it would probably be a [scream emoji] out of 10.

[h/t Daily Picks]

A mosque in Coachella, California was hit with gunfire early on Tuesday morning, authorities are reporting. No one was injured.

The Islamic Society of Coachella Valley was hit by gunfire at 5am on Tuesday and when investigators came to the scene, they discovered that gunshots had hit the building as well as a nearby truck. Investigators are looking into the case as a potential hate crime. No injuries were reported.

A California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is asking that the FBI investigate the incident. In a statement released on Tuesday, CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said, "Any time shots are fired at a house of worship, the FBI should offer its resources to local authorities to help determine whether or not there was a bias motive for the attack. Our nation's leaders also need to speak out against the growing level of anti-Muslim sentiment that can lead to such incidents."

[Image via Shutterstock]

Abruptly deposed former New York Times editor Jill Abramson is teaming up with Steven Brill to start a publication that has **one million dollars** to give to writers just like you in the coming year alone. How can you get your piece?

They won't be giving a buck to a million writers, either; they'll be giving $100,000 to ten lucky writers in exchange for—this is true—one single story. A long fucking story, sure, but still: $100K, one story. A healthy year's salary for one story. That's more than most book contracts, and a story is shorter than a book! Ten writers will reportedly get the chance to live this dream. (It would be 12 writers, but Capital New York notes that "Brill and Abramson will each be contributing one piece per year.")

Sounds great, and sign me up. (Seriously, Jill, please, sign me up. I'm begging you. I need this. I can't go on like this. Things have gotten bad around here. It's toxic. I feel like I'm drinking poison each and every morning I wake up. I can't keep doing it. I can't. I need a way out. Any way at all. I'm a desperate man. For the love of god—please.) The nagging question, though, is how long can this gravy train really last? Burning through a million bucks a year for just one story a month, what exactly is the business model? Here it is, via Capital NY: "The project will operate on a subscription basis, and Brill said that contributing writers can also get a percentage of the subscription revenue generated by their pieces... Brill said that subscription revenue 'will be the main component' of the project, financially, though he and Abramson are still talking to interested parties about investing."

As much as I love this idea as a writer (and future colleague?? Jill?), allow me to remind you of the old saying, "This shit will never work." This is a venture that plans to sell subscriptions to a single story per month, which will presumably appear online. It's like a wine-of-the-month club for incredibly long stories. The problem is that people love paying for booze and hate paying for journalism, particularly online, particularly when it is not a daily publication but instead a single story per month. They need to raise a million bucks for the outside writers, plus, let's say very conservatively, another half million for Brill and Abramson themselves. That's $1.5 million in subscription revenue. A subscription to The New Yorker, which offers many high quality stories each week, is $70 on Amazon. That means that this brand new untested and unproven startup journalism venture would need close to 22,000 people to pay what they would pay for a New Yorker subscription each year, just to break even.

Steven Brill has a long list of accomplishments, but building successful new online media business models is not one of them.

I wish them luck though! Pitch, pitch, pitch for that $100K story, before the well runs dry.

[Photo of Jill Abramson with chief investor: Getty]

A few weeks ago, I accidentally pushed the air conditioning unit out of my bedroom window, sending it plunging down from the second story into the alleyway below. No one was harmed. Let me emphasize: It was an accident.

It was a Saturday. I remember because it was the day after an evening of post-work drinks in honor of Gawker Editor-in-Chief Max Read's birthday, which was on a Friday. I had a few drinks. I smoked a few cigarettes. Overall, a good night. I was woken up by the THUD! THUD! SPLASH! sound of rain pelting the air conditioner, which I had inherited from the room's previous tenant. This did not sound right to me. This sounded wrong and it sounded loud, and I wanted the noise to stop. "Why is this happening?" I rose from my bed and walked to the window to investigate. Maybe I could stop the noise.

This is the time of year when air conditioners are no longer cooling people's rooms, or drowning out the other noises in the night. People are removing, or thinking about removing, their air conditioners from the windows for the winter. Other people are worrying about being bludgeoned by those people's air conditioners.

Because of how quickly things happened, I cannot remember exactly what occurred next, but according to my best memory: I wiggled and futzed with the window holding the air conditioner ever so slightly, pushing it upward ever so delicately until... crash! There was nothing holding the air conditioner. There was no air conditioner. There was only an open window and wind spraying rain in my face.

I peeked my head out of the window to survey the carnage my clumsiness had wrought in the alley below. The air conditioner did not look good, but it was still mostly intact. Here's a picture of it after I hauled it to the curb in front of my building:

Ouch.

I have told this story a few times. Each time, I am met with the following reactions from listeners: shock, awe, exasperation ("You could have killed someone!!!!!!"). Disapproval flickers in their eyes. But guess what? Any idiot, including this one, could very easily push their heavy box of metal that cools their room into the street below.

But I have good news. I have done my research in order to atone for my sin of stupidity. There is almost a zero percent chance that a falling air conditioner can kill you. Let me explain.

Yes, Someone Has Been Killed By a Falling Air Conditioner Before

I know. I just said the odds are minuscule. But the worst has happened in New York City: In 1988, the New York Times reports, 37-year-old Vito DeGiorgio died after an air conditioner fell seven stories from a building on East 23rd Street. DeGiorgio was hit at 1:20 p.m. and was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital about two hours later.

But it appears to have been a one-time freak accident resulting in death. With the Village Voice, Daily Intel, and Gothamist before me, in my web crawl of both Google and LexisNexis, I couldn't find another story about an A/C plummeting to the street and killing anyone. There have been a handful of reports of air conditioners falling from their perches and striking people below—but they all survived, obviously scathed. Let's run through them.

2006: East 104th Street

From Gothamist:

a 51 year old woman was hit by an air conditioner unit that fell out an East 104th Street window. The Post reports Lynda Kneish had been walking on the sidewalk when the AC tumbled from the third floor, and her "right leg was crushed, the bone shattered. She also suffered broken ribs, a broken pelvis, fractured vertebrae, and internal bleeding."

2010: 65 Second Ave.

From the Village Voice:

On what will go down in history as a very unlucky day for 67-year-old Tony Franzese, the poor man was just walking his Shih Tzu down 2nd Avenue at 3rd Street when he got bonked on the head with the errant A.C.

He reportedly suffered a head wound and was taken to Bellevue, where we're told he's in stable condition.

2012: 1780 First Ave.

From DNAinfo:

An air-conditioning unit came crashing down last week from a 20th-floor apartment of a public housing complex into a playground where nursery school children were playing, the school's director and New York City Housing Authority officials said.

2014: East 100th Street

From Daily Intel:

It happened again: A not-quite-stable A.C. unit, of which there are thousands and thousands constantly dangling above our heads, actually plummeted from a sixth-floor window, hitting an unsuspecting pedestrian in the head and injuring her leg. "It looked like hamburger meat, it was disgusting," said Chloe Pinkerton, a 28-year-old high school teacher, who had been training for the New York City Marathon.

The gloomy hope here is: While there are slightly higher odds of you being hit by a falling air conditioner, your chances of dying from that hit are comparatively nil.

Why Do Air Conditioners Fall?

This isn't a philosophical question. Air conditions fall because you push them. Or more likely: Your unit wasn't properly installed in the first place.

"I've never heard of one spontaneously falling, but I have heard of people throwing their windows up and them falling out. And people grab the cord at the last second and they're dangling in the air," Jonathan Berkson, proprietor of SuperCoolNYC Air Conditioners, told me. Berkson has been installing air conditioners in the city for five years and installed more than 200 this past summer.

Berkson told me that the only correct (and safe) image of an air conditioner in a window is one that has a metal bracket (or brackets) underneath it or is encased in a window cage (which you'll typically only see on municipal buildings like schools). But walk down just about any residential street in New York City, look up, and you will see air conditioners jutting from the windows of countless buildings, all propped up on their ledges by a variety of items: pieces of wood, bricks, scrap metal, stacks of old books, nothing.

Berkson, who obviously has a stake in saying so, told me most people underestimate how difficult it actually is to install an air conditioner—their weight distribution is weird, making it challenging to properly balance them in a window. Also, it's intimidating as fuck to install a 60-odd-pound metal box on a tiny window ledge seven, eight stories up from the street where people are innocently walking.

I've since learned that the air conditioner I inherited had been installed by the previous tenant "all by herself," which explains how easily it fell from the window.

Are There Laws Pertaining to Air Conditioner Installation?

Current regulation of window air conditioner units is a little hazy—unless you live in public housing. There are 334 public housing developments in New York, across a collective 2,600 buildings. Air conditioner installation, upkeep, and removal in those buildings are policed by the New York Public Housing Authority. And they're pretty diligent. From my email correspondence with them:

If a resident wants to get a major appliance such as an air conditioner, they must first contact the development office and sign a special appliance agreement. If a resident removes a window guard to install an air conditioner (A/C), they must also call the development office because NYCHA must inspect the window to see that the A/C is securely installed. To prevent accidents, all air conditioners must be properly braced and installed according to the manufacturer's installation specifications. If a resident intends to remove an air conditioner, he/she must notify us to arrange for an appointment. The resident cannot remove any air conditioner from any window unless a NYCHA maintenance worker is present to immediately replace the air conditioner with a window guard.

Moreover, NYCHA staff perform visual inspections of all apartments three times a year to ascertain those apartments that have missing, defective or improperly installed window guards or air conditioners.

If you don't live in public housing, then the laws and rules for air conditioners get a little trickier. As confirmed with a New York City Department of Buildings spokesman, New York City Local Law 11 is the only current legislation on the books that regulates the safety of window air conditioners—for buildings that are five stories or higher. "Air conditioner units must be bracketed to the manufacturer's specifications," the Dept. of Buildings spokesman told me.

But there are loopholes in Local Law 11 I believe have led to air conditioners to dangle in their current state over the city en masse: Buildings five stories or higher are required to be inspected at least every five years, more if someone files a complaint. If your improperly installed air conditioner causes your building to fail its inspection, then your building's owner or manager, not you, will be told to get the unit up to code.

Five years is a long time in the life of an apartment building: tenants come and go, new ownership can take over, etc. You can imagine that in those intervening years between inspections how many air conditioners are installed and removed from windows. Coupled with the diverted responsibility of the A/C unit's proper installation, it's no wonder so many look like they could fall at any second.

Which brings me to Local Law 11's second major loophole: You are not legally required to have your air conditioner installed by a professional (as you should). When I asked the Dept. of Buildings to clarify whether Local Law 11 stipulates that window air conditioners require professional installation, I was told that "the law doesn't specify." This loophole is closed in some buildings—especially newer ones and co-ops—where landlords and building managers will impose those requirements themselves. But otherwise, anyone is free to shove an A/C into a window however they can.

And they do: Berkson told me that he's been called to peoples' homes countless times to rework hack jobs performed by "someone from Craigslist they paid $50 to install their air conditioner." He's seen a lot of people stuff styrofoam all around their air conditioners to hold them in place.

So, Will a Falling Air Conditioner Kill Me?

The honest answer is yes, one can. But in the triage of anxieties one can have about living in New York, falling air conditioners should place well below being pushed onto the subway tracks and walking into an open grate in the sidewalk. The chances appear to be slim.

I asked Berkson if he thought the threat of falling air conditioners was real. "I don't think it's a real," he said. But he was willing to speculate. "However, if it was going to happen, it would probably be during peak times, like during a heatwave in June."

And when I tried to ask a representative at health and life insurance company Aetna (which, full disclosure, services healthcare benefits for a number of Gawker Media employees) about the number of accidental death claims they've received pegged to falling air conditioners, I was told they didn't have that data, presumably because they never, or very rarely, have. (Indeed, the poor Aetna rep I spoke with was downright puzzled by my question.)

Another, tangible way to ease your fears of your own air conditioner falling to the ground and killing someone is to suck it up and hire someone to install it on your window ledge—and then bug your friends to do the same.

[Illustration by Jim Cooke]

Last night, rapper Jay Z and his lifelike wife Beyoncé attended a basketball game in Brooklyn, where they watched the Nets thrash the visiting Oklahoma City Thunder, 116 to 85. Or, anyway, that's what was happening in front of them. God only knows what Beyoncé was seeing.

Based on a Splash News video titled "Beyoncé has very animated conversation with Jay-Z, later sways back and forth, but with no music playing while at basketball game NYC," it was beautiful.

As the explanatory title suggests, Beyoncé spends a large portion of the 2 minute, 45 second clip rocking herself back and forth in her chair, apparently to the tune of nothing. The ambient noise of a basketball game, perhaps. The silent whir of the spinning Earth as it whips through outer space.

She sways gently at first, as if trying to soothe a baby that is herself to sleep, and then with increasingly pronounced undulations, as if piloting an invisible ship through a violent tempest.

It's chilling to watch, in the same way that her uncanny stillness in the infamous elevator brawl footage was chilling to watch.

What does Beyoncé do in her private moments?

Absolutely nothing.

[h/t @mdotbrown via Kyle Wagner]

"A voter gestures as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) votes in the midterm elections at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky," the Getty Images caption reads. That's... accurate as far as it goes. Happy Election Day, Mitch.

[Photo credit: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images]

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ninety-year-old volunteer worker Arnold Abbott was arrested this week for preparing and serving a meal to a group of homeless people. He faces a $500 fine and up to 60 days in jail, local news outlet KHON reports.

Abbott and the two church ministers with whom he was arrested stand accused of violating a new local ordnance that "effectively outlaws" the distribution of food to homeless people in public places, according to KHON. Abbott said police stopped him in the act on Sunday:

"One of police officers came over and said 'Drop that plate right now,' as if I was carrying a weapon," Abbott said.

Also charged was a minister from Coral Springs and Sanctuary Church pastor, Wayne Black.

"We believe very strongly that Jesus taught us that we are to feed his sheep," said Pastor Black.

For Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler, oblivious to the coming PR disaster, warned that the law would be enforced when it was passed last week. From Fort Lauderdale's Local 10:

"Just because of media attention we don't stop enforcing the law," said Seiler. "We enforce the laws here in Fort Lauderdale."

Abbott, who seems like a real badass, sued the city and won in 1999 when it banned him from feeding the homeless on the beach. He told KHON that he's not afraid to go to court again, and said he'll be back on the street with food tomorrow despite the arrest.

[h/t Reddit, screencap via KHON]

A group of scientists have created an absolutely spectacular 3-D computer simulation of an EF-5 tornado that tore through central Oklahoma on May 24, 2011. The animations show the mesmerizing mechanics of how nature's most violent storms form and operate.

The video, which is 18 minutes long, has no audio as it's a presentation meant to supplement a talk given by the meteorologists who conducted the study. The scientists used atmospheric data from the May 24, 2011 tornado outbreak across central Oklahoma to run a model simulated supercell that produces an EF-5 tornado. The simulation depicts clouds in the supercell and the condensation funnel from the tornado, as well as wind streamlines and vorticity (rotation) within the tornado.

The real-world tornado off of which this simulation is based had winds of more than 200 MPH as it tore a 63-mile path through the towns of Calumet, El Reno, Piedmont, and western Guthrie, all west and north of Oklahoma City. Nine people died and nearly 200 people were injured when the storm hit. The tornado was so powerful that it scoured grass from the earth, debarked trees, tossed a 20,000-pound oil tanker more than a mile, and scrubbed buildings clean off of their foundations.

Here are some photos taken by the National Weather Service during their survey of the damage. The first photo shows a pole that (formerly) held high-tension wires, the second shows a building scrubbed from its foundation, and the third, surprisingly enough, shows the remnants of a small airplane mangled up with building debris.

We rarely get to see the inner-workings of a tornado—just the gray wall of clouds outside and the devastating damage they leave behind. The video is a testament to the incredible computer powers available to scientists today that allow us to see the mechanics of tornadoes. Hopefully this research will lead to a better understanding of how tornadoes form and strengthen, ultimately leading to better warning times.

[Top Image: Leigh Orf via YouTube; damage photos via NWS Norman]

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

On Monday, the state of Maine reached a settlement with a nurse who's been fighting the quarantine restrictions being placed on medical workers who have had contact with ebola patients. With quarantine all over the news these days, could a legal challenge to the practice actually succeed? Probably not.

Image Credit: Adam Gregor/Shutterstock

The Power to Quarantine

Both the federal government and state governments have the power to quarantine people, and both of them rest their authority on the Constitution.

The federal government locates its ability to regulate public health in the commerce clause, which gives Congress the power to pass laws regarding interstate commerce. The commerce clause is the source of a lot of laws, since a lot of things you wouldn't expect can be tied to commerce one way or another.

In the case of quarantine, the CDC is empowered to make quarantine regulations under section 361 of the Public Health Service Act. Under that law, the CDC has the authority to detain, medically examine, and release persons entering the United States or traveling between the states, who are suspected of carrying communicable diseases.

The states can also pass public health laws which enable them to quarantine people suspected of carrying diseases. Their authority is located in their police powers, which give states the ability to pass laws to protect the health, safety, and welfare of persons within their borders. Since the Tenth Amendment gives powers not given to the federal government and not prohibited to the states by the Constitution to the states, their police powers are pretty all-encompassing.

Supreme Court Building by Jeff Kubina/flickr/cc by sa-2.0

Jacobson v. Massachusetts

Jacobson v. Massachusetts is considered one of the most important public health cases in American history. A 1905 Supreme Court case, Jacobson upheld a compulsory vaccination law. By the way, if you were wondering if the vaccination debate has changed at all during the last 110 years, the answer is no.

There are a number of factors that make Jacobson relevant. The first is the statement that individual freedom can be restrained for the common good:

But the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis organized society could not exist with safety to its members. Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy. Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.

Jacobson also stated that the state was free to pick among competing medical/scientific theories for their the basis of its laws. And even if a plaintiff created uncertainty about the safety of vaccinations, this would not be enough to invalidate the law.

However, Justice Harlan's opinion also places some restrictions on the exercise of police powers, giving some room to challenge public health laws:

[T]he police power of a State, whether exercised by the legislature, or by a local body acting under its authority, may be exerted in such circumstances or by regulations so arbitrary and oppressive in particular cases as to justify the interference of the courts to prevent wrong and oppression.

In a 2005 article, Professor Lawrence O. Gostin pulled out four standards that determine if the law has gone too far. They are:

• Necessity: Harlan notes that the exercise of police powers be based on the necessity of the circumstances and may not be used in "an arbitrary, unreasonable manner" or go "beyond what was reasonably required for the safety of the public."
• Reasonableness: Harlan says courts can invalidate a state action when a law "purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is, beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law."
• Proportionality: Balancing the amount of public good versus the degree on invasion into personal liberty
• Harm Avoidance: Harlan points out that a vaccination of a "fit man" like Jacobson was Constitutional, but if a person could show that they were in no condition to be vaccinated, the law could not be held to apply to them.

Image credit: Penn State News/flickr/cc by nc-2.0

Possible Challenges to Quarantine

Quarantine cases in American law are few and far between. And cases where the plaintiff actually prevailed are rarer still. If a quarantined person wants to challenge his or her status, he/she can argue that the action violates equal protection, due process, or conflicts with federal policy.

Equal protection challenges involve quarantine regulations that are discriminatory. In 1900, for example, San Francisco required only its Chinese inhabitants to be vaccinated for bubonic plague, and restricted their movements unless they showed proof of their vaccination. The law was challenged in Jew Ho v. Williamson and Wong Wai v. Williamson. Because the restrictions were imposed on a single group, it violated the equal protection clause, and were thus invalidated.

Due process challenges — challenges that allege the government denied a person liberty — rest on the kind of analysis seen in Jacobson. In those cases, courts weigh three factors: what interest is affected by the government action, the risk of error/any possible other safeguards, and the government's interest.

Challenges to quarantine based on due process have not been that successful. A 1922 case in Illinois upheld the quarantine of a woman who had never been ill with typhoid, but who the government believed carried the illness. The Supreme Court of Illinois found, "it is not necessary that one be actually sick, as the term is usually applied, in order that the health authorities have the right to restrain his liberties by quarantine regulations."

In 1963, a New York federal judge upheld the 14-day quarantine of a woman who had no symptoms, no evidence of contact with an infected person, and who had merely come from an infected area. The court upheld the quarantine, saying:

[The] judgment required is that of a public health officer and not of a lawyer used to insist on positive evidence to support action; their task is to measure risk to the public and to seek for what can reassure and, not finding it, to proceed reasonably to make the public health secure. They deal in a terrible context and the consequences of mistaken indulgence can be irretrievably tragic. To supercede their judgment there must be a reliable showing of error.

In the very specific case of ebola, there's a chance that state quarantine might conflict with the Obama Administration's policy of not discouraging health workers from going to the hot zone. However, federal policy cannot preempt a state quarantine. The federal law itself would have to be contradictory, and the law allows states to have more restrictive quarantine restrictions than the government. As pointed out by Professor Eugene Kontorovich in the Washington Post, the Supreme Court has held that unless the federal government has quarantine laws or regulations inconsistent with those of the states, "the laws of the state on the subject are [presumptively] valid."

Ebola Quarantine

It's unlikely that an equal protection claim will be made by anyone being quarantined under for ebola. There's no evidence that people are being quarantined for their race, like happened in San Francisco in the early 1900s.

It would therefore fall to a due process claim. However, as Professor Kontorovish argues, precedent is not on their side:

There are extremely few contexts where the state can deprive someone of liberty without any showing of wrongdoing, or any personal conduct whatsoever: conscription, quarantine, and in a milder fashion, jury service. The case law basis for conscription goes back only to 1918 (also the time of the first widespread quarantines n the U.S.), but it has proven impervious to a liberalized due process clause. Quarantine is safe too.

Moreover, 20th century quarantine cases have typically death with tuberculosis and small pox, both of which are far less lethal than Ebola, and about which much more was known. (The most common form of smallpox had a 30% fatality rate, less than half that of Ebola.) All this shifts the presumption of validity even more towards the state.

Under the basic Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test for these kind of deprivations of liberty, the gravity of the of government's interest and adequacy of pre-deprivation process are key factors. The long incubation period and deadly effects all counsel for allowing a deprivation of liberty without any showing of illness. Locking a patient up after they develop a fever simply does not substitute for doing so in advance.

If a plaintiff claims that, rather than being aimed at public health, the ebola quarantine regulations are being created purely to calm the public fears, then that concern may not outweigh the invasion being visited on them. Professor Gostin told Fortune:

Government cannot use public fear as a rationale for depriving a person of liberty. Indeed the rule of law stands precisely to prevent that kind of injustice. The only basis for lawful quarantine is significant risk based on science.

On the other hand, the plaintiff would have to prove that the quarantine was based on nothing more than politics. Nurse Kaci Hickox has repeatedly argued that there's no science behind the quarantine she was going to be subject to, but Jacobson allows the government to take their pick of science experts in their determinations. Given the tendency for courts to defer to state judgment in quarantine cases, it seems unlikely that such a case would win.

Does America intentionally make nonwhite voters wait in longer lines to cast their ballots, to deliberately disenfranchise them? Or have centuries of white supremacy simply produced persistent across-the-board inequality of resources, which happens to include unequal access to voting machines?

Twitter finally began posting profits over the summer, and the company is spending it on an expansion into the building behind them. But having two buildings really breaks up the open floor plan. So Twitter is looking into building a "skybridge" to optimize efficiency.

According to building permits filed with the Department of Building Inspection that were obtained by Valleywag, Twitter is spending at least $11.4 million to build new offices on multiple floors at 875 Stevenson Street (which the company is having readdressed as 1 10th Street). In a statement to Bloomberg, Twitter says the proposed skybridge linking the buildings will save so many minutes:

"It's simple efficiency — it would take at least five minutes per employee to go down an elevator, out of one building, into the other, and up the elevator to the right floor," Twitter said in a statement.

Another benefit of the skybridge? Twitter employees can avoid awkward elevator interactions with the social workers in their building.

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

Photo: Google Maps

Remember that scene in American Hustle when Jennifer Lawrence's character sticks some metal in the microwave? It starts a fire and Lawrence's character dismisses the entire technology, claiming that it zaps the nutrition out of food. She even has an article to back up her claim. Now the real life journalist who was quoted for that real life article is suing for $1 million, claiming libel and defamation.

"I read that it takes all of the nutrition out of our food," Lawrence's character tells Christian Bale's character in the movie that's set in the late 1970s. Microwaves were first becoming mainstream in the 1970s and people were concerned about all kinds of health effects from this new-ish household technology. Bale's character calls the claims bullshit and Lawrence replies, "It's not bullshit, I read it in an article, look," she says handing him a magazine. "By Paul Brodeur," she says.

What's the magazine? It's never named in the movie, but in real life Brodeur wrote a piece for The New Yorker and was interviewed for People magazine. Brodeur points to the People article where he doesn't claim that it zapped the nutrition from food. Rather, his contention in the interview (which you can read for yourself) was that microwave technology in the U.S. was still too unproven and leaky and that the risk of radiation exposure was high.

From the January 30, 1978 issue of People magazine:

In 1975 over 800,000 microwave ovens were sold in this country, more than the sales of gas ranges for the first time. Nobody knows for sure what constitutes a safe level of exposure to microwave radiation. Some studies indicate that effects of microwave radiation are cumulative. If so, the risk from repeated exposure for young children is high.

Brodeur was interviewed by People in 1978 because he had a new book out, called The Zapping of America, which elaborated on some of his fears about bringing microwaves into the American home. But the "zapping nutrition" angle wasn't his concern. In fact, household microwaves were really a side issue to much larger accusations of government conspiracy surrounding military applications of microwave technology.

From the February 2, 1978 review of The Zapping of America in the Harvard Crimson:

In addition to the mind-control applications, microwaves are being harnessed for what Brodeur dubs "total electronic warfare." Both the United States and the USSR are rapidly learning how to use microwaves to inflict severe burns on humans, as well as refining their surveillance, radar and rocket-jamming techniques. The microwave race spirals endlessly, leaking more radiation into the environment and into our bodies.

The most horrifying part of the story is that, despite Brodeur's seemingly comprehensive research and documentation, he himself claims to know only the "tip of the iceberg."

As Entertainment Weekly reports, the lawsuit insists "Paul Brodeur has never written an article or ever declared in any way that a microwave oven 'takes all the nutrition out of our food.'"

"By misquoting Mr. Brodeur in this manner, the Defendants have suggested to the audience that Mr. Brodeur made a scientifically unsupportable statement," the complaint says. "By attributing the untenable statement to Mr. Brodeur, Defendants have damaged his reputation."

If Brodeur wins the libel suit he also wants to get his name taken out of future copies of the movie. From a filmmaking perspective, this wouldn't actually be that difficult since we see Jennifer Lawrence's back when she's delivering the line: "By Paul Brodeur." It would be easy enough to loop in a different name, but it would no doubt rankle plenty of people. Messing with film history, especially for a movie nominated for Best Picture, really riles up movie nerds.

What actually happens when you put metal in a microwave? You can read all about it from Gizmodo's own Andy Tarantola.

[Update: The original headline to this post referred to a "real life scientist." Mr. Brodeur was a science journalist for the New Yorker.]

Image: Gif from the movie American Hustle by Andy Tarantola

Chris Rock's SNL hosting debut got a lot of attention for Rock's opening monologue about terrorism and the new Freedom Tower, but it also contained what some are calling the worst SNL sketch of all time: "The Couple."

The three-minute bomb is notable for Leslie Jones' painful 10-second pause, followed by a botched line, that snuffed out what little momentum Jones and Rock had to work with. A.V. Club's Dennis Perkins called it "the most painful episode of stage fright I've seen in a decade." The mortifying pause was cut from the Hulu rebroadcast, but you can see it in the live version above.

Splitsider speculated in their episode review that there was "a painful cue-card mixup," and revealed in an update that the sketch may have beens scripted by Rock's writing team, a rare instance of a host invading the SNL writers' room.

(Almost) everyone seems to agree that Jones, a member of the SNL writing staff who was promoted to featured player just a couple of weeks ago, will bounce back from this episode, especially if she didn't write the sketch. But will it still go down in history as The Worst Ever?

Before you answer, consider that Ching Chang existed ("Chicken make lousy housepet!") and that we're only 3 years out from the time SNL did one long joke about Grace Kelly farting.

[h/t Reddit]

A new study estimates that Europe has suffered "a decrease of 421 million individual birds" in the past 30 years.

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Tonight on the TV we've got tiny chefs, buxom redheads, 19 brides for 19 grooms and counting, and the destiny of our country will be decided, but otherwise it's no big deal.

AT 8/7c.

• Masterchef: Junior, one of the odder success stories of last year, premieres its second season on Fox. Kind of like the Cute Animal corner of the Internet, but for food, and on TV; and for another taste of animalistic cuteness I'd mention that Bad Girls Club is to have a "Glitter Beef," on Oxygen.
• I don't know what that means, but it seems like it could be important.
• The Voice has a recap episode, now that Taylor Swift is gone, before the Live shows begin, and
• Selfie burns off two with "Even Hell Has Two Bars" and "Never Block Cookies," one of them in place of Manhattan Love Story.

Not getting canceled outright is promising, and I guess the burnoff could build some audience, but it's still scary. I do know that, for me, I like to watch them two at a time because I get nervous when I feel like the end of the episode is coming, and then relax when I remember there's another one to watch. Perhaps this effect is universal and perhaps the scientists at ABC have figured that out.

AT 9/8c.

• History Channel's Curse of Oak Island ("Once In, Forever In") follows two brothers from Michigan as the search for haunted treasure on a cursed island, and that's a show that exists on television and tonight enters its second year, while
• Moonshiners on Discovery premieres its fourth, opposite Cooking Channel's Masterchef: Canada and the Below Deck 90-minute Reunion on Bravo. What happens for 90 minutes of that actual show, much less that you could talk about for 90 minutes after it happened.
• "Remember that time those two waiters miscommunicated? Such drama was had among us, below these decks."
• ABC has a special on the Marvel family of comics, interconnected films, smoothie franchises and non-mutant superheroes, in case there is a single fact about Marvel that you have somehow neglected to pick up by the osmosis of ubiquity.
• My favorite Marvel fact is that humanoid toys are taxed higher on import than non-human toys, and Marvel successfully argued in court that mutants are not human and therefore not subject to the tax. Politically this would be a questionable, Good Wife-type ruling, since all anybody wants is to be thought of as a person, but luckily mutants, as in homo superior, are not actually real so their legal personhood is moot. (Bonus facts.)
• PBS finishes up the second season of Makers talking about the history of Women in Politics, so that's something to watch when you're done voting, if you haven't already voted by the time you're reading this.
• OWN's If Loving You Is Wrong finishes up its first season of whatever is going on with that show, Nail'd It continues doing just that on Oxygen, True Tori is the worst some more on Lifetime, but who cares because
• Two hours of clown-car juggernaut 19 Kids & Counting: "Jessa's Engagement" followed by "Dishing With the Duggars." Expect Jessa's engagement to go just as smoothly as some number of her older sisters' recently did.
• Degrassi's got another hour on Teen Nick, but it's mostly about the comedies otherwise: New Girl and Mindy versus Marry Me and About a Boy.

I'm warming up to Marry Me but it's still doing "that thing" where it explains what it's doing as it's doing it, like people on that show are constantly saying "I'm going to do 'that thing' where I do 'the thing' and I'm 'doing the thing'" that they are doing (You're the Worst also picked up this habit, off and on), which in real life is the sign of a person with no self-respect, which why would the people on that show have that anyway, because they are fucking losers. Keep your eye on the blonde friend, she's the breakout after that Botox episode, if you see Lucy Punch tell her to call me, and remember that it's not the '90s anymore and you don't have to constantly ask irony's permission to exist.

AT 10/9c.

• MTV's got Awkward./Faking It and Happyland, of course, while Sons of Anarchy covers basically the same material on FX.
• On the History Channel, a show called Search for the Lost Giants premieres, and guess what? It's exactly what it sounds like! It is about people looking for giants! They swear they are around here somewhere.
• There's also an NBC Special about the elections, but I don't really get what that gives you for a midterm that you wouldn't want to get from local news. I am interested in overall Congress races, obviously, but even in Texas we do pay attention to that stuff. But oh, I guess it's a chance to bring out the holograms, so I shouldn't look it in the mouth. I do love an informative hologram.
• And finally, USA continues for some reason to pair Chrisley Knows Best with the transcendent Benched.

Have you seen this? It's really good! I mean, I'm sad about Bad Judge—speaking of burn-offs, both that and A to Z will play out their seasons, or so we're told for now—but not as sad as I would be if there were no Benched, if you see what I'm saying. By at least a slim margin.

As of a month ago, after ending White Collar, USA still hadn't determined the fates of Playing House, Royal Pains, Covert Affairs or Graceland, but I think Benched and Playing House would pair up quite nicely. Also more efficiently, since I end up watching every episode like three times anyway and you might as well get all that done at the same time.

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

It's election day in America—the political equivalent of a tech IPO. And this election, Silicon Valley's tycoons donated heavily across a variety of candidates, partisan PACs, and ballot measures.

While wealthy donors try to figure out which donations got the best return on investment, let's look at the tech leaders with the most skin in the game:

• Sean Parker: The former Facebook executive and noted Redwood forest destroyer has been prominently funding campaigns across the country. He's donated $1 million to California's propositions 1 and 2, another $50,000 to Gov. Jerry Brown, and at least $77,600 to other state-wide candidates. He's also spent $299,000 on local races in San Francisco, including supporting an automobile-rights initiative and an increase of the minimum wage. On top of that, Forbes reports Parker has spent $1.46 million on federal races, including backing multiple Republican candidates. All this activity left the SF Weekly declaring Parker "a top California political power player." Total: at least $2,886,600 in donations.
• Marc Benioff: The CEO of Salesforce has been spreading his bets across multiple political parties this election. National Journal reports Benioff has donated tens of thousands to both the Democratic and Republican congressional campaign committees. All told, the Journal says Benioff has donated $687,800.
• John Doerr: The famed Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers venture capitalist finds himself in the same camp as Parker—heavily focusing on California races. He donated $875,000 alone to Props 1 and 2. He's also shelled out at least $800,000 on national races according to Open Secrets, including maximum contributions to Democratic senators Mark Udall and Chris Coons. Total: more than $1,675,000.
• Cari Tuna: The former Wall Street Journal reporter, who is now married to billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, has begun donating in state elections. Forbes reports she chipped in $150,000 to support California's Prop 47, which will reduce sentencing mandates on drug and theft crimes. Open Secrets also reports she donated $2,600 to Sean Eldridge's congressional campaign. Eldridge, like Tuna, is married to a Facebook co-founder.
• Reed Hastings: Like many others in this list, Netflix's CEO has spent $250,000 backing California's Props 1 and 2. He also donated $100,000 to a PAC dedicated to helping Democrats retain the senate. However, he made no donations to individual candidates this year. Total: $350,000.

• Eric Schmidt: The Google Chairman spent $527,214 on federal races alone this election cycle, the National Journal reports. He donated a quarter million to the same pro-Democrat PAC that Hastings donated to. He also spent thousands more on individual senate candidates, including backing Mitch McConnell's re-election campaign.

• Ron Conway: San Francisco's boogyman and prominent angel investor has been spending wide and far this election. Federally, Conway has dropped $1.094 million on various races, according to Open Secrets. Despite having been a Republican until 2011, Conway donated to a litany of Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Cory Booker, and Mark Udall. But keeping to his roots, he's also backed prominent Republicans like Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio. Back home in San Francisco, Conway and his wife donated to $447,900 to local ballot initiates and races. Most significantly, they donated a combined $223,900 to a smear campaign that rewarded a city supervisor that passed a law in Airbnb's favor. Total: at least $1,541,900.

The nice thing about being a billionaire is that even if your candidate loses, you still win.

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

Photos: Getty

Turns out Alex from Target, the unassuming, handsome young cashier who set teen Twitter users' hearts aflutter this week, was just a marketing ploy after all.

A marketing company called Breakr claims it orchestrated the viral campaign centered around an "unknown good-looking kid and Target employee from Texas," which purportedly began when teen girls began maniacally retweeting a photo of him that had been posted on Twitter.

The cute Target guy was quickly identified as Alex Chrisopher Laboeuf and his Twitter exploded—by Tuesday his account had more than half a million followers.

Breakr CEO Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares wrote in a lengthy brag on LinkedIn that his company was only looking to practice manipulating teenagers, and never thought the Alex from Target meme would catch on the way it did.

Leonares says the tweet originated with a British Twitter user named Abbie, who has since denied involvement, claiming she found the photo on Tumblr.

i wish i never tweeted the fucking photo is the first place

— ⠀ (@auscalum) November 4, 2014

whatever im so done with this alex shit

— ⠀ (@auscalum) November 4, 2014

But it's hard to tell if anyone is even real anymore. Leonares also points out a laptop in the background of a YouTube parody intended "to keep fueling the social media flame with our kids."

"As you can see in the video below, we were all in a Google Hangout the whole time."

The parody has already been viewed 56,000 times.

Am i famous now?

— DGM_Alex (@acl163) November 2, 2014