The tech industry tried its damnedest to become a political heavyweight in this year's elections, propping up candidates and spending millions to push forward a startup-friendly agenda. They failed.

Silicon Valley's tycoons primarily financed safe contests—backing strong incumbents like Sen. Mitch McConnell and Gov. Jerry Brown's ballot initiatives. But they took a risk on a few candidates that were particularly friendly toward's the industry's goals and they got beaten badly.

Tech heavyweights rallied around two candidates running for the US House of Representatives. The first, Sean Eldridge running in New York, got crushed by nearly 30 points. The second was back home in Silicon Valley, where the industry pushed aggressively to unseat longtime congressman Mike Honda.

Sheryl Sandberg, Vinod Khosla, Eric Schmidt, Peter Thiel, Google, and Facebook all chipped in to replace their representative with Ro Khanna. Despite Honda and Khanna being both Democrats, Khanna was deemed "one of us" by the industry. Their thinking was that a man who babbles techspeak would be better for the Silicon Valley than a staunch liberal.

But Silicon Valley forgot that it takes more than money to get someone into office—you also have to convince voters to cast their ballots for your candidate. While the industry kept hyping how good Khanna would be for tech, they forgot about all the other voting humans in California. He lost.

Then there was tech's big gamble in supporting Lawrence Lessig's Mayday PAC. Lessig's goal has been to remove corporate money from politics. To do so, Mayday mainly targeted swing races, backing candidates committed to campaign finance reform. And Mayday supported those candidates with millions raised from the likes of Sean Parker, Peter Theil, Reid Hoffman, Evan Williams, Fred Wilson, and Chris Anderson.

But Mayday hasn't really panned out. Most of their candidates lost by staggeringly high margins. The only two winners weren't much of a political risk: Walter B. Jones was an incumbent and Ruben Gallego ran virtually unopposed.

Lessig himself acknowledges that hubris has hurt Mayday's chances. A New Yorker profile on the superPAC published last month discussed its first big defeat:

In New Hampshire on September 9th, Scott Brown beat Jim Rubens by more than twenty-six points. Lessig put up a blog post headlined "WE LOST. BADLY." He flew to Washington the next day, and we met at the office of the Global Strategy Group. Lessig said it was a mistake to have backed Rubens. His advisers had warned him that Brown was too far ahead, the campaign was too short, and television ads in New Hampshire were too expensive. Lessig had stubbornly gambled that they could win anyway, but, in the end, he said, "it was an impossible lift."

It's too bad. Campaign finance reform is something this country badly needs, and it benefits all of us that the tech industry has come down firmly on the right side of the issue. But their political naiveté shined through this election, and they looked more like a reliable ATM for the Washington establishment than a disruptive threat to the status quo.

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

Photo: Getty

Police say the murder confession posted yesterday on the image board 4chan was real and matches an active crime scene in Port Orchard, Washington.

The confession thread, posted Tuesday around 2 p.m., was reportedly created before the first 911 call came in and contained images of the deceased woman, Amber Lynn Coplin, naked with red marks around her neck. Her teenage son discovered her body less than an hour later, which the 4chan post had predicted:

Check the news for Port Orchard Washington in a few hours. Her son will be home from school soon. He'll find her, then call the cops. I just wanted to share the pics before they find me. I bought a BB gun that looks realistic enough. When they come, I'll pull it and it will be suicide by cop. I understand the doubts. Just check the fucking news. I have to lose my phone now.

Authorities suspect her boyfriend, 33-year-old David Michael Kalac, killed her on Monday or Tuesday night. Kalac—who texted "Shit is all fucked now. You'll see me in the news," to a friend early Tuesday morning—has been on the run in Coplin's gold Ford Focus ever since, police say.

According to NBC, Kalac was spotted driving Coplin's car in Portland early Wednesday morning but managed to lose police after a brief chase. He is considered armed and dangerous.

Every aspect of the case of Christopher Adam Tang, better known as Afroduck, has been completely absurd.

You have a guy who somehow managed to lap Manhattan in a record 24 minutes (in a BMW Z4, of all things); posted a video of the run online, which got featured on Jalopnik; became the NYPD's Public Enemy Number One for a short time; leaked a video of a cop doing the same thing; went to trial; and then today, disappeared from that trial as jury deliberations were underway.

It's all just... kind of silly.

But New York's justice system doesn't think it is. Tang could still face as much as a year in jail if convicted of reckless endangerment and reckless driving. Now, however, the big question is this: Where the hell is Afroduck?

Tang is from Canada, and if convicted he could face possible deportation after serving his sentence. Our man in the courtroom Raphael Orlove said many people are speculating that's where he went, and it's kind of the common sense outcome, too.

Though Tang's Canadian passport has been seized as a condition of his bail, the New York Post explains he can still get there:

Tang is on bail and his Canadian passport was seized. But he could still re-enter his country by presenting a Canadian birth certificate or a citizenship card at the border, according to Canada Border Service Agency.

It's not clear when anyone last saw Tang, but he was in court on Monday. (The trial took a break yesterday.) His lawyer hasn't been able to reach him, and the judge has issued a warrant for his arrest.

If Tang was really serious about fleeing to Canada — and again, no one knows if he did that or not — then he's there already, because surely border officials are looking for him now. In the meantime, the trial will proceed in his absence.

Oh where, oh where has the Afroduck gone? Oh where, oh where could he be? (Toronto, maybe.)

The perk competition between tech companies has taken a very personal turn. Google will soon start covering the cost of DNA tests "for employees and their family-members suffering from cancer," says Reuters.

The tests will be conducted by Foundation Medicine, a "molecular information" company which received financing from Google Ventures in two of its early funding rounds. Bill Gates, Yuri Milner, and Kleiner Perkins also invested. The company went public in late 2013.

Foundation offers a specific kind of testing related to cancer patients. According to Reuters:

Foundation Medicine helps steer oncologists to a drug treatment based on the patient's genetic profile. Its two commercially available tests range from $5,800 to $7,200.

Reuters says Google employees found out about the perk last week and tests will be covered starting in January, 2015.

This is the second time recently that Silicon Valley companies have stepped in to pay for procedures most healthcare plans don't cover. Women in particular have benefitted from this never-ending game of perk one-upsmanship. Last month, it was reported that Facebook and Apple now pay for female employees to freeze their eggs.

This latest offering could be a sign of more perks to come, given Google's recent emphasis on healthcare and genetic data and the regulators who get in the way.

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

[Image via Foundation Medicine]

Authorities in Florida are searching for a quadruple amputee who's been on the run since Tuesday, when police discovered the bodies of both of his parents.

Sean Petrozzino, 30, reportedly lost his legs, hands and parts of his arms to bacterial meningitis. He's currently a "person of interest" and not an official suspect in the double murder, but police did caution he's armed with a gun.

Petrozzino reportedly moved in with his parents last week after separating from his wife amidst some serious financial issues. Police discovered their bodies when Petrozzino's schoolteacher mother, Nancy Petrozzino, failed to show up for work Tuesday.

Petrozzino was last seen on an ATM surveillance camera Tuesday morning.

A prosthetics expert told the Orlando Sentinel you don't need a hand to shoot both your parents—just the will—as most guns can apparently be fired by the handless, "without special devices."

NOFX's Fat Mike was suffering from neck pain during a concert on Tuesday night in Sydney, Australia. "Huh. Maybe I shouldn't be in the band NOFX anymore," he didn't say.

Mike's neck pain was bad news for a fan in a bucket hat who forgot about the neck pain announcement—which was made earlier in the show, according to TMZ—and hopped on stage. After hopping up, the fan put his arm around Fat Mike's neck and, in return, received a punch. After falling to the ground, he received a forceful kick to the face.

The fan apologized—after being kicked in the face while already on the ground!—soon after on Twitter, and Fat Mike returned the apology:

I'm sorry too Alex, I was in terrible pain all night. When you grabbed me by the neck I defensively reacted... offensively @alexanderpeterq

— Mike Burkett (@FatMike_of_NOFX) November 5, 2014

Huh. Though it ended with a Twitter hug, let us please not forget the lessons we learned from this ordeal:

1. Stop it with NOFX.
2. Stop it with jumping on stage.
3. No touching.
4. Quit it.
5. No stage diving anymore.
6. Also stop moshing.

Bye!

[h/t HuffingtonPost]

Nearly a year ago, the Washington Post reported the impending divorce of David Brooks and his wife of 27 years, Sarah. But the couple never filed any divorce papers, or moved out of the District of Columbia. And, interestingly enough, they just bought a $1.9 million home in D.C.’s Cleveland Park neighborhood.

The real estate website UrbanTurf reported in mid-September that the 53-year-old New York Times columnist and his wife had quietly sold their Cleveland Park house, where they’ve lived since 2012, for $4.5 million.

In an item noting the sale, the Post referred to the Brookses’ missing paper trail in regards to their relationship: “Currently there are no records of the Brooks divorce on file in D.C. court, and David Brooks did not return a call for comment.”

Not included in the Post’s report was the fact that, three weeks prior, David and Sarah Brooks had jointly purchased a new home in the same neighborhood, on Macomb Street NW.

A property database maintained by Washington, D.C.’s Office of Tax and Revenue indicates the Brookses purchased the house, a five-bedroom American Foursquare, on August 22 for $1.9 million.

In a related deed dated August 7, the Brookses are listed as “DAVID B. BROOKS AND SARAH BROOKS, HUSBAND AND WIFE.” Another two deeds of trust, both dated August 15, describe the couple as “SARAH BROOKS AND DAVID B. BROOKS, WIFE AND HUSBAND.”

The most recent filing under both of their names, an October 24 deed of release related to their former residence, refers to the couple as “tenants by the entirety,” an ownership arrangement available to married couples in certain jurisdictions. All of these documents are stamped by a public notary, and clearly indicate that the Brookses intend to occupy the property as joint tenants.

The master bedroom suite · Via Washington Fine Properties

The first deed filed on August 15 does contain at least one sign of marital discord, however. In that document, which spells out the terms of their new mortgage, Sarah Brooks lists her current address as her family’s residence, on Ordway Street NW. David Brooks, on the other hand, lists his current address as an apartment building on Wisconsin Avenue NW, just two blocks south of his old house.

Public records indicate the columnist has been renting a two-bedroom apartment at that address since July 2013, and his D.C. voter registration lists the apartment as his physical address. (A receptionist at the apartment building said she was unable to confirm or deny or whether Brooks still lived there.)

So it seems as though the Brookses were dealing with a rough patch in their marriage, to the point that the couple had physically separated. But it’s unclear whether they ever planned to legally separate. And it’s possible that the purchase of this new house is not indicative of a newfound flame in David and Sarah’s relationship, but just a humdrum real estate transaction, a couple downsizing on property as their children grow older and leave the family nest.

But there has been one public sign—well, a very strong hint—that the Brookses managed to repair their marriage, or are in the process of doing so. On June 23, Brooks published a Times column about a two-year-old blog post titled “15 Ways to Stay Married for 15 Years.” The post “appealed tremendously,” Brooks wrote, in part because it addressed “a subject that obviously I have a lot to learn about.” Two months later, the columnist and his wife closed on their new home.

If you know any more about the Brookses, please get in touch.

Email the author: trotter@gawker.com · Photo credit: Getty Images

"Obama is straw that stirs the drink — bad." The only person who understands this headline is presumably employed as an editor at the New York Post.

On Wednesday, the Japanese heavy metal/teen-pop hybrid band Babymetal played a nearly sold-out show at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom. I didn't go, and after watching a few of their videos this morning, I'm really, really regretting it.

Try to watch the clip for "Megitsune," their second single, without grinning. I dare you.

Who is Babymetal? Suzuka Nakamoto, Yui Mizono, and Moa Kikuchi, the three teen girls who make up its roster, are either the most brutal J-pop stars in all the land or or the world's happiest metalheads. My favorite song of theirs is called "Gimme Chocolate!!", and I have no idea what it's about, but it makes me want to climb up a mountain, throw a box truck off its peak, and ride a surfboard back down.

Many, many bands have tried combining metal and hardcore's aggression with genre tics lifted from dancefloor-friendly pop, and uniformly, their songs are as terrible as their haircuts. Maybe it's Babymetal's total devotion to both sides of the equation, or the frantic enthusiasm they bring to their songs; maybe it's their choreography, their crack backing band, or their penchant for the theatrical, but somehow, they pull it off.

Rather than reading any more boring words, watch these three videos and resist the urge to dance or punch a hole through your desk.

Like any good metal band, Babymetal comes with an elaborate mythology. In an interview with MTV 81, the network's Nipponophile offshoot, the band said it was only able to form after receiving blessing from the "Fox God," and vulpine imagery plays heavily into their aesthetic (see the masks in the top image).

Whatever the Fox God is, it seems to be smiling down: Babymetal's eponymous debut peaked at number one on Billboard's world albums chart (it currently sits at 13), the band opened for Lady Gaga on several dates this year, its videos have millions of views each, and most impressively, American metalheads—maybe the snobbiest, shittiest fans in music—actually seem to like them.

The FBI announced today that a startup founder and former SpaceX employee was arrested in San Francisco for allegedly operating Silk Road 2.0. According to the FBI, Blake Benthall's online drug bazaar was netting millions of dollars worth of bitcoin every month while he simultaneously worked at SpaceX.

Elon Musk's space exploration startup told Business Insider that Benthall was a SpaceX employee while he began operating Silk Road 2.0. KQED News reports that Benthall is facing a lengthy prison term for his alleged involvement in the dark web drug trafficking operation:

Blake Benthall, who resides on Florida Street, was arrested Wednesday, the FBI said. U.S. In New York, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Benthall is being charged with conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking by starting the "Silk Road 2.0″ website about five weeks after the government shut down the original version last year. He has also been charged with conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in fraudulent identification documents, and engaging in a money laundering conspiracy. The various charges carry sentences from 10 years in prison to life.

The criminal complaint, which was unsealed today, says the online market was generating sales around $8 million per month.

Benthall didn't make FBI work very hard. According to the complaint, Benthall allegedly registered the server he hosted Silk Road 2.0 on with his own email address.

Benthall also retweeted a post about the relaunch of Silk Road on the very day it went online:

Benthall has had a long history working for startups and has an extensive background with Python, Ruby, and jQuery. On Facebook, Benthall identifies himself as a software engineer for SpaceX. A SpaceX spokesperson tells Valleywag Benthall parted ways with the company this past February.

Prior to SpaceX, Benthall worked with Carbon Five, a top-level startup consultancy that has worked with Square, Taskrabbit, and Walt Disney. A Carbon Five spokesperson tells Valleywag that Benthall had left the company before he began running Silk Road 2.0:

Blake is not currently an employee of Carbon Five. He was a contract employee with Carbon Five from December 2012 - March 2013. According to the dates that have been reported in the news, his employment with us does not overlap with the time that the Silk Road 2.0 web site was operational.

Carbon Five had nothing to do with Silk Road or anything that Blake allegedly worked on outside of Carbon Five projects.

On AngelList, Benthall also claims to be the technical co-founder of a startup called Late Labs. On Late Labs' website, the company claims it was "relaunching" in the summer of 2014.

Forbes's Ryan Mac also reports Benthall was actively running a tech incubator out of his apartment.

Benthall ran a tech incubator out of his home in SF's Mission district. A neighbor says home's backyard was filled with FBI agents yesterday

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) November 6, 2014

Benthall allegedly used the profits from his short-lived startup drug life to live large. According to the complaint, he used $70,000 worth of his bitcoin to buy a Tesla.

His alleged involvement in Silk Road 2.0 operation seems like a sharp departure from who Benthall was three short years ago. On Reddit, Benthall was downvoted for telling the site's users "You don't need drugs":

Maybe he should have listened to his own advice?

This is a breaking news post and we will update as we learn more.

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

Photo: Blake Benthall/GitHub

William Wilson acquired his pink Cape Coral, Fla. home in a foreclosure auction Tuesday for $96,000. When he went to the home the next day to inspect the property, he found an unlisted, additional feature: the decaying remains of what neighbors believe to be the home's last tenant, who hasn't been seen in years.

According to the News-Press, the last piece of mail sent to the address was from November of 2011 and taxes owed on the property date back three years. Neighbors told the paper that a reclusive woman from Miami lived in the house with her sister, but no one had seen her in "several years."

"The inside was a mess," Wilson told the News-Press. "It looked like (someone) was packing to move. There were a lot of boxes, some pictures of children on the fridge."

Wilson said he found the house is disrepair. Rusted gates covered all the windows and doors; he walked into the living room to find a bird cage and pile of feces. He found the remains in the master bedroom next to the bed.

"You couldn't tell who it was," Wilson said. "You couldn't tell if it was a male or a female...it's disappointing and a sad thing that nobody cared enough to check."

Next-door neighbor Gary Oben Jr. told the News-Press that he only saw the woman living in the house "a handful of times" in the span of a decade. "I had a hunch," he told the paper. "Either it was a grow house or there was a dead lady in there."

[H/T New York Daily News // Image via CBS Miami]

"Well, reality TV has had quite the evolution," Valerie Cherish tells us during the first episode of The Comeback in more than nine years. "It's a different reality. And I should know, because I was there at the beginning with The Comeback. Back then, it was just me and people eating bugs on Survivor. 'Uh, what's this? This is entertainment?' Well, as it turns out, yes. Yes it is. I was right."

When she says The Comeback, she's referring to the reality show within the HBO series, but she might as well be talking about the actual show itself. (The infinity-mirror effect is only going to get more complicated from here, by the way.) As those who love it know, The Comeback was detrimentally ahead of its time. Almost a decade after The Comeback was unceremoniously canceled from HBO, Kudrow and show's co-creator Michael Patrick King have brought it back for a limited, eight-episode run. To put it simply: well, they got it!

I have seen five episodes of The Comeback's second season, and overall, the show is as masterful, funny, painful, insightful, and pointed as it was the first time around. It is also as compulsively watchable. I viewed the five advance episodes HBO sent out in one binge watch, and then I went back and watched the first two again for the purposes of this review. I will watch them again as it airs, and again and again after that, as I have been doing with the first season for the past nine years. I love The Comeback and it is a tremendous relief that they didn't fuck it up. The "series return," as HBO is billing it, couldn't be more welcome.

Season 2 finds Kudrow's Valerie Cherish, a washed-up '90s sitcom star/'00s reality-TV subject whose underdog status is as pitiable as it is understandable, attempting to reinsert herself into pop culture using her same method as last time: existing in front of cameras. Val has commissioned students to film her life for an update reel she intends to pass on to Andy Cohen, with whom she almost worked in 2008—we see a clip from her storming off the set of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, feeling like she'd been setup to lie and ranting, "I've done a reality show before. I know how it works."

Val soon receives news that Paulie G (Lance Barber), with whom she worked on the failed sitcom Room and Bored (the fictional show within the show), has gotten a deal with HBO to produce a show called Seeing Red about his heroin addiction and relationship with a readhead "a neurotic older sitcom actress" named Mallory Church. Val reads the script, and fumes over her "horrible" portrayal. "He's written me as a monster!" she screeches. She has her lawyers issue a cease and desist and storms into HBO to confront…well, just about anyone that will listen to her. Fortunately, the powers that be happen to be auditioning characters for that show when she arrives.

What happens then, about 30 minutes into the 41-minute Season 2 premiere, is one of the most emotionally complicated scenes I've had the pleasure of viewing on any TV show. Val enters the audition room angry, only to learn that the producers wanted her to read for the part, but couldn't reach her. Upon hearing this, her tone softens. Her forehead smoothes. That these people might actually like her makes all the difference for Valerie. The script is no longer something to condemn, but a ticket to relevancy. Valerie reads for the role, agreeing to play the monster version of herself that Paulie has envisioned. After she recites a monologue, in which her character confronts Paulie's in words much sharper than those ever employed by the real Valerie, she flees the room. She voices displeasure at her cold reading, but she seems ashamed at how shameless she just was.

And then she gets the part. It is at this point that The Comeback becomes a show about a show about a show about a show. It is also clear that Valerie Cherish's desperation to be liked is at a new high that over the course of the season exposes her to new lows. I won't spoil too much, but Paulie has Valerie endure humiliation more disgusting than we'd previously seen, and that's really saying something for a show that initially failed to find a visible fanbase partially because it was so damn cringe-inducing.

Valerie Cherish signs up for her torture, she debases herself so knowingly (as much as she tries to deny it once she's got the part) and yet, I feel for her. Part of that has to do with how sensational Kudrow is in this role. Her portrayal is the reason they came up with the term "lived-in" to describe acting. Valerie's compulsive tendency, for example, to infiltrate emotional crescendos by saying something completely inappropriate makes The Comeback something of a thrill ride. Follow along closely and you will repeatedly feel your stomach drop.

Kudrow's Valerie lays bare that human need to be loved and appreciated, while exposing the things people do to get in their own way approaching that goal. Valerie wants acceptance, but she is so self-absorbed that she can't remember most people's names—not even that of Jane (Laura Silverman) who produced her reality show the first time around. She is desperate for interaction but doesn't realize how uncomfortable she automatically makes people when she approaches them with an entourage-sized camera crew. (She convinces HBO to let her keep the crew to film behind-the-scenes footage for Seeing Red.) She watches a playback of a scene that she just acted the shit out of, and all she can focus on his how bad the lighting makes her look. Reality stars tend to be utterly full of self-consciousness and detrimentally lacking in self-awareness, a paradox fueled by narcissism. Valerie Cherish is the epitome of that.

But she's not a monster. The greatest injustice Valerie Cherish suffered during the first season was her inability to self-edit, as The Comeback presented the raw footage of the reality show documenting her comeback and she attempted, time and again, to flag the humiliating television gold that had just occurred by yelling "Jane!" But after watching Valerie without a filter and getting to know her so well, we can understand just how unfairly she is treated by Paulie. His main gripe with Valerie, which makes her a monster in his eyes even though he was terribly cruel to her on the set of Room and Bored, is her tendency to give feedback on his scripts. This seems to have damaged him severely, though we know it was never about him—Valerie's notes and requests for changes were only about her ego. She spoke out in fear that she'd be portrayed as lesser than her castmates or as someone who hates puppies. Through Paulie's fictive rendering of Valerie, we are given a window to his egocentricity, and why so much human interaction is practically doomed from the start. We can't understand each other when we're so hopelessly fixated on ourselves. And so much of the time, but especially in the field of entertainment, people come to believe that they can't afford to fixate on anything but themselves.

(Seth Rogen, who plays the Paulie G role in Seeing Red, transcends all of this with something that I assume is rarer in Hollywood than even in the rest of the world: compassion that comes from deep emotional intelligence. Rogen pops up in a few episodes and has never been more likable.)

A lot of Valerie Cherish's self-absorbed delusion is played for laughs—she calls Lena Dunham "Lela Durham," she insists on spending thousands of dollars of HBO's money on a wig that looks just like her actual hair. The show surveys what we unfairly reward in our culture, as well as what we unfairly punish, and indicts it all through hilarious absurdity. It's quite a pickle we've gotten ourselves into through things like selfishness and ageism, and maybe the best way to cope is through laughter. This is entertainment? Well, as it turns out, yes. Yes it is. Valerie Cherish was right nine years ago, and today, she's never been more right.

According to one scandalized wedding guest, fundamentalist Christian wild child Jessa Duggar Seewald didn't wait for the wedding night to bang her new husband Ben. Oh yeah: when she and Ben went to privately share their "first kiss," something sinful allegedly happened.

One "Mary B." alleges on the blog "My Life As a Stay at Home Wife and Mother" that Jessa's sister Jinger accidentally walked in on Jessa and Ben engaged in an "act of lust" in a back room of the wedding church. Mary explains, "Multiple people were discussing that when Jinger opened the door to get Jess for the reception, she immediately closed the door with a look of shock on her face. A big group of the girls were waiting outside the room to walk with her out…and my own daughters saw as well."

Here is Mary's absolutely amazing story from the 1,000-guest Duggar wedding [sic throughout]:

I was very upset when I was told about the incident that was witnessed by [my daughters] when the door to the room [Jessa and Ben] were in was accidently opened. I am not sure why they would not wait for the evening to pray and then consumate God's marriage.

The Lord has blessed them and brought them together. To hear so many people discussing what they inadvertendly walked into was heartbreaking and troubling. Why did this happen? How could this beautiful, joyus day now be forever tainted and destroyed by rumors about what the girls may (or may not have) seen? And if this is true why would they commit such an act in the Lord's home...the same Lord who guided them together. This really made me question Ben's headship and leadership skills. I pray he is not swayed to evil. I pray he acts as strong husband and worship leader to Miss Jessa. I have a terrible, guy feeling. I have tried talking to my husband about this but he has said he will not talk about it until he prays about it and gets an answer from the Lord. This on average takes about 48 hours for him to recieve an answer.

Rumor has it in the fundamentalist Christian community that Jessa, 22, was so hot for Ben that she had to hurry up and get married so she could kiss him. (And do other stuff.) Mary reckons that "Ben needs to be a stronger leader and not allow Jessa to be led away by temptation. ... This responsibily lays on the woman, as it's proven that men have a much harder time."

If the sexy Instagram Jessa posted yesterday is any indication, she is enjoying married life, love, and lust. Caption: "It's great living life with your best friend! @ben_seewald."

[Photos via Instagram]

Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad prequel/spinoff, Better Call Saul—a.k.a. your reason to live through winter—is filming in Albuquerque, supplying only the occasional crumb of info to addicted fans. There's the billboard, the song, and now this this short behind-the-scenes set video.

It's mostly the usual hype about how much fun it is to work on the show, but there are some important things to note here: Michael McKean is on board as Saul Goodman's—or should I say Jimmy McGill's?—brother, Chuck McGill, and Jonathan Banks will reprise his role as Breaking Bad's professional problem-solver, Mike Erhmantraut.

There are also some reveals of cast members we haven't met yet: Rhea Seehorn (Whitney, Franklin and Bash) as Kim Wexler, Michael Mando (Orphan Black) as Nacho Varga, and Patrick Fabian as Howard Hamlin.

Banks drops some not-so-subtle hints about Breaking Bad cameos, too: "You kind of expect, every once in a while, Aaron or Bryan or Anna or Dean or R.J. to walk around the corner."

He should expect it, because it sounds like there's every chance that at least Walter White and Jesse Pinkman will cross paths with Jimmy/Saul/whatever we're calling him now.

"[Bryan Cranston] and Aaron Paul, in addition to some of Bad's other actors, have expressed interest in making appearances, which Gilligan intends to make happen," the Hollywood Reporter revealed back when Saul was first announced.

Better Call Saul premieres in February. If you watch this teaser very slowly and loop a GIF of the courtroom footage from the music video until then, you might survive that long. Good luck.

[h/t Digg]

"Hold X to review Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare." If only it were that simple.

It's easy to take a screenshot from a single tactless moment in Advanced Warfare's campaign and hold it up as an example of this being just another Call of Duty game. Just another five or six hours of mindless military porn, included primarily to give players too timid to take their game online something to help justify the $60 pricetag. And a flimsy story at that—one that fumbles awkwardly through anything not directly involving shooting or being shot at.

It's easy because that's exactly what Advanced Warfare's campaign mode is. Change the setting from the 2050s to modern day and strip away the high tech gear and this would be just another Call of Duty game.

Taking lead on Call of Duty development for the first time, Sledgehammer Games doesn't tinker with the established formula. Advanced Warfare isn't a complete overhaul of the franchise. It's a tech upgrade — an impressive tech upgrade.

Take the campaign's story, for instance. A soldier finds himself embroiled in a plot to take over the free world and battle against overwhelming odds to set things right. It's standard Call of Duty fare. It's just presented with more technical proficiency than any Call of Duty before it.

The digital actors come to life as they never have before. Kevin Spacey does a fine job in his video game debut, portraying Jonathan Irons, the founder and CEO of the world's largest private military corporation, Atlas. Prominent video game actor Troy Baker is just lovely as Jack Mitchell, a wounded Marine given a fresh chance to fight by Irons. And British actor Gideon Emery is outstanding as Mitchell's captain.

As the story goes, Mitchell is an up-and-coming Marine whose career is cut short following a tragic mission to South Korea. He loses his best friend, his left hand and his dignity as the weighty moment is accompanied by the unlocking of the "Seoul Mates" achievement. In steps Jonathan Irons, offering to lend Mitchell a replacement hand in exchange for his services to Atlas. Thus begins a long and storied career that turns on a dime a few missions later as the former enemy of the free world introduces Mitchell and company to the new enemy of the free world.

It's a shocking twist that will… okay it's not. Within the first 15 minutes of the campaign you can pretty much see how everything is going to play out. It's the uncanny (in a good way) digital actors who give weight to a story that would have otherwise fallen flat. Sloppy writing, glaring plot discrepancies and the odd "hold X" moments are much easier to overlook when the monsters of military video game acting are on the screen.

And when they aren't we're too busy battling through exotic locales and participating in massive set-piece battles to care. From pitched battles across busy city streets to an incredibly cool sequence deep within Antarctica to the explosive mech suit sequence we all knew would be the moment the first shots of it surfaced, Advanced Warfare never shies away from spectacle.

We've run through corridor-like city streets before, grabbing cover and shooting until there's nothing shooting back. Now we're double-jumping through city streets courtesy of future tech exosuits, tossing threat detection grenades to highlight our enemies as glowing red silhouettes. We're killing until there's no one trying to kill us back, but we're doing it with lasers and heat-seeking explosives and even the odd primitive mech suit.

The game we're playing hasn't changed. The way we play it has.

The primary difference is the game's newfound mobility. Through the application of rocket booster-equipped exo suits, Call of Duty finally realizes a truth that platforming games have known for decades — double jumping is the best. Two of this year's big first-person shooters — Bungie's Destiny and Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall — wooed players with fresh new ways to traverse traditional battlefields. With its newfound vertical movement, Advanced Warfare manages to keep up with the competition. It's such a profound difference that I worry for future Call of Duty games that aren't set in future times — bunny-hopping just isn't cool anymore.

With boost-jumping, boost-sliding, boost-dashing and boost-dodging, Advanced Warfare deftly out-maneuvers older games in the series, while still maintaining its classic feel. Each chapter in the campaign mode introduces players to new ways to confront and overcome familiar problems. Mute mines dampen sound, adding dramatic flair to breaching rooms. Bio-sensors see through walls, allowing soldiers to tag enemy combatants without worrying about breaching at all. Magnetic gloves scale metal surfaces with ease.The grapple line allows players to zip stealthily through levels — or tear mech pilots right out of their suits.

I only wish the campaign's killer tech weren't so tightly controlled. The bio-sensors make a single appearance. The magnetic grips show up a couple of times. Only two levels make use of the grappling hook, offering us a brief glimpse of intoxicating freedom before leading us back to a mostly linear experience. This set of amazing toys deserves a bigger playground.

Advanced Warfare's technical upgrades are most keenly felt in the game's extensive online multiplayer. After years of running about maps getting shot in the face every time I turn a corner, now I'm getting shot in the face in mid-air from the top of a building 100 yards away.

There's a new energy and excitement to Call of Duty multiplayer matches with Advanced Warfare that I've not felt in years. There's a giddy feeling that comes as the timer counts down to the start of any of the game's dozen or so multiplayer match types. And when that countdown ends, we're not simply deploying — we're rocketing out of the gate, boost-sprinting and jumping our way towards enemies and objectives.

Between this instilled eagerness and the game's extensive Pick 13 create-a-class feature, allowing players to build a soldier with just the right equipment, it's easy for lesser-skilled soldiers like myself to believe we can actually get the job done. And if that proves untrue, at least we're earning ranks and supply drops at a fast enough rate that showing up at the end of the end-of-game report isn't quite as painful.

Oh, those glorious supply drops, filled with random weapons and equipment. The joy of opening a box of random goodies might be lost on more hardcore players but, for a borderline casual like me, it's a drug. Each new weapon added to my arsenal is another round I must play in order to see if it's "the one", and even when I think I've found it (I'm quite fond of a particular SMG right now), there are variations of that weapon to be found and attachments to add in order to tweak performance and stability.

I've never delved this deep into the mechanics of a Call of Duty game. I've never really wanted to. The more I explore these systems the more comfortable I get with the game and the higher my name reaches on the end-of-round report.

Still, should the failure start to overwhelm, Advanced Warfare's new Combat Readiness Program is a fun and anonymous way for novice players to gain a little more confidence. A quick-and-dirty team deathmatch featuring a mix of players and bots, this special mode disables voice chat, replaces player names with generic "Friendly" and "Enemy" tags and replaces the standard summary with a player progress screen. It's stupid in the most brilliant of ways.

In an odd juxtaposition, I find myself enjoying the multiplayer modes I normally abhor and not taking to the one I assumed I would love best. I expected the cooperative Exo Survival mode to be right up my alley, given my great love for Call of Duty: Ghosts' Extinction campaign, but where Extinction had a cohesive story running throughout, Exo Survival is just a random series of battles with different enemies to kill and objectives to achieve. I enjoy a bit more structure with my co-op. Perhaps the upcoming zombies DLC will scratch that itch more successfully.

There is a stupid moment in Advanced Warfare — but there've been stupid moments in nearly every Call of Duty game. Let's show off the atrocity of war by making the player mow down innocent civilians, Modern Warfare 2. Hey Modern Warfare 3, let's call to mind the 2005 tube bombings by blowing up the Davis family's London vacation, little girl and all. Why not put a mission in the game that revolves around assassinating Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian dictator still alive enough to get incredibly ticked over his depiction in Black Ops II.

Call of Duty has made some bad decisions.Handing the development reins to Sledgehammer Games was not one of those. Sure, we've still got a trite story sprinkled with stupid moments, but those stupid moments play out in spectacular fashion, powered by the convincing performances of some of the best virtual actors in the business (and Kevin Spacey). We're still shooting at each other for points/flags/dogtags/sport, but the way we're shooting at each other and what we're shooting with have been vastly upgraded.

Advanced Warfare isn't a different Call of Duty game. It's a better one.

Now which button do I hold to wrap this up?

The National Weather Service has developed a powerful tool that allows users to create custom weather maps that show everything from temperatures to snow totals. The tool's most excellent feature, by far, is the ability to track future weather along the path of one's road trip.

The tool, called the Enhanced Data Display (or EDD), is still in its experimental stages, so the application will occasionally go offline while meteorologists and technicians tinker with it. When it's online and in good working order, though, the application is perhaps the most powerful tool available on the agency's website.

The EDD allows you to map out everything from radar and satellite imagery to forecasts, current weather observations, and even upper-air soundings taken from rawinsondes attached to weather balloons. Of all of the EDD's excellent features is a nifty tool hidden behind a traffic sign up on the top-right portion of the application, called the travel hazard forecast.

When you click the traffic sign, a window pops up that allows you to enter the beginning and endpoint along your planned drive. Much like Google or Bing, the feature automatically takes the shortest route possible—if you plan driving from Washington to St. Louis, for example, and you'd like to visit Aunt Edna in Cleveland, you'll have to add Cleveland as a waypoint.

In the above example, I chose a to take a trip from Sault Saint Marie, Michigan to Caribou, Maine (two super popular destinations), with stops in Detroit and Cleveland along the way so I don't have to cross into Canada and void my American street cred. The resulting map shows you three different features—an icon, a data point, and travel conditions between cities on your route.

The application uses the distance and time of your trip—1,695 miles and 25 hours, in this example—to calculate the weather at certain points along your route. These points are plotted out every dozen miles or so, and they show you the weather conditions expected at that point (wind, snow, rain, storms, fog), a data point of your choosing (forecast temperature, forecast snowfall amount, wind speed, etc.), and the impacts you'll encounter between cities.

The roads are shaded in colors much like a traffic map on a news website—the colors range from green to red depending on how severe the hazards. If you're driving under clear skies and calm winds, the road will be green, while roads will gradually fade to red as you drive headfirst into a blizzard.

When you hover over one of the waypoints along your trip, it will show you the time you should arrive at that point (note: this assumes you don't make any stops and don't hit traffic), and gives you the weather for that time. For example, if we leave Green Bay at 2:36 PM, the application estimates that we'll arrive in Chicago around 7:00 PM; we'll arrive in the aptly-named Windy City to find a temperature of 40°F with winds of 25 MPH gusting to 35 MPH. If you were to keep driving, you'd hit Benton Harbor around 8:30 local time to find rain/snow showers with stiff winds.

All of the features offered by the EDD are impressive—and come with the quality of a National Weather Service forecast, rather than a shady "forecast" culled by a third-party app—but the travel hazards forecast takes the prize for what could become one of the most useful weather tools on the internet. It takes away the guessing game that can come from looking at twice-daily weather maps and extrapolating weather between here and there.

[Images: NWS EDD]

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

Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, starring Jessica Chastain, comes out tomorrow, and if Christopher Nolan has his way, the only winter movie starring Jessica Chastain that you will know about is his.

Yesterday, the New York Times published an article detailing a behind-the-scenes struggle between Nolan and the creators of an upcoming Chastain-led indie called A Most Violent Year. Per the Times, the terms of Chastain's Interstellar contract bar her from promoting any other film between the period of "early October through early December," which has apparently completely gummed up the rollout for A Most Violent Year.

It is not unusual, of course, for star actors to be juggling promotion for overlapping films, but the Times article hints at Nolan unexpectedly strong-arming the smaller film:

For stars, hitting the publicity trail is a decades-old practice, and for studios it is a standard, and essential, piece of marketing strategy. Initially, Mr. Chandor and his backers — Participant Media and the independent distributor A24 — believed that Ms. Chastain, while blocked from media appearances, would be allowed to attend the screenings and get-togethers that are de rigueur for those seeking Golden Globes and other prizes that pave the way to the Oscars.

On that assumption, they arranged to release "A Most Violent Year" in a small number of theaters on Dec. 31, to qualify it for awards in 2015, with a wider opening to follow.

But Mr. Nolan and his backers have insisted that Ms. Chastain's contract forbids even those semiprivate encounters and have not given in to pleas from Mr. Chandor, A24 and others for a waiver. Next week, however, she will be permitted to attend a private tastemakers' screening at the Creative Artists Agency here.

The notion that Nolan is being an asshole over something he shouldn't be was also floated by Vulture's Kyle Buchanan, who tweeted a link to the Times article while saying that he's heard even more about Nolan's "unusual" contract demands than what is laid out by the Times.

Been hearing about all sorts of unusual contract demands from Christopher Nolan for months. Here's one: http://t.co/cGbQdhmhXu

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) November 6, 2014

Which is where we come in: if you are privy to any knowledge about what Christopher Nolan is demanding of the stars of his films—be it Interstellar or others—leave a comment below or email me at jordan@gawker.com, anonymity guaranteed.

[image via Getty]

We all know that money was the big winner in the midterm elections. But just how big? Big, big, big! Bigggggggg money!

At the Center for Responsive Politics, Russ Choma quantifies just how big the big big money was this time around: a total of $3.67 billion spent on the midterms (with just slightly more spent by Republicans), and a victory by the higher-spending candidate in 82% of Senate races and 94% of House races. There appears to be a slight correlation!

Increasing political spending and the direct link between money and winning elections are odious but longstanding trends. The real alarming news is a new trend:

What is different is the apparent decline in the number of donors. Just as every election since 1998 has been more expensive than the last comparable one, every election also saw more donors than the one before. It appears the 2014 election will break that chain, with a smaller number of overall individual donors. And the campaigns themselves are projected to spend less money than in the previous election: In 2010, they spent $1.8 billion, and this cycle they are projected to lay out $1.5 billion.

Even fewer people who may conceivably have some influence with their elected representatives—just what we need. And if you think that decline in direct campaign spending is a good sign, it's not. That spending has just shifted to shadowy, unaccountable outside groups funded by the very rich.

Plutocracy/ Oligarchy in 2016!

[Photo: AP]

Well, it's almost nine months past Valentine's Day, so it's no wonder we're having a bit of a Basic Baby Boom. This leaves the Baby Name Critic with so many terrible names to put through her spin cycle and so little time to eat dry cereal while watching Dating Naked. And the Baby Name critic needs her leisure time, or else she gets very grumpy.

Our latest baby-makers are Rachel Bilson and Hayden Christensen who, according to paparazzi photos, appear to go to the beach a lot. Do they have jobs? I don't know. Perhaps they are living off of the royalties of Shattered Glass, a fine film about ethics in gaming journalism. Bilson, 33, gave birth October 29 to a girl. The girl was given a name. (If you'll excuse me for just one second, I'm having trouble typing it because it is so bad. I am going to walk away from my computer and take three deep breaths and come back and see if I can type it.)

Okay I'm back. Bilson and Christensen named the child "Briar Rose."

Briar Rose is a Disney princess and also a star of a Grimm Brothers fairy tale written in 1812. In Sleeping Beauty, she protects another princess from a curse and then gets married, because that is the happiest ending to woman's life. Men think she is hot and they stare at her while she sleeps and talk about how hot she is.

This is a bad name for a woman. In this case it would have been better if Bilson and Christensen named their daughter Toilet Water, or Garbage Pail. Those names are stronger and more interesting than Briar Rose.

I suppose we should be grateful that they didn't name the baby Br'er Rabbit.

This has been Baby Name Critic.

Leah Finnegan is Gawker's Baby Name Critic.

[Photo via AP]

British department store chain John Lewis is known for its annual Christmas ads, which feature some sort of aggressively cute concept and a new cover of a popular song that will immediately top the U.K. charts. This year, though, they've been hard at work developing weaponized make-you-cry technology. Hope you like sobbing!

Even though it's only November and we're already steeling ourselves against commercialism and Christmas creep, the story of Monty the Penguin will leech every salty teardrop out of your Grinchy, humbug face.

It's like they isolated the nostalgia for childhood imagination from Calvin and Hobbes, copied the dialogue-free storytelling tricks of Pixar's tearjerkingest scenes, threw them into a particle accelerator, and fired it directly into your left ventricle.

As an inveterate cynic, all I can say is that this is the kind of scary manipulation you get when corporations realize humans have feelings and then hire someone to find out where they come from. And it's working: Everyone in Britain is crying, Monty and Mabel the Penguin toys are entirely sold out, and Tom Odell's cover of John Lennon's "Real Love" is destined to be a holiday #1.

As a former kid, though, I need someone to find a thermos to put me in, 'cause I'm a goddamn puddle.

[h/t every single person in Britain, apparently]