Not sure if you've seen these, but uh, Kim Kardashian has some nude photos in Paper magazine this month. And unlike the last time she posed nude for a cover, Kim's actually happy with the result. "It made me feel confident and really good about myself," she said yesterday.

On the Australian TV show The Project, Kim elaborated:

I was so honored and excited to work with [photographer Jean-Paul Goude] because he is a legend, and for me that was something I wanted to do to make myself feel confident. As a role model I'm not saying anyone else should do that, but for me it was an art project and it taught me to do what you want to do.

Can't argue with that. She continued, "I'm never one to preach, but I felt really positive and really good about myself. I love the photos, I did it for me, I hope other people like them."

I think other people like them!

I struggle with accepting the fact that I am a strange girl. I'm not the kind of strange girl that relishes her weirdness and feels that it adds cachet—most of the time I feel misunderstood, disliked, or acutely alone. My conversations tend to alienate those around me; what I perceive as candor and connection reads like unmitigated gaul and oversharing. I've been told that I just have to find people who "get me," and that has proven difficult.

In my mind, I imagine that my brother could be the one who gets me. In reality, we haven't been around each other regularly since I was in elementary school, so who knows what we would have been like in a real relationship? I rang in his birthday this year with the recurring dream I have every few weeks: We're both hanging at our mama's house and he's just a normal guy. It's summertime and our mama made him a sandwich that he's eating on the porch like we did when were young. He's ironing clothes and absent-mindedly watching TV. He's standing in the bathroom mirror cutting his hair. I wake up to find it is only a dream, and the wound in my heart where a "regular brother" should be feels raw and new. Again.

The emptiness of it is physical, and takes my breath away.

My parents only had the two of us. We were born seven years and five days apart. My brother was beguiled by the garish street lifestyle we saw in our daddy's friends, and he committed himself to it early. Meech was a 15-year old presenting as a fledgling kingpin in neighborhood nightspots—complete with the finger waves, Airbrushed jean jackets, random girls, and our daddy's Corvette. To me, he was just my big brother. The person who made me omelets on Saturday mornings, who ate every Snickers bar and every Twizzler from the candy dish; the person who wrote raps and drew cartoons for his girlfriends. I was a maudlin elementary school kid. I wore lace bobby socks and my hair in fluffy ponytails tied with ribbons while lying under our dining room table reading and fantasizing about moving to a white farmhouse with green shutters near our parents' hometown in Mississippi. My brother and I were always different.

But we've also always been the same. The same eyes set deep in the same oval face; the same praline complexion. We both possess the dignity of our mother and our father's biting wit, which has rendered us both as charming as we are insufferable. There's no one better suited to "get me" than he is. If I had my way, my brother would be my closest friend. We would meet at our mother's house for dinner, travel together for our birthdays, send each other judgy texts about Love & Hip Hop. If I had my way, I would never feel alone because the one person who's like me—who gets me—would be in my life and I would have a partner.

Instead I've spent the last 20-odd years brimming with loneliness and longing too embarrassed to talk about it. While I've been going to school, moving across country, falling in love, generally finding my way through life—my brother has been in prison.

The time before my brother's conviction is something of a blur—for years he had been in and out of our house, in juvie, and living on his own. In fact, when he was convicted, he was already in serving time for an assault for which he had admitted responsibility. I had already become accustomed to my life without him, but I thought it was temporary. I thought that his prison sentence would make him realize that he had really fucked up and needed to do better when he got out.

Our visits to see him in prison were frequent and lighthearted. We brought him clothes and took pictures and talked about how life would be when he got out. Even after he was charged with murder, we still had hope. His first trial ended in a hung jury and with no eyewitnesses and no physical evidence, I had no doubt that he would be coming home soon. Then the state changed the theory of their case and called on my brother's former codefendant—our next door neighbor—to serve as their star witness in exchange for clemency. After the trial and sentencing this former friend came to our house, weeping, swearing he didn't have any idea who killed that man, but that he was afraid of prison, so he lied.

Meech was convicted of murder, armed robbery, and assault with intent to commit murder along with a few lesser crimes—more than three life sentences in total. I was in shock. I remember sitting in the court room during the trial having no fear that he would he be convicted, and when the sentence was handed down I was stunned. My ears were ringing and I couldn't believe what was happening. I don't remember anyone's face or reaction—I just remember feeling that this was not real—my brother was not going to spend his life in prison. It could not be real.

Meech has never had a real job. He has two kids who are now in their 20s, but he has never tucked them in or taught them to ride a bike. He can't help our mama paint the garage. When our father was succumbing to cancer, Meech could only listen to his faint, dying attempts at speech on the other end of a collect call and repeat, "I love you, Daddy. I love you. Can you hear me?" He couldn't attend the funeral; he had to send a letter instead.

It's times like this where the feeling of being odd and alone is too much to bear. In sad times, I kick myself because my own condition could be worse—look at what Meech has to endure. In happy times, I kick myself because why do I deserve these good experiences he will never have? My parents had to wonder every day how their actions contributed to their first born's imprisonment. Maybe if our father had been more gentle and more stable my brother wouldn't have had so much to fear and to live up to. Maybe if our mother didn't try to right all the shortcomings of her childhood by overindulging ours, things would have been different. Maybe if they'd sent him to private school like they did me, he would have had more positive influences Their regret and sadness is warranted. My niece and nephew have never had a father to care for them. Their longing is warranted. My brother has been deprived of his entire adulthood. His freedom, his children, his hope. His depression, anger, frustration? All warranted.

Who am I to pity myself in the face of all those reasonable emotions? In the time since my brother's conviction, I've arguably had a fulfilling life—I've earned some degrees, bummed around Detroit broke and happy as I immersed myself in the music scene; practiced juvenile defense in New Mexico, studied in Paris, walked tigers in Thailand, and went scuba diving in the open ocean off Belize. Now I've moved to Brooklyn and started a new life with new love and hopes for a family of my own.

And yet I do pity myself. I feel sorry for myself for not having a normal family life, then I feel selfish for thinking that way. It's absurd to think my sadness matters when compared to the absence my parents and my brother's children experience, so I don't seek solace in them. I try to face it alone. I miss him. I feel obligated to communicate with him because I know he's lonelier than I could ever imagine. I hate that the world has dealt him this insurmountable blow, but I think I'd dismantle if I took on his case as my life's mission. Reading his letters makes me so depressed that I sometimes leave them unopened.

November 2013

Dear Yvette,

I truly hope that when this missive finds its way to your hands that you & all of those whom you love & care for are in the best of health and highest of spirits...As for myself, I'm taking this shit one day at a time, as I struggle to maintain my sanity which is certainly easier said than done. Several months have passed since I've heard from you…

I often take the coward's path and I don't write back.

Instead of doing something that may be meaningful to remedy it, my longing metastasizes into an ugly, clingy attachment to my friends. When I meet new people, it feels like falling in love. I want to hear all about them, spend all of my time with them; I want to bare myself to them. But at the same time I'm afraid that if I share too much they will start in with the pity and doubt. I fear I will feel alone, again and again. I don't cultivate many close relationships. I'm outspoken and funny and hanging out all over town, but what looks like a thriving social life feels more like drifting because I have no one in my actual life to anchor me. Sometimes I feel more lonely in a crowd than I would anyplace else.

When I have mustered the strength to discuss my brother's imprisonment it's generally met with an intolerable mix of pity, excitement and, worst of all, incredulity.

"You poor girl!"

"You were a juvenile defense attorney and your brother is a juvenile serving life? That's wild..."

"So he was a drug dealer, right? Well…." (Despite all the liberal Facebook posts about prosecutorial misconduct and shit, it seems like no one really believes that a person can be in jail for something they didn't do.)

I hate each and every one of these conversations. I feel like some sort of freak or real live ghetto disaster for people to ogle. And as awful as all of these external interactions feel, they are compounded by the fact that I don't even have adequate standing for my sadness.

So on the eve of my brother's 42nd birthday—October 3, 2014—all these emotions were slamming around in me and left me sobbing. I texted one of the few people who knew my whole story a string of "I'm sad and strange" texts. She told me not to be sad, then texted me pictures of a housewarming gift she'd made for my new apartment, and a picture of her pregnant belly being hugged by her four year-old daughter. These things were simple but sweet, and in a world where I tend to feel isolated, these small kindnesses help me to know that there are people who "get me" and love me in spite of—or maybe even because of—my complexities.

These small kindnesses give me the strength to be a better daughter, aunt, and, most importantly, a better sister to my brother whose loss is infinitely more poignant than mine. In order to be the person my family needs, I have to let people in and allow my own needs to be fulfilled. I have to be open to kindness.

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

Contact lenses are great: They sit on your cornea and fool people into thinking you have perfect vision. They are also a nightmare for a number of different reasons with varying degrees of rationality.

Here are my personal top five contact-related fears, ranked.

5. Wearing my final pair of contacts past their supposed expiration date is actually very bad for my eyes. In this fear, I wear my final pair of contacts for ten or so days past my change-out date, because my contacts prescription has expired and I cannot buy any new contacts until I see my ophthalmologist, because the contacts industry is a racket. I wake up and cannot open my eyes. I go to the mirror—still, I cannot open my eyes. Eventually I find out that my eyes are open, actually, but I am just blind now. Why didn't I think order new contacts when I knew I was running out?

4. I misidentify the contact disinfectant with 3% hydrogen peroxide for normal contact solution again. Once, a roommate of mine had a 3% hydrogen peroxide lens cleaner called Clear Care. It is apparently supposed to be used with a special contact lens holder that neutralizes the peroxide. Hmm. Because the bottle and label and most of the language included on the label looked identical to that of non-cornea-burn contact solution, I used it as if it were non-cornea-burn contact solution. Trouble was, it was cornea-burn contact solution. Lesson learned, I guess. I never used my roommate's contact solution again and, after several rounds of eye-flushing and screaming (genuinely), my eyes were left without permanent damage (as far as I know). In this fear, they are left with permanent damage. I am blind. Why didn't I just buy more of my own contact solution when it ran out? Why didn't I read the label more carefully? Why was I born with imperfect vision when some were born with perfect vision?

3. Some sort of apocalypse or monster scenario. Everyone loves the Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last," in which the man with the glasses survives the apocalypse and breaks his glasses just as he sits down to read a stack of books. Even though his wife and boss are finally dead, the poor man still cannot read books. A nightmare, yes. But what if Henry Bemis were a contact lens wearer? No chance for a new pair, or a case to store this pair in. Plus all that dust. Immediately hopeless. Now that is a real nightmare. Also a nightmare: any sort of thing you see in a movie where people have to hide from a monster or survive a zombie apocalypse or I don't know what. Strange, to me, that you never hear any of those people complaining about their contacts. It would be a constant struggle.

2. I am kidnapped. My kidnappers see me walking home with a backpack and take me for a vulnerable child whose use of an iPhone 5 while walking denotes wealthy, if detached, parents. They pull over to the side of the road and because, despite my appearance, I am an adult whose fear of being kidnapped has dulled over the years, I think nothing of it. Two men jump out of the kidnapping van and throw a potato sack around my body. Oh no. Anxiety and an inability to think on my feet and react properly in even benign social situations keeps me from getting out of the potato sack and running away. I am taken to a cold, dark, probably even wet location while my kidnappers dilly-dally around. I don't know when they'll make the call to ask my parents for an unreasonable amount of money, or send it to them in a note full of magazine cutouts, but I can tell it won't be soon. Maybe they never will. "I have contacts in," I call out. No response. "I can't keep them in overnight, and the left one is already sort of messed up," I continue. No response! My hands tied behind my chair, I am useless to remove my contacts even if I decide I'd rather be nearly blind than suffer the pain and damage leaving your contacts in for extended periods of time causes. "Do either of you wear contacts?" Now pleading, I yell, "DO YOU HAVE A CONTACTS CASE I CAN BORROW?" Again, my kidnappers give no response. Oh my god. No. Oh no.

1. I die unexpectedly. Maybe I fall in front of a train, or I don't look both ways when I cross the street because it is my turn to walk and a bicyclist runs me over because apparently they're so special and they don't have to follow any rules. Maybe someone murders me? In any case, I am taken to the hospital and pronounced dead, or maybe I'm pronounced dead at the scene. My body is sent to the funeral home. Oh no. Hold on—did anyone check to see if I had contacts in at the time of my death? No. They didn't check at all, and they also don't check at the funeral home. Doesn't being an organ donor mean they take my eyes? Don't they want them for something? No. Not this time, at least. My contacts are plastered to my eyes until my eyes fully decompose. In heaven, I wear contacts.

[image via Chuck Rausin, Shutterstock]

U2 have postponed their scheduled week-long residency on the Tonight Show while they deal with the unknown person or persons trying to kill Bono, so Jimmy Fallon booked himself and The Roots to stand in for The Biggest Dad Band in the World last night.

Fallon's impression of a young, vital Bono might actually be better than Bono's at this point. If you closed your eyes, you'd almost think you were hearing an energetic, sprightly, and possibly Viagra-enhanced U2. And damn, Larry Mullen suddenly got really good at drumming.

That's cool, Bono. You can stay at home, where you can recover from that bike spill and hide out from possible assassination attempts. Jimmy's got this shit covered. And he's not going to force any Songs of Innocence on his audience.

[h/t Gossip Cop]

It's the first wintry day on the Eastern seaboard, and the sparrows are nowhere to be found. The sun cuts through the ice-wind but provides no warmth. A lone crow makes its rounds. Tila Tequila's firstborn is two days old.

Ms. Tequila, a reality television star, model, and the author of Hooking Up With Tila Tequila: A Guide to Love, Fame, Happiness, Success, and Being the Life of the Party, gave birth to little Isabella Monroe Tequila (jk, her real last name is Nguyen) on Sunday.

I can't say that I like this name. Isabella is like the fancy hatbox of names: pretty on the outside, empty on the inside, and overall useless, because who wears big hats? Monroe, I am assuming, is after Marilyn, not James or the doctrine, which sucks for the kid because Marilyn was one fucked-up broad (I beg of you, old-cinema-obsessed parents, please name your daughters after Jane Russell. Or Shulamith Firestone. Please!).

But the name is fine. Sweet, even. It's not trying too hard. But it is trying. And I hope it succeeds. Because, weirdly, I only want the best for Tila Tequila.

This has been Baby Name Critic.

Leah Finnegan is Gawker's Baby Name Critic.

[Pic via Getty]

If there was one thing Bob Marley loved, it was sweet reggae music. If there was another, it might be his family, or his hometown of Kingston, about which he sang poignantly throughout his career, or it might be the ganja. And if there was a third thing, that third thing must have been branding opportunities. Just look at all the Bob Marley stuff you can buy!

Now, finally, all of those passions will live as one: introducing Marley Natural, "a premium cannabis brand rooted in the life and legacy" of the reggae legend who famously advocated revolution. It's slated to hit weed-legal markets late next year. USA Today reports:

The line will include pot-infused creams, accessories (like vaporizers in the style of e-cigarettes) and strains of "heirloom Jamaican cannabis," inspired by the herb that Marley liked to smoke.

The family and the company say this is serious business, designed to be sold like a "modern product, cleanly packaged and marketed with the help of the same agency that branded New Balance and Starbucks Coffee.

The cannabis itself will be sold as "loose packed" buds, oils or concentrate, executives said.

You'll have to roll the joints yourself.

What with Bob Marley™ official coffee, headphones, backpacks, wristwatches, t-shirts, sweatshirts, baby shirts, posters, coozies, coin purses, picture books, and makeup bags already available, adding a line of vape pens and heirloom pot was clearly the only irie thing for the Marley estate to do. How else would discerning smokers know which brand to buy?

"It just seems natural that Daddy should be part of this conversation," Marley's 47-year-old daughter Cedella Marley said. "As Daddy would say, 'make way for the positive day.'"

Marley Natural is owned by Privateer Holdings, a Seattle private equity firm.

[Image via AP]

When most of us think of "rare blood," we think of AB-positive or O-negative. But it turns out there are far, far rarer types than that. In Filton, England, there's a lab that handles blood donations from across the UK—and identifies this super-rare blood.

Photographer Greg White recently got a tour of the NHS Blood & Transplant's Filton Blood Center while on assignment for the science publication Mosaic. As you can read in Penny Bailey's Mosaic story from October, there's a lab called the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory that operates under the center's umbrella. The IBGRL keeps track of what Bailey calls "golden blood," because of its extraordinarily rare occurrence and its ability to save the lives of the few people who share it.

We republished the story here on Gizmodo without White's images, but the resulting photos are not to be missed, giving us a fascinating glimpse inside the lab itself. The IBGRL has been around since the 1940s, and it's where many major advances in blood science have taken place, like the discovery of many new antigens—the stuff in our blood that invokes immune responses, and the presence or absence of which determines our blood types. But one of its most important roles is keeping track of rare blood donors, both so that they can donate to other rare blood type patients in need, and for equally vital research purposes.

There are many different types of rare blood, and they all depend on the absence of certain groups of antigens. In Bailey's story, which you can read more about here, we meet a man who simply doesn't have any Rh antigens, so he's missing entire blood group system. That makes him Rh_null –, one of the rarest blood types in the world. The IBGRL's research initiatives include keeping a reference database of those rare humans, like the Rh_null – man, who share extremely unusual blood. Inside the center in Filton, scientists test all the blood donated from around southern England, determining everything from blood type to the presence of harmful viruses.

So what was it like to shoot the inside of the NHS lab where blood is sorted? White describes it as "a constant hum of machines and conveyors while people swiftly moved about in their blue coats, hats and hair nets." Blood, of course, is fragile—it must be kept at exactly 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit, otherwise, it could develop infections or the cells could be destroyed. And when blood is this rare, a spare bag is out of the question.

According to White, much of the activity in the lab occurred at strange hours, because new blood arrives at the lab overnight after being donated in the afternoon. "The processing of the blood therefore happens from about 3am onwards," he says. "So by 6am it's pretty busy and full of fresh blood thats being filtered having the white blood cells removed."

"At first it was a bit weird to be surrounded by so much blood," he adds. "But you soon become enthralled in the space and the process and at ease with the blood. In fact, it's quite uplifting thinking about how much blood is actually donated, although there could always be more."

In a way, the NHSBT's center is like the UN for blood, a central institution where the world's hospitals and doctors come for help and information, and it's fascinating to see the inside of such an important space. Mosaic's full story on rare blood donors is well worth a read here. Or you could go donate, yourself.

"We know it can be hard to talk about race, especially when you are white," the solicitation reads. "MTV is trying something different, a documentary exploring the ideas, experiences and attitudes of young, white Americans around race. We think its [sic] time to think."

The Craigslist ad sounded like a joke as it made the Twitter rounds. But it was not a joke:

The casting call is part of a documentary effort by a Brooklyn-based company, Punched in the Head Productions. "We specialize in eye-opening, perspective-changing stories about real people," its website says—"the kind that make you feel like you've been 'punched in the head.'"

To that end, Punched in the Head is seeking young white people who have their own stories of racial hardship, prejudice, and victimhood.

But it's not what you might think: It's for an untitled "Whiteness Project" being spearheaded by Jose Antonio Vargas, the Pulitzer-winning journalist who garnered fame and notoriety after revealing in writing that he was an undocumented immigrant.

I've reached out to Vargas, whose journalism mixes easily with policy advocacy, for comment on the project. He may give beleaguered white youths a forum in the upcoming documentary, but he's unlikely to let them dominate the narrative. His nonprofit, Define American, and Punched in the Head are looking for Caucasian kids with other perspectives, too:

• ...Has something happened in your life that's made you confront your own possible white privilege? Do you appear to be between the ages of 16 and 24?
• ...Is your life different than people who live or go to school with mostly white people - for better or worse? Do you appear to be between the ages of 16 and 24?
• ...Do most people look at you and think you're white, but you hesitate before checking the "caucasian" box on forms? Do you appear to be between the ages of 16 and 24?
• ...Are you a white person who's been affected by race in a way that doesn't fit any of the above categories? Do you appear to be between the ages of 16 and 24?

If none of this is your sort of thing, Punched in the Head is also casting for teens who are being slut-shamed, show-dog owners, and people with overweight pets.

The business world is giddy and agog at the rip-roaring return of mergers and acquisitions. M&A is back! Just yesterday, two mega-deals worth $100 billion were announced. Some people are getting very, very rich. The deserving people, that is.

The stock market is booming and borrowing money is cheap and that means that big corporations are looking to BUY other big corporations or have MERGERS to make an even more enormous corporation. Why does the business world love M&A so much? Well, for Wall Street banks and law firms, the answer is simple: fees. They are paid staggering amounts of money to advise on these things. In just the two big deals announced yesterday, five advising banks "could reap as much as $316 million in fees for their work."

The bankers are being rewarded.

For the corporate executives, there is no better statement of DOING SOMETHING than entering into a BIG DEAL. These DEALMAKING CEOs are truly the kings of corporate America, notwithstanding the ones who totally destroy their own companies in the process.

The executives are being rewarded.

And then there are the real predators: the hedge funders, the "activist" investors, the sharks of finance who hunt vulnerable companies for a living. Bill Ackman (pictured) is a billionaire hedge fund manager who is so rich that he bought a $90 million condo and doesn't even live in it. Ackman was involved in one of yesterday's two big deals—he was working with a company called Valeant in an attempt to buy Allergan. In the end, though, Allergan sold to a different company, Actavis, for $66 billion. Sounds like Ackman lost, right? Not so! Because he had accumulated almost 10% of Allergan's stock while he was attempting to help Valeant buy it, Ackman will actually make a cool $2.2 billion on Allergan's sale to a different company. And all he had to do to earn that money was to fail in his task of acquiring the company for Valeant.

Bill Ackman, the most deserving, is the most rewarded of all.

Mergers and acquisitions churn up huge clouds of money, like an aquatic mammal digging for shellfish churns up sand. This money is then vacuumed up by various bankers, and advisers, and executives, and financiers. In the end, there are still companies doing whatever the companies did before.

An interesting piece of context here is that big corporate mergers tend to be bad for consumers, and that "Academic research suggests that few mergers add up to significantly more prosperous or successful companies and also that acquisitions during buyout booms, like the one we are in now, are more likely to fail than those made in other periods."

To the extent that mergers and acquisitions generate "value," that value tends to be reaped by a tiny clique of insiders, rather than by shareholders or society as a whole. Why is that? Because the American system rewards the deserving, and Bill Ackman is deserving of $2.2 billion for accumulating a stock position in a company that later sold to someone else. That is about as much money as 30,000 New York City public school teachers will make this year, combined.

From 1979 to 2013, median hourly wages for Americans grew by just 6.1%.

If we are unhappy with the way that our society distributes its spoils, we are free to change the rules under which we live.

[Photo: Getty]

Last night saw the premiere of the CIA drama-thriller and Katherine Heigl-humbling vehicle State of Affairs. If you thought that the show looked like a reheated primetime casserole of Homeland with an ostensibly more likeable lead, well, you might have been right on the money. But depending on your television sensibilities, it might also be exactly what your TV diet needed.

This is an all-around great time for female-led primetime dramas. From Alicia Florrick to Olivia Pope network television is filled with complex women at the top of their field, kicking ass on a weekly basis and honestly, I kind of love it. Attempting to join the roster is now CIA analyst Charleston "Charlie" Tucker. Would it be better to let the DVR space serve elsewhere? Well, it depends on a few factors:

1. You May Have Already Forgiven Katherine Heigl Without Realizing It
Not all of us co-signed on Miss Heigl's fall from public grace, alright? I might have signed the Hathaway petition but the fact is that I like Katherine Heigl. Quite a bit. Back in 2005, with the iPhone still two years away, Izzy Stevens was my favorite Grey's Anatomy intern. That she is rumored to be a diva doesn't change the fact that Knocked Up is still my favorite Apatow film, or that 27 Dresses is perfectly fine for a movie titled "27 Dresses."

State of Affairs finds her in fine shape and even the most generic string of hallways, glass offices, and sleek apartments doesn't distract from a (mostly) on-point performance. I would normally mock a government analyst sneaking away from CIA security in high heels via the back of a truck, but Heigl sells it as best as it can possibly be sold.

2. It's Sexy But It's Not Shonda Rhimes Sexy
Considering that Scandal centered an entire episode around a teenager getting Eiffel Towered earlier this season and that analingus is the go-to move of one of the How To Get Away With Murder law students, State of Affairs has a certain 2008 sensibility that will appeal to people whose pearls are worn out from all the clutching. Charlie Tucker is sexually irresponsible in a way that has her vocally claiming to be sexually irresponsible from the safety of her therapist's couch, with brief flashbacks to her steamy bar encounters. Some people like their TV sex with blown-out hair, and the sheets firmly clamped under armpits, and there is nothing wrong with that.

3. She's Not as Unhinged as Carrie Mathison
While Homeland provides us with a damaged female protagonist that occasionally borders on being a truly vile human being, broken beyond repair by what she has seen and done, Charleston Tucker's inner anguish is of a safer, less off-putting variety that includes neatly chaotic war flashbacks and warmly lit moments of intimacy with her dead fiance, killed during a terrorist attack. (Or was he?)

4. The Leather Jackets of Charleston "Charlie" Tucker
The Good Wife has power suit skirts, Olivia Pope has a monochromatic fetish and it appears that Charlie's signature item will be her string of leather jackets, dutifully employed to transform herself from bureaucrat to conspiracy tracker to "chick who can hang" archetype.

There's also a "shit's getting real" cardigan.

5. It Is Both Politically Current & Completely Innocuous
With the threat of a live beheading and numerous Bin Laden references, the show feels both timely and behind its times as it never quite makes a particular statement on those element but seems content to leave them on the table and raise its eyebrows at you at its perceived brazenness.

There's a dead fiancé with a doppelganger, a big bad ominously named 'Omar Abdul Fatah', an anonymous texter, a black female POTUS, thank you very much (who also happens to be the mother of the aforementioned dead fiancé) and a knife-wielding jaded mentor. In short... meh. We've seen it all before and crudely stacking all these elements on top of one another does nothing to heighten their appeal.

Still, with both Charlie and the President having cold-blooded revenge at the top of their personal agenda, there is a blatant disregard for due process that could become interesting down the line. Unfortunately, the supporting cast looks right out of an Agents of SHIELD helicarrier's spare bin, entirely too bland to even bother differentiating at this point.

Will I tune in again? Probably not. But that's not because Heigl is particularly insufferable, or because the show commits any cardinal sin right off the bat: She isn't, and—save, perhaps, for the ridiculous amount of cell phone walk-&-talks—it doesn't.

The State of Affairs pilot, like most pilots, throws a lot out there, setting the table with the necessities of a procedural as well as an ongoing mystery. NCIS has been on for twelve years now; let's not underestimate the viewership appeal of "fine, but kind of bland."

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

American actor George Clooney and his new wife, British human rights attorney Amal Alamuddin Clooney, are reportedly looking to adopt a baby. Not just any baby, however—one from a "war-torn country," according to reports from Woman's Day and the Daily Mail.

According to a "source" close to the couple, the Clooneys hope to "use the adoption to highlight the plight of orphans in countries like Syria."

Huh. Unless George has some special movie star pass (possible!) the Clooneys probably can't adopt a baby from Syria. The U.S. Embassy in Damascus advises:

Syria, as a Shari'ah law country, does not recognize or provide for adoptions of Muslim children. Several attempts by U.S. prospective adoptive parents have failed, although technically some provision was made for certain Christian denominations to adopt. ... The Embassy's understanding is that until specific Decree 76-compliant previsions have been developed to address adoption for specific denominations, it is not possible to adopt in Syria.

Furthermore, international adoption experts typically do not recommend adopting children in the middle of a war zone. Francine Uenuma, spokesperson for Save the Children, told Today back in March that focusing on adoption in a crisis situation is "misguided attention." The organization notes that "international adoption should never be considered in the first phase of an emergency. Children separated from their families in a crisis are extremely vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation."

The Clooneys themselves haven't commented on their reported efforts to adopt.

[Photo via Getty]

A man who recovered from Ebola in Liberia has reportedly been quarantined in India after traces of the deadly virus showed up in a test of his semen.

The Times of India reports that the man has been isolated in the New Delhi airport since arriving in India on November 10. He reportedly shows no other symptoms of the disease.

"The situation is under control and there is no need for any alarm. However, all precautions are being taken in this regard," India's health ministry said in a statement.

From the Times of India:

He will remain under isolation in the special health facility of Delhi Airport Health Organization till his body fluids test negative and is found medically fit to be discharged, [the Health Ministry said] said, insisting that the man is a treated and cured case of Ebola.

He had carried a certificate of medical clearance from the Liberian government, mentioning that "he has successfully undergone care and treatment related to Ebola and after post treatment assessment has been declared free of any clinical signs and symptoms and confirmed negative by laboratory analysis", the official statement said quoting the Liberian document.

His three blood samples tested here were also found negative for and, therefore, according to WHO and CDC specifications, he is deemed to be cured, it said.

The virus can be detected in semen up to 101 days after the onset of symptoms, though "sexual transmission of Ebola has not been definitively established," according to the CDC.

[Image via AP]

Last month, an issue of TIME magazine hit newsstands with the grabby cover headline "Rotten Apples." The article looks at Silicon Valley's controversial involvement in bringing down teacher tenure in California—another in the pile of articles written about privatizing funds for public schools, encouraging the growth of charters, and instituting proposed fixes for America's broken school system that require not only budget cuts in high-risk communities but private financing elsewhere.

Reading these articles gets you lots of quotes from think-tank policymakers, lobbyists, union leaders, and politicians. And only a few from those leading the public schools themselves: actual teachers, administrators, and aides.

Since the TIME story was published, over 100,000 teachers have signed a petition to ask the magazine to apologize for the misleading nature of the story and cover, suggesting that it paints issues in education reform in a needlessly aggressive and calculating manner by putting teachers on trial instead of the system. (For the uninformed, the story's focus, Silicon Valley engineer David Welch, suggests a supposedly easy fix: get rid of all the "ineffective teachers" and—voilà!—the system's fixed. As the story's author notes, "Many [teachers] argued that policies focusing on cold, statistical measures fail to take into account the messy, chaotic reality of teaching in communities where kids must contend with poverty and violence.")

As one teacher at a United Federation of Teachers rally said at the end of October, "We didn't become teachers to become millionaires. We became teachers because we believe in the American dream and that all children deserve a quality education. We are all good apples here. We work very hard and deserve better."

According to the National Education Association, the national average teacher starting salary for 2012-13 was $36,141. Given the high demands of the job, the constant pressure to meet state test scores requirements, the changing protocols, the union negotiations, the long, long hours, the never-ending debates over the Common Core, and the push against an often static bureaucracy, that salary number seems way too low. It is, frankly, insulting.

We'd like to hear from our readers working in public schools about their lives and work. Tell us about your successes with students or otherwise, tell us about your failures, tell us what you think could help in making your jobs easier or more rewarding or more respected, what could make your metrics fairer, your lives less dependent on a Scantron and a Ticonderoga No. 2. Tell us anything that you think the average person doesn't know about your job, but should, down to the frustratingly mundane details.

We'll share your stories in a regular column (and anonymously, if you so choose). How can we fix America's schools? You—the teachers, aides, administrators—tell us.

All stories can be sent to dayna.evans@gawker.com or left in the comments section below.

[Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Shutterstock]

Vox's Matt Yglesias argues that Uber—where an executive suggested to a Buzzfeed reporter that "the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media"—has "an asshole problem."

Users really are entrusting the company with a lot of personal information about their comings and goings. If Uber wants to play a broader role in customers' lives, the volume of data available to the company will grow even further. Privacy concerns are nothing new in the digital economy. But serious players try to take them seriously. If executives from Google even suggested for a minute that the company might use its trove of data to blackmail enemies, the whole enterprise would be at risk of regulatory vaporization — and rightly so.

The vision of free entry into the rides-for-hire market is appealing, and it took a certain devil-may-care attitude to get it off the ground. But it is off the ground now. Uber is a major company. And it's time to start acting like it. Not all rules are made to be broken.

Insofar as it's considered spying on an oppositional journalist, Uber is acting exactly like a major company. Like, say, Hewlett-Packard:

HP has now admitted to spying on its own directors' personal phone records in order to root out a leaker. It did so by using private investigators who engaged in "pretexting"—calling up phone companies and impersonating directors seeking their own records. HP late last week additionally admitted to spying on the phone records of nine journalists, including at The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, some of which date to 2005.

Or Wal-Mart:

Federal investigators are looking into the actions of a computer systems technician at Wal-Mart Stores who, over a period of several months, intercepted pager and text messages and also secretly taped telephone conversations between Wal-Mart employees and a reporter for The New York Times, the company said yesterday.

Or Fox News.

Cook said that his source, whose name he did not want to appear in this article, divulged that Ailes had commissioned someone (or some people) to tail Cook, and that they had reported back to Ailes on his whereabouts. Cook said this person had first-hand knowledge of the situation and he provided related text messages to Capital documenting that this conversation took place.

Why limit ourselves to the U.S.? Deutsche Telekom is unquestionably a major company:

For years, Deutsche Telekom hired outside companies to spy on journalists and members of its own supervisory board, hoping to uncover internal leaks.

The only way Uber has failed to "act like" a "major company" is by getting caught. (See also: Whisper.) If Uber has an "asshole problem," so does all of capitalism.

Ferguson corrections officer Jaris Hayden has been accused in a federal civil rights lawsuit of having forced a pregnant inmate to have sex with him in exchange for her freedom.

The woman, who is only identified in the lawsuit by her initials, J.W., was apparently pulled over by Ferguson police last month for driving with expired license plates. She allegedly gave officers a fake name, leading to her arrest. Hayden, 29, the suit claims, told the woman, "you smell good" while booking her in jail.

According to the St. Louis Dispatch, the woman's boyfriend arrived at the jail soon after to post her bail. Hayden then apparently informed them that there were outstanding traffic warrants from other municipalities out on the woman. "I will do anything to go home," the woman claims to have said.

Hayden then led the woman to a boiler room where, KMOV reports, "he motioned for oral sex" before having intercourse with her. According to the suit, Hayden ushered the woman out of a side door of the jail without security cameras.

The woman then claims to have walked to a Subway restaurant across the street and put multiple pubic hairs she kept from sex with Hayden in a plastic bag; DNA testing, the St. Louis Dispatch reports, confirms the hair to be Hayden's.

Hayden has been charged with two counts of having sexual contact with a prisoner, one count of permitting escape and one count of acceding to corruption by a public servant. His attorney, Scott Rosenblum, told Reuters that Hayden intends to plead not guilty.

[Screengrab via KMOV]

The Ohio state legislature is seeking to pass a bill that would completely shield state employees, doctors, and companies involved in executions from public records law. Because more secrecy is just what our flawless capital punishment system needs.

Rare vampire-lemon hybrid Kristen Stewart's strapless dress slipped down during a presentation at the Hollywood Film Awards over the weekend, leaving her nipples visible underneath a mesh top. This is apparently hugely embarrassing because it happened in front of her ex-boyfriend, Hashtag TeamEdward.

Despite "suffering" what tabloids are sure must be the immense shame of kinda-sorta revealing something that any ambitious perv can already see in a major motion picture, KStew is just chill as fuck about the entire thing.

"She is not worried about it. It's not a big deal," a source told HollywoodLife, "If people want to see her naked she'd rather it be from the movies she has done with nudity but this happened and she has already forgotten about it."

"It's not like the Fappening and certainly not the worst thing cameras have caught from her. Not a big deal at all."

You mean to say an actress didn't drop her dress during an award show as part of a carefully calculated plot to sex up her image, kickstart her career, and steal her ex back from FKA Twigs? Gasp and egads! I don't believe it.

CBS was also pretty chill regarding the raging NIP-SLIP SCANDAL: You can watch the whole clip, which they didn't even find racy enough to censor, above.

[h/t Hollywood Life, Photo via CBS]

I woke up in a strange place. The bed felt plush, and when I rolled over onto my side, there was water, an ocean full of it. I felt slightly sick. I'd just spent my first night on the world's most advanced cruise ship, but a billion dollars worth of technology is no match for the Atlantic Ocean.

This ship had over 20 restaurants, and I knew one of them must have coffee.

"Did we miss breakfast?" I asked my girlfriend, as I dug through my half-unpacked bag for a shirt. "Do you know?"

"I have no idea," she shook her head. "Isn't there an app or something?"

"The app thinks the cruise is over," I grumbled. At some point, the app that was supposed to be my personal concierge for the whole cruise started to display a "Have a Safe Trip Home" message, directing me to collect my luggage. The onboard features were gone, and we were definitely in the middle of the ocean.

On the desk, hidden in a folder where I'd absent-mindedly stuffed it, was a paper version of the day's itinerary. We hadn't missed breakfast, but we'd have to walk what felt like a mile to the other end of the ship before we got there. The app surely could've steered us there. I'd follow the signs on the wall instead.

Several weeks before that foggy morning, Royal Caribbean had invited me on an inaugural voyage of its newest ship: Quantum of the Seas. It was an exciting email to receive; Quantum's reputation preceded it. It's the one with the robotic bartender, indoor sky-diving facility, virtual balconies, bumper cars, crazy-fast Wi-Fi, a surf simulator, and even a Johnny Rocket's for eating burgers by the pool. It's all powered, naturally, by two new apps that help you plan your trip and navigate a ship that's nearly a quarter mile long.

Royal Caribbean wanted us to check out Quantum of the Seas so badly, the company hosted me and a guest for two days and two nights, all expenses paid. Conveniently, the ship sailed from New York City, where I live, so we did not take them up on the airfare.

Quantum of the Seas is also the ship that's supposed to make or break the cruise ship industry, which poses an interesting question: Does adding all of this technology and connectivity really make a holiday more relaxing and enjoyable? Especially given that lots of people go on vacation specifically to escape technology. You know, the old "unplug and recharge" mantra. I wasn't sure what I believed going in, but this cruise would reveal a more nuanced truth.

Quantum of the Seas as it sailed into New York Harbor, just before my cruise (Image: Royal Caribbean)

It wasn't the technology itself that made Quantum of the Seas stand apart. There's nothing strictly new here, just new to giant cruise liners. Rather, it was how Royal Caribbean was redesigning the entire cruise experience to be tech-driven. Human concierges had been replaced by informative apps. Bartenders had been complemented with cocktail-slinging robots. Blank walls had been transformed into dynamic screens. All of this aspires to transform the cruise experience into something more fitting for our digital age.

I'm a native of that digital age, and I'd been wanting to on a cruise as an adult for, well, basically the entire time I've been an adult. But nobody would ever go with me! They didn't want anything to do with a kitschy cruise. I guess mine is sort of the post-cruise generation—or at least that's what people are saying.

My parents were big cruisers in the 70's and early 80's, so they always talked up the experience. In the 90s, we went on a little three day Carnival cruise from Cape Canaveral to the Bahamas and back for my sister's 13th birthday. I was 11 at the time so I don't remember much. But I do remember the rocket launch. Cape Canaveral is just around the corner from the Kennedy Space Center, and we'd gotten lucky on the timing. The night we set sail, the passengers rushed up to the deck after dinner to see the shuttle take-off. The blast from the thrusters lit up the horizon, and the spacecraft scorched across the sky. I'll cling to the sense of awe I felt at that moment for the rest of my life.

There would be no rocket launch on this cruise. Instead, I'd have to settle for lesser—however still impressive—technologies. It's also worth noting that Royal Caribbean is celebrating the crown jewel of its new customer-winning line of ships in the United States for just six months. Then it's ripping out the ship's live music venue, expanding the casino, and sending Quantum of the Seas to China, where it will live permanently.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Why don't I start from the beginning, before the seasickness and the stress and the scotch? Why don't I tell you about the first time I saw this so-called "smart ship?"

In New Jersey, sandwiched between a beautiful country club and a barren rail yard, there's a cruise port called Cape Liberty, about two miles away from the Statue of Liberty. There she was, floating in the Hudson River like a sideways skyscraper: Quantum of the Seas. The world's most advanced cruise ship. The home of an indoor sky-diving tube, an ocean-faring gondola, a tablet-powered mixology machine.

Now it would be my floating resort for the next two nights. I honestly couldn't wait.

This is North Star, a gondola on the end of a crane arm that swings out over the ocean to give passengers a better view of the, uh, ocean. (Image: Royal Caribbean)

Weighing in at nearly 170,000 tons and measuring almost 1,200 feet—that's almost a quarter of a mile—Quantum of the Seas is the world's third-largest ship. All of that hull is enough space to stack up 16 decks full of 18 restaurants, four pools, and even a roller skating rink. The ship holds up to 4,180 guests and 1,500 crew members. All that for an estimated $969 million.

There are several pillars that support that smart ship designation—I'll get into a few more of them later—but the first is a ten-minute check-in process. You're supposed to do the vast majority of the check-in activities online and print out your boarding passes before your trip. That way, when you show up at the port, you just go through a metal detector, get your ticket stamped, and climb aboard. This seems standard to airline travelers but is apparently new to Royal Caribbean.

That's not how it happened, though. I don't have a printer at home, so after we went through security, we first had to go to a kiosk, where a friendly attendant printed out our boarding passes. This alone ended up taking about ten minutes, during which I overheard one attendant ask another what the password for the registration system was. I don't want to make it too easy for ne'er-do-wells, but let's just say the password is a slight variation on the word "password."

Once we finally got our stamped boarding passes, we hobbled over towards the ship, where another attendant scanned them. There was an error. Despite the passes showing all of my correct information, when they scanned the ticket, the computer thought I was my girlfriend.

While we were finally walking up the gangway onto the ship I wondered whether or not those early glitches matter. I could have avoided one of them if I'd had access to a printer. And an errant boarding pass scan, while frustrating, doesn't seem like an issue created by new technology; it could have happened on any cruise ship.

The real test of whether or not technology improved the cruising experience would happen once we boarded the ship. After all, Royal Caribbean designed an entirely new system that used RFID chips in wristbands or old-fashioned plastic cards to keep track of guests' wants and needs.

The design of the wristband makes it seems like Royal Caribbean wants you to replace your watch with an RFID chip. I wore mine for about five minutes before it felt like a weird some sort of weird tracker. I decided to wear my watch instead because we still had dinner reservations to make.

You could use either the wristband or the card—both contained the same passenger data. (I ended up using the card the whole time because it felt like college, and I liked that. I also didn't really like the idea of wearing a branded bracelet for three days.) Nevertheless, this design surely affected the check-in process and required writing new software. New software is always buggy, even on cruise ships.

Let me get this out of the way now: Quantum of the Seas is a spectacle. I'd almost say that it's a caricature of a spectacle, each feature drawn out to a hilarious extreme and entirely overwhelming. Walking into the Grand Concourse felt like walking into senior prom, except instead of rented tuxedos and sparkly dresses, everyone's wearing Bermuda shorts and matching Royal Caribbean wristbands. I'm sure a lot of cruise ships are like this, but having only been on one as a child, I couldn't quite grasp the gravity of this extravaganza.

It's worth noting that the pub had my favorite beer in the world, Heavy Seas Loose Cannon, on tap. It's also worth noting that the keg was kicked by the time we stopped by, less than 24 hours after the cruise started.

The ship's town square, while handsome, didn't seem too remarkable at first glance. We meandered past a pub that actually looked like a real pub and past the expensive duty-free brands you probably see on most cruise ships. There's sort of a fancy mall feel to it all.

It wasn't until we got to the elevator banks that I felt like I was on vacation in Blade Runner. If the town square area was overwhelming, this elevator situation was downright unbelievable. Everything was a touch screen, so there were no physical buttons to push. We guessed which deck we were on from the room number on our boarding passes—there were no porters to show you to your room on this presser—and tapped the glass. On second thought, the overall design was even more futuristic than Blade Runner. It was more like Tron 2.

Just imagine six columns of glass and steel zooming up and down while you surf through the Atlantic Ocean. Sure, other cruise ships have elevators, but these felt damn futuristic. (Image: Royal Caribbean)

What really stood out to me as I explored the ship was the sheer number of screens. There was a screen for everything: a tablet to help you make your dinner reservations in the Grand Concourse, a screen for displaying weird video art, a touchscreen panel to help you navigate the ship, and obviously, a TV screen in the staterooms. As someone who normally stares at a screen for approximately 15 hours a day, this LED-lit landscape was not necessarily a change of pace.

When we finally found our cabin, though, I was surprisingly delighted. I knew that we were going to have a balcony, but I expected my complimentary cruise to come with a little bit less space. Looking back at the (cheap) Carnival cruise my family took years ago, I think the four of us squeezed into a space that's roughly the size of a hatchback.

What I got on Quantum of the Seas was pretty comparable to a standard hotel room with a queen bed, a desk, two closets, and an almost-normal-sized bathroom. The decor was inoffensive, tasteful even. The TV was a razor-thin Samsung that swung out from the wall so that you could see it from any angle. Rooms without a window came with a virtual balcony, a larger TV positioned vertically that streams live images of the ocean view. (More specifically, RED Epic HD cinema cameras beam live images onto 80-inch Sharp Aquos 4K LED TVs.)

I didn't get on this ship to watch The Jetsons in my cabin, though. I came to do, well, I don't what. There were so many options, I didn't know where to start. For lack of a better organizing principle, I went to the very front of the ship.

The way it's laid out, Quantum of the Seas is like a floating city. That's true of all cruise ships, but the exceptional number of dining, drinking, and entertainment options on this particular ship made the whole experience feel weirdly urban. And in this floating city, every hour is happy hour.

As we headed up to the deck, we spotted a couple of cruisers cradling large glasses of white wine. Within, I'd say, 90 seconds, we had our own large glasses of white wine. Looking back, I now realize that placing an order with the bartender was the first time I'd actually spoken to a crew member on board. I don't bring this up to highlight my enthusiasm for booze. It's an example of how digital the whole experience is designed to be. Until that moment, all of my questions had been answered by an app.

The two new apps released with the Quantum-class ships are called Cruise Planner and Royal iQ. You're supposed to download them before you even get on board. That's because the apps together act like your own personal concierge. You book dinner reservations, spa appointments, show tickets, and other activities, all though the apps. The apps also contain maps of the ship's decks and a neat little feature that lets you chat or call people who aren't on the ship. The idea of an app-powered vacation doesn't thrill me, personally, but I can see how some people would find it convenient.

All of this is handy until it's not. Again, Royal Caribbean just built this software, so it's bound to be buggy, and it was. For instance, at some point in my first 24 hours on the ship, the Royal iQ app thought that I'd gotten off the ship, so I couldn't use it any more. This wasn't a big deal, because the same features are available on touchscreens and tablets throughout the ship. Again, I'm sure some people find this convenient. But to be perfectly honest, I don't want to be tethered to my phone or staring at screens when I'm on vacation. I do that enough when I'm not.

I seemed to be the exception, though. Clearly, plenty of people like staying connected on vacation. You couldn't turn around without seeing someone gazing at a tablet or taking a picture with their phone. This being a press trip, Royal Caribbean was also constantly encouraging us share our thoughts and photos—specifically selfies—on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

There was a dumb hashtag: #SelfieAtSea. The crew even gave out "selfie sticks" to make the selfie-taking experience easier. Oddly enough, this very millennial-seeming stunt didn't really catch on with that demographic. The only people I saw using the selfie sticks were middle-aged women with phablets.

As we were wandering around with our drinks, my girlfriend spotted former teen star and Instagram celebrity Alexa VegaPena on board. We were actually in the same room when she took the two selfies on the top left. Evidently the she had started popularizing the hashtag on Quantum of the Sea's sister ship, Allure of the Seas, a few weeks ago, and was back to kindle the flame on Quantum. There's nothing wrong with Royal Caribbean inviting a B-list social media celeb on board. (Alexa VegaPena has nearly 300,000 followers.) The company really is trying real hard to connect with the younger generation. But we're not all selfie-taking Instagram addicts.

We finally found the ship's gondola parked over a pool bar towards the front of the ship. I was lucky enough to hop right on. The media badge I was wearing probably helped. The North Star rose up slowly, offering a broader and broader view of the deck beneath.

It's almost cooler to look at North Star from below than it is to ride the thing—especially if you're afraid of heights. (Image: Royal Caribbean)

This is a good example of how the ship repurposes land-borne technology for ocean-faring uses. If you've ever been on a gondola at a ski resort, the gondola on Quantum of the Seas will look very familiar. (In fact, the part that holds passengers was built by a ski gondola company.) The key difference is that at a ski resort, the gondola takes you to the top of the mountain. On the ship, it just goes up, around, and back down. I didn't enjoy the ride as much as I feared the idea of being in a bubble hundreds of feet above the boat's deck. But I'm kind of a wimp.

My North Star experience lasted about ten minutes and felt a little underwhelming. I can't decide whether it improved my overall cruise experience, since my fear of heights came into play. The glass orb does look pretty cool on the deck, though.

Time works in weird ways on a cruise ship. In a sense, it's your primary form of currency. If you're a normal cruise ship customer, you've paid a sizable sum of money to ride on a large boat, probably to a fun destination. Our short cruise just did a big circle in the Atlantic. So-called "3 Night Quantum Sampler Cruises" on this ship start at $500 plus about $100 in taxes and fees. Let's just call it $200 a day. For that you get to stay in a room with a virtual balcony—which is not as cool as it sounds but is still a little bit cool—and no window. Your meals and some activities are inclusive. Everything else (read: booze) is not.

So maintaining this assumption that time is your currency, it's also important to emphasize that there is so. much. to. do. on this ship. Quantum of the Seas isn't the biggest cruise ship in the world, but it's possibly the most feature-rich. There's so much to do that it's almost stressful. FOMO (fear of missing out) quickly became the dominant theme.

This artwork on display in one of the stairwells was also stressful—especially in the era of the Costa Concordia and the poop cruise.

We soon learned that planning was the only way to enjoy this big boat of fun without feeling like lost kittens at a lion convention. And the way Royal Caribbean's designed the Quantum experience, you're supposed to use apps for planning everything. Which meant that my next stop after the North star was my smartphone. I started thumbing through the app to see what was next.

Dinner reservations had already been made for us at The Grande, the ship's only formal dining room, but we wanted to do the black tie thing the second night so we tried to make reservations at Jamie's Italian, a Jamie Oliver restaurant. It was booked. We tried Wonderland, an Alice in Wonderland-themed restaurant that resembles your very worst Johnny Depp nightmares. Booked. We even tried another one of the main dining rooms. Booked.

According to the app, nearly every dinner option on the ship was booked solid. Frustrated, we actually walked over to one of the other dining rooms and talked to a human. Despite the app's hard "NO," the hostess insisted that they could accommodate us. I sincerely wish we'd started this process by asking a human, but Royal Caribbean is clearly pushing really hard for the app-driven cruise experience.

We ended up just going to The Grande that night anyways. It was excellent. The service was top notch, and the food was even better. The waiter kept my wine glass full, and I ate some snails, followed by lobster and lamb. This was the elegant, fun, and luxurious experience I'd always dreamed about! Ironically enough, I later realized that it was one of the only old-fashioned cruise ship experience I had on the ship.

This sculpture is about the size of an SUV turned on its nose and looks much more beautiful in real-life.

That same evening, I had a terrific conversation with Adam Goldstein, the President and Chief Operating Officer of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. He's been at the company for 26 years, so he's seen the industry transform as travel tastes have evolved. When I asked him what he was most excited about on this new class of ships he mentioned the innovative Wi-Fi system and the disruptive so-called "dynamic dining" experience.

The Wi-Fi system is not only innovative; it's also pretty damned fast. Goldstein told me that Royal Caribbean worked with a company called O3b Networks to connect the ship to satellites that flew in a lower orbit so that the signal wouldn't have to travel as far and, thus, yield higher upload and download speeds. O3b Networks is also one of those companies that's bringing fast Wi-Fi to developing countries. (The name "O3b" stands for "Other 3 billion.")

Indeed, in areas of the ship that got good coverage, I was getting near broadband speeds. My stateroom, unfortunately, was not one of those areas. Thank God I wasn't on the ship to sit in my room and surf the internet. The Wi-Fi worked well on my phone, as we walked around the decks. That was nice, but again, I kind of like not being connected at all times when I'm on vacation.

Perhaps because I grew up in a restaurant—like, I literally slept above the dining room—I was also pretty intrigued by Royal Caribbean's new dynamic dining. Traditionally, dining has been a very straightforward part of the cruise experience. You're assigned a dining room and a large table, and every night, you go there and eat with the same strangers.

Why have so many different options? Well, as Goldstein explained to me, that's what people want. So the company offers more choices at a premium. While five of the restaurants are complimentary, it'll cost you a little extra for the personalized experience. If you imagine that millenials are the target for Quantum of the Seas, you're looking at a customer base that's used to a highly individualized and connected lifestyle. Everything on the ship is designed not only to offer a unique experience but also an experience that's unique to you.

Meanwhile, you don't have to deal with inconveniences like slow Wi-Fi or nowhere to play X-Box or the lack of an indoor sky-diving facility. Quantum of the Seas is kept afloat by excess and extravagance. But it's your excess and extravagance.

The next morning is when I woke up a little lost with a hangover headache. I also felt sea sick. The ship was rocking only very slightly, but it was rocking. Thankfully, I'd thought ahead and took something for the nausea. This was the big day—my only full day at sea—and I had a plan, a plan that would kick in as soon as I found some coffee. And I did thanks to the paper itinerary that was left in my room the night before. As I mentioned earlier, mxy Royal iQ app had decided that I'd gotten off the ship.

At this point, my trip on board the Quantum of the Seas happened at a rapid-fire pace. The first stop was the indoor sky-diving facility, which Royal Caribbean calls RipCord by iFLY. The slightly grumpy Brit setting up the appointments told me I could get in the next class but would have to run back to my room to change my shoes in five minutes. That wasn't going to happen with the schedule I'd lined up, so I didn't get to indoor skydive.

The last thing a seasick passenger wants is an anti-gravity type of experience, amirite? (Image: Royal Caribbean)

Honestly, the whole experience takes an hour, and it seemed like 59 of those 60 minutes were spent on training and suiting up. You only get a minute or so of indoor sky-diving. I'd seen these kinds of facilities on land before. They're just giant fans that can suspend a human body in mid-air. It's undeniably impressive that Royal Caribbean built one on a boat. But it's not necessarily an experience you couldn't find in, say, Las Vegas.

Right below the indoor sky-diving area is the surf simulator. The house-sized device basically spewed a layer of fast-moving water up a ramp, so you could glide over the surface with a boogie board or, presumably, a surfboard. It looked insanely fun, but it was also November in the North Atlantic. It was a cold time to be swimming around without a wetsuit. Then, of course, there was the line, which would surely cost me more precious time. So I skipped the surf simulator. I had to keep moving.

The bumper cars came next. They're part of an indoor entertainment area called SeaPlex. It's basically a big multipurpose basketball court. One hour they throw bumper cars onto the surface, the next it's roller skating time. (This is the first ship to ever offer bumper cars and roller skating, so there's that.) There's also a circus school, but I didn't see any clowns or acrobats. (You can apparently learn how to be a trapeze artist on board Quantum of the Seas, so there's that.) Upstairs are fun things like foosball and ping pong tables. There's even a dedicated—and well0branded—Xbox area for the gamers. With so many options, I couldn't decide what to do. So I moved on. Time is money, and I'd imagine that all of these things require either lines or appointments on a full ship.

There are a total of four Xbox stations, all of which feel like a much larger version of those kiosks in the Walmart electronics section.

Heading aft, we found ourselves outside again and surrounded by cartoon characters sprinkled throughout a complex network of swimming pools. This is part of the DreamWorks Experience which is probably awesome for kids but not for me. We ducked back inside where there was another pool and some giant jacuzzis, and we promised we'd come back for a swim later. We didn't.

Further ahead was the solarium which actually ended up being my favorite part of the ship. The massive glass enclosure was near the spa and low-calorie restaurant, so there was lots of sunshine and an emphasis on healthy living. It was also full of plants so the air felt extra oxygen-rich. A set of terraced pools provided that soothing waterfall sound, and you couldn't turn around without bumping into some sort of relaxing furniture. We ended up in something I can only describe as a love egg and napped. It was the most blissful moment of the whole cruise.

It also happened to be the most technology-free.

The Solarium sort of feels like a floating bio-dome, and it's great. Alexa VegaPena likes it too because this is where we saw her taking selfies. (Image: Royal Caribbean)

As it turned out, all of the technology-centric activities on the ship reminded me of my busy technology-centric life in New York. They required booking appointments, waiting in line, staring at screens—again, all of the things I was trying to get away from.

All told, I'd do it again, though also have to save up for months to be able to afford the full-fledged Quantum of the Seas experience. While Royal Caribbean was sort of coy about how much everything costs, it's safe to say that the rock bottom $600 price tag for the shortest cruise is almost certainly lowballing the actual cost. If you want to eat in Jamie Oliver's restaurant, that'll be an extra $25. If you want to drink a cocktail, you either have to buy a drink package—up to $55 a day—or pay a la carte. If you want a massage, that'll be over $100. And if you're only on the ship for two nights, like I was, you'd better plan ahead, if you want to see it all.

Royal Caribbean doesn't want you to see it all, though. Someone from the company joked that filling the ships with an overwhelming number of features was good for their business, because then people would have to take a second trip so they could see what they missed! I don't think actually think he was kidding.

Who wouldn't want to watch read tweets while swimming?

At dinner on our last night we shared a table with Richard Fain, the chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. While he's held that job title since 1988, Fain has a background in cargo shipping, which struck me as funny for some reason. We also shared the table with two competing tech blogs, which also struck me as funny for some reason.

Fain wanted us to know that he was hip, though. He dropped personal trivia tidbits about driving a Tesla and living in a LEED-certified house. These high-tech, environmentally conscious practices lined up with the new Quantum-class of Royal Caribbean ships. (In addition to Quantum of the Seas and Allure of the Seas, a third ship called Ovation of the Seas is due to set sail next fall.) If the company's multibillion-dollar bet pays off, the futuristic ships will introduce an entirely new generation to the absurd experience that is cruising.

The rest of the cruise feels like an LED-lit blur. After saying our goodbyes at dinner, we wandered into Two70, a bar and lounge area by day and an acid-trip of a theater by night. As Royal Caribbean describes it, the theater features "the awe‑inspiring Vistarama and dancing Roboscreens® that are as much a part of the show as the performers." Now having seen the show I will say that is true. Imagine the movie Moulin Rouge but in real life plus robots. If it's spectacle you want, this is where to get it in heaping, gluttonous proportions.

Royal Caribbean reps described the show in Two70 as "Cirque de Soleil but with more technology" which is actually rather accurate. It's pretty fun, to

The next thing I knew, I was at the Bionic Bar, home of the robotic bartender. Actually, I should say bartenders, because there are two of these fast-moving machines working in tandem underneath a ceiling of inverted bottles. They look like a little booze icicles.

In a way, this is what I was most interested to see. (I was also interested in the virtual balconies, but again, they turned out to be nothing more than big TVs turned sideways. The overall effect was a little hokey, seeing a little bit of simulated daylight would be better than living without any glimpse at the outside world.)

The robotic bartenders are not unique to Quantum of the Seas. They're actually a product made by a company called Makr Shakr. At first glance, they look a lot like the robots used to build cars. The experience that Royal Caribbean's created elevates that design to another level, though. The cruise company has created, well, a bionic bar for its bionic ship.

The bar's interface is much easier to use than I expected. Several tables are equipped with tablets and RFID scanners. You have to scan your wristband or card, which verifies your age and connects to your credit card. Then you can choose from a list of recommended cocktails or design your own cocktail. The featured drink when I was there was Long Island Iced Tea which seemed silly. Because they contain so many ingredients, Long Island Iced Teas take a long time to make, especially when a robot is doing to pouring.

Regardless of your choice, your order gets put in a queue with everybody else's on a pretty slick display that's built into a mirror. The display also shows a wait time which, I'd noticed, tended to be about 15 minutes. We'd passed by the Bionic Bar a half dozen times; it's almost impossible to avoid it since it's tucked into a corner overlooking to town square area. It was always crowded. But that night, at that moment, we were just about the only ones there, and the wait was 0 minutes.

While I watched these spinning hulks of metal suck booze down from the ceiling, house music bumped in the background. The bar was dark, like many bars are, and everything was shiny with that slick-looking molded plastic. The only human working at the Bionic Bar was the woman who was wiping down the countertop. Unclaimed drinks sat in slots on the countertop in front of the robots. Before I knew it, one of the robots poured my attempt at a drink recipe into a plastic cup. I got up and fetched it. As I poured the bright green liquid into my face, I questioned my identity.

It's not as existential as it sounds. Like the show in the robot-filled theater, the Bionic Bar is spectacle for spectacle's sake. Almost every time we passed the bar there was a wait that would've exceeded the wait at any other bar on the ship. (We didn't wait longer than two minutes for a drink at any of the other human-tended bars we tried.) The Bionic Bar also pretty much specializes in high balls. When we tried anything more complex, it tasted a little bit off, somehow artificial. It sure did look cool though! Again, spectacle for spectacle's sake.

That always seemed like a very American idea to me, and I am an American. We're the home of Hollywood, the country of Disneyland, the inventors of the Super Bowl. If we can do anything, we can do spectacle. If you want it, come and get it.

The ship felt strangely familiar the next morning, like a dream I'd had once before. This makes good sense since I'd been wandering around the damned thing for two days. The feeling of leaving was uncanny, though, as if I'd go back to my normal life and not know how to live it. There were so many necessary things I'd have to do, so few frivolities. In a more relevant sense, there would be so many things I'd know how to do, with my sometimes old-fashioned habits in place.

I guess I got what I wanted, after all. I did have fun. I did make memories. I did all that stuff you're supposed to do on a cruise. And even though that endless list of features and high-tech experiences seemed overwhelming while I was trying to live them, that list exists in real life, too. I think I just have a lot more practice dealing with it.

A blogger lost at sea.

Regardless, it's hard for me not to feel a little uneasy about the excess and extravagance. That's the best word I can think of to describe some of the technology on this ship: extravagant. Some people want this out of a vacation, and I get that. These people would very much enjoy Quantum of the Seas, if they can afford it.

But I couldn't get the image of that space-borne cruise ship in Wall-E out of my head: packs of people sitting back slurping drinks and awaiting entertainment while their bodies turned to mush. If only Royal Caribbean had given us Segways to negate the need for walking… An app would take care of everything else!

I was eager to get back to Brooklyn , back to my technology-fueled, landlubber lifestyle. The backwards-ness of it all struck me somewhere halfway through the Holland Tunnel, hundreds of feet below where the cruise started out. Here's this massive, half-century-old cruise ship company making a monumental effort to keep its industry afloat by redesigning the experience. (I'm allowed one pun, am I not?) Its biggest buoy is the giant floating gadget that is Quantum of the Seas. Its effort to appeal to a new generation of would-be cruisers is nothing short of valiant.

I am a member of that generation, and I'm not sure if I need a floating gadget for a vacation. That's not to say it's not novel or fun. In fact, I thought even the most absurd technological marvels on the ship—I can't decide if it's the indoor skydiving spot or the robotic bartender—seemed both neat and fun. It was all certainly pretty futuristic.

But maybe I want to escape all of that every once in a while. I want that secluded beach where there is no Wi-Fi signal and no place to charge my iPhone, rather than use my iPhone to schedule fun. I want to remember my disconnected life, where vacations led to revelations. I want to be that 11-year-old on the deck of a ship staring up at a rocket roaring across the sky, wondering what was next.

Top art by Tara Jacoby

How do you turn the traditional neo-Nazi march that passes through your small town every year into a good thing? If you're the residents of Wunsiedel, in Bavaria, Germany, you turn their hate parade into an involuntary walkathon, so that every step they take raises more money for an anti-fascist charity.

As the former burial site of Rudolph Hess, Hitler's deputy führer, Wunsiedel is hallowed ground for far-right extremists, who gather there annually to march. This year, fed up with the intrusion, residents and activists organized Rechts gegen Rechts (rights against rights), pledging to donate €10, or about $12.50, to the organization EXIT Deutschland for every meter the marchers walked. EXIT's mission: to provide assistance to people who'd like to drop out of extreme right-wing communities and organizations.

"The further they march, the more money is collected," says the narrator of a video about the stunt below. "In other words, for every step they take, the neo-Nazis campaign against neo-Nazis, and unwittingly finance more and more defections from the extremist scene."

Organizers painted markers along the route to make marchers aware of the money they raised, hung banners with slogans like "If only the Führer knew," and distributed bananas to ensure the extremists made it to their goal. By the end of the march, they'd raised €10,000, or about $12,500.

The BBC wildlife story begins "Warning: You may find the videos in this story disturbing." The BBC is absolutely correct. Nevertheless...

Comes the story, via the academic journal Polar Biology, about a recently rising and video-recorded phenomenon in the Antarctic:

BBC was first with the story:

The sexual behaviour of the fur seals hasn't come as a complete shock to the scientists that recorded it.

In 2006, they saw, for the first time, a fur seal attempting to copulate with a king penguin, on Marion Island, a sub-Antarctic island that is home to both species.

But three recent incidents in multiple locations of "young male seals sexually coercing what appeared to be healthy penguins of unknown gender" have set the researchers scurrying:

"Honestly I did not expect that follow up sightings of a similar nature to that 2006 one would ever be made again, and certainly not on multiple occasions," said Nico de Bruyn, of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa...

"This really made us sit up and take notice," said de Bruyn, of the new sightings.

Seals and sea lions had never before been recorded having sex with other biological classes of animals, but nonetheless, there is a rash of fur seals now catching penguins, mounting them, and attempting "copulation several times, lasting about five minutes each, with periods of rest in between." Like this:

In one incident, the seal finished, then ate his feathered victim.

Why are the seals doing this? There's no unified theory yet, although researchers speculate "it is a release of sexual frustration, given the hormonal surges during seal breeding season," or merely practice for skills they might later use in effective mating.

As for why it's happening more often, scientists think the pack is learning the deviant behavior from the first few seals who attempted it.

Still, de Bruyn told the BBC, "[I]f this is learned behaviour, we really can't think of what the reward may be for these young males."