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How Many Snowstorms Would It Take to Match Buffalo's Week From Hell?

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How Many Snowstorms Would It Take to Match Buffalo's Week From Hell?

Before it formed, forecasters were concerned that today's lake effect snow could form over the areas that saw five feet of snow earlier this week, dropping a total of 100 inches of snow by Friday. That's just from two storms! How many snowstorms would it take elsewhere in the country to reach 100 inches of snow?

Today's band of heavy lake effect snow ultimately set up a few miles south of the hardest-hit areas, sparing anyone the chance of cracking triple-digit snowfall totals. Even though it wound up not happening (thankfully), any area seeing the realistic potential of 100 inches of snow from two storms in one week is unthinkable for most people; 65 of those inches falling in just about one day is definitely towards the top of the list for a non-mountainous area. We can look back at snowfall records in major cities around the country to see how many snowstorms it's taken over the past few years to add up to around 100 inches of snow.

The following list keeps count of each day in the record books that measured 0.1" of snow (the minimum amount for measurable snow) between today and back as far as it takes to add up to a total near the triple-digits.

  • In Washington D.C., all of the snow that's fallen on National Airport since January 2009 measures up to 100.8 inches, and it fell over the course of 59 calendar days. It took 59 days of snow over the course of 5 years to see as much snow in Washington as parts of western New York could see in four days.

  • New York City (Central Park) has seen 96.7 inches of snow over the course of 41 days since February 2011. I use Central Park for most weather in New York because the stations at LaGuardia and JFK are heavily influenced by their proximity to the water.
  • Boston has seen 107.5 inches of snow over 43 days since February 2013.
  • Philadelphia has seen 111.6 inches of snow over 54 days since January 2011.
  • Pittsburgh has seen 106.8 inches of snow over 94 days since January 2013.
  • Detroit, which just saw its snowiest winter ever recorded, has seen 99.5 inches of snow over 65 days since March 2013.
  • Cincinnati has seen 101.8 inches over 80 days since January 2011.
  • Raleigh, North Carolina has seen 99.8 inches of snow over 59 days since January 1997. It's taken 59 days over nearly 18 years to see 100 inches of snow in Raleigh because the region sees snow so rarely compared to areas up north. The time span grows longer the farther south you go...
  • Atlanta, Georgia has seen 99.7 inches of snow over the course of 78 days since January 1970.
  • Dallas (DFW) has seen 95.6 inches of snow since the beginning of the airport's records in January 1974. The total fell over the duration of 83 days.
  • St. Louis has seen 45 days of measurable snow since December 2010 that produced a total of 102 inches of snow.
  • Chicago has seen measurable snow on 74 days since February 2013, accumulating 110.5 inches between then and now.
  • Minneapolis has seen 107 inches of snow over 81 days since February 2013.
  • Denver has seen 108.4 inches of snow over 60 days since January 2013.
  • Salt Lake City has seen 55 days with a dusting or greater of snow, which has brought a total of 105.3 inches to the city since November 2013.
  • Anchorage, Alaska has seen 60 days of accumulating snow since December 2012, totaling 106 inches.
  • Fairbanks, Alaska has seen the most instances of measurable snowfall to reach 100+ inches, with 112.2 inches of snow falling over the course of 103 days since December 2012.

For the record, the airport in Buffalo sees an average of 89.9 inches of snow every year, with the greatest one-season total of 199.4 inches falling between 1976 and 1977. The airport isn't exactly representative of the area since the lake effect snow has such a tight gradient. During the first event this week, the airport in Buffalo recorded 6.2 inches of snow, while communities just five or six miles away saw more than five feet.

We're at the height of lake effect snow season right now. Lake effect snow events will continue to occur through the winter until Lake Erie freezes over, which will cut off the source of instability feeding these intense bands of wind-driven snow.

[Image: AP | This post was updated to reflect that the band of snow set up a few miles south of the areas that saw 5 feet of snow earlier this week, ultimately sparing them from approaching 100" of snow.]

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Horny Couple Causes Traffic Jam Fucking in Their Car Outside of Jail

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Horny Couple Causes Traffic Jam Fucking in Their Car Outside of Jail

Springfield, Ore. police arrested a couple last Sunday having sex in their car, conveniently parked (and rocking) outside the jailhouse.

Police told KVAL that Kelli M. Knutson, 24, and Logan P. Jackson, 33, apparently went to a strip club together, and after leaving, and feeling "caught up in the moment," walked across the street to their car parked in front the jail, and started having sex. Their display reportedly caused a small traffic jam—drivers kept slowing down to watch them.

"We'd normally tell them to go someplace that's safer than a parking lot, or wherever we might find them," Sgt. Rich Charboneau told KVAL. "In this case, we had traffic being slowed down, we had someone complaining about it, so we had to take action."

Both were arrested by police on indecent exposure and disorderly conduct charges. They were booked in separate jails.

[H/T NY Daily News // Image via KVAL]

Walmart Dodges Taxes While Its Employees Starve

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Walmart Dodges Taxes While Its Employees Starve

Two new reports today about Walmart, the world's top provider of crap. One points out that Walmart is a tax dodger; the other points out that Walmart worsens our national hunger crisis. A banner day for Walmart!

The first report, from Americans For Tax Fairness, examines the costs to America that result from Walmart's systematic strategy to avoid paying taxes as much as possible. It's easy to say "all corporations do that," but all corporations are not America's biggest employer, nor do they wrap themselves in the American flag as much as Walmart does, even while costing the American public billions of dollars. Essentially, Walmart has an ongoing corporate policy of offshoring money to save on taxes and lobbying the US government to try to cut its own tax bill permanently:

This report finds that Walmart avoids $1 billion a year in taxes by exploiting existing federal tax loopholes. It is trying to cut its tax bill by at least another $720 million a year – more than $7 billion over 10 years – by getting Congress to lower the corporate income tax rate by 10 percentage points, from 35 percent to 25 percent.

Walmart is also pushing hard to permanently eliminate from U.S. taxation profits that are reportedly earned in other countries – known as a territorial tax system.

One of the only things that a multinational corporation can do to demonstrate actual patriotism is to contribute to the public coffers of its host nation. This is exactly what Walmart seeks to avoid doing.

The second report, from Eat Drink Politics, looks at Walmart's role in the U.S. "hunger crisis"—that is, in an exceptionally rich nation in which almost 50 million people face hunger issues, and an equal number receive government food assistance. But why should that affect the millions of Americans employed at Walmart, who are paid by a company worth $271 billion? Well, because Walmart, which employs an estimated one in ten retail workers in America, is so powerful that it is able to drive down the wages of the entire retail sector, thereby pushing millions of Americans closer to poverty, rather than pulling them out of is. From the report:

Estimates of hourly Walmart wages vary, but one study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Walmart cashiers average just $8.48/hour, while another industry report found the average pay to be $8.81 per hour. At this rate, an employee who works 34 hours per week, which is Walmart's definition of full-time, is paid $15,500 per year, which is about $8,000 below the federal poverty line for a family of four.

Walmart has confirmed that the company pays the majority of its workers less than $25,000 a year. As a result, many Walmart workers are at or near the federal poverty line and are unable to feed and clothe their families and provide basic necessities for their children.

Atop this post is a newly released photo of a canned food drive for employees of an Oklahoma Walmart store. That is never a good sign. Just a good holiday season reminder that Walmart is a self-serving, tax dodging, poverty wage-paying monolith that has made its founder's children unimaginably rich while keeping millions of people who work for it poor as hell. Never forget that Walmart is a lie.

[Photo of a canned food drive for Oklahoma Walmart employees via FB]

When Porn and Virtual Reality Collide (NSFW)

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When Porn and Virtual Reality Collide (NSFW)

The porn of the future is titillating. As virtual reality matures, we'll be aroused in three-dimensional immersive alternative realities, interacting with super-lifelike porn stars customized to our taste. People will look back on our passive and lonely 2D smut and pity us. But… when?

Oculus Rift porn, like VR everything else, has been overhyped for years. Extra-overhyped. It's still being overhyped, even as the pornographers dabbling in Rift development are struggling to get the subjects into adequate 3D scans. Even fewer companies have tackled the interactive aspect of simulated sex with teledildonics.

Some pornographers have realized the teledildonics on the market just aren't good enough yet, as is the case with Oculus game Wicked Paradise, which closed up shop despite heaps of fanfare last year. Meanwhile the customizable 3D avatar games that have been made it to consumers have steps-above-Minecraft graphics that'll give you a headache, and that's after you've gotten over the simulator-sickness.

At this early stage, it's very hard to make quality adult content for VR. The porn makers filming live-action have to Macgyver their own VR-compatible equipment, reinvent the standard adult film process, and program new processing software.

But people are doing it. And like a good journalist, I explored the stuff that's out there today. I found the pickings slim and mostly terrible (at least to me). But they were also a crude, salacious glimpse into how this technology could eventually blow the sex industry apart.

Filming for the metaverse

Despite VR devices not even being available to regular consumers, Spain-based porn company VirtualRealPorn is one of a small handful of pornographers developing for Oculus Rift already, by adapting traditional live-action porn for the headset.

VirtualRealPorn films porn clips in an 180-degree immersive experience (so not full-on 3D) and they've played with the Rift's sound capabilities, inserting moments in the scene where the actress whispers in the viewer's ear—a big hit with customers.

When Porn and Virtual Reality Collide (NSFW)

So far there are 25 clips in its library, each about 9 minutes long and from the POV of the male. VirtualRealPorn communications director LindaWells said that adding interactivity, including with teledildonics, is one of the many plans for the future. But right now they're still trying to figure out production, along with post-production editing for the Rift.

Both, she said, are time-consuming and expensive. There are many rules the filmmakers "must follow to create a comfortable immersion" experience, explained Wells, which the company has been discovering through trial-and-error. "Traditional adult filming rules aren't valid for VR."

And beyond figuring out a new way of filming, the company had to create its own equipment to shoot the pornos.

"There isn't equipment on the market to shoot for VR with good quality and we had to do much research to create custom cameras and rigs," said Wells. "The custom equipment is followed by a very custom workflow in post-production since the market lacks any good and complete software to do these processes." VirtualRealPorn developed its own software for post editing, too.

This struggle to adapt film and production processes to the Rift is an industry-wide problem. SugarDVD, a massive adult film company that made headlines this spring when it announced it would be making interactive VR porn, has yet to even reveal it's long-awaited Oculus Rift demo, which was supposed to come out this summer.

So far it's "scanned two adult performers and are currently in the process of working them into our demo," wrote press liaison Rebecca Bolen. In other words, it's not done yet.

Bolen did not respond to multiple requests to elaborate, but the company had this to say in a blog post in late August: "We've found that in order to create a more immersive experience, we need to start from the beginning of production in order to perfectly tailor adult content to the VR world."

3D-scanning porn stars

On the digital side, the technology for scanning and replicating porn actresses is moving steadily along. Veiviev, the NSFW arm of the 3D scanning service Infinite Realities , had the best 3D scans I could find. They call their realistic nudes "sculptures," and themselves "artisans."

A demo of their Lucid Dreams v2 went up this spring and features digitally rendered naked 3D women in provocative poses. A newer version is on the way.

According to a company blog post, Veiviev is only interested in making "frozen moments in time," nothing else. Just stills you can walk around; their sculptures don't move. In the future they promise to make male nude sculptures as well.

When Porn and Virtual Reality Collide (NSFW)

Screengrab from Lucid Dreams 2/Vimeo

A Japanese company called PG Productions also has decent 3D scanning technology, and digitally replicated five Japanese porn actresses for its PLAYGIRLS product.

I was unable to determine exactly how interactive PLAYGIRLS is or how much its models move, beyond hair blowing in the wind as they stand on a beach in a bathing suit, as seen in a demo.

Most of the motion VR erotica already on the market comes from Japan, where they're basically hentai. Anime porn that's not trying to be lifelike is a lot easier than digital renderings, after all.

One Japanese game has you look up a girl's skirt, another has you screw the hologram pop star Hatsune Miko while she is fully clothed. Looking realistic is clearly not the goal. The intercourse with Miko was glitchy on all the videos I found on YouTube; her crotch (or your hands?) look like shredded paper blowing in the wind or a WendyVainity video.

Going deep in the Uncanny Valley

But the upswing of creating avatars instead of just filming humans is you can personalize your actors. Creating your own model to get sexy with is a major selling point of VR porn, said Brian Shuster, the founder and CEO of the virtual reality network Utherverse, which makes Red Light Center, an online sex club that lets you minimally design your own character.

Utherverse also working on integrating the Rift and motion technology Leap Frog into future products, so you can use your hands to interact with your personalized porn star.

It wants to create realistic avatars. Shuster told the Daily Beast its Rift porn will be "basically identical" to real porn—but its current Red Light Center offerings don't inspire much confidence.

Here's a SFW Screen cap of Red Light Center gameplay:

When Porn and Virtual Reality Collide (NSFW)

The user pages of community designers, who design clothes and hair, looks worse that early 2000's MySpace pages, another Utherverse feature that makes me doubt they can produce a 3D porn experience that will be indecipherable from the real thing, any time soon.

Utherverse's character customization isn't particularly thrilling either, and you have to pay for every change in "Rays," the game's virtual currency. Better hair and costumes, naturally, cost you even more.

When Porn and Virtual Reality Collide (NSFW)

At this point, neither Utherverse nor Red Light Center are Rift compatible, or hook up to any teledildonic.

Teledildonics

Japan is pioneering interactivity too. The Custom Maid 3D game, where you design your own maid and use a controller fitted around your cock to navigate through the game (and screw your maid), added Oculus Rift support last June, making it the first game ever to use teledildonics with the Rift.

Another robotic sex game appeared at last November's Rift game jam, where a Tenga—a masturbatory suction toy for men—was hooked up to a Falcon, a small white machine with arms that move. Combined, the two beat in time to whatever is happening on the screen, involving a creepily young anime avatar.

Meanwhile, the Austrian-based interactive sex video game company TriXXX released its newest game Chathouse 3D this year, which utilizes the Rift. Chathouse 3D is similar to Red Light Center in that it is a interactive social network where horny people can make customizable sub-par avatars that fuck each other and also utilize a game-specific digital currency. But one reviewer called the game a "disorienting horrible mess" that will give you a headache before it gives you a hard-on.

It also offers teledildonic support for the Vstroker and the Fleshlight, two masturbatory toys for men. The game promises that every time the Fleshlight is penetrated, the thrust will be transmitted into the game via the Vstroker.

What about teledildonic support for women's masturbatory aids?? TriXXX's Nikolaus, who did not give his last name or job description, wrote the company is "always looking for new toys/devices to integrate into our system," but doesn't plan on adding lady-centric gadgets any time soon.

The company is more interested in adding unspecified new features to Chathouse 3D, including "shop system integration"—presumably so it can make more money from the game's virtual currency. The money-making potential of virtual cybersex is huge; Nikolaus said there are currently more than 180,000 users on the TriXXX social network.

Meanwhile, Wicked Paradise, an erotic video game widely touted last year, has been shelved. Top brass Wicked Paradise personnel, asking to not be named, said the game is put on hold until the virtual reality "market matures" and haptic feedback technology—namely in teledildonics—improves to accompany it.

When Porn and Virtual Reality Collide (NSFW)

Wicked Paradise animation test. Screenshot via Vimeo

"We realized that the current VR space—especially the hardware—simply is not good enough to make a lifelike realistic erotic VR adventure game" said the source. "We did a ton of experiments and came to the conclusion that without haptic feedback [we] can't create a VR erotic experience worth having."

The problem is that most available teledildonics (and similar remote sex toys like RealTouch) have huge latency problems, which causes a "very noticeable delay in what you see and what you feel," said the source, calling this "a huge problem in VR," and "not very sexy at all."

This delay issue "sends any erotic VR content you might make deep into uncanny valley, resulting in an experience that is more frightening than arousing," the source said.

The shelving of Wicked Paradise is a shame: Wicked Paradise's demo graphics looked infinitely better than Chathouse 3D and anything Utherverse has created. And interestingly, the game itself was garnering more interest from women than men.

The Future

So when will we finally enjoy our Oculus-powered 3D immersive interactive alternative pornographic reality? I'm sorry to say it's going to be quite a while.

Creating an avatar you can sex that doesn't look like a cartoon character or plastic doll is just not possible yet. The simulations aren't realistic enough. VR porn for anything other than the heterosexual male does not exist, leaving women to roam glitchy sex simulator games if they want to get their VR freak on.

No company has bothered to make their product compatible with sex toys for women, nor plans to do so any time soon. The technology to make live-action 3D porn is still DIY. The Rift isn't widely available, and probably won't be for years. Then you have the simulator-sickness issue, common among most new Rift users as the device requires an acclimation period.

"The porn industry seems to be more conservative; usually they wait for a technology to be spread among the people before creating content for that technology," Wells told me in an email. If it's years until Oculus goes mainstream, it could be even longer for adult entertainment on the Rift to be enjoyable for the average guy, much less the average girl.

As revolutionary as the future promises to be, VR porn right now is more trouble than it's worth. I for one am quite happy sticking to the plebeian, passive 2D porn already on the market. For now at least.

Illustration by Jim Cooke

Jennifer Lawrence Given Box Full of Crickets in Terrible On-Set Prank

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Jennifer Lawrence Given Box Full of Crickets in Terrible On-Set Prank

It seems like the worst part about being a celebrity, aside from the loss of privacy the search for a dope enough swimming pool, is the fact that actors seem to love nothing more than terrible on-set pranks. On the set of Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, Jennifer Lawrence completed her Hollywood prank ritual when she received a bunch of gross crickets.

Lawrence told Entertainment Weekly the stupid prank story at the Los Angeles premiere of Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1. Her co-star Jeffrey Wright reportedly gave her a nice little Tiffany's box, which she opened with delight:

"I got a Tiffany's box filled with crickets!

It was the most awful combination of feelings in the world. It was like, 'Tiffany's!? Jeffrey! You didn't have to do that!' And then I opened it...it was awful. And they were in my trailer for months, I couldn't get them out."

Never fill Jennifer Lawrence's trailer with crickets for months.

Never prank.

Never.

Prank.

[image via Getty]

Frat Suggests Taking Feminist Students on a "Raping Trip"

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Frat Suggests Taking Feminist Students on a "Raping Trip"

This year, the American fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon chartered its first "colony" in the U.K. at Edinburgh University. The American frat bros brought much across the pond to their Scottish brothers: "dignity," "honor," stories about famed DKE George W. Bush, and rape jokes.

The Edinburgh student paper, The Student, obtained the official minutes from DKE meetings over the last year and published snippets of them this week. Apparently, DKE bros were so proud of the jokes they made about raping "feminists" that they actually wrote them into the minutes. The Student reports:

A DKE-AS meeting on 4 March 2014 discussed "Feminists" as a full agenda item; the other two agenda items were "Matters from the eBoard" and "Any other business." According to the minutes, during discussion of the "Feminists" agenda item, a member of the fraternity suggested organising a game of paintball between DKE-AS and FemSoc [the student feminist society] to "calm the waters." When the ex-president vetoed the proposal, the proposer responded: "How are we going to rape them?"

A second member then said: "Let's go to Montenegro, for a raping trip."

A member of the fraternity also joked that a female EUSA [the student association] official had raped his friend in Palm Beach, Florida. Another member responded: "She didn't need a strap-on!"

Good stuff, you should write it down.

While frat bros joking about rape is far from surprising—DKE's chapter at Yale was responsible for that hilarious "No means yes, yes means anal" chant—according to The Student, Edinburgh DKEs were allegedly putting together a program to take advantage of drunk women. The paper reports:

A source within the fraternity told The Student that members had also discussed planning and rolling out a free "service" called "Phone a Deke," whereby women not wishing to walk home unaccompanied following nights out could enlist a DKE-AS member to walk them home. According to the source, members joked about taking advantage of the women, some of whom would be intoxicated and vulnerable following a night of alcohol consumption. These alleged conversations are not recorded in the minutes.

No disciplinary action has been taken against DKE yet, but a University spokesman told the Huffington Post, "We are treating this matter extremely seriously."

FemSoc condemned the jokes recorded in DKE's minutes in a Facebook post:

FemSoc condemns in the strongest terms the abhorrent misogynistic and transphobic behaviour and statements made by the DKE frat. We hope the university will join us in standing up against sexism and take disciplinary action against students involved in the frat. ...

The fact that this type of behaviour is acceptable to a group of students, and that it was even recorded in official minutes, is a clear example of how rampant sexism and misogyny exists in our everyday surroundings, and we must fight it.

[Campus photo via The Student]

Queens Hotel Manager Doesn't Want Any Yucky Homeless People in His Rooms

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Queens Hotel Manager Doesn't Want Any Yucky Homeless People in His Rooms

When New York City's Department of Homeless Services was temporarily without beds for a group of local homeless people this month, it did a pretty cool thing: booked 100 rooms at a Radisson in Jamaica, Queens and told the hotel's management they were for a "government group."

Pierre Merhej, the hotel's manager, was none too happy about the apparent bait-and-switch. DNAinfo reports:

Still, Merhej said he would not allow DHS to book rooms at the hotel again, even if the city offered more money.

"This is a hotel, not a shelter, and we want to keep it this way," he said. "We have a business to run and a reputation to keep and we intend on keeping it."

Merhej admitted that the hotel's use as a temporary shelter didn't "really have an impact on our regular guests," and was unsure how many homeless people actually stayed in the rooms during the 10-day period for which they were booked.

It's not the first time the city has housed homeless people in a hotel, which, when you get down to it, is an enormously cost-ineffective band-aid for New York's 58,000-strong homeless population. Good for DHS for engaging in a little light trickery to make sure those people weren't spending the night in the cold, but spending some money on figuring out permanent housing would be even better.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

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The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Caity: The twin reflecting pools at the National September 11th Memorial are just what memorials should be: vast, and arresting, and humbling, and sad. The museum is very expensive.

Rich: I was really surprised how moved I felt looking at the North pool, which is the one I came upon first. It's lovely, firstly: a giant rectangular chunk in the ground with a man-made waterfall on each side. People stick flowers in the names engraved on the surrounding stones. The memorial plaza is by far the prettiest thing we've seen so far in any of these tourist traps. Prettier than Lady Liberty herself. Prettier than Bevin's eyes.


The best restaurant in New York is

The café at the National September 11th Memorial & Museum

Menu style

À la carte

Cost, including two $24 tickets for admission

$72.00


Rich: The entry process to the museum suggested a phantom chaos that wasn't present on what I am guessing was an under-attended day. You walk a roped-off path to buy tickets, and then you walk the length of it back so that you can rewalk the length to get into the museum via another roped-off lane. If we ran it, it would have been Cross-fit.

Caity: The afternoon we went was beautiful—bright and clear and cold—but also very, very windy. Not a great day to navigate the blustering wind tunnels of downtown Manhattan.

Rich: Especially when you are walking under scaffolding in makeshift lanes to a street that barely exists.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Caity: The standard tickets required for entry are $24, with an $18 option for veterans, students, and seniors. According to the website, "access to the Museum will always be free for 9/11 family members."

Rich: I wonder if they make you prove it, or if it's just based on the honor system a la EPCOT.

Caity: There's also this: "Family members can bring two complimentary guests. Any additional guests will be charged standard ticket prices."

Rich: Technically we're all related.

Caity: Regardless of the specifics, no one seemed eager to scam their way into the museum that Tuesday.

The first thing you encounter in the 9/11 museum is a kind of meta exhibit about the long-term effects of 9/11, which forces you to go through post-9/11 style security before setting foot near the exhibits. It's like walking through an airport, or like walking through the Statue of Liberty ferry terminal, which is also like walking through an airport.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Rich: You have to take everything out of your pockets and remove your belt.

Caity: Coats and bags are placed in plastic bins to be scanned, and visitors are required to walk through metal detectors.

Rich: You are given the option of stepping through a regular metal detector or standing inside the genital-revealing, arms-over-head-so-hands-meet-in-diamond-formation, TSA full-body scanner.

Caity: It had such an airport vibe that I almost instinctively started to remove my shoes, before realizing no one else had. I heard someone else ask a guard if he should.

Rich: Yeah, I wondered if my laptop needed its own tray, and then I remembered that I wasn't carrying a laptop.

Caity: An employee directing foot traffic snatched up a water bottle long since abandoned in the security line and said to the Europeans behind me, "They always leave their water bottles. You can keep your water bottles!" I wasn't carrying more than 3oz of liquids, but I would have discarded them if I had been.

After walking in, we made our way to the second floor atrium terrace, where there is a small café that is mentioned almost nowhere on the memorial and museum's official website. If you do a search for the term "café," you get a few results of varying relevance: A guide for visitors with limited mobility explaining that the café is wheelchair accessible; a page advising people who want to contribute visual art to the 9/11 Memorial Artists online database to visit an Internet café or public library if they cannot access the web from their home.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Rich: The wheelchair-accessibility thing is a lie, by the way. There isn't really room for anything wider than a human body in that little strip of space that becomes increasingly narrow the closer you get to the cashier. It's like a funnel. Or a slaughterhouse designed by Willy Wonka. In fact, the entire floorplan of the museum is nuts. The floors are in the shape of irregular polygons made by a child who just learned how to draw and connect straight lines.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Caity: When we went, around 12:30, the triangular café area was crowded with high school students wearing yarmulkes.

Rich: I watched one kid make affectionate physical contact with no fewer than three of this classmates: two were boys! Kids today are so advanced.

Caity: A couple of them grumbled about me when I claimed the only table that mercifully opened up mid-visit. Kids today want my table and I was here first.

Rich: Yeah, those kids talked shit about you as they walked away. Kids today claim THEY were there first.

Caity: As you pointed out, I was on Earth first. I was also at the table first! Those kids don't even remember 9/11.

Rich: I was actually going to fight with them. DON'T TALK SHIT ABOUT MY FRIEND!

Caity: It would have been embarrassing to have to cut this review short because we got kicked out of the 9/11 Museum and Memorial for fighting, but at least we would have stood for something.

In any case, there was absolutely not enough seating up there to accommodate what did not seem like an astronomical number of patrons. Nor were there enough café employees (3) or registers (1).

Rich: Everyone was very anxious for pastries. There just wasn't enough anything.

Caity: The menu of the café consisted of savory pastries and sweet ones, cookies, coffees, and Boylan Bottling Company gourmet soft drinks. The Boylan sodas felt like an odd choice—more conspicuous than just offering Coke or Pepsi products, and to what end?

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

A sign asked patrons to pardon the café's appearance while it was under construction, but when I asked our cashier how long the café had been open, she said "a couple months." The sense I got was not that it was under construction, but rather that they were overestimating their continued enthusiasm for the project.

Rich: It's like the decision makers took the outcry over the proposed "comfort food" restaurant to heart and decided that the respectful thing to do would be to make eating at the 9/11 Museum as uncomfortable as possible.

Caity: I ordered a ham and gruyere croissant, plus a "semolina and olive oil cookie," both served room temperature. I also got a ginger ale in a glass bottle.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

The croissant was fine. It would have been the star of any free hotel continental breakfast. The cookie seemed to be the result of an effort to create a joyless cookie. This, it achieved.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

To my surprise, it arrived sandwich-style, with a thin layer of chocolate in the middle, and tasted mostly like olive oil.

Rich: Discomfort food blues. I got the Potato Onion and Sour Cream Danish; butter was its strongest flavor. My hazlenut macaron may have had praline involved—I'm not certain because it mostly tasted like a chewable vitamin. Imagine a macaron that tasted like a Flinstones vitamin and that's exactly what it tasted like. I ate the whole thing and I wouldn't be surprised if Momofuku Milk jumped on the tastes-like-chewable-vitamins bandwagon.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Caity: One thing that struck me as odd about the café is that many of its offerings seemed to be stored in large white boxes kept in plain sight.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Rich: Yeah, like at your uncle's 50th at a VFW or something. Imagine that kind of a party with a human being rammed up your ass the entire time, and that's what being in line for a lunch that couldn't satiate a cockroach was like.

Caity: Near the register was a display case filled with beautiful clean white bowls. My guess is that they were—at one point in time—intended to hold food, but now the café seems resigned to the fact that the bowls have become artifacts. "Empty bowls from the 9/11 Memorial & Museum café" displayed behind glass for all eternity.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

A poster stuck to a cement column advised onlookers to call 9(/)11 in the event of a choking incident.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

If you time your visit so that a table opens up just as you are completing your transaction at the register, you will find that the atrium itself is a lovely (if cramped) place to eat, surrounded by enormous, bright windows extending above and below your line of sight, where you can watch leaves soar up the empty equivalent of several stories and through the air. We sat directly across from two steel "tridents" that at one time formed part of the exterior structural support of the North Tower.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Rich: People were hovering, waiting for us to be done. A woman walked over rocking her baby wildly, practically swinging it, as if to say, "I can't control my child, but if I had a seat perhaps my job as a parent and human who doesn't drop other humans might be a bit easier to do." A very old person sighed something about dying before he ever got to sit down again.

Caity: Oh, dear. I was blithely unaware of all these people. I was reading the sign about the steel tridents. I was drinking a Boylan's Ginger Ale.

Rich: I was already agitated because had I burned my mouth on the latte that I didn't even order but decided to settle for because I didn't feel like waiting another 20 minutes for the cappuccino I did order. I guess I was just looking for trouble.

Caity: There's probably no "right" time to eat on a visit to the 9/11 memorial, but if you absolutely must, either for a restaurant review column, or because you have low blood sugar, I strongly advise doing it before you tour the museum. You will not be in the mood to eat after. You will not be in the mood to do anything except sit alone, quietly.

Rich: It's the kind of museum where you go to be reminded of what you already know. One of the first installations featured a bunch of voices overhead describing the day and keywords of theirs were projected onto columns. "It was very, very sad," said one man.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

On the way down to the exhibits, a woman with three-inch flamingo colored nails side-eyed me as she was coming up on the escalator. I can't say I enjoyed that, but it was refreshing both attitudinally and sartorially in comparison to everything else.

Caity: I cried. I could have cried more, and I wanted to because it would have felt good to cry, but I knew we had to get back to work within the hour, so I held back as much as I could.

The area that houses the exhibits is very dark and quiet and warm. There are small stands bearing tissue boxes placed in some dark corners. There are lots of places to sit. It's a place that welcomes crying.

I expected there to be more people openly weeping. If people were crying—and I don't understand how they could not have been—they were discreet about it.

Rich: The In Memoriam room, which features portraits of everyone who died that day, a searchable database for more information on all of the victims, and smaller room with in the room where 30-second tributes are played at random, that room choked me up.

But mostly, I felt like it was surreal. As surreal as the actual day was, especially going through the giant exhibit that traced the day, basically, minute by minute.

Caity: I teared up in that room, and I really cried listening to a voicemail a man on a hijacked plane left for his wife.

Rich: Yeah, I refused to listen to that. I just read the transcript on the wall.

Caity: I was very matter-of-fact. Before I listened to it, I thought "Listening to this will make me cry." And then I listened to it, and it did.

Rich: It's interesting how detailed our understanding of 9/11 is. Like we heard this guide tell these women about an elevator that stopped between floors after the first plane hit. One guy in there was a window washer whose squeegee allowed them to pry open the elevator door and then punch holes in the sheet rock. They all lived.

Caity: After she told the story, she invited them to go look at the squeegee in the next exhibit, though you and I were not able to find it.

Watching the news clips from the day made me remember watching them in my 7th grade classroom.

Rich: Yeah, you see Matt Lauer interrupting an interview with Richard Hatch and it's the moment everything changed in terms of awareness.

Caity: Matt Lauer looked so young.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

It looked like footage from...13 years ago.

I remember our principal wheeling a television into our classroom, and I remember thinking it seemed like a really big deal to her. Everyone got picked up early from school, even though we were in Paxtang, PA, population 1,570, hundreds of miles from all the action.

Rich: Who could possibly concentrate?

I exited the subway at the northwest corner of Union Square, and had a clear view. And it was soooo early. And the first thing I thought was, "Did aliens attack?" People were standing around pointing and I saw some of them smiling, so that was really strange. And then I went to my terrible temp job just as the second plane hit, and they sent me home. Then I couldn't get home because the F stopped under the WTC and filled up with smoke. They backed up the subway to the previous station and we all got out. I walked to my friend's place and went to sleep, and when I got up, I thought, "This is still happening?"

One word about the museum gift shop: The pricing was so weird. $12 for a coffee mug is OK! I paid $25 for a Cher one, so this was a steal. $20.95 for a water bottle—now it's starting to get crazy. $95 for a scarf featuring the New York skyline? Outrageous.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Caity: I still remember what I was wearing that morning: A pink t-shirt and blue and lavender Hawaiian-print Miken surf shorts because it was 2001.

Rich: A lot was made of how beautiful that day was, and it's true. Some days are just so bright, crisp and perfectly temperate that it feels like 9/11, though you can't really use that as a descriptor because it's still too soon and people are still too touchy.

My favorite thing at the museum was an exhibition called "Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning." Here is the description from the brochure:

This artwork, created by Spencer Finch, is composed of 2,983 squares to commemorate the individuals killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. Each square is a unique shade of blue.

The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Really awesome way to talk about memory and aesthetic perfection. Because it was a perfect day, except for all of the tragedy and world-changing conflicts that came to a head.

Caity: That was beautiful. Everything was sad. The food was not memorable, but there were too many other things to remember.


Is Everything OK?

Questions About the Dining Experience

Would you go back?

Rich: Respectfully, no. There is a Duane Reade on practically every other corner in Manhattan, and a Starbucks on even more—there are plenty of more convenient places to visit if I want to burn my tongue on a latte and relive the heartiness of Flinstones vitamins.

Caity: The $24 entry fee is only one of many factors that makes the café at the National Semptember 11th Memorial & Museum a hard sell for an enjoyable lunch. I think I would probably eat at one of the food vendors you pass on the walk to the memorial the next time I find myself in the neighborhood.

Is it a good first date spot?

Rich: Nah.

Caity: Yes!!!

Is it a good place to have an affair?

Rich: If you could find a way to be turned on in the 9/11 Museum, that's your business and God bless you and I might want to interview you for a piece I'm writing so get at me (no homo).

Caity: No. There is no way to be inconspicuous in the atrium of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, although I did feel like I gained intimate knowledge of everyone I brushed up against while navigating my way through the crowd. I also noticed one couple engaged in an embrace that seemed more sexual than consoling in one of the darkened theaters on the lower level.

Is it a good place to bring a doll?

Rich: Outside the museum's main attraction, the September 11, 2001 Historical Exhibition, there was a warning that the exhibit contained scenes of violence and is not appropriate for people under 10 years of age. Think about what kind of doll owner you are or want to be, and heed those words.

Caity: No. While it might be comforting to have a beloved childhood toy to hug close to your chest as you walk through the exhibits, there is simply no place in the café for a doll to sit.

There are a bunch of restaurants in the world, including some in New York City. But in a city of over 24,000 restaurants, how do you find the best? You begin your search in places that are already popular: New York's hottest tourist destinations. In The Best Restaurant in New York Is, writers Caity Weaver and Rich Juzwiak attempt to determine the best restaurant in New York.

Previously: The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The Empire State Building; The Macy's Basement; Wall Street Bath & Spa; El Museo del Barrio; The Williamsburg Urban Outfitters ; The Central Park Boathouse; The Tommy Bahama Store; The Bronx Zoo; The Armani Store;The Crown Cafe at the Statue of Liberty; The Campbell Apartment inside Grand Central; The U.N. Delegates Dining Room; Play at the Museum of Sex; Le Train Bleu inside Bloomingdales; LOX at The Jewish Museum; The American Girl Café

[Images via Rich Juzwiak and Caity Weaver]


Marilyn Manson's "Sick" Lana Del Rey Rape Scene Leaks After 2 Years

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Unreleased footage from a 2012 collaboration between Marilyn Manson and Hostel director Eli Roth leaked online last night, and it includes a very hard-to-watch scene depicting Roth holding down and raping singer Lana del Rey.

"The footage is so sick, it's been locked in a vault for over a year," Roth told Larry King in an interview last October.

The disturbing simulated-rape clip apparently made its way out of that vault as part of a reel for Sturmgruppe, a Los Angeles-based digital art group that has done cinematography and editing for Manson in the past.

Some outlets are reporting the video is called "Sturmgruppe," but most of the footage—minus the Del Rey scene and the party balloons with "rape" Sharpied onto them—made it into the finished video for Manson's "No Reflection," directed by Lukas Ettlin:

In the same Larry King interview, Roth said it was "crazy" to suggest that depicting the sexual abuse of women "adds to horror":

"No, that's a crazy question. There's literally no way to answer that. The sexual abuse of women is so horrific. I mean, Straw Dogs is a movie where there's rape. Does that add to that movie? Yes. But how are you supposed to answer a question like that? It's crazy."

Update: Although Roth had previously said he shot the video "with Marilyn Manson and Lana del Rey," Pitchfork is reporting that Manson's reps say he never intended to use it in a music video.

[h/t Spin]

Parents of Clemson Frat Pledge Still Don't Know Why He Died

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Parents of Clemson Frat Pledge Still Don't Know Why He Died

On September 2, Clemson University sophomore Tucker Hipps was found floating under a bridge near the school's campus after an early morning run with his Sigma Phi Epsilon pledge brothers. It's now over two months later, and Hipps' parents still have no idea why their son died.

Yesterday, Hipps' parents Cindy and Gary gave their first televised interview since their son's death to WSPA in South Carolina and they made it clear that they're still looking for answers regarding the circumstances of Tucker's death.

Tucker's parents think someone has information that can provide the answers they so desperately need.

"If I had something on my heart that I knew and I didn't tell it I know that would destroy me and if you know something like that it's going to destroy you," his mother told Amy Wood.

Tucker's dad: "It's an awful heavy burden to carry around." His mom adds, "And I wouldn't want someone to live with that burden."

His dad said, "We hope that somebody, who was told by somebody that somebody did something will speak up and help us find closure for our son."

Hipps was reported missing by a pledge brother after he didn't return with the rest of the group following a 5:30 a.m. run. He was later found under a highway bridge that runs over Lake Hartwell—police determined that he died from blunt force trauma. But the questions of how and why Hipps, a 19-year-old with no medical issues, went over a bridge during what should have been a routine run have not been answered—publicly at least.

As we highlighted a few days after Hipps' death, the scuttlebutt among Clemson students at the time was that Hipps died during some sort of hazing activity. Those claims have not been proven, and Clemson police have not charged anyone nor do they seem like they will, but Hipps' parents seem to think Tucker's pledge brothers are still withholding information. In the interview, they said that they know the results of the post-mortem toxicology report, but said they could not reveal them because the investigation is still ongoing.

As one might expect, Hipps' parents did not have kind words regarding the entire notion of fraternities. They also, his dad says, did not want him to join one in the first place, but Tucker insisted.

"As close a relationship as Tucker and I had his whole life there were some things that he was not going to tell me and there was nothing about that fraternity that he was going to tell me," his dad said.

"I tried my best to dissuade him I wasn't part of a fraternity in college."

"I told him I'm not going to say you can't do it but I am not going to pay for it."

So Tucker Hipps got a job to pay for it himself.

"I can tell you that last time I saw him he was both tired and worn out he looked like he hadn't had much sleep," his dad told 7 On Your Side.

After Hipps' death, fraternity activities at Clemson were suspended, and according to Hipps' parents the school is still conducting an investigation into his death.

Last week, Nolan Burch, a freshman at West Virginia University, died of alcohol poisoning at the school's Kappa Sigma house.

[image via Facebook]

Have You Seen These Men?

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Have You Seen These Men?

The man on the left is wanted for verbally and physically harassing a young boy in Tewkesbury, England, and the man on the right allegedly sexually assaulted a teenage girl near a Kohl's in Newport News, Va. Police released these composite renderings this week.

If you've seen the man on the left, contact the Gloucestershire Constabulary, and if you've seen the man on the right, call the Newport News Police Department's tip line at 1-888-LOCK-U-UP.

[Images via Gloucestershire Constabulary and Newport News Police Department]

This Nuclear Sub Was Part Of History's Most Unlikely Beer Run

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This Nuclear Sub Was Part Of History's Most Unlikely Beer Run

Setting out on a nuclear submarine patrol is just about the closest thing there is to interstellar travel. Life is monotonous, there is nothing to look at, work is demanding and both sleep and space are in short supply. Navy ships can execute Steel Beach events and even the rare 'Beer Day' to give overworked crews a break, but subs are a different story... Usually.

This story, told by a veteran submariner that will remain anonymous, is of a US nuclear fast attack submarine that rippled off all of its Tomahawk cruise missiles in anger, then was the benefactor of one of the most spectacular beer runs of all time. The result of which was a rare, if not unprecedented occasion for an American nuclear submarine crew:

Unfortunately, submarines do not get Beer Day. They are not allowed to store it on-board like surface ships and getting a stores load at sea is both rare and difficult. Yet my submarine miraculously managed it during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

We were returning from a month or two at sea. We read the tea leaves in the message traffic and knew that something was going to happen in the Gulf soon. Sure enough, a few days before we got back to Groton we got word that we were being surge deployed to the Gulf. We got a weekend to say goodbye to friends and family and then sped across the Atlantic.

The coordination for so many submarines and surface ships to go to the same place at the same time is amazing. Two submarines rarely share the same water space, and if they do they're forbidden from sharing the same depth range. Add in skimmers all over the place and getting to periscope depth to check in a few times a day was a big pain in the ass.

After farting around the Mediterranean for a few weeks we got orders to proceed through the Suez Canal and take station in the Gulf. Submarines are helpless on the surface, let alone constrained in the Suez. Standing Officer of the deck on the sail Bridge as we went through the Suez was terrifying. We had a destroyer in front of us for protection, but what good was that to save us from some dude with an RPG popping up over a sand dune? That was the only time I ever had to wear a flack jacket.

Once we got through 'The Ditch' we took station in our tiny box in the sea. We spent the whole time at periscope depth dodging surface ships, shipping traffic, and fishing boats. We waited for mission tasking and for Shock 'n Awe to begin just like the rest of the world. We practiced battle stations and missile launch drills twice a day. We were lucky if we got four hours of sleep.

Finally Shock 'n Awe came. It was not as drilled. Instead of a quick and decisive death blow we ended up chasing Saddam and his cronies. One Tomahawk here, an air strike there, and no tasking for my boat. Then the money shot finally came. We could hear the tasking come over the wire for other ships but none for us. Every time a tasking order came the Skipper ran to Control and was 'blue balled.'

When we finally got our tasking orders it was a doozy. Every other sub had gotten fairly small salvos (small numbers of missile launches). They ordered us too shoot it all. Load all four torpedo tubes with TLAMs (BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles) and launch all 12 vertical tubes. No submarine had ever shot a full TLAM load before. The first 15 went perfect and then number 16 was a dud. So close to a full salvo!

With the vertical tubes empty they shifted us to the back of the line and we loaded the torpedo tubes again and waited for more tasking.

Due to our surge deployment we didn't have a chance to fully reload our stores. As we floated there in the Gulf we started running out of food. Eventually it was rice, beef knuckle (an actual part of a cow not in the hoof) and powdered eggs. I ate waffles every day for weeks. We also started running out of cigarettes. People were smoking half at a time and digging old butts out just for two stale drags.

Salvation came in the form of a Senior Chief who busted his knee. It started to swell badly and the Doc had to drain it. A submarine doc is basically a nurse who can also perform emergency surgery, stitches, and yank teeth. The Senior Chief needed a doctor.

Our mid watch boys had become good friends on the chat messenger with the mid watch crew on a nearby destroyer. We told them of our plight. No food! No cigarettes! Their CO was sympathetic but there was nothing he could do... Until he found out we needed a doctor.

The next day we surfaced and the destroyer sent a small boat over. With a doctor. And food. And cigarettes! And hard ice cream!!! And .... Hey what's that pallet?! BEER!!!

That destroyer and my submarine will remain nameless, but those guys will always be heroes to everyone on my boat. Unfortunately we were still on station. Beer was not in the cards just yet.

We completed our tasking and were ordered through Suez. There was a line of submarines ahead of us so we got told to stay and wait our turn. We stayed surfaced and did steel beach for three days. On the first night the crew finally got their two beers. The Skipper hoarded some extra and ended up getting wasted. Crew members were selling them at ridiculous profit. A Guy sold a single can of rot gut nasty beer for $20!

We finally got our water space to travel home. Other than a four hour stores load at the submarine tender in Greece it was full speed ahead all the way back to Connecticut.

This Nuclear Sub Was Part Of History's Most Unlikely Beer Run

Thanks so much to 'The Former Submariner' for sharing this fantastic story with us and to all those in the Silent Service that get stuck in these steel tubes for weeks and weeks at a time.

Photos via wikicommons/USN

Tyler Rogoway is a defense journalist and photographer who maintains the website Foxtrot Alpha for Jalopnik.com You can reach Tyler with story ideas or direct comments regarding this or any other defense topic via the email address Tyler@Jalopnik.com

Jennifer Garner's Ex-Husband Bestowed Upon Child a Great Polish Name

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Jennifer Garner's Ex-Husband Bestowed Upon Child a Great Polish Name

The Baby Name Critic isn't one to ogle the male specie. She prefers to keep them at more than arm's length. Why, you ask? Because they can physically impregnate you at any minute! And even though the Baby Name Critic loves to critique baby names, she prefers not to be around babies. Also, men are awful (© official slogan of the Baby Name Critic franchise, est. 2014).

But Scott Foley, née Garner, as in Jennifer Garner, as in Sydney Bristow, as in Hannah Bibb, as in Mrs. Ben Horrible Affleck, is quite handsome. I think he is very good on Scandal, navigating all those television screens. Apparently he has recovered and remarried after divorcing the woman with the deepest dimples in Hollywood, who later told Allure that the photogenic couple "didn't have a shot." (For what it's worth, she also said that Ben Affleck is "taller than you'd expect." Crazy shit.)

Foley is now married to Marika Dominczyk, a Polish-American actress (and a daughter of a Polish solidarity movement leader) who has appeared in I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and National Lampoon's Bag Boy. They have a daughter, Malina, and a son, Keller, and this week welcomed a baby boy: Konrad.

This is an interesting case for the Baby Name Critic. How do we deal with sibling-name continuity in the modern age? Malina is a Polish name, meaning raspberry. Konrad, though Germanic in origin, is popular in Poland as well. But Keller—Keller is a suburb of Dallas. The surname of Helen. A for-profit business school.

Foley's middle name is Kellerman, so the impulse behind young Keller's name is klear. But I do not like it. The brood is immediately divided: Two have Polish names, and one is named after dad. It's two against one, with the middle child singled out. Life will either be great for him, or horrible. Like when you dream your whole life of playing Batman but then your ex-wife's husband gets cast. It should have been you. It should have been you.

It's hard to be a man.

This has been Baby Name Critic.

Leah Finnegan is Gawker's Baby Name Critic.

[Pic via Getty]

Lunatic: Keystone Pipeline Will Teach Men "What it Is to Be a Man"

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Lunatic: Keystone Pipeline Will Teach Men "What it Is to Be a Man"

Today's date is November 21, 2014. Illustrating Peggy Noonan's newspaper column today is a photo of Ronald Reagan's funeral. Ronald.. sweet Ronald... Peggy hath not forgotten you.

This man we have in the White House, today—does he have fiber? Does he have character, and morals? Does he have the manly, sun-kissed visage of a true leader, who might go by the name of, to pull an example out of the thinning air, Ron, or Ronald—perhaps a "Ronald Reagan?" Dame Peggy Noonan thinks not.

Peggy Noonan is an 800 year-old broken record and half of her fucking column today is about Ronald Reagan who has been dead for a decade and yet her column is still the most popular thing the Wall Street Journal publishes. Go figure.

My theory: it's because of Peggy's insight as a scientific analyst on the issue of climate change.

And there is the Keystone XL pipeline and the administration's apparent intent to veto a bill that allows it. There the issue is not only the jobs the pipeline would create, and not only the infrastructure element. It is something more. If it is done right, the people who build the pipeline could be pressed to take on young men—skill-less, aimless—and get them learning, as part of a crew, how things are built and what it is to be a man who builds them.

On top of that, the building of the pipeline would show the world that America is capable of coming back, that we're not only aware of our good fortune and engineering genius, we are pushing it hard into the future. America's got her hard-hat on again. America is dynamic. "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Not just this endless talk of limits, restrictions, fears and "Oh, we're all going to melt in the warm global future!"

Which is sort of the spirit of this White House.

Great presidencies have a different one. They expand, move on, reach out.

Forget devastating climate change. "America is dynamic." Forget basic chemistry and science. Great presidencies "expand." Forget a global push for alternative energy sources. We should build the Keystone pipeline so that "aimless" young men can learn "how things are built and what it is to be a man who builds them."

Staunch Republican Wall Street Journal readers: do you even take this woman seriously? Serious question.

[Photo: Getty]

Darren Wilson Reportedly in Talks to Resign From Ferguson Police Dept.

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Darren Wilson Reportedly in Talks to Resign From Ferguson Police Dept.

Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson is reportedly in final talks to resign from the department as a grand jury is on the verge of deciding whether to indict the officer for the shooting and killing of Michael Brown.

CNN reports that Wilson is apparently considering leaving Ferguson PD "as a way to help ease pressure and protect his fellow officers." Wilson has apparently been cautious to not move forward with an official resignation while the grand jury is still deliberating, "for fear it would appear he was admitting fault." CNN speculates that Wilson could resign as soon as today, when the grand jury could also deliver its decision.

Meanwhile, Ferguson is bracing for the outcome of the grand jury's deliberations: Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a 30-day state of emergency on Monday, and locals have been feverishly stocking up on guns. Protests and demonstrations started cropping up in the streets Wednesday and Thursday night; the Wall Street Journal reports "a handful" of people were arrested by police last night.

[H/T Complex]


Did you know that if your coworkers quit, your chance of getting a raise goes up?

Food Network Chef Giada's Thanksgiving Diet Tip: Spit Out All Your Food

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Food Network Chef Giada's Thanksgiving Diet Tip: Spit Out All Your Food

Here's a holiday diet tip from expert Food Network chef Giada de Laurentiis: spit everything you eat into a pretty little bucket. According to Page Six, Giada maintains her "size 2" frame because when she films her show, "she never eats. Never."

Page Six's source on Giada's show claims:

"When Giada films her cooking show, she never eats. Never. When she is making drinks and food that she has to drink or eat, they have a dump bucket that is brought out the second they cut." She spits it out, and then filming resumes, the source said.

"Sometimes when they are shooting her taking bites out of food like cake, they have an assistant take the bite (so you only see teeth and a mouth), and then they cut back to her taking an empty fork out of her mouth to resume filming."

Her assistant is presumably allowed to get fat.

Giada's rep denied but then basically confirmed the source's claims to Page Six:

That is absurd and completely false. She absolutely eats her own food while filming. ...

Giada tapes sometimes three episodes in one day, and they do multiple takes on a close-up of her eating. She doesn't always eat and swallow every time, since they can do sometimes six to 10 takes with three episodes a day, and that would be like eating six to eight meals a day . . . The bottom line is, she most certainly does eat the food she prepares on the show, but does not always consume the whole dish, as that would be too much for most people to eat in one day.

The hottest dish this Thanksgiving is a bucket of Giada's signature Mini Meatball Sandies covered in her own spit.

Giada has previously claimed that she stays skinny by practicing everyone's favorite diet buzz word: "moderation."

[Photo via Getty]

Jon Stewart Finally Made His Debut as a Colbert Report Guest

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Jon Stewart Finally Made His Debut as a Colbert Report Guest

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are close friends who've collaborated on everything from the Daily Show to the Rally to Restore Sanity to a nerdy-as-hell lightsaber battle, but Stewart had never been a guest on the Colbert Report until last night.

With just 12 episodes of the Report remaining, Stewart turned up to pitch his first film as a director, Rosewater. But first, Colbert had to grill him the same way he'd grill any other "liberal lion" who comes on his show (except with a deep and abiding bromance).

Stephen Colbert, the character, has really been at his best and his most fun during the run-up to his final episode, which only makes it harder to accept that he has less than a month to live.

[h/t Vulture]

Down With Meetings

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Down With Meetings

Many of you have jobs in which you are required to regularly attend "meetings." Meetings about budgets, or staffing, or strategy, or one million other arcane workplace topics. I would like to point out, to your boss: "meetings," as a practice, are an enormous waste of time.

I am fortunate enough to work in an environment in which daily "meetings" are not required. I sit around and make blog posts. That's about it. It is a very straightforward job. It does not require lengthy consultations with various higher-ups. I am mostly left alone, to make my blog posts. I am not asked or ordered to attend a multitude of corporate "planning sessions," each week, or to have "sit downs" to "discuss the direction we're going in." I work for a company that produces blog posts. I use my work time to produce blog posts. Efficiency is achieved.

In this sense, my job is not so different from any other normal, efficient job. Willy Wonka's Chocolate Company produces chocolate. Some of the workers spend their time making the chocolate. Some package the chocolate, some ship the chocolate, some sell the chocolate. Some tally up the money, some do the payroll, some clean up. What everyone's job has in common is that it contributes to the purpose of the career in question. A chocolate-making Oompa-Loompa need not ask himself, at the end of his day, "What did I accomplish today?" He has a huge pile of chocolate that answers that question.

Assuming you like what you do, and do not just spend your time at work looking for ways to avoid work (if you do, you're doing a great job right now), you want to maximize the time that you spend actually doing your job. You don't want to spend half of your time doing meta-tasks that do not actually contribute to the purpose of why you are there. And—here is a crucial point—neither should your employer want you spend lots of time on tertiary tasks that are not actually your job. Your unmolested efficiency at work is to the benefit of both you and your employer.

If someone wants to tell you something at work, they can walk over and tell you. If they want to tell a bunch of people something, they can send an email. On rare occasions of great import, when something very complex and critical must be discussed and explained to a large group of people, it makes sense to have a "meeting." In that rare case, it is probably worthwhile to sit a bunch of people in a conference room and hem and haw and give a rambling introduction and recap of the situation at hand and explain at length the ins and outs of every last hypothetical possibility of what may or may not be happening some time soon, and then to patiently listen and respond to grindingly repetitive questions from a group of people who were not totally listening. This is a "meeting." It may drag on for 30 minutes, or an hour, or many hours. It should be deployed only when absolutely necessary.

The one thing that you can guarantee that everyone in a meeting is not doing during the meeting: their actual jobs.

Physically gathering a bunch of people in a room (along with more unfortunate lost souls on "speaker phone") and talking to them at length and then taking all of their questions one by one is perhaps the least efficient method of communication ever devised by man. It is certain to produce an excess of unimportant small talk filler to get things underway, an excess of repetition of various points to help those whose minds inevitably wandered, and an excess of time spent answering questions about things that only the single biggest idiot in the room does not understand. Carving a decree onto a stone tablet would ultimately be a more efficient communication tactic than holding "meetings." The biggest idiot in the room could simply consult the tablet with any questions. Everyone else could get on with their work.

So why then are many of our jobs filled with exactly the sort of unproductive meta-tasks like "meetings," that seem to drag on forever to little end? To answer that question, you need to only consider the role of the middle manager. Most big companies are full of em! Middle managers have two main characteristics: 1) They make more money than you; and 2) They do not produce anything that can be easily identified. The middle manager at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Company does not actually make chocolate. He just supervises those who do make the chocolate. And he is paid more than they are. So the middle manager's most important job becomes, in essence, convincing those above him that he is worth his salary. He does not produce anything tangible that he can point to to prove his productivity. So the middle manager produces meetings.

I submit to you that the true underlying purpose of most "meetings" at work is not to inform people of things. It is to demonstrate to the company that the managers and supervisors are doing stuff. Meetings are a visible action that can be taken by middle managers, who do not have the luxury of being able to directly produce something of value to justify their own existence. Ask yourself: who do most meetings benefit? You, the humble employee? Or the person running the meeting, who has publicly shown themselves to be vital to the ongoing operations of the company? Of all of the work meetings that you have endured, how many could have been easily replaced with a simple group email laying out the information at hand, or a brief phone call, or a 30-second personal conversation? Half? Three quarters? At least two thirds, if we're being honest with ourselves. I am not arguing that all meetings are unnecessary. I am just pointing out that most meetings are.

Thousands of collective work hours could be salvaged every year if an average company instituted a policy of only having meetings that were absolutely necessary, rather than having meetings whenever a motherfucker wanted to talk about some shit. If you are an employee whose time is actually valuable, you already understand this. If this idea seems dangerous because you work in an amorphous management job: go make some chocolate.

[Image by Jim Cooke; source photo via Shutterstock]

Rookie NYPD Officer Fatally Shoots Unarmed Man in Brooklyn

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Rookie NYPD Officer Fatally Shoots Unarmed Man in Brooklyn

A rookie NYPD officer reportedly shot and killed an unarmed man in Brooklyn last night.

Both the New York Post and the New York Daily News report that an unidentified NYPD officer killed 28-year-old Akai Gurley in the stairwell of the Pink Houses, a housing project in East New York, at about 11:15 pm Thursday night. Police sources told both papers that Gurley was unarmed.

Gurley and his girlfriend were reportedly walking in the building's stairwell when they encountered two NYPD officers on patrol, one of whom shot Gurley once in the chest.

"He didn't do nothing wrong," Melissa Butler, Gurley's girlfriend, told the Daily News. "He was just standing there and they shot him. He was an innocent man."

"They didn't give no explanation," she added. "They didn't identify themselves. They just started shooting."

From the Daily News:

The NYPD said in a press release that two uniformed officers were on a vertical patrol in the building about 11:15 p.m. Thursday. They entered the stairwell from the eighth floor and were descending it. Gurley and Butler entered the stairwell from the seventh floor, she said. Police said that one of the officers fired a single shot, but further information was not provided. It was not clear why the officer fired, and a police source said Gurley was not armed.

The NYPD press release described the stairwell as "dimly lit."

Butler also said lighting in the stairwell was a problem as did a neighbor, who told the Post "with that door closed, you can't even see in the staircase."

Gurley and Butler made it down two flights of stairs before Gurley lost consciousness. He was rushed to Brookdale University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Both officers were taken to Jamaica Hospital and treated for tinnitus. The NYPD is scheduled to hold a press conference about the shooting Friday morning.

UPDATE 12:56 pm: At a press conference this afternoon, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says a "coincidence of events" led to the shooting, which he described as "tragic," and that the officer's gun may have accidentally discharged—he had "no intention of striking anyone." The officer was reportedly on "probationary status" and had only been on the job for 18 months. He reportedly drew his weapon upon entering the stairwell, which was completely dark.

Bratton also described Gurley as a "total innocent."

UPDATE 2:16 pm: The officer has been identified as Peter Liang. From the New York Times:

Officer Liang, who was on the job less than 18 months, and his partner werepatrolling the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York when they encountered Mr. Gurley inside a nearly pitch-black stairwell shortly before midnight, Mr. Bratton said.

Officer Liang drew his flashlight and his gun as he entered the stairwell on the eighth floor.

At the same time, Mr. Gurley and his girlfriend had just entered the stairwell on the seventh floor.

"One officer discharged one round from his service weapon, striking the male in the chest," according to a statement from the police.

Liang has been relieved of his badge and gun, and has been placed on modified assignment.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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