No longer content to rule the sky, the owl has extended its terrible dominion into another element of the wondrous universe: Earth's hydrosphere.
Self-described "birder at heart" Steve Spitzer told Chicago's WGN-TV he shot footage of this great horned owl swimming in Lake Michigan after it suffered an attack by two peregrine falcons. According to Spitzer, the owl flew away before bird rescue arrived at the beach.
Obviously this bird did not need to be rescued; it is God of all things.
A second lawsuit
According to court documents obtained by Valleywag, Jennifer Young, "a forty-one year-old single mother of two," was hired by Zillow as a sales consultant earlier this year. The $4.5 billion real estate company allegedly promised her a "leadership role" with a six-figure salary. Instead, Young was repeatedly harassed about her age by management. Emphasis added:
Ms. Young was quickly exposed to Zillow's "frat house" and "boys club culture" where binge drinking and the willingness to participate in lewd discourse was rewarded by lucrative assignments in the form of Zillow managers routing incoming calls for potential sales leads.
As a result of Ms. Young not participating in the conduct described above, Ms. Young's sales manager would make comments to her during the course of her work day such as "are you too old to close?" and "try to keep up with us." It was commonplace at the Zillow office for managers to inform employees, including Ms. Young, that if you do not "drink the Zillow kool-aid" there would be no opportunity for career advancement.
Tech companies have long fetishized youth. Mark Zuckerberg once told an audience
In the complaint, Young says she was involved in a car accident this past summer that resulted in a pinched nerve in her back, among other injuries. Fearing retaliation for missing work, she went to the office the next day instead of going to the hospital.
Despite her injuries, managers allegedly forced her to stand for two to three hours a day during "the blitz"—periods in which Zillow sales staffers are "not allowed to sit down while the [employees] makes non-stop sales calls." Young says these "blitz" sessions exacerbated her injuries.
After months of growing pain, Young checked into a hospital to get her injuries treated. According to Young, she even notified Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff of the situation. However, she was fired by Zillow for "job abandonment" while she was allegedly still in the hospital.
In a statement sent to Valleywag, the law firm representing Young, Geragos & Geragos, slammed Zillow's track record on employee rights:
Ms. Young's Complaint is emblematic of the retaliatory conduct experienced by those who requested basic employment rights and the right to be treated with human decency during their employment at Zillow.
We have received dozens of credible phone calls, with documentary evidence, from former and current employees at Zillow who share these claims, and we intend to seek justice for all of the brave individuals who have come forward.
Zillow denies there are any culture problems at the 1,200 person company.
"It is clear that the narrative being pushed by this law firm is completely inconsistent with those who know and work with Zillow," a company spokesperson told Valleywag in a statement.
"We take any allegation about our workplace seriously and will investigate these claims."
This is the fourth lawsuit filed against Zillow by Geragos & Geragos's attorneys in recent weeks. Previously, Zillow was hit with a pair of suits that accused the company of refusing to pay overtime or provide lunch breaks, and retaliating against a whistleblower who reported that employees were using forged contracts. On Monday, the company was sued for allegedly subjecting female employees to "sexual torture
To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.
Photo: Getty
NBC's live dress rehearsal of Peter Pan bombed in the ratings, averaging 9.2 million viewers and half of what The Sound of Music drew last year in the all-important 18-49 demo. Per Vulture's Josef Adalian, numbers took a notable dive in the production's third hour—more people watched a rerun of The Big Bang Theory and a new episode of Two And A Half Men. http://morningafter.gawker.com/peter-pan-live...
The New York Times' Steven Greenhouse has spent nearly two decades as a reporter covering labor in America. This week, he announced he's taking a buyout. He talked to us about the labor beat, unions, and the future of the American worker.
Gawker: With your departure, the number of big papers with full time labor reporters is down to one. How do you see the future of labor reporting? Do you see encouraging stuff elsewhere, or do you think a lot of stories are just going to disappear?
Steven Greenhouse: The NYT has a long and distinguished history of covering issues involving workers and labor unions, and I am confident that the Times will continue to give serious attention to these issues, whether it is stagnating wages or the protests of the Fight for 15 fast-food movement. An example, though not on the labor, the NYT's investigative reporter, David Barstow, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his coverage of egregious workplace safety violations
Nationwide, the number of full-time reporters who covered labor fell sharply over the past 7 to 10 years as newspapers downsized. But labor coverage – by full-time and part-time reporters – has rebounded recently, at least somewhat, in response to the battles over collective bargaining in Wisconsin and Ohio, the right-to-work fight in Michigan in response to the rise of the fast-food workers' movement as well as growing concerns about income inequality and declining living standards for the nation's middle class.
Gawker: What are the biggest changes in labor that you've seen over the course of your years on the beat?
Greenhouse: In the 19 years since I began covering labor (in late 1995), the balance of power between corporations and labor has shifted strongly in favor of corporations as the percentage of worker in unions has continued to drop. Labor has also been weakened by increased globalization – a force that has pressured many American corporations to press harder to cut costs. In the view of many economists, organized labor's declining leverage has contributed to income inequality, stagnating wages and worse pension and health coverage for millions of workers.
Gawker: Economic inequality has been increasing steadily for more than three decades. Are you optimistic about the economic future of the average American worker?
Greenhouse: I am optimistic and pessimistic. On one hand, the economy is continuing to grow fairly strongly and unemployment has been falling and that should at some point increase workers' leverage — with or without labor unions — in demanding and achieving higher wages and better working conditions. On the other hand, there remains plenty of slack in the economy and in the labor force. Unfortunately the folks in Washington don't seem to be doing much to improve the situation. Also on the pessimistic side, corporations seem to be investing less in training American workers, and globalization continues to place downward pressure on wages in the U.S.
Globalization is great for sophisticated companies – it enables them to move operations anywhere in the world in search of lower production and labor costs (and higher profits). That's great for corporate shareholders, but not good for American workers, and in that way, globalization is a force fueling increased income inequality within the U.S. (even as it has raised living standards in China and many other countries.)
Gawker: Do you think organized labor/ unions in America are going to experience a resurgence? Or do you think their slow contraction and demise will continue unabated?
Greenhouse: I first began covering labor in late 1995 just as the A.F.L.-C.I.O. elected a new president, John J. Sweeney, who promised to do his all to bring a resurgence of labor. But despite Sweeney's best efforts – to spur more organizing, to rally immigrant workers, to ally labor with faith groups – Sweeney and his allies failed to bring about any lasting, substantial resurgence.
Among workers nationwide, there is growing upset about stagnant wages and worsening conditions, but unions are not doing much organizing. And when unions try organizing workers, most companies mount aggressive, sophisticated campaigns, often bringing in expensive experts, to combat and defeat unionization. So I don't see much near-term growth for unions – unless organized labor somehow achieves some breakthroughs in overcoming employer resistance or in inspiring workers to flock to labor's banner notwithstanding the pressures they face from their companies to shun unions.
Nowadays a lot of the action we're seeing to help workers is in non-union worker advocacy groups. These innovative groups are making waves in numerous states. Here I think of Domestic Workers United, Make the Road in New York, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and the Workers Defense Project in Texas. These groups are not as powerful as traditional labor unions, but they have made some substantial gains.
Gawker: A lot of labor focus lately has been on raising the wages of retail workers, fast food workers, and chain store workers. Do you think people in these industries will every truly win a living wage?
Greenhouse: With its one-day strikes in more than 150 cities, the fast-food movement is making a lot of noise and shaking things up. Whether it can bring enough pressure to bear to win a $15 wage remains a big question. In the retail sector, OUR Walmart, the union-backed group of workers, just held its biggest protests ever on Black Friday. Walmart as well as fast-food giants like McDonalds and Burger King are immensely powerful companies, and it looks as if it will take significantly more leverage and pressure from labor to persuade them to raise wages in a significant way.
Gawker: What would you tell a young person just entering the work force in 2014? Any words of wisdom you can offer workers, having observed the beat for this long?
Greenhouse: As the experts say – and I know it has become a cliché – but to earn a decent living, it is far more important than ever before to get a college degree. The premium of what college graduates earn over what high school grads earn is higher than ever before.
Once upon a time, when I was a reporter at the (Hackensack) Record in New Jersey, we all grumbled about the low pay. If memory serves, I was making about $180 a week when I started there in 1976. The frustration was so great that several reporters, including me, launched a unionization effort that quickly won a lot of support. Reporters organized a union meeting/dinner that was to be held at Tabachnick's Deli in Teaneck. I recall that 40 or 50 or reporters, copy editors and photographers had signed up to attend.
Three hours before that dinner meeting was to take place, a notice magically appeared on the newsroom bulletin board. Presto, the publisher announced that the whole newsroom was getting a 25% raise. (Yes, that took the wind out of the unionization drive.) Most any labor experts will say that when workers band together they can achieve far more than by themselves – whether it is to complain about long hours or a bullying boss. It is harder to unionize now than in the late 1970s because employers fight unionization far more fiercely and because many workers today don't know or care as much about unions as workers did decades ago.
[Image by Jim Cooke/ Photo via Getty]
Reality star-turned-anti-vax mom
The former prom queen is still upset about that time Stephen Colletti went behind her back and dated her high school nemesis, Lauren Conrad. Kristin explains to Oprah (???):
My boyfriend at the time would take Lauren Conrad to dinner and buy her flowers, which never would have happened if it weren't for the show and MTV. I felt very used and manipulated.
Lol. You hear that LC? Never would have happened.
K-Cav also admits that she didn't like being portrayed as the "bad girl." She says, "When I saw it air and saw the way that they represented me, I was really, really upset. I cried for hours and hours after I saw the first episode."
Because of her truly traumatic experience of becoming famous at 17, Kristin thinks reality shows shouldn't be about kids. "I still to this day think you should be 18 to do a reality show," she says, "only because of my experience."
An unfortunate reality of the holiday season is that one must obtain gifts for those they don't necessarily like. One might even hate these people. For example, Uncle Tim's new wife Shea's daughter Melody, who once said you would be pretty if you had bangs. Or your boss, Mr. Man, who has never paid you back for the all lattes you have purchased for him. Or your ex-boyfriend, Carl, whose stunted progress on his novel—about you!—ended your relationship.
These sad humans don't deserve gifts, one might think. Oh: But they do. Because gifts, as much as they can be symbols of love, can also be symbols of hate. Here are some suggestions for how to express your hate this Christmas.
A fantastic gift at a reasonable price point that keeps giving all year. Your recipient will think of you each week when the tissue of Newsweek lands with a *whisp* in his or her mailbox. So much valuable content to consume (who is Satoshi Nakamoto?), thanks to you.
This is a fun gift because it forces the recipient to at least think about going to Chili's.
John Williams is a dead author fetishized by the pretentious male élite for his stories about men discovering themselves. His books are boring. Here is the description for the John Williams book Butcher's Crossing: "John Williams dismantles the myth of the making of the American west in this tale of a Harvard dropout who seeks adventure hunting one of the last great buffalo herds, but ends up losing his innocence." Step-cousin Melody will love this, and maybe Uncle Tim will too!
For your enemy with bad breath. Merry Christmas, trout mouth.
"Here are the ingredients to make yourself an ugly pile of crap. This is how much I treasure you."
Tread lightly if you choose to do this one. This is not an excuse to butter the coffers of pro-life or anti-gay loonies. This is a risky, strategic move, so deploy it wisely. If you are too immature to handle it, don't do it. That said, if your chosen recipient happens to be a hunter, perhaps donate to animal rights group. Or if your recipient is a rich asshole, donate to a homeless shelter. Or if he or she is a Republican, you have it very easy.
"A useless wedge of cork for you, my sweetest enemy."
This will be released eventually. What a great gift for someone you hate: a horrorshow preserved on outdated technology.
A great gift for someone you hate, because kombucha is disgusting and was trendy for five minutes four years ago, and who the fuck wants to babysit an odorous batch of the mother culture when if you absolutely must have some you can buy it? Make it crystal-clear to the giftee that they most procure their own jars for brewing.
Amid all this shopping, don't forget to buy something nice for your best friend—yourself. Happy holidays!
A 22-year-old woman who was bullied for her looks as a kid says she ran into one of her former tormentors this week, and he asked her out on a date. She agreed, but only so she could stand him up in the ultimate middle-school revenge fantasy.
"I was pretty pissed off he asked me out, to be honest," she said. "It really made me angry that now I'm attractive, he instantly wants to jump into bed with me," Oxford student Louisa Manning told Buzzfeed.
"My gut instinct was to say no, but then I realized what a brilliant opportunity it was, and after bouncing ideas off a friend for a few hours, we came up with an idea."
On Facebook, Manning posted the note she says she left at the restaurant for the cretin who used to call her "Manbeast" and mock her weight and her monobrow.
"Remember year 8, when I was fat and you made fun of my weight? ... Perhaps you don't, or you wouldn't have seen how I look 8 years later and deemed me fuckable enough to treat me like a human being," she wrote.
This is how Manning looks now:
But just to make doubly sure he remembered that the girl he asked out and the girl he called "Manbeast" were one and the same, she says she enclosed a photo of herself at age 12.
"Picture the girl in this photo," she wrote, "Because that's the one who just stood you up."
After her note started spreading on Facebook, she posted a comment saying she actually received an apology from the former bully. Here's what she says he wrote:
Hey… For what it's worth, I was actually here to meet up looking for a chance to meet up looking to make friends, not because you are very good looking. I guess I had it coming though, and certainly don't blame you for standing me up.
I can't change who I was 8 years ago, and I won't insult your intelligence by pretending that it didn't happen, but I hope you believe me when I say I'm a completely different person now. I can only apologise and wish you the very best. I guess I won't hear from you again but I mean it when I say that I hope you have every success you deserve."
"If he'd intended to apologise he should have done so when I bumped into him last weekend rather than asking me out for dinner first," she told BuzzFeed, "but it's still an apology and it's still amazing I got one."
It's so perfectly '90s-high-school-comedy that it wouldn't be shocking if the entire thing were staged—it's not that hard to write a note and photograph it, after all—but sometimes revenge scenarios that seem too good to be true actually are. It's a nice thing to believe.
[h/t Uproxx]
According to a scathing lawsuit from five former employees, the chef and owner of Michelin-starred restaurant Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare served a tantalizing fusion of wage theft and virulent racism alongside its $225-a-plate prix-fixe meals.
The suit, brought by serial restaurant litigator Maimon Kirschenbaum on behalf of a former sous chef, prep cook, and group of servers, alleges that chef César Ramirez and proprietor Moe Issa kept for themselves the 20 percent service charge that restaurant uses instead of a tip, took disproportionately large cuts of additional tips left for waitstaff, and worked employees overtime without paying overtime rates, Eater reports.
And then there's the racism. According to Emi Howard, a former server who is Asian-American, Ramirez regularly referred to Asian customers as "shit people" and barred them from sitting near the area where he works. When Howard seated a group of Asian customers near Ramirez anyway, the suit claims, the chef subjected her to a "wild verbal tirade" and began seating customers himself so as to avoid proximity to so-called shit people.
Bafflingly, another claim alleges discrimination against "Upper West Siders," which—and I'm just guessing here—is maybe code for Jews? From the suit:
When a large piece of meat was cut into many pieces for the guests, Defendant Ramirez instructed Ms. Howard to give the worst pieces of meat to the "shit people," i.e., Asian people, and to "Upper West Siders."
Both Issa and Ramirez issued statements to deny the claims. Issa's:
At Brooklyn Fare, we pride ourselves on the diversity of our staff who hail from around the globe, and we welcome everyone who comes through our doors with open arms, be it a guest, vendor, or employee, regardless of their creed, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or nationality. We pay all of our staff fair wages for their hours worked as well as gratuity in accordance to the law.
And a portion of Ramirez's, which can be read in full at Eater:
I would like to request that those reading this understand that these are allegations and I deny them. This has been tremendously hurtful and damaging to myself and everyone who has contributed to building The Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare over the last five years. I acknowledge that these allegations can be hurtful and painful to those reading them as well and I want you to know that I sympathize with you as I personally understand how painful this is.
Yelp reviews, left before and after the allegations were made public, are decidedly mixed. Few dispute the quality of the food, but accusations of terrible service abound. One reviewer wrote that an Asian friend was berated, threatened, and told never to come back:
My friend (who happened to Asian) was pulled outside and cursed out for 15 minutes and told to never come back. Ramirez even threatened to report him to his bosses at a London based investment bank (who he claimed to know). Full disclosure, I wasn't with him this night, and he was drunk and loud and made conversation with other people at the table (which is a huge no-no). That said, he did apologized profusely.
The reviewer wrote that when he attended, he did not feel attacked, "which says a lot given that I am from the UWS *and* asian."
The consensus among reviewers seems to be that racist or no, Ramirez is a jackass. Wrote another reviewer, who is also Asian:
Arrogant? Yes! Awkward? Yes! A prick? Likely. Racist? Unlikely.
[Photo via Jessica and Lon Binder/Flickr]
Those nerds at Netflix can talk about their algorithm all they want, but clearly they're doing something right: Just as NPR America is finally discovering Black Mirror on Netflix, the UK's Channel 4 has delivered the trailer for its Christmas special, premiering on the 16th overseas and sure to arrive on our shores quite soon. Probably a good time to catch up on at least the brilliant first three-hour season (and save the lesser three-hour followup, if you need to).
In the 90-minute movie, Jon Hamm tells some cute guy three unnerving stories about life a few minutes from now, reflecting universal truths through our relationships with the TV, computer, and phone screens in which we already spend so much time regarding and contemplating ourselves.
Morning After is a home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow@GawkerMA and read more about it here
Typhoon Hagupit is approaching the Philippines today as a violent typhoon with winds of 120 MPH and gusts up to 170 MPH. The storm will bring catastrophic flooding, mudslides, significant wind damage, and a 13-foot storm surge to parts of the island country over the weekend.
Hagupit, locally known as "Ruby," reached its peak strength earlier in the week
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) expects the typhoon—which it considers "violent" due its intense winds—to maintain its current strength as it slowly moves into the country overnight on Saturday and into Sunday (local time). Hagupit will crawl over the Philippines after making landfall, finally emerging in the South China Sea by early Monday morning (Sunday night in the U.S.—Manila is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Time).
This slow forward movement will produce torrential rainfall for a prolonged period of time. Rainfall rates of up to an inch an hour are possible as Hagupit moves through; some areas could see rainfall totals exceeding a foot or more. Needless to say, catastrophic flooding is expected when Hagupit makes landfall, with mudslides likely in communities that flank the bases of hills and mountains.
In addition to the risk for dangerous flooding from Hagupit, winds well in excess of 100 MPH will cause extensive building and infrastructural damage, and east-facing shores could see a four-meter (13-foot) storm surge, according to PAGASA, the Philippines' weather bureau.
In case you were wondering, Typhoon Hagupit has two different names due to a quirk in international naming conventions. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is the United Nations agency responsible for maintaining the list of names used to designate tropical cyclones around the world. Storms that form in the western Pacific are assigned names based on the WMO's list of 140 names contributed by 28 countries bordering the western Pacific Ocean.
Long before the WMO instituted its own naming conventions, the Philippines maintained its own list similar to that used in the United States. For continuity, the Philippines continued to name tropical cyclones that came into its area of responsibility, resulting in two different names for tropical cyclones—the one issued by the WMO and used by the international community (Hagupit), and the one assigned by the Philippines and used locally (Ruby).
[Images: NOAA, JMA]
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This weekend represents one of the few normal weekends you're going to get, between all the holidays and holidays parties and other ways of being American that this time of year forces down your gullet. So why rest up, save your strength, revel in all the rich entertainment bounty that is available to you? We have great ideas this week.
Black Mirror, obviously.
All six episodes of this brilliant Channel 4 anthology show—which centers its unconnected, soft-SF stories on the interaction between ourselves and our technology; the title refers to your phone, TV and other devices—are finally available.
It is not scary. Everybody thinks it's going to be scary but it's not. Here's a spoiler-free guide:
We talked
Now is the perfect time to revisit it, and discover what can happen when Sandman-type genre mashups (in TV and movies, something that currently takes the form of your Once Upon a Times and Supernaturals, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: LXG; even True Detective tried it, as part of its attempt to be everything) are accomplished by someone who is both intellectually creative and emotionally insightful.
This show ended 20 years ago this week. Probably you are a different person now than you were then. Worth thinking about. Let Clarissa's wisdom guide you. Or, if you are a youth and/or hate reminders of childhood, bring fresh eyes to Clarissa's fashions, her fantastic mother, and BFF Sam's haircut climbing in the window all the time.
As everybody knows, Adam Devine is the Fifth Element; the pinnacle of human evolution that will eventually save us all. And what this show is, is what if you were at his house, enjoying his company, and interrupted 3-4 times every thirty minutes by fresh stand up comedy performed by: Fat guys with beards, horny sloppy Maxxinistas, barely functioning alcoholics, and sometimes even minorities. The comedy is good, the performers are up-and-coming, and Adam Devine is nature's most perfect creation: Win/win/win.
Movies that are fantastic:
Movies that are okay: Gravity, The Devil's Advocate, Eyes Wide Shut. They aren't bad, they aren't anything. They're movies. Celluloid memories of things that never happened. Watch them or don't watch them, you're going to see them at some point in your life so it might as well be now, or later if you feel like it.
Movies that you should not stream even though they are available to you:
...I don't want to end on that bummer note, though, so what else. Oh! Amazon, duh.
[Image via]
Previous editions of the Weekend Stream are here. You live in the future now! Almost any media you can think of, you can find from the chair you're sitting in. Even if you can't, take comfort in the fact that the amount of things you can't find online will never go up: Only down. In that spirit, Morning After asks: What are you streaming this weekend?
It is en vogue to hate on Justin Bieber for being a punk—and, granted, Justin Bieber is a punk. But Justin Bieber, just a talented kid, is not the Bieber you should hate. No, that is Jeremy Bieber, Justin's dad.
A few days ago, TMZ reported that Jeremy Bieber—pictured above at a UFC event, who has the name of a child and the face of an Adam Sandler character but is in fact an adult with his own children—hurled the family dog off of a two-story balcony because it bit Justin's little brother Jaxon sometime last year.
Justin and Jeremy Bieber bought Karma, an American Bulldog, a year ago, and it was rough from the beginning. Karma was living at Jeremy's Canada home, but the animal needed training. It bit Justin's little bro Jaxon, which sent Jeremy into nuclear mode.
Trainer Trevor Dvernichuk tells TMZ ... Jeremy grabbed the dog and hurled him off the balcony into a snow bank.
This is just one of Jeremy's alleged transgressions, and it is certainly not the first. For instance, last month he was ordered by a judge to pay over $12,000 for trashing an Ontario apartment he lived in between 2011 and 2012. Via TMZ:
The landlord claims he left the place in shambles ... pet urine and feces stains all the over place, a toilet that busted after someone flushed a hairbrush down it and lots of other stuff.
What's notable about this is incident is not that Justin Bieber's dad is a reckless asshole, but that his 20-year-old son pays his rent. Here is a receipt from court filings that show Bieber wiring $1,650 for one month's rent (in Ontario!):
I mean, whatever, but at least have the decency of not leaving piss and shit all over an apartment that your son pays for? That's some sad-ass fathering.
If you have ever wondered why Justin Bieber has turned out to be such a little shit, you need to look no further than his father, who appears to fancy himself merely as his son's partner-in-crime.
You may remember when Justin was arrested in Miami for DUI and drag racing. Well, the person who was making sure that there were cars blocking the road Justin was racing on was Jeremy.
Justin Bieber's dad, Jeremy Bieber, was at the scene of Justin's DUI drag racing arrest on Jan. 23, a source close to Justin confirmed to HollywoodLife.com. He also reportedly helped his son block off the street so that he and his friend, rapper Khalil, could race their Lamborghinis on the residential street, reported TMZ.
You may remember a minor controversy involving Justin Bieber, a private plane, weed smoke and Super Bowl weekend 2014.
According to multiple law enforcement sources, the leased, luxurious Gulfstream IV on which the 19-year-old Canadian pop star, his father and an entourage of 10 friends traveled was so full of marijuana smoke that the pilots were forced to wear oxygen masks.
Justin Bieber smoking so much pot that his private plane pilots have to deploy gas masks is hilarious. The rest of the story is not:
"The captain of the flight stated that he warned the passengers, including Bieber, on several occasions to stop smoking marijuana," says the official report of the incident. "The captain also stated he needed to request that the passengers stop their harassing behavior toward the flight attendant and after several warnings asked the flight attendant to stay with him near the cockpit to avoid any further abuse."
[...]
"The flight attendant stated the passengers, including Bieber and his father, Jeremy Bieber," stated the report, "were extremely abusive verbally and she would not work another flight with them."
Justin and Jeremy Bieber—age 39—were reportedly such dicks to a private plane flight attendant that she was forced to cower in the cockpit and then refused to ever work with them again.
It's also worth noting here that Jeremy Bieber has been accused of kicking a woman in the face and breaking her jaw.
Justin Bieber's jailbird father was once charged with assault for allegedly breaking an 18-year-old girl's jaw after he smashed her in the face with a flying roundhouse kick, MailOnline can reveal today.
Jeremy Bieber was taken to court, accused of the brutal attack on Alicia Wadden – who stood at just 5ft3in and weighed 100 pounds.
Alicia says she was knocked unconscious by the kung fu style kick, which, according to her statement given to police, broke her jaw in two places, chipped her teeth and forced her to eat pureed food for two months.
Jeremy Bieber faced no consequences for that alleged action, and here is why:
However, the day before the case was due to go to court, Alicia alleges Jeremy, now 39, turned up at her boyfriend's work and handed him $1,000, telling him that she should not show up to testify.
Alicia took the money and left town soon after, moving back in with her family in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
He is no stranger to prison, though. Here, via Radar, is Jeremy's rap sheet:
Justin Bieber's mom gave birth to him when she was in a "home for pregnant girls" and raised him on her own. Now his father mooches off him and is one of his many companions who flies around the world encouraging his worst tendencies. Except, of course, he's 39 years old.
Oh, also, he wears cargo pants at the beach.
Nice life if you can swing it.
[top image via Splash, bottom image via Daily Mail]
Did I say crazy amazing? I meant to say that Extreme Barbie Jeep racing is extremely dangerous. Or maybe it's both?
We've seen Extreme Barbie Jeep racing before
The dude in the pink car at the start of this video, though, does totally make his ankle go kablooey, as you can see here.
He is, however, fine. At least by Extreme Barbie Jeep racing standards, as Busted Knuckle Video explains.
Amazing enough the doctors say it isn't broken and that he only tore some ligaments! Dalton said he will be back next season ready to compete in this insane sport.
I'd come back, too.
With the nickel and diming, cramped seating, and often poor customer service, it's no surprise that travelers are dissatisfied in general with the airline industry. It's not all a crapshoot, though. We took a look at America's airlines to find which ones are most (and least) likely to give you a better, hassle-free trip.
We took a cue from Business Insiders' best international airlines list from last year, and tweaked it a bit to focus on US airlines and include more criteria. Our ranking system is based on three critical factors: a comfortable experience with the airline (from cabin seating on the plane to ease of making reservations), the airline's history of on-time performance, and the amount of additional fees that can be tacked onto your tickets.
For airline experience, we used SkyTrax's rating, which evaluates airlines on a one- to five-star system. Among SkyTrax's criteria are check-in experience (at an airline's "home base" airport), delay and incident handling, cabin seating and cleanliness, in-flight entertainment, onboard catering, and cabin staff service. These are rated by relative importance, with staff service and cabin seating weighed more importantly than, say, airline magazines and ticket counters quality.
For on-time performance, we checked the airline scorecards from FlightStats (data from September 15, 2014 to November 15, 2014). Instead of just looking at percent of flights on time, though, we also considered percent of flights that were excessively late (delays of 45 minutes or more) and percent of flights canceled or diverted.
And for total additional fees, we referred to this 2013 analysis by 24/7 Wall Street using Airfarewatchdog.com's survey of fees. The analysis totaled the amount a passenger would pay for the minimum fee in 14 fee categories, which includes costs for additional checked bags, overweight bags, flight change fees, booking fees, and food and drink costs.
For each of these three factors, we calculated the indices to compare each airline against the others, and then averaged the scores to get the ranking below (an index of 100 is average, higher index is better). While we've asked you before which airlines are just the worst
(We also provide information below on the airlines' overall customer service ratings, as noted by the 2014 American Customer Satisfaction Index from ACSI and Department of Transportation's report on customer complaints, but because not all airlines were scored individually on these reports, we couldn't incorporate them into our ranking system.)
The airlines are scored from best to worst, but, as you know, airlines' coverage varies widely. Many of the top airlines only fly to and from limited destinations. So when you're booking a flight, search for the route you want and look for the airlines in this order. You might not end up with the top ranked airlines, but at least you'll end up with the best available to you.
It's also worth noting that, besides airport coverage, there are other intangible or not easily measured criteria that's left out of this analysis that you'll probably want to consider, such as: whether a travel credit card
Without further ado, here are the rankings, from best to worst.
Airline Experience Index: 130
On-Time Performance Index: 102
Fees Index: 123
Total: 118
Like JetBlue, Virgin America gets a big boost from its stellar airline experience rating (those mood lights, friendly service, and roomier than average seats
Airline Experience Index: 97
On-Time Performance Index: 101
Fees Index: 143
Total: 114
Similarly, if you're flying somewhere on Alaska Airlines' route, you probably won't regret its low-cost fees—the least amount of fees among the airlines (just $20 for your first and second bags). The airline also has the least number of complaints with the DOT.
Airline Experience Index: 97
On-Time Performance Index: 109
Fees Index: 134
Total: 113
Allegiant is a smaller airline that flies very specific routes (mostly to the south), but it's worth a look if you're going somewhere they travel. Not only do they have among the lowest fees of the bunch, Allegiant has the highest on-time performance scores, with 90% of flights on time and only 1% of flights excessively late (remember, the average is 8%).
Airline Experience Index: 130
On-Time Performance Index: 96
Fee Index: 109
Total: 112
JetBlue edges out Southwest with its 4 out of 5 stars rating for airline experience from Skytrax—matched only by Virgin America for this award. Otherwise, JetBlue is neck and neck with Southwest for on-time performance (read: it can use some work), but total additional fees are a bit higher and are destined to increase as well, now that the company plans on charging for checked bags. JetBlue has the highest customer satisfaction as ranked by ACSI, though that might change too in the near future.
Airline Experience Index: 97
On-Time Performance Index: 99
Fee Index: 126
Total: 107
Yes, we know Southwest is one of your favorite airlines, especially if you're a frequent flier
Airline Experience Index: 97
On-Time Performance Index: 99
Fee Index: 126
Total: 107
If we were able to incorporate ACSI scores in the total (we didn't because ACSI only gives one average score for many of the smaller airlines), Frontier Airlines might have been rated worse than American, United, and US Air. Not only does Frontier have sub-par on-time performance, The Department of Transportations' air travel consumer report for January to September 2014, Frontier had the most number of complaints of the airlines with data on them—more than twice the average number of complaints per 100,000 passengers. (It also has an above average number of baggage mishandling reports.) It does better than the others in the bottom half because fees aren't as terrible in some cases as you might expect—the airline doesn't charge for booking on the phone or in person, both the first and second checked bags are just $20, and additional bags are lower than most airlines at $50.
Airline Experience Index: 97
On-Time Performance Index: 97
Fee Index: 85
Total: 93
United Airlines only rises above the other airlines at the bottom for its slightly lower total additional fees. Otherwise, United actually fares a bit worse than American Airlines when it comes to on-time performance, with 2% of its flights canceled or diverted (the average for the airlines is 1%). Overall customer satisfaction, as rated by the 2014 American Customer Satisfaction Index from ACSI, is also below average—along with American Airlines and US Airways.
Airline Experience Index: 97
On-Time Performance Index: 102
Fees Index: 70
Total: 90
Delta's on-time performance is actually above average across these airlines, but high fees ($754 compared to the average $579) drag its rank down. Also, they're far from the worst airline, but enough customer horror stories and snafus keep Delta from being the beloved, "most trusted" airline it might want to be.
Airline Experience Index: 97
On-Time Performance Index: 102
Fees Index: 68
Total: 90
Hawaiian Airlines' main issue is those additional fees (the third highest here)—that's mostly because if you're traveling between the US mainland and the islands, there's a $150 change fee, compared to the $30 change fee if you're flying interisland. The airline gets middling marks otherwise.
Airline Experience Index: 97
On-Time Performance Index: 98
Fees Index: 63
Total: 86
US Airways' on-time performance and customer satisfaction ratings are nearly identical to now-merged carrier American Airlines, giving them a run for their money when it comes to abysmal airline service. Like the other legacy airlines, added fees steep—more than double that of Southwest's.
Airline Experience Index: 97
On-Time Performance Index: 98
Fees Index: 55
Total: 83
Below average on-time performance, above average excessively late performance, and below average customer satisfaction place American Airlines right up there at the bottom with Spirit Airlines. It doesn't help that American Airlines' total fees add up to the highest among other carriers.
Airline Experience Index: 65
On-Time Performance Index: 96
Fees Index: 88
Total: 83
No surprise, right? Spirit Airlines, time and again, gets called out as the worst of the worst airlines, thanks to outrageous fees and customer horror stories. The numbers don't lie here either. In addition to being the only domestic airline rated 2 out of 5 by Skytrax for airline experience, Spirit was only on-time 71% of the time—tied with Southwest and Jet Blue for last place in this contest—and it was excessively late 12% of the time—50% more often than the average airline. So not only do you have to pay for every single little thing (even carry-on bags!) when you fly Spirit, for that privilege you might not even get to your destination on time.
Photo by PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek (Shutterstock), Bananaboy (Shutterstock), nhirai (Shutterstock)
Rolling Stone's managing editor Will Dana issued a note today saying that the magazine would be re-examing its blockbuster story of rape and its aftermath at the University of Virginia. The magazine announced it has found "discrepancies" in the central anecdote of Sabrina Rubin Ederly's article, an account of a student being gang-raped by seven members of a campus fraternity.
In the note, Dana first defends Erdely's reporting of the story, and then pretty much throws her main source and alleged rape victim, Jackie, under the bus:
Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie's story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone's editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie's credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie's account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn't confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence.
In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.
Since Erdely's story was published two weeks ago, various journalists have questioned its central account of Jackie's rape, pointing out that Erdely never contacted
After Dana published his note, the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi, where Jackie said her rape happened, issued a statement rebutting her claims. The fraternity claimed it didn't host a party on September 28, 2012, the night Jackie said she was raped. The frat also said that no Phi Psi member worked as a lifeguard in 2012 (Jackie said she met the man who orchestrated her rape because they were both lifeguards at the campus pool).
The Washington Post interviewed Jackie in light of some of these discrepancies, and she's sticking by her story. She does say, however, that she felt manipulated by Erdely and that she was "completely out of control over my own story." She continued, "I never asked for this [attention]. What bothers me is that so many people act like it didn't happen. It's my life. I have had to live with the fact that it happened every day for the last two years."
It may never be clear what exactly happened to Jackie on the night of September 28. The Post has attempted to report out Jackie's claims, but the paper already deleted a big claim of its own without a correction:
The Washington Post has deleted a claim that Jackie never met the student she named: http://t.co/ZST3WaMZzk pic.twitter.com/3WMPseQXYA
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) December 5, 2014
All of this is bad. Jackie's friend Alix Pinkleton, a campus rape survivor herself, sums it up best in her statement to the Post: "One of my biggest fears with these inconsistencies emerging is that people will be unwilling to believe survivors in the future."
Stephen Colbert has some bad news about the second-to-last week of The Colbert Report: He was unable to book legendary Seattle rockers The Presidents of the United States of America to play their classic '90s jam, "Peaches." Consolation prize, though: He landed actual president Barack Obama.
What we were already thinking of as the victory lap for The Rev. Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA, Colbert has officially dubbed "Mr. Colbert Goes to Washington, D.C. Ya Later Legislator: Partisan Is Such Sweet Sorrow: A Colbert Victory Lap: '014."
The Report will be in D.C. Monday for Obama's first time getting the Colbert bump. Other guests for the show's penultimate week include Into the Woods actor (and incoming Craig Ferguson successor) James Corden on Tuesday and Serial host Sarah Koenig on Wednesday.
[h/t Digg]
YOGURT DIP SCANDAL? Here are the bare facts:
FACT: Sabra, a manufacturer of hummus and other middle Eastern foods, signed a deal with the National Football League to become the official dip of the NFL.
FACT: Sabra believes that this marketing initiative will help Americans learn to love hummus and other Middle Eastern dips, which many provincial Americans now regard as foreign and weird.
FACT: Tzatziki is a popular Middle Eastern dip. Sabra, of course, sells tzatziki. One would assume that Sabra would be working diligently to convince Americans to enjoy tzatziki's delicious flavor, with the help of their NFL partnership.
FACT: But are they? Or are Americans being patronized and bamboozled???
Yesterday I received an email from astute reader B****, along with the photo that you see here. What this astute reader found may shock you. I quote: "These are two tubs of tzatziki that I bought personally from the Fresh Garden store in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. I paid $3.49 for each tub. Both of them hail from the Sabra family of products. Each has the same list of ingredients. They taste the same. They are, incontestably, the exact same stuff. Yet one is 'Tzatziki' while the other is the rather less terroristy-sounding 'Greek Yogurt Dip,' and guess which is an Official Dip Sponsor of the NFL?"
Strange. Odd. Bizarre. Disturbing. Disquieting. There must be some explanation, though? Why, Sabra itself lists Tzatziki as a separate flavor of "Greek Yogurt Dip." I pressed B**** for further details. He added: "Yes. 'Tzatziki' and the Americanized 'Cucumber Dill' are both listed separately under Greek Yogurt Dips, though their ingredient lists are identical."
And for the coup de grace, B**** "dipped" into the dips himself. Are you prepared to hear this, America? "A taste test just came back positive," he told me. "It's a match."
America: too terrified of Tzatziki to acknowledge that it likes Tzatziki? If this is true, the Sabra corporation, the National Football League, and every grocery store in America should be struck down by almighty GOD (of dip).
2014 was a banner year for garbage lies on the Internet in general, but anyone with a Facebook account knows it was a particularly strong one for racist, garbage lies. Here's a look back at just some of this year's most vile viral whoppers, which, in their own small way, each helped spread bigotry and prejudice.
Image via Twitter
Here is the real #MikeBrown....pretty surprising there is so much support for a violent thug Blood gang banger. pic.twitter.com/nAt2feu4OM
— Cutloose (@Cutterman11) November 29, 2014
This viral photo of "the real Michael Brown" was first debunked back in August, when a Kansas City police officer shared it with the caption, "I'm sure young Michael Brown is innocent and just misunderstood. I'm sure he is a pillar of the Ferguson community."
In reality, the picture shows Joda Cain, an accused murderer from half a country away. But just like a widely-circulated photo of Trayvon Martin that actually showed the rapper Game, this false image was just too convenient to give up for the racists who see all black teens as Boyz n the Hood extras.
Almost four months later, it's still going strong.
Islamophobes thought they had their hands on an IRL Marine Todd
However, unlike other viral racist garbage, the consequences of this hoax were directly observable and included an armed protest of the gas station in question, demonstrating the very real dangers of fake Internet bullshit.
Image via Twitter
Remember
this horseshit
Naturally, it soon came out that the picture was of a completely different white dude, a motocross rider who broke his "forehead, cheek, nose, jaw and eye socket" in a crash.
After last week's grand jury decision, this photo of Wilson's actual injuries
Image via Twitter and St. Louis County
Of course, it wasn't just earnest, hopelessly dumb bigots that enflamed America's racist paranoia this year. In July, the alleged satirists at National Report transformed prejudice into pageviews by publishing a multi-part story
The absurd story was quickly proven false, but National Report's proprietors were rewarded for their racist hoax anyway, netting over two million hits in that month alone.
Image via Facebook
Finally comes this hot new racist meme, currently racing through social media and covered in detail
Some clever turnip literally edited the phrase "black lives matter" out of the original picture and wrote in "robs a store," making it pretty hard to miss the motive behind this viral lie and the dozens like it in 2014.
The sign "No mother should have to fear for her son's life every time he robs a store" was photoshopped. Real sign: pic.twitter.com/olAE1PAIZ1
— Taylor Parks (@tmgparks) December 3, 2014
Image via Facebook
With Rolling Stone's story on gang rape
You can read the full statement, almost certainly written by a former frat-bro lawyer and not an actual Phi Psi guy, right here:
I was in a fraternity during college. I say that here for two reasons: so you know I was sweet as hell back then, and so you trust me when I tell you this letter is basically meaningless, penned by a group of scared kids in crisis mode, who require regular meetings to keep their floors mopped of beer. It's supposed to "refute" claims of sexual assault against the group, but what does it really refute?
"We have no knowledge of these alleged acts being committed at our house or by our members" doesn't refute said acts.
"The chapter did not have a date function or a social event during the weekend of September 28th, 2012" doesn't refute said acts—that only means there was no formally organized party at Phi Psi that night. It doesn't mean people weren't socializing there. Maybe it was a handful of people, maybe it was a huge rager, but it's a given that someone is drinking at every college frat in the United States at any given moment.
"Our chapter's pledging and initiation periods, as required by the University and Inter-Fraternity Council, take place solely in the spring semester and not in the fall semester" doesn't refute said acts, because frat rushing is lawless. This is like a foreign regime denying the use of chemical weapons because it's against international law—who cares, man! Not Phi Psi, or any other fraternity, which are constantly breaking the fake rules imposed upon them by fake institutions like "Inter-Fraternity Councils."
"No ritualized sexual assault is part of our pledging or initiation process" doesn't refute said acts, but at least it's very minimally reassuring.
The only counter-claim that doesn't instantly fold in on itself is that "the 2012 roster of the Aquatic and Fitness Center does not list a Phi Kappa Psi as a lifeguard," as originally claimed by the alleged rape victim. But if the only hole in her story is that she said some guy was a part-time lifeguard but that guy wasn't a part-time lifeguard, then this apologia is truly as lame as it looks.
Another monument of American media undone: The dELiA's catalog, uncompromising explicator of teen-girl apparel, will shut down, as its parent company enters Chapter 11. Liquidation awaits the assets of the once must-read title and its attached retail stores, and dELiA's Inc. "does not anticipate any value will remain."
