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Rents Are Going Up, Suckas

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Rents Are Going Up, Suckas

For the first time since 2001, there are not enough rental units in America to meet demand. Can you guess what this means?

If you said "It means that the financial firms that bought up all the unwanted housing after the 2008 crash will now be taking their just rewards out of your pocket," you win! The prize is a cramped studio apartment in a poor location with a rent that is shockingly high. And you'll take it! Bloomberg reports:

"It's that supply-demand equation that allows us to get aggressive about raising rents," Stephen Schmitz, chief executive officer of American Residential Properties Inc. (ARPI), a landlord with more than 8,500 homes, said at an investor conference this month. "Three years ago, you would go to raise somebody's rent and they could say, 'I'll go down the street and pay $100 less than I'm paying you now.' But today they can't because all those houses down the street are occupied."

Vacancies are low; housing supplies are limited; now you pay. This is in fact exactly how free market housing is supposed to work, so if you don't like it, just build your own apartment tower, and stop complaining.

Meanwhile in New York City a Manhattan condo with a block-long terrace can be had for only $39 million. You can have that, or the cramped studio ($38 million).

[Pic via Trulia]


Obama Calls James Franco "James Flacco" in Latest Interview Disaster 

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After he criticized Sony's decision to cancel the release of The Interview during his press conference earlier today, President Obama briefly mentioned the film's two stars, Seth Rogen and "James Flacco."

"I think it says something interesting about North Korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie starring Seth Rogen and James Flacco," Obama said. "I love Seth and I love James, but the notion that this was a threat to them gives you a sense of the kind of regime we're talking about."

New York's Law Enforcement Unions Are Filled With Pathetic Crybabies

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New York's Law Enforcement Unions Are Filled With Pathetic Crybabies

Patrick Lynch, chairman of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and head spokesbaby for the inconsolable id of the NYPD, gave a private speech to his union last week. Bill de Blasio "is not running the city of New York," he said in response to a series of perceived slights from City Hall. "He thinks he's running a fucking revolution." The raging toddlers in attendance howled and smacked their tiny palms together in approval.

Among the grievances that apparently caused the collective temper tantrum was a statement the mayor released regarding the alleged assault on two NYPD officers in the wake of the Eric Garner non-indictment. The police union presumably had no objection to de Blasio's calling the incident "ugly" and "unacceptable" violence that has "no place whatsoever" in New York, or his warning that the protesters involved should "expect immediate arrest and prosecution." Similarly, the mayor's urging that cops across the city be "commended for the professionalism, dedication and restraint" they've displayed during demonstrations was unlikely to leave any police feeling rankled. No, the union representing New York's finest was enraged by a single innocuous word: allegedly. Said the mayor:

However, an incident today on the Brooklyn Bridge, in which a small group of protestors allegedly assaulted some members of the NYPD, marks an ugly and unacceptable departure from the demonstrations thus far.

"When cops are the accused, the word 'alleged' never enters into the discussion," said Michael Palladino of the Detectives Endowment Association, the union representing NYPD detectives. Ed Mullins, Palladino's counterpart in the Sergeants Benevolent Association, concurred, calling the mayor a "nincompoop" for his word choice.

The outrage was borne of either stupidity or willful ignorance: "alleged," as Mullins should know, is a procedural word that's routinely used to refer to crimes that have not yet been proven in court—incidents, in other words, just like the one on the bridge. As de Blasio said in a follow-up statement: "There will always be due process, so events are alleged until we have all the facts."

We have a word for the kinds of people who are so eager to feel like their sandcastle's been kicked over that they'd turn a statement of aggressive support into an offense worthy of multiple public screaming fits. The word is crybaby, and New York's law enforcement unions—representing beat cops and prison guards on up to detectives and sergeants—are filled with crybabies of the highest order.

Capital New York published excerpts of Lynch's "fucking revolution" speech, which also directed officers to enforce the law "with [City Hall's] stupid rules, even the ones that don't work" and to "use extreme discretion in every encounter." The instructions are a thinly veiled encouragement to cops to make themselves useless by patrolling like rulebook-obsessed pedants: City Hall thinks cops who choke unarmed men and beat up 12-year-olds need to rein themselves in? We'll show them what reined-in really looks like.

The union's response recalls a story about Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. At one point during a 1954 recording session, Davis asked Monk, who was playing in his band, to "lay out"—that is, to stop his famously energetic playing for a few measures to open up the band's sound—and Monk responded just like the police union did: by getting up from his piano entirely while the band was still playing. You want restraint? I'll show you restraint. Monk was a trailblazing, peerless musician, of course, and it's likely that he was also a human being who suffered from bipolar disorder.

Last week's speech in Queens wasn't the first time the police union leadership demonstrated its essential crybabiness in the wake of the Garner unrest. Earlier this month, the PBA's website began displaying the following message urging officers to sign a form barring de Blasio and Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Vivertio from attending their funerals should they be killed in the line of duty:

Dec. 12, 2014—DON'T LET THEM INSULT YOUR SACRIFICE! Download and sign a request that Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito stay away from your funeral in the event that you are killed in the line of duty. Completed forms may be given to your PBA delegate.

In addition to the "alleged" fiasco, the petition was launched in response to a speech de Blasio gave immediately following the grand jury's failure to indict Daniel Pantaleo. It included a moving anecdote about discussing with his son Dante the kinds of interactions he might have with NYPD officers as a young black man, which angered the unions as well: The NYPD, biased against young men of color? Where did the mayor get a crazy idea like that?

To be fair, that particular speech was pretty anti-cop. As well it should have been! A white cop murdered a black man on video and was not punished for it. The NYPD as an institution is demonstrably, categorically racist, and it deserves to be called out publicly for it in the harshest possible terms. Screaming infants are known for a lot of things—sleeping, making weird faces, shitting all over the place—and the ability to soberly reckon with their own flaws is not one of them.

New York cops are virtually unparalleled in their ability to make noise and throw things until they get what they want, but they do have one close contender: New York correction officers. Thanks to some considerable political strongarming from the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association, a bill that would give the Queens District Attorney's Office authority over court cases alleging abuse by Rikers Island guards currently sits on Andrew Cuomo's desk awaiting approval. The union believes that the Bronx DA, which currently handles such cases, is too tough on guards—and it was willing to effectively halt the city's entire court system from operating for one whole day last year in retaliation. From the New York Times:

Last year, the same union effectively shut down the court system in the city for a day, an exercise in a different kind of power. Led by Norman Seabrook, the president of the union, correction officers claimed every single bus for transporting prisoners was unfit to drive or could not be moved. What were they up to? Well, the shutdown took place on the day a man being held at Rikers Island was supposed to be delivered to the Bronx courthouse to testify at the trial of two correction officers accused of assaulting him. The prisoner, and 750 other people due in courts throughout the city, were not able to go.

But the idea the Bronx DA is unnecessarily tough on guards—that it's interested in prosecuting correction officers at all, really—is completely farcical. In 2012, Terrence Pendergrass, a former Rikers captain, stood by and did nothing while a mentally ill man died from ingesting poison in his custody. Several other guards brought the inmate's increasingly worrying attention to the captain's attention, but he brushed them off, telling them not to bother him "unless someone is dead." Pendergrass was convicted of a crime last week, but only after the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in his case. Bronx prosecutors previously found that he'd done nothing wrong.

Law enforcement unions in New York have gotten so infantile over the past several weeks that even police officials are distancing themselves: this week, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton called the funeral petition an "unfortunate" "personal attack" on the mayor. If New York cops want the people they supposedly protect and serve to think of them as anything other than squealing, vindictive monsters, they'd do well to follow the top cop's lead.

[Image via AP]

Radio Station Apologizes for Letting a DJ Get a Rimjob on the Air

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Radio Station Apologizes for Letting a DJ Get a Rimjob on the Air

Chilean radio station Top 40 held a contest earlier this week, offering tickets to the giant EDM festival Mysteryland, and one lucky winner got hers by giving a DJ a rimjob live on air (here I'm employing an extremely loose definition of "lucky").

The station asked what listeners would do for tickets to an EDM festival, and the answer turned out be "actual anything, up to and including licking whipped cream out of a human anus." The human anus in question, DJ Paul Hip, then invited other listeners to make out with the girl who'd just tongued his butt and win tickets of their own.

Top 40 hyped up the contest at first, tweeting out a photo of the on-air rimjob, but soon thought better of it and deleted the tweet.

Radio Station Apologizes for Letting a DJ Get a Rimjob on the Air

It was too late, of course. Once a rim has been jobbed, you can't unjob it.

The photo has since ended up on the official Mysteryland website, which automatically pulls in tweets about the festival. And since Top 40 couldn't stop it from spreading—the photo, they couldn't stop the photo from spreading—they eventually decided to apologize for it:

"Dear listeners,

Following an image that was published on social media, that shows one of our listeners taking a challenge to get tickets for a festival, we would like to communicate the following:

- The "40 Principales" team apologizes to all the people that were offended for the image published.

- We want to clarify that the challenge done by our listener was absolutely voluntary and proposed by her, as part of a contest that was open to anyone who wanted to take part of it.

- Also, we are sorry for our mistake on accepting that challenge.

We hope that you understand that this was during a playful context and there wasn't bad intentions, and intention to offend or denigrate our audience.

Hug,

The Radio Team '40 Principales'."

Mysteryland Chile runs this weekend. Best of luck to the contest winners in recovering from the public humiliation and indignity they've suffered. By which I mean "attending an EDM festival."

[h/t BuzzFeed, Photo: 40 Principales]

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

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Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

This year, humanity landed on its first comet, a child was born to a woman with a transplanted womb, and a fossilized sea shell forced us to reconsider our conceptions of human culture. Those are just a taste of the 20 achievements, innovations, and advances we've selected for our roundup of 2014's biggest scientific breakthroughs.

The Oldest Artwork In The World Predates Modern Humans

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

In 2007, archaeologists examining fossilized seashells in a museum collection stumbled upon a detail other scientists had somehow missed: deliberate engravings of abstract patterns. These shells were dated to over 500,000 years ago, and were found amongst other shells that had been carefully crafted into specialized tools, at the same site where the first fossils of Homo erectus, our hominin ancestor, had been discovered, in 1890. Taken together, these discoveries suggest that Homo erectus was far more sophisticated than previously believed and capable of symbolic thought. This year, these scientists published the fruit of seven years of confirmation that these shells indeed represent the earliest examples of art and tools in the world. While scientists disagree somewhat on the original purpose of these artifacts, the discovery "raises the possibility that the development of human cognition — human culture — was a very long process. It was not a sudden development," says Alison Brooks, a paleoanthropologist from George Washington University.

Evidence For The Big Bang Is Refuted By Interstellar dust

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

In March, Harvard's servers were brought to their knees dealing with the international demand to watch a press conference about ... gravitational waves. It's no surprise; as physicist Marc Kamionkowski reflected, "It's not everyday you wake up and learn something completely new about the early universe." Scientists had finally observed a particular pattern in the cosmic microwave background radiation, known as B-mode gravitational waves, which cosmological theorists had predicted would peak during the first 10-34 seconds of the primordial universe following the Big Bang. Or so they thought.

Soon after the announcement, evidence came to light that the study's findings were likely an experimental artifact. In the ensuing months, scientists confirmed that interstellar dust was the likely source of the observed B-mode gravitational waves. As with all science, it takes some time for the dust of a big discovery to settle, and in this case, dust was all that was left. Hopefully scientists will soon use their massive Antarctic telescope, BICEP2, to observe real B-mode gravitational waves through dust-less regions of the Earth's surroundings.

The World's First Birth With A Donated Womb

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

Above: The newborn baby just after birth, via Brännström et al.

In late September, for the first time ever, a woman gave birth to a baby after receiving a womb transplant. The mother and child offer hope to women the world over with missing or non-functional uteruses, who desire to carry their own children to term.

The unidentified 36-year-old woman was born without a womb (a congenital disorder known as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser – or MRKH – syndrome), and is one of nine Swedish women who received a uterine transplant from live donors between 2012 and 2013. Some of those women received wombs from family members (including their own mothers), but this particular uterus was reportedly donated by a 61-year-old "family friend" who had undergone menopause 7-years prior to the 2013 surgery.

Young Blood Rejuvenates Old Brains

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

A few years ago, scientists from Stanford discovered that it's possible to reverse cognitive decline in old mice by injecting them with the blood of the young. At the time, researcher Saul Villeda wasn't entirely sure how young blood reversed the effects of cognitive decline. This year, several studies helped elucidate the mechanism responsible for this rejuvenation.

The Orion Spacecraft Proves Doubters Wrong

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

Orion blasting off on top of a Delta IV Heavy rocket at 7:05 am EST, on Friday December 5, 204. Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

When NASA announced plans for sending humans on deep space exploration, their dream was met with a mix of wistfulness and scorn, as few believed it would ever become a reality. As the Orion spacecraft worked its way through design, development, and systems testing, that same disbelief continued to haunt it. Even those hopeful that it would take shape as a vessel to carry humans beyond the Earth-Moon system were convinced it would be the archetype of a government project: over-budget, behind schedule, and ultimately unfulfilling.

This December, NASA proved the doubters wrong. For the first and only uncrewed test flight, Orion went through its paces absolutely perfectly, blasting out of Florida, soaring through the Van Allen radiation belts, and splashing down into the Pacific Ocean. On one hand, it was just a test flight. On the other, this was real, undeniable progress in moving from a dream to a reality. The next time Orion heads to space it will be with astronauts on board, and the time after that will be to carry humans to an asteroid. NASA is trying to do something outrageously ambitious on a starvation budget and this could all fall apart, but if it keeps working, Orion's test flight was the first real step on an incredible journey.

The Largest Robotic Swarm In History Takes Shape

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

In August, researcher Mark Rubenstein and his colleagues reported the most impressive demonstration of robotic swarm activity to date: A group of 1,024 low-cost, inch-wide robots called "Kilobots" that can self assemble into a variety of two-dimensional shapes (two-dimensional in the sense that the shapes are never more than one-Kilobot tall). Speedy they're not, but Kilobots can twitch, scuttle, and jostle around one another to achieve complex global behaviors – and they can do it autonomously. Together, they constitute the largest, most technically impressive robotic swarm ever created.

A 1024-strong horde is still several orders of magnitude shy of the swarms we see in nature (the number of ants in a supercolony, for example, can easily exceed 100-million), but it's a significant step for the field of swarm robotics. As Rubenstein and his colleagues note, their work advances the ambitious goal "of creating artificial swarms with the capabilities of natural ones.

The First Earth-Sized, Habitable Zone Planet

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

Above: An artist's conception of Kepler-186f Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech

In April, scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a faraway planet that's perhaps the most Earth-like yet discovered. It's the same size as our home world, and at the right distance from its parent star to have liquid water.

"The ultimate goal of all this searching for exoplanets – the real reason we're doing this – is to answer the question ' are we alone?'" So said Tom Barclay, a research scientist working with NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission, and co-author of the paper recounting Kepler-186f's discovery.

Barclay says that the answer to that big, ultimate question is almost certainly contained in the answers to a host of smaller ones, starting with: Are there other places out there like Earth? With the discovery of Kepler-186f, Barclay said, it's clearer than ever that "the answer to that question is 'Yes.'"

An Ocean's Worth Of Water Below Earth's Surface?

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

After a series of experiments, geologists have come to a rather startling conclusion. There may be a ocean-sized amount of water far beneath the Earth, trapped inside the high-pressure mantle zone between our planet's liquid metal core and its outer crust.

For decades, geologists have speculated about what created Earth's vast oceans of water. One popular theory is that icy comets crashed into the planet, eventually melting into oceans. But another theory, which now seems more plausible, was that Earth was already packed with water when it formed. As the planet coalesced out of dust and rocks, that water became trapped in various rocks below the crust.

Galactic Supercluster Laniakea

Our galactic supercluster is 100 times bigger in volume and mass than previously thought. Using an innovative mapping technique, astronomers have charted an enormous region they're now calling Laniakea. The new study, which better defines the dividing line between superclusters, offers a completely new look at our galaxy's surroundings.

King Richard III's Remains Confirmed To 99.999% Accuracy

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

The case is officially closed on what's been called the oldest forensic investigation in history. A new genetic analysis is providing incontrovertible evidence that the skeleton found under a parking lot in Leicester belonged to the king, while uncovering new truths about his appearance and lineage.

Enceladus Harbors A Hidden Ocean. Does That Ocean Harbor Life?

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft beamed back images showing what appeared to be plumes of water vapor spewing from fractures, called "tiger stripes," near the southern pole of Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn. These images alone could not prove that liquid water existed beneath the moon's surface. But in April, an analysis of gravity measurements taken by Cassini confirmed that a large reservoir of liquid water exists underneath Enceladus's icy exterior. Moreover, they've confirmed that the tiny moon is a differentiated celestial body; it's comprised of two layers — an external icy layer and an internal rocky core made up of silicates. Excitingly, this layer of silicate rock, in conjunction with liquid water, means that Enceladus features a potentially habitable environment — one that could be even more hospitable to life than Europa, a moon of Jupiter.

Not four months later, the Cassini team presented observations that suggest the moon's geysers may be directly connected to the sea beneath its surface – a monumental discovery. As Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini imaging team, put it: "For me, the finding of an easily sampled, habitable environment within Enceladus has been Cassini's most profound discovery. Many of us are now asking whether a second origin of life in our solar system could have occurred on this little moon."

A Skull Discovered In An Underwater Cave Holds Clues To The History Of America's First Settlers

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

Paleoamericans began exploring the western coasts of the Americas about 15,000 years ago, but never managed to establish the longer-lasting empires (Inca, Maya) that would give rise to Native Americans. Because of the distinct facial features of paleoamericans and Native Americans, scientists thought the two groups had distinct ancestry. However, a skull found underwater off the shore of Mexico proved this year that Native Americans and paleoamericans share common ancestry in the people who lived in Beringia (an enormous stretch of fertile grassland connecting Eurasia and the Americas during the last ice age) and that differences in their facial structure must have come about from differences in lifestyle, not ancestry.

Dreadnoughtus, An "Astoundingly Huge" Supermassive Dinosaur

Dreadnoughtus Schrani – the herbivorous, titanosaurian sauropod described in September by University of Drexel paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara and his team – is estimated to have been 85 feet long. Its tail accounted for roughly 30 of those feet. Its neck, the individual vertebrae of which measure more than three feet across, stretched 37 feet in length. Its scapula, pictured here beside Lacovara's son, stands more than five and a half feet tall – the tallest ever reported for any titanosaur.

Measurements taken from one of Dreadnoughtus' femurs, which stands over six feet tall, have led Lacovara and his team to estimate that the dinosaur, which lived approximately 77 million years ago, weighed about 65 tons in life, making it far and away the largest land animal for which a body mass can be accurately calculated (the previous record holder, another Patagonian titanosaur named Elaltitan, had a calculable weight of 47 tons.) No two ways about it –Dreadnoughtus was, to quote Lacovara, "astoundingly huge."

Evidence of Active Tectonics on Jupiter's Moon, Europa

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

Above: A false-color image of Europa's trailing northern hemisphere, where subduction zones are hypothesized to exist. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

A recent geological survey of Europa revealed a massive, 20,000 square-kilometer portion of the moon's surface had gone missing. In September, researchers published evidence that suggests a plate tectonic system may be moving old portions of Europa's surface beneath adjacent plates. If confirmed, the finding would make Europa the only known place in the solar system (apart from Earth) whose surface continues to be shaped by active plate tectonics.

Stem Cells Could Hold A Cure To Type 1 Diabetes

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

Above: human-stem-cell derived beta cells. (Douglas Melton)

β cells are insulin-producing cells found in the pancreas that help keep blood glucose levels in balance. In patients with type 1 diabetes, β cells are targeted and destroyed by the immune system. A possible cure? Replace the destroyed cells with ones grown in a lab. In October, researchers at Harvard University published a method for converting human embryonic stem cells into β cells at quantities large enough to make cell transplantation feasible (though researchers still need to figure out how to protect synthesized cells from the autoimmune attacks that eliminate the body's natural β cells). The cell-derived β cells are currently undergoing trials in animal models, including non-human primates.

A Living Organism With An Expanded Genetic Alphabet

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

The genetic codes of all living things consist of the same four building blocks: Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, and Cytosine. These building blocks, abbreviated by the letters A, T, G, and C, respectively can be found in untold combinations. But in May of this year, researchers announced they had engineered, for the first time, live E. coli bacteria that incorporate two entirely new letters into their genetic alphabet. An achievement nearly 15 years in the making, the team's reconstituted version of the bacteria boasts two artificial base blocks of DNA – DNA that can be carried and passed on to future generations.

An Artificial Yeast Chromosome Was Built From Scratch

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

Twelve years ago, scientists created the first artificial virus. Eight years later, the world was introduced to the first synthetic genome for bacteria. By 2012, scientists had created the first complete computer model of a living organism. In March of this year, an international team of scientists reconstructed a synthetic and fully functional yeast chromosome. A breakthrough seven years in the making, the remarkable advance could eventually lead to custom-built organisms (human organisms included).

Scientists Discover the Gynosome, A New Kind of Sexual Organ

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

When Brazilian scientist Rodrigo Ferreira sent a few insect specimens to a Swiss entomologist named Charles Lienhard, the latter identified the insects as belonging to an entirely new genus, henceforth known as Neotrogla. Lienhard also noticed that the females had an erectile "penis-like structure," which he called a "gynosome." Among this group of cave-dwelling Brazilian insects, the females use their gynosomes to penetrate the males. It's a first in the animal kingdom, and scientists say that the lives of these insects challenge everything we thought we knew about sexual selection.

At Stonehenge, A Pair of Monumental Discoveries

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

Though archaeologists have long suspected that the huge neolithic stones of Stonehenge once formed a complete circle, evidence in support of the claim has remained elusive. In September, following a dry summer season, archaeologists were able to observe patches of dry grass that appear to confirm the prehistoric monument's circular configuration.

Not two weeks later, archaeologists, u sing powerful ground-penetrating radar, announced they had detected a trove of previously unknown burial mounds, chapels, shrines, pits — and most remarkable of all — a massive megalithic monument made up of more than 50 giant stones buried along a 1,082-foot-long c-shaped enclosure. The new findings upend previous conceptions of Stonehenge as a desolate and lonely place.

The Philae Lander Successfully Touches Down On a Comet

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2014

Over ten years ago, scientists at the European Space Agency bid adieu to a robot lander named Philae, as it set off on a mission with the Rosetta space probe to collect data about comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This November, after Rosetta achieved orbit around the comet, Philae detached from Rosetta and landed on 67P. After two wild bounces and no harpoon strikes to anchor it, Philae settled in the shadow of a cliff. For the first time in human spacefaring history, a robotic probe had been placed on the surface of a comet – and already its findings are reshaping the way we view the universe.

Forward or Delete: This Week's Fake Viral Photos

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Forward or Delete: This Week's Fake Viral Photos

Occasionally, against all odds, you'll see an interesting or even enjoyable picture on the Internet. But is it worth sharing, or just another Photoshop job that belongs in the digital trash heap? Check in here and find out if that viral photo deserves an enthusiastic "forward" or a pitiless "delete."

Image via Twitter


FORWARD

Despite being a stump speech-ready example of an American small business, phone-wielding patriots hit Mark-1 Plumbing of Texas City, Texas with constant threats and harassment this week after one of their trucks showed up on Jihad Twitter as an improvised combat vehicle in Syria.

Unfortunately for former owner Mark Oberholtzer, an additional photo from October confirms that the pictured pickup is one his son Jeff sold to a Houston-area auto dealer last year.

However, the company denies that they planned to secretly aid Islamic militants via a series of impossible to anticipate transnational auto sales. "We have nothing to do with terror at all," the younger Oberholtzer told KHOU-TV.


DELETE

On Tuesday, Taliban militants attacked a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing over 100 people, many of them students. Soon after, this striking photo of a blood-stained children's shoe raced through social media with the hashtag #Peshawar, becoming one of the most widely shared representations of the massacre.

But as reported by Vocativ, in reality the picture was taken after a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli shopping mall in 2008. According to Haaretz, at least two children were seriously wounded by the blast.


FORWARD

On the Internet, "historical pictures" are one the most reliable sources of total bullshit, surpassed only by "historical pictures of famous people," but—as improbable as it may seem—this one is real.

Taken from Taschen's The Godfather Family Album, the photo shows Marlon Brando in and out of the makeup designed by special effects artist Dick Smith (himself known as "The Godfather of Makeup"). Brando was just 46 at the time of filming, necessitating the old-man-ening seen above.


DELETE

As increasingly unhinged geologists are compelled to point out each time this picture pops up online, this photo of Iceland's Silfra rift does not show a gap "between two tectonic plates" with the American plate "on the left, and the Eurasian on the right."

From Reddit user purple_people_eaters:

[I]t should be pointed out that tectonics are more of a zonal thing. You can't necessarily say that the rocks on the left belong to the North American plate, while the rocks on the right belong to the Eurasian plate. The geologic processes that are occurring in the area are creating these valleys and canyons, but it is more of a fuzzy divide instead of a sharp clear one that the pictures make it out to be.

Although formed by tectonic drift, the fissure seen above is just one of many faults that can be found in the area, Iceland's Þingvellir National Park.


DELETE

Forward or Delete: This Week's Fake Viral Photos

I don't even know what to say about this one other than it's one of the worst fakes I've ever seen. Two years ago, Weird Al posted it on Twitter. This week, it was shared by @OldPicsArchive. A couple months from now you can expect to see it on Facebook. Here's the original. God help us all.

Image via Twitter//h/t PicPedant

Your Guide to the Best TV All Weekend Long

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What makes this weekend different from all other weekends? It's blurry and has no distinct edges, no set beginning, no set ending. Everything from here forward is amorphous, and unfortunately that's true of our entertainment as well: Slim pickings, throughout the next week. Luckily you also have the Weekend Stream, for things already available, and of course our guides to what's arriving and what's leaving on Netflix at the New Year, so that should help.

FRIDAY

AT 8/7c.

  • CBS has the Amazing Race finale, and then everybody takes a shower I presume.
  • NBC's airing a two-part special called Caught On Camera With Nick Cannon: Viral in which the recently ex-Mr. Mimi drops a viral load "more real than any reality program," and even more amazingly, "provides first person accounts of what's happening on screen from those who lived it, recorded it and saw it happen." At this point it's like, is there anything that guy can't do?
  • And TNT will be showing its annual Christmas in Washington for the last time, after fifteen solid years. The First Family, Rita Ora, Darius Rucker, Hunter Hayes, Christina Perri and Aloe Blacc will all be there and I suppose you should join them, if you love America. Because TNT, after tonight, clearly does not.

AT 9/8c.

  • Nicktoons will show the final four episodes of Legend of Korra, including the two-part finale that went online this morning. It's been a long, beautiful road for that show, and it will be missed, but this last season has really been something special. Between Henry Rollins's anarchist coup giving way to Zelda Williams's military takeover, and the gorgeous rebirth of Airbenders setting right the 200-year catastrophe that began before Avatar even started, it's a hell of a way to end this chapter in the saga.
  • H2, meanwhile, asks if Ancient Aliens are to blame for the Great Flood in Mesopotamia that has featured in the classic myth cycles of every religion since. My guess: They are not.
  • Christmaswise you have a choice: CBS's A Home for the Holidays special, which is about adoption and sponsored by Wendy's, or on PBS, Christmas With the Mormon Tabernacle Choir starring soprano Deborah Voigt and Gimli the Dwarf.
  • At 10/9c. it's the third season premiere of Myth Hunters on AHC, or a double-shot of TLC's Something Borrowed, Something New titled "My Big Fat Persian Wedding" and "Here Comes The Groom." At 11/10c. you have the season finales of IFC's acquired tastes Comedy Bang! Bang! with Lonely Island and Birthday Boys. And then around 12:30 on CBS, follow up the tearjerking Colbert Report ending with the series finale of Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson.

SATURDAY

At 9/8c. Syfy has a TV movie called Christmas Icetastrophe, and Animal Planet's doing a holiday special for Pit Bulls & Parolees. 10/9c. brings us new episodes of ID's I'd Kill for You (that's the one where people kill for other people, to prove a point usually) and TLC's Sex Sent Me to the ER. 10:30 is Black Dynamite on Adult Swim, and at 11:29 it's Saturday Night Live with sprightly monster Amy Adams, who ended her fourth decade on Earth this summer and is now working on her fifth, with obscure indie band One Direction.

SUNDAY

At 8/7c. the Librarians of TNT learn the truth about Santa, and the Real Housewives of Atlanta learn the truth about themselves. Then at 8:30, the Mayor of Pittsburgh goes Undercover Boss on some people to learn more about what a mayor does.

AT 9/8c.

  • 90 Day Fiancé is getting close to being over on TLC, which is sad but not that sad.
  • On AHC, The Bible's Greatest Secrets are probed, this time uncovering the real "Mission of Jesus," and guess what it's not low holiday prices.
  • Food Network pairs with its own magazine to uncover the Top 10 Restaurants, according to Food.
  • Scott Disick just keeps revealing more about himself on Kourtney & Khloé Take the Hamptons in this week's episode, "There's No Smoke Without Fire Island."
  • On OWN, Oprah looks into the current whereabouts of Natalee Holloway's mom, the original cast of The Real World, and Tiffany. Good episode all around.
  • It is also, sadly, time for the finales of Homeland and The Affair, both of which have been renewed.

At 10/9c. it's The Comeback, the House of DVF finale on E!, and My Five Wives on TLC. 11/10c. brings us Phaedra Parks and Faith Evans on Watch What Happens: Live, which is the best version of Phaedra you're ever going to see, so you might as well take advantage.

Morning After is a new home for television discussion and appreciation, brought to you by Gawker and more real than any reality program. What are you watching this weekend? What are we missing out on? Recommendations and discussions down below.

Zen Koans Explained: The Final Koan

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Zen Koans Explained: The Final Koan

"I have blogged for so very long," caterwauled the dunce, "yet still the people do not embrace the zen!" Enraged, he "dropped the mic," which turned out to be a rubber Super Bounce ball. At that, he achieved enlightenment—right on the noggin!

The koan:

The enlightenment:

This has been "Zen Koans Explained."

[Photo: Shutterstock]


Rumor!

Study: Dr. Oz is full of shit

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Study: Dr. Oz is full of shit

Do you get your medical advice from "America's doctor," Dr. Oz? Well, you should probably stop doing that. Because a new study out from the British Medical Journal says that his advice is baseless or wrong about half the time.

Researchers randomly selected 40 episodes of his show and examined 160 recommendations. Their measure for whether something was truthful hinged on an ability to find at least one case study that supported what he said. Researchers were only able to do that 54 percent of the time.

Dr. Oz first made a name for himself on Oprah Winfrey's show back in 2004 and from there became a household name, launching his own show in 2009. But the doctor has come under fire in the past year for using his show to peddle unproven cures and unscientific ideas. He even had to testify in front of a Senate subcommittee this past June where he was grilled for being full of shit.

At the time, Dr. Oz presented a spirited defense of his snake oil peddling. But ultimately he conceded that some of what he says on his show wasn't scientific.

"I actually do personally believe in the items I talk about in the show," Dr. Oz testified in June. "I passionately study them. I recognize oftentimes they don't have the scientific muster to present as fact, but nevertheless, I would give my audience the advice I give my family." [Emphasis added, obviously.]

During the Senate subcommittee hearing in June, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri read Dr. Oz some of the things he'd said on TV. The guy sure loves the words "magic" and "miracle."

"'You may think magic is make believe but this little bean has scientists saying they've found the magic weight loss cure for every body type—it's green coffee extract."

"'I've got the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. It's raspberry ketones."

"'Garcinia Camboja. It may be the simple solution you've been looking for to bust your body fat for good."

Yeesh. Yeah, you should probably stop listening to Dr. Oz. At least if you prefer that your medical advice come from someone who knows what the hell he's talking about. [Washington Post]

Image: Dr. Oz testifies on Capitol Hill June 17, 2014 before the Senate subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance via the Associated Press



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What People Get Wrong About PewDiePie, YouTube's Biggest Star

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What People Get Wrong About PewDiePie, YouTube's Biggest Star

Four years ago, an account named "PewDiePie" uploaded a video to YouTube. It was about Minecraft. The video featured what sounded like a young man laughing heartily at an unlucky zombie that had gotten stuck in a tree. The commentary wasn't in English—it was in Swedish.

The next few videos on this account focused on commentary for first-person shooters such as Call of Duty. These were in English. While you couldn't see the commentator's face, his style was candid. It was as if he was speaking to a friend standing right next to his computer—only a bit goofier, as he frequently said word salad, or whatever seemed to pop into his mind.

During one of these early 2010 videos, the man behind Pewdiepie can be heard thanking his fans for helping him reach 100 subscribers:

"To a lot of people 100 subscribers is probably an insignificant number, but to me it means a lot. I just want to thank you guys so much for your support," the young man said. "Some of you have been asking me...what's the next thing? Do you want to be on Machinima? Do you want to be famous? It's a little early to talk about that stuff, but, no, I don't want to be famous."

The Pewdiepie account would go on to upload Let's Play videos—lots of them. In the videos, you can see a handsome, blond young man freak out at horror games such as Amnesia. Four years later, Pewdiepie—whose real name is Felix Kjellberg—is the biggest star on YouTube, with 32,734,954 subscribers and counting. It's the type of following that breeds influence. According to Variety, teens are more likely to consider personalities like Pewdiepie more famous than traditional stars, like Jennifer Lawrence. Games discovered by Pewdiepie, like Slender, can rocket into stardom. This Midas Touch holds true even if the game isn't considered very good, or isn't very polished—just look at Goat Simulator. People now make games with explicit shout-outs to Pewdiepie, seemingly in the hopes that he'll feature their games on his channel. And it's not uncommon to see up-and-coming YouTube stars trying to mimic Pewdiepie's energetic style.

The thing is, while Pewdiepie is very popular, those among the gaming 'elite'—hardcore players who might comment on a website like Reddit, Twitter, or even Kotaku itself—don't seem to take very kindly to him. In an informal Twitter poll, people described Pewdiepie to me as an "obnoxious waste of time," "annoying," and, above all, people told me that he made them "feel old." The press isn't always kind to Pewdiepie. He is often posed as an inexplicable phenomenon, the kind of thing that can make a games reporter sweat with fears of obsolescence. At worst, the press takes potshots. Variety says Pewdiepie's shtick is "blathering like a blithering idiot" and that his videos feature "aggressive stupidity." A recent South Park episode which explored the popularity of watching someone like Pewdiepie play games had one outlet saying they were "sad for tomorrow's gamers."

It seems difficult to talk about Pewdiepie without delving into hostile conversations about whether or not he 'deserves' his success, or whether or not his type of entertainment is 'worthwhile.' Isn't he just a man that yells over video games? What is the world coming to?

It's the sort of reaction that sparks curiosity. Until late this year, I was not one of the millions of subscribers that watched Pewdiepie videos. I avoided him, I think, because I'd heard bad things. But I had to start watching. If he's the future, I wanted to know more about it.

For a few months now, I've been tuning in to the occasional Pewdiepie upload on YouTube. I don't watch every video—his output is more than I can keep up with. His channel is full of hundreds of videos he's recorded over the years. Remarkably, he does it all on his own.

"My fans don't really care about professional high-end production videos...the fact that people know that it's just me making the videos – with no crew – has proved to be a winning concept," Pewdiepie said in an interview with Icon Magazine. "The thing that has made YouTube so successful is that you can relate to the people you're watching to a much higher degree than to the people you see on TV. And that's why I keep doing it all myself, though it would save me a lot of work if I didn't."

For those of you that have never watched a Pewdiepie video before, here's a somewhat recent one, picked at random:

Since the video isn't out of the ordinary for a Pewdiepie upload, it gives us a good sense of what a typical video looks like. Before you click, you'll notice a few things. First, the thumbnail features a glitched-out version of Shrek. Funny Photoshops such as these are common in the thumbnails of Pewdiepie videos. Second, you'll note that the title of the video is almost entirely in capslock. MY FAVORITE SHREK GAME, in this case. Though Pewdiepie does play popular games, more often than not he'll play the sorts of obscure games that you'd probably never read about on a site like Kotaku. Once the video starts, Pewdiepie introduces himself, often by making silly gestures and saying his own handle in a signature high-pitched voice. Peeeewdiepie! If you watched the South Park episodes on Pewdiepie, it's the same way that Cartman says the catchphrase "Cartman Brah."

What People Get Wrong About PewDiePie, YouTube's Biggest Star

Then, once the video gets rolling, Pewdiepie—who is sometimes accompanied by his girlfriend, Marzia, or one of his pets—reacts to whatever is happening on-screen. Being that he's a cheerful guy, much of his reaction to everything is a joke, or a laugh. It helps that many of the games he plays are absurd, and that his style of commentary is random and raw. You never really know what Pewdiepie is going to say next, though you can count on hearing curses, as well as off-the-cuff remarks. Sometimes, what Pewdiepie says doesn't really make sense. But, as someone who dips her toes into things like streaming from time to time, it's hard for me to hold something like that against Pewdiepie. It's difficult to sound smart in the moment, as you're playing a game that demands your attention. I give props to anyone that can pull it off.

I'm inclined to call Pewdiepie's brand of video harmless entertainment...mostly. Pewdiepie is also known to be profane, crude and arguably insensitive. In the video above, for example, when Shrek goes into a duel with another character, he says "get raped!" When two characters stick closely to Shrek, Pewdiepie yells "stop molesting me!"

The way some of the internet tells it, a Pewdiepie video is supposed to be all shrieks and yells—the sort of immature thing that would become grating after a while. And sure, Pewdiepie isn't always speaking in an indoor voice. He'll readily admit that it's a part of his act. According to an Adweek interview, he likes to "[keep] it more energetic, crazy." But, after watching many of his recent videos, I'm not sure people wholly get who Pewdiepie is now, in late 2014. It's true that he got famous for screaming his head off at horror games. It's also true that, this year, Pewdiepie's channel doesn't feature as many horror games, either. That's intentional. While popular horror games such as Five Nights at Freddy's rake in the views for a channel like Pewdiepie, 2014 is the year that Pewdiepie seems to be pushing back on what some fans demand of him. Instead of limiting himself to horror games, Pewdiepie is now actively playing more things that interest him. We've seen instances when games render Pewdiepie speechless altogether. Watching a recent video now, you get the sense that Pewdiepie is changing, perhaps maturing a tiny bit. Maybe it's the beard tricking me, though.

I couldn't help but wonder: what else do people get wrong about Pewdiepie? Can I trust when a self-identified gamer sneers at someone like Pewdiepie when a lot of our hardcore culture likes to celebrate personalities that flaunt how cynical, jaded, annoyed or angry they are? Annoyed Gamer. Cynical Brit. Angry Joe. Yahtzee. Francis. These are the sorts of old-school personalities that gaming seems to welcome with open arms. On the other hand, personalities that are too happy, or too hype, like HipHopGamer and Pewdiepie, meanwhile, are openly mocked. People can like what they like, of course, and there's room for all these personalities.

I decided to go straight to the man's fans. What do they think of Pewdiepie? What do they see in him? Why do they like them so much?

With these questions in mind, I made an account on Pewdiepie's official forums, where Pewdiepie's "Bro Army" discusses his latest videos. It's the community that Pewdiepie reads in lieu of YouTube's messy comments. While I was logged on during American work/school hours, there were only 36 users who were logged in, and there were over 700 people lurking on the website. The forum isn't anything special, though I was amused by weirdly specific rules like 'Try to have a conversation and not shout Pewdie quotes constantly,' and 'Don't post lyrics.' But beyond that, standard fare. You've got your threads about Pewdiepie's latest videos, you've got threads about games, you've got threads about random junk.

Most responses to Pewdiepie videos never seem to be more than a sentence or two. To quote a few examples of replies to some threads about Pewdiepie:

"Ha! This looks like a good game for my boyfriend and I to play too!"

"I loved this video it's cool to see you two play together."

"Right now I only play with my boyfriend and his friends and I'm getting tired of all the testosterone!"

"All I do is play games and watch Pewds and Marzias videos to hold me over to the next day! Sad panda."

Many of the users claimed to be from around the world—people said they were from places like Italy, the U.S., Asia. Pewdiepie's audience seemed remarkably international. Naturally, many people had avatars of Pewdiepie himself, with some people actively pretending to be Pewdiepie—it made reading the forum a bit bizarre. Another interesting thing I noted was that many of the people in the Pewdiepie forums seemed to be girls. Young teenagers. Perhaps that isn't surprising, given Pewdiepie's boyish look, and his willingness to be vulnerable, intimate—many of his videos are shot in his bedroom—and even feminine, on-screen.

What People Get Wrong About PewDiePie, YouTube's Biggest Star

It's the sort of approach to YouTubing that can lead to scenes of Pewdiepie in an airport that look like the Beatles have just flown in town:

What People Get Wrong About PewDiePie, YouTube's Biggest Star

It's also the sort of following that makes it easy to see why people would make so much fun of him. As I argued in my piece about the Kim Kardashian: Hollywood game which is also popular with young girls, society loves to tell teen girls that their interests are stupid, vapid, and not worthy of respect. It's not just teen girls, really. The internet has made a sport of mocking teens growing up on the internet. It's easy to forget that we might have once been like that too, only our embarrassing origin stories aren't archived on the likes of Tumblr.

When you take into account what Pewdiepie is doing with this audience of teens—making people spectators in the games he plays—it's also not surprising that some of the 'gaming elite' dislikes the guy. Our culture is built on playing the games, weathering the hardship and challenges yourself. A gamer is not born, this mentality posits. Gamers are made after running the gauntlet. What do you mean these people just want to watch? Meanwhile, sites such as Twitch that let people broadcast their games are exploding because there's a growing audience of people who want to watch other people play games. It's like how someone might want to watch a sport, but not actually play it. Anyone who cracks jokes that are along the lines of, 'back in my day, kids actually played video games,'—and those are some of the jokes I heard on that South Park episode and have heard from Pewdiepie's many critics in and outside of the press—is getting left behind.

Sometimes Pewdiepie actually gets people into games though. A friend told me that her twelve-year-old sister, who never showed an interest in games before, suddenly wanted to try out all the horror games she could find because of Pewdiepie. This little girl is not someone that a website like Kotaku could normally reach, I don't think. They're a part of a new generation of gamers who don't necessarily read or trust gaming sites, but they're still interested in a reliable source when it comes to game recommendations. This source doesn't have to say anything smart. They just have to play the game, let people see the thing in action. The fact that you only see raw reactions in Pewdiepie's videos works in the game's benefit. You get to see an honest take on a game. Traditional game reviews, meanwhile, are inundated with meaningless marketing buzzwords like "visceral" and jargon like "framerate." These are things that may inform purchases for people like me, but they aren't useful to anyone who isn't already immersed in hardcore gaming culture.

Let's go back to talking about the Pewdiepie forums. I hopped into the forum's chat, where some people were arguing with each other about how old they are. Most claimed to be over 20 or 30. My guess is that only people who aren't that old would feel the need to convince strangers on the internet that they're over 18, but, who knows!

I told the chat I was writing about Pewdiepie, and I asked them: why do you guys like Pewdiepie? Immediately, one person responded saying that it was because Pewdiepie is so "fabulous." Another person had a more hot take on Pewdiepie, shouting "IT"S SIMPLE! HE'S FUNNY!!!" I could practically see the massive eyeroll through the computer screen.

Then I asked the chat, do you feel like people who don't watch Pewdiepie get him all wrong? Someone calmly responded, "People [have] their own opinion. That's all. We can't explain everything." And at least one person tried to troll me, claiming that they thought Pewdiepie was shit (despite, you know, being in a chat for Pewdiepie fans on a Pewdiepie forum). This response was met with hostility with some of the other chatters, but I got the sense that they were all already familiar with this person's cranky disposition.

Eventually I left the chat, and started perusing other threads. One thread, which catalogued how people heard about Pewdiepie in the first place, was particularly enlightening. Most people say they heard about Pewdiepie through word of mouth, often through other friends. Some people said that they came across Pewdiepie after running YouTube searches for games they were interested in, or they came across him randomly while in a YouTube rabbit hole. Google notes that 95% of gamers frequent online video like the ones hosted on YouTube to consume gaming media. "Go to YouTube in an incognito mode window," one Redditor on r/pewdiepie instructs. "Enter without a login to any account and without having browsed anything on Google. "Around half the videos recommended and pushed to you will be of video game's players and video game's commentators mixed in with the cat videos and talk show clips. It's not just a thing, it's a whole entertainment genre," they wrote.

In particular, people mentioned that they learned about Pewdiepie through horror games. This is common—like I said, Pewdiepie cut his teeth on horror games, and that's what most people know him for. In the subreddit dedicated to Pewdiepie, one Redditor remarked, "I don't like playing horror games, but I enjoy watching other people play. It gives me the opportunity to experience the story without having to suffer through gameplay I wouldn't enjoy myself." That same person cited that Pewdiepie gave them a chance to experience games without having to invest in a high-end computer or spend money at all.

Another oft-cited video that helped people discover Pewdiepie is called "Happy Wheels." It's about a humorous game with awkward controls the likes of which QWOP, Surgeon Simulator, and Octodad have now made famous:

Eventually, I found myself in a thread that asked people how Pewdiepie changed their lives. This was one of the most popular threads in the entire forum, and it was full of responses:

"He made me respect how much effort some youtubers put into their videos."

"He's not ashamed of Being Weird .. & that's the Thing i liked about him."

"I have actually lost 3 lbs watching PewDiePie for the last 2 weeks... I had read somewhere a while ago that laughing increases weight loss."

"I owe my life to this man."

"Before I discovered Felix I was quite lonely. In a population of 1000 in a small town in Iceland you don't really blend in the crowd, as there are no crowds lol. But anyway, I barely had no friends. I was alone at all times. To be honest, I didn't really care. My parents weren't home much so I didn't have anybody to talk to. Then I discovered Felix. I then knew that maybe I did care after all that time. Because at that exact moment, I was happy for the first time in a really long time. Someone understood me, someone made me laugh. He's like my best friend. I know he doesn't know I even exist. But I know he does care about us bros."

"Honestly I feel like he cares about us. Not for money or fame-but because were just like him. Best of all were considered brothers and not fans. And every video he expresses how much he's thankful for us and its wonderful to be part if a multi-million brotherhood with you guys :) <3."

"I watch him every day, even when i feel sad he makes me happy. He makes the videos with love for his bro's and you see that, thats the reason why he is loved by so many."

"Pewds has changed me from being weird and abashed to being weird and FREE!"

"Put a smile on my face, even after a tough or stressful day."

"He inspired me to start my own charity program!!! "

"He made me feel better about myself because he isnt afraid to be who he really is. I dont like people judging who i am but Pewds inspired me not to care. I try my hardest to ignore it and i be myself no matter what people think. Since my parents divorce i hadnt really laughed as much as i did when i saw pewds videos. I love his videos and watch them whenever i can to keep my spirits high or just when im feeling down."

The responses are astounding. For some it'll be easy to get held up on the fact that some of these claims have misspellings, or they're too earnest, perhaps even misguided. For me, it highlights one thing. I don't think people like Pewdiepie are wasting kids' time or making them 'stupider,' as some would claim. I do think he's making them less lonely. We can try to pass the buck to Pewdiepie here, but what did we do as a society that necessitates so many of our kids resorting to a person on a screen to keep them company, to help them through tough spots that they don't know how to navigate? Maybe that isn't the right thing to ask, either—not when so much of the stress of our lives is mitigated online. I've had countless friends who I only know online. I follow people on sites like Twitter closely, consuming their day-to-day life with faves and retweets, reblogs and comments. I'm not special in that regard, either. Pewdiepie is the natural result of online culture, a type of celebrity who arose because of a specific need.

After reading through Pewdiepie forums, I went back and found a video blog where Pewdiepie wasn't playing a game. He was just talking into the camera to his fans. The lighting was warm, and the focus made everything around Pewdiepie soft, fuzzy. The camera focused on his face. He wasn't yelling. He wasn't doing his silly voices or any of his schticks. He was just talking. Actually, he was apologizing for something in an earlier video—not to anyone in particular, but it felt like he was talking to me personally. It was kind of unsettling. As I looked away from the screen, I thought about something Pewdiepie said in an interview with Icon Magazine. "The loneliness in front of the computer screens brings us together."

To contact the author of this post, write to patricia@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter @xpatriciah.

Ferguson DA Claims He Knew Witnesses Were Lying, Let Them Testify Anyway

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Ferguson DA Claims He Knew Witnesses Were Lying, Let Them Testify Anyway

In his first interview since the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, St. Louis County District Attorney Bob McCulloch claims that he was well aware that several witnesses were not telling the truth, and that he allowed them to testify before the grand jury anyway.

Earlier this week, The Smoking Gun reported that Sandra McElroy, known as "Witness 40" in the Michael Brown shooting case, was a serial fabulist who in all likelihood was not even close to the scene of the crime. McElroy's testimony that she saw Brown "charge at the officer" "in a football position" most closely resembled Wilson's own version of events.

McCulloch was aware of—and perfectly fine with—such falsehoods masquerading as evidence, he said during an interview with local radio station KTRS.

Excerpts from BuzzFeed:

KTRS: Why did you allow people to testify in front of the grand jury in which you knew their information was either flat-out wrong, or flat-out lying, or just weren't telling the truth?

McCulloch: Well, early on, I decided that anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything was going to be presented to the grand jury. And I knew that no matter how I handled it, there would be criticism of it. So if I didn't put those witnesses on, then we'd be discussing now why I didn't put those witnesses on. Even though their statements were not accurate.

So my determination was to put everybody on and let the grand jurors assess their credibility, which they did. This grand jury poured their hearts and souls into this. It was a very emotional few months for them. It took a lot of them. I wanted to put everything on there. I thought it was much more important to present everything and everybody, and some that, yes, clearly were not telling the truth. No question about it.

McCulloch later added that he was "absolutely sure" that some witnesses lied under oath, but that he would not seek perjury charges. He also blamed the media for "latching on" to one witness who "clearly wasn't present" at the shooting—a description that likely refers to McElroy.

There were people who came in and, yes, absolutely lied under oath.Some lied to the FBI. Even though they're not under oath, that's another potential offense — a federal offense.

I thought it was much more important to present the entire picture…

There's talk of one witness now, and some of the media is doing exactly what I said they would do, they pull out one witness and just latch on to that, and this lady clearly wasn't present when this occurred. She recounted a statement that was right out of the newspaper about Wilson's actions, and right down the line with Wilson's actions. Even though I'm sure she was nowhere near the place.

As BuzzFeed notes, the rules governing attorneys in Missouri expressly prohibits a lawyer from "[offering] evidence that the lawyer knows to be false." Rule 4-3.3 of the state's rules of professional conduct reads in part:

A lawyer shall not knowingly...offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false. If a lawyer, the lawyer's client, or a witness called by the lawyer has offered material evidence and the lawyer comes to know of its falsity, the lawyer shall take reasonable remedial measures, including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal. A lawyer may refuse to offer evidence, other than the testimony of a defendant in a criminal matter, that the lawyer reasonably believes is false.

Hear the full interview with McCulloch below.

Seth Meyers to Sony Hackers: Bring It On, Read My Email

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Other, other late night host Seth Meyers took on the Sony hackers who've managed to temporarily stop the release of The Interview in a new bit he's calling "Bring It On." In the piece, he dares the hackers to attack NBC and release his personal email, while his network overlords beg them not to in the captions below.

Damn, Colbert was barely out the door before Meyers started doing The Word. But hey, at least he's doing a better job standing up to the hackers than Sony is.

[h/t Reddit]

Deadspin Hae Min Lee, Team Player: The Serial Murder Victim's Lacrosse Heroics | io9 Biggest Scienti

Kim Kardashian to Mom: I Love U But Please Change

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Kim Kardashian to Mom: I Love U But Please Change

Below is an email that Kim Kardashian sent to her mother and manager, Kris Jenner, last week. As Kris tells it, "my LOVELY daughter @kimkardashian sent me this delightful email after she apparently saw my picture online."

Let's all try to dress less omish in 2015, okay?

[Photo via Getty]


How Amy Pascal Hacked Our Hearts

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How Amy Pascal Hacked Our Hearts

Amy Pascal, the head of Sony's film division, is probably going to lose her job. The story is long, but the facts are simple: With Seth Rogen and James Franco's The Interview cancelled, Pascal's department has taken something north of $50 million of Sony's money and lit it on fire in the most spectacular and embarrassing way possible.

It's safe to assume that this is the lowest moment of Pascal's professional life. Things got bad when the true scope of the leaks became known, and got even worse from there, when emails were uncovered in which her and a colleague made tacky and unfunny jokes about the kind of movies Barack Obama might like (punchline: the ones with black actors in them!). She is currently in the unprecedented position of having one of her studio's completed films hidden from the public at the behest of a foreign government, and will likely hit rock bottom if, or when, she is ultimately canned.

But eventually, hopefully, Pascal will realize that while she's the root cause of the Sony leak scandal, she's also its most sympathetic personality—a strong, intelligent boss who comes off in her correspondence as a passionate and moral human being in an industry of insane egomaniacal assholes and money-fuckers.

This isn't us saying this: the fallout from the Sony leaks has made it clear that Pascal is beloved by many power players in Hollywood. Last week, Seth Rogen, for instance, thanked Pascal for having "the balls" to make The Interview, and though he will probably forever hold a grudge against Sony for canceling the film, I bet the fiasco makes him respect Pascal even more for taking it this far.

In other emails, she is praised by people like George Clooney and Aaron Sorkin—who, by the way, stood behind her even after she said he was broke. In an email Clooney sent her after early negative reviews of his film Monuments Men trickled out, he wrote that Pascal is "literally the only person running a studio that loves film." Clooney added: "I adore you Amy."

It hasn't been surprising to find out from the hacked email that everyone in Hollywood is a dick. But it has been a bit surprising to learn how committed Pascal is to actually making good movies. Every year it seems like people lament the creative direction of Hollywood, but Pascal seems to be, even in her correspondence with other studio executives, committed to putting great films on the silver screen. (She is only so valiant, though: if Pascal is fired, one of the last films she will have financed at Sony is Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.)

The Sony emails are mostly boring. This is true, of course, of basically anyone's email. There have been dozens of great and important stories uncovered in the inboxes of Pascal and other Sony executives, but that represents something like a half of one percent of what was leaked by whoever hacked the company. Even the most toothsome exchanges are pocked by banal back-and-forths about unimportant minutiae. Even in Hollywood, the business of doing business features only glimmers of glamor.

But in this sea of nothingness, Pascal's integrity shines through. She is warm to her coworkers and supportive of her employees; thoughtful and genuinely caring even in the midst of doing the film industry's dirty work. Email chains involving deals worth tens of millions of dollars are routinely followed with Pascal affirming that relationships are important to her, and that she can't wait to see her friends and partners soon.

And when she has to place the needs of her studio and her employees above the whining of her collaborators, she is unhesitating and unyielding. Take her sparring with notoriously hotheaded producer Scott Rudin over Sony's planned Steve Jobs biopic, and a Cleopatra movie starring Angelina Jolie that nobody wants to make except Jolie and Pascal. Rudin is in ruthless pursuit of what he thinks is best for the Jobs film—namely securing David Fincher as director—and Pascal plays along. Until she doesn't.

"Don't you fucking threaten me," she tells Rudin at one point. After growing tired of indulging his whiny spiels, she forwards one to an underling with the words "get rid of him."

Pinched words likes those are the culmination of exasperation, a feeling Pascal renders perfectly. Here is one email to Rudin that features torturously elongated ellipses and a perfect kiss-off closer.

How Amy Pascal Hacked Our Hearts

Even more enjoyable, though, are the specific quirks of her emails, many of which are marked "Sent from my Sony Xperia Z2" (if there's any silver lining to Pascal potentially losing her job, it's that she will no longer have an obligation to use a Sony Xperia). The bulk of Pascal's emails are short one-liners, but the best ones resemble free verse poems. Sent normally to her closest confidants at Sony, and often late at night, these emails have a distinct and charming lyrical quality to them.

Here is part of one from a response to Rudin that could double as a sketch of a pop-punk song:

You better shut it down

That is what you said

That sounded like a threat to me

Her hand-washing of an upcoming Cameron Crowe movie starring Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone came in a free-flowing stream of consciousness rant.

How Amy Pascal Hacked Our Hearts

These sorts of Pascal emails can be broken down into bite-sized, almost zen-like koans. Like from the above email:

It never

Not even once

ever works

Or from another email about the Crowe debacle:

Maybe it's the rain

I feel better

Or this one:

Waves

Surfing

At airport

All ok

Pascal should get another job in Hollywood if Sony does indeed shove her off the plank. Sony isn't the most profitable studio in the industry, but Pascal has made the company hundreds of millions of dollars while also making a number of great films. She has some of the most important people in Hollywood—from producers to directors to actors— devoted to working with her. But if all else fails, she could start a self-help email service that places a short thought in your inbox every day.

"Maybe it's the rain, I feel better" is my personal mantra for fighting off seasonal affective disorder this winter. Maybe Pascal, in the midst of a personal winter, can find comfort in her accidentally beautiful phrasing. And also in the fact that the most consistent revelation out of the Sony hack is that she's really good at her job.

[photos via Getty, illustration by Jim Cooke]

Emails: How UVA Stonewalled Rolling Stone On Rape Story

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Emails: How UVA Stonewalled Rolling Stone On Rape Story

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Jezebel and at least one other news outlet, the University of Virginia has released a series of emails between the school and Rolling Stone. The emails outline how the school dealt with media requests from reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who wrote the magazine's widely read (and, later, very controversial and much-questioned) story about a student named Jackie, who said she was gang raped at a frat party in 2012.

The emails show failures on both sides. UVA made it exceedingly difficult for Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely to get access to anybody who might have had actual knowledge about Jackie's allegations or had spoken to her directly. But in the released emails, neither Erdely nor Rolling Stone's fact-checker ever asked directly whether the school had knowledge of Jackie's claims or believed them to be true. In fact, there's no indication in the emails that Erdely and UVA ever discussed Jackie's case. (They may have done so by phone). The only time Jackie's name appears at all is in an email between Erdely and Emily Renda, a former student who advocates for sexual assault survivors and who is mentioned in Erdely's story. (Interestingly, Renda cc'ed a UVA spokesperson on her emails to Erdely. She was doing so, she said, to get permission for a photo of her to run, but that does mean that the UVA spokesperson did at least see Jackie's name mentioned at one point.)

Erdely could have used Renda or another student as her main character, but went with Jackie. In an email to Renda, she writes: "FYI, I talk about your own assault in the broadest of strokes. Sadly there's was no room in the article for the full contours of your story, in all its detail, which frankly could have been an article unto itself."

Emails: How UVA Stonewalled Rolling Stone On Rape Story

The emails show that Erdely started talking to school administrators as early as September (the story was published in November). From the start, Erdely tried repeatedly to get an interview with Nicole Eramo, the associate Dean of Students who heads the school's Sexual Misconduct Board and is the person to whom Jackie says she reported the rape. The reception was polite but chilly: UVA repeatedly refused to let Erdely talk to Eramo, saying without elaboration that she was "unavailable." She was also not allowed to speak with Claire Kaplan, head of the campus women's center.

Eramo actually emailed Erdely directly at one point in early September, signaling a willingness to talk: "A few of my students mentioned this story to me so I'm really glad you reached out!" But she CC'ed the school's PR department on the email, and soon enough she was suddenly and permanently "unavailable."

Erdely was allowed to speak only to Teresa Sullivan, UVA's president, but only in the presence of a public relations representative. She made it clear that she felt the school was being overly cagey:

As for the presence of other people during the interview: If that's the only way I'll be allowed to talk to President Sullivan, then so be it. But I imagine a university president is fully capable of getting through a phone conversation on her own, without help. My article will obviously mention the way UVA has sought to restrict and pad my access to its administrators.

She also asked repeatedly for statistics about sexual assault on campus, which the school only sent at 8 a.m. on the day she finally interviewed Sullivan, an interview that was rescheduled several times.

As we said, the emails do not show any discussion between Rolling Stone and UVA about Jackie's specific allegations, including any direct questions about whether the school administrators had heard about them or believed them to be true. Shortly before publication, though, a school spokesperson told Erdely they knew she'd been asking questions about a different sexual assault case, one which supposedly took place in Spring 2014. Spokesperson Anthony Paul de Bruyn was able to tell Erdely that one was untrue, something he repeated three separate times, twice with Erdely and once with the RS fact-checker. He wrote on October 9:

One additional matter. As we said during our phone interview, federal privacy laws prohibit us from disclosing details of any sexual assault report, investigation, or hearing. That said, your characterization of the facts of the spring 2014 case you referenced during our interview is incorrect.

When Erdely asked what about the alleged incident was false, de Bruyn couldn't or wouldn't answer: "Due to privacy concerns, we are unable to be more specific about the Spring 2014 case."

Later emails between a Rolling Stone fact-checker and university administrators show that the fact-checking happened about 11 days before the issue hit the stands, seemingly just before the issue closed. While the fact-checker was careful and thorough in asking about the school's policies and procedures regarding sexual assault claims, she also never asked via email whether the school had specific knowledge of Jackie's allegations.

Emails: How UVA Stonewalled Rolling Stone On Rape Story

The entire PDF, with some private contact information redacted, is embedded below. We'll be receiving more documents from UVA in the coming weeks and we'll update you as we receive them.

Know anything else about this story? Email us.

Image via Flickr/Phil Roeder

Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came To Peace With Her

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Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came To Peace With Her

The internet is a mountain, and if you climb that mountain, waiting for you at the top will be the person with whom you need to make peace. I climbed my mountain and a woman named Justine Sacco was there.

One year ago today, Justine Sacco was the global head of communications for the digital media conglomerate IAC. Getting on a plane for a trip to South Africa, to visit family, she published a tweet: "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm White!"

At the time, I was editing Valleywag, Gawker's tech-industry blog. As soon as I saw the tweet, I posted it. I barely needed to write anything to go with it: This woman's job was carefully managing the words of a large tech-media conglomerate, and she'd worded something terribly.

It was a natural post. Twitter disasters are the quickest source of outrage, and outrage is traffic. I didn't think about whether or not I might be ruining Sacco's life. The tweet was a bad tweet, and seeing it would make people feel good and angry—a simple social and emotional transaction that had happened before and would happen again and again. The minimal post set off a 48-hour paroxysm of fury, an eruption of internet vindictiveness.

Sacco was in the air, unable to realize what she'd done or apologize it, and as the tweet garnered retweets and faves and the first drafts of think pieces, eager observers tracked her flight across the Atlantic. A hashtag trended: #HasJustineLandedYet. Several hours later she emerged into an unfathomable modern multimedia hell-nightmare and was quickly and summarily fired.

Nearly as quickly, the righteous Twitter mob moved on. There were other social media morons and marketing employees to hold accountable: Trayvon Martin blackface costumes (338,000 page views), ill-conceived brand tweets, the Auschwitz selfie teen (179,000 page views), racist radio hosts (291,000 page views), and so on.

Some of them were pernicious, some were stupid. Each time, each slap, was the same: If we could only put one more wrongheaded head on a pike, humiliate one more bigoted sorority girl or ignorant Floridian, we could heal this world. Each, next outrage post was the one that would make a difference.

Sacco-related hashtags went dark; blog posts were pushed down the page. The "Justine Sacco" of headlines and links faded into a blur with those racist 12 Years a Slave posters. Remember those? Of course not—and I didn't think much about Justine Sacco after that, either.


Six months later, I got an email. The subject was "Justine Sacco here." I almost had a stroke. Yes, there was a period after "here." Justine Sacco, here. Where? Right here—fuck. There was a ghost speaking directly into my Gmail inbox.

Was Justine Sacco typing to me from the grave? Was she typing from the bottom of a sewage pit? Had she lost everything? I realized suddenly that I felt very guilty about having—I assumed—destroyed another person on what was basically a professional whim. It had only taken half a year to kick in!

She was asking me if I'd be willing to meet for drinks. Putting aside worries of a murder-suicide, I said OK.

Not long after, the two of us shared dinner and margaritas, and I looked up at a face I'd only ever seen on a screen, tweeted and repeated by people who hated that face. I've never been star-struck, but my stomach knotted. Justine Sacco had a face that wasn't made up of pixels.

And, as it turned out, Justine Sacco is not a racist monster. She is a kind and canny woman who threw back cocktails, ate delicately, and spoke expertly about software. She was friendly, very funny, instantly relatable, and very plainly not a cruel sicko. We talked about college, jobs, home, family, and work—she'd recently landed on her feet as the communications boss for a small New York startup, and seemed to be happily rebuilding her career.

I was severely nervous throughout. It was like a first date, only it's not a date and also the person has a really good reason to hate you, and has had half a year to stew over that reason. For about an hour, we talked about anything else; we gossiped about our respective industries, her treatment in the press, and cheery career goals.

Maybe it was the third drink, or months of piling, compressed guilt, but midway through our meal I had to say sorry. An apology to Justine Sacco had been itching at my throat from the moment I saw her. I was afraid to say it—because who knows what else I should be sorry for?—but the itching was worse.

So I did it: I said I was sorry posting her tweet had teleported her into a world of media scrutiny and misery. I'd tried not admitting even to myself that I was sorry, toying with various exculpatory principles like a child's wooden blocks: posting her tweet had been media criticism, industry watchdoggery, social justice, karma.

I'd managed to half-convince myself what I'd done was right, but then I saw her face. How often do you get to say you're sorry to someone you ruined on the internet? I was in a daze.

"I was so naive," she said. She had never expected the tweet would be interpreted the way it was.

To her, the entire thing had been plain:

She was flying to South Africa, where she has family.

This trip, she explained, made her think about how so many westerners consider HIV/AIDS an "African thing," when of course there is a domestic AIDS epidemic.

Her tweet was supposed to mimic—and mock—what an actual racist, ignorant person would say.

Ergo, tweeting that thought would be an ironic statement, a joke, the opposite of what it seemed to say. Not knowing anything about her, I had taken its cluelessness at face value, and hundreds of thousands of people had done the same—instantly hating her because it's easy and thrilling to hate a stranger online.

Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came To Peace With Her

Sacco was not depressed, or even slightly bitter, and said she bore no resentment towards me at all. She'd only wanted to meet up, she explained, because I owed it to her. I should get to know her before ever writing about her again. There was no catch, no setup, no tricks—she just wanted me to consider her a person, and not a meme.

How could someone who tweeted something so stupid be so emotionally perfected? How could she not hate me? She was serene, decent, and despite the continued existence of Twitter, hopeful: "Someday you'll Google me and my LinkedIn will be the first thing that pops up." That part was heartbreaking.


Justine and I stayed in touch, mostly through email and IM, and I consider her a friend. I never thought I'd write (or think much) about her again.

And then, this past October, while sitting distracted and tired at my desk, riffing on the twisted online movement against "social justice warriors" in video games, I wrote a tweet of my own: "Ultimately #GamerGate is reaffirming what we've known to be true for decades: nerds should be constantly shamed and degraded into submission."

Impulsively, and sort of laughing to myself, I added another, saying that we should "Bring Back Bullying" to counter this rising tide of web militancy. It was insincere and over in an instant, to me at least.

But within a few hours, thanks in part to my similarly trigger-happy and trolly editor Max Read, I watched a whirlpool of spleen and choler swelling till it had sucked in most of my energy and attention, along with that of many of my coworkers. Hundreds of people tweeted or emailed me or my editors; blogs and minor internet personalities sprang into action to challenge me. Their demands started with my firing and escalated from there.

Many of these people were disingenuously seizing on my tweet to direct a right-wing campaign against my employers. But it seemed clear that some portion of the outraged mass I was now facing genuinely believed that I was advocating for middle school-style bullying.

How could anyone have misread my irony? It made no sense. The question How could anyone think I was seriously condoning bullying? was exactly as clear in my mind as How could anyone think I was seriously making light of AIDS in Africa? had been in Sacco's.

Structurally, we had made the same sort of joke: Here is what a truly horrible person—a person whose attitudes were entirely opposite from mine and those of the people who know me—would say. You could argue that hers was worse, conjuring a real and pernicious attitude that had resulted in systemic historical oppression and mass death. But the impulse was the same, and so were the reactions.

The internet became unbearable, unreadable for me, a constant ringing and roaring in my ear. There was no point in defending myself; any attempt at explaining my joke would cause those who were gleefully offended by it to redouble their efforts. GamerGate had turned itself into something more despicable and retrograde than I'd ever intended to point out with my little joke, but there was no one who wanted to listen to that. There wasn't any conversation to be had, no objective to reach or conclusion to draw. Smashing a pinata isn't just for the candy—it feels great to swing your arms and feel a thud, and so they'd clobber me no matter what, even when it was clear there wasn't much sport left in it for GamerGate, either.

Twitter is a fast machine that almost begs for misunderstanding and misconstrual—deliberate misreading is its lubricant. The same flatness of affect that can make it such a weird and funny place also makes it a tricky and dangerous one. Jokes are complicated, context is hard. Rage is easy.

That's been a boon for social media platforms and digital publishers, as any blogger will tell you.

But in 2014 context means basically nil, anyway. Every time I say something online, there's a significant chance it will either be interpreted by committee on Twitter, or stumbled over by post-lobotomy brand managers. If, instead of making a facetious statement about bullying, I'd said "Gamergate is a group of shit people," they would've claimed I was making light of feces-borne illness fatalities. Does Adobe stand against dysentery?

I've been asked many times if I would post Sacco's tweet all over again, and I still don't know how to answer. Would I post the tweet again? Sure. Would I post the tweet knowing it's going to cause an incredibly disproportionate personal disaster for Justine Sacco? No. Would I post the tweet knowing it could happen? Now we're in dicey territory, and I'm thinking of ghosts: If you had a face-to-face sit-down with all of the people you've posted about, how many of THOSE would you do again? We're wading through swamps and thorns, here.

Justine Sacco has a PR job she enjoys now, but she deserves the best and biggest PR job, whatever that may be. Give it all to her. In the depths of the Gamergate blues, Sacco IMed me to ask how it was all going, and offered one piece of advice: "Just don't engage." Without any discussion, she knew the only divine truth of the internet: Do nothing. Never tweet. Never apologize. Never say anything at all. Be an inert bundle of molecules and let the world tear itself apart around you.

This is the one thing no one in public relations—pretty much a sham industry anyway, sure—has figured out, or is smart enough to put into practice. When you fuck up on the internet, do nothing. Say nothing. Remain motionless as best you can, no matter how much you want to explain, or argue, or contextualize. Shut up! Just shut up. It's what someone would have said to Sean Parker if he weren't so alienated in a big tumor of tech money.

Anyone working on any endeavor needs someone smart enough to tell them to just shut up, which is why Justine Sacco is the most qualified person in her entire field. She has the expertise of ten lifetimes when it comes to dealing with bad press. She survived a genuine personal crisis. She's unkillable, and smart, and she will tell you to shut up, idiot, it can't get any worse.

Image by Jim Cooke

"I Can Breathe": An Evening with the Men of #ThankYouNYPD

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"I Can Breathe": An Evening with the Men of #ThankYouNYPD

If you wanted to hear both sides of the argument about race relations in America last night, you might have made your way down to City Hall in New York, where pro-NYPD and anti-racism demonstrators yelled at each other across barricades. "You're a fucking racist," one side screamed. "You're a fucking moron," the other side screamed back.

I asked one man wearing a "I Can Breathe" t-shirt what the phrase meant. "If he hadn't resisted arrest," the man said with a shrug, "he could still breathe."

A chant started: Hands up! Don't loot! A demonstrator next to me asked his friend, "Are they saying, 'Don't loot?' or 'Go blue?'" His friend laughed. "Either one, they both work," he said. Over 1,000 people had RSVP'd "Yes" to the listing for the event on Facebook; on Friday night I didn't see more than 50 people on the pro-NYPD side, and half of those were probably reporters.

One man had flown in from Colorado specifically for the event. He brought the "I Can Breathe" t-shirts with him. "I'm not pro-cop, I'm not anti-cop," he told me. "Whenever somebody gets killed there's going to be tension." Another chant started: Don't resist arrest. Don't resist arrest.

"We've got four more years of this," one man, who told me his name was Bill Owens, a retired NYPD detective, said to another. "Three," his friend replied. "Don't make it longer than it already is."

Petulant police union leader Pat Lynch recently complained of the lack of support coming from City Hall: "If they're not going to support us when we need 'em, we'll embarrass them when we can."

"This is what happens when people don't vote," Owens said. I asked him what he meant. "This," he said again, gesturing vaguely towards the opposing protestors, City Hall, New York City, America, etc. "This... progressivism. This whole thing that Obama and De Blasio are on."

"These people are pyschos," John Plant, a retired member of the FDNY, said, referring to the counter-protestors. "At what point does it end?" Owens shook his head. "They're professional agitators. It goes all the way back to George Soros," he told me.

"These people talk about 'white privilege,'" Plant said. "I don't call it white privilege. I call it family privilege. American privilege." He was just gearing up. "You know, a lot of black people don't feel safe in their own neighborhoods. There's a lot of talent in the black community, and it's suppressed. It makes me sad."

"Cops don't want to hurt people," Plant said. "They want to help people."

[Image via AP Images]

Underage Suspect Confesses to Bow and Arrow Dolphin Slaying

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Underage Suspect Confesses to Bow and Arrow Dolphin Slaying

After being shot with a steel-tipped hunting arrow, it took a dolphin recently found dead in an Alabama bayou at least five days to finally succumb to its injuries. Now investigators believe they have caught the culprit, an unnamed juvenile.

According to NOAA, the suspect gave authorities a written confession and the weapon used in the crime, the compound bow seen below.

Underage Suspect Confesses to Bow and Arrow Dolphin Slaying

"I just really can't understand why anyone would cause this kind of harm to something that's harmless to people," an Orange Beach, Alabama official told WALA-TV.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, killing a dolphin is a federal offense punishable by up to a year in jail and $100,000 in fines.

[Images via NOAA Fisheries//h/t NY Daily News]

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