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Once a week for several months, a bot created by a group of artist-hackers purchased one item selected at random from Agora, a Silk Road-style darknet marketplace, and had it delivered to an art gallery in Switzerland. In November, the bot bought a packet of ecstasy pills that were hidden inside a DVD box, and last month, it picked a forged Hungarian passport. Who committed a crime?

Random Darknet Shopper bought plenty of relatively innocuous stuff, too: a pair of Nike Air Yeezy IIs, bootleg Diesel jeans, a stash box that looks like a can of Sprite. Its creators, an art collective called !Mediengruppe Bitnik, allotted it $100 worth of bitcoins every week. The purchases were delivered to Kunst Halle gallery in St. Gallen, where they were displayed as part of a deep web-centric art show.

As Marina Galperina notes at Fast Co. Labs, this isn't the first stunt of its kind. Darius Kazemi, something of a legend amongst bot-makers, began a similar project in 2012, but his creation only trawls the drug-free waters of Amazon.

The possibility that machine intelligence might by happenstance decide to purchase enough MDMA for a really fun night out at the club makes things trickier. Forbes' Ryan Calo ponders the implications.

Are these artists liable for what the bot bought? Maybe. In the United States, at least, criminal law is predominantly statutory. We would have to look to the precise wording of the federal or local law and then apply it to the facts at hand. If, for instance, the law says a person may not knowingly purchase pirated merchandise or drugs, there is an argument that the artists did not violate the law. Whereas if the law says the person may not engage in this behavior recklessly, then the artists may well be found guilty, since they released the bot into an environment where they could be substantially certain some unlawful outcome would occur. I presume they even wanted the bot to yield illegal contraband to make the installation more exciting. Wanting a bad outcome doesn't make it illegal (you cannot wish someone to death), but purposefully leaving the bot in the darknet until it yielded contraband seems hard to distinguish from intent.

All of which is interesting in theory. But even if !Mediengruppe Bitnik couldn't be busted for buying the drugs, it seems like you'd have a pretty clear-cut possession case against whomever is running the gallery.

[h/t Fusion, Image via !Mediengruppe Bitnik]

Last night, the actor John Travolta surprised one lucky fan when he introduced himself to the man, at the gym, where they were alone, together, at three in the morning. "I thought I was at the gym by myself at 3am," the man wrote on Reddit, but he wasn't, because John Travolta was there, too, being friendly, to a male stranger, at the gym, in the dead of night.

The man provided no further details about the interaction, such as why John Travolta approached him at the gym, at three in the morning, where he thought he was alone. One assumes that John Travolta merely wanted to strike up a conversation with this strapping young athlete, while the two were alone, together, at the gym.

What else would happen between two men, one of whom is John Travolta, who don't know each other, except for this night, and only this night?

UPDATE: According to a different Reddit user, the man who met John Travolta, at the gym, where they were alone, together, at 3 a.m., said in a since-deleted comment that "John approached him and asked if he was married, if he had kids, what he did in his spare time, and then started talking about his private jets. He said they talked for a while."

We can't verify if that's what the original comment said because it was deleted, but what else would two men, one of whom is John Travolta, talk to each other about at the gym, where they were alone, together, at 3 a.m.?

[image via Reddit]

It's New Years Eve on an island in Turks and Caicos. Sitting at a small beach bar is a leathery white-haired ghost who sometimes still haunts Johnny Depp. A hairless, tattooed adult boy enters the room.

A source tells US Weekly:

There was an old guy throwing back drinks who said, 'Who the f—k are you?'" one source recalls. In response, the "All Around the World" pop star shot back, "I don't know, who the f—k are you?"

"Apparently satisfied" with Bieber's quick comeback, Richards smiled and said the one thing Justin "Piss Boy" Bieber has never heard before: "You're a man. I respect that." Then he walked away, leaving Bieber to process the strange, foreign words.

It wasn't until a few minutes later, when "another old guy and came over and told Justin, 'Keith Richards wants to have a drink with you,'" that the 71-year-old rock legend's identity was revealed.

Bieber embarrassingly took the invitation as an opportunity to attempt to "bro down" with Richards, who tempered his adorable little expectations by telling the hairless Kia hamster, "Let's get one thing straight. You're a wannabe."

"Justin called it the best night ever," US Weekly reports.

[image via AP]

Chloe G0ins, a model whose accusations against Bill Cosby could be the first to fall within California's statute of limitations, reportedly met with LAPD officers Wednesday to discuss filing criminal charges against the television star.

Goins claims Cosby took her to the Playboy Mansion in 2008, where he allegedly drugged and assaulted her. In previous interviews, she's said she awoke to Cosby sucking on her toes.

FOX reports she spent two hours meeting with detectives, but she may not have a case.

Goins hasn't publicly confirmed the nature of the assault, which would determine whether her allegation is prosecutable, but she said in December she doesn't believe she was "raped or molested," which could doom her case.

In California, prosecutors have ten years to file rape charges, but the state's legal definition of rape requires penetration. The six-year statute of limitations for the lesser offense of sexual battery reportedly ran this summer.

[image via AP]

The Secret Service demoted four execs this week, but according to the New York Times, the agency still hasn't gotten around to securing the White House fence, which the Department of Homeland Security has deemed "one of the biggest dangers to the president's security."

Via the Times:

No action has been taken to improve the fence, which the Department of Homeland Security report says is one of the biggest dangers to the president's security.

The report, which was released on Dec. 18, said that the fence must be "changed as soon as possible." It said that the barrier should be several feet higher and that its horizontal bars should be replaced with vertical ones to make it more difficult to climb.

So what has the agency done to address embarrassing mistakes like this and this and this and this and this? Demote four assistant directors while praising the resulting "change" and "fresh perspectives." Some of the employees are, however, "expected to remain at the Secret Service."

Bright new day for the Secret Service. Definitely getting around to that fence one of these days.

Mark Wahlberg doesn't deserve a pardon, says the woman who prosecuted him for beating up two Vietnamese men in 1989.

"In the 13 years I served in the attorney general's office, I recall only one instance of a defendant violating a civil rights injunction — Mark Wahlberg," former prosecutor Judith Beals wrote this week in the Boston Globe.

I'm glad Mark Wahlberg has turned his life around. I've read that Hoa Trinh has forgiven him. But a public pardon is an extraordinary public act, requiring extraordinary circumstances because it essentially eliminates all effects of having ever been convicted. It is reserved to those who demonstrate "extraordinary contributions to society," requiring "extensive service to others performed, in part, as a means of restoring community and making amends." On this, I am not sold.

First, Wahlberg has never acknowledged the racial nature of his crimes. Even his pardon petition describes his serial pattern of racist violence as a "single episode" that took place while he was "under the influence of alcohol and narcotics." For a community that continues to confront racism and hate crime, we need acknowledgment and leadership, not denial.

Another woman, Kristyn Atwood, was 9 when Wahlberg and his friends threw rocks at her and her friends' heads while they were out on a school field trip.

"When people talk about racism in Boston, I always remember that," Atwood told the Globe. "For him to try to get it overturned and make it seem like it never happened? I don't think that's fair."

[image via AP]

A Cincinnati man is under arrest after he allegedly plotted to bomb the Capitol in support of ISIS, the FBI said Wednesday.

Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, was reportedly arrested after buying two semi-automatic rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition in an undercover FBI sting.

The FBI reportedly began investigating Cornell after he began professing support for ISISTand threatening members of Congress online. Via the Boston Herald:

The FBI was alerted about Cornell in the fall by a confidential informant who told officials the suspect had posted several pro-ISIS statements and videos on social media sites. According to the FBI, Cornell connected with the informant to "make our own group in alliance with the Islamic State here and plan operatives ourselves."

The two allegedly met a number of times to devise a plan to build and detonate pipe bombs at and around the U.S. Capitol, and then shoot employees and officials at the building. According to the criminal complaint, Cornell said he was following the directives of violent jihadists abroad.

He was reportedly charged with attempting to kill a U.S. government officer and possession of a firearm in furtherance of an attempted crime of violence.

[image via AP]

Don't forget: We're trying out a new publishing system where we post less often to the front page of Gawker. To see more Gawker stories, read the Gawker Newsfeed, located here.

If you use an RSS reader, update it with this feed, which will give you all content from all Gawker.com sections: http://newsfeed.gawker.com/rss/vip. We're going to be posting some content directly to the front page—at nights, on weekends, and throughout the day—and sharing that back to the Newsfeed, so you won't miss anything.

Sometime this week, follow lists will be migrated from the main blog to the sub-domains, to give writers a head start on approving commenters.

The news on the disastrous effects of global warming is never good; but it also possesses the special quality of always being even more bad than we might have guessed.

Today: the thirsty sea, which seeks to swallow us all. A new study published in Nature finds that scientists in the past had actually overestimated how much the world's oceans had risen before 1990—by 30%. If you think that is good news, it is not. Because the scientists also found that we had been underestimating how much the seas have risen since 1990—meaning that the swiftness of the modern sea level rise has been much worse than we thought. The AP says that "The current sea level rise rate — which started in 1990 — is 2.5 times faster than it was from 1900 to 1990," meaning that the situation is getting worse much faster than we had previously assumed.

No portion of this study contained good news.

Enjoy your beach house while you still can.

[Photo: Flickr]

With the exception of two categories—Best Picture and Best Song—Selma was shut out of Academy Award nominations. It doesn't matter: As Esther Armah argues below, the film will endure regardless of academy sanction thanks to its "beautiful, complicated" portrayal of history.

A couple of years ago, union-busting retail monster Target expanded into Canada in what they thought would be a bold new phase of international domination. It was not.

Today, the company announced that it is shutting down all 133 of its Canadian stores, laying off more than 17,000 employees, and writing off the whole god damn project as an enormous, outlandish, multibillion-dollar failure.

What went wrong? Target's CEO said only that "After a thorough review of our Canadian performance and careful consideration of the implications of all options, we were unable to find a realistic scenario that would get Target Canada to profitability until at least 2021." For a more illuminating perspective, please re-read this email sent to us by a Target Canada insider last year, detailing the company's botched effort to graft its American business plan onto a new country.

We extend our sympathies to Target's Canadian employees. If it makes you feel any better, Target has problems in America, too.

[Photo: Flickr]

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The correct answer to the question of how future historians will view Barack Obama's presidency 50 years from now is "I have no idea." But this, admittedly, is no fun.

And thinking about how historians will view Obama can be a useful way of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Obama administration. So New York magazine asked 53 historians to "weigh in on Barack Obama's legacy" by answering questions like "What will be seen as Obama's single most significant accomplishment?" and "Will Obama's reputation have improved or declined in 20 years?"

The results were published this week. The case that Obama will (or at least should) have a positive historical legacy was made effectively by Jon Chait and several of the historians polled for the issue. But it would also be entirely possible to make a case that Obama will not be terribly well regarded by future historians. From the left, a case could focus around the failure to adequately punish financial fraudsters and torturers, the entrenchment of several aspects of the Bush/Cheney national security state, and the failure to take sufficient steps to address climate change and increasing financial inequality.

From the right, the argument should be even easier—most of what Obama has done will either result in the entrenchment of policies inconsistent with conservative values or fail to endure.

Which makes Christopher Caldwell's attempt to argue that historians will "eviscerate" Obama such a remarkable achievement. It reads as if he had outtakes from some random Weekly Standard articles lying around, and given the assignment, hastily complied some sentences from them at random while pretending that his argument had something to do with Obama. Laden with falsehoods, remarkable feats of illogic, implausible predictions, non-sequiturs, and some ugly race-baiting, almost every sentence of the Caldwell's argument makes a better case for Obama's positive legacy than the most fawning hagiography could. Hence, we bring you the annotated Christopher Caldwell:

Democrats nominated Barack Obama in 2008 to extract America from George W. Bush's Iraq misadventure and to spread more fairly the proceeds of a quarter-century-old boom for which they credited Bill Clinton.

It is true that Democrats probably give Bill Clinton too much credit for the economic boom of the late '90s. The force of this argument, however, is undermined considerably when one tries to conflate the impressive economic growth of the '90s and the thoroughly mediocre economy of the Bush years into one single "boom."

The Election Eve collapse of Lehman Brothers changed things. It showed that there had been no boom at all, only a multitrillion-dollar real-estate debauch that Clinton's and Bush's affordable-housing mandates had set in motion.

The idea that "affordable-housing mandates" were the primary cause of the financial collapse is utter (and thoroughly debunked) horseshit. Nothing about the Community Reinvestment Act required financial institutions not only make huge numbers of risky and/or fraudulent loans, securitize these loans, and then represent extremely high-risk bonds as blue-chip investments.

It also showed how fast historians' likely rankings of presidents can shift: Clinton went from above average to below average, Bush from low to rock bottom.

The three major surveys of historians conducted after 2008—C-SPAN in 2009, Siena College in 2010, and United States Presidency Centre in 2011—all rank Clinton above average, the former two substantially above. George W. Bush's reputation has indeed gone from bad to worse, so a rare accurate statement from Caldwell, albeit one backing up the trite point that presidential reputations change over time.

Obama may wind up the most consequential of the three baby-boom presidents. He expanded certain Bush ­policies — Detroit bailouts, internet surveillance, drone strikes —

Obama can (and should) certainly be criticized for marinating some Bush-era surveillance policies, but to say he "expanded" them is very hard to defend. Most importantly, unlike Bush Obama has never claimed an inherent authority under Article II to conduct warrantless searches without congressional authorization.

We can say that Obama expanded the Detroit bailouts, I suppose, but given their success it's hard to see how this will negatively affect Obama's legacy. Drones, I will concede to Caldwell.

and cleaned up after others.

Even if we concede that Obama didn't do enough, things like "winding down the Iraq fiasco" and "ending torture" deserve more than a quick "yadda-yadda."

We will not know for years whether Obama's big deficits risked a future depression to avoid a present one,

Given that Obama's "big deficits"—which were almost certainly too small given the scale of the economic catastrophe Obama inherited— have vanished, I think we can be very confident that they did not cause another depression.

or whether the respite he offered from "humanitarian invasions" made the country safer.

Personally, I'm willing to say that offering a "respite" from invading countries that pose no threat to the United States had not made the country less safe.

Right now, both look like significant achievements. Yet there is a reason the president's approval ratings have fallen, in much of the country, to Nixonian lows. Even his best-functioning policies have come at a steep price in damaged institutions, leaving the country less united, less democratic, and less free.

Obama is a divider, not a uniter! David Broder lives. I must concede, however, that the freedom of Americans to die if they cannot afford health insurance has been substantially undermined by the Obama administration.

Health-care reform and gay marriage are often spoken of as the core of Obama's legacy.

It seems rather odd to say that same-sex marriage—on which Obama's role is limited to taking a belated position in favor and appointing Supreme Court justices who will, like virtually any Democratic nominee in 2015, vote in favor of making it a constitutional right—will be "central" to Obama's legacy, but in fairness presidents to tend to get excessive credit for what happens under their watch.

That is a mistake. Policies are not always legacies, even if they endure, and there is reason to believe these will not. The more people learn about Obamacare, the less they like it

This is pretty much an inversion of the truth. The Affordable Care Act is unpopular in the abstract but its individual provisions are popular, and public ignorance of the content of the legislation remains very high. Also highly relevant to the question of whether the ACA will "endure" is the fact that repealing it is even less popular than the ACA itself. Short-term public opinion will not determine whether the ACA survives.

— its popularity is still falling, to a record low of 37 percent in November. Thirty states have voted to ban gay marriage,

So Caldwell bases his belief that the ACA will not endure on public opinion surveys, and then does not hesitate at all before declaring that same-sex marriage will not endure while ignoring the remarkable public shift in favor of same-sex marriage. The apparent assumption that judicial opinions favoring same-sex marriage will not endure is also almost certainly wrong, and his belief that marriage discrimination will be restored after it is ruled unconstitutional by a majority-Republican Supreme Court later this year is implausible in the extreme.

and almost everywhere it survives by judicial diktat.

I note that Caldwell uses the phrase "judicial diktat" in the same goddamned paragraph in which he mentions the ACA but fails to account the ongoing war being waged by conservative litigators in the service of denying health insurance to as many people as possible.

These are, however, typical Obama achievements. They are triumphs of tactics, not consensus-building.

The idea Barack Obama invented political conflict is so precious. Don't reactionaries even read their Carl Schmitt anymore?

Obamacare involved quid pro quos (the "Cornhusker Kickback,"

The fact seems to have been missed by conservative pundits and Supreme Court justices who apparently get their news largely from third-tier talk radio wingnuts, but the "Cornhusker Kickback" is not in fact part of the ACA.

the "Louisiana Purchase," etc.)

The Medicaid concessions given to Louisiana did at least survive in the final bill. Alas, the idea that Barack Obama invented the idea of "giving minor concessions to legislators to secure their votes" remains risible. It seems unlikely that future historians will base their evaluations of Obama on his willingness to use tactics used by pretty much every democratic legislature to pass every statute ever.

that passed into Capitol Hill lore, accounting and parliamentary tricks to render the bill unfilibusterable,

Heavens to Betsy – a bill was allowed to pass into law with only a 60% supermajority in the Senate! Surely historians will never forgive this unprecedented abrogation of democratic values!

and a pure party-line vote in the Senate.

Well, yes. But since the Republican congressional leadership announced ex ante that they would not cooperate to pass any legislative achievements ex ante, this is essentially a tautology – it was either a party-line vote, or no legislative achievements.

You can call it normal politics, but Medicare did not pass that way.

If the Republican Party of 1965 ever comes back, then the comparison with Medicare would actually be relevant. The fact that Obama did not get Republican support for the ACA will be about as relevant to future historians as the fact that he was unable to secure the support of any Whigs or Know-Nothings.

Gay marriage has meant Cultural Revolution–style

Yes, I'm afraid Caldwell is about to compare someone losing their job and someone being criticized for expressing bigoted views to a dictator slaughtering more than a million people. (When the AEI fired David Frum for not taking the party line on the ACA, I wonder if this was more like the Nazi death camps or Stalin's forced famines.) As for the pervasive discrimination in marriage and employment that gays and lesbians have suffered – hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking a whole lot of queer eggs.

bullying of dissenters (notoriously, Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty

I'm sure that historians evaluating on Obama's legacy will focus on someone briefly being suspended by a forgotten reality show...

and the Mozilla founder Brendan Eich).

...just as I'm sure that historians evaluating on Obama's legacy will focus on a rich guy resigning from a company after a modest pressure campaign because he expressed views inconsistent with the company's values and/or interests.

You can call this normal politics, too, but the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not pass that way.

This is just dumbfounding. First, it's worth nothing that LBJ had to make all kinds of concessions to break the filibuster and get the Civil Rights Act passed, although Caldwell has just told us that this constitutes virtually unprecedented behavior will ensure a bill's impermanence. As for the apparent assumptions that the Civil Rights Act did not involve major political conflict, or that there was no social sanction for expressing white supremacist views in the wake of the Civil Rights Act – to state these arguments is to refute them.

Obama's legacy is one of means, not ends.

If there's anything that characterizes those recognized as the greatest presidents, like Lincoln and FDR, it's their unwillingness to challenge existing institutional practices. In addition, this argument makes less than no sense. Obama isn't acting as an executive to achieve desired ends? He just issues executive orders for the hell of it? Or perhaps it's not a wild coincidence that his executive action on immigration and the environment and LBGT rights mirrors his legislative agenda.

He has laid the groundwork for a political order less answerable to voters. His delay of the Obamacare employer mandate by fiat, his provision of working papers to immigrants by executive order — these are not applications of old tricks but dangerous constitutional innovations.

1. These actions were not remotely unprecedented, and
2. it's unclear to me how these actions make the "political order less answerable to voters." Surely routine Republican filibusters and generally unwillingness to make government function do more to undermine electoral accountability than executive orders issues by the public official with the closest of any to a national electoral mandate.

After last fall's electoral rout, the president claimed to have "heard" (presumably to speak on behalf of) the two-thirds of people who didn't vote.

And, indeed, the fact that Republican success at the ballot box is inversely correlated with voter turnout seems worthy of mention.

And he has forged a partnership with the country's rich — not the high-earning professionals calumniated in populist oratory (including his own) but the really existing Silicon Valley and Wall Street plutocracy.

Before Barack Obama wealthy individuals had no influence on American politics and I'm sure they never will again. It's good that Obama is term limited, because before long I fear that the Republican Party might actually nominate a financial industry plutocrat as its presidential candidate.

For a generation, there has been too much private wealth in politics; Obama's innovation has been to bring private wealth into government. He has (with others' help, certainly) begun to emancipate the presidency from Congress's control of the budget. In 2013, JPMorgan Chase, Obama's most important early contributor, paid the Justice Department about $20 billion in fines (involving no high-level prosecutions), all of it redeployable by the administration.

Yes, the Obama administration's unprecedented reaching of legal settlements with companies truly represents a new age in American government. And who knows what power will come from fines that constitute a miniscule fraction of the federal budget?

Federal stimulus funds incentivized states to approve Bill Gates's Common Core curriculum.

Why, now that Obama has set a new precedent by placing conditions on federal spending, we might end up with a national drinking age! If only a man like Ronald Reagan were in the White House, this never would have happened.

Michael Bloomberg's Young Men's Initiative, a private endeavor, has been adopted with modifications by the White House.

Of all the things that historians will use to evaluate Obama's legacy, surely his call for private philanthropies to help children develop their full potential will not be one of them. As to what on earth is supposed to be wrong with this…I'm afraid I don't speak wingnut crank.

Under the nation's first black president, race relations regressed.

Oh, Jesus.

At times maladroit (insulting a police officer for arresting his friend Henry Louis Gates, unaware the cop was an expert on racial profiling),

Oh, well, if the cop was an "expert in racial profiling" this surely settles the question.

at times unlucky (calling anger over the non-­indictment of Darren Wilson ­"understandable" as rioters torched Ferguson, Missouri, on split screen), at times ethnocentric (Eric Holder's arguments on behalf of "my people"),

If you're not immersed enough in the fever swamps to be aware of what Caldwell is (to give the charitable interpretation) pretending to be offended by, Holder once observed that paranoid conspiracy theories about the New Black Panthers—in 2011!— were offensive to the memories of the people of all races who "put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people" during the voting rights struggles of the 60s. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be offended by—African-Americans were systemically disenfranchised, and Holder is African-American. I think to get it you have to be part of a political movement that would, say, rehabilitate the legal theories of the antebellum slave power to gut the Voting Rights Act.

the administration alienated sympathetic whites. Mitt Romney won three of five white votes in 2012, and exit polls from 2014 show this to be a floor rather than a ceiling.

Barack Obama getting two of 5 white votes proves that he's a racially divisive figure; Mitt Romney getting fewer than one out of 10 African-American votes and fewer than 3 out of 10 Hispanic- and Asian-American votes proves that he's racially inclusive. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Obama may be remembered the way Republican California governor Pete Wilson was after he backed the anti-immigration Proposition 187 in 1994—as one who benefited personally from ethnic polarization but cost his party and his country dearly by it.

Right, if we assume that only white voters really count, and old and disgusting idea. Caldwell may also want to consider the possibility that demographic changes do not affect Wilson's coalition and Obama's coalition in precisely the same way.

Obama's reputation will also have something in common with that of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who believed history and technology have a direction and that his job was to align his country with it, no matter how illogical or undesirable it might appear to his countrymen.

There are words here, but I can't say they generate a great deal of meaning.

Like Gorbachev, Obama will be esteemed in certain quarters a generation from now, but probably more by foreigners than fellow citizens, and more by his country's enemies than its friends.

If you're one of the majority of the American electorate who supported Obama in 2008 and/or 2012, you're un-American, and possibly a traitor. Also, apparently we're supposed to see that the Soviet Union was broadly popular and was supposed to live forever, and anyone who thought otherwise was some sort of nutty technological determinist.

Unless the typical American historian fifty years from now gets their doctorate from Beck University, I can't say I see Caldwell's view of Obama's legacy being very influential.

Scott Lemieux is an assistant professor of political science at the College of Saint Rose. He contributes to Lawyers, Guns, and Money, The Guardian, and The Week.

Isaac Mizrahi, fashion designer and Celebrity Jeopardy runner-up, recently appeared on QVC to promote some new designs that, according to QVC host Shawn Killinger, look just like the Earth as viewed from a bazillion miles away on the planet Moon.

What the fuck? Mizrahi's not about to let that one go. "From the planet Moon. From the planet Moon" he repeats, derisively.

"Isn't the moon a star?" Killinger "corrects" herself. And that's when Mizrahi shuts her down with some cold, hard astronomy facts and we all move on with our lives.

Just kidding! The bad and uncomfortable conversation only gets worse and more uncomfortable.

"No, the moon is a planet, darling," Mizrahi replies, suddenly changing his original position to one that is completely wrong.

"The sun is a star! Is the moon really a planet? Isn't the sun a star? The sun is a star!" Killinger decides, somehow managing to become even wronger.

"I don't know what the sun is," Mizrahi admits. Oh. Oh no.

"The moon is not a planet! I KNEW IT!" Treacy is shouting now, as she moves in to finish off what's left of the wounded, rapidly expiring body of Science. "I KNEW IT! You were trying to take me down that road..."

This Hindenburg of an argument is finally over, and the loser is all of us. We are all this unfortunate model, hiding our faces in disbelief at the catastrophe that has unfolded:

[h/t Daily Mail]

From time to time we publish letters from death row inmates. Today, we bring you a letter from Jeffrey Wogenstahl, who is scheduled to be executed by the state of Ohio in January of 2016.

Jeffrey Wogenstahl was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1991 kidnapping and murder of Amber Garrett, a ten-year-old girl from Harrison, Ohio. A court's recap of the case can be seen here.

We publish letters from death row inmates not to re-litigate their cases, or to take a position on their guilt or innocence, but to give a voice to a group of people who are rarely heard from. The following letter is Wogenstahl's response to our request for his thoughts, sent to us via an email system accessible to prison inmates.

Mr. Nolan,

The following is in response to your inquires about death row and myself: This ordeal started on the morning of November 24, 1991. The police knocked on my apartment door investigating a missing persons report. I volunteered to help assistant them in any way I could and gave full permission for them to search my apartment. I had nothing to hide. Unfortunately they did find half a joint and since I was on parole I was incarcerated on parole violation. It was pure stupidity on my part getting high (pot) while still on parole. I was gave 2 years by the parole board for having marijuana in my apartment.

A year later, while still serving the parole violation, I was indicted for murder. My trial was literally a complete joke. My lawyer was working for prosecutor joe deters, I was not gave ANY investigators, and defense experts, or ANY kind of means to prepare a defense. The jury was only informed on what the prosecutors presented and nothing by my attornies. The jury was prohibited from seeing scientific test results that showed it was NOT me who committed the murder. My trial consisted of perjured testimony, false testimony, the prosecution knew testimony was perjured, they with held favorable evidence, and made totally improper comments to the jury. In NO WAY did I receive a fair trial. All of this is clearly substantianted by court records.

Needless to say, I was convicted and sentenced to death for a crime I did NOT do. My first ten years on death row were spent learning the law and filing numerous pro se documents as I did have 24 hours a day to go through my trial transcript and understand how the appeal system works. The lawyers appointed usually had as many as 10 death row clients and were totally overworked with limited finances to do your appeals. The appeals decides who gets executed and who may be lucky enough to get off death row or be granted a new trial. If I hadn't spent all those years learning the law and filing various documents, I would have been executed many years ago.

I don't fear dying at all. Every human will die one day. I only hope that I will one day be allowed a FAIR TRIAL and have the jury see ALL the evidence. Recently I have obtained a crime scene investigator/expert who has reached the conclusion it was NOT me. All this is presently being litigated in the courts. The problem is I wasn't afforded lawyers who actually cared about the truth until after I was gave an execution date. This is very common during death penalty appeals. Of course very few even attempt to understand the appellate procedures or help assist their lawyers. I personally did NOT trust my lawyers with my life. My trial lawyers are the reason I'm on death row.

The psychological aspect of having a death sentence can be complicated. Personally I will NEVER allow them to incarcerate my mind or take my peace of mind. If it's my fate that I am to be murdered by the State of Ohio I go in complete peace with everyone and everything. After 23 years on death row for something I didn't do, my death is my freedom. It would just be a shame if the truth isn't told. The truth has NOT been told. What I really don't understand is that if the state is so conviced I committed the murder, why are they so afraid of allowing me a new trial where the jury can be shown ALL THE EVIDENCE?! My past is not one of being a model citizen whatsoever. I have convictions for robbery and burglary and have served many years in prison. However, nothing even remotely close to what I've been convicted of.

I grew up in a decent family in the subarbs of Cinncinati, Ohio. The Mt. Healthy and Northgate areas. I went in the army when I was 17 and should have stayed there. I don't consider myself a "religious" man but I am a spiritual person. My daily routine is spent within my prison cell. I don't leave it except for my daily shower and to use the kiosk. This is by my own choice as I prefer to be left alone. Inside this cell is MY world and while they have my body locked up, they will NEVER control my mind. The vast majority of the guys around me can't handle being in their cells 23 hours a day. They have to participate in prison socializing. That's their choice as it's mine to stay in my cell and don't want to be bothered.

I occupy my time quite literally within my mind. Whether I'm painting or just looking out the window, my mind is free to go anywhere. I am fortunate enough to have a very special friend and we're in contact on a daily basis. As strange as it sounds, being on death row all these years has actually been benificial for me. I've finally "grown up" and learned to show consideration to those who help me. To be considerate of others' feelings and not just mine. I've also learned to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. Small things like watching a mother bird feed her young, enjoy a breath of fresh air containg the smell of flowers, just staring up at the sky and watching the clouds go by. All so very simple things of life I never appreciated my entire life. Truth is, very few on the outside do either.

I know in my heart I'm a good person and that means a lot. Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion but sometimes it's simply not based on all the facts. I think the majority of people belive that if a person is convicted of a crime they must be guilty. Unfortunately that logic is not correct all the time. Of course what politician or government official would acknowledge there is even a slight chance an innocent person could be executed? Not even in the hypothetical context would they admit that!! It's not politically correct nor do proponents of the death penalty ever want to even consider it!!! It's always, "the appeals would prevent an innocent person from ever being executed" mentality!! It does NOT always work like that. The judicial system is far to often for those who can afford it. I only wish the blood thirsty public (of Ohio) would take the time to be better educated on the truth of the entire judicial system and not just what the politicians tell them. So whatever is going to happen, will. If anyone who might read this is interested, please visit jeffrey wogenstahl.com where the legal aspects of my joke of a trial are shown and supported by court documents. Thank You.

Sincerely, Jeff

The full archive of our "Letters From Death Row" series can be found here.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Remember: Gawker is trying out a new publishing system where we post less often to the front page. Read about the change here. Happening elsewhere: Defamer Taylor Swift Was Getting Like 100 Texts When She Saw Harry Styles Sorry | Newsfeed Advice Columnist Listened to Her Son's Impressive Fucking for 4 Minutes | Fortress America Gun Nuts Simulate Paris Shooting, Get Shot By Simulated Terrorists

Science of Us, the New York Magazine blog that has previously taken us into the minds of a horse fucker and a 58-year-old virgin, published an interview today with an 18-year-old who claims to be in a sexual relationship with her father. They are also engaged to be married!

"Genetic Sexual Attraction" (GSA), explains Science of Us, is the term for "intense romantic and sexual feelings" felt by some after reuniting with an estranged biological relative. According to The Guardian, GSA occurs in 50 percent of cases where estranged biological relatives meet again as adults, which sounds absolutely crazy and I refuse to believe it.

Nevertheless, it (allegedly) happened to these two lovebirds. The interviewee's father got in touch with her when she was 17, after having zero contact with her since she was five. Here she is on how they reignited their relationship:

My mom said that he didn't want to have anything to do with me. But she was very controlling and kept me under Fort Knox–like conditions. She's had my Facebook password since I've had an account. One day, after I got my Facebook privileges back, he added me as a friend. At first, I figured it was my grandpa because they have very similar names. I thought, Maybe grandpa got techy?

She says she didn't date very much when she was a (younger) teenager, but the little dating experience she had was, hmm, troubling:

In fifth grade I dated a boy for two years. But one night he got drunk and had sex with a girl who ended up pregnant. It fucked everything up. I told him he had to go and be with this girl and take care of the kid.

She ended up falling asleep with a cigarette in her mouth and their house burned down, so she left town with the kid and never came back. I supported him through that and we ended up half-ass dating, then my mom found letters we had written to each other about making out. She said things were getting too serious and sexual and took me out of class and homeschooled me for a while.

Did she feel an instant attraction upon meeting her father? Ah, funny you ask—she did!:

It was so weird and confusing. I was seeing my dad for the first time in forever but it was also like, He's so good-looking! And then I was like,What the hell are you thinking? What is wrong with you? I saw him as my dad but then also part of me was like, I'm meeting this guy who I have been talking to over the internet and really connecting with and I find him attractive.

When they finally reunited, she stayed with him for five days. On the first two nights, he slept on the couch; on the third night they both slept on the floor, she with her head on his chest:

The fourth night rolls around and we ended up on the floor again. This time we actually cuddled. When he woke up, we were spooning. I didn't know this at the time but later, after we admitted our feelings, he told me he had had "morning wood" and had gone to fix it.

(She explains he just went to the bathroom to pee.) She also lost her virginity to him:

There's a reason I lost my virginity to him — because I'd never felt comfortable with any other man. It was insanely sensual. It lasted for about an hour and there was a lot of foreplay. We both had orgasms. We are so similar so it's so easy to sexually please each other. For example, we both hate neck-biting. I've never been in a more passionate, loving, fulfilling situation.

Here she is on being bullied:

Mostly my weight and the fact that I wasn't pretty enough. But when my dad and I started dating I became more confident, and it's funny how much more attractive that makes you feel.

The father and daughter are currently engaged to be married (her dress will be black):

Yes. I want it to represent our uniqueness, so we aren't doing a white wedding. The color scheme is black and purple, and we are both going to wear Converse tennis shoes. He's wearing jeans and a nice dress shirt. He says he's not wearing a bow tie, but it's my wedding and I am saying that he is.

On whether they will have kids together or adopt:

We'll have kids together

(!!) Of course, that leads to the question of whether she fears potential genetic problems:

Nope.

Nope!

I wouldn't risk having a kid if I thought it would be harmful. I've done my research. Everybody thinks that kids born in incestuous relationships will definitely have genetic problems, but that's not true. That happens when there's years of inbreeding, like with the royal family. Incest has been around as long as humans have. Everybody just needs to deal with it as long as nobody is getting hurt or getting pressured or forced.

On whether they'll tell their kids that their father is also their grandfather:

We've decided that most likely we won't. I don't want to give them any problems.

And, of course, on whether her father is physically her type:

Definitely. He's alternative and has piercings and tattoos.

As always, please head over to Science of Us and read the whole thing.

[image credit: Shutterstock]

If someone "says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch," [Pope Francis] joked.

Pope's momma so fat they send up white smoke when she puts her fork down.

Pope's momma so ugly they switched back to Latin Mass so they don't have to turn around and look at her.

Pope's momma smells so bad when she walks into church they have to light all the candles at once.

Pope's momma so fat Jesus ran out of fishes.

Pope's momma so fat when he said he wasn't gonna wear the red pope shoes she said "What's shoes?"

Pope's momma so dumb she went to the Vatican tombs looking for Malcolm X.

Pope's momma so dumb she asked for a papal bull at Sizzler.

Pope's momma so fat they give her a poker chip instead of a communion wafer.

Pope's momma so ugly they baptized her with Holy Bondo.

Pope's momma's feet stink so bad Jesus stood 10 yards off with a pressure washer.

Pope's momma so broke she stole hubcaps off the Popemobile.

Pope's momma so dumb she renounced dogma because of her pet allergies.

Pope's momma so fat the bathroom scale just said "HIGH MASS."

Pope's momma drank so much at communion Jesus got anemia.

Pope's momma so dumb she went on Fandango and tried to buy tickets to Vatican II.

[Photo illustration by Jim Cooke, original photos via Getty]

Since his arrest in 2013, Ross Ulbricht has remained the chief suspect behind the Silk Road, a sweeping and sophisticated online drug market. But today in court, his defense dropped a shocker: they claimed the market's actual kingpin was Mark Karpeles, who is infamous for running the world's biggest bitcoin operation into the ground before he turned 29.

According to Motherboard, Ulbricht's team says their client was the victim of a set up:

"We have the name of the real mastermind and it's not Ulbricht," Joshua Dratel, Ulbricht's lawyer, said in court today. He plans to argue that Karpeles framed Ulbricht.

[...]

"[Silk Road] would be a device for leveraging the value of Bitcoin, and if he could create a site independent of Bitcoin, you could control the value of Bitcoin," Dratel said, reading from [DHS Agent Jared] DerYeghiayan's emails.

DerYeghiayan believed his evidence was so strong that he even drafted a search warrant for Karpeles's email in May of 2013.

This allegation is the second enormous controversy that the Japan-based Karpeles has been recently embroiled in; just last year, he confessed to losing a small fortune in bitcoin after mismanaging (or defrauding) the notorious Mt. Gox exchange into oblivion. To be caught in an underground global drug conspiracy on top of losing a lot of money that wasn't his would be a twist pulled from a Michael Mann picture. Maybe.

The crux of Ulbircht's defense —who was the real DPR?—has finally been unveiled. Ulbricht let out a rare smile when it finally happened.

— Patrick O'Neill (@HowellONeill) January 15, 2015

I don't buy it. If Mt. Gox's CEO was the one running Silk Road it would have imploded spectacularly about one month after it launched.

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) January 15, 2015

@AdrianChen this is going to make a terrible movie.

— d a banks (@DA_Banks) January 15, 2015