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Remember the attractive teen who got arrested last November for allegedly dealing prescription drugs? (Fuck what you heard: her mugshot was cute.) Well, "mugshot dime" Alysa Bathrick was picked up for a second time last week.

Bathrick, 18, was charged Friday with shoplifting in Raleigh, N.C., ABC 11 reports. The alleged theft occurred January 26. Her new mugshots, above, are still cute, but they lack the insouciant charm and don't-give-a-fuck eyebrow game of her previous work.

Cute Mugshot Girl was cocky about her last arrest, tweeting her own booking photo and telling people on Twitter she'd been busted for "Xanax, homie." This time, Bathrick hasn't said anything about her arrest online, just retweeted this:

that moment when youre calling wake county detention trying to bail out @_ahleesah and she's already out lmfao

— bacon and eggs (@daisypooH8syou) March 4, 2015

[h/t Uproxx, Photos via Wake County]

At an aggressively loud party a few weeks ago, as the lights from a rainbow disco ball flashed directly into my eyes, I thought about the float tank. A skinny white DJ bounced along to an EDM remix of a well-known pop song, but nestled behind my forehead was serenity and peace. I stayed for one drink and got the fuck out, hustling through the streets of New York with the image of capsuled meditation dancing in my brain. If I tried to imagine it hard enough, I was floating like a baby in the womb.

In the beginning of January, I decided to try "floating," the act of purposely isolating oneself in a coffin-like tank filled with epsom salt water for upwards of sixty minutes. Given my punishing claustrophobia, this was likely a terrible idea. Add my aversion to hippie shit meant to cleanse my aura or whatever, even more so.

My first appointment, I panicked and canceled. I delayed making another by an entire month. I thought about the tank day—written in enormous blue letters in my planner F L O A T T A N K—with equal humiliation and fear. I had signed up to be closed into a tank from which I may never emerge. The salt would surely kill me. The tank lock would malfunction and I would die there in ten inches of water. My family would have to bury me in a cereal box because I'd have shriveled up to the size of a baby alligator.

I had learned about isolation tanks, just like everyone will at one point in their lives, through a spontaneous encounter with a float spa in North Philly, a location on the same street as a Dos Funny Frogs cleaning service and a local pizza shop with juicy calzones. I sent my editor an email, "You ever heard of this?" with the link to the float spa. For the record, that was in October—it's incredible what fear can do to our abilities to actually perform. In an attempt to bring my other friends into the fold, I told them about this experiment, maybe they'd like to join me? In response, one friend pulled up a clip from the 1980 film Altered States where a scientist couple, who had designed their own float tanks as an experiment, lose their fucking minds. Their bodies turning into sinewy inside-out versions of themselves, and all their muscles are pink-red as they spontaneously burst into flames.

No, thank you.

When I finally got around to fulfilling my editor's request and signing up to for a float, it was a Thursday in January and I felt like shit. I sometimes have trouble sleeping and the previous night I had been unable to close my eyes for more than thirty minutes; I was miserable but sedated by the time I was ready to go. This was the best state of mind I could have been in if I was going to be stuffed into a plastic capsule for an hour.

The place that I'd chosen to go to was, incongruously, on 34th Street. I had thought perhaps wrongly that businesses that housed "float spas" were reserved for the more genteel or Berkeley-ified areas of New York City. I expected to find one in Williamsburg or the East Village or Park Slope. On the train up to 34th Street, I reached into my jacket pocket where I found an old Mars Bar. I stuffed it into my face unceremoniously and grumbled at the early afternoon subway crowd. Winter had rendered me a stodgy old man.

I had done no real research on floating outside of google image searching "float tank" and panicking, so when I arrived at the Aspire Health Center and heard Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" playing over the speakers, I interpreted it as a very bad sign. Inside the center, there were a few pieces of gym equipment, two people running on treadmills, and a man and woman in different states of catatonia sitting in wheelchairs. Aspire's slogan is "Feel better, live better, be better." When the dusty Mars Bar started hitting the center of my gut, I hoped that the float would, at the least, help me live better.

Rana Seabrook, the manager of the float spa, greeted me wearing a psychedelic rainbow dress, her hair dyed the color of a summertime popsicle. After a warm introduction, she led me up a flight of carpeted stairs to my new alien home. Seabrook explained that she'd worked at the health center in a different capacity before she'd begun floating, which she'd done as a relief when she was pregnant. She loved it so much that she was given full charge of the float spa.

We reached a door, which Seabrook pushed open gently into what felt like an alternate universe. The light glowed purple and blue, a calming aura in the closed space. A wall of tan-wood lockers. A bathroom. A shower. A clean carpet and some towels, and a candle flickering in the soft darkness. Seabrook casually explained to me what I was expected to do: put myself into the tank, press a button to my left, wait for the lid of the tank to lower, and then float. I asked her what I was supposed to think about while I was floating and she explained that I could attempt to meditate, though the first float would always be spent trying to figure out exactly how to float. Meditation would come later.

I was allowed to use earplugs if I wanted, to keep water out of my ears. I could use a waterproof neck pillow. If I really needed to, like if I started panicking and yelling for mercy, I could press the button to my left that raised the ceiling of the tank and just float out in the open, like I was in some sort of salt-based hot tub. Seabrook left me to my devices and shut the door behind her.

I tried to lock the door but it wouldn't lock. I suppose I would be left to die at the hands of an unhinged float spa murderer. I quickly rinsed my body (protocol) and stood defiant and naked in front of the vehicle of my doom, a pile of my clothes crushed together at my feet.

Have you ever seen a picture of a parasaurolophus? They were dinosaurs with uncomfortable protruding long knobs that came out the back of their heads. When they opened their mouths, they looked like someone was pulling the long knob, as if they were puppets. The gaping wet pool of the float spa and its melted plastic lid made me think I was about to be swallowed by a dinosaur. No problem. Or maybe some sort of vaginal mouth. Or a clam. It didn't matter. The room itself was dimly lit in shades of purple and blue, which contributed to a sense of unease, feeling as if I'd walked into a nightclub with no dancing and no people.

I put in ear plugs, grabbed the neck pillow, and stepped into the gaping mouthhole. As I laid flat, I could feel the dense water swill around me. My naked body was floating. Not unlike a spa, I thought. Just like hanging out in a hot tub.

There were two buttons to my left. A red one and a black one, both cartoonishly large, like they could ignite a booby trap set by Wile E. Coyote. I assumed, rightly, that the red one was to be used in emergencies and in the event that I needed to lift the float lid. The black button just turned the lights off. Great button. I went for the red and watched as the rounded lid closed me into my personal hell.

The darkness was almost pure, only a sliver of light leaked in through the crack in the door, and everything in my coffin was initially very silent. When I'd settled into floating, I began to hear ambient sound outside of the float room—people running on treadmills, a pop song that I couldn't determine quavering through the atmosphere, a few people talking like several Charlie Brown teachers in a faraway place. I tried to block out all sound, if I could.

The water was slimy and viscous to the touch, and the air was damp and smelled of nothing, like a spa. The tank was a swampy temperature, slightly humid, which occasionally made it hard to breathe. My body, lousy with fear, reached out each limb and finger and toe to feel the outside edges of the tank, getting acclimated to my new plastic shell. If this was to be home for the next hour, I had to know what I was working with.

I started counting up silently without even realizing it. I had my eyes closed and felt salt crawling up and around my body very acutely. My earplugs fell out. I had kept my eyes closed so that I knew not to think about how close the roof of the tank was to my face—when I reached up, my fingertips could stroke the slick plastic—and made a conscious plan to not open them until the whole ordeal was over.

I took deep breaths, whispering inaudibly that everything was okay. Everything around me was black. Behind my head was a very narrow glimmer of auric light, which was my one signal that I was still firmly planted on this earth and not somewhere floating in space.

The feeling of being inside a flotation tank is not unlike getting inside a sleeping bag and zipping it up above your head. Or being put into a refrigerator box and having someone sit on top of it. Or getting closed into a closet by a maleficent trickster. The instinct to scream, "Let me out! Let me out! Stop fucking around!" is persistent, but the only person who is fucking with you is yourself. Before I'd made it into the tank, Seabrook had told me that the first time floating would be a lot of me trying to figure out what my body was supposed to do and the second time would be more about actual meditation. Quietly I swore that there would never be a second time, so none of what she said really mattered.

Inside, time passed very, very slowly. Eyes closed, in total darkness, I fought the urge to be aware. I moved my fingers around in the water and recognized my body's weightlessness for the first time. I wiggled my toes and craned my neck back. There was nothing holding me up except salt and there was no sound except for my breathing. It was warm in the plastic clamshell. I instinctively allowed myself to start letting go, initially from boredom and then from necessity.

Still with my eyes closed tightly, I began to think about hurt that I'd felt or trauma that I was holding on to. Like one would in meditation, I tried to push those feelings out of my head and just repeat the same mantra over and over. Occasionally, I would become aware of the salt in my ears or the steam in the tank, which was sometimes a little much to bear. After what felt like a half hour, but could have been longer or shorter, I decided to open the lid for a little fresh air. This immediately felt like a mistake when I realized now I knew where I was and was even more conscious that I was willingly trapping myself.

I closed it again, but this time the floating was easier. I allowed myself to think less and process more. I kept repeating the mantra. And then the strangest thing happened, a thing that I had not been expecting at all: I began to hallucinate. There were colors floating in and out of my purview, when my eyes were open and when they were closed. Nothing was totally formed or making sense, and there were no specific meanings to the images I was seeing, just splatters of warm color on a black backdrop. I settled into this feeling, allowing myself finally to feel comfortable with my restriction.

Before long the roof of the tank began to spontaneously rise and before I had even gotten a chance to relax, the hour was up.

Seabrook told me that she gets anywhere between 20 and 50 people coming in a week. She has regulars who come for scheduled weekly sessions. She has couples who attend the spa together and float in two tanks at a time. Seabrook herself got into floating when she was pregnant and needed some relief on her back. After the birth of her child, she started going as often as she could, sometimes once a week, just to relieve the stress of the outside world.

"In a place like New York City, you can get lost in the crowd," she told me on the phone a week after I had floated myself. "When you're floating, you're breathing."

The feeling that floating gives you, Seabrook explained, could "last for up to days after the fact. It's you, yourself, and your comfort." She told me that she feels that the experience of floating is like getting "a facial or a massage," a luxurious treatment through which management of everyday stress is possible. Especially, I add, given how truly isolated the experience makes—from technology and availability to friends, family members. When I first walked into the float room, I had a "where do I hold my hands" moment with my cell phone. "Where do I throw this thing?" I tossed onto my pile of clothes. It was blissful to be out of reach from the entire world for one full hour.

"A lot of people don't know about it. That's the weird part," Seabrook explained. "Everybody needs it."

I rinsed my body in the shower again and dressed. I was so deeply relaxed as to feel nearly high; a yellow aura was floating around my brain. After paying the $90 fee (pricey, I thought, but Seabrook assured me that there were deals that made the floating cheaper), I walked out onto 34th Street, still enveloped in peaceful bliss. Was this what I'd needed in winter in order to settle my nerves? I was calmer than I'd been since August.

Waiting for the subway, I wasn't impatient like I normally am. On the train, I wasn't angry and stressed. I didn't listen to music to distract myself. My head maintained a soft buzz. I had a doctor's appointment, so I got off at Sixth Avenue and 14th Street and walked west at dusk. These kinds of nights are rare but there was a pleasant glow in the sky, the kind that manifests itself on Instagram in photos of our glorious skyline, reds and yellows and sharp blue.

As I was walking, I felt like I was pushing through a gauzy fog. I briefly looked down at my phone to check an incoming message. When I looked up, I locked eyes with two women working at the counter of a newly-opened bakery, wherein the light was such a brilliant yellow that for one second I believed I'd dreamed them up. They smiled at me—I shit you not—and I sort of drearily smiled back at them, and I took it as an invitation to go in. They had just opened, would I like to try some fresh raisin pastries still warm from the oven?

Are you fucking kidding me? Yes. Yes, I would.

I stuffed some free pastries in my face, went to the doctor, took a trip home, and went to sleep without consequence at 9 p.m., and slept the most restful night of sleep I've had in probably ten years, stashing the memory of being held captive in a warm, wet cocoon—silently, serenely, uninterrupted—in the depth of my headbox for future callbacks in times of need. As it turns out, there would be many.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

American children are a bunch of spoiled brats. You've likely heard the refrain repeated for years now, and new verses are always being added. A couple years ago Elizabeth Kolbert's widely shared New Yorker article "Spoiled Rotten" remarked that, "With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world."

This conversation—when it's had in this way—is generally limited to middle-class and upper-class children. Much of this 'spoiling' is attributed to an excess of resources, and more importantly, an absence of discipline. Attachment parenting partisans are blamed for nurturing their kids into hellacious little martinets; free-range parents from Boerum Hill to Bernal Heights are pilloried by gleeful internet hordes.

"A lack of discipline is apparent these days in just about every aspect of American society," concluded Kolbert, at the end of her piece. But when it comes to disciplining children, the lack is something much more specific, which is to say: corporal punishment. In historical context, what's underway is an unprecedented social experiment; the past 20 or so years may well be the first generation of parents in Western history to collectively reject spanking as an acceptable way to discipline kids.

Both my parents came from middle-class backgrounds, and they both learned to behave under the spectre of a raised hand. I was raised with spanking as a threat that was never acted upon. Now that I'm a parent, I've been socialized to understand that even threatening corporal punishment is a form of cruelty. I've never done it. And I'm not saying that nobody in my demographic hits their kids. But according to the middle-class mores of our time—and I would argue that this is an issue where class lines are more telling than race, despite the obvious intersections of the two—using threats and acts of violence to teach your kids discipline is not okay.

The stigma placed on corporal punishment has left nothing in its place as an agreed-upon effective disciplinary tool of last resort, and it's into this breach that the firehose of parenting advice has been snugly inserted. Talk to your kids with respect, and they will respect you. Talk to your kids firmly and they will learn to behave. Set limits. Be consistent. Use incentives. Divert them away from trouble spots. Give them time-outs. Briefly take away privileges. But whatever you do, do it by talking to them. Talking, talking, so much talking. Have you ever tried to reason with a three year old? Path of least resistance it is not. These parents may be taking a roundabout route to teaching discipline, but they sure as hell are teaching their kids how to be good little communicators.

According to Dr. W. George Scarlett of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University, "What does seem more prevalent today than in previous generations is an inability on the part of many parents to be 'firm' when firmness is needed—the main symptom being that many parents today will endlessly whine and try to reason with their children at times when what is called for is a simple, 'That's it, no more T.V.—into the bathroom and brush your teeth'."

When parents are consistent in their messaging, Scarlett adds, kids become "literate" in their parents' tones of voices and facial expressions, and come to know when they "really mean it." He argues that kids shouldn't be labeled "spoiled" so much as "unable to read" firmness, because their parents haven't given them enough consistent demonstrations to learn from.

Despite the challenge, we keep on trying to reason with our kids—it's the closest thing we have to a current consensus about how to discipline them. Given this, it's no surprise that one of the perennially best-selling contemporary parenting advice books is How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. This book would read as utter nonsense to parents a century ago, when parenting advice books were a relatively new genre; the first American book of this kind was Infant Care, first published in 1929 by the Children's Bureau, a government aid organization for mothers across the country, many of whom lived in dire conditions of either urban overcrowding or extreme rural isolation. (You can read all of Infant Care at archive.org, it's fascinating.) Dr. Benjamin Spock's 1946 Baby and Child Care was only the second mainstream parenting advice book, and it was virtually unchallenged as an authority until the 80s.

Infant Care notes that "slapping or corporal punishment should never be resorted to with babies." With babies. But with kids? By all means. Once an infant had learned the habits required for living within a household's routines, they were held accountable. Across the ocean and two centuries earlier in England, the Duke of Wellington made his (probably apocryphal) statement that "the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." Sure, he was referring in part to character built on the cricket pitch, but mostly it was the "toughness" bred by the enthusiastic application of the cane.

We used to hit our kids because we thought it was good for them, and—within the context of the harsher world those kids grew up in—we may not have been entirely wrong. The way we think of "discipline" today is a throwback to an economic and cultural past, when the ability to sit still and keep quiet had measurable rewards all the way into adulthood. Many professions were based on the ability to submit to discipline, especially in the lower classes. Farm laborers, all forms of professional service and especially low-paid factory workers needed to be able to endure harsh disciplinary regimes in order to make their living. Up until a few decades ago, there were more economic opportunities for people who were very good at blending in; the white-collar jobs that emerged in the aftermath of WWII still placed a high premium on finding one's place in a strict hierarchy.

I'd argue that is no longer so much the case, at least in the imaginations of middle-class parents. Today's working world rewards independence, risk-taking and self-confidence. But where does discipline fit in? And what kind of world are we readying our kids for, anyway? As parents, we are aware, simultaneously, that if everyone is raising their kids to be the next Steve Jobs or Miranda July, we're in for a hellscape of ego when a critical mass of these little weirdos start graduating from high school. (I'm not talking about the millennials, those poor bastards. Let's give them a break and leave them out of this.)

I do the always-talking thing with my kids, just like everyone else. I do try and say no to them a lot—more often than necessary, just so they get real good and used to it. If they can figure out how to feel satisfied in a world structured by a lot of "no"—and really, given that they are both able-bodied white males born into the middle class, they will hear far fewer "no's" than any other group of humans on earth—I feel I have taught them something valuable. But, as former spankers may understand, it's hard to know when your own form of discipline "works" and when it has unintended and unwanted consequences. Sometimes I worry that my arbitrary limits are making my kids less curious and dynamic, or that I'm making them unnecessarily wary of me.

In the end, the construction of discipline reflects our hopes about the working world our kids will find themselves in. We've decided not to hit our kids partly because we don't want to cause them pain, but also because we hope that kids who don't know fear will be better off in the world we're trying to make. What we're left with the perennial anxiety that we are not doing enough to prepare them for independence.

And there's another anxiety, the economic one, the one underlies all the hand-wringing about undisciplined American kids. What kind of discipline can prepare a kid for the fact that there won't be nearly enough opportunities for all of them when they grow up? What will all those communication skills matter to those kids who don't find their place among the lucky few to be spared that old-fashioned obligation—to sit still and take whatever the world gives you?

Kathryn Jezer-Morton is a writer and editor in Montreal. She writes about motherhood at You're Mom Dot Com.

Illustration by Jim Cooke

On Scandal, a presidential election has been rigged, a woman has gnawed a tracking device out of her arm, and the Republican president's gay chief of staff is engaged to a prostitute. All inherently more believable than the moppet hair glued onto Lena Dunham's scalp for her upcoming guest role.

Per the Hollywood Reporter, Dunham appears in the March 19 episode of the Shonda Rhimes series as Kinky Sue, a woman who enlists Olivia's help with her "plans to expose the sex secrets of some of D.C.'s most elite."

Here's a profile view of the wig vis-a-vis Kerry Washington's own hair, which on the show always looks fresh and glistening and billowy as if Olivia goes to the the salon every 42 minutes.

Bad wig. And worse when you consider the hair of the show's other female cast members:

Like Mellie...

And Abby...

Even dumb Quinn...

This show is basically a shampoo commercial. Whatever styling product deal provided in a gift basket to the actresses of Scandal has apparently not been extended to Lena Dunham, a self-confessed fan of the show, which is kind of mean.

Lena Dunham's wig on Scandal looks like how a haircut by Hannah Horvath from Girls would probably turn out: not good.

[H/T Flavorwire // Images via ABC]

Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .

Picture a New York City sex dungeon. Now picture a typical Park Slope apartment. Now picture a New York City sex dungeon inside of a Park Slope apartment. What does it look like? Hardwood floors or dingy concrete? Whips, chains, baby pics on the fridge? A lonely bottle of hand sanitizer laid atop a thrift-store side table, complimentary squirts for paying customers only?

At Brooklyn Based, read an illuminating profile of Jennifer (not her real name), a 24-year-old dungeon madam who hosts dominatrices and men seeking domination in her three-bedroom Park Slope apartment to help pay rent. Jennifer isn't a dominatrix herself—she describes her own sexual interests as "vanilla"—but allows a cadre of women to use her apartment's front room, taking 40% of their earnings from $150-250 sessions. It doesn't sound like she's exactly rolling in money, but if she's making rent as the sole occupant of a $2,100 three-bedroom apartment, she isn't struggling, either.

Plus, there are surprise benefits:

When Jennifer had to cut one of our conversations short because she was about to start driving, I accidentally learned of one of her job perks.

"You have a car?" I asked.

"No, one of the dommes and I borrowed a sub's car," she said. "He asked her to tie him down to the bed, then take his car and use his money to go out to eat."

But not all clients are quite so generous:

Besides one client who ran out without paying (a dominatrix later chased him down the streets of Park Slope), there have been no major incidents, and Jennifer has some controls in place to ensure her safety. Before a client comes to her home, she inputs their phone number into Spokeo, which combs the web for a history of that number. There are several websites that escorts use to rate clients and report abusers, which Jennifer also examines. While a session is underway, she always remains in the other room. And she does have a harpoon in the closet, she jokingly told me, in case of emergency.

Brooklyn Based has a few photos of the dungeon, which looks more like Eric Forman's living room in That 70's Show than Christian Grey's red room: wood paneled walls, carpet, the aforementioned hand sanitizer. But Jennifer won't be holding court there long. Recently, the landlord terminated her lease—she thinks neighbors may have ratted on her—leaving her looking for new digs. Know anyone who needs a roommate?

h/t ANIMAL. Image via AP. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Albert Maysles, who, along with his brother David, directed documentary cinema classics Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1975), died Thursday at his home in Manhattan, reports the New York Times. He was 88.

Coincidentally, a 40th anniversary remastering of Grey Gardens is being released today in select theaters via Criterion. It's a gorgeous print, worth revisiting if you've already seen it or experiencing it for the first time, if you haven't. Big and Little Edie Beale—the reclusive aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, who were captured in their crumbling East Hampton mansion in 1973 by the Maysles' camera—have never booked better, bolder, or more staunch.

Grey Gardens served to give the Beales a taste of the stardom they had long craved, but it was not without its detractors—the kind of people who scream "Exploitation!" when faced with candid depictions of eccentrics. Albert discussed the process during a brief intro to Criterion's release of The Beales of Grey Gardens, a 2006 companion documentary made from footage that was not included in the original Grey Gardens. Though its nature is vérité, Grey Gardens was more collaborative than most documentaries, partly because the Beales were natural entertainers.

"There were days when we got such good material that all four of us would shout, 'Ah, it's been a banner day!' We all loved that," Albert recalled.

"We loved these two women very much, and the film itself, brings us all four together: the women, my brother and myself," Albert continued. Big Edie died in 1977, Little Edie died in 2002, and David Maysles died in 1987. They remain together, all four of them, preserved for eternity in Grey Gardens and The Beales of Grey Gardens.

[Image via Getty]

An architecture firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has an idea that would make their home city's skyline the most unique in the country, all while paying homage to the land where the wind comes sweeping down the plain: an awesome, tornado-shaped tower. I want to go to there.

Kinslow, Keith & Todd, Inc. drew up the plans for the Tulsa Tornado Tower without a client in mind, but Andrew Kinslow told Tulsa's Fox affiliate that the project is generating buzz among investors who might want to get in on the ground-floor.

There's not a client at this point. It's just a conceptual drawing of what could potentially take place and happen downtown," Kinslow said.

The tower would rise to 20 to 30 stories and house a severe weather museum. Kinslow said that office space could also be added easily.

According to a floor plan posted on the firm's website, the theoretical permatwister could hold classrooms, auditoriums, a severe weather museum, a weather research center, a restaurant, and as mentioned in the news story, office space.

Oklahoma lies square in the middle of a region of the country known as Tornado Alley. The state's location and flat terrain allows strong storm systems from the west to collide with warm and humid air flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico. The tropical air provides instability and fuel for thunderstorms to feed on, and approaching upper-level features can provide enough lift and wind shear for these thunderstorms to turn into violent supercells, leading to potentially destructive tornadoes.

[Images: KKT Architects, Fox 23 Tulsa]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

This week, privacy experts and advocates from around the world gathered in Valenica, Spain to meet and discuss how to combat government surveillance. As if on cue, one of the activists discovered an ominous tracking device attached to the bottom of their car.

We found a tracking device on an activist's car at #CTFestival - please help us identify it: https://t.co/ss4WSxWS3U https://t.co/JBQJa7uplU

— Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) March 6, 2015

Jacob Appelbaum, one of the privacy leaders behind behind the Tor Project, is trying to gather information about the mysterious device:

On March 4th, 2015, we found a tracking device inside of the wheel well of a car belonging to an attendee of the Circumvention Tech Festival in Valencia, Spain. This was reported in the local media.

If you have information about this device - please send information to jacob at appelbaum dot net using gpg.

The device was magnetically mounted inside of the left wheel well of the car. The battery is attached by cable to the tracking device. The battery was magnetically mounted to the frame of the car. The tracking device was similarly magnetically mounted. The device itself has an external magnetically mounted GPS antenna. It has a very simple free hanging GSM antenna. The device included a Movistar SIM card for GSM network access. The entire device was wrapped in black tape.

One Reddit user speculates that the vaguely sinister device could've come from this Spanish gadget store—although that doesn't even begin to explain the questions those in attendance must have.

Photos via Jacob Appelbaum

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: E93A 40D1 FA38 4B2B 1477 C855 3DEA F030 F340 E2C7

Thousands of people in Dimapur, India, stormed a jail that was holding a man accused of rape, brought him out into the streets, and beat him to death on Thursday, the New York Times reports. Police who were guarding the jail were overcome by the mob, though an official was unable to explain how.

The Times reports that Syed Sirf Khan, a man identified by locals as an "illegal migrant from Bangladesh," was being held in a local jail after being accused of raping a Naga woman from a tribal community that makes up almost 90 percent of the Nagaland state, where Dimapur is the capital. Tensions over nontribal populations moving into Nagaland have been heightened as of late, the Times notes.

Video from the attack, which was shared by news organized NDTV, shows disturbing imagery of a mob leading the naked man down a street before he was allegedly thrashed by the group, which was reported to be between 1,500 and 4,000 people strong. The Times spoke to L. L. Doungel, the top police official where the incident occurred:

It was also not clear on Friday how far he was taken before the police stopped the procession, though Mr. Doungel said that it was "quite a distance" from the jail. Eventually, the police fired on the crowd, killing one protester and wounding several others. But by the time Mr. Khan's body was recovered, he was dead.

According to NDTV, the chief minister of Nagaland, T.R. Zeliang, has ordered a high-level investigation of the incident.

[Image via AP]

A spinal surgeon who helped rescue Harrison Ford after the actor's plane crash on an L.A. golf course yesterday afternoon described the experience to ABC News. "He was stunned a bit," Sanjay Khurana said. "He was moaning and in pain."

Khurana said he immediately ran to the downed plane, where other golfers were already working to extract Ford. Once Ford was free from the wreckage, Khurana said he helped stabilize him, and checked his blood pressure and airway.

"You don't go golfing expecting to see an airplane crash and to help extract someone and realize it's someone you know from the movies, right" he said. "It's fairly bizarre. But as a surgeon, I've been practicing for almost over a decade now, you deal with urgent situations. So you have to do your best for someone in distress."

"It was obvious by his face, it was Harrison Ford," he added. "I'm old enough, or young enough, to have watched all his Star Wars films. So, it was obvious."

Ford was hospitalized in "fair to moderate" condition, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department, and is expected to make a full recovery.

[Image via AP]

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

That goddamn app. Even though it's ugly and incomprehensible and barfs useless notifications at me, I keep using it. When I touch its stupid icon on my screen, it's a hate tap. It's a finger cringe. But I can't quit!

Illustration by Javier Brosch via Shutterstock

Right now, my biggest hate tap is the noxious thing that used to be Foursquare. Remember Foursquare? It was lovely. Two years ago, I used it to navigate my way to cafes with the best avo toast in Melbourne; last year, it brought me to an amazing vegetarian restaurant near Taksim Square in Istanbul. I knew those places would be good, because Foursquare would tell you when your friends had checked into a place and what they thought.

It did what every good social app developer dreams of: Foursquare recreated an important real-life social interaction in a way that felt magically simple. Maybe I wasn't traveling with a big group of friends in Melbourne and Istanbul, but I felt like I was. I could follow in my pals' footsteps and get their suggestions in real time. I was better informed, enjoyed my travels more — and I felt less alone than I normally do when traveling in cities I've never visited. I felt like I was traveling with friends all over the world, thanks to a thoughtfully-designed chunk of software.

But those days are over.

For some reason Foursquare decided to split itself into two spam-ridden, useless apps called Foursquare and Swarm. As far as I can tell, Foursquare now exists entirely to twang out 15 notifications for shit you don't want every time you open the app, and to suggest garbage based on advertisers like "steak breakfast" and "boat rides to Alcatraz." If you try to look for something like "avo toast," it will offer you listings for random nearby restaurants, half of which also spam you with coupons for things you hate, which you'll have to buy with brands of credit card you don't have. And Swarm? Well, it's just a pure stalking app. Trick people into friending you and follow their every move!

Yet I keep hate tapping, because I remember the days when Foursquare told me where my friends had been, and recommended restaurants based on my preferences. And the thing is — once in a while, after I've wiped away three successive pages of notifications and bullshit, it will actually find me a local cafe with avo toast. Or one of my friends will check into to a noodle place on Swarm and I'll try it too. It's like the sad little ghost of the old app peeps out at me, and I come back hoping for more.

Illustration by Palto via Shutterstock

There are also other, possibly less pathetic forms of hate tapping. Every day I use apps that are profoundly meh — but I can't stop because there are no real alternatives. Like gmail. Who the hell really likes gmail? Don't even get me started on the gibbering madness that was Inbox. Also: Facebook. There is nothing more despicable than the sticky web of desperation and lies that is Facebook — and yet if I don't use it, I don't get invites to my friends' parties. Because they're all hate tapping invites into Facebook because they don't want to use email because gmail is annoying.

There should also be a special place in app hell for things like Uber that everybody loves, but are owned by companies whose evil is so transparent that it's hard to feel good about using them. Maybe Facebook belongs in that category too.

Then there are the services you love, like Tumblr and eBay, that just have shitty apps. So you use them endlessly, because you're on the train with your phone and you want to get to all the things. Or sometimes an app is good on iPhone but sucks on Android — I'm looking at you, Seamless. Either way, you want the service so you endure the fucktastic apps.

Occasionally you get into quandaries. Like what if you want to search for an alternative to the app you hate, but the app you hate most is the app store itself? I know, that's super meta. But have you used the store on Android? All those colorful UI lozenges trying to get you to think that the Play Store is playful! Full of music and movies and games, just like Apple! Ugh. Stop trying to be something you're not, Android. You're the PC of the phone world. Own it.

The thing about hate tapping, though, is that it has a golden core of Utopian longing. I miss apps that were genuinely good once, like Foursquare. The magic is gone, but my loyalty remains. And some of us are willing to endure a truly demonic app just to get access to the wonderment that is Tumblr. I'm not some hipster who is using these shitty apps ironically, just to enjoy marinating in scorn. (Save that for Tinder, people.)

When I hate tap, it's an expression of belief that one day — somehow — my apps will be good. And the app store won't be a dirty diaper full of nuggets. Maybe that day will never come. But hope still wells up inside me. I mean, I think it's hope. It might just be nausea.

Thanks to Tom Scocca for epithet-generation aid on this article.

Contact the author at annalee@gizmodo.com.

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Democratic New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez will be investigated as part of a Justice Department corruption probe, CNN reports.

An official confirmed the forthcoming investigation to the Washington Post, which is expected to be formally announced in the coming weeks.

According to CNN, Menendez is being investigated for his chummy relationship with Florida ophthalmologist (and frequent campaign donator) Salomon Melgen, particularly three instances in which the senator either lobbied to the doctor's financial benefit or accepted payments without filing proper disclosures.

First, Melgen's company, ICSSI, was accused by the federal government of overcharging them $8.9 million:

Menendez advocated on Melgen's behalf with federal Medicare administrators who accused Melgen of overbilling the government's healthcare program, according to court documents and people briefed on the probe. Melgen was among the top recipients of Medicare reimbursements in recent years, during a time when he was also a major Democratic donor. Melgen's attorneys have denied any wrongdoing.

Second, Menendez allegedly worked to protect an existing contract Melgen's company had with the Dominican government:

Prosecutors also are focusing on whether Menendez broke the law in advocating for Melgen's business interest in a Dominican Republic government contract for a port screening equipment. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, at the time, considered donating port screening equipment to the Dominican Republic, which would have hurt the contract of Melgen-controlled company.

Federal investigators are also reportedly looking into flights Menendez took to the Dominican Republic allegedly paid for by Melgen:

Investigators have focused in part on plane trips Menendez took in 2010 to the Dominican Republic as a guest of Melgen. In 2013, after word of the federal investigation became public, Menendez paid back Melgen $58,000 for the 2010 plane trips calling his failure to properly disclose the flights an "oversight."

The senator's supposed involvement in Melgen's Dominican affairs is uncanny given how the Cuban government might have schemed to make it look like Menendez had slept with underage Dominican prostitutes.

[Image via AP]

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

Forty days and nights ago, phenomenal woman Kristin Cavallari commenced furious work on her debut memoir and lifestyle book Balancing on Heels (we can only assume). The tome is scheduled to hit Amazon in 460 days. Her task is not small: Kristin promises the text will encompass "really just everything in my life." As Krist's witness over the past 40 days, I have learned that "really just everything" in her life is more everything than anyone thought possible.

Kristin may seem like just your average or slightly below average gal. A wife whose basic thoughts drift listlessly below her meticulously curled, unnaturally blonde hair extensions. A mother who parlayed being mean in high school into years of fame and fortune. Though she is immeasurably blessed on this Earth, Kristin often presents herself as the salt of it. "It's refreshing to see that [I'm] just like everybody else," she told Good Morning America in January.

In fact, Kristin's world is filled with tumultuous, vibrant confusions. Her everyday life is a quest in search of a higher truth.

Like Jesus in the desert, Kristin has, over the course of the last 40 days, abstained from sour cream, agave, additives, "parabins," egg whites, most shrimp (unless she knows where the shrimp is coming from), and likely very many other food products. Like Jesus, Kristin is hungry. Likewise like Jesus is Kristin sustained by a mystical faith: His in the power of God; Kristin's in the validity of a collection of loosely-sourced web articles on a subject that might kindly and ambitiously be termed "natural science."

In pursuit of the most Right lifestyle, Kristin has read the screeds of Doctors Oz and Mercola and Kellyann, and she has obeyed. She "stumbled upon" an article touting the benefits of bone broth, so she boiled bones. She heard fermented food can be used to treat a child's allergies, so she fermented vegetables for her infant son. She read that "agave isn't what we thought it was," and, thus betrayed, drank a quarter cup of maple syrup mixed with milk instead.

While Kristin has not yet decrypted all the secrets of the universe, she is keen to share with us small pieces of what she has uncovered: a skincare brand she loves; her favorite color; how she feels about looking "really skinny" ("I don't like that look.").

The rest will be revealed to us sometime, many days, and months, and seasons from now, when Kristin emerges from her study, hands raw and heels balanced, clutching a record of all her earthly and divine knowledge committed to scroll.

Today, her God is still a mystery to me.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

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 VK.com

FORWARD

After blowing up on Twitter, this photo (and its inevitable parodies) were featured pretty much everywhere this week, including no less than four Gawker Media blogs. Given the improbability of the shot, it also inspired a good deal of skepticism, but all evidence points to the picture being the real thing.

Additional photos from the sequence published by ITV make pure Photoshop an unlikely scenario, but National Geographic dug even deeper, consulting both a digital forensics expert and National Wildlife Federation naturalist David Mizejewski:

Mizejewski said European green woodpeckers feed on ants, which means they spend a lot of time on the ground. This type of foraging behavior makes the birds vulnerable to attack from predators—in this case, a hungry weasel.

[...]

"The least weasel's signature move is to sever the spinal cord of its prey with a bite to the neck, which is exactly what we're seeing in the photo," said Mizejewski.

Images via Twitter

DELETE

After months of floating around online, the above image finally took off this week, boosted by a post from the Facebook page "Veternaria." Variously described as "an Inari fox" and "a monkey from Madagascar," the odd creature actually belongs to the taxon "total bullshit."

Created by Russian doll maker Santaniel late last year (and available for just $499), this isn't the first of their whimsical creations to be mistaken for a real animal. In 2013, another doll from Santaniel's "Inari fox" series similarly went viral.

Image via Facebook//h/t Snopes

DELETE

While usually Antiviral deals with fake photos passed off as real, this entry is just the opposite. As Gawker's Andy Cush explained earlier this week, the above picture and other "unbelievable" photorealistic CG images currently circulating online "are actually plain old photos."

All of them come from HYPER REAL CG, an Instagram account created by David O'Reilly, the artist behind web parodies like Twitter's @free_facts (sample fact: "Fish never sleep because they are so full of rage"). O'Reilly apparently thought the gag was pretty straightforward, expressing surprise on Twitter after sites like the Huffington Post and Gizmodo fell for it:

So.. I thought the #hyperrealcg joke was really obvious - the blandness of virtuoso 'photoreal' 3d. Didn't expect sites to take it literally [...] #Hyperrealcg is just some fun ribbing at cg tropes. Not trying to fool anyone. Hope you guys are enjoying and not getting angry. ✌️

Image via Twitter//h/t Death and Taxes

DELETE

Another seemingly obvious joke widely taken at face value, this supposed rejection letter from Harvard required a full explanation from author Molly McGaan on Tuesday after it was retweeted tens of thousands of times:

Guys-

I have literally gotten 12 messages asking me this, so I thought I clear it up. That Harvard letter I shared is not real. It's from the comedy magazine I write at my school.

Of course, the "Citizen Poke" letterhead should have tipped at least a few people off, but hey, it's not like everyone has Google.

Image via Facebook

PLEASE DON'T FORWARD

While it doesn't appear this now-famous image of a lizard "playing" a leaf was digitally altered, this shot and others by photographer Aditya Permana bear the hallmarks of an arguably more insidious trend: twee nature photos staged by manipulating and even injuring animals.

Often coming from Southeast Asia, these macro shots regularly show their subjects in "cute" but unlikely or impossible poses, sometimes aided by wire and glue. Photographer Jenn Wei explains what makes these pictures such an affront to her and her peers:

Winning awards and gaining profits with deceit and animal abuse is unfair for the real nature photographers. [...] Nature photographer should capture the true essence of wildlife, not forcing the poor animals to hold an umbrella, dance or do kungfu. The nature is beautiful and interesting as it is.

Permana insists this photo wasn't staged, telling the Daily Mail that after watching the lizard for an hour he "noticed it looked like it was playing a guitar." Only Premana knows for sure, but even if the lizard wasn't posed, this photo promotes the kind of unnatural nature photography Wei decries.

Images via Twitter

Fans drinking vodka sodas instead of Monster tallboys. Matching suits and mirror-encrusted guitars. A funky man who addresses adult humans as "children," like he thinks he's Prince or something. Vocoders, syncopation, silly glasses. This is the deeply strange universe presented in Nickelback's new video, and fans are not happy about it.

In case you're sitting at work or otherwise incapable of watching, the lyrics excerpted here should be sufficient for conveying the extremely sexy vibe of Nickelback's new glammy disco-rock single "She Keeps Me Up" and its attendant video.

Funky little monkey, she's a twisted trickster

Everybody wants to be the sister's mister

Coca-Cola roller coaster

Lover her even though I'm not supposed to

Setting aside a litany of legitimate questions about the song itself—Is the sexy sister literally Chad Kroeger's sister? Why isn't he supposed to love her? (Because she's his sister?) Should we be concerned that the "funky little monkey" of Kroeger's fantasies happens to be played by a black woman?—let's enjoy the befuddled reactions of Nickelback's diehard fans, who have been riding a Coca-Cola roller coaster of emotion since the video's release.

Among longtime devotees of Kroeger and the boys—a band whose every release since 2001 has gone platinum, and who have appeared in at least one TV commercial—a rallying cry is beginning to sound: sell-out! What, is Iggy Izaelia going to be on the next album????

Ah, the old "what were we thinking disc." A classic pitfall, known to all in the music industry.

But as easy as it is to point and laugh at Nickelback along with everyone else—and there is certainly plenty to laugh at in this video—I can't help but begrudgingly admire a band that's willing to alienate even its most passionate defenders, especially when that band is already among the most reviled in the world. If we're lucky, these funky little monkeys will keep on making "what were we thinking discs" from now until they play their final power chords.

Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Two Ferguson police officers have reportedly resigned and a court clerk has been fired for sending or receiving racist emails, according to the St. Louis Dispatch. The dismissals come just two days after the Department of Justice released a damning report exposing the Ferguson Police Department as fundamentally racist.

The Dispatch reports that Capt. Rick Henke and Sgt. William Mudd resigned on Thursday; Court Clerk Mary Ann Twitty was fired on Wednesday.

From the Dispatch:

It was not clear whether the three were alleged to be senders or recipients of offensive emails. They could not be reached for comment.

The sources said Henke was associated with an e-mail from 2008 suggesting that President Barack Obama would not be president for very long because a black man can't hold a job. They said Mudd was associated with an e-mail from 2011 suggesting that CrimeStoppers paid a black woman who terminated a pregnancy.

With the resignations of Henke and Mudd, the Ferguson Police Department only has to replace the remainder of its entire force in order to become racism- and brutality-free.

[Image via AP]

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

If you haven't yet lost the will to live, what are you waiting for? Scared? Afraid of ending up in Hell? Afraid everyone in Hell will find out you're a big baby? In any event, heaven exists here on Earth: It's a live streaming feed of poolside bros at a Holiday Inn.

For the past three years, the "Pool Cam at the Holiday Inn Resort in Panama City Beach, Florida" has sprung up to gladden the winter gloom like a raging boner, or a vibrant yellow crocus; dozens of men in board shorts and women in bikinis lurch towards each other and splash for our amusement. It's a bustling bro confab, a sort of Fashion Week for HPV, a United Nations meeting for dudes who'll yell "FAG!" at you from a passing jeep. Luckily, there's no audio in this stream; just endless Adderrall dance vibes.

I don't imagine many people know about the Pool Cam—and that includes both viewers and stars—but that's what makes it so nice. When I look outside my window, all I see is slush and seasonal suffering. But on the Pool Cam, I have my own private window of shitfaced paradise. The cold aches go away. I smell beer and I feel warmth and I forget how miserable New York is and will continue to be. Have you ever streamed the will to live? I did for hours, and kept a diary.

10:34 am — The water looks clean. There's nobody by the pool. A single palm tree is swaying. You can almost smell the water (Bacardi Limon, urine, sweat, semen, Drakkar Noir, hint of chlorine).

11:03 am — Some dude in a navy jumpsuit strolls by Pool Cam, head down, holding a can of Red Bull and wearing wraparound shades. He chooses to keep on moving.

11:23 am — The pool is still completely empty. There aren't even any birds.

11:24 am — The navy jumpsuit fellow walks to the edge of the pool and stares out across it. One more day, he tells himself—just one more day.

11:52 am — Life! Six women have appeared in the pool, bobbing like porpoises. One of them heaves her friend upward. Guys! It's Friday. Have we ever been so happy? A maintenance man pushes by an enormous trash bin, presumably filled with condoms and empty Lime-A-Rita cans. He's got one of those trash-poking sticks with a pointy end. Don't poke the ladies, friend.

12:03 pm — It's officially afternoon, and we've witnessed our official first bad decision of the day: a woman just walked past the pool with her three small children. I'm sorry miss, but your kids now all have mouth herpes and are Diplo fans.

12:05 pm — The pool girls clustered into a tight, floating ball of limbs, like a tropical rat king. There's no sound but I imagine they were screaming SARA(H)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One of them left the pool and acted as if she was going to throw in some sort of stuff animal. Instead, she jumped back in the pool. Fuckin' party and never stop.

12:19 pm — The young women have toweled off and departed, and I'm all alone again. My editor Max Read walks over to my computer and asks what the hell I'm doing. I explain there were just some girls hanging out the pool a second ago, I swear, and that they'll be back soon probably. Stream imitates life. Skeptical and, worse, clearly disappointed in me, he walks away.

2:28 pm — Guess I dozed off there for a bit. My thighs feel radiant. This place feels reanimated: a few dozen people are now frolicking, separated into soggy, porous clusters. Two gentlebros toss a football back and forth; sometimes they catch it, sometimes not. Does it really matter? Of course not. Even a drop is a catch when you're chilling this hard. I'm open, guys.

2:49 pm — The football is gone. In its place, a frisbee. I wish I could hear what everyone's talking about.

2:51 pm — Just spotted the day's first full case of beer. Poolbrews. Floaters. Aluminum oysters. Crack 'em, Brady.

3:38 pm — Woop-woop: we've got a cooler on the scene. The pool is filling up, the sun is out, and everyone's in the mood for a handjob. When does dancing start? I'm getting antsy in my seat now that my friends have come to the pool.

3:41 pm — I've now been streaming the Panama City Holiday Inn for six hours.

3:42 pm — American flag shorts and a tank top in a single friend group.

3:43 pm — What percentage of the people in this pool have driven drunk in the past 24 hours? I bet 100 percent but it's hard to be sure. Pool dudes have begun to shake their butts and stick their arms straight into the air, suggesting that music just started to play, or that a devastating earthquake is about to rip through this carefree scene.

3:47 pm — The janitor wheeled out his large trashcan again, stared at the carnage, and gave up. How can you even tell what's floating trash at this point? A volleyball just landed next to a guy's head and splashed him. He seemed startled.

3:56 pm — In the spirit of the day I'm listening to a Skrillex EP and pretending my medication doesn't block the euphoric effects of MDMA. At the moment, literally everyone present (on Pool Cam and here in my chair) is white.

3:56 pm — What's this guy's deal? I'm keeping my eye on you, chief.

4:01 pm — The stream is slowing down considerably. Blinking in and out, and freezing like a margarita. BroBible.com linked to it, which is probably sending a glut of vicarious viewers with thigh tattoos and neon t-shirts to the Pool Cam's servers. I hate dealing with crowds, especially during my freaking spring break!

4:08 pm — I switched wifi networks and the stream is doing a little better. There are so many balls flying through the air right now. Man hands spiking volleyballs, man hands throwing footballs, woman hands clutching soft, smooth bodies in the water. So many hands in the air—any hands that aren't grabbing or throwing are locked firmly in the air. The mere idea of this pool is enough to give you a social anxiety disorder that didn't exist before.

4:12 pm — This picture makes me think that love might not be a lie after all. That girl in the center of the screen is bouncing on her flexing-up-and-down toe bones and sipping out of a large plastic cup while the bro next to her holds what looks like a 7-11 Big Gulp filled with Fireball. I'm not sure it's actually Fireball but I've never had a hunch like this before. I bet they're holding hands over the water, or at least suggestively grazing crotches.

4:15 pm — Phone break. Yo. It's Eric. I'm at the pool. haha nah. Aight see u soon.

4:17 pm — A man in a SECURITY windbreaker is speaking into a mic he's got clutched against his chest. Two men next to him are smoking something, hunched over one another.

4:20 pm (hell yes) — I don't want to alarm you motherfuckers but someone just wheeled over another cooler filled with delicious beer. Also, this guy is double fisting what appears to be a Big Gulp container and a comically oversized tropical drink flute. No one has offered me a drink yet which is just plain rude given that I've been poolside for almost seven hours, and I've got a bigger heart than anyone.

4:23 pm — I like these guys, a genuine bro trifecta: one wearing a mesh jersey, one shirtless with a backpack, and one wearing green shorts and doing a "steering wheel motion dance" to his seat.

4:28 pm — Two poor, deeply underpaid cleaning staffers are picking up empties and crumpled beer case boxes. One of them was just struck by an errant volleyball.

4:39 pm — I'm not really sure how to best describe what I just saw, but I have to try: A large group just jumped out of the pool at the exact same time and started doing a choreographed dance. Then, my stream froze, and when it resumed, they were gone. I'm either contact drunk or there's a ghost in my computer—a party ghost.

4:52 pm — The Big Gulp lovers are toweling off, sharing an embrace, body heat, and odors. Not Big Gulps filled with liquor, though—they've got their own.

4:55 pm — The sun is setting on the Holiday Inn Resort in Panama City Beach, Florida. I wish I could stare at this stream for hours more without being hospitalized. I wish it weren't 28 degrees in New York. I wish I had a boozy Big Gulp of my own, and I could spend eternity trapped in this pleasure vacuum with Sean, Richie, Jessie, Mickey, Sean G., Eliana, Laura, Sean F., and Ted "Squirt" Goldstein. But I can't. It's time to clean up the cans. It's time to get out of the pool.

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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For the second time this year, a young woman is in trouble for being naked in a library in exchange for money.

According to an Ottawa Sun report, a 21-year-old woman from Ontario—known only by her webcam handle Lilsecrett—just turned herself into local police:

She turned herself in Friday morning and was released with a promise to appear, police said.

Investigators said they received information about the identity of the suspect on Thursday and attempted to locate her.

Not only is she facing criminal charges of an "indecent act" in public, she's been booted from MyFreeCams.com, the company that hosted her paid routines. So, now she's in trouble with the law and out of a well-paying job, so that's great. But in the defense of the law, it probably wasn't great to be masturbating on a webcam with little kids walking around behind you:

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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PGP fingerprint: E93A 40D1 FA38 4B2B 1477 C855 3DEA F030 F340 E2C7