Facebook, a dull and endlessly scrolling record of personal propaganda and content headlined in two or more sentences, isn't satisfied with the way its 1.4 billion users (most non-sentient) consume the news. According to the New York Times, it takes an epic eight seconds for the average Joe Facebook User to load an outside news link, clicked on in Facebook, in a new browser tab or window. Unacceptable.

So what is the world's most powerful publisher that doesn't publish anything to do? Subsume the places that actually publish things. The Times reports that's what Facebook is aiming for, and the company has been having "quiet talks" with "at least half a dozen" publishers (including the Times) "about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site."

It's one thing to live in a country that has an obesity crisis but it's another to assume the users of your product are so lazy that they can't be made to "tap a link to go to an external site." Welcome to... AOL!

But a richer, smarter, more powerful and more terrifying AOL. Setting aside the fundamental issue of allowing a separate, extremely powerful, and extremely rich company to publish, host, present, and package your theoretically independent journalism—and we'll set it aside because all these poor desperate publishing companies will too, Gawker included, I'm sure—the problem with Facebook seemingly swallowing up news organizations like Ursula in the Little Mermaid is, duh, money.

Revenue share is a very... delicate thing, mainly because Facebook has a shit ton of money and news organizations don't (excepting BuzzFeed, but BuzzFeed is basically Facebook with a large and growing YouTube tentacle attached to it), and they both want money. The Times has more on this, and it's very sad, not the least of which because the amount of money that would make a difference to even a successful publisher is very, very different from the amount of money that would make a difference to Facebook:

The company recognizes that the new plan, championed by Chris Cox, the top lieutenant to Facebook's chief, Mark Zuckerberg, on product matters, would remove the usual ads that publishers place around their content. Although the revenue-sharing ideas are still in flux, one would allow publishers to show a single ad in a custom format within each Facebook article, according to one person with knowledge of the discussions.

Facebook has not historically done any kind of revenue-sharing with content publishers. Essentially, its position has been "Put your content on Facebook and we'll send you traffic." But lately Facebook has been experimenting with revenue-sharing options. In December, it began showing N.F.L. clips sponsored by Verizon. Verizon paid for the clips to be sent to people's news feeds and ran an ad at the end of them. The N.F.L. and Facebook split the revenue.

I would say it is not necessarily a good idea to compare news organizations to Verizon and the N.F.L. But the comparison is a good reminder that Facebook does not regard more traditional publishers as rivals—as those publishers, dripping with the swagger of an industry that seemed on the brink of a renaissance, might have assumed just a few years ago—but as optimization problems to be solved. Whatever suddenly-enormous teen-gossip app is threatening its command of cell-phone users' attention—that's Facebook's rival. Traditional (even semi-traditional) journalistic media outfits, swearing fealty to its traffic hose? Those are bugs to be programmed out. Facebook purchases its rivals. It consumes its subjects.

Rapper Rich Homie Quan, feeling some type of way, allegedly punched a security guard who wouldn't let him through the backdoor VIP entrance of a packed club early Monday morning, even though Quan is a rich millionaire, bitch.

"I'm a rich millionaire, bitch," Quan shouted, according to Christian Cajigas, a security guard at Miami Beach hotspot LIV, "I'm coming through these doors, I'm with Flo Rida."

Cajigas told police that when he told Quan to use the regular entrance for regular, non-rich millionaires, the rapper sucker punched him twice, breaking his nose and teeth. Another member of Quan's crew allegedly hit him in the back of the head.

"RHQ and his entourage crossed the street and boarded a speedboat and roared off," TMZ adds.

LIV has seemingly become the venue of choice for celebrity fights over the past year. It's the spot where Instagram's patron saint of overcompensation, Dan Bilzerian, kicked a woman in the head during Art Basel, and it's also where Diddy punched Drake over a beat.

Police told WSVN they'd like to speak to Quan about a possible battery charge.

[H/T Complex, Photo: Getty Images]

Dr. Seuss, the guy who rhymed everything in all those books you read as a kid (or as an adult, no judgment), will be honored with a museum to his work in Springfield, Massachusetts set to open in mid-2016. According to a press release, the museum will be called The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum, which is a huge stupid mistake.

The press release on Springfield Museums' website comes with details of the forthcoming museum to honor the Massachusetts native and children's writer:

Visitors will enter the 3,200 square-foot exhibition through a large entry hall designed to simulate elements of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. In succeeding galleries, visitors will explore a series of environments that replicate scenes from Dr. Seuss's imagination and encounter life-sized three-dimensional characters and places from the books.

[...]

The building's second floor is slated to house additional exhibits including a re-creation of Ted Geisel's studio, an exhibition about the making of the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden and other related displays.

Okay, sounds good. Probably gonna be pretty fun.

But why not name it the Seusseum? That's a way better idea.

[Image via AP]

Two years after Elisa Lopez was filmed being sexually assaulted while sleeping on a 4 train, the NYPD has arrested Carlos Chuva, 43, whom after being shown a still from the video told police, "That is me."

In a cell phone video recorded by fellow passenger Jasheem Smiley, from October 2012, Chuva can be seen slipping his hand under Lopez's skirt as she sleeps. Smiley and another passenger shouted at Chuva to stop and alert Lopez, who eventually awoke to fight her attacker off and exit the train.

Lopez told Cosmopolitan that she only learned the extent of the assault after the video had made its way online. "I was in disbelief," Lopez she told the magazine. "This can't be me. I felt sick to my stomach. I was yelling, screaming. I was hysterical."

After the video of her assault spread online, Lopez launched a social media campaign to find Chuva, but when asked by Gothamist how he was finally identified, the NYPD declined to comment. Chuva was arrested last Thursday and reportedly charged with first degree aggravated sexual abuse.

Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .

San Francisco is opening a forward-thinking new homeless shelter designed to house entire communities of people who have long lived on the streets. If you would like to be pessimistic about this nice development, consider the big picture.

San Francisco is the closest thing that America has to a city in which the middle class is completely purged from the city limits. "The median price of a single-family home sold in San Francisco in January was $915,000," the Wall Street Journal reports. "The average asking rent at the end of 2014 for a studio apartment was $2,575." The new homeless shelter in the Mission district, meanwhile, is funded by a multimillion-dollar private donation, and is slated to be open for only 18 months before it is turned into apartments. It can house up to 75 people.

San Francisco's homeless population in 2013 was 6,436. Of those people, nearly 3,800 were "unsheltered."

With a $2 million donation, the city is able to run a shelter that houses 75 people for 18 months. At that rate, it would cost the city of San Francisco about $115 million to house its current homeless population for one year—more than a billion dollars over the next decade. That sounds like a lot of money. But in a city with an $8 billion annual budget, it's not necessarily prohibitive.

Even if San Francisco did decide to build enough shelter beds for all of its homeless citizens, it runs the risk of duplicating New York City's homeless system: comprehensive, and plagued by "Dangerous living conditions, rat-and-roach-infested residences and fire violations." (And not very effective at diminishing the homeless population.) Homeless shelters are short-term emergency measures, not long-term plans. Things that have been shown to actually get homeless people off the streets include building permanent long-term housing, and intensive job-training programs coupled with intensive social services designed to propel people to self-sustainability.

A new homeless shelter is better than no homeless shelter. But it is not better than affordable housing and living-wage jobs. San Francisco is a city racing full speed towards becoming the exclusive domain of the rich. If they build more homeless shelters, middle class people will be clamoring to rent them for $1,500 a month.

[Photo: Flickr]

Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

A group of children at a playground in Greenacres, Fla., all younger than age 10, witnessed a couple in the throes of passion last Friday as their copulation travelled from tree-side to inside a truck.

After police were called to the scene, the Sun-Sentinel reports, an officer came upon the couple—Shane Johnson, 38 and Danielle Stager, 26—mid-act. Johnson was seen "kneeling inside of a truck on the seat" with Stager's "feet dangling out of the driver's side door."

According to the arrest report obtained by the Sentinel, after spotting the officer, Stager looked at Johnson and said, "Shane, we are going to jail."

Both were charged by police with with lewd and lascivious behavior.

[Image via WPTV]

Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .

The 2012 Super Bowl was one of the most watched television events in U.S. history, with an estimated viewership of 111.3 million people. Three million more watched the halftime show. Madonna, the iconic pop star and headliner, crafted a thirteen-minute-long medley of her songs, a lavish production costing millions. The result was a spectacularly staged performance. The show opens on a stage decorated with Egyptian motifs and similarly costumed dancers as Madonna enters, dressed as the hierophant of an ancient mystery cult, seated in a throne on a chariot being pulled by dozens of "slaves."

The original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn would likely have been envious of the attention to detail. Other dancers dressed as armored angels and strange deities spin around Madonna as she sings "Vogue." Tall banners are decorated with a symbol, an M cutting into a circle, the two sides of the letter forming what look like massive horns. Madonna's costume is simple, a Roman centurion's skirt, her head adorned by a winged helmet with two pointed appendages rising from the middle.

Madonna's interest in esoteric matters goes way back. Beginning with an awkward conversation with Kurt Loder of MTV in 1997, Madonna tried to explain finding her way to the Kabbalah Centre, where she was taught that, "If you want to have goodness in your life, you have to give it." She also explained that the soul becomes firmly attached to the body at age 13 (the age of a Bar Mitzvah). In a later 2005 interview with the Guardian, having become increasingly devoted to the Kabbalah Centre, Madonna again tries to explain what the teachings mean to her, and defending the controversial center from what the interviewer, Dina Rabinovitch, calls "charlatanism."

The Kabbalah Centre was started in 1969 by the retired Rabbi Philip Berg. Berg wanted to divorce the mystical teaching of the Kabbalah from its Jewish context, believing it to have universal spiritual power. While the center uses the Bible and the Jewish Kabbalistic text called the Zohar in its teachings, the main thrust of the approach is in the practical application of what the center calls "the world's oldest body of spiritual wisdom." The center contends that Judaism kept the 5,000-year-old teachings secret until Berg believed that all people should have access. In Judaism, the Zohar is considered the primary source of Kabbalistic wisdom. The Zohar was written in Aramaic sometime in the 13th century, likely drawing from a variety of sources, some old and some contemporary to its own time, and serves as a mystical interpretation of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The center claims that the power of the Zohar is not in what it says, but what it is— an artifact of great power that can alter one's destiny:

To merely pick up the Zohar, to scan its Aramaic letters and allow in the energy that infuses them, is to experience what kabbalists have experienced for thousands of years: a powerful energy-giving instrument, a life-saving tool imbued with the ability to bring peace, protection, healing and fulfillment to those who possess it.

This occult approach to the Kabbalah has been part of the tradition for centuries, but Berg was the first to give it such wide appeal. He was not the first, however, to extract the occult nuggets.

Renaissance magicians had looked to Jewish Kabbalistic texts as sources of wisdom that could easily conform to their own mystical interpretations of Christianity. Later, occultists followed their lead and found in the Kabbalah a rich mineral vein of esoteric wisdom they could apply to their own systems. For example, in the Golden Dawn, important tools of the student, such as astrology and tarot, had their corresponding Kabbalistic identifier, in particular the sefirot, the Kabbalistic tree of life, which became central to Western occultism. Simply put, the sefirot refers to the ten aspects of the divine that spring forth from the unknowable Godhead, or ein sof. The sefirot can be laid out like the geography of the universe. The sefirot are a beautifully realized, and in some sense, materialistic view of the universe. Each aspect of creation is delineated by a temperament (judgment, compassion, masculine, feminine), and not only is it easy to show how each individual sefirah has a corresponding numerological and astrological meaning, images of the sefirotic tree hearken back to the Renaissance alchemical emblems.

For occultists through the ages, Judaism represented the authoritative ancient tradition with enough of its own mystical and legendary magical practice that it offered the perfect complement to an already complex configuration of ideas and practices.

Madonna likely saw her very public interest in an esoteric philosophy as also having artistic potential. The halftime show presents her as a priestess, imbued with divine wisdom, ready and willing to initiate anyone who wishes to enter into her mysteries. Conspiracy theorists had a field day with it. The very next day, the website The Vigilant Citizen offered a breakdown of Madonna's show, a paranoid exegesis making note of every element of the performance: Madonna's costume resembles Ishtar, the Sumerian goddess of love, war, and sex; Madonna's throne flanked by sphinxes is a perfect rendition of the chariot in the tarot deck; the first song, "Vogue," ends with a winged sun disc illuminating the stage, a symbol one blogger claims is used by all the major secret societies. Most damning of all, however, is at the end of the show when Madonna disappears in a flash of smoke and the words "World Peace" light the stage, "a PR‑friendly slogan used by those pushing for a New World Order lead [sic] by a one world government," concluded one blogger.

Given the occult imagination's influence on popular music (and on Madonna herself ), it's not a stretch to suggest that Madonna consciously drew from mythology, occultism, and even the symbols of secret societies for her show. On the face of it, it was pure pop spectacle, full of color and drama, signifying Madonna's ego and little more. This spectacle, whatever its meaning, was only possible because of what came before it. The theater of rock began long ago: in the smoky UFO Club when Arthur Brown wore his flaming helmet, when Hawkwind hypnotized their fans with lights, when Bowie came onstage not as himself but as a crash-landed Ziggy. Madonna's show is simply a later encounter with rock's Dionysian roots, ones that can't be severed. Maybe the conspiracy theorists are right. We are being mesmerized by popular music, and it's an inside job. There is no all-seeing eye in a pyramid scheming with the music industry. It's just who we have always been, a civilization that demands that music shake our spirits.

The following is excerpted from Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll with permission from the author and Tarcher/Penguin, a division of Penguin Random House.

This is Illuminati Month on Black Bag, in which Gawker locks itself in the woodshed and breaks out the red yarn to explore its favorite conspiracy theories. Photo via Getty

In a disturbing story published today by Philadelphia magazine, a woman alleges that the Uber driver that picked her up in Philadelphia's Old City last month "held her arms down, ripped her pants, and raped her."

The woman, 33, also claims that the driver held her in his car and continued to drive her around for more than two hours.http://gawker.com/boston-uber-dr...

And even though a police report was filed more than a month ago (on the same day she was allegedly assaulted), a spokesperson for Uber claims the company only learned of the incident after Philly mag called for comment on the story today.

Update 2, 3:57 p.m.: It would appear, at least according to a rough translation of this Le Parisien story, that this isn't the first time Uber claimed to have learned about an alleged sexual assault perpetrated by a driver long after it had been reported to police. (H/T @chi1cabby)

Update, 3:26 p.m.: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim," an Uber spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "The driver in question has been deactivated from the Uber platform, and we will assist the authorities in any way we can."

The company's comment goes on:

Here is what we know at this time:

• The trip in question occurred on February 6th and concluded with the driver dropping off the rider at the address where the Philadelphia Police Department 5th District station is located.
• The driver has been interviewed by the PPD and was not arrested and continues to cooperate in their investigation.
• The driver was affiliated with Uber Philadelphia as an uberX partner.
• Upon learning of the incident, we immediately contacted PPD to assist in their investigation and support their efforts in any way we can.
• As the investigation continues, the driver's access to the Uber platform has been suspended.
• While we do not know the identity of the victim due the PPD's privacy policy, our thoughts and prayers are with her.

[Image via Uber]

Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .

In this life, you flail blindly, pummeling your way from one day to the next through alternating periods of heroic effort and helpless inertia, unwilling or unable to behold the world beyond the lonely confines of your own ego. In this way, you resemble an idiot kangaroo with a watering can stuck on its head.

Recently, photographer Ian Berry spotted one such idiot kangaroo in Coffin Bay, Australia, and relayed his experience to The Advertiser, a local tabloid:

While Mr Berry was checking on the kangaroo, fellow Coffin Bay locals Rob Smith and Steve Dew, who had spotted the roo earlier, had returned with rope and tin cutters with the aim to set the marsupial free.

Luckily, they succeeded – but not without a few failed attempts first.

"They used rope first … one had rope tied around the can and the other had the roo's tail and they tried pulling but it didn't work," Mr Berry said.

"At this point it (the kangaroo) was pretty tired because it had been trying to kick the can off … (Mr Smith and Mr Dew) were able to get close enough to cut the can off.

It's true that your own struggle differs from the plight of the idiot kangaroo in one key respect: for you, there are no saviors bearing rope and tin cutters. The best of your hopes lies in another idiot kangaroo whose erratic path occasionally crosses with your own, flickering with the promise of companionship just outside the overwhelming dark of your watering can. If your fortune is good, the two spouts might line up for an ecstatic moment as you hobble off drunkenly together toward your eventual demise, offering a single radiant glimpse at your partner from one can to another before blindness descends again.

Mostly, you're in this alone.

Good luck.

Images via Ian Berry. h/t Arbroath. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

A week and change removed from Robert Durst's startling televised bathroom confession and his subsequent arrest in New Orleans, there are still so many mysteries swirling around HBO's true crime documentary series The Jinx: How many times did Durst visit "Beverley Hills"? Why is Bobby Durst both repulsive and sorta charming? Does Andrew Jarecki actually think that goatee looks good?

But my favorite mystery is still that wild, bitchy brunette Bobby Durst calls a wife: Debrah Lee Charatan.

For the uninitiated, Charatan, Durst's second wife, is a side player in The Jinx. She refused, smartly, to be interviewed for the documentary, so we only see her in deposition footage and hear her in recorded prison phone calls with Durst. When she first appeared, all smokey-voiced and with voluminous dye-singed hair, I assumed that she was some sort of street walker or junkie queen that Durst had shacked up with during some interlude between dismembering a transient and pissing on CVS candy.

But no! Debbie Charatan is a bonafide New York real estate power player who seems to be eerily clear-eyed and a possible Svengali in all of Durst's sordid dealings. When The Jinx ended with Durst's dramatic hot-mic confession—"What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course"—Charatan allegedly sprang into action and arranged for Durst to fly to Cuba, where there is no extradition for U.S. fugitives. It looked like the couple were planning to rendezvous in Havana until the L.A.P.D. showed with a warrant for Durst's arrest the morning before the final episode aired.

So now we ask you: has ever a woman deserved a Lifetime biopic more than Debbie??

Charatan, 58, is a native of Queens, the daughter of a one-footed kosher butcher (slow down, read that again; one-footed-kosher-butcher) and an orphaned Holocaust survivor.

"She's an excellent broker,'' a former employee of Charatan's told the New York Times in 2003, ''but she's also one of the most ruthless people I have ever come across.''

"For Debbie, it's all about the money,'' said a former executive who worked under Charatan for 12 years. ''When she met Bob, she hit pay dirt. I am sincerely sad for her. I don't think this was in her plan.''

"I knew if I couldn't be a star," the Times quotes her as saying at some point in the '80s, "I wouldn't be happy."

Charatan graduated from high school in 1974 and took a job as a secretary at a real estate brokerage for $115 a week. "Most people wouldn't have taken that job as a secretary but I saw it as an opportunity to learn a lot," Charatan is quoted saying in a profile featured in the 1994 book Pathways to Success: Today's Business Leaders Tell How to Excel in Work, Career and Leadership Roles.

She worked her way up to property manager, eventually overseeing more than a thousand properties.

She put herself through college, married a lawyer, Bradley Berger, and became the president of Bach Realty Inc , an all-female real estate brokerage founded in the 1970s. Bach sold over $200 million worth of real estate in New York in the 1980s under her leadership. In 1984, Charatan was featured in Glamour as one of its 10 Outstanding Young Working Women of the year. Here is a little blurb of Charatan in the New York Real Estate Journal from the same time period:

And here is a letter penned by Charatan about her success, published in Pathways:

But by 1987, the Times reported, 2o out of Bach's 24 female employees had quit or been fired. The brokerage later fell apart under the weight of lawsuits claiming that it didn't pay out commissions to their brokers.

In 1988, Charatan met millionaire real estate heir Durst. She'd abruptly left Berger three years before, moving into her own apartment and taking their then-infant child with her. But then, in a custody hearing a year after meeting Durst, Charatan granted Bergen full custody of their 5-year-old son Bennat; she reportedly did not see or speak to him for over a decade. Since then, mother and son have reconciled and they now run another real estate firm together, BCB Property. Durst and Charatan were wed in December 2000, in "a Times Square skyscraper by a rabbi who said that she had picked him out of the phone book." Police had reopened their investigation into the disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathleen McCormack, just a month before the marriage.

According to Crain's New York Business, Durst began seeding BCB property four years ago. Charatan and her son have completed several real estate sales in the last two years that have provided the company with tens of millions in profit.

As Crain's Daniel Grieger put it: "If Robert Durst doesn't kill you, he just might make you rich."

While it's pretty clear that Durst and Charatan may be more business partners than lovers, it still comes as a surprise to learn that, according to the New York Post, Charatan may turn state's witness in order to avoid criminal prosecution for her role in arranging Durst's last-minute relocation to Cuba.

What drives Debbie? What makes the daughter of a one-footed-kosher-butcher from Queens build a real estate empire and then double down on the enterprise to help out an eye-brow-shaving-likely-homicidal-cross-dressing-thin-lipped man like Durst?

We want answers. We want more Debbie.

Have you ever hung out with Debbie Charatan? Do you know stuff about her? Are you actually Debbie? How long have you been reading Jezebel? We would love to speak with you. Do get in touch. Lean in with us, Deb!

Contact the author at natasha.vargas-cooper@jezebel.com.

If you want to reach us or send us documents securely, you can use our SecureDrop.

Student debt: Lots of people have it. "Including Miles Teller?" you're wondering. Huh, funny you should ask.

Despite having appeared in several major movie posters and also Whiplash, Miles Teller has not paid off his NYU student loans, which amount to, as Vulture reported last year, $100,000. Dang, Miles Teller. That's a lot of money to study acting at NYU.

Man.

Even knowing it worked out I'm having some doubts about whether or not it was worth it for you to spend $100,000 to study acting at NYU, Miles Teller. $100,000, damn.

Teller spoke to Vulture recently about why he has not paid off his loans, even though he is in movies now and can:

"My business manager says the interest is so low, there's no sense in paying them off. I can, if I want to have that badge of accomplishment, but until then I still very much have my NYU loans."

Typically people pay off student loans because they are loans to be repaid rather than strictly because of the sense of accomplishment one generates when paying them off, but all right, Miles Teller. Not my tempo, but all right.

Image via Getty. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

While searching for Kristin Cavallari memorabilia on eBay a couple of weeks ago, I came across a rare and curious item: a magazine ad page for a little-seen reality show hosted by Kristin called Get This Party Started.

The seller described the item thusly:

This magazine ad (which ran in publications as a promotion, and measures approximately 8x10.5 inches) has some printers creasing and general wear, but is still in pretty good shape! Not a photocopy or more recent reproduction. The images on the back are showing through some.

According to Wikipedia, the show aired for one week on UPN in February 2006 before getting cancelled. Did you see it? I did not.

Even though I was unfamiliar with the show—which is, as Wikipedia points out, is not to be confused with the P!nk song "Get the Party Started"—I decided to bid on the ad page, which ultimately sold for $5.99.

Was I the high bidder? You'll have to check back tomorrow to find out. For now, I turn to you, reader, for help in my quest to determine what this freakin' show was about.

Do you have any physical evidence that Get This Party Started, hosted by Kristin Cavallari, existed? Did you see one of its two episodes with each of your own two eyes? According to Wikipedia, the series "set out to throw surprise parties for deserving people." (?) Maybe you went to one of those parties! Or maybe you just deserve one. If you have any information, please comment below or email allie@gawker.com.

One last note from Wikipedia that may be pertinent: "The show ended up last out of the 156 programs which aired on the six major American broadcast networks in the 2005-06 season."

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

The first day of a two-part severe thunderstorm event is unfolding across the middle of the country, with an enhanced risk for severe weather—three on a scale from zero to five—possible in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri. Storms could produce very large hail, damaging winds, and a few tornadoes.http://thevane.gawker.com/heres-a-crash-...

The Storm Prediction Center just issued its fifth severe weather watch of 2015, which is unprecedented in the 45 years the agency has kept records of its severe thunderstorm and tornado watches. We usually see more than 50 watches issued across the United States by this point in the year, a testament to the cool, stable airmass and unfavorable tracks storms have taken as they've trekked across the country.

Counties shaded in blue are under a severe thunderstorm watch as of 3:00 PM CDT, and they'll remain under the watch until severe thunderstorms exit the region and the danger has diminished. The risk for severe weather isn't limited to the watch area—if you live around the watch, you should keep an eye on the weather, as well.

Why are we seeing severe weather today? As shown in the poorly-annotated map above, a strengthening low pressure system is getting its act together over southern Kansas this afternoon, dragging warm, humid air into the central Plains from the south behind a warm front. The clouds cleared out of the region from south to north this afternoon, allowing temperatures to rise into the upper 70s and low 80s across the area at risk for severe weather. The combination of daytime heating, moisture, and lift along the cold front will spark some thunderstorms along and east of the I-30 corridor.

There's enough wind shear (wind changing speed and direction with height) that any storms that do form across the risk area have the potential to turn into supercells. The High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model does a good job of showing a squall line with embedded supercells as it moves across Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas. The model simulated radar begins at 2:00 PM CDT and ends around 9:00 PM CDT.

The agency issued the enhanced risk for severe weather this afternoon as a result of the 30% probability for hail that exists in cities like Joplin, Springfield, and Fayetteville. Hail could reach two inches in diameter (larger than a golf ball) in the strongest storms.

A 15% risk for damaging winds (58+ MPH) exists over roughly the same area. Some of the storms in and around the severe thunderstorm watch may produce isolated wind gusts up to 70 MPH, which could easily damage trees, power lines, and toss loose objects scattered around your house.

It's also worth mentioning that there's a marginal risk for tornadoes in any of the storms that form across the risk area. There's enough moisture present that any storm that gets some good rotation on it could produce a brief tornado. Even a small, weak tornado can pose a threat to life and property, so pay attention to the weather as you go about your evening.

A similar situation will unfold a bit farther to the southwest during the day on Wednesday, with large hail again serving as the dominant type of severe weather. Much of central Oklahoma will see the risk for hail two inches in diameter or larger, which is the size of a hen egg, or between a golf ball (1.75") and a tennis ball (2.50").

The National Weather Service issues warnings for individual thunderstorms, while the Storm Prediction Center handles the overall risk for severe weather. You can keep tabs on your local radar using Wunderground's great radar tool.

[watch/analysis/model maps: GREarth | risk maps: author]

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

Starbucks Coffee announced Sunday that it will stop making its baristas engage customers in uncomfortable conversations about race, concluding a strange experiment that no one but the company's CEO seemed to like.

"CEO Howard Schultz ended the effort Sunday, after days of pushback against the company's initiative to start a conversation about race within its more than 20,000 stores ... the scribbling of a somewhat-ambiguous message on lattes has been quickly phased out," the Washington Post reported.

"Starbucks has ended the first phase of its Race Together initiative almost as soon as it began, CEO Howard Schultz announced in a letter, after it was deluged with criticism over the last several days," said Newsweek.

And here's a Fox Business ALERT: "Starbucks silenced! The coffee chain ending its controversial campaign to spark race relations after just one week."

While it's true that the campaign was an unpopular, misguided PR stunt, that's not what killed it. It was always scheduled to end Sunday.

Here's the relevant section of an internal memo on the initiative that Gawker received last week:

And this is what Schultz wrote in a letter to employees:

This phase of the effort — writing "Race Together" (or placing stickers) on cups, which was always just the catalyst for a much broader and longer term conversation — will be completed as originally planned today, March 22.

The #racetogether cups didn't stop because Starbucks listened to the overwhelming popular sentiment that this is a bad, awkward and self-serving way to address America's problems around race. In fact, USA Today's Starbucks-sponsored Race Together sections and Starbucks' employee forums about race will continue, although no one will pay attention.

This strange chapter in seeing what a very rich man can get his employees (sorry, respected partners) and customers to put up with was never meant to last longer than one media cycle.

Starbucks seems to be getting undue credit for responding to customer feedback (it didn't), and not enough credit for imagining that this was not just a good idea, but such a good idea that it could actually accomplish its goals in a week.

Although, to be fair to Starbucks, if the point of the campaign was to cement Howard Schultz's legacy, it worked. He'll always be the guy who sold the SuperSonics.

[h/t WaPo, Photo: Starbucks Corporate]

Can we please find a 29-year-old to reveal the 29 Things They've Learned in 29 Years?

THOUGHT CATALOG DOT COM

• 18 Things To Learn By The Time You Turn 18
• 18 Lessons I've Learned In 18 Years
• 18 Lessons I Am Glad I Learned By 18
• 20 Lessons I've Learned In 20 Years
• 21 Life Lessons I've Learned In 21 Years
• 21 Things I Have Learned In The Past 21 Years Of Life
• 22 Lessons I've Learned From 22 Years Of Life
• 23 Lessons I Learned In 23 Years
• 23 Painfully True Lessons You Learn By Age 23
• 24 Lessons Learned Before Turning 24
• 24 Things I Learned By Age 24
• 25 Things I've Learned In 25 Years
• 25 Lessons I've Learned In My 25 Years
• 25 Things I've Learned In My 25th Year
• 26 Things I've Learned In My 26 Years Of Life
• 26 Things I've Learned About Life As A 26-Year-Old Woman
• 26 Beauty Lessons I've Learned At 26
• 27 Lessons You'll Learn By 27
• 27 Things I've Learned At 27
• 27 Things I've Learned In 27 Years
• 27 Lessons I've Learned In My 27 Years
• 28 Things I've Learned By Age 28
• 28 Little Lessons For Your 28th Year
• 28 Important Things I've Learned In The Past 28 Years
• 30 Lessons Learned On Your Way To 30
• 30 Life Lessons I've Learned Before Entering My 30s
• 31 Things I've Learned In 31 Years
• 31 Things I Learned From Being 31 Years Old

Thirty-two-year-olds encouraged to apply.

Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

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New Jersey, a state known for its equal number of local heroes, sheroes, and zeroes, has gained itself another member of the boss-applesauce community when a councilwoman from Mahwah flipped two middle fingers to the mayor of her town, calling him a "piece of shit" at a council meeting. Now that's how to get things done.

Councilwoman H. Lisa DiGuilio reportedly threw up two middle fingers to Mayor Bill Laforet of Mahwah, N.J. after he disagreed with a council decision to move to reinstate a deposed Director of Public Works. The reason? The guy had allegedly been watching "inappropriate material" on his work computer, Patch.com reports:

Mahwah Mayor William Laforet took steps to fire Ed Sinclair, the director of the Department of Public Works, after an anonymous letter claimed the DPW computers were being used to view "inappropriate material" on a "regular basis."

Laforet implied that it would be a conflict of interest for councilwoman DiGuilio to vote in reinstating Sinclair, so she stood up and flipped him off, not once, but twice—at the same time. Double up!

"I have been on this council for 28 years, and I have never experienced the low life of this mayor," DiGuilio said in a report by PolitickerNJ.com.

Here's to you, local New Jersey hero, Miss Councilwoman "Double Birds" DiGuilio.

[Image via Patch.com]

Here is a picture from the Internet of a man face-fucking a Lincoln memorial—not The Lincoln Memorial, which is marble, and enormous—with his socks on.

The image appears to have originally been posted to Twitter by user @a_farmerr, a.k.a. "Farm Daddy," his body as smooth as the bronze he caresses. He is gentle, but also firm.

Farm Daddy deleted that tweet, but the image was preserved by BuzzFeed's Joe Bernstein, thank goodness.

There are many questions to be asked about this photograph. Which Lincoln memorial is this? Why socks—was it cold? Is the dick in the mouth? Who took the picture? Also: why?

If you have any information about this, please let us know.

Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school famous for its bizarrely powerful Greek system, is having a pretty tough year. Today it gets even worse. Dartmouth has confirmed to Gawker that it extended the suspension of one of its most notorious fraternities, Alpha Delta, over allegations of branding—that is, pressing a piece of hot metal into a fraternity pledge’s skin. If that sounds unpleasant, you might want to prepare yourself for the rumored details of what exactly transpired.

According to Dartmouth’s gossip mill, college officials learned of the branding shortly after a sophomore Alpha Delta pledge, who was branded on his ass during a pledging ritual in Fall 2014, sought medical care after he discovered the affected tissue had become infected over a recent winter break. This somehow got back to Dartmouth administrators, who responded by heaping a lengthier suspension—but not permanent de-recognition—on Alpha Delta. One of the frat’s more famous alumni happens to be Dartmouth’s sitting president, Phil Hanlon.

We were alerted to A.D.’s branding allegations by a tipster, whose email we’ve copied below. The same tipster provided screenshots of Dartmouth’s anonymous chat service, Bored@Baker, suggesting the ass-branding rumor has achieved some traction in Hanover.

Hey there,

Judging from your Beta story a year and a half ago, Gawker seems to love stories about frat shenanigans. According to the Dartmouth-only chat site bored@baker, Alpha Delta—the frat that inspired Animal House and claims current Dartmouth president Phil Hanlon as an alumnus—has been derecognized over hazing gone awry.

Basically, a sophomore pledge during the fall elected to be branded on his ass to avoid more drinking-intensive pledge activities. Unfortunately, the brand was infected over winter break, and after the pledge (now a brother of AD) was hospitalized, some medical staff notified Dartmouth.

AD has been no stranger to controversy in recent years: they were one-half of the “Bloods and Crips” mixer two summers ago, and were put on probation this past fall for another offense, though that apparently hasn’t stopped them from initiating new members.

Would be a good story: this century-old frat gets shut down over some guy’s ass, who must feel pretty shitty right now.

Here are the screenshots:

Dartmouth spokesman Justin Anderson confirmed the extension of Alpha Delta’s suspension in an email to Gawker: “Alpha Delta fraternity has been charged with violating Dartmouth’s standards of conduct in connection with the reported branding of some new members of the fraternity by other members in the fall of 2014.” Anderson declined to address the specifics of the allegations. The rest of his email is below:

The activities in question reportedly occurred inside the Alpha Delta fraternity house, while the fraternity was on suspension for policy violations in the winter and spring of 2014. The organization has a significant three-year history of disciplinary violations, including hazing, underage service of alcohol, and hosting unregistered events.

Because of the serious nature of the charges, and the evidence gathered to date, Dartmouth is strengthening and extending the terms of AD's current suspension pending the outcome of the disciplinary process.

If Alpha Delta is found responsible during that process, a range of possible disciplinary sanctions could be imposed including, but not limited to, probation, suspension, or permanent revocation of recognition.

Know any more about this? Shoot us an email or hop in the comments below.

Email or gchat the author: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · Photo credit: Shutterstock

Despite promises to clean the Rio de Janeiro bay in time for the 2016 Olympics, mayor Eduardo Paes was forced to admit this week that some of the athletes are just going to have to deal with competing in the raw sewage expelled by a large, poorly managed city.

Although Paes offered assertions that the athletes will only compete "in the cleanest part of the bay," researchers reportedly found traces of deadly enzymes in the water last year. And, via the AP:

A helicopter ride Monday organized by biologist and environmental activist Mario Moscatelli illustrated the extent of the problem, revealing household trash floating throughout the entire bay, including within lanes for the Olympic sailing competition.

Heavy rains in Rio over the weekend exacerbated the problem. Each time the tropical city sees heavy rains, the amount of raw sewage emanating from the city's more than 1,000 "favela" slums spikes and huge amounts of trash are flushed off the streets and into area waterways.

"I think it's a shame," Paes reportedly told SporTV.

[images via AP]