Wearing clothes is mostly good. Being yourself, also good. Our official position is: Wear what you like. Unless what you like is memecore thermals adorned with enhanced images of Big Macs and sold to you by the McDonald's corporation. McDonald's is going into fashion, and it's bad.

McDonald's Sweden (exclusive, rare, crispy) has unveiled a Big Mac product line that is ugly as it is stupid. It is Brands Saying Bae, on cool-kid approved separates, forever. Are you fit and attractive? Do you have a "trendy" hairstyle? McDonald's suggests you buy a raincoat or Wellingtons or bedsheets covered in the "hamburger of hamburgers." When was the last time you wore something so good or cool? When was the last time you ate cow tortured and processed on behalf of America's most cynical corporation? You can put the two together if you live in Sweden and feel like spending $60 on a shirt.

I've said before, wear whatever you want. But I guess I didn't really mean it.

[h/t Dazed]

Images via Bigmacshop.se. Contact the author at dayna.evans@gawker.com.

Did you know Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson has a 44-year-old brother and his name is Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson? It’s true. We were reminded of this fact after Rosie Gray at BuzzFeed published an email Buckley sent to a Bill de Blasio spokeswoman today. The message manages to be both sexist (Buckley refers to the spokeswoman as “LabiaFace”) and incompetent (he accidentally CC’d the very spokeswoman he was referring to). Here it is:

From: Buckley Carlson
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 3:18 PM
To: Tucker Carlson; Spitalnick, Amy (OMB)
Subject: Re: Correction Needed

Great response. Whiny little self-righteous bitch. "Appalling?"

And with such an ironic name, too…Spitalnick? Ironic because you just know she has extreme dick-fright; no chance has this girl ever had a pearl necklace. Spoogeneck? I don't think so. More like LabiaFace.

Buckley Carlson

The email came after the spokeswoman, Amy Spitalnick, requested a correction in a Daily Caller story about her boss’s comments about the federal transportation budget. The item suggested de Blasio and President Obama, both Democrats, were in disagreement about what constituted adequate funding. Spitalnick disputed this in several emails between her, the story’s author and editor, and eventually Tucker Carlson. Buckley’s “dick-fright” comments were in response to Carlson’s last email to Spitalnick, in which he stated that her “tone” was “whiny and annoying.”

A recent version of Buckley’s résumé, which used to be available on his (now-deleted) personal website, described him as “a crisis communications media consultant, writer and political strategist.” The same document, seen below, indicates he owns “an elderly Maine Coon cat, a Golden Retriever, and a Finnish Spitz.”

Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson. Nice guy.

Email or gchat the author: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · Photo credit: Getty, Daily Caller

Today is the second day of a two-part severe weather outbreak across the Plains states, with giant thunderstorms blowing up over Oklahoma and Arkansas. The storms have the potential to produce hail up to the size of tennis balls, so naturally, storm chasers are speeding towards them in hopes of catching nature at its fiercest.

The program I used here, GREarth, allows you to overlay dozens of variables on a map, including the location of storm spotters who are relaying their positions via GPS devices. The multicolored car dots shows each storm chasing vehicle, while the yellow boxes show severe thunderstorm warnings issued for each storm as it starts to produce large hail.

It's pretty mesmerizing to watch the chasers race towards storms once they bubbled up west of Tulsa.

A moderate risk for severe weather—a four on a scale from zero to five—is in place across the parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas seeing storms right now. Just like yesterday, most of today's storms are prolific hail producers, with at least nine reports of hail the size of golf balls or larger as of 5:00 PM CDT.

As the evening progresses, the storms should start to merge into squall lines as they move east towards the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys. The threat for severe weather shifts east tomorrow, with a marginal risk for some damaging winds across coastal parts of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.

[Image: GREarth]

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

Remember senior spring in high school? Now imagine if you could take all the irresponsibility, sex, and drinking, but set it 40,000 feet in the air and throw in a gun and federal mandate. Look at that guy! Look at his shades!

The Center for Investigative Reporting took a nosedive into the world of the workaday sky marshal, which you probably assumed was a constant firefight up the aisles between drink service, piling up bodies of the enemy. But, maybe because there haven't been any attempting domestic air hijackings in fourteen years, these armed air-guardians don't do much of anything other than party, fuck, and waste money:

The internal inquiry-turned-criminal investigation appears to revolve around the service's Herndon, Virginia, dispatch center and a flight schedule coordinator accused of offering to help snag better assignments in exchange for personal or sexual favors.

Think about your current job. You're probably just sitting on your ass all day anyway—now imagine if your ass was in the sky. A perpetual vacation. Atmospheric holiday. Endless peanuts. It doesn't even matter if you fuck up:

In one recent case, an air marshal lost his badge after inviting a woman he had met at a bar to his hotel room in Portland, Oregon, said Sonya Hightower, a retired air marshal and representative of the Air Marshal Association.

Don't you wish your job would fly you anywhere, for basically no reason?

"It's a travel agent service. Wouldn't it be nice to pull someone out of their seat and fly for free?" said Donna Leuck, who retired from the service in March 2014 after 12 years as an air marshal based in Orlando.

Don't you wish your job would send you to Hawaii just because you feel like it?

Joseph Zappa, who retired from the air marshals' Las Vegas office last year, said a supervisor took multiple trips to Hawaii during a time when he was considering retiring there.

Don't you wish your job came with a low chance of encountering a terrorist?

With few bad guys to chase, however, insiders say many air marshals have ended up chasing lovers instead. In the eyes of some air marshals, it turned the service not just into a travel agency, but a giant flying fraternity party.

Don't you wish your job was largely an excuse to chase butt across the globe?

"Some would (pretend to) be a pediatrician. Or, if there was a convention at the hotel, they'd go to the convention, see what it was about and use that as their cover story," he said. "Next thing you know, they'd have women in their rooms."

Don't you wish your job gave you an opportunity to buy and smuggle drugs while also being a cop?

The party atmosphere went beyond drinking and having numerous lovers around the country, Lacson and others say. Lacson said he knew air marshals on international missions who purchased steroids, testosterone, Viagra and other pharmaceutical drugs without prescriptions and brought them back into the United States.

This job is so great that the whistleblowers are jaded about stuff like this:

"That's what it's become: 'Where are we going drinking tonight, and how many hookers are we picking up?' " he said. "The majority of the people I flew with, the men that are married and have families, they go out and they pick up prostitutes overseas. It's a way to kill time."

Not only have people quit this dream job, but some have hired an attorney to represent them in disputes with the agency. The attorney sounds like a real wet blanket:

"The problem with this agency is that the air marshals have no real job to do. There has never been a hijacking or any real aviation threat since the inception of the agency," he said. "So you have thousands of air marshals flying around on the taxpayers' dime, gallivanting all over the world. They sleep in five-star hotels and run wild like college kids on spring break once they get off duty overseas."

If air marshals are meant to protect our noble American way of life, there's no better way than by living the American dream: being paid to fuck around in a padded chair and take naps after cheating on your spouse in a hotel room.

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

A year-long AP investigation reveals the global fish market feeds off a robust slave fishing trade benefitting everyone involved except the slaves, who are reportedly kept in cages and whipped with toxic fish when they get tired. Sounds pretty bad!

So how does the free-labor fish get into your cat food and onto your dinner table? The AP managed to get inside one fishing operation, where the slaves—usually Burmese citizens—are forced to live in cages on a "tiny tropical island" in Indonesia called Benjina. Despite days spent catching food, they are not allowed to eat the fish, for it is apparently deemed too valuable for them.

The slaves interviewed by the AP described 20- to 22-hour shifts and unclean drinking water. Almost all said they were kicked, beaten or whipped with toxic stingray tails if they complained or tried to rest. They were paid little or nothing.

Runaway Hlaing Min said many died at sea.

"If Americans and Europeans are eating this fish, they should remember us. There must be a mountain of bones under the sea," he said. "The bones of the people could be an island, it's that many."

And according to the AP, there's no question that the slave-caught fish is everywhere: during the year-long investigation, they claim they tracked several hauls via satellite that ended up at processing plants supplying global distributers.

Inside those plants, representatives told AP journalists that they sold seafood to other Thai processors and distributors. US Customs bills of lading identify specific shipments from those plants to American firms, including well-known brand names.

That fish was then reportedly sold to cat food brands like Fancy Feast, Meow Mix, and Iams, human brands like Chicken of the Sea, and grocers like Kroger, Albertsons and Safeway.

Indonesian Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti tells the AP she wants to stop the slave trade but is finding it hard to get support: "She added that campaigns to save wildlife get far more attention than abuse involving humans at sea."

[h/t AP, image via Shutterstock]

Suzanne Duarte, grinning like a maniac in her mugshot, and was still smiling the next day when a local news station interviewed her in jail. And why not? She'd just set fire to a yoga studio. This is the face of a lady living her best life.

"Most people can't understand the smiling mug shot," Duarte told Dallas's CBS 11 Monday. Maybe this will help: She set fire to a yoga studio. That's the explanation.

Duarte said two men who worked at American Power Yoga had been harassing her for years and wouldn't stop. One of them "kept hitting on me and kept trying to make me the girlfriend on the side," she told CBS 11.

So she waited until Saturday night and, after she was certain the studio had emptied, tried to burn that mother down with matches and a can of gasoline.

She wanted to "set it on fire, just destroy it, get rid of the devil's temple," she said.

It sort of worked, forcing the devil's temple to close briefly before returning to scheduled classes later in the week. No one was hurt, and businesses in the adjoining shopping center weren't damaged.

The fire should be a powerful message to Duarte's alleged harassers, who nearly saw their livelihood go up in flames. How are they reacting to all of this?

"A spokesperson for American Power Yoga says the studio has been under new ownership since November, and until Saturday they were unaware of any dispute," CBS 11 reported.

Oh.

Well, at least she set a yoga studio on fire. No one can take that away from her.

[h/t Raw Story, Photos: Dallas County Sheriff's Office, CBS 11]

Post-peace hipster follicle-farm John Bolton is the latest contestant in the New York Times' "Who can write the insanest Strangelove shit about scary Persians?" sweepstakes, with an entry that concludes we must bomb... something somewhere. But if you pan this stream of consciousness long enough, a gold nugget turns up.

Quick as he is to clamor for military action by American service members whose uniform he's never worn, Bolton was a late entry in this Times bonanza, having to compete with Tom "Why not arm ISIS against Iran?" Friedman and David "I know anti-Semitic vermin when I smell it" Brooks. But Bolton knows how to surpass those mealy-mouthed neo-liberals, because he never stopped being the kid who brings his own Risk board to the party and leaves his capacity for introspection at home, under the bunk bed, nestled next to his Cobra Commander and a pile of flies' wings pulled cleanly from their thoraxes.

There's plenty of crazy, predictably, in a Bolton op-ed titled "To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran"—an op-ed in which he argues, incoherently, in the third paragraph that

but by the tenth paragraph, he's all nah:

But nestled in this pile of belligerent lettuce is a meaty blackened chunk of wisdom that Bolton does his best to bury. Israel, you see, already has nuclear weapons, and has managed not to annihilate all of the declared existential enemies that share its neighborhood—and prevailing weather patterns. But Iran—Iran!—is different, you see:

Ironically, perhaps! Because for all its militarist bluster and willingness to level villages and expand territory to pursue its dead-end enemies, Israel basically gets what it wants without having to irradiate its near abroad. Israel gets what it wants, at least in part, because it is a nuclear power, as the U.S. just recently acknowledged. There is no faster way to become a big swinging phallus on the international scene than to acquire the capability to flatten your enemies in a wink. Just ask all the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

This is what the geostrategic kids call "deterrence," an analog to the theory of "mutually assured destruction"—the notion that if I have a bomb, and you have a bomb, you won't use your bomb, because then I'll use my bomb, and we'll all be dead, and only Joffrey Baratheon will survive long enough to enjoy some plutonium-infused pie and wine in the post-attack detritus.

To Bolton, it goes without saying that the U.S. and its allies—current nuclear powers like Israel and the U.K., and possible future nuclear powers like Saudi Arabia and Egypt—want nukes for defensive deterrence, to assure their enemies that any attacks will be met with an apocalyptic response. But, he asserts, "Iran is a different story"!

Different... how? He never explicitly says how. Only that they have nuclear "ambitions." He implies that these ambitions are different from the U.S.'s and Israel's. He implies that Iran, in other words, is not interested in deterrence, is not interested in becoming a great power, is not interested in playing the realist game of Risk. He implies that Iran, in short, wants to be able to strike first, to kill all our friends in the region—even if most of the climatic winds in, say, Israel and Iraq move in a westerly direction, and would likely carry the fallout of a nuclear strike right back towards Tehran and Qum and Isfahan.

Bolton, in short, thinks a nuclear Iran would be different from all the other nuclear powers that have come before it because he thinks Iran is run by crazy brown Muslim people whose hatred for Jews and Americans and American allies is far stronger than their own love of life. His argument depends on an unfortunately widely held blanket belief that Iranians are fucking bonkers and not interested in traditional statecraft.

What if we share Bolton's assumptions about the Persian psyche? What if we look to Tehran and see what he sees:

To this simple calculation of the problem, Bolton—co-captain of the Iraq War's pep squad—has a simple solution:

The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel's 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required... Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran's opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.

Yes, because attacks on Saddam Hussein, combined with vigorous American support for Iraq's opposition, aimed at regime change in Baghdad, worked so magnificently. Syria, too, has really learned its lesson with weapons of mass-destruction. Good call, Bolton.

Let's not forget: Iranian leadership is bonkers, as far as that goes. Its regime jails and tortures dissidents—like most of the other nuclear powers. It promulgates a religiously inspired exceptionalist ideology—like most of the other nuclear powers. It has a profound anti-Semitism problem—like most of the other nuclear powers.

Should we trust Iran with a nuclear program? No. We shouldn't trust any nation-state with a nuclear program. Especially not a nation-state that, however committed to deterrence, cedes prime op-ed space and political influence to an imbalanced mustache-waxing war addict.

[Photo credit: AP Images]

The daughter of NYC mayor Bill de Blasio, 20-year-old Chiara, is now the face of a New York City campaign to alleviate teen depression, DNAinfo reports. Chiara was outspoken about her struggles with depression and substance abuse during her father's campaign for mayor in 2013.

Chiara visited Millenium Brooklyn High School on Tuesday with her mother Chirlane McCray to speak about her new initiative. In a time when teens hardly know how to speak on the telephone, the initiative will utilize texting as means to seek support for NYC high schoolers experiencing depression or sadness. Chiara had this to say about her new campaign, via the Times:

"Many New York teenagers aren't yet ready to speak their pain aloud," Ms. de Blasio said at a news conference at the school, as her mother, Chirlane McCray, stood by her side. "But they might be ready to text somebody who can help."

Ms. McCray, who introduced her daughter, cited a study showing that more than a quarter of New York City high school students said they felt sad or hopeless every day for two weeks or longer. Few reported seeking help from a counselor.

The initiative will be available initially as a pilot program to teens at ten city high schools, where sufferers of depression can text a number for counselor guidance.

Ten NYC high schools are participating in a pilot for a teen mental health texting service: http://t.co/0tsxhRTCQw pic.twitter.com/KGe9naASXg

— nycHealthy (@nycHealthy) March 25, 2015

[Image via AP]

"I actually want to live in a world where Jonah [Lehrer] should get another chance, even though I really understand that he made some really stupid mistakes," Jon Ronson, author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed, tells New York magazine. Lehrer's next book, The Smarter Screen, is available for preorder from Amazon. [h/t Anna Holmes]

Contact the author at scocca@gawker.com.

Federal authorities late yesterday arrested Spc. Hasan Edmonds, 22, a Illinois Army National Guard soldier, and his cousin Jonas, 29, for attempting to join the Islamic State's anti-Western jihad, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Hasan Edmonds, who is apparently a current reservist, was apprehended while attempting to board a flight from Chicago's Midway Airport to Cairo, Egypt, in hopes that he could link up with the ISIS terrorists and join their hordes in Syria and Iraq, authorities told the Sun-Times. Jonas was taken peacefully in his suburban home in Aurora.

The paper explains the alleged plot as it was related by authorities:

Hasan Edmonds planned to use his military training to fight on behalf of ISIL, while Jonas "planned to carry out an act of terrorism in the United States after Hasan Edmonds departed.," the feds say.

They met with an FBI undercover employee and "presented a plan to carry out an armed attack against a U.S. military facility in northern Illinois, an installation where Hasan Edmonds had been training," the feds say.

ABC News, which says the pair "first came onto the FBI's radar in late 2014," reports that the pair will appear later today in a federal court.

What's this?! Cate Blanchett—professional actress, queen, always so composed—totally lost her cool, dropped the F-bomb, and cut off a painfully awkward interview while doing press for Cinderella?! Shut up!

No, seriously, shut up. What seems to have happened here is that Cate played along perfectly with annoying interviewer Jonathan Hyla of Australia's Channel Ten, but a clip taken out of context by the good ol' Daily Mail started the meme that the actress was genuinely flipping out.

Blanchett's "that's your fucking question?!" outburst came after she parried Hyla's uncomfortable banter for nearly four minutes, and she was clearly laughing at the end of the interview. Even the Mail, with its "loses her cool with journalist, swears on TV" headline, actually knew it was all a joke.

They buried this quote from a rep from the show, The Project, deep down in the story: "We were delighted to learn that Hyla and Cate Blanchett share the same wicked sense of humor. It is one of the funniest interviews we have ever done. There was much laughter throughout the interview, and too much content to air in our allowed time."

Hyla shared that unaired footage on Twitter, "for those misrepresenting" the interview:

For those misrepresenting my #CateBlanchett interview, here it is uncut https://t.co/xNtObSNgSh #IStillNeedKnowHowTheyGotThatCatOnALeash

— hyla (@hyla) March 26, 2015

Does that sound like a woman with anything less than copious, abundant reserves of cool? Get the fuck out of here.

[h/t WeSmirch]

Sophie Hunter, the woman Benedict Cumberbatch chose to marry instead of you and also instead of me, so sorry to us, unveiled her one-of-a-kind Valentino wedding gown in Vogue and on Instagram today.

It's beautiful, I guess, whatever.

According to Vogue, via Page Six, the gown was designed by Hunter along with Valentino creative directors Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli. It took three months to complete, blah, blah, blah. It is made of lace.

"It feels very much of nature," said the soon-to-be mother of Benedict Cumberbatch's child, "and it's so detailed and extraordinary that I'm still trying to get my head around how beautiful it is."

So happy for you, Sophie Hunter, and your beeeaaautiful life. (Insincere.)

[image via Getty]

Welcome back, dear readers, to The Kerfuffler, where every other week we take a look at the culture wars raging online. This week we're looking at the debate surrounding the nature and aims of one of the first 'internet generation' terrorist groups, Islamic State.

As western governments grow increasingly invested in anti-IS efforts, the foreign policy blogosphere has become obsessed with questions of what exactly IS is, and what they're after. Graeme Wood's Atlantic cover story "What ISIS Really Wants," which essentially claims that IS is best understood in a religious framework, has been particularly influential in this debate. The article went viral online, and remained one of the Atlantic's most-viewed stories for weeks afterward.

There are a number of problems with Wood's analysis. For starters he claims that IS is benefitting from an influx of jihadis "from around the world," which is "unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing." This is part of a popular media narrative wherein, activated by a vaguely-described process of "online recruitment," legions of heretofore-dormant young Muslim men IN OUR OWN BACKYARDS are flocking from Boise and Birmingham to join IS. Even more nefariously, we're told, IS is recruiting young Muslim women using kittens and Nutella.

The problem with this narrative, dear reader, is that there is little hard evidence that this sort of thing is actually happening in anything like the numbers Wood and others cite. Even the arch-scaremongers of the CIA only put the number of Westerners in IS's ranks at a couple of thousand. Meanwhile, in the Arab world, social media is more likely to be used to mock IS than to mobilize for them.

This is just one example of the ways pundits writing about IS overstate its influence. Writers like Wood treat the group's aspirations as accomplishments, referring to its patchwork of tentatively-held bits of territory as a "hermit kingdom," and even more ridiculously, as a "caliphate." Indeed, Wood refers to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS's nominal leader, as "the first caliph in generations...the commander of all Muslims" despite the fact that only one in a hundred thousand of the world's Muslims recognize al-Baghdadi's self-granted title.

Wood went on to tell his tale of apocalyptic Islam gone wild on the blog of prominent New Atheist and professional Islam-basher Sam Harris. In their analyses of IS, Wood and Harris provide erudite, 'enlightened' versions of FOX News' more populist Islamophobic scare-mongering. While its rhetoric is more subdued, this middlebrow Muslim-bashing accomplishes the same goals as V.S. Naipaul's recent full-Godwin assertion in the Daily Mail that IS has literally become the Fourth Reich. This is a vast exaggeration of the threat posed by fanatics, but it does nicely justify an endless state of war.

Matthieu Aikins's recent Rolling Stone profile of the "hard men in Baghdad" — the mostly Shi'ah militiamen who are fighting ISIS — is more even-handed. "Iraq burns," Aikins writes, "and its fate will forever remain on our conscience." But even here this fact is treated as a crime of neglect rather than assault. Ignored are the ways in which the US's years-long war and occupation in Iraq — which boasted a much higher body count than IS — destroyed civil society and helped to create IS in the first place. This makes IS's roots and motivations appear more irrational and unfathomable, which in turn fuels the increasingly profitable and influential Islamophobia industry.

Though their voices are often drowned out, a few writers are pushing back. In The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain pointed out that Wood's "10,000 word exercise in confirmation bias" only cited one Islamic scholar. Writing for the New Statesman, Mehdi Hasan , citing testimony from actual escaped IS captives, disputes the very characterization of IS as 'Islamic.' And in The Nation, veteran Middle East expert Juan Cole warns that the scaremongers are not only demonizing Muslims, but allowing IS to control the narrative.

Your Kerfuffler, dear reader, would hope this goes without saying, but: None of the above is meant to diminish IS's vileness. Their aims are horrific, and their tactics are monstrous. No one should have to live under their rule.

But when one asks what is to be done about brutalizers, one must guard against the rhetoric of other brutalizers. So it's worth asking: Is IS the advance guard of a frothing horde of Muslims THE LIKES OF WHICH THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN (even though, confusingly, they also supposedly come straight from the dark ages)? What do they really want?

On these questions your Kerfuffler finds the assessment of one of the most famous Muslims in America — ex-NBA star and cultural commentator Kareem Abdul Jabbar — more incisive than thousands of words by professional terrorism 'experts.' Asked on the Morning Joe show what IS really wants, he responded:

It's a play for money and power, and these people try to impose their will on people so people will listen to them, and they can be in charge. That's all it's about. They've taken on a fascist attitude and a fascist approach to everything. You do what we say or you die....You can make parallels to things that have happened here in America. Like the Ku Klux Klan saying they are the Christian knights, and they do not practice Christianity.

In these things — the use of grisly violence to control other peoples' lives and money, the exploitation of religion's most regressive tendencies — IS is hardly new. And, sadly, they are hardly alone — in the Middle East, or in the world.

Snappy & Friends, a short animated show sponsored by Kellog's Rice Krispies, first aired sometime in 1949. In 1968, a visionary toy scientist named Alex Cartwright created an artificially intelligent robotic arm that could play full games of Stratego, Battleship, and Candyland, to the delight and vague unsettlement of its opponents. One of the defining rock bands of the hippie era was Digital Lady, an acoustic-guitar-and-kitchen-utensils ensemble that featured the brother of Richard Nixon's press secretary on percussion.

None of this is true, of course, but if you consulted Wikipedia about any of it in recent years, you'd find articles on Digital Lady and the robotic Milton Bradley Playmate that were just as detailed and seemingly well-sourced as those about musical groups and children's entertainment robots that actually exist. By its very nature, the encyclopedia that anyone with an internet connection can edit is fertile ground for hoaxes, and because everyone from spam site webmasters on up to university professors uses Wikipedia as a source of information, many of those hoaxes multiply and persist elsewhere long after they've been flagged and removed from the site.

While researching the longest-running-hoax in Wikipedia history for a post last week, I noticed a page on Wikipedia itself devoted to fictions that have been published there in the past. Below are 10 of the strangest, cleverest, and most doggedly influential examples, all of which lasted at several years on the site before they were taken down.

Olimar the Wondercat, the Fake BBC Kids' Show

Published: August 5, 2006

Deleted: July 9, 2013

Olimar the Wondercat, supposedly a "short-lived children's television programme made by the BBC in the 1970s" featuring a cat with magical powers, was in fact fabricated by a British clinical neurologist named Ed Wild as a tribute to his real-life, non-magical cat, presumably also named Olimar. Wild admitted the ruse on Twitter after the Olimar page was pulled down in 2013. To lend the article credibility, Wild seems to have invented a nonexistent website called "When We Were Kids TV Archive," then used that website as a source.

Choice excerpt: "Despite Derek being voiced by Serge Gainsbourg, the French version was a flop and was dropped after only four episodes."

Outside Wikipedia: Despite its seven years online, Olimar didn't break far into the wider internet. One obscure cartoon-related website places it on a list of "pre-80s" TV shows, and it appears as an entry on Free-Streaming-Movies.com. For some reason, they weren't able to find a working stream.

Joe Streater and the Boston College Point-Shaving Scandal

Published: August 12, 2008

Deleted: October 8, 2014

The Boston College point shaving scandal is very real: ESPN produced a 30 for 30 documentary about the '78-'79 mob-affiliated bid to fix college basketball games last year. But Joe Streater, a real BC player whose name is frequently mentioned in connection with the fix, wasn't involved with it at all. In fact, he wasn't even on the team at the time. As Ben Koo conclusively documented on the blog Awful Announcing in 2014, the widespread tarnishing of Streater's name can be traced to one inaccurate Wikipedia edit that was duplicated several times over by journalists who used the encyclopedia as a source.

Choice excerpt: ""Kuhn agreed to participate, and brought in his teammate Jim Sweeney and Joe Streater"

Outside Wikipedia: Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, and the Associated Press have all published sports-scandal roundups that mention Streater as a guilty party in the BC scheme. As of March 20, only Bleacher Report has issued a correction.

Milton Bradley Playmate, the Toy From the Future

Published: January 2008

Deleted: August 10, 2014

The Milton Bradley Playmate's article is unusually detailed and well-written for a hoax, which may explain how it was able to live so long despite a patently unbelievable premise. According to Wikipedia, the Playmate was a late '60s-era concept toy that never actually made it to market, which would have allowed kids to play real-life Milton Bradley board games against an intelligent robot that used a claw arm to move pieces around.

Choice excerpt: "Due to the large servo motors required to operate the claw arm and the primitive state of computing at this time, Cartwright was unable to get the Playmate to an acceptable size and cost before Milton Bradley pulled his funding. The final version of the Playmate was around the size of a filing cabinet and would have cost an estimated $5000 USD."

Outside Wikipedia: The Playmate appears in a spammy machine-generated book called Entertainment Robots, which probably pulled its text straight from the Wikipedia article. (This sort of thing happens all the time.)

Bilcholim Conflict, the War That Wasn't

Published: July 4, 2007

Deleted: December 29, 2012

The Bilcholim Conflict—a supposed 17th century war between Portugal and the Maratha Empire that led to the creation of Goa as an independent state within India—is probably the most well-known hoax on Wikipedia. The Daily Dot chronicled the 4,500-word article's story in 2013, noting that the author had invented several books and their authors to flesh it out (try googling David D'Souza's 1961 tome Roots of Conflict in Portuguese Goa). Bilcholim is also notable for its having been awarded a "good article" designation—a seal of legitimacy that the Wikipedia community only bestows upon one percent of articles on the site.

Choice Excerpt: "A 1921 fiction book by Frank McCallas on rebellion in India bore notable similarities to the events of the Bicholim conflict. Another book in 1958 by Goan writer Victor D'Souza entitled 'Goan Life' presented a story about a Christian family living in a village which had given up allegiance to the Marathas, which was possibly inspired by the events during the conflict."

Outside Wikipedia: David D'Souza's fictional book is cited as a reference on at least one non-Wikipedia blog post, and Bilcholim itself was immortalized in a bot-generated book, just like the Milton Bradley Playmate. It has been so widely publicized as a fabrication, however, that much of what you're likely to find online today makes reference to the hoax itself, not the imaginary conflict.

Digital Lady, the Psychedelic Kitchen-Sink Band

Published: December 2008

Deleted: July 12, 2014

Digital Lady, the aforementioned San Francisco experimental rock band, was supposedly borne out of its founding members' common interest in "subversion, tattoos, and The Meters." The group's records, carrying excellent titles like Lush Bum and Impeccable Creams, were "notoriously sparse; Cusmari and Wolfe recorded their EP with two acoustic guitars and a single Shure SM58 microphone. Drums were improvised using kitchen dishes and utensils." Manfred Ziegler, imaginary brother of real Nixon staffer Ron Ziegler, was the drummer.

Choice Excerpt: "Digital Lady's essence can be heard in a variety of today's bands, including The Provisionals, who covered the Digital Lady song, Girls In Green, on their first EP. Similarly, smatterings of Digital Lady can be heard here and there throughout the shoegaze genre."

Outside Wikipedia: A concert-tracking website called Zup lists Digital Lady in its database of bands. Thanks to Digital Lady, Ron Ziegler is linked to terms like Moog synthesizer and Switched-On Bach on this interactive infographic.

Crocodile shears, the Unbelievably Brutal Penis-Torture Gear

Published: March 20, 2006

Deleted: July 30, 2012

A medieval torture device that was supposedly used on the penises of men who attempted to assassinate a king. The shears' spiked blades were to be superheated before use. (The phrase "crocodile shears" does have a real-world connotation, but it has nothing to do with torture or penises.)

Choice excerpt: "The penis...once exposed to sufficient tension, was torn from the prisoner's body; or, at the least, was severely mutilated."

Outside Wikipedia: Crocodile shears regularly turn up on lists and discussions of "gruesome," "horrifying," and "twisted" torture devices, including on ViralNova, Listverse, AskMen, and Urban Dictionary. They're also found in several books with real, human authors, including Nigette M. Spikes' Dictonary of Torture and Alex Preston's novel In Love and War, which the Guardian called "profoundly moving" in its review last year.

Saint Ofelia, the Imaginary Martyr

Published: June 8, 2008

Deleted: April 14, 2014

Saint Ofelia, of Denmark, is said to be a Roman Catholic martyr. But it's hard to find a reference to her in any source that doesn't seem to be getting its information from her four-sentence Wikipedia article.

Choice excerpt: "Her name day is February 3."

Outside Wikipedia: References to the imaginary martyr are mostly found on baby-naming sites like this one and this one. (We can only hope some child somewhere has been named after her.) She's also in a spam book about Danish people.

The Made-Up Maid That Inspired Amelia Bedelia

Published: January 31, 2009

Deleted: July 29, 2014

The article on Peggy Parish's series of children's books once alleged that the titular character was based on a maid in Cameroon, "where the author spent some time during her formative years." Daily Dot writer EJ Dickson admitted last year that she'd made the edit with a friend in college while they were "stoned out of our minds," "with the intention of seeing how fast it would take to get it taken down." It stayed up for five years.

Choice excerpt: "Her vast collection of hats, notorious for their extensive plumage, inspired her to write an assortment of tales based on her experiences in North Africa."

Outside Wikipedia: As Dickson notes, her tossed-off joke picked up an astounding amount of steam after she published it: here it is in a book about Jews and Jesus Christ; here, a blogger uses the fictional anecdote to make a labored point about slavery. Herman Parish, who picked up writing the Bedelia books after the death of his aunt, once told a reporter that Peggy based "the lead character on a French colonial maid in Cameroon."

Slow Blind Driveway, the Inauthentic Bluesman

Published: November 16, 2006

Deleted: August 26, 2009

Slow Blind Driveway—an imaginary old guitarist dreamed up to poke fun at both the naming conventions of bluesmen and the insatiable appetite of some record collectors for ever-more impoverished and obscure musicians—was supposedly born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1885, and recorded for Atlantic and Regal Records before his death of heart failure in 1952. His distinctive moniker was inspired by his given surname—Driver—and "the number of his songs about being on the road."

Choice excerpt: "His style was unique: a form of country blues, bridging the gap between the raw blues of the Mississippi Delta and the more refined Chicago sound. The style is documented on John Lomax's 1940 recordings of Driveway for the Library of Congress."

Outside Wikipedia: A "this day in blues history" blog post commemorates April 19 as the day "Influential Blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter, Slow Blind Driveway died in Deatsville, Alabama at the age of 66." The folk singer John Gorka occasionally performs under the name Slow Blind Driveway, though that joke appears to be unconnected to the Wikipedia hoax.

Illustration by Tara Jacoby. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

From July 15th to September 15th, over a thousand armed American soldiers will maneuver through the Southwest United States as part of a vast operation with a single motto: "Master the Human Domain." Internet conspiracy theorists wait their whole lives for a moment this rich.

"JADE HELM 15" is a real military exercise cooked up by the United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). It's also, if you ask a certain cohort of internet dweller who thinks each day will be the one when Barack Obama personally carries away his guns, the first phase of martial law in America. When I was first forwarded this slideshow—apparently a preliminary briefing on Jade Helm marked marked "For Official Use Only"—the conspiracy theorists were the only ones talking about the exercise.

AllNewsPipeLine.com considers this the beginning of the end:

With September of 2015 consistently being warned of as a potential timeframe for the global collapse and World War 3, are these exercises more proof that something huge will happen near that date or just more ongoing drills as posse comitatus no longer applies upon American soil and America turns into a 'no longer' invisible dictatorship?

The site adds that FEMA-operated "death domes" are already being erected across Texas to prepare for civilian abductions during Jade Helm. InfoWars, the New York Times of right-wing paranoia, notes that "Although nations can benefit from joint drills, the exercises also serve to blur the lines of national sovereignty, slowly leading to the formation of a North American Union."

FreedomOutpost.com is equally suspicious:

For years now, our veterans, Christians, patriots, gun owners, constitutionalists, pro-life advocates, small government supporters, small businesses, real journalists in the press, anti-corruption activists, anti-UN Agenda 21 advocates, anti-global warming supporters, anti-war patriots, anti-criminal immigration supporters, have all been targeted by this administration as enemies of the United States, even within government documents. Are we supposed to trust that they have pure intentions now?

Realizing that ignoring the paranoid will do nothing to quiet them, Army spokespeople are trying to ease everyone's nerves with some military boilerplate. From ArmyTimes.com:

The Army says Jade Helm is a real exercise and will take place in the Southwest, as the slides indicate. But USASOC spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria said that's the extent of the reports' accuracy.

"It's a training exercise. Just a regular training exercise," Lastoria said of Jade Helm, which USASOC documentation references as a training exercise in at least one previous year as well.

It's funny how even an extremely mundane denial sounds ominous coming from the Pentagon. Lastoria also spoke to Stars & Stripes:

"This exercise is routine training to maintain a high level of readiness for Army Special Operations Forces because they must be ready to support potential missions anywhere in the world on a moment's notice."

But you don't need to believe in FEMA death domes or an Islamofascist White House to find Jade Helm a little bit unsettling—even if it just a routine exercise meant to simulate a future Middle Eastern war zone inside America. One particular slide, which divides up the Southwest into "hostile" or "insurgent" pockets, has been the epicenter or message board frothing:

Another slide notes that Jade Helm participants will be blending in with locals wearing "civilian attire," while others will appear armed:

And this insignia, with that perfect blend of Microsoft Office '98 aesthetics and creeping fascism copy, isn't helping anything:

You can read the USASOC slideshow below if you'd like to start preparing now.

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

A museum dedicated to preserving the history of Italian-Americans in New York City has decided to evict one of the few remaining descendants of Italian immigrants living in Little Italy, the New York Times reports.

The Italian American Museum owns six apartments in the building next door to the museum, including the one in which Adele Sarno, an 85-year-old American whose parents were born in Naples, has lived since the 1960s. Five years ago, after the museum warned Sarno that her rent would go up, Sarno recruited the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, an affordable housing non-profit, to argue on her case. It was then that the octogenarian learned that her rent was not eligible for rent stabilization. The Italian American Museum followed through on their warning and served Sarno with an eviction notice in November.

The museum claims that income from the six apartments helps fund its operations. In a conversation with the Times, museum spokesperson Joe Carella asked, "So the museum should be running a charity or providing residences at discount rates?"

According to the Times, a census in 2010 found that there were no Italian-born Americans living in the small Manhattan area defined as Little Italy. Sarno, whose rent is $820 a month (her upstairs' neighbors pay $4,500 a month), has been asked to leave within a few days, though she has been living in the neighborhood for her entire life. The museum founders do not seem to see the problem here:

In an interview, Joseph V. Scelsa, founder and director of the museum, rejected the idea that the eviction was at odds with the institution's mission.

Little Italy, he said, "is not a community of Italian-Americans any longer." He said at some point the population that gave the area its name would disappear entirely, but that "the legacy would still remain because we have an institution that does that."

If Sarno is pushed out, she will be forced to move to Wisconsin to live with her only daughter.

"How could you throw old people out?" she told the Times yesterday. "I'm not going to be here that many more years. Let me die in my home."

Image via AP. Contact the author at dayna.evans@gawker.com.

On Tuesday, Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed into the French Alps under mysterious circumstances, killing all 150 people on board. Two days later, French prosecutors announced that the plane had been "intentionally destroyed" by its co-pilot. Audio from the cockpit captured the sounds of passengers' screams just before the moment of impact, suggesting, perhaps, that they were unaware of their imminent collision until the final seconds.

Here's what was know about the flight, its passengers and crew, and the man who deliberately crashed it into a mountain.

What Happened

Tuesday morning, a Dusseldorf-bound Germanwings flight disappeared over the French Alps, 40 minutes after taking off from Barcelona. Authorities later determined that, shortly after reaching its cruising altitude, the aircraft descended rapidly for eight minutes before crashing into a remote area. The plane's wreckage—including a damaged black box—was discovered later that day. There were no survivors.

The plane's cockpit voice recorder.

By Wednesday night, French investigators had determined that the flight's co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, had locked the captain out of the cockpit just after the plane hit cruising altitude. Lubitz then allegedly disabled the flight's autopilot and began an eight-minute long descent into the French Alps. Brice Robin, the French prosecutor, said the captain tried multiple times to reenter the cockpit. Investigators heard "violent" knocking on the black box's recording as the captain rapped on the door several times "without response," before eventually attempting to break it down. Just before the plane crashed, Robin said, passengers began screaming. "I think the victims realized just at the last moment," he stated.

The Co-pilot: Andreas Lubitz

The 27-year-old pilot was a German citizen who lived with his parents in Montabaur, according to the AFP. He also reportedly kept a flat in Duesseldorf, the city to which Flight 9525 was traveling when it crashed.

Lubitz started flying in his teens, when he obtained a glider pilot's license and joined a gliders club in Montabaur, according to Peter Ruecker, a member of the club. Ruecker told CBS News that Lubitz began training as Lufthansa pilot in 2008, shortly after graduating from a college prep school. He was officially hired as a pilot by Germanwings in September 2013, after five years of training, and had 630 hours of flight experience at the time of the crash.

"He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well," Ruecker said. "He gave off a good feeling."

Lubitz was a "completely normal guy," according to Klaus Radke, another member of the gliders club. "I got to know him, or I should say reacquainted with him, as a very nice, fun and polite young man," Radke told Reuters.

Lubitz spent time training in the United States, according to CBS News. For four months in 2010, he reportedly trained at a flight school in Arizona; he was last in the U.S. in fall 2014, on a crew visa.

He was also apparently an avid runner who competed in local races and had completed a half-marathon. Reuters reports that Lubitz expressed an interest pop music and night-clubs on his Facebook page.

At a press conference Thursday, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said Lubitz had undergone rigorous psychological and aviation reviews since he began training with the company in 2008.

"He was 100 percent fit to fly. There was no particular thing to note or to watch out for," Spohr said. "We choose our staff very strictly. The choice of staff is very strict - we not only take into account their technical knowledge but also the psychological aspect of our staff."

Spohr also said Lubitz's training was briefly interrupted for an unspecified reason but was later completed.

"The co-pilot qualified as a pilot in 2008. He first worked as a steward and then became a first officer [co-pilot] in 2013," he said. "He took a break in his training six years ago. Then he did the tests again. And he was deemed fit to fly."

Spohr and German officials said there's no apparent link to terrorism, though the investigation remains on-going. When asked if Lubitz had committed suicide, Spohr said: "I am not a legal expert. But when one person is responsible for 150 lives, it is more than suicide."

The Associated Press reports that the local government in Duesseldorf ran a security check on Lubitz in late January and found nothing unusual.

The Captain

The captain's name has not been released yet, but German media outlets have identified him as Patrick S., a father of two. He'd reportedly logged more than 6,000 hours of flight experience over his 10 year career with Lufthansa, Germanwings, and Condor airlines.

The Telegraph shared a portion of an interview with one of his former colleagues, originally posted on a French website called Europe1:

"He was one of the best," the report quotes a retired Lufthansa pilot identified only as Dieter.

"He was someone very reliable, he was one of the best pilots we had," he said. "I am 100 per cent sure they did the best they could. That's what I think because I knew him very well, he was one of the best, he had a lot of experience, he had more than 6,000 flight hours behind him."

The Other Victims

Among the dead were 16 teenagers and two teachers from a German high school who had just completed a week-long exchange program in Spain. Two German opera singers also died in the crash, as did a pair of newlyweds who'd just married on Saturday. Three Americans—Yvonne Selke, 58, and her daughter, Emily Selke, 22 (pictured above); the third victim was identified by the State Department as Robert Oliver—were on board, as were citizens from Argentina, Morocco, Spain, Germany, Australia, Britain, Iran, Colombia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Israel, and Japan.

Marina Bandres Lopez-Belio, film editor, based in Manchester killed in Alps plane crash along with 7 mnth old son. pic.twitter.com/OjsKFURfvJ

— North West Tonight (@BBCNWT) March 25, 2015

Two Australians killed in Germanwings flight named as Carol Friday and her son Greig http://t.co/dSzy3pUCet pic.twitter.com/THtkc7D5Yo

— ABC News (@abcnews) March 25, 2015

Los colombianos que fallecieron en la tragedia de #Germanwings http://t.co/8rKCX1MaTn pic.twitter.com/zXPAvRlouj

— LA Fm (@noticierodelafm) March 25, 2015

#BREAKING Confirmed: 2 Iranian nationals is among 148 killed in German plane crash pic.twitter.com/Q6PtCRGcj6

— Tasnim News Agency (@Tasnimnews_EN) March 25, 2015

What's Next

Investigators and rescue crews will continue to sort through the site for evidence and to recover bodies, a process that could take weeks because the severity of the crash and its remote location

Images via AP, GIF via Telegraph. Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

The Washington Post reported this morning that, pursuant to CIA Director John Brennan's vaunted re-organization plans, the chief of the agency's counterterrorism center has been unceremoniously reassigned. The newspaper declined to report this name, however: Michael D'Andrea.

The Post story, by Greg Miller, includes a lot of detail about D'Andrea. In fact, it's the second story Miller has written exploring—perhaps constructing—D'Andrea's complicated and irascible persona (the other was a profile that appeared in March 2012). Here's what we have learned about D'Andrea from Miller's reporting:

• He is a convert to Islam.

• He "directed the hunt for Osama bin Laden."

• He was the "driving force of the Obama administration's embrace of targeted killing as a centerpiece of its counterterrorism efforts."

• He will be among the "first to face blame if there is another attack on U.S. soil."

• He manages "thousands of employees."

• He chain-smokes cigarettes.

• He spends "countless hours on a treadmill."

• He has a hideaway bed in his office.

• He can be "profane and brutal toward subordinates."

• He was the basis for a character known as "The Wolf" (pictured above) in Zero Dark Thirty.

• He is regarded by one former CIA director as "one of the finest intelligence officers of his generation."

• When a co-worker once attempted to give him a cartoon sketch of himself as a gift, he "crumpled it up and threw it away...saying, 'I don't like depictions of myself.'"

• He has been called "the undertaker."

That's a lot of data—a compelling portrait, even—about a man who occupies a senior role in the CIA, who is accountable for the disposition of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, who is charged with protecting American citizens from attack, and who is responsible for hundreds of deaths abroad. The one data point that is missing, however, is that name. Michael D'Andrea.

Because he remains undercover, The Washington Post has agreed to withhold his full name. He has been publicly identified in the past by both his actual first name, Mike, as well as that of his CIA-created identity, Roger.

A CIA spokesman asserted to Gawker that the identity of the outgoing director of the counterterrorism center is indeed classified. But that doesn't make it a secret. D'Andrea's name and affiliation have been on the internet for almost a year, and the ACLU's Chris Soghoian and others have been circulating it on Twitter today. Gawker has independently confirmed D'Andrea's identity.

WaPo withholds full name of retiring CIA terrorism official, Michael D’Andrea, architect of drone signature strikes. http://t.co/QY65Cp4HMR

— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) March 26, 2015

D'Andrea's predecessor at the counterterrorism center was also treated as an undercover operative, but the position has historically been occupied by real, named senior government officials. The center's founding director was Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, a man who is not afraid of talking to reporters. Cofer Black, who ran the center during and after 9/11, was repeatedly named as such in the Post and trades on the experience to market himself as a paid speaker. Robert Grenier, who has also been named by the Post, highlighted the gig on the cover of his book.

It's not clear why D'Andrea is being treated differently by the Post. He is not an operative being deployed in any theaters—D'Andrea is a very high-level bureaucrat with an enormous amount of power and taxpayer resources at his disposal. He works at a desk in CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Generally speaking, government officials at this level are not deliberately shielded from accountability by the government, or by the newspapers that cover it. If it is the case, as Miller wrote, that D'Andrea was one of the people who would first face blame in the event of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, it is difficult to imagine the justification for declining to name him. How would we know whom to blame?

It is likewise difficult to imagine that Miller would have been able to acquire the amount of color and detail he has on D'Andrea without the tacit cooperation of some current and former senior officials at the agency. If security or classification concerns led agency officials to decide that D'Andrea's identity should be closely held, one would imagine that they would decline to cooperate with attempts by reporters to put details about his personal life—his religion, his exercise habits, his career history, his marital history—on the record. But Miller's reporting on D'Andrea has relied on interviews with or statements from "a former high-ranking CIA official who supervised the counterterrorism chief," "a former senior U.S. military official who worked closely with the CIA," former CIA director David Petraeus, former deputy CIA director Michael Morrell, and, in the case of today's valedictory, CIA spokesman Dean Boyd, who called Miller's unnamed subject "one of the true heroes of the agency."

Today's story states simply that the Post withheld D'Andrea's name "because he remains undercover," which is a different way of saying that his identity is classified (the 2012 story also cited "concerns for his safety" on the part of the agency). But an assertion by the CIA that a given fact is classified has not always, on its own, stopped the Post from publishing in the past. Its reporting on the Snowden documents, for instance, has contained reams of classified information that the intelligence community did not want published. The Post decided to publish it anyway, presumably for good reasons. Asked whether any additional concerns beyond the simple fact that the CIA has placed D'Andrea under cover motivated its decision to withhold his name today, a Post spokeswoman declined to comment.

Gawker asked Boyd, the CIA spokesman who commented on the record about D'Andrea for Miller's story, whether there was any reason not to publish D'Andrea's name. He replied that "we have officers who are undercover, and it's a federal crime to reveal them by name. I can't, by law, confirm that name."

The law Boyd referred to is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime for people with access to classified information—or others engaged in a "pattern of activities intended" to disrupt intelligence agencies—to reveal the names of "covert agents." The statute defines "covert agents" as government officials whose identities are classified and who have served overseas within the last five years. Asked whether the outgoing director of the counterterrorism center had served overseas within the past five years, Boyd replied: "The person in that position has been in it for almost a decade. He is posted at CIA headquarters, which is in Langley, Va."

D'Andrea's successor in that post, according to Miller, is "an agency veteran who has held a series of high-level positions, including running the CIA's operations in Afghanistan. His name is Chris."

Contact the author at john@gawker.com.
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We constantly get our hopes up for upcoming movies... and then they let us down. It's easy to get sucked into the hype cycle, as people talk up their projects — but sometimes, you can tell just from the way people talk about a film that it's probably not going to work. Here are eight key phrases that usually indicate danger.

Note: We're being very careful to use the word "usually" here, because any of these things could apply to a handful of great movies as well. But these are things that, when I hear them, usually set my Spidey-sense tingling. For more early warning signs, check out our list of ways to tell from a movie trailer that it's going to be awful.

So when we're in a junket, or obsessively combing through every interview about a movie for scraps to put into Morning Spoilers, here are the things that we hear that make us worry:

1) "We realized that nobody had ever told the origin of ____"

This is a huge one. People say this a lot about prequels — or origin stories of longstanding characters who have appeared in multiple forms over the years, but never had their origin story told. For example, they said this a lot about Oz The Great and Powerful: Why does L. Frank Baum never go into detail about the origins of the Wizard of Oz in his books? The Wizard's origin is discussed in a paragraph or two, here and there, but never really gone into. Ditto for how Kirk and Spock first met, in Star Trek. And a ton of others — I feel like every few weeks, there's another project where the producer or screenwriter is saying the origin story is the great unexplored territory. Often, they say this about projects that never get off the ground, maybe because they eventually realize the origin story isn't as interesting as they thought. And the fact is, usually the origin story was left unexplored for a reason — some characters just don't need origin stories.

2) "It's our Star Wars" (For things that are nothing like Star Wars)

Let's get this out of the way right up front — Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn also said this about his movie, which did actually rule. But when people say "this is my Star Wars," they usually aren't comparing any of the actual elements of Star Wars to anything in their movie. They're meaning "this will be a huge expansive saga with cuteness and danger," or else, "This was something where I obsessed about the crunchy edges of the mythos for way too long." For example, Last Airbender writer/director M. Night Shyamalan made a big point of comparing his movie to Star Wars in every interview, but the resulting film did a disservice to both the original cartoon and Star Wars. Also, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem writer/directors the Strause Brothers invoked the Star Wars comparison a lot. The point is not that people shouldn't invoke Star Wars — it's just a bad sign when you invoke it for stuff that's really nothing like Star Wars.

3) "It's not a remake. We're putting our own spin on the concept of ____"

See Total Recall, RoboCop, Death Race, a few other things. (Plus the upcoming Terminator Genisys, sad to say.) When people who are taking on a beloved old property and refurbishing it for the 21st century keep insisting that they're not simply doing a new version of the original, sometimes they mean it. And Death Race is a perfect example — it contains almost nothing of the Roger Corman film, except for cars and the Frankenstein mask. (And I kind of liked Death Race for what it was, but it's not really in the same league as Death Race 2000. Ditto for RoboCop.) I guess when people seem like they're trying to have it both ways — invoking a classic thing, while also saying they're not doing that thing — then that's usually a big flashy light of warning.

4) Any phrase that includes "service" as verb.

I freely admit that this is just one of my pet peeves, like the word "franchise." People in the movie business use the word "service" as a verb quite a bit, and it brings to mind the image of grease-covered truck-stop-bathroom shenanigans. They talk about "servicing the mythos" or "servicing the characters," or "servicing the story" — and basically this means "giving screen time to." But in a way that implies that what's being serviced is one element of a big box of toys, along with the VFX and the explosions and whatnot — and it also often means that something is being given screentime, rather than actual development.

5) We had no idea what we were reacting to on these green-screens

Channing Tatum's interviews about G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, from before the movie came out, are pretty hilarious to read now. Tatum talks a lot about how he had to get over his fear of overacting, and stop taking the movie so seriously, at the insistence of Dennis Quaid and director Stephen Sommers. But most tellingly, Tatum talked a lot about how he had no idea what he was doing in any given scene, and none of it made sense to him in the moment. He told Blastr:

I'm sitting there looking at a green screen like, "RIPCOOOORD! NOOOO!" Stuff like that, and you're just like, "What am I doing?" Or you're like, "You get the rockets, I'll get the nanomites. Wait a minute, what are nanomites?" I don't know what's going on, but you're just having fun with it.

To be fair, lots of actors talk about having to act against greenscreen and imagine that they're looking at a dragon or a robot or whatever — but when that crosses over into "I don't know what's going on," that's frequently a bad sign. I feel like Jake Gyllenhaal said similar stuff in his interviews for Prince of Persia, and the actors in the Star Wars prequels were also somewhat befuddled. Update: Commenter Grok points out Ian McKellen actually cried on the set of The Hobbit due to excessive, bewildering greenscreen.

6) We do reference that in the film.

People say this in interviews if their movie is based on a thing that they're actually not really including — the big example that comes to mind is Battleship. Director Peter Berg was forced to spend every interview discussing how they were really going to work in references to the board game in the movie, even though the movie was largely nothing to do with the board game. To a lesser extent, this came up with Watchmen as well — Zack Snyder tied himself in knots explaining how "the squid" from the comic was still in his movie. (Because the anagram S.Q.U.I.D. was used for something.) Your mileage may vary — a lot of people felt Watchmen worked better without the squid, but I actually felt the ending was flat without something that over-the-top. But in general, when people are forced to explain in interviews how they nod to something that was a core element of what they're adapting, that's often a bad, bad sign. (And I feel like I hear this a lot, beyond these two examples.)

7) We had to go back and fix the tone.

OK I have to confess — I got sucked into spending a couple hours last night reading all the interviews that people did about the Jonah Hex movie, which are the purest distillation of "we already know this movie is a disaster, but we still have to sit here promoting it" that I've ever seen. And one of the things that comes up a lot in the Hex interviews is the question of the reshoots that happened, with Francis Lawrence reportedly stepping in to direct some new material. Everyone involved points out — correctly — that reshoots don't necessarily mean a movie is in trouble. (They really don't. Every Marvel movie has had reshoots.) But then they explain that the tone of the movie was wrong, and it needed to be made less comedic. And THAT actually is a huge warning sign. Michael Bay similarly said that last year's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles needed huge reshoots because the tone was wrong, although he said this after the fact:

I'm texting Drew. Then he goes to the bathroom. I go to the bathroom. He's at the urinal and [I say], "We are in so much f—ing trouble!" I write Paramount, "Guys, we have a serious problem. We need funny writers right now. Because the pipeline has to keep going." We really had to get that tone right. It was dicey.

8) My character was changed a lot after I took the role

The other thing I got from the Jonah Hex interviews was that Megan Fox kept saying that she did not sign on to play a "hooker with a heart of gold." And whenever an actor admits that the role they ended up playing was really not the one they thought they were playing... that's also a huge danger sign.

A building in Manhattan's East Village has reportedly collapsed following a large explosion. Hundreds of fire firefighters are reportedly at the scene, battling what's become a seven-alarm blaze. The New York Post is reporting that as many as 30 people are missing while the New York Daily News reports that at least six people—including two firefighters—have been injured, one critically.

UPDATE 5:47 pm: Mayor Bill de Blasio says the explosion appears to have been caused by a gas leak.

"Preliminary evidence suggests a gas related explosion. That investigation is ongoing." - Mayor @BilldeBlasio.

— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) March 26, 2015

"At this moment we know of 12 individuals who have been injured, three in critical condition." - Mayor @BilldeBlasio.

— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) March 26, 2015

BREAKING: per @MarcSantia4NY crew working inside #sushi restaurant accidentally hit #gas line #EastVillage #explosion #NBC4NY

— Andrew Siff (@andrewsiff4NY) March 26, 2015

UPDATE 4:43 pm: At least 12 people were injured in the collapse, according to CBS News. Three of those injuries are reportedly critical.

"We heard a big sound, then three or four people fell on the street," one witness told Reuters. "People were running and screaming."

UPDATE 4:20 pm: CBS New York is reporting that two people are in critical condition following the explosion.

MAN 7-ALARM 125 2 AVE, MIXED OCCUPANCY MAJOR BUILDING COLLAPSE,

— FDNY (@FDNY) March 26, 2015

Now #FDNY operating on-scene at 123 2nd Avenue in Manhattan. pic.twitter.com/bg8vx1TwLX

— FDNY (@FDNY) March 26, 2015

From the scene of the 2nd Ave building collapse http://t.co/HY5AjtbmeL pic.twitter.com/o9IPpxzajr

— New York Post Metro (@nypmetro) March 26, 2015

#BREAKING: Aerial view of building collapse @NYPD9Pct. Numerous rescue units on scene #SOD #ESU #K9 #Aviation #FD pic.twitter.com/d9iX4GOBUd

— NYPD Special Ops (@NYPDSpecialops) March 26, 2015

U/D Manhattan: 125 2 Ave FDNY reporting 3 FireFighters missing. Search on the way 10-66 Transmitted. #FDNY #BREAKING pic.twitter.com/AftWTCRNCg

— NYC Scanner (@NYScanner) March 26, 2015

@MarkCrudele yes it seemed to be an explosion inside the bldg. Ppl were trapped in upper floors. I left the scene asap. Police/fire arriving

— Lauren Trivellini (@laurenkell) March 26, 2015

Crazy explosion on 7 and 2nd east village #fire #explosion pic.twitter.com/U3Z4mx3Wut

— J K (@Jamie_S_Kennedy) March 26, 2015

A photo, via Google Maps, of the building at 125 2nd Ave. before the explosion:

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.