Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal's account.

The emails, which were posted on the internet in 2013, also show that Blumenthal and another close Clinton associate discussed contracting with a retired Army special operations commander to put operatives on the ground near the Libya-Tunisia border while Libya's civil war raged in 2011.

Blumenthal's emails to Clinton, which were directed to her private email account, include at least a dozen detailed reports on events on the deteriorating political and security climate in Libya as well as events in other nations. They came to light after a hacker broke into Blumenthal's account and have taken on new significance in light of the disclosure that she conducted State Department and personal business exclusively over an email server that she controlled and kept secret from State Department officials and which only recently was discovered by congressional investigators.

The contents of that account are now being sought by a congressional inquiry into the Benghazi attacks. Clinton has handed over more than 30,000 pages of her emails to the State Department, after unilaterally deciding which ones involved government business; the State Department has so far handed almost 900 pages of those over to the committee. A Clinton spokesman told Gawker and ProPublica (which are collaborating on this story) that she has turned over all the emails Blumenthal sent to Hillary.

The dispatches from Blumenthal to Clinton's private email address were posted online after Blumenthal's account was hacked in 2013 by Romanian hacker Marcel-Lehel Lazar, who went by the name Guccifer. Lazar also broke into accounts belonging to George W. Bush's sister, Colin Powell, and others. He's now serving a seven-year sentence in his home country and was charged in a U.S. indictment last year.

The contents of the memos, which have recently become the subject of speculation in the right-wing media, raise new questions about how Clinton used her private email account and whether she tapped into an undisclosed back channel for information on Libya's crisis and other foreign policy matters.

Blumenthal, a New Yorker staff writer in the 1990s, became a top aide to President Bill Clinton and worked closely with Hillary Clinton during the fallout from Whitewater investigation into the Clinton family. She tried to hire him when she joined President Obama's cabinet in 2009, but White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly nixed the idea on the grounds Blumenthal was a divisive figure whose attacks on Obama during the Democratic primary had poisoned his relationship with the new administration.

It's unclear who tasked Blumenthal, known for his fierce loyalty to the Clintons, with preparing detailed intelligence briefs. It's also not known who was paying him, or where the operation got its money. The memos were marked "confidential" and relied in many cases on "sensitive" sources in the Libyan opposition and Western intelligence and security services. Other reports focused on Egypt, Germany, and Turkey.

Indeed, though they were sent under Blumenthal's name, the reports appear to have been gathered and prepared by Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the CIA's clandestine service in Europe who left the agency in 2005. Since then, he has established a consulting firm called Tyler Drumheller, LLC. He has also been affiliated with a firm called DMC Worldwide, which he co-founded with Washington, D.C., attorney Danny Murray and former general counsel to the U.S. Capitol Police John Caulfield. DMC Worldwide's now-defunct website describes it at as offering "innovative security and intelligence solutions to global risks in a changing world."

In one exchange in March 2013, Blumenthal emailed Drumheller, "Thanks. Can you send Libya report." Drumheller replied, "Here it is, pls do not share it with Cody. I don't want moin speculating on sources. It is on the Maghreb and Libya." Cody is Cody Shearer, a longtime Clinton family operative—his brother was an ambassador under Bill Clinton and his sister is married to Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott—who was in close contact with Blumenthal. While it's not entirely clear from the documents, "Moin" may refer to the nickname of Mohamed Mansour El Kikhia, a member of the Kikhia family, a prominent Libyan clan with ties to the Libyan National Transition Council. (An email address in Blumenthal's address book, which was also leaked, was associated with his Facebook page.)

There's no indication in Blumenthal's emails whether Clinton read or replied to them before she left State on February 1, 2013, but he was clearly part of a select group with knowledge of the private clintonemail.com address, which was unknown to the public until Gawker published it this year. They do suggest that she interacted with Blumenthal using the account after she stepped down. "H: got your message a few days ago," reads the subject line of one email from Blumenthal to Clinton on February 8, 2013; "H: fyi, will continue to send relevant intel," reads another.

The memos cover a wide array of subjects in extreme detail, from German Prime Minister Angela Merkel's conversations with her finance minister about French president Francois Hollande—marked "THIS INFORMATION COMES FROM AN EXTREMELY SENSITIVE SOURCE"—to the composition of the newly elected South Korean president's transition team. At least 10 of the memos deal in whole or in part with internal Libyan politics and the government's fight against militants, including the status of the Libyan oil industry and the prospects for Western companies to participate.

One memo was sent on August 23, 2012, less than three weeks before Islamic militants stormed the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. It cites "an extremely sensitive source" who highlighted a string of bombings and kidnappings of foreign diplomats and aid workers in Tripoli, Benghazi and Misrata, suggesting they were the work of people loyal to late Libyan Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi.

While the memo doesn't rise to the level of a warning about the safety of U.S. diplomats, it portrays a deteriorating security climate. Clinton noted a few days after the Benghazi attack, which left four dead and 10 people injured, that U.S. intelligence officials didn't have advance knowledge of the threat.

On September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, Blumenthal sent a memo that cited a "sensitive source" saying that the interim Libyan president, Mohammed Yussef el Magariaf, was told by a senior security officer that the assault was inspired by an anti-Muslim video made in the U.S., as well as by allegations by Magariaf's political opponents that he had CIA ties.

Blumenthal followed up the next day with an email titled "Re: More Magariaf private reax." It said Libyan security officials believed an Islamist radical group called the Ansa al Sharia brigade had prepared the attack a month in advance and "took advantage of the cover" provided by the demonstrations against the video.

An October 25, 2012, memo says that Magariaf and the Libyan army chief of staff agree that the "situation in the country is becoming increasingly dangerous and unmanageable" and "far worse" than Western leaders realize.

Blumenthal's email warnings, of course, followed a year of Libyan hawkishness on the part of Clinton. In February of 2011, she told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that "it is time for Gaddafi to go." The next month, after having described Russian reluctance over military intervention as "despicable," Clinton met with rebel leaders in Paris and drummed up support for a no-fly zone while in Cairo. On March 17, 2011, the UN Security Council voted to back Libyan rebels against Gaddafi.

It's this buildup, which Clinton still proudly recalled in her 2014 memoir, that Blumenthal appears to join in on 2011. In addition to the intel memos, his emails also disclose that he and his associates worked to help the Libyan opposition, and even plotted to insert operatives on the ground using a private contractor.

A May 14, 2011, email exchange between Blumenthal and Shearer shows that they were negotiating with Drumheller to contract with someone referred to as "Grange" and "the general" to place send four operatives on a week-long mission to Tunis, Tunisia, and "to the border and back." Tunisia borders Libya and Algeria.

"Sid, you are doing great work on this," Drumheller wrote to Blumenthal. "It is going to be around $60,000, coverting r/t business class airfare to Tunis, travel in country to the border and back, and other expenses for 7-10 days for 4 guys."

After Blumenthal forwarded that note to Shearer, he wrote back questioning the cost of the operation. "Sid, do you think the general has to send four guys. He told us three guys yesterday, a translator and two other guys. I understand the difficulty of the mission and realize that K will be repaid but I am going to need an itemized budget for these guys."

"The general" and "Grange" appear to refer to David L. Grange, a major general in the Army who ran a secret Pentagon special operations unit before retiring in 1999. Grange subsequently founded Osprey Global Solutions, a consulting firm and government contractor that offers logistics, intelligence, security training, armament sales, and other services. The Osprey Foundation, which is a nonprofit arm of Osprey Global Solutions, is listed as one of the State Department's "global partners" in a 2014 report from the Office of Global Partnerships.

Among the documents in the cache released by Lazar is an August 24, 2011, memorandum of understanding between Osprey Global Solutions and the Libyan National Transition Council—the entity that took control in the wake of Qadaffi's execution—agreeing that Osprey will contract with the NTC to "assist in the resumption of access to its assets and operations in country" and train Libyan forces in intelligence, weaponry, and "rule-of-land warfare." The document refers to meetings held in Amman, Jordan between representatives of Osprey and a Mohammad Kikhia, who represented the National Transition Council.

Five months later, according to a document in the leak, Grange wrote on Osprey Global letterhead to Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro, introducing Osprey as a contractor eager to provide humanitarian and other assistance in Libya. "We are keen to support the people of Libya under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Finance and the Libyan Stock Exchange," Grange wrote. Shapiro is a longtime Clinton loyalist; he served on her Senate staff as foreign policy advisor.

Another document in the cache, titled "Letter_for_Moin," is an appeal from Drumheller to then-Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan offering the services of Tyler Drumheller LLC, "to develop a program that will provide discreet confidential information allowing the appropriate entities in Libya to address any regional and international challenges."

The "K" who was, according to Shearer's email, to be "repaid" for his role in the Tunisia operation appears to be someone named Khalifa al Sherif, who sent Blumenthal several emails containing up-to-the-minute information on the civil war in Libya, and appears to have been cited as a source in several of the reports.

Contacted by ProPublica and Gawker, Drumheller's attorney and business partner Danny Murray confirmed that Drumheller "worked" with Blumenthal and was aware of the hacked emails, but declined to comment further.

Shearer said only that "the FBI is involved and told me not to talk. There is a massive investigation of the hack and all the resulting information." An FBI spokesperson replied only that "there is nothing additional we are able to provide at this time, apart from the press release information."

Blumenthal, Grange, and Kikhia all did not respond to repeated attempts to reach them. Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton had no comment on Blumenthal's activities with Drumheller.

Whatever Blumenthal, Shearer, Drumheller, and Grange were up to in 2011, 2012, and 2013 on Clinton's behalf, it appears that she could have used the help: According to State Department personnel directories, in 2011 and 2012—the height of the Libya crisis—State didn't have a Libyan desk officer, and the entire Near Eastern Maghreb Bureau, which which covers Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, had just two staffers. Today, State has three Libyan desk officers and 11 people in the Near Eastern Maghreb Bureau. A State Department official wouldn't say how many officers were on the desk in 2011, but said there was always "at least one" officer, and "sometimes many more," working on Libya.

Reached for comment, a State Department public affairs official who would only speak on background declined to address questions about Blumenthal's relationship to Clinton, whether she was aware of the intelligence network, and who if anyone was paying Blumenthal. Asked about the Tunisia-Libya mission, the official replied, "There was a trip with the secretary in October of 2011, but there was also a congressional delegation in April, 2011. There were media reports about both of these at the time." Neither trip involved travelling via Tunis.

Read all of the Libya intelligence memos below:

Update: This post has been updated to reflect a response from a State Department official stating that, despite the fact that contemporaneous State Department directories show no Libya desk officers at the agency in 2011 and 2012, there was always at least one officer devoted to Libya.

This post was reported and written in collaboration with ProPublica.
Contact the authors at biddle@gawker.com and jeff.gerth@propublica.org
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A tipster sent along the above photos of Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the likely heir to his father’s job as publisher and head chairman of The New York Times, riding the subway sometime last year. The younger Sulzberger may be paid $153,910 per year (and the older, $6.8 million), but sometimes the MTA is more convenient than a cab.

Photos of the attention-shy A.G. are still pretty rare, though. The most recent picture of him was taken sometime in the year 2009 by a New York Times photographer for publicity materials:

Before that, the most commonly used picture of him picture of him was the one seen below, apparently snapped by his former employer, the Providence Journal:

The Times does not possess a more recent publicity photo of A.G. Sulzberger, according to a spokesperson for the paper. (Which is, admittedly, unusual—especially for someone with a pretty good chance of inheriting control of the family business.) When asked if he still resembled his 2009 portrait, the same spokesperson said: “Basically, yes.”

(h/t Anonymous)

Almost 9 weeks ago, former Laguna Beach star Kristin Cavallari commenced miserable toil on her debut book, which she has chosen to call Balancing on Heels. At the time, she stated the tome would encompass "really just everything in my life." Today, we can finally reveal the first confirmed part of "everything."

While it remains unclear exactly what Balancing on Heels will look like (Chapters in order? Out of order? Text written left to right?), we now know 100 percent for sure that one of the pages will be titled "Almond Butter Cookie Recipe." (Or similar).

Kristin dropped this news herself on Instagram, captioning the above photo: "Just perfected these almond butter cookies. Recipe is going in my book, Balancing On Heels [thumbs up emoji]"

A commenter on Instagram responded, "Cannot wait to read!!!!"

We are all waiting.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

Philip Gourevitch took to the New Yorker blog yesterday to publish some words about the Germanwings crash. The resulting blog post is very bad—so bad it is worth taking as a case study in how not to do aggregation.

Gourevitch is an accomplished journalist who has been all over the world and learned about many things, as his New Yorker writer biography attests:

He has travelled extensively for the magazine, reporting from Africa, Asia, Europe, and across the United States. He has written about the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia, about the dictatorships of Mobutu Sese Seko, in Congo, and Robert Mugabe, in Zimbabwe, about the Tamil Tigers, in Sri Lanka, about Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, in France, and about the American soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq.

Here is what Philip Gourevitch does not know anything about: Germanwings Flight 9525 or its co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz.

The casual reader of his blog post might miss that. Gourevitch writes vividly of the scene inside the airplane, "a god-awful eternity, especially after the captain began knocking, then shouting, then pounding at the barred cockpit door":

In the final moments before annihilation, the recorder registered the hammering of the captain's fists and feet against the door, the screams of passengers, and the quiet, steady rhythm of Lubitz's last breaths.

The horror. It's all there in the sound of Lubitz breathing. The wind of life, the wind of death. That steady soughing tells us all that we know so far, and all that we don't yet—and may never—know

The horror. Period. It's all there—all where? In the sound of Lubitz breathing, a sound that Philip Gourevitch has not heard. The wind of life, the wind of death, the wind that the investigators listened to and told reporters about, so that the reporters could write about it in the newspapers, so that Gourevitch could read about it when everyone else did.

By rendering this from just this side of the eye or ear of God, Gourevitch is being a bad blogger. Instead of compressing the material, he's inflating it. The knocking, shouting, pounding captain in the first paragraph and the hammering captain in the second paragraph are the same meager thirdhand fact, repeated twice to sound more authoritative. Likewise the "quiet steady rhythm of Lubitz's last breaths" and "the steady soughing." Soughing. The plane "flying down, down out of the sky, down into the mountains, down into death"—yes, that's what a crash is: Plane go down, out of sky, hit ground, people die. Why 14 words for it instead of one? Because the writer has nothing to say.

It's vamping. Eventually, when the facts run out, Gourevitch drags Shakespeare into it, quoting Richard III's meditation on conscience and villainy. Perhaps Lubitz went into the mountain because of the darkness of the human soul. Or maybe—I'm guessing here—he had a pure psychotic break and was trying to knock loose the transmitter that They had put inside his skull. Nobody knows!

All that Gourevitch is really equipped to say, under his yards and yards of purple brocade, is that an airplane crash is a horrible thing. At least, that's all his text says. His subtext is rather worse. Of Lubitz, Gourevitch writes:

Assuming, for now, that Robin has got the story right, Lubitz's victims—high-school students and opera stars, vacationers and business commuters, young lovers and old married couples, families and solitary travellers, citizens from at least fifteen countries—meant nothing to him. They could have been any of us, anywhere—whoever flies or rides a train or takes a bus or in any way entrusts her life to strangers, as we all must regularly and routinely to get through this world.

This proposition, that the 149 people who died on the plane were reduced to an impersonal abstraction, may or may not have been true for Lubitz. It's certainly true for Gourevitch.

[Photograph via Getty]

Contact the author at scocca@gawker.com.

The National Weather Service failed to issue a tornado warning in Moore, Oklahoma, when a preliminary EF-1 tornado made a mess of the town for the sixth time in as many years on Wednesday. AccuWeather wasted no time blasting the agency for its failure while trumpeting their own success in warning clients twelve minutes before the storm struck. There's only one problem—their brand new television network didn't cover the storm, either.

For years, the Pennsylvania-based weather company has produced forecasts for both private clients and the public. AccuWeather's website and apps are heavily trafficked and make the company a small but noticeable force in weather media. For detractors, the company is most well-known for its executives (allegedly!) influencing Senator Rick Santorum to introduce the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005, which would abolish the agency as we know it while privatizing most of the agency's duties to the incredible benefit of companies like...AccuWeather! Isn't it fun how that works?

The company's forecasting is also taken into question at times, especially over the past few years when the company began issuing detailed weather forecasts for up to 45 days in the future, which is a period about 6x longer than the current science of meteorology allows for an accurate forecast.

Enter the Moore tornado. A line of supercells ripped through central Oklahoma on Wednesday as part of the country's first major severe weather outbreak of the spring. Given the quiet nature of severe weather so far this year, the event was highly anticipated among weather geeks and news organizations alike. As soon as the first storm formed, most media outlets went wall-to-wall with coverage.

The supercells weren't in an environment particularly conducive to the monstrous tornadoes Oklahoma is associated with, but the risk wasn't exactly zero. The Storm Prediction Center noted that there was a low risk—20% chance—of at least two tornadoes within the severe thunderstorm watch they'd issued for the region a few hours earlier.

One of these supercells approached the Oklahoma City metro area from the west as several outflow boundaries from nearby storms sat over the area. The greatest threat from the storm was hail the size of golfballs and damaging winds (which radar suggested were in the range of 90-100 MPH just above ground level), but with the surge of damaging winds and the approaching boundaries, there was a chance of a brief, spin-up tornado.

One of these spin-up tornadoes touched down in Moore around 6:35 PM CDT, continuing through the city until it lifted ten minutes later. Unfortunately, the storm occurred too quickly (and forecasters moved too slowly) to issue a tornado warning in time—by the time meteorologists had issued the tornado warning, the tornado had already moved through Moore, catching many residents off-guard. That was a huge, inexcusable miss on the part of the National Weather Service.

AccuWeather has a vested interest in building up its client base, so like any other company would do when one of its competitors slips, it went for the jugular. On Thursday morning, AccuWeather put out a scathing press release that swiped at the National Weather Service for failing to issue a warning in time, while trumpeting the fact that AccuWeather pushed out a tornado warning to its paying clients a full twelve minutes before the storm struck.

That warning reached the company's business clients, though. If you're a member of the unpaying public, well, you were kinda screwed.

Earlier this month, the outlet launched its much-awaited television network, which replaced The Weather Channel for Verizon FiOS subscribers across the country. The network's website proudly touts its all-weather format, which is a not-so-subtle dig at The Weather Channel's tendency towards reality programming during off-hours and quiet weather days:

AccuWeather's trusted, personalized approach to severe weather alerts, news, and forecasts is available on a new network – the only "All Weather, All the Time" source for 24/7 weather broadcasts in HD.

AccuWeather delivers a Smarter Choice in broadcast weather programming: All-weather information and updates you want, with the Superior Accuracy you need, from the world's weather leader.

The information and updates you want! Unless it was about that tornado, in which case AccuWeather didn't cover it. Oops.

All of the following news clips run from around 6:37 PM CDT to 6:38 PM CDT, the time that everyone saw or got confirmation that a tornado had touched down in Moore.

Oklahoma City's KFOR was on it:

As was legendary meteorologist Gary England's home turf, News 9:

Dr. Greg Forbes and Carl Parker over at The Weather Channel were at the top of their game, as always when severe weather rolls around:

That's some pretty good coverage. Surely, we had even more riveting and in-depth analysis of the outbreak from that brand spankin' new, 24/7 all-weather information and updates you want AccuWeather network, right?

Take it away, Bernie!

... oh.

The AccuWeather network is only available to those who subscribe to Verizon FiOS' television services, so to be fair, Oklahoma City doesn't actually have the AccuWeather network yet. However, you would think that a brand new network that wants to take the place of an established behemoth like The Weather Channel would flex their muscles and prove to both the public and to cable/satellite companies across the country that they can carry the torch during a major weather event. What better way to sell your channel to the masses than show that, even during a rapidly unfolding severe weather outbreak in Oklahoma, you've got this, and you can compete with the blue behemoth in Atlanta?

Instead, we got weather on a loop while their company talks smack on the internet. It came down to the old "private weather versus public weather" debate. If this is the best they've got, imagine what would have happened if Santorum had successfully deep-sixed the National Weather Service?

There's no way around the fact that the National Weather Service screwed up and cannot let that happen again, but don't be thrown off by the big talk in AccuWeather's press release: this was AccuWeather's big chance to make a splash and prove their might to a potential nationwide audience that doesn't have an "LLC." or "Inc." after its name, and they blew it.

[Images: KFOR, Gibson Ridge | Videos: KFOR, KWTV, The Weather Channel, the AccuWeather network]

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

Earlier this week, it was widely reported that the Islamic State had taken over the real-life version of Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine. This is not accurate. ISIS fighters have not torn down the Mos Eisley Cantina and are not currently stomping through the historic streets where a young Jedi's destiny was born such a long time ago.

The story appears to have spun out from this CNN report, which explained that arms caches formerly belonging to Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime had been found in Tunisia, the country where Star Wars' desert scenes were filmed. Although the weapons weren't directly linked to IS, Tunisian officials are reportedly anxious about the group's operations in Libya.

The Tunisian city of Tataouine, which has allegedly become a waypoint for IS fighters coming and going from their Libyan bases, is the inspiration and namesake of George Lucas's desert planet. But here are two important facts about Tataouine, reflected in a couple of corrections on The Guardian's website:

This article was amended on Thursday 26 March to reflect that Star Wars was not filmed in Tataouine, but in desert locations in Tunisia.

This article was further amended on 27 March. Tunisian tourist officials have denied there is any danger and say that the area is patrolled by 1,500 troops."

So, assuming the officials' statement is accurate, it seems Tataouine isn't actually the wretched hive of scum and villainy it was initially made out to be. And IS hasn't taken over the actual Star Wars sets—located in Matmata, Tozeur, and on the island of Djerba—either.

You can go about your business, nerds who didn't care about the Islamic State's activities until they (reportedly) ruined your childhood. Move along. These are not the droids you're looking for.

[h/t Independent, Photo: Hoylen Sue]

A beautifully preserved 1830s steam train is thought to be lurking under a busy thoroughfare in one of the posher parts of Brooklyn. But in 1861, it was sealed up, seemingly for eternity. Everything was set to excavate it just a few years back, until petty personal politics seem to have destroyed any chance of that.

What lies within the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel in Brooklyn remains one of New York’s last great archaeological mysteries. The tunnel itself was built in 1844 for the Long Island Rail Road, carrying passengers from other parts of what was then the City of Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island to the waterfront for ferries into New York City.

And, by the standard of a “railway tunnel that is underground,” it was the world’s first subway.

It served reliably as a critical link in the New York-to-Boston railway route for 17 years, with trains shuttling passengers back and forth to the ferry docks underneath its brick roof. It was fairly uneventful, besides the casual dude getting murdered inside it during a labor dispute, because this is New York.

But it was ordered to be shut down in a complex corruption scheme involving the LIRR, a compensation system, and the state government, which was definitely not the last time a complex corruption scheme involving the LIRR and compensation systems occurred.

In the fall of 1861, the subway tunnel was bricked up and partially filled in, and documentation at the time indicated that a locomotive from the 1830s was left inside. After the tunnel was closed to humanity, it was mostly forgotten. There were a few references to it here and there, including one from Walt Whitman, who worked at a few Brooklyn newspapers when it was still in operation.

Via Forgotten NY:

The old tunnel, that used to lie there under ground, a passage of Acheron-like solemnity and darkness, now all closed and filled up, and soon to be utterly forgotten, with all its reminiscences; however, there will, for a few years yet be many dear ones, to not a few Brooklynites, New Yorkers, and promiscuous crowds besides. For it was here you started to go down the island, in summer. For years, it was confidently counted on that this spot, and the railroad of which it was the terminus, were going to prove the permanent seat of business and wealth that belong to such enterprises…

...But its glory, after enduring in great splendor for a season, has now vanished ­ at least its Long Island Railroad glory has…

The tunnel: dark as the grave, cold, damp, and silent. How beautiful look earth and heaven again, as we emerge from the gloom! It might not be unprofitable, now and then, to send us mortals ­ the dissatisfied ones, at least, and that’s a large proportion ­ into some tunnel of several days’ journey. We’d perhaps grumble less. afterward, at God’s handiwork.

But that was about it. Some romantic references, some old records that no one paid much attention to, and not much else. It wasn’t completely forgotten immediately, however, as rapidtransit.net notes:

It was reportedly used by smugglers after the Civil War. On January 27, 1916. the tunnel was explored and photographed by the Department of Superstructures of the Borough President of Brooklyn’s office. It was found to be in relatively good condition, but empty and without rail or ties. In the 1920s the tunnel was reportedly used for both mushroom growing and bootleg whiskey stills. In 1936, New York City police broke into the tunnel with jackhammers to look for the body of a hoodlum supposedly buried there.The hoodlum was found later in a barrel of cement in Buffalo. In 1941 the tunnel was again inspected by the federal Works Progress Administration to determine its structural strength. A few years later, it was once again opened, this time by the FBI, in an unsuccessful search for spies.

In the late 1950s, it was inspected one last time. And then the tunnel appeared to have well and truly slipped from the collective consciousness of the history buffs, city officials, and engineers who remembered it.

Until 1979, when a Brooklyn rail nut named Bob Diamond heard that there might be a tunnel buried underneath Atlantic Avenue on a local radio show. Here, let Bob tell the story in his own words, in this frankly excellent video done by The Verge:

Bob was able to excavate a huge portion of the tunnel that was filled with dirt, and even led tours of it until 2010, when city officials shut the whole operation down. He never found, however, what was supposed to be the jackpot. The gold at the end of the rainbow. A priceless artifact of industry and transportation.

An 1836 wood-burning steam locomotive, known as the “Hicksville,” lying on its side.

If it’s there, it should look pretty much just like this, according to this 1844 woodcut engraving (via brooklynrail.net):

Retired in 1848 and declared “not worth repairing” in 1853, it was supposedly sealed into the tunnel behind a brick wall in 1861, when the rest of the tunnel was closed off. We don’t know exactly what the train might look like, but a modern working replica of a similar design looks like this:

But it was that brick wall that Bob couldn’t surmount. Taking out the dirt filling the subway was easy, all it took was some hard manual labor and some volunteers. Breaking through a brick wall takes machinery, and money, and cooperation with the local government. But everything was in the right place – the tunnel was where it was said to be, the brick wall was where it was said to be, and readings below the street from a local contractor showed something underneath the street, right where the locomotive was said to be.

Laura Brinkerhoff, of Brinkerhoff Environmental Services, told me that her firm was responsible for conducting the survey over five blistery cold nights back in January 2011. Shutting down the street from midnight to 5 AM, and using both an electromagnetic detection device and and cesium-vapor magnetometer, her team discovered a massive metallic object underneath Atlantic Avenue. An object that didn’t resemble a water main or anything with a modern utilitarian purpose, and was highly unusual for a regular Brooklyn street.

Brinkerhoff couldn’t confirm whether or not it was a locomotive, but it was big, it was different, and it was metal.

Bob Diamond didn’t have the machinery or money to break through the brick wall and see what was inside, but National Geographic did. So when NatGeo came calling to make a show about the tunnel, and have a big reveal Al Capone’s Vault-style, it looked like everything was falling into place.

Until petty politics stepped in.

Diamond was understandably upset when the city shut down his access to the tunnel, as he’d been leading tours down there for years. So he said some not-nice things about city officials, because that is what you do when city officials piss you off.

Normally, that’s not really terrible at all. City officials are supposed to have thick skins, and criticism comes with the territory. I’ve said some not-nice things about the subway, but I still take it to work every day, and no one’s tried to stop me from riding. It’s because I’ve got a job to do, they’ve got a job to do, everyone’s got a job to do, and it’s never a personal issue.

Everyone I’ve ever dealt with in a professional capacity with the city has been exactly that – professional.

But apparently when it came to Diamond’s criticism, that didn’t happen for one New York City Department of Transportation spokesman, Seth Solomonow. In e-mails between the DOT and NatGeo obtained by the New York Daily News, Solomonow intimated back in February 2011 that a great reveal would never happen:

The emails reveal Department of Transportation PR man Seth Solomonow pulled the plug on the project in part because leaks in the press and Diamond’s lawsuit cast the agency “as the bad guy.”

“If people from the Channel...want to call me they’ll simply be hearing me ‘yell at them’ and then (I’ll) make sure the film will NEVER HAPPEN,” Solomonow said during a Feb. 2011 conversation, according to Pam Wells, a Nat Geo executive producer.

“With the DOT being cast as the bad guy by Bob Diamond, we cannot, at this point, allow National Geographic access to the tunnel...Let me make it clearer. Do not call us. We will call you.”

It’s unclear if Solomonow’s tone and subsequent rejection were his choice alone, or an official policy from the DOT. He’s no longer with the DOT, and in an email he referred all questions about the matter to them. A DOT spokesman only said that they closed the tunnel “for safety reasons,” and that they couldn’t comment on pending litigation.

Brinkerhoff suggested that the project met other stumbling blocks as well, including the death of a major partner in the project who headed up a local cultural and historical group.

But no matter what did happen between the major players, the special never happened. NatGeo, for its part, considers the whole project shelved, according to the NYDN.

That hasn’t stopped Diamond from trying, and he told Gothamist that he’s done everything possible to get it all working again, including the tunnel tours, with plans laid out by an engineer to address FDNY safety concerns and numerous letters sent to the DOT and city mayor Bill de Blasio. But all he’s gotten back so far is form letters.

Which is really just incredibly tragic. Not only is what little we’ve seen of the tunnel so far already a hugely important piece of transportation history, but what might be behind that brick wall could be even bigger. And with the New York City Transit Museum so close by, it’s a natural tie-in.

Mayor de Blasio, you and I both know you’re a rabid and fanatical reader of Jalopnik. Seriously, I’m here all day working down in the bloggin’ mines, and I spend less time on this site than you do. So if you have a heart, you know what to do.

Give us the tunnel. And give us our steam engine.

Topshot credit: Matt Baume

Contact the author at ballaban@jalopnik.com.

Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: 0D03 F37B 4C96 021E 4292 7B12 E080 0D0B 5968 F14E

The planned Flatbush condo is set to open in the next few years. Cheers to New New York.

More than a year after she was found guilty of murdering her roommate, Amanda Knox's conviction was overturned by Italy's highest court. The former exchange student was convicted twice of killing Meredith Kercher; first in 2009 and, following a dismissal on appeals, in January 2014.

Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were accused of killing Kercher in 2007, when Knox and Kercher were college students studying abroad in Italy. Both were convicted in 2009, and then acquitted in 2011, after serving four years in prison.

Two years later, Knox and Sollecito were ordered to stand trial again for the killing. Knox remained in Seattle throughout the trial; Sollecito stayed in Italy and was arrested attempting to flee to Austria following the guilty verdict. He was sentenced to 25 years while Knox received a 28.5 year sentence. Sollecito's conviction was also overturned today.

[Image via AP]

Ellen Pao, the former Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers junior partner who sued the high-powered Silicon Valley venture capital firm for gender discrimination after she was allegedly sexually harassed, targeted for revenge by a former lover, and passed over for a promotion, lost on three of the suit's four counts Friday.

It initially appeared she'd lost on the fourth count as well, but the vote was 8-4, which is not a sufficient majority. The judge sent the jury back for further deliberation.

Pao, currently the interim CEO of Reddit, had claimed she experienced blatant discrimination over a period of years, and others in the company retaliated against her for reporting it. Kleiner Perkins argued that Pao, who has an engineering degree from Princeton, and an MBA and a J.D. from Harvard, didn't possess the leadership skills and "genetic makeup" to be a VC, and was better suited as support staff.

A diverse group of jurors decided Pao's gender—and her decision to report Ajit Nazre, a fellow Kleiner partner and former lover, for allegedly retaliating at work after she broke off their sexual relationship—was not the reason she was denied a promotion that could have been worth millions.

Pao's suit sought $16 million in damages.

[Photo: Getty Images]

Hiding at the bottom of Dave Holmes's (very entertaining) write-up of the March 23, 1988 pop charts is a link to an incredible document. It is titled "B-Rock Party." It is a home video, shot the night of June 28, 1988, of a party attended by some exquisitely 1988 suburban teenagers. At 1:36, a set of parents arrive home unexpectedly and, to the great benefit of future generations, the camera continues to record.

"Nice," dad says. Mom, too, has her say: "You're all outta here, guys."

I don't know how Holmes found this video — at publication time, 704 people had watched it since it was uploaded in 2007 — but he has unearthed an important artifact of teen history.

Deadspin Aaron Hernandez's Fiancée Testifies, Doesn't Flip On Him | Jalopnik A Train From 1836 Could Be Buried In Brooklyn Because Of Petty Politics | Jezebel Which Sad and 'Very Famous' Actress Is Seeking Life Advice on Reddit? | Kotaku Bloodborne Monster Can't Stop Dancing | Kinja Popular Posts

The captain of Germanwings Flight 9525 used an ax in a desperate last-minute attempt to break into the doomed plane's locked cockpit, according to a report in German newspaper Bild and French TV station Métropole 6.

"Andreas, open that door! Open that door!'" the pilot shouted at co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, according to Métropole 6. The pilot then reportedly reached for an ax, which is standard safety equipment on all Airbus A320 planes.

From the Washington Post:

The German newspaper Bild, citing security sources, also reported the pilot tried to slice into the door with an ax, which is part of the normal safety equipment aboard an A320.

But cockpit doors around the world have been made to near combat-grade strength since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The doors now have complex locking systems and reinforced materials that can include Kevlar, a fiber-weave built to resist gunfire.

Earlier Friday, German police announced that Lubitz, who authorities say intentionally crashed the plane, was hiding a medical condition from his employer and had received—and then destroyed—doctor's notes excusing him from work the day of the crash.

Image via AP. Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

Asked to turn over emails hosted on Hillary Clinton's private server for independent review, lawyer David Kendall told the House Benghazi committee the task was impossible because the relevant data had been permanently deleted, The New York Times reports.

"Thus, there are no hdr22@clintonemail.com emails from Secretary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state on the server for any review, even if such review were appropriate or legally authorized," said Kendall in a letter to the committee on Friday.

According to the Republican congressman who subpoenaed the emails, it appears that the messages were erased sometime after October, when Clinton aides personally determined which emails were required to be archived under the Federal Records Act.

"Not only was the Secretary the sole arbiter of what was a public record, she also summarily decided to delete all emails from her server ensuring no one could check behind her analysis in the public interest," said Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina in a written statement.

In December, Clinton gave the State Department about 30,000 emails her staff decided were part of the government record. Another 30,000 emails they viewed as personal were erased—permanently, it now seems.

"At the end, I chose not to keep my private, personal emails," Clinton explained earlier this month. "Emails about planning Chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends, as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes."

[Image via AP Images]

From: Tau, Byron [mailto:xxx@wsj.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2015 09:48 AM
To: Barnes, Desiree N.
Subject: Travel pool #1- arrival at JBA

Marine One touched down at Joint Base Andrews at 9:41 a.m.

POTUS bounded down the steps at 9:45. We're headed for warmer climes. Up the AF1 steps moments later.

You can tell this is a non work trip became someone forward of the press cabin ordered 3 beers at 9:26 am.

Byron Tau Reporter, Wall Street Journal c: 202-xxx-xxxx [ tel:202-xxx-xxxx ] d: 202-xxx-xxxx [ tel:202-xxx-xxxx ] xxx@wsj.com Sent from my iPhone

Public Pool is an automated feed of White House press pool reports. For live updates, follow @WHPublicPool on Twitter.

Citing unnamed officials with knowledge of the investigation, The New York Times reports that the man believed to have intentionally crashed a Germanwings plane earlier this week sought medical treatment for vision problems.

Like previously rumored mental health problems—which the newspaper's sources also confirmed—it appears that Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz tried to hide the eye condition from his employer.

From the Times:

It is not clear how severe his eye problems were or how they might have been related to his psychological condition. One person with knowledge of the investigation said the authorities had not ruled out the possibility that the vision problem could have been psychosomatic.

Some people role play to escape the dreariness of their day-to-day lives. Some people role play to bring back childhood memories. Some people role play to explore fantastical worlds of their own creation. I role play because I want to know the answer to the question "What if powerful and intimidating Bar Rescue host Jon Taffer interrupted anime demons having cybersex on Twitter?"

For those who are unfamiliar, Bar Rescue is essentially Kitchen Nightmares, but with bars and clubs instead of restaurants. It is the greatest show on TV. Jon Taffer is like if Gordon Ramsay was from New York and gesticulated wildly about a hundred times more often. He is my hero. For the similarly uninitiated, anime cybersex roleplay consists of people pretending to be anime characters, often with supernatural powers, and acting out explicit sex scenarios on Twitter. The worlds of anime cybersex roleplay and Bar Rescue are rarely combined.

At first, many of the role players just ignored me.

Eventually, they started to respond.

I understood the Twitter role play community to be quite open and accepting, but apparently the one thing they can't abide is criticism of their bars - or the implication that they owned bars at all.

In fact, the more I role played, the less people wanted anything to do with me.

You can't help those who won't help themselves. But Taffer's methods can work, if you're willing and hard working, even if you're chained to a wall.

I don't believe it's an exaggeration to say that my Taffer role play was the most important social exercise since the Stanford Prison Experiment. But what did we learn? Well, @Death_In_Red is still in denial about even owning a friggin' bar. @_UkeSlave would rather be shirtless than run a clean establishment. @SparkJolteon was more concerned with "getting off" than "being financially responsible." But at least I had my one success story, @JennyCasket. I'm proud of her, and I hope somebody has untied her.

Stefan Heck is on Twitter as @Boring_as_Heck. Portions of this post originally appeared on his website.

I read Akiba Solomon for the first time in the early 2000s when she was a senior editor at The Source magazine. While Akiba's penchant for crafting sentences was on par with some of the greatest scribes of that era, it was her ability to structure features, interviews, and investigative pieces that made the fledgling young writer in me so jealous. This underappreciated ability to thoughtfully and imaginatively curate and structure prose is most wonderfully on display in the book she co-edited with Ayana Byrd, Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts. As the current editorial director of Colorlines, Akiba has written and edited some of the most important pieces in the country around intersectional (in)justice. We are incredibly lucky that she agreed to be a part of our Times Six series.

Two of the questions in this series focus on memory, love, misogyny, and blackness. Two of the questions place us at 12 years old, the same age Tamir Rice was when he was gunned down by police in Cleveland Ohio; and the same age Davia Garth was, who was killed by her stepfather in the same city. One of the questions asks us imagine two incredibly needed national policy proposals. The final question ponders how black lives can actually matter in 2015.

Laymon: Tell me about the first time you remember your love for black folks being threatened?

Solomon: My freshman year of college at an HBCU in Tallahassee. I was an up north, Afrocentric snob but didn't realize it. So I was so confused about why these angry Jacksonville girls were trying to beat me up for nothing, and why their boy threw me into the cafeteria conveyor belt. Also, in a time of all baggy everything, I was horrified at how stank some of the girls dressed. I was on my Assata Shakur ready-for-war look, with my jean set and 40 Acres and a Mule cap. Meanwhile, my sisters would be up in the club with their cheek-bottoms hanging out screaming "Pop That Pussy" while some ignorant dudes doused them with drinks.

When you were twelve years old, can you describe for me what a perfect day would look like?

I'm from Philly, a town where hair is important, but I wasn't allowed to process mine until high school. Around age 12—while I was attending a predominantly white, mostly rich, all-girls school—I became obsessed with this matter. I didn't care what the white girls thought, though. I was preoccupied by what two of the 13 black girls at that K-12 school saw when they peeped my struggle bangs. That year I wore a cream knit tam way into spring because I was so ashamed of my naps.

On a perfect day, my hair would have been permed and styled by Hair Image on 52nd Street. I would've met up with a fine, young African-American gentleman who didn't care that I talked kind of white. We would listen to "Harvest for the World" because I was a weird kid who was into that kind of thing. Then I would hop on somebody's stage and belt out "Someday We'll All Be Free." Finally, I would have mac and cheese and cranberry sauce for dinner.

If twelve-year-old you could describe the most exciting thing you did last night, what would she say?

Wow. Back to 12. It's a draw. Watching Falcon Crest or singing in my father's basement studio. If we were doing the Falcon Crest thing, I would comment on how fine Lorenzo Lamas appeared to be. If it was the studio, I would talk about how Ralph from New Edition was an excellent singer.

Can you describe your first memory of misogyny and anti-blackness colliding?

At an old job of mine there was a white guy who would say "nigga" the same way normal members of his kinfolk would say "dude." Once he was talking to this black man at the copy machine and said, "Niggas kill niggas over bitches every day." This was pre-Eminem, when "I wish a white boy would" was still viable, so I thought the person who looked like me would have checked his friend. Instead, they gave each other pounds and began caressing each other's faces with light strokes. OK. They didn't physically caress one another but their bonding over the failings of niggas and bitches was palpable. I laugh about this now, but back then it was a big deal.

If you could concretely propose any two new national policies, what would they be?

I don't have policy chops so I have to keep this vague. One: African-Americans and any other form of black person whose family got here by yesterday would receive reparations. Two: Property taxes should not determine how public schools are funded.

How can black lives really matter in these United States of America?

Is this a trick question? I think it's inherent that black lives matter in this country. If black lives didn't matter, white supremacist institutions wouldn't keep using increasingly boring ways to kill us and explain it away.

But to answer what I think this question is, I would say that when all black people have food, clothing, shelter, education, full employment, leisure time, transportation, wealth, freedom, voting rights, clean air and ironclad protection from nervous law enforcement agents, that would signal that black lives really matter.

[Photo via AP]

On Friday, two additional women came forward with claims they were raped by Bill Cosby, one of whom says she was just 17 at the time, The Wrap reports.

At a press conference organized by Gloria Allred in Los Angeles, Sunni Welles and Margie Shapiro joined the dozens upon dozens of women who have now accused the comedian of sexual assault, telling all-too-familiar stories of being drugged and raped.

Shapiro says she was 19 years old when Cosby invited her out to dinner in 1975. Instead, they ended up at a Playboy Mansion guest house, where the comedian allegedly challenged her to a sinister game. From The NY Daily News:

They played some pinball, and Cosby challenged her to a wager, saying whoever lost would swallow a pill, she claimed.

"I said sure, why not, since he was still not being malicious or anything," Shapiro said.

She lost a game, took a pill and quickly blacked out, she said.

"I came to a little and the first thing I saw was Bill Cosby's face not far above me and we were both naked," she said. "He was inside me and touching me and I was so grossed out, I can't find the words to express my disgust."

According to Welles, she was a 17-year-old aspiring singer when Cosby took her to a jazz club in the mid-196os. After drinking a soda, she blacked out and woke up hours later naked and alone in a nearly empty apartment.

Cosby allegedly told her that she had gotten drunk on champagne and must have stripped herself, but a subsequent outing with the comedian ended the same way.

"I remember drinking a Coke and again I awakened in the same room alone and naked," said Welles. "This time I didn't call him and I never heard from Bill Cosby again."

[ Image via Getty Images]

Are we being who we think we should be or who we think other people want us to be? Hyun Kim, meditating on the matter of habits, posed this question two weeks ago. But maybe it's less a question of who we think we should be and who we think other people want us to be, and instead a question of who we are. So, who are you?

"The Musical Dangers of Globalization" by Hua Hsu

But there's a paradox at play: as technology enables us to access the far reaches of the planet, the illusion swells that the rest of the world is merely a frictionless swipe away. In aspiring to sound like everywhere at once, the album risks sounding like no place at all. Even though "Future Brown" was mostly recorded face to face, in a physical studio, there's little feeling of specificity. Some critics have accused the group of being overly strategic in seeking out collaborators, plucking rappers and singers from the streets and enlisting them in the service of a generically rendered worldwide struggle.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/...

"Galaxies Inside His Head" by Stephen Burt

His work explores multiple identities and multiple forms of masculinity — how to be, or become, various kinds of men — but it is also an art of evasion: To become a full-time poet, Hayes had to leave a house of prison guards. Hayes works to escape not the African-American identity but the demand that he (or anyone) express that identity in the same way all the time. When Hayes read in South Carolina last month, "a young white girl pretty much accosted me and said, 'Why do you write so much about being black?' " he told me. It wasn't the first time he was asked. "Because I amblack. I'm black, I'm Southern, I'm male, I'm obsessive, I'm weird, I'm half-blind," he answered.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/mag...

"Time Borrowed" by John Herrman

Years of free referral traffic from Facebook have posed the question: When will Facebook want to keep this traffic for itself? Supposing years of future success—and putting out of mind that another law of platforms is eventual death—partner journalism poses its own version of this question: If Facebook knows what works, why outsource it?

http://www.theawl.com/2015/03/the-te...

"The (Urban) Legend of Ernest Hemingway's Six-Word Story" by Josh Jones

Supposedly composed sometime in the '20s at The Algonquin (or perhaps Luchow's, depending on whom you ask), the six-word story, it's said, came from a ten-dollar bet Hemingway made at a lunch with some other writers that he could write a novel in six words. After penning the famous line on a napkin, he passed it around the table, and collected his winnings. That's the popular lore, anyway. But the truth is much less colorful.

http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/the-ur...

"Scared Senseless: The Indie Horror Boom and What Frightens Us Now" by Mark Harris

To love horror movies as an adult is to resign yourself to the probability that you are not going to be scared very often unless what you fear most in the world is nostalgia.It Follows is a better-than-decent, less-than-great genre film whose most original quality is a sick-joke inversion of the premise of Friday the 13th and its '80s-horror ilk that the teenagers who have sex are always the ones who get slaughtered. Here, the death-dealing, cleverly shape-shifting entity — the "It" that follows its targets with the intention of killing them — can be shaken off only if the victim-to-be transmits it to somebody else via sexual contact; it's like an STD whose only cure is passing it along … except that, according to the movie's rules, that only postpones its near-inevitable reappearance because, you know, guilt and sin and Freud's return of the repressed. For good measure, every once in a while someone quotes from The Idiot.

http://grantland.com/hollywood-pros...

"Is Kahlil Joseph Hip Hop's Most Important Video Director" by Emily Manning

Almost all histories in black cinema aren't really representations of us, I think most people who know black people on any level know that to be true. We've excelled as a community and as a people and as a culture in every other art form in a way that's just amazing. There are more black fine artists than there are filmmakers, which is crazy because the fine art world is one of the tightest knit out there. But I think this underrepresentation also an amazing opportunity for us. It's almost like Silicon Valley in the 80s and 90s: the black community is where all the great ideas are, it's where the next generation of filmmakers are going to come from, it's what's going to save movies. Once we start making movies in the same way that we make music, it'll be undeniable. Once we're able to represent ourselves—not even represent ourselves but to express ourselves—in the way that we feel and we think, then I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what that's gonna look like!

http://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/...

"SXSW Is Decadent and Depraved" by Ernest Baker

I've been down this road before. Not at this festival specifically, but at other gatherings like it, and it's all so much less validating this time around. What are any of us really doing here? What purpose does creating this content serve besides mitigating corporate impressions?

Maybe something you've written makes people laugh, or brings them closer to an experience for which they weren't present to witness themselves, but I generally think that people can survive without an endless stream of hot takes on [insert Soundcloud rapper]'s 27th showcase of the week. Don't get me wrong, from the moment I touch down in Austin, I'm having fun, but there's this lurking suspicion that SXSW is, ultimately, a futile affair.

http://four-pins.com/life/sxsw-2015...

"How Cool C and Sready B Robbed a Bank, Killed a Cop, and Lost Their Souls" by Michael A. Gonzales

All these years later, Philly folks still question what brought Cool C and Steady B to the point of armed robbery. Were they in debt to drug dealers? Were they stealing funds to advance their recording career? Were they simply desperate to maintain their Big Willie images? While it may feel difficult to get a regular nine-to-five after tasting hip-hop fame, many old school rappers have done it. Cool C and Steady B made a different choice.

https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-c...

[Image via Getty]