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Jeopardy Gets Awkward With Contestant's Understanding of Consent Laws


New Maya Angelou Postage Stamp Features Thing Maya Angelou Didn't Say

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New Maya Angelou Postage Stamp Features Thing Maya Angelou Didn't Say

A new Forever stamp issued by the USPS has Maya Angelou’s face on it. Beside her face is the name “Maya Angelou.” Underneath the name “Maya Angelou” is the quote “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” But there’s one problem with the stamp that uses Angelou’s face and name: she isn’t responsible for the quote. Joan Walsh Anglund is. Speaking of quotes, here’s one from Anglund:

New Maya Angelou Postage Stamp Features Thing Maya Angelou Didn't Say

Oh, and here’s another one from USPS spoksesperson Mark Saunders:

New Maya Angelou Postage Stamp Features Thing Maya Angelou Didn't Say

That’s a lot of quotes from people who aren’t Maya Angelou!

Images via AP.


Contact the author at bobby@jezebel.com.

A Bunch of Dumb Teens Just Ruined Spring Break For Everyone 

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A Bunch of Dumb Teens Just Ruined Spring Break For Everyone 

In a story straight out of the second act of a high school graduation movie, a bitchin' spring break in the Gulf of Mexico was ruined this weekend when Alabama police busted a group of teens hauling their fun juice across state lines.

But even though the teens were forced to forfeit what amounts to quite a bit of beer money—not all of it theirs, doubtless—it seems like these dumb kids did everything they could to get caught. Via the Baton Rouge Advocate:

First, they broke traffic laws:

The students, Harrison Coogan, 18; Brandon Barber, 19; Hunter Coker, 18; and Carson Buckner, 19, were on Interstate 10 in a Ford pickup that was towing a trailer with an expired tag when they were stopped by deputies, said Lori Myles, a Mobile County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.

Then they consented to a search?!??!??????

During the stop, the pickup’s driver gave deputies consent to search the trailer, where authorities found nearly 2,000 beers, five liters of boxed wine and eight bottles of liquor, Myles said.

Among the confiscated alcoholic beverages were 106 18-packs of Natural Light beer, five 12-packs of Corona beer and five liters of Franzia boxed wine. Several bottles of tequila, vodka, whiskey and rum also were collected by deputies.

And then they narced on their friends???????

The students, who identified themselves to deputies as fraternity members, were en route to the beach to meet “a larger group of people for the week of spring break,” Myles said.

Dang. Might have to watch the festivities from home this year boys.

[ image via Flickr]


Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Marilyn Manson Allegedly Sucker-Punched at Canadian Denny's

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Marilyn Manson Allegedly Sucker-Punched at Canadian Denny's

In a tale as old as terror itself, the shocker became the shockee last weekend when an irate diner is said to have sucker-punched Marilyn Manson at an Alberta, Canada Denny's.

According to TMZ's initial report, the ironic reversal occurred at around 2 a.m. on Sunday, after the professional bogeyman allegedly called another patron's girlfriend a "bitch." A Manson representative later disputed that version of events, claiming the attack was unprovoked:

Manson's manager tells TMZ the rocker was enjoying his late night meal when two girls approached him and asked for a photo. Manson says he obliged and never called either woman a "bitch" ... as witnesses have claimed.

Marilyn says the guy came out of nowhere and hit him in the face. Manson says his security grabbed the guy, who then began screaming about blowing up Manson's next concert.

The shocked rocker's manager told TMZ that Manson now plans to press charges against his assailant for serving up the unrequested Grand Slam®.

[Image via Getty Images]

Fan Preys On Adam Levine Just Like Animals, Animals, Like Animals

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Fan Preys On Adam Levine Just Like Animals, Animals, Like Animals

"Maybe you think that you can hide/I can smell your scent from miles," singing competition badboy Adam Levine once said, but last night the hunter became the hunted.

The wild-eyed fan somehow eluded security at Levine's Anaheim show, got onstage and managed to stay there, apparently until a security guy decided he felt like intervening.


The encounter was also apparently as painful as it looked—Levine said the fan injured his beautiful head in her attempt to physically force him to love her.

"It's just weird to be, like, in the moment, ya know? And you're singing, and your eyes are closed, and you have this beautiful moment. And then the next thing you know someone's f—king in your face," Levine said to the crowd after the incident. "It's super terrifying."

"That was weird right?" he added. "She like cut my ear."

Just like animals, animals, like animals-mals.


Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Malia Obama Learned to Drive (Drunk??) From the Secret Service

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Malia Obama Learned to Drive (Drunk??) From the Secret Service

Congratulations to Malia Obama for becoming the latest teenage child of a president to learn how to drive. First comes a cool selfie, then a slight tug away from Dad as he embarrasses you for the trillionth time by grabbing your hand the White House North Lawn, then a driver's license to free you from the oppressives force of your nerd-ass parents. Peace!

In an interview with Rachael Ray set to air later today, Michelle Obama explains that it was the Secret Service that taught Malia to drive, rather than either of her parents. "They wouldn't let me in the car with her," said the First Lady, according to CNN.

A few high-ranking Secret Service members have recently made headlines for allegedly driving cars drunk. But, as the old adage goes, a drunk driver is better than a bad driver, which Michelle definitely is:

It's a good thing, too, as the First Lady told Ray she hasn't driven in seven or eight years, and admitted earlier this week she's forgotten some of the basics.

During a Monday interview on "Live! With Kelly and Michael," Obama said that when Malia asked her for advice on how to park in a public lot, the First Lady wasn't sure.

"I barely know now too so I have to check with other sources," she said.

While Malia is always flanked by a security detail, Michelle revealed that the teen occasionally drives alone:

"She always has security around. But in order for her to learn how to drive, she had to drive on her own. So once she was legally permitted to drive on her own, she gets in her car," she said.

Sasha remains trapped.


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

Alleged Teen Rapist Claims John Tucker Must Die Fans Framed Him

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Alleged Teen Rapist Claims John Tucker Must Die Fans Framed Him

Tyler Kost, who is accused of sexually assaulting 13 girls, appeared in Arizona court Monday where his attorney, citing logs of Facebook chats, claimed that the alleged victims—ages 13 to 17—were inspired to frame Kost as a rapist by the movie John Tucker Must Die.

Kost was arrested by police last year following accusations from multiple girls of sexual abuse, primarily from his former high school, Poston Butte. His attorney, Michael Alarid, produced Facebook messenger chat logs and Instagram photos, claiming they point to a supposed revenge plot against for Kost "being a player." From the Associated Press:

The prosecution handed over 98,000 pages of social media records from several of the alleged victims, but Defense Attorney Michael Alarid said he needs the communications of at least 8 other people to determine how far the plot spreads.

The court documents reveal a group Facebook chat where three of the accusers and three witnesses made plans to "teach a lesson" to Kost and referred to the movie "John Tucker Must Die," where ex-girlfriends take revenge on a former boyfriend. The exchange happened weeks before the women accused Kost of sexual assault."

Among the chat transcripts presented in court Monday, Fox Phoenix reports, were the messages, "Tyler needs to be taught a lesson" and "We should sacrifice him to Satan."

It's unclear whether more alleged chat logs between the girls will be obtained or revealed, because pursuant to Facebook's privacy policy, only law enforcement can request chat records.


Image via Fox Phoenix. Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .

'It's Controversial or No One Notices': A Chat with Elizabeth Wurtzel

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'It's Controversial or No One Notices': A Chat with Elizabeth Wurtzel

One winter evening I was walking to the subway when I got a 270-word text that began, “Jia. Hi. It’s Elizabeth Wurtzel.”

I was, to put it mildly, surprised. A few weeks back, I’d been trying to set up an interview with her about her slim new book, Creatocracy. Published through none other than Thought Catalog, the book is subtitled “How the Constitution Invented Hollywood,” and it’s Wurtzel tracing America’s best inventions (“rock ’n’ roll, blue jeans, the Gold Rush, cable TV”) back to the Founding Fathers’ particular relationship to rebellion, individual ownership, and state suspicion—asserting that the Constitution’s intellectual property clause is not only the most important thing in it but also the genesis of our country’s singular, unparalleled cool.

The argument is inconsistent and selective in a way that feels deliberate: Creatocracy is copyright law explained through fireworks, a book that swivels between provocation and sweeping pronouncement in the service of a tricky historical determinism. Though there’s almost no first person, it’s a distinctly first-person piece of writing. Oversimplified, Wurtzel’s thesis is that you’re a genius if you can get everyone to look: an argument inextricable from Creatocracy’s glibness as well as her writing career at large.

I was curious. I sent her some fairly direct questions, asking about her relationship to provocation and if she really stood by the idea that America—all of it, the Wal-Marts of the rigged free market, the bruised, bigoted sense of meritocracy—was unilaterally that cool. But our interview kept getting pushed back, then it was cancelled altogether. I wasn’t surprised: I knew that she was in treatment for breast cancer, and that relatively recent personal essays had alluded to a life that was knowingly in flux; I also figured my questions (“Do you have thoughts about the fact that Thought Catalog is known for trolling?”) had put her off.

Then I got that text, in which she explained that she’d just had surgery, and that the site of her implant-preparing spacers had gotten infected, requiring another surgery and post-operative drainage. She was on a lot of medication, she said, but she still wanted to do the interview as soon as she could. We kept texting; eventually, she just invited me over. “Do you drink?” she asked. “I drink.” We both like red. I came over with tulips.

It was an unexpectedly warm day when she opened the door to her downtown apartment. Her place is dim, airy and full of beautiful personal objects: ceiling-high stacks of CDs and records, plants, candles, figurines, curios, pictures and books (many of which depict her, or are her own). She was wearing a loose dress, tall boots; her hair fell long and flaxy on her shoulders. Her fiancé—younger, radiating care—was getting ready to go for a run.

I asked her how she was feeling. She kept calling breast cancer “annoying,” which she had done repeatedly in texts—downplaying it, like she does in this Vice piece. (“You go in with breast cancer and come out with stripper boobs.”) She told me it’s mostly a matter of a lot of time spent on the train to get uptown. I ended up staying at her apartment for more than two hours, eating cheese and crackers, drinking wine. She asked me a lot about myself—my boyfriend, Gawker Media, my neighborhood in New York—and listened carefully to my answers. When I turned on my tape recorder, her fiancé was heading out to refill her Percocet prescription, which got us talking about drugs, oxycontin in particular.

“I don’t know why that’s the one that gets people addicted to heroin,” she said. “They all have the same ingredient, don’t they? And I just had serious surgery, so if they’re not giving it to me, who are they giving it to?”

I told her about the FDA oxy crackdown, and how for a couple of years, one county in Florida had prescribed a startling amount of the oxy distributed in the United States.

“One day I want to write a book about Florida,” she said.

You should.

In a way, I already have. I published a book about being a drug addict in Florida. I went down meaning to stay for two weeks, but I was a drug addict, so I ended up staying for a year. I’m trying to remember how that happened. I guess that’s just the kind of thing that happens.

Let’s talk about Creatocracy. I enjoyed reading it a lot, and thought that if anyone could make people read about copyright law, it would be you.

I don’t really think it’s about that.

'It's Controversial or No One Notices': A Chat with Elizabeth Wurtzel

What do you think it’s about?

Well, it’s kind of about copyright law, I guess. It’s because of our Founders that there’s intellectual property in the Constitution, and it’s because of intellectual property that this country has turned out a certain way—and really, that the world has turned out a certain way.

I don’t think the Founders were imagining Hollywood, Silicon Valley. I don’t think they could have imagined that. But they bothered to put intellectual property in the Constitution, which is not common. There are Constitutions that have been written quite recently that don’t include intellectual property. It seems to me that intellectual property the most important thing we have in the Constitution—and the most important thing we have going. What else do we do here? We don’t manufacture anything anymore. All we do is invent things.

In your book, you say America is the most inventive country in the world—but then you also say our creativity is being degraded, particularly with music.

It does seem like a lot of the stuff we do best has been thoroughly degraded. But we’ll come up with something else.

When people were connected by music in this country, it was a better time. We were happier, more connected to each other. We’re now connected by Facebook, by things that are not as lovely. And it’s crazy to think we’re going to save everything we’re losing, because there’s no impulse towards saving them. Like streaming music: it’s not paying. These industries are going to die, because no one’s doing anything real to save them. You need to pay people the money they deserve to do what they do—and I mean serious money. Musicians need to be paid the way people at Google are paid. What do people pay for streaming?

$10 a month, ish.

That’s not enough.

I’m curious about your idea of a bygone age. I grew up in a different generation than you, but I feel exactly the way you do about music. What you call a lost experience has been my actual, recent experience. Music is the primary way I’ve connected to a lot of my friends, for example—probably the most important thing in my life. But under your conception, I couldn’t understand it in the same way; I missed the good era. You don’t think young people today could have the same relationship to music that you did when you were younger?

Maybe, but I doubt it. They don’t have the kind of choices. They don’t have as much being offered to them.

I’d argue they have more choices, in a way, if the choices are produced differently.

They’re not buying albums.

That’s true. I haven’t bought many albums. Just concert tickets.

I feel they’re not getting infused with it.

Do you listen to anything that’s on Top 40 now?

I never listened to anything on top 40, ever. I always listened to rock music, which was never top 40. Nirvana got popular, but that was a surprise, and other than “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” they didn’t have hit songs. Hole didn’t have many hit songs, either, and I loved them.

But I buy plenty of new albums. I just bought Emmylou Harris’s new album. I just bought six hours worth of unreleased Bob Dylan basement tapes. I like a lot of alt-country stuff. I got Arcade Fire recently.

Maybe you’d like Tame Impala. They’ve been doing a lot for rock.

I read somewhere that your musical taste stops changing at 26.

Was that true for you?

Maybe. I still like new music all the time—but it’s mostly stuff I’ve always liked, and I just like more of it. And there’s stuff I missed. I never listened to the Beatles much, but it turns out they’re really awesome.

The truth is, the very best stuff was made probably in the ‘60s. We haven’t evolved very much.

Yeah, I was listening to Prince last weekend and having similar thoughts. But so, your book: when did you decide to write it and do it through Thought Catalog?

Well, at first it was a paper I wrote in law school. I didn’t think it was a book at all. It was my final paper for law school, and actually, when I first got out of law school, I gave it to David Blum at Amazon—he wanted to publish it as it was as a Kindle Single. I didn’t think that was a good idea; I thought it needed to be updated and made smoother.

And then I kind of forgot about it, and I wrote something for Thought Catalog and I showed this to them, and they thought it would make a good e-book. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a book. I might have underestimated it. Thought Catalog isn’t a book publisher, they’re a website. Maybe it should have really been a book, I don’t know.

Do you have plans to write another book proper?

I do have memoir plans. I thought about doing some kind of fiction, but I think memoir is what people like me doing. I wrote a piece for New York a few years ago when things were really bad. I thought, people liked that—that’s really what people like me doing.

People are fascinated by you; why do you think that is?

I think I remind people of themselves.

You’re honest.

I think I have the same problems everyone else has. Not exactly, but kind of. It turns out that cancer is very common—maybe the most normal thing that’s happened to me. It’s unbelievably common.

And really, most of the things that have happened to me, they happen to everybody. The one thing I shouldn’t feel about anything that happens to me is ashamed. Who doesn’t get all messed up with this or that thing?

But it’s not just that. I think people are also interested in what about you is not relatable. Was the NYMag piece the one you wrote about beauty?

No, that was the one for Elle: looking back at different boyfriends, feeling like I was getting older. I liked that one. That’s really what I wanted to turn into a book.

But now I’m getting married—even though I’m still the same. It just turns out that when you’re ready to get married, you get married.

What made you ready?

The truth is, that whole thing I wrote about in NYMag [a period in which a previous tenant of her apartment semi-stalked her] was really awful. It made me think I should straighten out my life. You can just decide enough is enough. You can really have that moment.

Did that moment feel unexpected?

No. When I was younger, I thought enough was enough quite often! But it turned out it wasn’t. I enjoyed things being crazy. People who are not married really enjoy the headache. They’re into the whole mess.

Now I just can’t imagine anything worse. I’m not even interested in happy drama. We’ve been talking about our wedding, and he says, “I hope it’s going to be the most amazing day of our life.” I don’t want that at all. I just want it to be a good day. I don’t want any “most amazing” anything ever again. I’m done with most amazing. I think I’ve had the most amazing day a lot of times. I’m through with all of that.

I know what it means to him, and that’s fine, but I don’t even want to humor him about it.

I think another reason that people have always been interested in your writing is because of the way you look. I assume that people were intrigued by you being beautiful, and also skeptical of your writing because of it.

I don’t read my own press. I don’t know what people think of my books.

But you know what I mean. You were on the cover of your books, you’re on the cover of this one…

I see what you mean, but I don’t think about it very much.

Did you ever hesitate to put your face on the cover of things?

I thought of it as just making it more personal. It was like an album cover. The idea was that you should care about the author. If people care about the author, they’ll care about the book. I didn’t think I should be on the cover of this book, but they wanted it, and that’s fine.

I wanted Prozac Nation to be relatable. There’s this idea that authors are supposed to be hidden, and it’s all about the book. But the reason people don’t care so much about reading is that they don’t care much about the person who wrote the book. Once upon a time, they did. People read confessional poetry, and Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were famous, and then Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell came along and replaced them. If you’re competing with albums, you have to do the same thing. You have to make people feel like you’re there.

But you’re not just any writer showing her face; your looks are of the type that could make your project both immediately celebrated and immediately dismissed. Did you ever think you were setting yourself up for judgment in either direction?

I’m sure people did judge me. I know they did. It was very frustrating. There wasn’t Twitter or anything like that, so it wasn’t as bad as it could be now. But people gave me a hard time all the time: like at the New Yorker, there were constantly people giving me a hard time about stuff I’d write in my columns that was all totally fine. It was very obviously sexism. I’m not sure if it was the way I looked, even. Maybe just that I was young, and people thought I was getting away with something.

Right: either way, that’s the bottom line.

I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it. Actually, you can complain about it. But then you sound like you’re complaining, and it’s not good to complain. It definitely made me pretty crazy—I took it out in other ways, I acted out a lot. But it was easy to bring out bad things in me, because I was emotionally troubled for all sorts of reasons anyway.

Once I wrote my book, which was about being crazy, it stopped bothering me. Even when I got terrible reviews, I don’t think it was because people had issues with me. It was with the writing. I suppose it’s me as far as I’m the one that did the writing, but it’s legitimate criticism, because it keeps happening. It’s not unfair. They’re getting it from somewhere. Is it purely about the text? No—but so what?

And if your stance in Creatocracy is your stance, you don’t really care. The style and the argument and who you are as a writer seemed intertwined: to oversimplify, you’ve made it if people are paying attention.

I think controversial is the closest you can get to everyone agreeing with you. Either you’re controversial, or nothing at all is happening. No one is universally praised.

Do you know when you’re going to be controversial?

It seems like my writing always is. Either it’s controversial, or no one notices.

So you don’t write to be controversial, but you don’t care that you are.

There’s no way to make everybody love you.

I think there are plenty of writers who would strive for everybody loving them, particularly with social media, maybe particularly in the “women’s media” sphere I work in. Making your flaws known in a vulnerable way is for some people connected to that goal. I wonder: what would have happened if you’d written Prozac Nation when Twitter was around?

It was pretty nutty as is, so I imagine it would have been even more nutty. But I have good friends and I like being with them. I’m not terribly tempted by whatever it is I could get out of Twitter. I’m on it, but I never look at it. I’ve noticed this idea that Facebook is so five years ago, but I feel like it has more impact. If I want to spread the news, it’s better to do it there.

It’s like that for web traffic too. Facebook is the one.

Why is that?

The mystical algorithm, the size of people’s networks, I’m not sure.

I just feel like Twitter is useless. And if I post anything at all on Facebook, people are really responsive. It’s people you have a relationship with, and with Twitter, the followers thing—what is that? It’s bizarre. It seems not very useful.

What’s your relationship like with the internet?

I have almost no relationship with the internet. I read the Times every day online. I feel like everyone should do that. I’m really wary that one day there will be no New York Times. I tell people to subscribe, because how else are you going to know why things are the way they are? If you read the Times, you’ll know everything.

[ I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, and when I come out, Elizabeth asks me if I survived it in there. “I hope the cat’s litter didn’t need to be changed,” she said.]

I’m very down with pet stuff, I’ve got this monster dog at home.

My dog just died. That’s the one thing I can’t handle. I’m fine with cancer, but that was really the worst thing. She died in January. It’s been awful. She had cancer, actually.

Jesus. Had you been diagnosed when you found out?

Yeah, I’d found out about me in early January, and about her in mid-December. And it was a blood thing for her, it was too late to do anything.

What kind of a dog was she?

A mix, a border collie. I was very, very attached to her. I got her when I was 36 and she was just a baby. Dogs are so wonderful—they’re definitely improvements over humans. I trained her to be a therapy dog, and she walked without a leash. She used to come on the subway.

What was her personality like?

She was very funny. She would sit on the couch like a person and she would imitate people. She was very smart, and very funny. She made people laugh.

What was her name?

Augusta. I never went anywhere without her. And it’s strange now, because I’m home a lot, without her.

Are you working on anything right now or waiting till you’re done with treatment?

Waiting. I’m still on Cipro, and all that.

I’m wondering about how you write: quick, or slow, or many drafts, or what?

I can write a 1000-word piece really fast, or a first draft. But I go back and fix a lot of things. I’m really fussy about getting every word to be the right word. You have to do that. Every word counts. If you care about words, you can’t even be sloppy about text messages, you can’t be sloppy about anything. You have to care about words all the time.

That’s the one thing I ever got about reading anything by Malcolm Gladwell, the 10,000-hour thing. It used to be that writing felt like a massive struggle. Now it’s not.

But there’s one thing: I have been trying desperately to write something about Augusta, but I can’t do it without crying. Which really means I shouldn’t do it. You shouldn’t write because you’re full of feelings. You write because it’s work.

It never felt like you were writing your feelings when you were writing memoir?

No, because at that point, it was just hard work. When you’re writing purely emotional stuff, it’s just never good. With Augusta, I think it might be coming out okay—but I’m just in tears. All I can say is that she’s the best thing that ever happened to me, which is true. And still, there’s a better way to say it, but I just can’t.

I tried to explain this to Jim last night: the reason I love her so much, the reason there’s no human that can compare to this. It’s that you get a puppy, and it’s no fun. They make a mess of your house. It’s really hard work—it’s not easy—and it’s lucky that they’re cute, but mostly they’re not cute. They make you get up really early, and they need to be walked in the middle of the night, and they eat everything, and it feels like it’s never going to get better. And it doesn’t get better for a long time. It’s a huge commitment. I had no time for anything else but taking care of Augusta when I got her.

Then she calmed down, and then I missed how crazy she was, and we were just great friends for most of her life. And I just can’t explain it without crying. I can’t get another dog now because I have a whole bunch of stuff to go through, so I don’t have enough time—

You mean treatment-wise?

Yeah, but as soon as I’m done I’ll get another dog. I have to have chemotherapy first. I start in April. I wish I was the kind of person who could transform your life so that you don’t need chemotherapy, but I’m not. And I guess if they say you need it, you probably do.

Your book is about talent, but you don’t spend that much time talking about who you think is actually talented.

I think a lot of people are really talented. The last book I read was Martin Amis’s book about Auschwitz, and I loved it. I couldn’t put it down. He’s always great. But really, I learned to write from listening to music, which, thank god—people love listening to music, but they don’t love reading. Music is a better way to learn things.

I feel the same way, maybe—I don’t know if I know exactly what you mean.

I read a lot, growing up, but I really was a music fan. That’s really what I wanted to do, but I just didn’t have that kind of talent. I don’t mean that I literally learned to write from music—probably I learned to write from things I read. But I just thought that the best thing ever would be to be a rock star. I idolized Bruce Springsteen. I thought he did everything right. His whole thing is connecting to people. He’s unapologetically sappy.

The music industry has the better idea. In 1994, when I was thinking about Prozac Nation, they were selling lots of albums, and the book industry was a mess, like it always is. Even when the book industry was doing well, they were doing badly. Today, Amazon is not the problem; Amazon’s probably helped.

So I never understood writers who said they didn’t want to do press, that wanted to be a special hidden figure. As a writer, you’re lucky that people like what you do. It’s weird that you wouldn’t at every opportunity try to connect with the people who love your work. Books are things people should like. It’s bad if we start thinking about the publishing industry as special. It’s not special. That’s why I wanted to be on the cover of my books, because I wanted people to know who I was and who they were reading. I always thought the more it was like music, the better it would be. And my publishers didn’t think a memoir was a good idea, and look!

Do you ever feel like you presaged the personality-driven aspects of the internet?

It’s so over the top. We’ve turned into a complete culture of personality. This is how fame has become a disorder: when you get something that you haven’t earned, you go crazy.

Was it weird for you to get famous?

I’m not really famous.

I think you’re kind of famous.

It hasn’t made me not me. Not even when Prozac Nation came out. I was still taking out the garbage. And it happened in pieces. First I was writing at the New Yorker, I’d gotten attention in college for things I’d done there. You sort of start to expect it. But maybe I could have done the more clever thing and branded myself more.

Well, I don’t think you really had to. What you did was pretty distinct, and now some version of your style is kind of ubiquitous in some arenas.

But what’s going to happen to people who have invented themselves on the internet, and then are going to try to do something legitimate—I mean, what’s going to happen to Cat Marnell?

Oh yeah, I bet everyone’s always comparing you guys.

I’ve met her, and I wonder if she’s capable of sustaining a narrative over the course of a book.

She has charisma.

That doesn’t mean she can write a book. That’s the thing. You can’t just invent yourself on Instagram and that’s it. It’s weird: what will she do? Maybe nothing. Maybe this will all fall apart.

I’d be interested to read her book.

But what could she possibly say? What is there to say?

Ideally, I guess, what she would be doing is something similar to what you did, right? That she would be Zeitgeisty in a similar way?

What is she supposedly writing a book about?

I think: being young, taking speed. I don’t really know.

I guess you could get a book out of that. You could get a book out of anything.

And you want to do another one.

I do. There’s always something. Now there’s this. Now, when I was thinking that nothing was going on, suddenly I have breast cancer.

But I don’t want to write a book about breast cancer. It’s already been done, just very badly. You do have to be funny on this topic. It’s the stupidest thing to have happen to you. Heaven forbid you think this makes you a better person. If all this stuff doesn’t make you a worse person—I mean, it’s very annoying. How could it not make you annoyed? If I don’t come out of this a worse person, what’s wrong with me?

Have you read that Meghan Daum essay about her near-death experience?

No. Did she become a worse person? I like her essays.

I do too. It wasn’t that—it’s in her new collection, The Unspeakable, where she almost dies at the end of this essay called “Matricide” that’s ostensibly about mothers, and matriarchal antagonism, and then suddenly at the end she gets this crazy illness and almost dies. People starts treating her like a spiritual object, and she’s like, “Leave me alone, I’m embarrassed.”

Someone sent me this horrible e-card telling me to “relax and recuperate.” I can’t believe I didn’t respond by saying, “FUCK YOU.” It’s really demeaning. Sympathy cards—who needs your sympathy? Sympathy is an insult. One thing you don’t need or want is sympathy.

There’s a personality type that wants it.

WHO?

I think a lot of people!

I really don’t want anyone’s sympathy. I did when I was depressed. Now all these people with their fucking sympathy cards—I want to say to them, where were you when I needed you, when I could not stop crying for 10 years? That was bad. This is whatever. I’m getting the best fucking care from people who are not you, because you’re not an oncologist, you’re just the person sending me these fucking sympathy cards.

Right. You’ve been through your ordeal already.

Yeah, thank god I went through all that, because I’m fine now. And I don’t need your sympathy card!

Do you feel like that period of your life has already eclipsed this thing that’s currently happening to you?

This is nothing. Everything is nothing after all that. Everything. Whatever is coming my way in the future is nothing.

Having serious emotional problems is really hard. Insurance doesn’t cover it, nobody cares, you are not a sympathetic person at all, you’re awful. No one wants to help you. I’m pretty good at making people somehow help me anyway, and still no one cared. Somehow I was amazingly demanding, and I found people who gave me incredible help. But it was awful, it’s the worst kind of problem to have, because you’re awful, you’re hideous. And you’re really in pain. Unbelievable pain that no one cares about, you can’t even find it in yourself to care about. You just want to die.

And if you can find a way to get out of that, which most people don’t—most people find a way to keep going underneath all of it, somehow—then everything after that is easy. Even this is not that bad. They have cold caps now, so you don’t lose all your hair.

That’s good. You have really good hair. Were you worried about that?

Yes, but I’m not anymore. And even if I end up losing all my hair—compared to everything I’ve ever had to deal with, that’s something I can deal with. I have been so unimaginably sad, felt so terrible. I can’t ever imagine ever feeling as bad as I felt before. I figure it only gets better.

Creatocracy is available through Thought Catalog here.


Contact the author at jia@jezebel.com.


Boston Marathon Bomber Guilty of All Charges, Faces Death Penalty

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Boston Marathon Bomber Guilty of All Charges, Faces Death Penalty

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, along with his brother, was accused of detonating a bomb at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013, was found guilty of all 30 charges today by a jury in Boston. All of the verdicts were unanimous.

Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev planned and carried out the April 15, 2013 bombing, which killed three people and injured hundreds more. Tsarnaev was also convicted of killing an MIT police officer Sean Collier during the three-day manhunt that followed the bombing. Tamerlan died during a shootout with police in Watertown, Mass.

Seventeen of the 30 counts carry a possible penalty of death. The jury—seven women and five men—will reportedly reconvene to decide sentencing on April 13.

Mainstream Rap's Gay Future Is Upon Us

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Mainstream Rap's Gay Future Is Upon Us

Last Saturday's edition of the New York Times featured a profile of the Atlanta rapper and singer ILoveMakonnen, who has become an unlikely budding star of sorts thanks to his off-kilter club jam "Tuesday." All the way down in the 24th paragraph of the story is a revelation that could count as a landmark moment for hip-hop:

“The rap world thinks I’m gay,” he said. “A lot of people out there do. They think I’m a homosexual, which is not a problem. I don’t want to say I’m gay, I’m straight, I’m bisexual or any of that, because that’s just. ...” he said, trailing off. “Who cares? All that’s doing is dividing us.”

There are a number of ways to read this quote from Makonnen talking specifically about his sexuality and more broadly about how he—an oddball—fits into the rap world at-large. To me, this seems to be an admission of queerness. But even if it's not, Makonnen and fellow Atlanta rapper Young Thug are (through visual presentation, but as crucially through sound) helping to push rap towards an inevitable future where an openly gay rapper is accepted and incubated—so that a gay rapper doesn't break into the mainstream as much as he is naturally absorbed.

Makonnen would not be the first openly gay or bi male rapper, of course, but he would be the first to be inside rap's mainstream. He's far from the prototypical rapper—his music is wobbly, broken, and morose, and he talks about being a quiet loner who loves indie rock—but he's also had a song played endlessly on rap stations in between tracks by people like Lil Wayne and Big Sean. Drake—one of the most popular rappers in the world, and someone whose own music continually takes a sledgehammer to traditional ideas of masculinity—signed Makonnen to his label and shot "Tuesday" to popularity by remixing it. Makonnen's new mixtape has verses from Gucci Mane and Migos, guys who visibly resemble what we understand rappers to be, and like those artists, Makonnen has entire songs about selling drugs.

Makonnen is undeniably a different dude, but he's nonetheless been accepted into rap's inner ring. Whereas an openly gay MC like Le1f is still forced to operate at a distance from contemporary rap—collaborating with producers, rappers and labels that have no direct, or often sonic, connection to the sort of rap music you hear on the radio and see performed on TV—Makonnen has made a statement about his sexuality from inside the fortified walls of one of America's strongest bastions of hetero masculinity. (Frank Ocean, a singer who also avoids labels but who has written about at least one relationship with a man, keeps mainstream rap and R&B at arm's length by choice.)

But Makonnen is not the only new artist challenging rap's traditional values. Even more popular is Young Thug, who—like Gucci Mane, 2 Chainz, and Future before him—has emerged from Atlanta as the most in-demand new collaborator in the business. He appeared on several top 40 hits in the last year, and is so exciting that it's rumored that Lil Wayne's falling out with his longtime label Cash Money Records was in part precipitated by his boss, Birdman, becoming enamored with Thug's music, and his potential.

Aside from being a go-to hitmaker, Thug is also an iconoclast who sticks in the craw of rap fans invested in the genre upholding heterosexuality. There is no evidence that Thug is gay or even bi—he raps frequently about having sex with women, has several children and has never spoken on the record about the subject—but he also seems to take a certain delight in tearing away at masculinity.

For instance, on Instagram, he frequently refers to other men—including famous faces like Rich Homie Quan and Birdman—as "hubbie" or "my love". He also does things like painting his nails and wearing a leopard print shirt that looks like a blouse (pictured above), eating away at rap fans who expect their rappers to look a certain way. The latest mini-controversy that resulted in homophobes calling Young Thug gay stemmed from his new video "Check," in which he dons the same Hooters tanktop worn by the restaurant's waitresses.

Visually speaking, Thug, and to a lesser extent Makonnen, are upturning rap music, but they're also following a path charted by artists—Andre 3000, Kanye West, Lil Wayne—before them. Those rappers rejected masculinity in their own ways—through style, too, or in the case of Wayne, by rapping proudly about a photo of him kissing Birdman—in the process moving rap, socially, to where it is now. Nonetheless, Makonnen and Young Thug feel like an acceleration point, and it's not because of their fashion, but because of their songs.

Young Thug's biggest solo single to date is "Stoner," which was put into rotation on rap radio in early 2014. The song is unstructured, spaced-out and fidgety. Thug treats cadences like a pile of junk to be rummaged through. At times he murmurs imperceptible lyrics, at others he sings softly or growls or converses with himself. The radio edit, which adds shards of silence to the mix, feels especially like a static dispatch from another planet. "Stoner" has strong connections to years of underground Southern rap, but it's also an undeniably singular and bewildering song.

Thug was the driving force behind "Lifestyle," a duet of sorts with Rich Homie Quan, billed under Birdman's amorphous Rich Gang moniker, that was one of the enduring rap hits of 2014. By Thug's standards, "Lifestyle" is an exceedingly normal, breezy song, but it also climbed up the charts despite, or perhaps because of, many of its fans being unable to decipher what Thug is saying. At the height of its popularity, Vine was populated by clips of people making fun of the song's garbled chorus, yet that only seemed to make both the track and artist more lovable.

"Lifestyle" was also an indication of how Young Thug could smooth his edges a bit as his music begins to reach a wider audience. But it also showed that he's still hanging on to the ethos of his early mixtapes, which treated rap like a funhouse meant to distort, surprise and spook you. On 1017 Thug, his breakthrough full-length from 2013, Thug uses his reptilian squeal and skewed point of view to alter and elevate familiar rap tropes like drinking lean ("2 Cups Stuffed"), smoking weed ("Condo Music"), and bragging about his jewelry ("Picacho"). The mixtape is full of songs that feel like a slight but newly discovered mutation of Southern rap club hits.

Makonnen is less electric and exciting, but he is twisting rap, too, albeit more quietly. Though he uses hip-hop to structure his songs, he often barely sounds like a rapper—in the Times, writer Joe Coscarelli accurately describes Makonnen's voice as a "gooey Broadway baritone" that splits "the difference between singers like Morrissey and Nate Dogg." Where Southern rap has long used Autotune to harden rapper's singing voices, Makonnen lets his amateur warble float over beats unadorned with no hint of menace or testosterone. His new mixtape Drink More Water 5 is a combination of boisterous anthems and introverted, mumbled ballads that feel like the doodles of an undiscovered recluse.

Thug and Makonnen are in their own ways altering how rappers are supposed to look. But their lasting legacies might be their ongoing queering of how popular rap sounds. Makonnen, nodding off into in his own bloops and bleeps, could slide perfectly onto a Le1f album track; Young Thug, constantly bending his voice into new and unrecognizable shapes, would have sounded at home on any of trans rapper Mykki Blanco's albums.

It's possible that mainstream rap's first openly queer artist will be a gay man whose music is nonetheless conservative and easily digestible. Maybe that person will look and sound as straight as J. Cole while also admitting in interviews that he sucks dick in the bedroom. But if we go by how gay rappers sound now—arty and uncompromising—it's more likely that mainstream rap will have to accept the queer underground's freaks and weirdos.

Young Thug and Makonnen, each in their own way, are making that future a reality right now. They may or may not be the first openly queer mainstream rappers, but I'm willing to bet that whoever is will look and sound a hell of a lot like them.

[photos via Getty]

500 Days of Kristin, Day 73: What's a Cute Bikini for a Pear?

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 73: What's a Cute Bikini for a Pear?

Kristin Cavallari recently took time out of her busy schedule writing a controversial anatomy textbook to offer swimsuit shopping advice to the women who have, either on purpose or through error, downloaded her eponymous iPhone app.

Yesterday, we relayed Kristin's advice for "curvy" girls as recounted in the "Best Bathing Suit For Different Body Types" post. (That advice: Maternity wear.)

Today, we'll reveal her suggestions for women who are "pear shape." Are you pear shape?

If you're not sure, look in the mirror. Is pear shape staring back at you? Yes? Then look alive! Here's Kristin's advice:

If you are pear shape: suits with little skirts are great for this body type. They subtly hide your curves making you feel more confident at the beach.

She offers this photo as an example:

500 Days of Kristin, Day 73: What's a Cute Bikini for a Pear?

It's O.K. to feel confident, even if you are shape like pear.

Tomorrow, we will spotlight Kristin's advice for girls with "little tummies."


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photos via the Kristin Cavallari app, Getty]

What More Is There to Say? On Walter Scott and Black Death

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What More Is There to Say? On Walter Scott and Black Death

There is little left to write. But the names are important to remember. Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell and Rekia Boyd and Akai Gurley and Michael Brown and Angelia Mangum and Tamir Rice, 12 and forever imprisoned in the innocence of youth. The afternoon of November 22, 2014 forever on repeat. And now Walter Scott.

The difficulty of responding, again, to something we've seen so many times, and will see again, is not lost on me. As an editor at a news outlet, it is my job to speak up when necessary and to use this platform to the best of my ability. But the constant onslaught of black death weighs on my shoulders. Last night, and much of this morning, I was at a loss for words. When asked by another editor if I had "any thoughts on Walter Scott," I bucked at the idea. All I could think was, Fuck, what more can I say that I haven't already? Writing "Black Lives Matter" has but so many iterations. When I sat down to write this afternoon, I found myself grabbing for the same words I have used in this space before, the same obvious truths that I have imparted onto you, the reader. But we are here again. So I must try.

Scott, the unarmed South Carolina man and former Coast Guard who was shot eight times in the back as he ran from an officer, now joins our sinister American ritual. I have yet to watch the video of Scott's shooting because I know the horror contained within, and my doing so will not change its outcome, or alter the reality black Americans find themselves mired in.

Follow the roots, this trend, the mass murdering of black men and women, the sullying of lives even in death, and they will lead you to the legacies of colonialism, economic disparity, poverty, sexism, and patriarchy—they will lead you to the very beginning of America and its flawed, grandiose dream. These are the tools of oppression. These are the ways in which black lives, brown lives, transgender lives, gay lives, and elderly lives are suffocated day after day. Again and again.

According to Mapping Police Violence, 36 black people were killed by police last month. That breaks down to one black person shot every 21 hours. These men and women did not lead perfect lives, all of them were not upstanding citizens, and still their worth was determined by another, their lives, like Scott's, snatched in broad daylight.

But the American institution did not fail these people. It has not failed us either. A government cannot fail those it never intended to keep from harm.

Michael Slager, the officer who fatally shot Scott, was but a willing participant in this eradication. Those in power, perched and safeguarded from the killing fields, need no excuse to violate our rights (Slager said he stopped Scott for a busted tail light, but under South Carolina law vehicles only need to be equipped with one working tail light). It has always been so, and might always be. The Justice Department's recent probe into the workings of the Ferguson Police Department proves as much. One of the many findings from the report:

The race-based disparities we have found are not isolated or aberrational; rather, they exist in nearly every aspect of Ferguson police and court operations... These disparities provide significant evidence of discriminatory intent, as the "impact of an official action is often probative of why the action was taken in the first place since people usually intend the natural consequences of their actions.” Reno v. Bossier Parish Sch. Bd., 520 U.S. 471, 487 (1997); see also Davis, 426 U.S. at 242 (“An invidious discriminatory purpose may often be inferred from the totality of the relevant facts, including the fact, if it is true, that the [practice] bears more heavily on one race than another.”). These disparities are unexplainable on grounds other than race and evidence that racial bias, whether implicit or explicit, has shaped law enforcement conduct.

The merciless shooting of Scott, the Justice Department's report, the deaths of Eric Garner and others—they are vivid and damning reminders of the marginal value those in authority place upon our existence.

It is uncertain how much jail time Slager will face, or if he will be convicted at all. The only sure bet is that more black lives will be unjustly and cowardly taken from us.

But hasn't it always been this way?

[Illustration by Jim Cooke]

What's Causing This Weird Desert "Hot Spot" NASA Spotted From Space?

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What's Causing This Weird Desert "Hot Spot" NASA Spotted From Space?

There's a patch of desert in the American southwest where something odd is happening. What is it — and what's causing it?

Last year, while analyzing satellite data of greenhouse gas emissions from the ESA, NASA noticed something weird: At the "Four Corners" section of the desert (the place where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet) there was an empty patch of earth with incredibly high — and unexplained — levels of methane. So high, in fact, that the little area around Shiprock, New Mexico ,was classified as having the highest methane concentration in the entire country.

Not only were researchers surprised at the measurements, they still aren't sure what's causing them. They do, however, have a few potential explanations:

The satellite observations were not detailed enough to reveal the actual sources of the methane in the Four Corners. Likely candidates include venting from oil and gas activities, which are primarily coalbed methane exploration and extraction in this region; active coal mines; and natural gas seeps.

To narrow down the probable cause a little further, NASA, NOAA, and researchers from both the University of Michigan and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences are making a more detailed map of just how the methane emissions are spread out over the area. With a better map, they hope they can also get a better idea of just what's going on.

Image: Shiprock, NM via NASA.

How Did Darren Sharper Avoid Arrest For So Long?

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How Did Darren Sharper Avoid Arrest For So Long?

ProPublica, Sports Illustrated, and The New Orleans Advocate teamed up to produce a thoroughly reported story seeking to explain how exactly former NFL player Darren Sharper was able to avoid getting arrested for months years despite being accused of rape multiple times. The whole story is worth a read, but the short answer is basically this: Sharper was smart enough to commit his crimes in different states, and none of the cops who investigated him were smart enough to go looking for previous accusations.

From 2011-2014, Sharper was investigated for raping nine women in Miami Beach, New Orleans, Arizona, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. According to ProPublica’s report, each individual investigation was bogged down by the usual missteps that plague rape investigations in America—hesitancy to go after a rich and famous suspect, failure to properly handle physical evidence, hostility toward accusers, failure to interview witnesses—but where everything really fell apart, and where Sharper was able to stay free for so long, was in investigators’ failures to go looking for a pattern of behavior.

For example, New Orleans PD detective Derrick Williams struggled to get an arrest warrant issued after investigating Sharper in 2013. But Williams never bothered to make himself aware of the fact that Sharper had been accused of raping a woman in Miami Beach two years prior:

Still, Williams might have strengthened his case if he had taken one additional step. A call to police in Miami Beach, which Sharper listed as his permanent address, would have turned up Sharper’s name in connection with the 2011 spring break incident.

Munch, the rape expert, said such inquiries are among the most important aspects of any investigation. Studies have shown that rapists have frequently committed prior sexual assault offenses. Such history can help support a new victim’s case.

The details of the New Orleans case were eerily similar to the Miami incident. Women in both cases who were young, white and blond. Women who had passed out at Sharper’s residence — either from alcohol or drugs. Women in both cases who woke to a sexual assault.

But Williams never made the call.

It was the same story later that year, when Sharper was under investigation for raping a woman in Los Angeles:

Detective John Macchiarella didn’t begin his investigation until two weeks after the woman filed the complaint, according to court documents. Once engaged, Macchiarella had the victim place a “pretext call” in hopes of eliciting incriminating information from Sharper. Police monitored the call, but did not issue an arrest warrant.

After that, there is little sign of action. Macchiarella did not attempt to interview Sharper. Nor did he obtain a sample of his DNA.

Most crucially, there is no indication that he tried to contact agencies in the other places where Sharper had lived.

If he had, of course, he might have learned of Miami Beach’s closed case. Or more importantly, that Sharper was under active investigation in New Orleans. By the time Macchiarella started his investigation, Williams had already received the report matching Sharper’s DNA to a sample found on the woman’s body.

Without other evidence to corroborate the women’s stories, Macchiarella’s investigation stalled out.

The failure continued with the Tempe, Ariz., police department, which began investigating Sharper in November of 2013:

And once again, the Arizona detectives did not look into Sharper’s background in other cities. In fact, the department deemed that such evidence was not worth gathering — despite a state law designed to make it easier to use a suspect’s history in rape cases.

“In a trial setting, it is highly unlikely that a ‘series’ of events in different jurisdictions would be made known to a jury that is deciding guilt or innocence on a single event,” said department spokesman Lt. Michael Pooley.

It wasn’t until Jan. 2014, when Sharper was accused of yet another rape in Los Angeles, that police started to make connections:

The women woke up the next morning at 9 a.m. One felt pain and burning in her vagina. They left without seeing Sharper. After talking later that day, the women decided to go to the Santa Monica Rape Crisis Center. They walked into the center at midnight.

The next day, they made their report to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Westside police station. This time, the officer taking the report noted that Sharper’s attacks featured a modus operandi.

Macchiarella, the detective who caught the first Los Angeles case, also got the second. Alarm bells went off. A judge issued an arrest warrant.

The police’s continued failure to look into Sharper’s background may have been excusable in a scenario involving a different crime, but as ProPublica points out, rape cases are unique in that investigators are explicitly encouraged by federal law to take past accusations and previous behavior by the suspect into account. In 1994, a law was passed that made it easier for prosecutors to use a defendant’s history as evidence in sexual assault cases, and the The International Association of Police Chiefs explicitly instructs detectives to seek out previous victims when investigating rape cases.

Had any of the cops investigating Sharper simply widened the scope of their investigation a little bit, they would have suddenly been face to face with a serial rapist with a clear modus operandi. Instead, they all chose to slog through their investigations and let the cases peter out, and Darren Shaper was allowed to continue raping women.

[ ProPublica]

Arkansas Lawmakers Believe Medically-Induced Abortions Are "Reversible"

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Arkansas Lawmakers Believe Medically-Induced Abortions Are "Reversible"

Just as several states now legally obligate doctors to lie to women about the dangers of abortion, Arkansas now has its own law forcing doctors to peddle bullshit. Physicians in the state will be required to tell any woman taking abortion-inducing drugs that she can reverse the process mid-treatment—a claim that's based on pretty much nothing.

The new law—which is almost identical to one passed in Arizona just a few weeks ago—is based on model legislation from pro-life advocacy group Americans United for Life. And any "science" the group's claims rest on is flimsy at best and nonexistent at worse. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) dismissed the very idea, writing:

Claims of medication abortion reversal are not supported by the body of scientific evidence, and this approach is not recommended in ACOG’s clinical guidance on medication abortion. There are no ACOG guidelines that support this course of action.

Currently, most modern medical abortions involve taking a dose of a drug (mifepristone) that blocks the hormones needed to maintain a pregnancy (progesterone). Then, two days later, a second drug called misopristol induces contractions, expelling the pregnancy.

What Arizona wants to do is force doctors to tell women about a very new, very unproven procedure by pro-life doctor George Delgado. Essentially, Delgado claims to have reversed abortions by injecting women with progestorone (the pregnancy-maintaining hormone) before they've taken the second round of treatment. Unfortunately, he's only tried it on six patients so far, and the "reversal" treatment proved no more effective than skipping the second pill entirely.

From The Atlantic:

The limited evidence we have suggests that taking progesterone does not appear to improve the odds of fetal survival by much. The abortion pill binds more tightly to progesterone receptors than progesterone itself does, one reproductive researcher told Iowa Public Radio, and thus the hormone surge is unlikely to do much of anything.

As Cheryl Chastine, an abortion provider at South Wind Women’s Center in Kansas, put it recently, "Even if these doctors were to offer a large dose of purple Skittles, they’d appear to have ‘worked’ to ‘save’ the pregnancy about half the time.”

And yet, we now have two states requiring doctors by law to counsel their patients on what Dr. Ilana Addis, Arizona chair for the ACOG referred to as "voodoo science." As Addis argued right before Arizona passed the law itself, "The rare woman who does regret her choice should not have to be subjected to unproven doses of an unnecessary hormone." [Mother Jones]

Image via Shutterstock.


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.



Dick Cheney: Obama "Worst President" Ever, Wants "to Take America Down"

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Dick Cheney: Obama "Worst President" Ever, Wants "to Take America Down"

Someday, friend-shooting mountain warlord Dick Cheney is going to unzip his skin and Andy Kaufman will leap out. Until then, we can enjoy his slapstick apocalyptic-shaman shtick, like this interview yesterday in which he vacillated "between the various theories" on why Barack Obumbler is so weak and evil.

The former vice president and Liz Cheney, who sprang forth from his forehead fully formed, got on the phone for a friendly three-way with right-wing radio maven Hugh Hewitt:

The ostensible purpose was to plug the Cheneys' upcoming book, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America, but how could they focus on something so crass as book sales when the earth's existence was threatened by Odumbo's dastardly plan to give Iran nukes and surrender Old Glory to the mullahs?

Confronted with a clip of Hussein Obummer warbling his weak song—"I think it's important to note that Iran's a complicated country, just like we're a complicated country"—the freedom hawks swooped in to drop some exceptionalist guano on their enemies' pate. Liz went first:

I cannot even imagine an American president saying any sentence that has Iran in it and says they're just like us. I mean, it's just outrageous… for this president to be in a situation where he's aligning our policies with those of Iran is just breathtaking and really shameful.

Father Dick then explained his theory that every other president, Democrat or Republican, for the past 70 years, has believed America should be the strongest military power in the world:

The first president who does no longer believe that fundamental truth is Barack Obama… It's a mark of the weakness of this president.

"This is one of the most radical regimes in history... who are sworn to destroy Israel… shouting 'death to America," Dick said of Iran:

"Totally radical regime… and Obama's about to give 'em nuclear weapons."

Why was Brak Husayn Obilbobaggins so eager to blow Liberty Central to kingdom come? Dick couldn't decide, but the consequences were clear:

I vacillate between the various theories I've heard, but you know, if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama's doing. I think his actions constitute in my mind those of the worst president we've ever had.

Dick and Liz Cheney, ladies and gentlemen! Or as they're known outside the Beltway:

Dick Cheney: Obama "Worst President" Ever, Wants "to Take America Down"

[ Photo credit: AP Images]

When You Find Out a Meme Is Seven Months Old

Cop Who Killed Walter Scott Fired From South Carolina Police Force 

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Cop Who Killed Walter Scott Fired From South Carolina Police Force 

Michael T. Slager—the white police officer arrested Tuesday and charged with murder after video surfaced of him gunning down an unarmed black man, Walter L. Scott—has been fired from the North Charleston, S.C. police force. He had served for five years.

In video of the April 4 shooting first obtained by the Post and Courier, Slager can be seen firing at Scott as he flees in a lot adjacent to a muffler shop; the officer fires eight shots before Scott, 50, falls to the ground. Slager, 31, can then be seen in the footage appearing to plant his Taser near Scott's body as more officers arrive at the scene.http://gawker.com/video-of-cop-s...

Eddie Driggers, the North Charleston police chief, told reporters Wednesday that proper procedures were “obviously not" followed in the aftermath of the shooting. The town's mayor, Keith Sumney, the New York Times reports, issued an executive order Wednesday that all police officers start wear body cameras. Officials with the police department also told reporters that Slager's eight-months-pregnant wife will continue to receive health insurance.

Slager's former attorney, David Aylor, told the Daily Beast that he dropped the officer as his client after the video was released Tuesday.


Image via North Charleston Police. Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .

A Few 'Significant' Tornadoes Possible Across Central U.S. This Evening

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A Few 'Significant' Tornadoes Possible Across Central U.S. This Evening

Things are going to get interesting in a hurry across the central part of the country this evening as severe thunderstorms rapidly develop in the moist, unstable air pumping in from the tropics. These dangerous thunderstorms even have the potential to produce a few tornadoes, some of which could be strong and stay on the ground for a while.

The Storm Prediction Center has issued a moderate risk for severe weather—a four on a scale from zero to five—for a chunk of the central Plains from northern Oklahoma to central Missouri. A three out of five (enhanced) risk for severe weather encompasses a larger area from the northern suburbs of Oklahoma City north to Kansas City and east to central Indiana.

A Few 'Significant' Tornadoes Possible Across Central U.S. This Evening

The greatest hazards this afternoon are very large hail and tornadoes, some of which could be "significant." A significant tornado is one that produces damage that rates an EF-2 or stronger. Hail could easily grow larger than golf balls in the strongest storms. Above is the probability of tornadoes this afternoon; a 5% risk is cause for concern, so a 15% risk for tornadoes (significant ones, at that) is something that should give residents pause and reason enough to pay close attention to the forecasts for watches and warnings.

The strongest storms also have the potential to produce hail larger than baseballs, so that could also pose a couple of problems.

A Few 'Significant' Tornadoes Possible Across Central U.S. This Evening

Today's severe weather will be a pretty standard severe weather event for April. We see warm, moist air pumping in from the Gulf of Mexico, a center of low pressure near the surface with a dry line and a cold front approaching from the west. A dry line is a boundary that separates moist air to the east and dry air to the west—they can serve as the focus for potent thunderstorms, especially in the southern Plains.

You can almost swim through the air in some places. It's not quite July gross, but it's getting up there, especially considering that this is one of the first bouts of sticky weather we've seen this year. Here are the latest dew points, showing the sharp cutoff between humid to the south and drier to the north.

A Few 'Significant' Tornadoes Possible Across Central U.S. This Evening

The atmosphere is quickly warming up (and destabilizing) north of Oklahoma City where sunlight is breaking through the cloud cover, and this is crucial for the development of thunderstorms. Strong instability needs to exist for powerful updrafts to form and develop severe thunderstorms, and it's (almost) in place across the area at greatest risk for dangerous thunderstorms.

A Few 'Significant' Tornadoes Possible Across Central U.S. This Evening

Above is a model-generated SKEW-T chart for southern Kansas right around now. SKEW-T charts use data collected from weather balloons (or, in this case, from a weather model) to show the temperature and moisture profile of the atmosphere. SKEW-Ts are immensely useful in severe weather situations, since they allow you to analyze how much instability (measured with Convective Available Potential Energy, or "CAPE") there is in the atmosphere. CAPE is like jet fuel that feeds the engines (updrafts) that power thunderstorms.

There's currently a capping inversion (the nerdy term is "convective inhibition," or CIN) in place across much of the risk area—the cap on this particular SKEW-T is circled in yellow. The atmosphere usually gets cooler with height, but an inversion occurs when a layer of air above the surface abruptly warms up. This warmer layer serves as a cap or a lid, preventing air from rising through it, which keeps thunderstorms at bay. Once the air near the surface warms up enough (or a forcing mechanism like a front approaches), the cap can break, allowing air to rapidly rise and thunderstorms to develop in just minutes.

The red-shaded zone on the SKEW-T shows the instability—the long, thick CAPE indicates the potential for powerful updrafts that can foster large hail and tornadoes once they can break through the cap in the mid-levels.

We've seen dozens of reports of severe weather today across areas from Missouri to West Virginia. The greatest risk zone is by no means the only area seeing severe weather today, it's just the most volatile region (and the most interesting to talk about). Even the most marginal severe thunderstorm is dangerous if a tree falls on you or you get caught outside when hail starts to fall, so even if your location isn't expected to see honkin' supercells like those getting ready to blow up over Oklahoma and Kansas, you still need to pay attention and take action if you're threatened by ugly conditions.

It's a classic week of screwed-up April weather. It's interesting in a nerdy sort of way, but dangerous whether you're interested in it or not. Almost everyone between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean will have to deal with a threat of severe weather through Friday evening, with the threat shifting east each day. Hail, winds, and tornadoes are all possible, so you'll have to watch the weather like a hawk through the weekend. The Storm Prediction Center issues severe weather watches and forecasts, while your local National Weather Service offices issue warnings for individual storms. You can keep track of storms near you by looking at your local Doppler radar; Wunderground's radar services are among the best available for free online.

[Images: author, HPC, GREarth, Twister Data]


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Science Watch: Sardine Heaven

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Science Watch: Sardine Heaven

Moon formation! Alien life! Fish death! Muscle appreciation! Dark studies! Robo-gloves! Arctic tundra! And the downfall of Western civilization! It's your Wednesday Science Watch, where we watch science—like a toad watch a bug.

  • How did The Moon "form?" Violently, like you. Your parents had a violent relationship.
  • A scientist claiming to be with "NASA" says openly in public, "I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade." I think I'm politely asking you to fuck off, sir!
  • Here we go again: now sardines are suffering from overfishing. Wake me when something goes right for sardines. Another day in hell with the sardine brigade.
  • You may be interested to learn that professional scientists are spending their time looking at a muscle in your body called the diaphragm. This muscle is "underappreciated" or so they would have you believe. When will scientists learn that we—*gestures to you and me*—don't care about the diaphragm? This is one trite narrative that is not just sick, but sickening.
  • The research physicists who control the Large Hadron Collider are trying to look beyond the visible universe—and into the Dark Universe. I don't support that.
  • There's a new robotic glove that could be a big help to stroke survivors who want to gain reuse of their hand's motor skills. For the majority of you who aren't stroke survivors—I've just wasted your time. "Thank me later" (sarcastic). You can add in the subset of stroke survivors who are unable to or uninterested in regaining hand motor skills to the pool of people for whom this story is of no value whatsoever. Makes you wish that editors who assign stories could do simple arithmetic, does it not?
  • It seems that the type of scientist that greatly enjoys publicity is now announcing to all who will listen that the frozen Arctic north could soon become a major source of carbon. As if the public is walking around looking for another source of carbon. Look in any diamond, it's there. Idiotic.
  • Batteries that bend. Guns in school. Babies having babies. Men marrying men. Read the signs, read the stars. The ancient runes.........

[Photo: Flickr]

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