Arrested in November for allegedly plotting the murder of a former employee, AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd pled guilty in a New Zealand court today to one count of threatening to kill and two drug possession charges, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

According to a summary of facts read in court on Monday, the charges stem from Rudd’s anger over a failed solo album. After the album flopped, a furious Rudd reportedly fired a number of employees, including the personal assistant named as his victim. From The New Zealand Herald (emphasis added):

On September 25, at around 8.12pm, Rudd called an associate holidaying in Australia and said he wanted the victim “taken out”.

When asked what he meant by that, Rudd said he wanted them “taken out” because “they were a bunch of [fuckers] and [cunts]”.

In another call to the same associate, while he was still in Australia, he offered him $200,000, a motorbike, one of his cars or a house.

The associate took this to mean as payment for carrying out his earlier request.

On September 26, at around 8.27am, Rudd called the victim to ask if he “was on” today.

The victim replied yes, before Rudd later responded “I’m going to come over and kill you” and then repeated “I’m going to come over and kill you, you [fucking cunt].”

In November, police arrested Rudd after searching his home and discovering 0.71 grams of meth and 130 grams of marijuana. Since then, prosecutors have dropped their initial charge of attempting to procure murder and an additional count of threatening to kill.

Scheduled to be sentenced in June, Rudd’s attorney says the musician intends to contest the conviction at that time, a legal peculiarity available to defendants who have pled guilty in New Zealand.

“This matter essentially revolved around an angry phone call,” said lawyer Craig Tuck, “that was it.”

[Image via AP Images//h/t Buzzfeed]

To begin, the briefest of rants. A few years ago, I got one of these Crock-Pot Little Dipper dealies as a gift. The idea, the gift-giver told me, was that I could use it to keep queso or artichoke dip warm when I had friends over. This was going to be so great! No longer would once-hot queso congeal sadly on my coffee table! The days of artichoke dip going cold when only half the baking dish had been consumed were over! IT WAS A HOT-DIP MIRACLE.

Except for one fatal flaw, or, perhaps, two of them: The cord on this tiniest of crockpots was quite short. (No shade: I am also quite short.) And my coffee table, lovely though it was, did not come outfitted with an electrical socket in which to plug the tiny cord. I suppose I could have used an extension cord, but they’re unsightly, and also? Did you know that I’m afraid of everything? I am! Which means that throwing down an extension cord in a place where people will be drinking, and could trip over it, fills me with the kind of dread that only a child who grew up on her mother’s dinner-table stories of horrific freak accidents could know. Consequently, for all intents and purposes, that itty-bitty crockpot was no more functional than a serving bowl outfitted with a koozy.

For whatever reason, though, I held onto the dumb thing. And then one day, I found a use for it: As it turns out, that stupid, tiny crockpot is the secret to perfect pot butter.

How I came to that revelation is another story. (It’s a bit sad, too, so you should be prepared for the possible occurrence of feelings.) It was summer, and my best friend’s father was dying of cancer. My friend spent as many weekends as he could in Pennsylvania with his dad and stepmother to help, to provide comfort, to just be there. As is the case with many people undergoing chemotherapy, his dad had difficulty with his appetite and with keeping food down, and he was losing weight at an alarming rate. Enter pot brownies! I got an email asking if I could help make a batch, which, of course.

The request came, presumably, because I make the best brownies, and also because I’m an adequate joint-roller, a talent which people often conflate with being the sort who knows stuff about weed. The problem was that I’d never actually made pot brownies, nor, more crucially, had I ever made pot butter. No matter: Thanks to Google, our brownies came out great, and there’s some video of my friend’s dad shuffling hilariously around the kitchen trying to make a pot of coffee that provided a much-needed bright spot for us during that heavy summer. But the process of making the pot butter was still off-putting.

There are an untold number of cannabutter recipes available online; as you might expect, they’re all variations on “combine weed and butter, then cook.” But one major issue with the production of stovetop pot butter is that it requires a fairly long cook time, which leaves the butter prone to scorching, even atop the lowest of flames or gentlest of coiled heating elements. In the case of my best friend and I, as people prone to both anxiety and perfectionism, this issue made the two or so hours of what should have been a chill time tending to a pot of gurgling weed butter incredibly stressful for us. I fretted that the butter was burning; he worried that his All-Clad saucepan was developing inoperable scorch marks; I in turn got upset at the suggestion that he thought there might exist a scorch mark I couldn’t cure. We self-soothed with HGTV and a lot of white wine.

I never made that mistake again. Of the five most prominent weed-butter recipes online—from the Cannabist, High Times, the Stoner’s Cookbook, the Weed Blog, and Leafly—only that last one makes mention of a slow cooker. Good for them, and good for you. Use one if at all possible.

From there, the simple math of weed butter is this: one ounce of pot to one pound of butter to, if necessary, one cup of water. To us Americans, a pound of butter is what you’ll get in a box containing four sticks. Ideally, the butter should be allowed to cook with the marijuana for two to three hours; the longer it can go, the more potent it will be. For those using a crockpot, leaving the butter on for anywhere from six to 12 hours will be just grand. And you may not even need water: In a tiny model, there simply won’t be enough unused surface area to lead to scorching. But for regular-sized slow cookers, the water will be crucial to allowing for an extended cook time. If you don’t have a slow cooker, do your weed-buttering in a covered dish that can hang out in a 200-degree oven for a few hours. And yeah, use water.

For regular smokers, it’s well worth saving your stems, seeds, and shake in a little runoff jar or baggie so that you can turn garbage into gold, so to speak: All of that stuff will infuse butter with plenty of THC, so put it to good use. If you’re not a regular smoker, it’s unlikely that you’ll have enough shake hanging around to avoid having to use your good bud for butter, and that’s okay; it mostly just means that your pot butter will cost you more than my pot butter costs me. But your brain function is probably doing better than mine, so, you know, tradeoffs. But! Are you pals with your dealer, or a grower? Ask if they have shake they’re willing to sell for a song.

Once your butter is cooked, it still will need one last treatment before it’s recipe-ready: You gotta strain out all that debris. A fine mesh strainer or sieve will be just fine for this, but if you have cheesecloth in the house (because you’re a fancy stoner), that’s even better. Set the strainer over a heat-proof container with a lid, or secure the cheesecloth to it using an elastic band. Pour the butter into the container, using a spatula to push as much through as you can. If you used cheesecloth, remove the elastic and give it a good squeeze. Discard the cooked ganja, let the butter cool at room temperature for an hour or so, and then refrigerate for later use.

Happy 4-20, by the way. What a coincidence! Which means, Dear Reader, that it’s time to share your best and most creative recipes using pot butter. Then we’ll all go get hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

Jolie Kerr is the author of the book My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag … And Other Things You Can’t Ask Martha (Plume); she can be found on Twitter, Kinja, and Tumblr.

Illustration by Jim Cooke.

Adequate Man is Deadspin’s new self-improvement blog, dedicated to making you just good enough at everything. Suggestions for future topics are welcome below.

Contact the author at jolie@deadspin.com.

One of today’s Pulitzer winners for local reporting isn’t actually a reporter anymore.

The Daily Breeze’s Rob Kuznia won the prize alongside Rebecca Kimitch for a series on corruption in the Torrance, California school district. Now the former reporter, who had more than 15 years’ experience covering local affairs, is celebrating the career high in his new job... as a publicist.

Apparently, as Kuznia co-reported the award-winning series, he was slowly getting squeezed out of the journalism racket.

Appended to the LA Observed’s coverage of the awards was the following bittersweet update:

We should note that Kuznia left the Breeze and journalism last year and is currently a publicist in the communications department of USC Shoah Foundation. I spoke with him this afternoon and he admitted to a twinge of regret at no longer being a journalist, but he said it was too difficult to make ends meet at the newspaper while renting in the LA area.

The small paper, according to Slate, has around 63,000 subscribers and only seven metro reporters on staff.

It would be nice to think the Pulitzer might help, but it probably won’t.

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

According to the L.A. Times, Blue Bell Creameries has issued a worldwide recall of its products over concerns that they may be contaminated with a dangerous strain of Listeria bacteria.

In March, Blue Bell announced a recall of several products after one them was linked to three listeriosis deaths in Witchita, Kansas. As a result of further testing and the discovery of additional listeriosis cases in Texas, the company now believes all Blue Bell products have the possibility of being contaminated.

“At this point, we cannot say with certainty how Listeria was introduced to our facilities and so we have taken this unprecedented step,” Blue Bell CEO Paul Kruse said in a statement on Monday. “We continue to work with our team of experts to eliminate this problem.”

#BREAKING: Can anyone spot the #BlueBell section? It's already ALL GONE from this Albertsons in Fort Worth. pic.twitter.com/yZvPBMwfHq

— Andrea Lucia (@CBS11Andrea) April 21, 2015

Listeriosis typically afflicts those with weak immune systems (such as young children, immunocompromised persons and the elderly), but once infected, 21 percent of patients die.

According to the company, Blue Bell products are sold in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming as well as several international locations.

[Image via AP Images]

Bet you woke up this morning feeling all smug about being a “person,”with “rights” just like any other Tom, Dick or duly incorporated S Corp. Well too bad, sucker, because monkeys have rights now too.

A Manhattan Supreme Court judge made the ruling—the first of its kind in America—on Monday, holding that two chimpanzees living at a university medical lab qualify as “legal persons” for the purpose of a habeas corpus writ.

Habeas corpus petitions—essentially hearings to determine whether or not an imprisonment is lawful—can only be brought on behalf of persons and not—a critical distinction—on behalf of things. By issuing the order to show cause, the judge essentially reclassified monkeys as persons within the legal definition.

Is it the worst idea, though? Eh. The line of cases so far aren’t trying to set the wild animals free (an issue already plaguing the New York metropolitan area)—just to regulate the care of arguably self-aware species. It’s a moral argument, and not an unpopular one.

Although similar petitions were overturned last year, the new ruling would also potentially open the door to legal protection for other smart-ass animals like elephants, dolphins and whales.

Now the school—Stony Brook University in Long Island—will have to file papers with the court arguing that keeping the monkeys in their medical lab is lawful.

Attorneys from the Non Human Rights Project representing the chimps say they’d like to see them moved to a sanctuary in Florida. Arguments in the case are expected to continue in May.

[h/t Buzzfeed, image via AP]

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

A 13-year-old student was detained by police on Monday for an assault on a Barcelona school that left one dead and four injured, the BBC reports.

According to witnesses, the unnamed minor was armed with a homemade crossbow and a machete when he began his attack on Joan Fuster secondary school, about one hour after classes began. From the L.A. Times:

[The student] walked into a classroom and opened fire on his teacher, who greeted him at the door, and on fellow students, one of whom was the teacher’s daughter, police said. A substitute teacher heard screams and ran to help. He was mortally wounded in the chest.

He had been working at the school for only a week.

Before he was subdued, the student reportedly injured two others, including a classmate who asked him to stop the attack. All four of the wounded are expected to recover.

According to The Local, the student is too young to face criminal charges under Spanish law.

“He will be assessed and be sent to a child detention unit or given psychiatric care,” a police spokesperson told the website.

[Image via AP Images]

Full House, the television show you only watched because there were no cartoons on and only miss because you haven’t seen it in 20 years, is coming to Netflix, sex-haver John Stamos announced tonight on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

This what you wanted, right, internet? I hope you’re happy.

Did you think that Zayn, a person we talk about now, was just going to lie down and die after leaving One Direction? Did you think he was just going to dig a Zayn-sized hole in the dirt; kiss his fiancée, Perrie Edwards, goodbye; jump in the hole; and kill himself right in the hole? Did you think that he was going to hope that a helpful stranger would pass by and fill up the hole with dirt, or maybe someone he hired in advance? Well think again, you lunatic, because maybe he’s going to try acting now.

According to the Mirror, Zayn is already in talks to possibly star in Bend It Like Beckham: The Musical. Ooh, lala! Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha spoke to the Mirror about Zayn’s supposed acting chops:

She says: “We’ve met and spoken. He trained as an actor first then became part of the band. So I think what he’ll be doing is staying true to his heart – and that’s all you can ever do.”

Yes, that is all you can ever do, as Zayn knows. Chadha added, “I don’t have a part in mind for Zayn just yet but hopefully in the future.”

Good luck, as always, to Zayn.

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

YouTube is a medium where mostly interesting people share mostly interesting things like cat fail videos and safe-for-work porn. However, there are certain outlets that give advice on certain automotive topics, namely the popular Scotty Kilmer channel, that you should take with a nearly lethal dosage of salt. Here’s why.

Scotty Kilmer, currently, is a YouTube personality that gives automotive advice, but in a previous life, he worked on cars, wrote books about working on and buying cars, and won an Emmy Award for hosting Car Talk on CBS in the mid ‘90s, all things you could learn by going to his website, also known as The Page That Time Forgot.

It’s important to note that anytime someone calls themselves an unequivocal expert in a field that is constantly changing with near-exponential rates of technological advancements, it’s difficult, if not outright impossible to take them seriously since the rate at which new information and methods are put out is faster than any person, regardless of experience, can realistically digest it. If someone in the ‘80s told you that they had 20 years of experience with computing, would it give them an upper hand on the quickly evolving computing marketplace in the ‘90s and ‘00s, or would it just be something that they’d recount to their drinking buddies in their half-built man-cave while complaining about “fuckin’ kids nowadays?”

I’ll give you an example of this erroneous and fallacy-laden “get off my lawn” mentality in a video entitled “Why Not To Buy A Mercedes,” or the antithesis of pretty much every article I’ve ever written. Let’s delve into a quick analysis, shall we?

First, Kilmer patronizes any potential viewer by telling us, the regular folk, that only fancypants millionaires who can’t be bothered to clean out their ashtrays and need the shiniest new toy every two years can afford a Mercedes because it’s just impossible to keep on the road unless you’re a spitting image of Scrooge McDuck. He then points to a non-descript order from a Mercedes dealer, totaling nearly a thousand dollars for doing what’s essentially an oil and fuel filter change. Here’s the thing - dealers, especially luxury dealers will always be expensive with out-of-warranty repairs because they’re priced for the customers who could afford the cars new, not the second or third owners that bought them at a depreciated cost.

To offset this cost, a great alternative to dealers’ service departments is to hire independent shops to do the work at a fraction of the dealer’s costs, and to use trusted aftermarket or rebuilt OEM parts, a notion he points out himself, obliterating his previous assertion that cars made by the luxury automaker are prohibitively expensive to maintain. It’s absolutely hilarious, at least, to my non-expert eyes, that Kilmer encourages people to give him faulty cars to work on, then makes not one, but two YouTube videos on how their luxury car purchase was such a bad idea because the car is so faulty. Not only that, Kilmer makes the remark that three out of four of his Mercedes customers are so infantile and incompetent that they don’t even know what half of the buttons do. This is truly Emmy Award winning stuff here, people.

He puts the car on a scanner and comes up with a few faults - one for a trunk light, and another for the washer fluid level, asking sarcastically “ Do you really want a car that tells you that there’s a problem with the wiring to the light inside the trunk?”

Why, yes. Yes, I do. As cars get more complicated, they get easier to diagnose with use of module scanners. This means that cars can store important information that can save you money by saving the mechanic the time required in diagnosing the problem and ordering parts that may not work for the issue at hand.

The washer fluid light is another one of Kilmer’s astute observations, reciting what the scanner tells him - that the trouble code should be cleared if no problems are present, claiming that “even the computer knows that it’s giving out squirrely advice!” Oh, the irony. Here’s the reality: t he washer fluid tank occasionally runs dry, and must be refilled. When it’s dry, running the pump without any fluid heats up the pump, as washer fluid is actually used to cool the pump’s electric motor. If it heats up too much, it can seize in the worst case, or blow a fuse in the best case. Either scenario causes a trouble code. If it cools down enough to work again, then the correct course of action is to simply refill the tank and clear the code, exactly what the computer told him to do. This can happen on any other car, the difference being that a Mercedes would be able to diagnose this problem, and you’d essentially be on the hook for figuring out the issue in a less technologically complex car.

It’s not rocket science, and a person that yells at everyone with ferocity that he has 47 years of experience should probably know this. There’s no need to condescendingly pontificate about why everyone doesn’t drive a $300 1994 Toyota Celica, especially when the initial premise is thoroughly negated by stating that in the majority of cases, the fault lies with the owner for neglecting necessary service.

But let’s back up a bit, maybe my assessment was a bit harsh and maybe that video was the outlier. Nope, nope and double nope. The double-speak and do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitude also extends to things like how to properly jack up a car and use jack stands, a subject he did a video on in 2011, pointing out the importance of having a safe jack stands. Fast forward to 2013, and in a video entitled “Fixing Leaking Rusty Brake Lines”, we see this:

The only thing keeping that dangling 3200 lb posterchild of conformity known as a Honda Accord from crushing his Emmy-Award winning skull is a Harbor Freight hydraulic jack made by the lowest bidder in a country that thinks Quality Control is a movie starring Tom Cruise in the late ‘80s. Trust is not something I’d grant to something with such questionable origins. Again, this is perhaps something that an astute observer and presenter with decades worth of work behind him should know and practice regularly. There’s a reason why you don’t see veterans like MotorWeek’s John Davis talking about the importance of putting on seat belts, then riding dirty as soon as the next review starts - it’s because he’s not an insane person and understands the importance of giving advice when perceived as an expert in the community.

In the same video, a video about how to fix automotive brake lines, we see another tidbit of great general advice:

It’s funny that Kilmer would advise someone to use a product on the braking system of their car, that strongly instructs specifically against its use in automotive brake systems. If it wasn’t so morbid, I’d tie it to The Simpsons’ Dr. Nick staring at a burning room, saying to the firefighters, “INflammable means flammable?!” When people bring up this blindingly obvious (and illegal in some states) inconsistency, Kilmer brushes it off as a product of a greedy lawyer conspiracy.

For those wondering, don’t ever use compression fittings that aren’t rated for brake lines, especially on un-flared brake lines. The money you save isn’t worth the surprise you’ll get when you need to stop and you realize that your brake fluid made a break for it three miles ago. Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of hokey advice that permeates through Kilmer’s videos. He advocates for snake oily mechanic-in-a-can head gasket sealers that don’t do much more than gum up your coolant passages to the point where it’ll be nearly impossible to take it out of the engine’s inner coolant passages after it hardens, and quick fix sealers for automatic transmissions and engine crankcase oil seals.

He also comments on how rich people are the cheapest people alive:

I’ll give you, the valued reader, a minute to let that sink in. Scotty Kilmer, a person that is actively making money by telling you to use cheap and completely unsafe parts on your car as a matter of expert advice, is lambasting someone else for not wanting to pay full price for something. Pot and kettle, meet thy new bedfellow.

We contacted Scotty for comment on these questionable recommendations, but are yet to hear back.

Many of the dozens of videos on Kilmer’s automotive advice channel are just the sort of thing that could fly for a person that has no money and even less skill, but it should never be taken as general advice from a self-proclaimed expert that has your best interest at heart. At best, it presents a temporary solution and one hell of a permanent problem.

If you’d like to follow the advice of someone who actually does know what he’s doing, with in-depth analyses and results for his claims, I’d suggest you to follow Eric The Car Guy. He’s employed as a automotive technician and his videos, although missing Kilmer’s trademark C-student editing, are incredibly informative and get to the point without treating you like a idiot that can barely get dressed in the morning, much less turn a wrench the right way. I highly recommend his channel, but as always, take my advice with a grain of salt and do your own research. After all, I’m no expert, but I wouldn’t mind an Emmy.

Tavarish is the founder of APiDA Online and writes about buying and selling cool cars on the internet. He owns the world’s cheapest Mercedes S-Class, a graffiti-bombed Lexus, and he’s the only Jalopnik author that has never driven a Miata. He also has a real name that he didn’t feel was journalist-y enough so he used a pen name and this was the best he could do.

You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He won’t mind.

I’m on vacation this week. Here’s a 2006 photo of Kristin Cavallari on the beach in Malibu with then-boyfriend Brody Jenner.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photos via Getty and Splash News]

In an incredible interview with Don Lemon in this month’s GQ, writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner opens by letting the CNN anchor humiliate himself by insisting that sorbet is pronounced “sor-BET.” Unfortunately, that is not how that word is pronounced.

The scene: Brodesser-Akner and Lemon dine at the restaurant in the MoMA. They decide on dessert—“something light,” because Don Lemon is on TV. They settle on sorbet, pronounced “sor-BAY.” But then something happens:

He leans in, big warm smile, not wanting to correct me, but needing to: “Sorbette,” he says, like a news anchor. “It’s pronounced sorbette.”

“Sorbette,” I repeat, shaky. I smile, not quite understanding the joke.

“Sorbette,” he says with the confidence of a man who informs hundreds of thousands of Americans each night about what is happening across this land as well as many others. “It’s pronounced sorbette.” Sorbette! Could he be right? I’ve been saying it like a French word for years, like a complete asshole. Have I, a native English speaker, a graduate of a four-year college, a frequent eater of frozen desserts, been mispronouncing it all this time?

[...]

And yet, and yet: When Don Lemon says this to me, I am sure that he is sure of it. And who can we turn to if not our news anchors?

But now here comes the waiter, and he asks if we’ve decided, and Don Lemon asks for the sorbette, and the waiter looks at Lemon like, Are you joking? I give the waiter the silent, wide-eyed micro head shake—No, he’s serious, proceed with caution—but the waiter has guts that I don’t, and so he says, “It’s sor-bay, sir.”

It’s sor-bay, sir

Shocking that a man who has a documented habit of indelicately and moronically articulating himself would make a mistake like this!

True fact: After this photo shoot, Don Lemon asked GQ's photographer if he did nudes. http://t.co/jZZcZMmzhy pic.twitter.com/zi7AL9MqGC

— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) April 21, 2015

[Image via Getty]

We already know that your weather app sucks, but the websites you use probably aren’t much better. One of the most common questions people ask about the weather is “what website/app should I use?” Here’s a list of great resources that will give you all the weather information you want, and more.

Weather Forecasts

When it comes to weather forecasts, outlets have to strike a delicate balance between usability and accuracy. Forecast quality is useless if the organization’s website is a link-laden Rube Goldberg machine, and the most beautifully designed forecasts you could hope for are just as useless if they’re nowhere near accurate.

The best website to use for weather forecasts is the National Weather Service. The government agency creates solid forecasts with a website they’re working to improve every day—you’re getting quality without the added fluff or obtrusive advertisements or unrelated articles that you find on other websites. The two best features of the National Weather Service’s website are the Enhanced Data Display (EDD) and the NWS Widget they’re working to make public.

I’ve used the Enhanced Data Display heavily here on The Vane, showing everything from forecast low temperatures to forecast snowfall totals during last winter’s back-to-back-to-back blizzards. It’s a highly interactive and customizable tool that allows you to display, analyze, and understand weather forecasts issued by NWS agencies to help you plan your life around nature’s temper tantrums.

The EDD gets better with every update, constantly adding more useful features—it even allows you to find a detailed weather forecast for the entire length of a road trip. Shown in the screenshot above is a the rainfall forecast for the next seven days..

If you’re looking for a quick look at your local forecast without the need to play with different map layers, the new NWS Widget is great for all devices, but be aware that it’s still in the “experimental” phase, and could stop working or go offline without any warning. It’s basically the same data you would see if you were to go to your city’s local forecast page on weather.gov, but organized in a cleaner format that gives you everything you need to know all in one spot.

The only downside to the National Weather Service’s website is their point forecast page, which you get when you click on your location on the static map on the main weather dot gov website.

Here’s what you first see when you arrive on a local forecast page:

They recently overhauled it to resemble what you’d see on a mobile device, which means it sucks on desktop. It looks like someone infused it with bubbles and ordered all the boxes to stay a court-mandated 25 feet from each other at all times. Too much space is hell in website design, which is what makes the NWS Widget even more useful.

Current Weather Observations

If you’re more interested in what’s going on right now instead of what’s going to happen in a day or two, the best site (and app!) you can use is provided by Weather Underground (commonly shortened to Wunderground). Most weather sites and apps give you weather observations from the nearest major airport, which could be 30 or 40 miles away in some cases. The weather is local, and there can be a huge difference in weather over short distances.

Over the past couple of decades, Weather Underground has amassed a network of tens of thousands of weather stations around the world that give weather on a local level much better than taking a peek at the airport a few counties over. These weather stations are run by average people, so you have to be wary of some of the observations (especially precipitation and wind) because of the location of the station. If the station is too close to paved surfaces, buildings, trees, or other obstructions, some of the data might be a little off. Most of the time, though, it’s pretty close to reality.

The organization’s mobile apps are just as good as the website— they have three apps: one that lets you look at individual weather stations and forecasts, one that gives you access to the Wundermap that’s available on the desktop site, and another app called “Storm” which gives you a juiced-up weather radar with all sorts of layers on top of it. We’ll get to that in the next section.

Weather Underground is now owned by The Weather Company, the parent company to The Weather Channel, so the forecasts you find on their website is pretty close to what you’d get from The Weather Channel or weather dot com. If you’re more loyal to TWC than the NWS, getting your weather forecasts from Weather Underground will give you the same data without the screaming headlines and ridiculous slideshows surrounding it.

Radar Images

We’ve previously looked at the best programs to use for weather radar images, but few of them are free. If you’re looking for quality radar images that you use without having to squint at the underlying map—or deal with the comical level of smoothing that makes it look like someone drew it with three markers—here are some of your best options.

Desktop: Weather Underground

One of the best features on Weather Underground’s website is their radar page, which gives you detailed radar data at almost the same level as many of the payware or subscription sites. You can click on individual radar sites to analyze data down to your county’s level. It also allows you to see the algorithm-generated hail and mesocyclone (broad rotation) icons placed over storms, along with arrows showing their movement and speed. These hail/rotation icons aren’t always accurate, but they can give you a good idea of what a storm is doing without having to buy a $250 radar program and learn to analyze data yourself.

Desktop: NWS Enhanced Data Display

The NWS EDD also shows you pretty good radar data, almost on the same level as what you’d find at Weather Underground. The benefit here is that you can overlay numerous other variables to help you understand the environment in which the storms formed.

App: Storm by Wunderground

Wunderground’s new Storm app is pretty good. The radar imagery is smoothed, but still allows you to see the most intense parts of the storm. The best part of the Storm app is that A) it’s free and B) you can overlay helpful layers over the radar data. You can show temperatures, winds, upper-level data, surface observations, satellite images, and even storm tracks, giving you the ability to get a better idea of what’s going beyond the storms. Storm is only available on Apple products right now, because we Android users are always the last to get the good stuff.

App: RadarScope ($9.99)

RadarScope is the best radar app available for both Apple and Android smartphones and tablets. It costs $9.99 ($29.99 for the desktop version on Macs), but it’s worth every single penny. The app allows you to use “super-resolution” Level II radar data to analyze precipitation, winds, echo tops (the top of the storm), and dual polarization data that tells you the size and shape of the objects the radar detects.

Desktop Programs: GRLevel3/GR2Analyst

Almost all of the radar images I post on The Vane are from GR2Analyst, which is part of a suite of radar programs available from Gibson Ridge. I went into these programs (and their competitors) in great detail in a post a couple of months ago, but the line of Gibson Ridge products are the top-of-the-line when it comes to using and analyzing radar data.

GR2Analyst allows you to use super-resolution radar data, create three-dimensional radar images (like the one above), and take cross-sections of storms, which is an incredible tool to study and forecast any type of weather event, but especially high-intensity severe thunderstorms. Its less-powerful (but still useful) companion GRLevel3 has lower-resolution data but a couple of features GR2A doesn’t have, such as radar estimated rainfall totals, and a much faster load/response time.

Here’s the downside: GR2Analyst costs a $250 one-time fee, while GRLevel3 costs a $79.95 one-time fee. You can integrate even more data into these programs by purchasing subscriptions from a great weather data company called AllisonHouse.

Satellite Imagery

Looking at satellite imagery has a wide range of uses, from checking to see when the clouds will clear out to spying on a powerful hurricane halfway around the world. Also, as I pointed out during a short-lived series on The Vane, it’s just cool to look at fresh pictures of our incredible Earth taken from space.

The best site for downloading satellite imagery in/around the United States is from NASA, which provides up-to-date images from the GOES satellites parked over the Western Hemisphere. The most useful tool is provided by the agency’s Earth Science Office, which allows you to zoom-in on different parts of our half of the world and look at visible, infrared, and water vapor imagery.

You can also click over to the GOES Project Science page to look at processed visible/infrared satellite imagery superimposed over an awesome colorized background. These images are updated every half-hour or so.

Historical Weather Information

Searching for current and future weather information is always useful, but what if you want to check to see what happened in the past? It’s hard as hell to find data about past weather events on the internet if you don’t know where to look. There’s climate data on the National Weather Service’s website, but it’s vague and only provides you with information valid for the past month or so.

The best website to use for climate information is a nifty tool called xmACIS2. There’s a bit of a learning curve to use the tool, but it’s extremely useful if you want to look up historical data like past temperatures and precipitation. It would be impossible to list all of xmACIS2’s features in a post like this, so here’s an example to give you an idea of how to use this excellent tool.

Say you wanted to find how much snow fell near Washington D.C. in February 2003. You would go to the “single-station” dropdown menu and select “daily data for a month.” You would enter 2003-02 in the date box, then go down and enter Washington Dulles’ code in the ID box. Once you click the “go” button, it’ll bring up all of the data for that month, including snowfall data on the right side of this page. Snowfall is the second-to-last column on the right.

You can find just about anything from just about any airport and cooperative reporting station around the United States using xmACIS2. The best part is that all of this data is easily copied into Microsoft Excel or your favorite spreadsheet program, so you can tweak and analyze all the data you want. Above is an example of data I retrieved from xmACIS2 and arranged to show the stark difference between warm weather in the west and cold temperatures in the east this past winter.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of great weather resources, but it’s a great start to help you build a solid list of bookmarks and apps to help you stay on top of whatever nature can throw at you.

What are some of your favorite places to get weather information? Tell us in the comments.

[All screenshots are via their respective websites/programs. Top image of lightning via gerlos on Flickr.]

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

Have an opinion about Coachella* or don’t, I don’t care. But let’s all agree that one cool thing about Coachella is a very specific, fleeting bit of internet that I like to call “Celebrity mansion rentals in Palm Springs during Coachella,” in which famous people post photos to Instagram of whatever estates they’re staying in while at the festival. This year, no one’s mansion rental mattered more than Rihanna’s incredible pool.

Serious question: has a pool ever looked better? I’m not sure! So many rich people pools try and do that thing where they surround the pool with big fake rocks for a “natural” look. In reality, what they end up with are pools that look like zoo enclosures. An alligator might be too dumb to notice how ugly his fake rock habitat is, but we should strive to be better than alligators.

This pool, though, really pulls it off, and it’s less about the rocks—which still look fake as hell—and more about the color of the water, which is this perfect clear-blue, not that false teal color of most pools. This pool really looks like a natural body of water you might stumble upon if you were Ryan McGinley, which I’m not, so I haven’t, which is particularly why I love this pool.

Rihanna’s best friend Melissa Forde, who is in the photo above, spent much of this past weekend posting shots of her and Rihanna burning through blunts by this great pool, and I dunno, could life get better?

Some people say that being famous sucks, but I’m not so sure.

Previously in Gawker Review of Pools: Justin Bieber, Jake Gyllenhaal, Iggy Azalea, Beyoncé/Jay Z, Sheryl Crow, Alex Rodriguez

[top image via Melissa Forde]

California legislators are considering a bill that would prohibit public schools from having the racial slur “Redskins” as the name of their school mascot. What next—the acceptance of Galileo’s heresies? It boggles the mind.

Sunday evening, The New Republic published its latest cover story, “The Ghost of Cornel West.” Written by Black Public Intellectual™ Michael Eric Dyson, the 5,000-word essay thoroughly castigates Cornel West, the well-known Princeton professor and social critic who believes himself to be a prophet.

Dyson, who is also a prominent professor with a penchant for performative affectations, was once a disciple of West’s teachings. Dyson will also be the first to tell you that he has love for West; early on he refers to him as “the most exciting black American scholar ever.” He later writes:

West and I became dear friends. I admired his penetrating intellect and he nurtured my deepening commitment to a life of the mind. West wrote a letter of recommendation on my behalf when I applied to graduate school in 1984 and helped me to land at his alma mater Princeton, where he had been the first black student ever to earn a doctorate in philosophy, and where I became the second black student to earn a doctorate in religion.

But that was a long time ago, and despite both men becoming star intellectuals, it appears to be time for Dyson to take his once mentor and friend to task. Publicly. In The New Republic. (It’s like when a young James Baldwin, not yet the “conscience of America” and star author he would later transform into, attempted to take down Richard Wright—the man he once called “the greatest black writer in the world”—in his review of Native Son, Wright’s most famous novel.)

If you are wondering why such an essay—though, really, “essay” is too nice; this is an attempt to fully ether West’s legacy—appears in the pages of the New New Republic, it is because The 100-Year-Old Magazine of Things White People Think is doing what it has done many times throughout its storied past: treating blackness as a thing to be picked apart. Only this time, they had another black man do the bidding.

Here is Ta-Nehisi Coates, in December, on the magazine’s complicated history with race coverage:

For most of its modern history, TNR has been an entirely white publication, which published stories confirming white people’s worst instincts. During the culture wars of the ‘80s and ‘90s, TNR regarded black people with an attitude ranging from removed disregard to blatant bigotry.

TNR did not come to racism out of evil. Very few people ever do. Many of the white people working for the magazine were very young and very smart. This is always a dangerous combination. It must have been that much more dangerous given that their boss was a racist. (Though I am told he had many black friends and protégés.) Peretz was not always a regular presence in the office. This allowed TNR’s saner staff to regard him as the crazy uncle who says racist shit at Thanksgiving. But Peretz was not a crazy uncle—he was the wealthy benefactor of an influential magazine that published ideas that damaged black people.

And when I think of TNR’s history, when I flip through Insurrections, when I examine the magazine’s archives, I am not so much angry as I am sad. There really was so much fine writing in its pages. But all my life I have had to take lessons from people who, in some profound way, cannot see me. TNR billed itself as the magazine for iconoclasts. But its iconoclasm ended exactly where everyone else’s does—at 110th Street. Worse, TNR encouraged incuriosity about what lay beyond the barrier. It told its readers that my world was welfare cheats, affirmative-action babies, and Jesse Jackson. And that white people—or any people—would be urged to such ignorance by their Harvard-bred intellectual leadership is deeply sad. The in-flight magazine of Air Force One should have been better. Perhaps it still can be.

But wait! TNR is actually aware of its complicated legacy. In January, the magazine attempted to have an “honest reckoning” with its blighted past before moving forward under new, more colorful leadership. “Bigotries can have complex, ongoing ramifications,” Jeet Heer wrote. “How do we reconcile the magazine’s liberalism, the ideology that animated the Civil Rights revolution, with the fact that many black readers have long seen—and still see—the magazine as inimical and at times outright hostile to their concerns? How could a magazine that published so much excellent on-the-ground reporting on the unforgivable sins visited upon black America by white America—lynchings, legal frame-ups, political disenfranchisement, and more—also give credence to toxic and damaging racial theorizing?”

And yet, The New Republic’s damning critique of West is a return to the kind of publishing the magazine was notorious for before Gabriel Snyder and his team took over late last year. This is not to say West is above scrutiny—after all, he is a public figure who has called out other public figures, including President Obama and Dyson—but there’s something about this particular essay appearing in this particular magazine that feels slimy. Also, why now? Many of the incidents Dyson recalls are years old. At one point yesterday, the hashtag #LoveAndHipHopAcademia floated across my Twitter timeline, many believing the tone of Dyson’s piece to be combative when it need not be.

Here are some things Dyson said of West:

West’s attacks on me were a bleak forfeiture of 30 years of friendship; it was the repudiation of fond collegiality and intellectual companionship, of political camaraderie and joined social struggle. I was a mentee and, according to West, who was kind enough to write a blurb for one of my books, “a rare kind of genius with organic links to our beloved street brothers and sisters.” But I had somehow undergone a transformation in West’s mind: I was an Obama stooge who had forsaken the poor. In November 2012, West, friend and mentor, one of the three men whose name is on my Princeton doctoral dissertation, let me have it in the national media.

In his callous disregard for plural visions of truth, West, like the prophet Elijah, retreats into a deluded and self-important belief in his singular and exclusive rightness. But God reminded Elijah that his prophetic exclamations were wrong. He instructed him to rest and recognize that he wasn’t the only one left who believed in God or bore witness to the truth. But these words mean nothing to West, who, after all, isn’t a prophet. He cannot retreat, and he relentlessly declares his humility to shield himself from the prophet’s duty of pitiless self-inventory.

If West was once Tyson in his glory, he is Tyson, too, in his infamy. Once great, once dominant, once feared, he is now a faint echo of himself.

This is personal for Dyson. And he’s airing his private beef with West in a national magazine, because apparently that is something men with PhDs do in 2015. The whole thing feels petty and malicious, like a scripted-quarrel between characters on VH1’s Love & Hip-Hop. With his sweeping critique, Dyson has done the very thing he accused West of doing: calling a friend out in public. Dyson, by his own estimation, has stooped to West’s level.

Gawker Contributing Editor Kiese Laymon, in a post on Facebook, expressed a similar sentiment regarding Dyson’s crusade:

Y’all, we are losing. There’s so much to say about this essay, and way more to say about the academic folk who directly and indirectly nurtured a lot of us into parts of our work. But sometimes you gotta just call it, and this n-word is trippin. The existence of this essay, and much of the words, are words folks have pinged around for a while, but somehow this essay feels like the end of one of the most unloving public black relationships I’ve ever read. Nah, Dr. Dyson, not like this. You do this in the New Republic? This? There? Why? Im not sure what “being better” and “doing the work” mean for the young academics and artists who learned from this generation of folks, but let’s please not mimic the worst of our teachers. Let’s please commit to actually working and reckoning and expressing hurt and lingering in real regret when we can.

For a magazine that is trying so hard to transcend the “crackpot racial lore” of days past and address “readers who look like the world,” it certainly could do without the very public shaming of one of Black America’s most brilliant minds, however past his prime you think he might be.

Cornel West didn’t need Michael Eric Dyson to rip his legacy to shreds in The New Republic. West was already doing a fine job of that on his own.

Gothamist reports on the harrowing tale of a woman who got in an Uber and took the “car ride from Hell” to get from Williamsburg to Midtown East, after which she had to dispute a $12,000 bill for her trouble. Sure, surge pricing was in effect, but she didn’t know it was going to be platinum surge pricing.

Jaime Hessel told Gothamist her trouble started when her Uber driver “just sat there for a little bit. Maybe for five minutes or so,” at the beginning of the ride. His behavior allegedly grew more suspect as her ride continued: he repeatedly missed a turn, then ended up reversing down the BQE onramp, cutting across lanes in the process.

Instead of bailing, she let him take her all the way to Manhattan—she had a charity bar crawl to get to, and the sunk cost fallacy exists—but contacted Uber to complain about how long her ride took and how scary it was.

The company agreed the route for her 35-minute ride was “inefficient”—which is a standard response, even in much scarier situations than this—and agreed to refund her $15 of her $56.40 bill.

Hessel agreed, but the credit card on her Uber account had expired between her March 28 ride and the time the refund was supposed to be issued. That’s when the billing got really weird, somehow turned from a $15 refund to a $16,000 charge.

Here’s how she explained the situation to Gothamist today:

I received two e-mails yesterday. One about the status of my credit saying it should be there, it’s been processed. And then a second e-mail saying they are trying to charge me $16,000, but then $4,000 had already been taken care of, so I owed them $12,000. I couldn’t even tell you what this was about, because I checked my credit cards and there was no charge. I e-mailed them numerous times and they kept giving me the runaround. I was furious. I mean, you can’t give me an explanation?”

In a series of frantic emails she provided to the site, she was able to convince Uber there’d been a mistake—but she worries the enormous charge would have cleared if her card hadn’t expired.

She never gave them a new card number–meaning she’d be out $15, but oh well—and she says she probably won’t use Uber again.

“I don’t know if I’ll use it again,” she told DNAInfo. “Maybe I’ll do it if it’ll be somebody else’s credit card.”

The company has since informed Gothamist that they’re refunding the entire cost of her ride, which sounds like the least they can do under the circumstances.

[Photos: Jaime Hessel/Imgur]

With the Supreme Court gearing up to hear arguments over what will be an historic decision on same-sex marriage later this month, a group of 100 conservative “scholars” filed a last-ditch attempt to convince the Court to put a stop to all this sin once and for all. Their argument, in short: legalizing same-sex marriage would directly lead to 900,000 more abortions in 30 years.

The logic—to use the term loosely—goes as follows: Legalizing same-sex marriage “undermines” traditional marriage. If traditional marriage loses its value, men and women are going to have less incentive to get married in the first place. Once that happens, similarly traditional values (like monogamy and waiting until marriage to have children) “will likewise crumble.” And everyone knows how much unmarried women love their abortions.

Except, try as they might, correlation will still never prove causality. Even Gene Schaerr, the former clerk of Justice Antonin Scalia who officially filed the brief, admitted to the Washington Post that “it is still too new to do a rigorous causation analysis using statistical methods.” And yet! Schaerr and co. trudge forth.

From the Post:

For instance, [Schaerr and his colleagues] say that declining marriage rates in a handful of states that have legalized same-sex marriage — Vermont, Massachusetts, Iowa — are proof of the harmful effects of gay marriage. That evidence seems to ignore the fact that marriage rates have declined in places like Texas and Utah as well, or that the overall U.S. marriage rate has been on the wane for decades

This false causality alone would be one thing, but the assertion that this would all result in the abortions of “nearly 900,000 more children of the next generation” is based on absurd and even (willfully?) incorrect assumptions. The brief argues that it “conservatively [assumes] that half of the decline in marriages over the next generation would come from women who permanently never marry as opposed to delaying marriage.” A statistic it cites as coming from this Pew study. Except that the study actually claims that only 25% (not half) of child-bearing-age adults will have never married by 2030—which is about as far as it’s comfortable going.

And that fake number continues to be extrapolated until Schaerr finally lands on his scandalous 900,000, entirely made-up abortions.

Image via AP.

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

Freewheeling rebels with nothing to lose, de Blasio and his safety cronies are coming for you. If the one thing keeping you in New York is the knowledge that riding shotgun in NYC’s taxis means the cool breeze blowing behind your neck and back, the life-affirming push of your hand against the dashboard during a stop made too short, and best of all, a chance to feel fear again, then you’re not gonna like the mayor’s latest: De Blasio is trying to make it illegal to ride in the front passenger seat of an NYC taxi without a seatbelt.

The NY Daily News has the report:

State law exempts passengers in the front seat, and children younger than 16, from mandatory seat belt use when traveling in a taxi, livery car or other for-hire vehicle. The new legislation would close that little-known loophole, officials said.

“Seat belts save lives and ... this is a common sense approach to expanding their use,” Taxi and Limousine Commission chairwoman Meera Joshi said. “We’ve had a lot of success using high-tech to solve customer-service and safety challenges, but sometimes, going ‘back to the future’ to a lower-tech solution like seat belts is the answer you need.”

De Blasio’s plan—to make it illegal to be seatbelt-free in the front passenger seat, or anywhere in the cab if you are under 16—is part of his Vision Zero program in a push to reduce traffic-related deaths. If cabbies are stopped with unbuckled passengers, the drivers would not be ticketed, but responsible parties would be. A fine could be from $25 to $100, mayoral spokesman Wiley Norvell told NY Daily News, adding that the city is drafting legislation to introduce to the state legislature in Albany.

For now? Enjoy your last moments of recklessness and think of de Blasio while you do it.

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

A million-dollar full-ride scholarship endowment to an Ivy League school is a good deed. But it doesn’t just earn you karma—it nets you fawning emails from the school’s development officials, customized campus tours for your kids, and private meetings with the school’s president, leaked Sony emails show.

The dump of tens of thousands of emails from Sony Pictures’ upper ranks, now conveniently indexed on WikiLeaks, lays bare the inner workings of one of the world’s most powerful corporate properties. But it also shows how the rich, powerful, and connected navigate the world: With rolodexes and billfolds of equal thickness.

Newly surfaced emails from Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton provide a schematic for how millions of dollars in Adam Sandler grosses can yield immensely preferential treatment for your children, not only providing access to a college admissions process that’s out of reach for virtually all other Americans, but giving them better opportunities both in college and in internships and job opportunities afterward.

An email from Lynton’s sister, noticed by the London Review of Books, is an admirably succinct summary of elite strategy:

He writes to his sister: ‘David… called me. he is obsessed with getting his eldest in Harvard next year.’ She replies: ‘If David wants to get his daughter in he should obviously start giving money.’ Obviously.

It’s apparent to everyone that munificent donors have a leg up in the admissions process. But it’s rare to see the actual behind-the-scenes workings of the elite and connected. The emails below give a sense of how much more smoothly the gears of power move when you’ve got a superrich and well-connected elite cranking the wheel—and make it even more clear that how you got into college isn’t how Hollywood aristocracy does it.

In 2013, Maisie Lynton was torn between applying to Harvard (her father’s alma mater) and Brown—a dilemma that surely most can relate to. In September of 2013, Lynton contacted Brown about establishing a scholarship for a full-need student.

Ronald Margolin, Vice President, International Advancement and Senior Advisor for Leadership Philanthropy at Brown, emailed back quickly:

On Sep 26, 2013, at 8:56 AM, Margolin, Ronald wrote:

Dear Michael,

I was pleased to receive your phone call and to learn that you are still interested in establishing a scholarship for a full-need student in memory of your friend Nathaniel Chapman ‘79. This would be an enduring memorial to him and to your friendship.

We reviewed payment plans that would make this scholarship a reality both in the short term and permanently. I attach the four-year pledge schedule I had sent with my April 6, 2012 letter—and we discussed a five-year plan yesterday. Either would work fine. I have also included a Pledge Form, “Making Gifts to Brown” and a brochure on Financial Aid at Brown. Please let me know if you desire any additional information or if you wish to discuss any of this.

I look forward to learning your and your wife’s decision.

With appreciation for your continuing interest,

Sincerely,

Ron

(At around the same time, Lynton was finalizing a gift of rare photographs to Harvard’s Fogg Museum worth several hundred thousand dollars—a hedged bet, maybe.)

By Februrary, Lynton had committed to a million dollar donation to Brown, a school he did not attend.

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 1:11 AM, Lynton, Michael <Michael_Lynton@spe.sony.com> wrote:

Dear Ron,

Sorry to be so late in responding. It has been very busy around here and I finally had the chance to sit down with my wife and we have decided to go forward with the scholarship at the $1mm level. A four-year pledge schedule works for us. I would love to talk to you about whether we can name the scholarship after Nathaniel and how I can give his children access to the scholarship should they be admitted to Brown. I look forward to speaking soon.

Best,

Michael

The fund would be named in the memory of Nathaniel Sheldon, a friend of Lynton’s who “was recruited by the CIA in 1980 to fight the Soviets,” as he explained in an email to Tom Rothman, Chairman of TriStar Productions, a Brown alum, and, crucially, a member of the university’s board of trustees.

A month later, Lynton received a personal message from Carol Beliveau, the International Program Coordinator at the Office for International Advancement, offering a meeting with the school’s president upon his visit to the campus with Maisie (whose name—poor Carol!—is spelled wrong throughout). Needless to say, a visit with the college president is is not usually a component of high school college tour.

Fwd: April 1 campus visit

Dear Mr. Lynton,

Alison Ressler and Ron Margolin have informed me that you plan to visit Brown with Maise on Tuesday, April 1. I would be pleased to assist with arranging the visit.

When your travel plans are set, could you advise what time you plan to arrive on campus and the time you must depart in order to frame the visit and to maximize the time. If you are staying in an area hotel, let me know so that I can arrange for an informational packet to be left at the Concierge’s Desk for arrival which will include the schedule and highlighted campus map.

For our records, it would be helpful to have Maise complete the attached Student Interest form and remit either faxed (401-863-3320) or scanned, along with a copy of her school’s transcript. The schedule will be set according to Maise’s specific academic interests. I understand that she has keen interest in computer science and chemistry (organic or inorganic?). Is an Admission campus tour and Information Session of interest?

While Maise is in class with students, Ron looks forward to meeting you at 11:00 am for conversation and will accompany you for introduction to meet with President Paxson at 11:30 am meeting.

Once all is confirmed, I will revert back with a final schedule.

Regards,

Carol Beliveau P’96
Int’l Program Coordinator
Office for International Advancement
Brown University

That fall, another officer from the giving program (“Office for International Advancement”) contacted Lynton, offering his daughter “anything...from our supplemental college counseling service to creating a customized campus tour.”

Dear Michael,

I hope that you have had a pleasant summer. I wanted to circle back on two fronts. Now that college admissions season is upon us in earnest, I am not sure if Brown is still among Maisie’s top contenders. If it is please let me know if I can do anything in that regard, from our supplemental college counseling service to creating a customized campus tour. I know how fickle students are and how stressful this process can be, so please let me know if I can do anything to help in that regard. Wishing you both the best as we head into admissions season in earnest.Also, I am coming back down to LA on September 22nd and potentially the morning of Sept 23rd. I was wondering if you had time for me to stop by as I am really thinking of ways to connect Brown alumni in the greater LA area with each other and back to Brown. There are a few ideas on which I think your advice could be really helpful, so I am hoping if you are around I could stop by for a quick hello. If you are amenable, perhaps David can suggest when you might be available.Hope to cross paths again sometime soon.

Kind regards,Michelle
Michelle Wachs ‘86, P’18
Director, West Coast Program
Division of Advancement

Lynton responded to say that he was “trying to stay out of it.” Tom Rothman forwarded Lynton an email from President Paxson saying “we will certainly look at [Lynton’s daughter’s] application very closely.” She was later accepted.

Rothman also forwarded this letter from Paxson, provided to him as a member of the board of trustees of the Brown Corporation, the school’s governing body:

From:

Office of President Christina Paxson <president@brown.edu>

Date: September 11, 2014 at 12:35:13 PM EDTTo: Office of President Christina Paxson <president@brown.edu>Cc: Vicki Colvin <vicki_colvin@brown.edu>, “Miller, James” <James_S_Miller@brown.edu>, Russell Carey <Russell_Carey@brown.edu>

Subject: Letter to the Brown Corporation from President Paxson​​

Dear Current and Emeriti Members of the Brown Corporation,

[...]

If you learn of an applicant who you think will be an outstanding asset to the Brown community, please let us know as early in the admission cycle as possible. Your letter or email should provide detailed information about the student and his or her background. It is most helpful if you reserve your recommendations for applicants about whom you feel the most strongly. Also, please tell us if you learn of a prospective applicant who may need “special handling” for campus visits or communications (e.g. a student with a parent who is a prominent public figure, or whose family has deep connections to Brown.)

I would like all letters or emails to be sent to Jim Miller in the Office of Admission and copied to Russell Carey in the Corporation office. Russell’s office will play a coordinating role, making sure that information gets to the right places within the university. I will personally ensure that the students you recommend get close and careful attention.

The memo included an interesting note on donations:

Finally, although your role as a representative of Brown means you learn about spectacular candidates, it may also place you in a number of awkward situations. One that requires special attention is when a family mentions a gift to Brown in the context of their child’s admission. Even the appearance of linking gifts to admissions poses a serious risk to Brown’s reputation. It is important to make it clear that we do not discuss gifts with families if their child is in the applicant pool or intends to apply in the upcoming admission cycle.

Rothman attached a note of his own regarding Lynton’s daughter: “Thought you’d find this interesting in light of the history I told you about. But the plan will still be as I said.” Maisie Lynton was soon after accepted into the Brown class of 2019.

Of course, the network of power and privilege that eases access to the Ivy League isn’t severed at matriculation—it supports the scions of the superrich throughout. Further emails from the Sony hack show the Lynton nepotism machine gearing up for his elder daughter, Eloise, an undergraduate at Harvard who found herself unable to get into a very popular class with Dr. Jerome Groopman, a New Yorker writer and professor of biology.

In a January 2014 email to journalist Jonathan Alter—who just happens to be Lynton’s brother in law—he wrote:

Huge thanks for calling [Groopman]. Should I drop him a relaxed email after you speak with him to say how keen eloise is on taking the class?”

Alter let him know he was taking care of it.

Re: groopman

Just talked to Jerry. He said she has to rank it number one to get in and I told him that she has. That would still leave him with twice as many people as he has room for but he knows Eloise has a personal reason for wanting to be in the class and it sure sounds like she’ll get in. He said you should not call him.

It doesn’t get any more difficult once you get out of school. Luckily for Eloise, her dad also had her back when she needed an internship, as shown in this chain between Lynton, T Magazine editor Deborah Needleman, and her husband, Slate Group chief Jacob Weisman:

On Oct 8, 2014, at 11:09 AM, Deborah Needleman wrote:

Send her my way!! Xx

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 8, 2014, at 11:05 AM, “Weisberg, Jacob” wrote:

Michael, I talked to Deborah and she¹d love to help if she can. The trick might be coming up with some kind of project that wouldn’t run afoul of employment rules. And for that, it might help her to have a little more idea about what Eloise is most interested in. Or perhaps Eloise can come see her. Hoping something works out.

Jacob

Where can’t the connections of the superrich get you access? A similar attempt on Lynton’s behalf to place her at BuzzFeed was rebuffed despite an in with Executive Chairman Ken Lerer, whom Eloise fondly addressed in emails as Kenny.

On Apr 30, 2014, at 9:18 PM, Lynton, Michael wrote:

welcome to my life....

On Apr 30, 2014, at 6:16 PM, Kenneth Lerer wrote:

Weird that’s not what they told me. They are so rude to me. I’ll find out

On Apr 30, 2014, at 7:38 PM, “Lynton, Michael” <Michael_Lynton@spe.sony.com> wrote:

Eloise talked to them today. They said they didn’t really have a job for her. Totally cool. I am pretty sure she found something she likes! Hope to see you out here soon! M

In this day and age it’s easier to get your children into the Ivy League than BuzzFeed.

Illustration by Jim Cooke

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

The greatest whiskey heist of the past 25 years—or at least the greatest whiskey heist of the past 25 years I am thinking of right now—may have been solved: On Tuesday, a Franklin County, Kentucky, grand jury indicted nine people in connection with the theft of at least $100,000 worth of bourbon, including 65 cases of the rare and highly valued Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve.

The criminal syndicate was allegedly lead by Gilbert Thomas Curtsinger. The 45-year-old Curtsinger, along with his father, mother-in-law, and seven others, reportedly nabbed at least 15 barrels of whiskey—including Wild Turkey, Eagle Rare, and Buffalo Trace—in addition to the missing cases of Pappy Van Winkle, which, on their own, are valued at more than $30,000; all together, authorities said the stolen whiskey was worth more than $100,000.

Melton: People paid $1200-$1500 per barrel of bourbon. #pappy pic.twitter.com/ETnARUg8Ce

— Sean Moody (@SeanMoodyWKYT) April 21, 2015

Sheriff Pat Melton told reporters at a press conference today that three of the defendants—two of whom, including Curtsinger, worked at the Buffalo Trace distillery and one of whom worked at Wild Turkey—stole the barrels and cases of Pappy over a period of about seven years.

“To say that 195 bottles walked out the door...that didn’t happen,” Melton said, according to WKYT.

The case, Melton said, began as an investigation into an illegal steroid ring until evidence from the Attorney General’s cyber-crime unit and tips from the community linked the suspects to bourbon theft.

“How many people do you know that have a barrel of bourbon at their house?” he asked at the conference.

The alleged thieves—identified as Julie Curtsinger, Mark Searcy, Ronnie Lee Hubbard, Dusty Adkins, Christopher Preston, Joshua Preston, Robert McKinney, and Shawn Ballard—met while playing sports, according to Melton.

“This all came together through softball,” he said.

As for the whiskey, the 25 bottles of Pappy Van Winkle that were recovered—the rest was sold—will likely be returned to the Van Winkle family; the barrels of whiskey, sadly, will be destroyed for sanitation reasons.

But was the Pappy Van Winkle recovered the same that went missing during the mysterious bourbon heist—known as Pappygate—of fall 2013? Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Zachary Becker said it’s possible, though he told the Courier-Journal that’s “more for Buffalo Trace to figure out and their inventory issues.”

[Image via WKYT]