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500 Days of Kristin, Day 142: Kristin Makes an Enemy

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 142: Kristin Makes an Enemy

Do you have a particular outfit that you really regret wearing say 10, 15, or 20 years ago? If you can picture it in your head, and it is, indeed, regrettable, congratulations: you’re stylish. According to People, anyway.

In a recent blog post titled—I mean it—“9 Reasons Kristin Cavallari Is Even More Stylish Than We Thought,” the magazine offers “9” “reasons” to support the assertion that Kristin is stylish (more so than we thought). We’ve already discussed some of them: “she’s getting ready for long hair again;” something about her sons; Pinterest?; blah, blah, blah.

Today, from People’s post, I present you with one more:

“There’s one red carpet dress she really regrets.”

Kristin elaborates:

For the VH1 Big in 05 Awards, it looked like an ice skater dress. It had like a big sparkle cut out on the chest, and all these little pieces of fabric lying around on the dress—it was horrible.

Here is a photo of Kristin at “the VH1 Big in 05 Awards” for your reference.

500 Days of Kristin, Day 142: Kristin Makes an Enemy

As you can see, it’s really an orange carpet look.

Whether or not regretting this look confirms that Kristin is stylish, the question remains: where did she get this dress she’s now publicly disavowed? What designer—who once was thrilled to have Kristin model his or her designs, surely—just got that fugly heap of baby blue mesh thrown back in their idiot face?

Who is Kristin’s new enemy?

Even by strenuous internet research, I have not been able to determine who designed this piece of shit. If you know, please contact me via email or in the comments below.


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photos via Getty]


Knife-wielding White House fence jumper Omar Gonzalez was sentenced to 17 months in prison on Tuesda

Cops: Drunk Woman Stabs Neighbor With Rake for Calling 911 Over Loud Sex

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Cops: Drunk Woman Stabs Neighbor With Rake for Calling 911 Over Loud Sex

According to the Kingsport Times-News, a Tennessee woman and her sex/crime partner were arrested for aggravated assault last week after the couple allegedly attacked a neighbor who reported their noisy boning to police.

Authorities say Erin Brooke Lawson, 32, and Johnny Allen Richards, 33, assaulted neighbor Mark Galin last Tuesday for calling 911 twice to complain about their loud sex. From The Smoking Gun:

After Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office deputies left the residence in Rogersville for the second time, Richards and Lawson allegedly attacked Galin at his apartment door.

As detailed in a police report, Galin told a deputy that Lawson “hit him with a rake and broke the handle.” She then allegedly stabbed him in the arm with the jagged handle. Richards, Galin added, struck him with a “2x2 stick.”

Deputy Kenneth Ferguson reported finding blood on the end of the rake handle, and observed “several lacerations” on Galin that were consistent with his account of the incident. The stick was also recovered.

According to police, Lawson, who they say was intoxicated, later injured her head falling in the drunk tank.

Since 2001, the couple has reportedly been arrested a collective 76 times on charges of drug trafficking, theft, domestic assault, stalking, failure to appear, public intoxication, burglary, drug possession, casual exchange of drugs, contempt of court and “a variety of driving offenses.”

[h/t The Smoking Gun]

Rachel Dolezal: There's No "Biological Proof" Who My Real Parents Are

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Appearing on NBC Nightly News Tuesday, former Spokane NAACP President Rachel Dolezal suggested her white mother and father might not be her biological parents, saying there’s been no DNA test or other “biological proof.”

“Up to this point, I know who raised me,” Dolezal told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. “I haven’t had a DNA test. There’s been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne are my biological parents.”

Gutherie responded by bringing up Dolezal’s birth certificate, which lists the couple as her parents.

“I’m not necessarily saying that I can prove they’re not,” replied Dolezal, “but I don’t know that I can actually prove they are. I mean the birth certificate was issued a month and a half after I’m born. Certainly there were no medical witnesses to my birth. It was in the woods.”

Later in the same interview, Dolezal said, “I definitely am not white,” reiterating in some of her strongest language yet that she sees herself as black:

Nothing about being white describes who I am. So, you know, what’s the word for it? The closest thing that I can come to is if you’re black or white, I’m black. I’m more black than white. On a level of values, lived experience currently. In this moment, that’s the answer. That’s the accurate answer from my truth. But I hope the dialogue continues to push against, ‘what is race? what is ethnicity?

During the 10-minute interview, which can be watched in full below, Dolezal also denied changing her skin tone using anything other sun and occasional bronzer.

“Some days I might have spray-on, you know, like bronzer or whatever,” said Dolezal. “But other days I don’t.”

New York Times Regrets Calling Dead Irish Students Drunk Party Animals

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New York Times Regrets Calling Dead Irish Students Drunk Party Animals

Yesterday, the New York Times published an article about a deadly balcony collapse in Berkeley that killed six college students from Ireland who had been partying on the structure. The victims had come to California on the J1 work-visa program—which, the Times noted in the second paragraph of the article, has become “a source of embarrassment for Ireland, marked by a series of high-profile episodes involving drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments in places like San Francisco and Santa Barbara.”

The inclusion of this detail struck many Irelanders as anti-Irish, effectively using the stereotype of Irish drunkenness to blame the students for their own deaths. On Twitter, Minister of Equality Aodhán Ó Ríordáin wrote in a message directed at the Times: “Your newspaper’s reporting of the Berkeley tragedy is a disgrace.” He later told the Guardian: “If that had been victims from any other nation would they have written an article like that? To do so in your early coverage of this tragedy is well, quite frankly disgusting.”

Incredibly, Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy formally apologized for the article’s content. In a statement provided to the Irish Examiner, Murphy wrote:

We understand and agree that some of the language in the piece could be interpreted as insensitive, particularly in such close proximity to this tragedy. It was never our intention to blame the victims and we apologize if the piece left that impression. We will continue to cover this story and report on the young people who lost their lives.

Times public editor Margaret Sullivan took issue with the article as well, writing on Wednesday morning:

It is not The Times’s policy to take a published story off its website, but the story would clearly have been written and edited differently now. ... I can say not only that I believe many of the complaints were valid, but also that I’m very sorry for the pain the story caused.

These apologies—granted by the paper’s chief publicist and its designated ombudsman—are particularly noteworthy given the Times’ reluctance to apologize for its reporting in virtually every other circumstance. Last August, for example, the paper was widely criticized for a front-page story by John Eligon that referred to Michael Brown, the black teenager gunned down in Ferguson by white cop Darren Wilson, as “no angel.” The same story treated Brown’s commonplace teenage interests—rap music, weed, and alcohol—as illuminating aspects of his character.

In that instance of reportage, Margaret Sullivan acknowledged that the story had issues:

In my view, the timing of the article (on the day of Mr. Brown’s funeral) was not ideal. Its pairing with a profile of Mr. Wilson seemed to inappropriately equate the two people. And “no angel” was a blunder.

Still, neither she nor the Times issued an apology.

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

Fusion Is the Least Wanted Network on Television

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Fusion Is the Least Wanted Network on Television

We’ve learned that nobody reads or watches Fusion, but as the legend goes, Felix Salmon’s dream journal still harbors a plan to get rich by making people, via their cable companies, pay for its television network. It sounds like a fine enough scheme as any in our current media wasteland, but they better get moving on it before television watchers are able to reject the channel outright.

Today, Variety published a survey of just over 3,000 people conducted by a market research company called Digitalsmiths. Respondents were asked which cable networks they would be willing to pay for if television moved to an á la carte model. Here are the results (if you expand the image it’s much more legible):

Fusion Is the Least Wanted Network on Television

The stations people would be most willing to pay for are about what you would expect—the big four (and free) networks, plus reliable and established cable channels like The Discovery Channel, Comedy Central and the Food Network.

As the graph slopes downward you begin to encounter cable news channels, midsize entertainment offerings (E!, MTV), niche channels (Cartoon Network, NFL Network) and newly created, but well moneyed, stations (Fox Sports 1, Oprah’s OWN). As you slide even further, you start seeing channels you forgot existed (Nick Jr.) or have never heard of (The Sportsman Network), that less than 1 in 10 people would be willing to shell out money for. Then there are the 24-hour infomercial networks and Spanish language channels.

Then, if you keep going, all the way to the very end, right next to the number zero, is the belle of the online media ball: Fusion, which, according to this survey, would seem to have as much luck pushing itself on the average American as a door-to-door vacuum salesman.

Of course, if nearly 70 percent of Americans are willing to buy ABC then they may end up paying for Fusion whether they like it or not (and they don’t!). It is better to be lucky than good, right?

[image of Magic Kingdom via Getty]


Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

Report: Collapsed Berkeley Balcony That Killed 6 Students Was Decorative

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Report: Collapsed Berkeley Balcony That Killed 6 Students Was Decorative

The fourth-floor balcony that collapsed with 13 people on it earlier this week in Berkeley, Ca., was mostly decorative, according to a member of the Berkeley Design Review Committee that approved the building in 2001. Six students—five of them Irish citizens—died and seven more were injured after the balcony plummeted from the Library Gardens apartment building during a 21st birthday party early Tuesday morning.

“It was definitely not large enough to be what the city would call an ‘open space balcony,’ where groups of people could stand outside,” Carrie Olson, a 14-year member of the review committee, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “This was meant just to be a place where someone could stand out for bit, get a breath of fresh air. Not for something like 13 people.”

Report: Collapsed Berkeley Balcony That Killed 6 Students Was Decorative

According to a city spokesman who spoke with the Chronicle, the balcony was designed to bear 60 pounds of weight per square foot, which meets city and state codes. Apartment owners aren’t legally required to post weight limits for balconies.

Olson, who told the Chronicle she abstained from the vote that approved the apartment, is calling for stricter oversight of balconies and says there are “a lot” of similar ones throughout Berkeley.

“It seems that those students were just doing what young people do, crowding onto a balcony,” she said. “But it’s up to us, not them, to make this stuff safe. That’s just what kids do. We have a responsibility, not just as citizens of Berkeley but as citizens of the world who send their children here, to make sure our structures are safe.”

Five of the victims—Olivia Burke, Eoghan Culligan, Niccolai Schuster, Lorcan Miller and Eimear Walsh—were 21-year-old Irish students spending the summer in Berkeley. The sixth victim, Ashley Donohue, 22, was from Sonoma County, California.

UPDATE 4:14 pm: From the Associated Press:

Berkeley’s mayor says early investigation points to moisture-damaged wood as a prime cause of a deadly balcony collapse.

Mayor Tom Bates said Wednesday that investigators believe the support beams may not have been sealed properly at the time of construction.


Image via NY Daily News. Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

We're All Here to Honor Hotel Transylvania 2


Rachel Dolezal's Brother Was Accused of Molesting Both His Sisters

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Rachel Dolezal's Brother Was Accused of Molesting Both His Sisters

Well before Rachel Dolezal was outed as a white woman pretending to be black, she and her younger sister, Esther, both accused their older brother of molesting them, TMZ reports. And according to court documents obtained by the website, Rachel claimed the abuse involved photographs of naked, black women.

Joshua Dolezal, a 39-year-old professor at Iowa’s Central College, was arrested last year in Colorado, where he was charged with four counts of child sex assault for allegedly molesting a six-year-old girl with whom he was “in a position of trust.”

According to the arrest affidavit, obtained by the Denver Post, the victim told investigators Joshua had molested another person as well. Those alleged victims, TMZ reports, were his two younger sisters—Rachel, who claims to be black, and Esther, who is black (and adopted).

Joshua has been charged with four counts of sexual assault by his other sister, Esther — and in legal docs for the case ... Esther’s older sister describes a creepy 1991 incident. The older sister’s name is redacted, but Rachel is the only other daughter in the family.

And there’s more—Rachel’s claims allegedly involved naked photographs of black women.

According to the docs, Joshua was 16 or 17 when he threw Rachel on the ground, pulled up her shirt and sexually abused her. The victim says Joshua then showed her National Geographic photos of topless African women ... and told her he masturbated to them.

She added Joshua was “turned on by the black body and was curious about black women sexually.”

The report lends credence to Rachel’s assertions that her parents outed her true race as a way to get back at her for aiding her sister in pursing the claim.

Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal have denied that they were motivated to speak out about their daughter because of the allegations.

“We did not initiate it but when we were asked we were honest,” Ruthanne told People. “We didn’t participate in the lies. We couldn’t. We won’t.”

Rachel’s mother also denies her son assaulted anyone and tells People she believes Rachel was behind her son’s arrest—perhaps in a bid to obtain custody of her adopted brother, Izaiah, who accused both his parents of physical abuse in a 2010 emancipation application that was ultimately dropped. (According to CNN, Rachel Dolezal was appointed Izaiah’s legal guardian with the consent of Ruthanne and Larry in “a separate legal action” in 2010.)

“That is all a malicious false lie,” Ruthanne said. “[Rachel] is the one who initiated it. We know it is not true.”

According to People, Ruthanne claimed the alleged victim suffered from a “reactive attachment disorder” and lied about the abuse.

During a series of interviews, the alleged victim, now 20, told detectives that Joshua, who is 19-years-older, made the victim undress in front of him and forced the victim to perform oral sex on him.

According to the report, the accuser told adopted mother Ruthanne about the alleged abuse but she “did not believe [victim] and told [victim] to stop telling lies.”

Joshua allegedly told his accuser, “Don’t tell anyone or ‘I’ll hurt you.’” The attacks, the victim said, ended when Joshua returned to college.

Ruthanne says the victim suffers from reactive attachment disorder, a condition in which a child can’t bond with a parent or caregiver, and “seeks to cause trouble in the family.”

“The aligning with Rachel on this is a very bad combination,” she says. “Our son wasn’t even home a lot of the time it was alleged it was happening,” she says, “and I was a stay-at-home mother and very attentive to the kids because of her disorder. I never left her at home with our son or anything like that.”

Joshua is reportedly scheduled for trial in August.


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

New Jersey Cop Allegedly Murdered His Ex-Wife in Front of Their Daughter

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New Jersey Cop Allegedly Murdered His Ex-Wife in Front of Their Daughter

Neptune, N.J., police sergeant Phil Seidle shot and killed his ex-wife Tamara Seidle in front of the couple’s seven-year-old daughter in Asbury Park on Tuesday morning, according to police. After a bizarre 30-minute standoff with police, Seidle was arrested on the scene and charged with murder.

Before the killing, Seidle chased his ex-wife through Asbury Park until he crashed his Honda Pilot into her Volkswagen Jetta, forcing it into another parked car, the Asbury Park Post reports. Seidle then exited, walked to Tamara Seidle’s crashed car, and fired his service handgun into her windshield several times. Monmouth County prosecutor Marc Lemieux told NJ.com that Seidle’s daughter was sitting in the passenger seat of his SUV.

Seidle was arrested after a standoff with Asbury Park police—some of whom knew Seidle personally, according to Lemieux. After officers took Seidle’s daughter into custody, he walked around with his gun to his head and fired more rounds at his ex-wife, only surrendering after the officers passed him a mysterious small black box, a witness told NJ.com. The box’s contents—and what about them evidently inspired Seidle to surrender—are unclear. The witness also said officers hugged and comforted Seidle as they took him into custody.

The standoff came to an end after police officers, on one side of Sewall Avenue, slid a small black box about the size of an individual cupcake box to Seidle, who was standing on the other side of the street, the witness said.

After looking at the object, he raised his arms over his head and walked out into the street to surrender, the witness said. The witness said police officers surrounded Seidle, who was “bawling his eyes out.” While taking him into custody, some of the officers hugged him and patted him comfortingly on the back, the witness said.

Lemieux said officials are investigating why police didn’t use force to apprehend Seidle while he was firing the second round of shots at his ex-wife.

During the standoff, Seidle reportedly shouted at his ex-wife about legal battles over custody of their nine children. The pair divorced in May, and the Asbury Park Press reports that Tamara Seidle alleged in a complaint filed two years ago that her husband was abusive and unfaithful. The complaint describes Seidle holding a gun to his head while his then-wife was pregnant and kicking her in the stomach.

A witness told the Press that Seidle said “I’m tired of going to court,” to Tamara Seidle before shooting her, and another witness told NJ.com that he made similar complaints to police.

Seidle is currently being held on $2 million bail at the Monmouth County Correctional Facility.


Screengrab via NJ.com. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Remember When a Dead Intern Was Found in Joe Scarborough's Office?

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Remember When a Dead Intern Was Found in Joe Scarborough's Office?

Back in 2010, Markos Moulitsas, better known as the founder of the Daily Kos blog, was a regular guest on MSNBC. The pairing of a liberal blogger and a liberal network was a natural one, so Moulitsas was used to going on TV and swapping insults about Republicans with Keith Olbermann or whoever.

That state of affairs came to a screeching halt in July of 2010, when Moulitsas found himself summarily blacklisted from MSNBC. His offense? Mentioning, on Twitter, the strange, sad story of Lori Klausutis, the intern who was found dead in Joe Scarborough’s office when the “Morning Joe” host was still a Republican congressman.

Here’s their exchange:

Markos: Like story of a certain dead intern. RT @JoeNBC: Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1.

Markos: But if you want to talk about bullshit “scandals”, @JoeNBC, there’s this one about Joe Sestak and the White House you might’ve heard of.

JoeNBC: @markos Unbelievable. You have a long history of spreading lies suggesting I am a murderer. This is the 3rd or 4th time by my count.

Markos: @JoeNBC, I’ve never suggested you’re a murderer. I’ve noted media hypocrisy in going after Gary Condit. But he was Dem. You aren’t.

JoeNBC: Anyone in media who interviews @markos, know that you’re extending your credibility to someone who regularly suggests that I’m a murderer.

Markos: A bit touchy, @JoeNBC? Links for where I accuse you of being a murderer please.

After this happened, MSNBC president Phil Griffin wrote to Moulitsas to say that he was banned from the network. It was one of the more bizarre pieces of cable news weirdness in history. It was also one in a long line of mini-wars Joe Scarborough has waged in an effort to stop getting people to insinuate that he killed his intern.

Let’s get one thing clear: There is zero evidence to suggest that Joe Scarborough had anything to do with the death of Lori Klausutis. But the story of Klausutis’s death has nevertheless haunted Scarborough over the years.

A journey into the time machine is necessary at this point. We emerge in May of 2001. The world is merely a pit of misery, rather than the apocalypse-lite horrorscape we’ll all get used to in the coming decades, and Florida Republican Joe Scarborough has just announced that he’s resigning from Congress after a mere six years in office to spend more time with his kids, one of whom has just been diagnosed with diabetes. It’s an abrupt end to a brief political career.

Fast-forward to July 19, 2001. Two people looking for assistance in an immigration case open the door to Scarborough’s district office and find a grisly scene: Lori Klausutis is lying dead behind a desk.

From an Associated Press report:

A 28-year-old office worker for U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough was found dead Friday in the congressman’s district office.

Preliminary findings from the medical examiner’s office showed no foul play or any outward indication of suicide, said Police Chief Steve Hogue.

Authorities identified the woman as Lori Klausutis of Niceville. She had worked for Scarborough since May 1999, said Mick Serrano, press secretary for the congressman.

A month later, a medical examiner concluded that Klausutis had been feeling unwell and had died after heart problems caused her to fall and hit her head on the desk. There were no apparent signs of foul play. Case closed.

The medical examiner’s ruling didn’t satisfy a surprisingly varied cross-section of armchair conspiracy theorists and Poirots, though. There were your garden-variety crackpots. But there were also people like Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott, whose mention of the case prompted an outraged Scarborough to write a lengthy letter to the magazine in 2005 (Wolcott apologized for bringing the story up):

His libelous charge, pulled from a hate site on the Internet, led readers to believe that a good woman named Lori Klausutis carried on an adulterous sexual affair with a congressman before being killed in a sleazy sex-scandal cover-up. The article also suggested that this imaginary sex scandal forced me to leave office. I was painted as the Republican Party’s answer to Gary Condit, saved from prosecution by a right-wing media machine.

[...]

Here are the facts Vanity Fair and James Wolcott would have learned had they spent five minutes on the telephone engaging in rudimentary fact-checking: (1) Lori worked in my annex office in Okaloosa County, Florida. (2) I met her no more than three times; I was never alone with her. (3) I didn’t leave Congress because of her death; I announced my retirement from Congress in May 2001-she passed away several months later.

Michael Moore also faced Scarborough’s wrath after he “registered the domain name JoeScarboroughKilledHisIntern.com,” another Vanity Fair article notes. (The website never really got off the ground.)

Then there was Katherine Harris, the cartoon villain who went from helping tilt Florida into the Bush column in 2000 to running for Senate in 2006. That campaign was a legendary disaster, but one series of calls Harris made garnered particular attention. From the Miami Herald:

Katherine Harris’ floundering U.S. Senate campaign lost its high-level staff again this week and is groping for a message - which doesn’t surprise Republican insiders who trace the seeds of her trouble to the story of “Joe’s dead intern.” This wasn’t any old Joe.

It was Scarborough, host of the prime-time MSNBC show Scarborough Country and a former Pensacola Republican congressman who was courted by national Republicans to run against Harris. But before he could announce he wouldn’t, Harris called major donors and suggested Scarborough would have to answer questions about the strange death of a former staff member in 2001, according to two former high-level Harris staff members, a GOP donor and Scarborough.

An especially fascinating wrinkle in this ongoing saga is the heated battle about it on Wikipedia. There are pages and pages of arguments about Klausutis in the internal editorial discussions. There’s even some (seemingly fake) person claiming to be Joe Scarborough who keeps weighing in. Here’s one excerpt:

Joe Scarborough again. Though I am pleased that 50% of my life as described by Wikipedia no longer involves an event that I had absolutely nothing to do with, I am surprised that Wikipedia continues to allow Gamaliel to remain an administrator when she has shown such bad faith in this matter…

These continued skirmishes have clearly not hindered Scarborough’s media career, but not every fight has been won. His Wikipedia page currently includes this unsourced passage: “There had been speculation that Scarborough was having an affair with one of his Congressional aides, Lori Klausutis, who was later found dead in Scarborough’s office after allegedly fainting and hitting her head on a desk in July of 2001.”

Lost in all this fracas, of course, has been Klausutis herself, whose story is a grain of sand in the annals of pre-9/11 America. Meanwhile, Joe Scarborough has failed upward, again and again.

Jack Mirkinson is a writer in New York.

Image via AP

Remember When is a series in which we remember things long forgotten. Would you like to remember something for Gawker? Email features@gawker.com.

Idiots Running College Paid Football Guy $170K to Talk Dumbly 

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Idiots Running College Paid Football Guy $170K to Talk Dumbly 

After weeks of public records requests by the Boston Globe, Massachusetts’ Salem State University has disclosed the fact that it paid $170,000 to good looking football guy Tom Brady to come talk on its campus.

The Globe reports that the school’s “nonprofit Salem State University Foundation paid the Patriots quarterback $170,000 to participate in its annual speaker series” last month—and how better to spend one hundred and seventy thousand dollars enriching your students’ lives than by hiring an Uggs model mouth platitudes about a football-deflation scandal for an hour?

I am being reductive; Brady also told the crowd, regarding his Super Bowl win, “There’s a lot of hard work that goes into accomplishing such a great feat, and the competition is so tough.”

That’s wisdom that you cannot put a price on. (But if you could, a fair one would be $170,000 via a nonprofit foundation.)

[Photo: Getty. This is the worst use of money by a college since the $219,000 table.]


Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

NYC Has Impounded 500 Uber Cars Since April for Picking Up Illegal Fares

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NYC Has Impounded 500 Uber Cars Since April for Picking Up Illegal Fares

On the same day that Uber got bad news from the California Labor Commission, the New York Post reports another ill omen for the technology-company-and-definitely-not-a-car-service everyone loves to hate and use anyway: NYC has impounded nearly 500 Uber cars since April in a sting against illegal “street hails.”

The NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission limits drivers of black cars and livery cars to pre-arranged trips. They’re not allowed to compete with taxis for spontaneous street pickups. But that’s apparently what 496 drivers did between late April and this week, and they had their cars seized for their trouble.

Uber officially prohibits its drivers from picking up random street fares, but it also doesn’t pay for or own the cars its alleged non-employees drive. If those drivers start using their vehicles to make some money on the side, they bear all the risk themselves.

There were 14,000 Uber cars registered in NYC as of earlier this year, which is technically higher than the number of yellow cabs on the road, but Uber doesn’t even come close to cabs when it comes to ride volume or hours driven.

One theory about the uptick in illegal fares, put forth by the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, is that Uber alone isn’t enough for a driver to get by in NYC.

“If you’re willing to risk breaking the law, you have to be willing to lose your car,” taxi federation president Fernando Mateo told the Post, “I would recommend, go back to the basics. Everyone has an app. You can’t make a living with just the Uber application.”

Mateo is obviously biased when it comes to Uber, but there might be something to that. At the beginning of this year, Uber cut its fares dramatically across the U.S.—great for passengers, but not so great for drivers. In a blog post, the company assured drivers that they’d actually make more money because demand would go up.

In practice, though, it doesn’t work that way. A Philadelphia UberX driver, “Muhammad,” put it very succinctly to the Philly City Paper’s Emily Guendelsberger in May:

Overall, demand has increased. But as a human being, we can only drive maybe three trips in one hour. If you give me 300 trips, that won’t do me any good. That demand is for other people, not for me. So cutting the rate is increasing the total business, but the driver is worse off than before.

With Uber cutting profits for individual drivers (but profiting itself from the increased overall demand), it wouldn’t be that surprising for struggling drivers—who in some cases invested in new cars just to drive for Uber—to risk going outside the system to ensure their cars actually make them money.

[h/t Consumerist, Photo: Getty Images]

500 Days of Kristin, Day 143: Kristin's Broken Promise

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 143: Kristin's Broken Promise

As avid readers of the Official Kristin Cavallari App for iPhone and Android may remember, Kristin posted a “healthy living” tip about taking magnesium supplements on the app almost one year ago. The post itself is innocuous: Kristin takes magnesium because she thinks it will cure what so dreadfully ails her; she reminds the public that this is just her opinion and she is “obviously not a doctor.”

But within the post there is a promise—tossed out casually in a parenthetical, but a promise all the same—from Kristin. A promise to tell us about Krill oil. Kristin wrote in the post:

I take Omega-3 supplements (next I’m trying Krill Oil..will keep you posted on that), I take a probiotic, and drink my greens in the morning.

Kristin, I’m afraid, has not kept us posted on that. (Krill oil.)

She wrote that she was going to try the supplement—which to my knowledge is something Dr. Mercola made up in his basement—“next.” That was in July 2014. Since then, Kristin has not so much as tweeted the word “Krill.”

Where is the definitive Kristin Krill oil review?

There is a chance, I guess, that it could show up in a book to be published one million moons from now.


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

Dangerous Flash Flooding Continues as Bill Chugs Its Way into Oklahoma

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Dangerous Flash Flooding Continues as Bill Chugs Its Way into Oklahoma

As Tropical Depression Bill swirls its way through northern Texas this afternoon, the storm looks more impressive over land than it ever did over the ocean. The storm is still producing very heavy rainfall, and flash flooding is likely as it continues sloshing towards Oklahoma and eventually the Midwest.

Tropical Depression Bill is still maintaining its strength even though it’s hundreds of miles inland now. This morning’s advisory from the Weather Prediction Center* shows that Bill has 35 MPH winds as it churns near Dallas, Texas. The agency expects it to maintain tropical depression status through Friday morning, and there’s a slight chance—not great, but not exactly zero, either—that the storm could briefly restrengthen into a tropical storm over the next couple of hours.

Dangerous Flash Flooding Continues as Bill Chugs Its Way into Oklahoma

The phenomenon at hand has been the talk of science and weather blogs for the past couple of days now. Dr. Marshall Shepherd—you may know him from WXGeeks on The Weather Channel—was part of a team that researched the “brown ocean effect” that could have an effect on Tropical Depression Bill’s organization and maintenance of strength so far inland. In a moisture-rich environment with saturated soils, storms can maintain their strength or even strengthen over land, as the soggy soil mimics the favorable environment found over the ocean. It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened—the most famous case was Tropical Storm Erin in 2007, which gained strength and even developed an eye as it moved over the Oklahoma City metro area. (The animated radar loop of Erin is shown above.)

This region of the country has dominated weather headlines over the past couple of months due to the extreme rainfall and destructive flooding that’s resulted from a conga line of supercells parking themselves over the region day after day. The waterlogged soil and tropical moisture in place over Texas seems to be keeping Bill alive and well, as much as a tropical system could be a few hundred miles inland, anyway.

Dangerous Flash Flooding Continues as Bill Chugs Its Way into Oklahoma

Here’s the radar from 3:10 PM CDT today, which doesn’t show an image as impressive as Erin eight years before it, but it’s not too shabby, all things considered. Doppler radar still indicates a closed, tight center of circulation almost smack dab over Fort Worth, Texas, with a large rain shield entering southern Oklahoma with rainbands of various intensity radiating from the general circulation. Radar measurements show that winds just above the surface are between 40-50 MPH just a few hundred feet above the surface, which would put Bill at tropical storm strength if they managed to translate to the surface.

Why does this matter? Rain! And lots of it.

Dangerous Flash Flooding Continues as Bill Chugs Its Way into Oklahoma

Bill produced a widespread area of six or more inches of rain around Victoria when it made landfall, and this swath of hefty totals continues north-northwest towards Dallas, eventually filling in through Oklahoma and around the heat ridge in the southeast. Bill’s continued strength/structure matters because it will allow heavy rain to continue unabated along its path until the storm finally begins to fall apart and all that’s left is residual moisture from the system.

Thankfully, the worst of the rainfall stayed offshore. A nasty train of supercells associated with Tropical Storm Bill set up shop just off the coast from Corpus Christi yesterday, lasting for more than twelve hours as they dumped more than twenty (two-zero!) inches of rain over the open waters. If not just for the flooding disaster they averted, the fact that these storms occurred over open water is a saving grace to countless people today. These supercells likely produced numerous tornadic waterspouts over the course of the event, which could have been a devastating tornado outbreak in the Corpus Christi area if it had occurred on land a few dozen miles to the west.

Dangerous Flash Flooding Continues as Bill Chugs Its Way into Oklahoma

The storm—or what’s left of it in a day or two—will continue moving up and around the ridge of high pressure that’s locked over the southeastern United States, which is making millions of people sweat in record high temperatures. Even if the rain shield as we see it now dissipates, the deep, tropical moisture Bill contributed to the atmosphere will continue riding around the ridge, allowing any thunderstorms that develop to tap into that sweet, sweet fuel and produce extremely heavy rainfall.

As for timing, the heaviest rain should be in the Tulsa/Joplin/Fayetteville area by tomorrow evening, near southern Illinois by Friday evening, and in the Ohio Valley by Saturday evening. Flash flood watches are in effect for just about everyone expecting more than an inch or two of rain, as heavy rain over a short period of time will inundated already-saturated soils and storm sewers, leading to rapidly rising waters. Pay attention to warnings and weather radar as you go about your day, and make sure you have a plan in place in case your home, business, or roads along your travels are flooded.

Do not drive through a flooded roadway. You may think you can make it, but you won’t. Even if you could, assume you won’t. It takes just a couple of inches of water to sweep you off of your feet, and a little more than that to sweep away even a large vehicle. Not only do you risk your life by driving through high waters, but you risk the lives of those who have to rescue you or recover your dead body. It’s not worth it.

*The National Hurricane Center handles advisories on a tropical system until it makes landfall. After landfall, forecasting responsibility shift to the Weather Prediction Center, which issues advisories on the system until it dissipates.

[Satellite: NASA | Maps: author]


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Charlize Theron and Sean Penn Have Reportedly Ended Their Engagement

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Charlize Theron and Sean Penn Have Reportedly Ended Their Engagement

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to be engaged, and a time to be not. Charlize Theron, an actor known primarily for her SoulCycle feud with Tia Mowry, has reportedly ended her engagement with aged actor Sean Penn. Rest in peace.

Us Weekly reports that after a year-and-a-half long romance, Theron called off her engagement to Penn after attending this year’s Cannes Film Festival. France: where Charlize Theron and Sean Penn’s love was born, and where it crawled and hid in order to die alone. Sort of romantic.

—Or is it?

We have reached out to Tia Mowry for comment and will update once we hear back.


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

“Men and women who eat at least 10 grams of nuts or peanuts per day have a lower risk of dying from

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“Men and women who eat at least 10 grams of nuts or peanuts per day have a lower risk of dying from several major causes of death than people who don’t consume nuts or peanuts... but peanut butter is not associated with lower mortality.” The agony and the ecstasy of living the nut life.


Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

What Was “The Game”? A Question and Answer About Last Night

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What Was “The Game”? A Question and Answer About Last Night

Last night, “the game” was Game 6 of the NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Warriors won 105-97, clinching their first NBA championship since 1975.

This is What Was “The Game”? an ongoing series in which we explain “the game” of last night.

[image via Getty]


Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

Singer Jason Derulo Reportedly Butthurt Over "8 out of 10" Review

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Singer Jason Derulo Reportedly Butthurt Over "8 out of 10" Review

Jason Derulo has an anonymously decent voice, the personality of toast, and a knack for making hits. When he arrived on the scene in 2009 with “Whatcha Say,” I pegged him as a one-hit wonder and here we are, six years and four albums later, still talking about Jason Derulo. His most recent hit, “Want to Want Me,” is as infectious as anything he’s ever released and the album it comes from, Everything Is 4 (get it—it’s his fourth?!), is at least half great. I’d give it a 5 out of 12 (there are 12 songs on it; five are good), which is more than I’d give most pop albums that I’ve heard this year.

Spin’s Dan Weiss, though, gave it an 8 out of 10. In his effusive review, Weiss wrote, “Without ever getting deeper than ‘You’re blessed from behind / I’ma take you to church,’ Derulo’s latest, Everything Is 4, proves he’s a workhorse, with possibly even (gulp) a vision.” Weiss essentially said to Derulo, Hey man, I see you for what you are, and not only do I accept you, but I love you for it. Still this was not good enough for Derulo, who if you weren’t aware, is the kind of person to remind you that he’s “really fucking successful.”

Weiss ended up interviewing Derulo after the review ran, and Derulo’s thoughts on it take up several paragraphs of the resulting profile. Here they are:

The second time we speak is at Warner Brothers HQ, in a comfortable living room of sorts, next to a foosball table, the day before Everything Is 4 is released. My review of the album went live earlier in the day, and Derulo is editing that. “I felt like that one was just jab after jab after jab. Like, I thought you were the worst review that I’ve seen thus far,” he tells me, trying to pull it up on his phone. (I gave it an eight out of 10 and called it the pop album of the year.)

“It mostly mentioned, like, fourth-grade lyrics, and, Michael Jackson being eons and eons away. It was just unnecessary jabs,” he says. We have to agree to disagree on the cleverness of linking the juvenile lyrical content of his Summer of Ass-defining 2014 hit “Wiggle” to the recorder flute behind it, an instrument typically taught in elementary school. “But you didn’t make that clear though, not the way you wrote it!” he says. His eyes are gigantic.

After some back and forth where I surprise even myself, we reach a détente where I’m not convinced he understands that a review isn’t a press release, but he does seem to realize I’m a fan. “When I heard you singing song lyrics,” he observes — caught me singing along to Everything Is 4 over the stereo when his crew arrived — “It seems like you listened to the album and spent some time.” This exchange is a lot more polite and charitable than it reads, but every bit as intense.

“I like to hear what other people have to say,” Derulo relents. “Not that it actually matters, because you know at the end of the day, I’m really fucking successful.”

Congratulations on your fucking success, Derulo. Now stop reading your own press if you can’t handle it, ya big baby.

[Image via Getty]

Deadspin RIP To Matthew Dellavedova And His Terrible, Beautiful Lob Passes | Gizmodo Interplanetary

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