Pushing kids into stressful, competitive situations and forcing them to be Little Adults until they inevitably break down under pressure for our amusement has always been one of the best, most American reality show concepts. A new cooking show called Man vs. Child looks like it’s going to accelerate the genre toward its absurd logical conclusion.

The premise: A team of five comically named children—Cloyce (13), Holden (14), Emmalee (12), Dylan (11), and Estie (7)—squeezes into one oversized chef’s jacket like a five-headed Muppet monster and competes in cook-offs against grown-up professional chefs. Or maybe the kids all compete separately—the program’s press release does not specify. To reiterate, one of them is named Cloyce.

Man vs. Child builds on the success of MasterChef Junior, a show where Gordon Ramsay, a thin film of human skin stretched over a pulsing knot of rage, babysits several knife-wielding children. But instead of subjecting its tiny cooking prodigies to unhinged yelling, Man vs. Child will torture them more subtly: either with Harlem Globetrotter-esque thrashings at the hands of the adults they look up to, or with the sneaking suspicion that these grown-ups who do this for a highly-paid living might be throwing the game.

Either way, the kids lose (but the audience wins).

Man vs. Child premieres July 23 on something called FYI.

[h/t Eater, Photo: FYI]

Bristol Palin, who shocked America by showing up 16-and-pregnant to the Republican National Convention in 2008, is pregnant again. She announced the news via her blog today, which was “a lot sooner than I ever expected due to the constant trolls who have nothing better to talk about!!!”

In a post titled, “Big News,” Bristol barely suppresses her extreme dread at the thought of having another child. “I wanted you guys to be the first to know that I am pregnant,” she writes. “Honestly, I’ve been trying my hardest to keep my chin up on this one.”

Eeek. She continues:

At the end of the day there’s nothing I can’t do with God by my side, and I know I am fully capable of handling anything that is put in front of me with dignity and grace.

Well...

Life moves on no matter what. So no matter how you feel, you get up, get dressed, show up, and never give up.

When life gets tough, there is no other option but to get tougher.

I know this has been, and will be, a huge disappointment to my family, to my close friends, and to many of you.

Yikes! It sounds like nobody, least of all Bristol, wants her to have this baby?

But please respect Tripp’s and my privacy during this time. I do not want any lectures and I do not want any sympathy.

My little family always has, and always will come first.

Tripp, this new baby, and I will all be fine, because God is merciful.

Not so merciful, of course, to suggest that she has any choice in this matter.

Bristol did not reveal any more information about the nature of her pregnancy or whether a partner is involved—again, she’s “announcing this news a lot sooner than I ever expected due to the constant trolls who have nothing better to talk about!!!”

She was engaged to U.S. Marine Dakota Meyer this year, but she abruptly canceled their wedding that was set to take place over Memorial Day Weekend.

Congrats on the baby!

Photo via Getty. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

On the morning of Freddie Gray’s funeral—during the service itself—the Baltimore Police Department issued a statement claiming that it had become aware of a “credible threat” that members of the Crips, Bloods, and Black Guerrilla Family gangs had teamed up in an effort to “take out” cops. At the time, both the timing and the intent of the statement felt questionable: Even if it was true, what was it supposed to accomplish, other than inciting fear and provoking public sympathy for the department? And couldn’t it have waited until after the funeral? Now, a new report suggests that the “credible threat” may not have been credible at all.

According to emails between Department of Homeland Security employees obtained by Vice News, the FBI’s Baltimore division investigated the gang partnership theory, and found it to be bunk. From Vice:

“The gist of this alert asserts that the BGF [Black Guerilla Family], the Bloods, and the Crips, have partnered to ‘take out’ law enforcement. The alert says this is a credible threat, but, I do not know if that ‘credible threat’ means that they actually have specific information or that the 3 groups involved have credibility in taking that kind of action against law enforcement, I would assert that it’s the latter,” wrote the fusion center employee named Brian. DHS redacted his surname.

The fusion center employee, whose name is Brian, said it was “curious that the alert came out from BPD media relations section instead of BPD Intelligence Unit, which is where we typically receive this kind of info…. The tensions have heightened here in Baltimore over the last 72 hours so this alert cannot be considered without that context.”

Hours later, in the same email chain, another DHS employee said, “FBI Baltimore has interviewed the source of this information and has determined this threat to be non-credible,” apparently marking this the first time that it was debunked since the threat first surfaced.

An FBI spokeswoman confirmed to the Baltimore Sun that the bureau had investigated the threat and found it non-credible. In a follow-up, the Sun reported that the Baltimore County Police Department—which polices the city’s northern suburbs—also didn’t give much stock to the idea:

Baltimore County Police officials found the threat to be “uncorroborated,” according to internal police emails obtained this week by The Sun under the Maryland Public Information Act. In an email to all sworn officers sent out at 4:12 p.m. on April 27, a lieutenant wrote that the city “identifies very nonspecific information about a retaliatory threat towards Law Enforcement after today’s funeral for Freddy Gray.”

So where did it come from? Thin air? An image macro posted to social media, like the one that started the bogus “purge” rumor? It wouldn’t be the first time a police department completely lost its shit over an Instagram post.

When I was in Baltimore that week, I heard two insane rumors that apparently came from law enforcement officers, both of which turned out to be false. The day of the funeral, a man told me he’d heard from a cop that another officer had been taken hostage by a group of Baltimoreans and was being held hostage in a West Baltimore basement at gunpoint. And the following day, a national guardsman told me that protesters had hijacked an ambulance in an attempt to steal narcotics. Baltimore police declined the Sun’s request for comment.

Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Anybody afraid of law enforcement should stay out of Northern Virginia for the next few weeks. And anybody familiar with the police in Northern Virginia should be afraid.

Starting on Friday, Fairfax County will host the 2015 World Police and Fire Games, the cop Olympics. It’s a huge deal for the county. Organizers bill the soirée as “the second largest global multi-sport event,” with only the real Olympics being bigger. Tony Shobe, sports director for what’s being called Fairfax 2015, claims that about 25,000 visitors will arrive to take part or spectate alongside the locals.

When the games were awarded, Fairfax County supervisor Michael Frey gushed in a press release about all the wonders of the area. “This is an outstanding opportunity for Fairfax County to showcase our exceptional First Responders and the world-class destination that we are,” the release read.

The sort of exceptionalism displayed by Fairfax County law enforcement these days, however, isn’t something the locals really want the world to look at. Take Tony Shobe’s workplace, for example. When not promoting Fairfax 2015, he serves as commander of the Emergency Response Team of the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office—which is really the county jail’s in-house SWAT team. His unit is now being scrutinized for the killing of Natasha McKenna.

“You promised not to hurt me!”

McKenna, 37, suffered fatal injuries on Feb. 3 at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. Authorities in Fairfax County routinely clam up when its law enforcers kill unarmed citizens, which happens pretty often. (In fact, if stonewalling were an event at this year’s Games, the hometown cops would be the chalk.) But the information about McKenna’s killing that has leaked out in subsequent months sounds like the stories that came out of Abu Ghraib during the Iraq invasion.

In late January, McKenna was arrested after employees of a Hertz outpost in Alexandria, Va., called police to report that she was being disruptive while returning a rental car. She fled when the cops arrived and was later detained by Fairfax County police on assault charges filed by an officer from Alexandria, a neighboring jurisdiction, who alleged McKenna threw a punch during the Hertz incident. Because the charges weren’t from Fairfax, the county would not conduct psychological evaluations of its prisoner, who had a history of mental illness, and decided to transport her to Alexandria. Incident reports uncovered by Tom Jackman of the Washington Post detail how a crew of sheriff’s department staffers—including six members of Shobe’s Emergency Response Team wearing full hazmat suits over their standard armored outfits—entered the 5-foot-3, 130-pound McKenna’s cell. The deputies cuffed her arms behind her back, shackled her legs, applied a device known as a “Ripp Hobble” to connect the arm and leg restraints and thereby further restrict her movement, and put a hood over her head. They then electrocuted her repeatedly with a taser set on 50,000-volts, according to the Post.

Tasers are designed to temporarily paralyze targets by shutting down their muscular system with electric jolts, typically delivered through probes shot into the skin. But when the standard methods didn’t sufficiently incapacitate McKenna, Fairfax deputies removed the probes from their taser and just pressed the device directly to her thigh and continued zapping her. That technique, called a “drive stun,” is used strictly to inflict pain on a target, not cause muscular incapacitation; further, stun guns are not recommended for use on mentally ill targets. McKenna’s heart stopped while the deputies were restraining her, and she died when taken off life support machines a few days later. The deputies reported that as they were inflicting mortal damage upon her, McKenna was yelling, “You promised not to hurt me!”

Fairfax County authorities listed McKenna’s death as “accidental” after a coroner ruled that she died of “Excited Delirium during physical restraint, including the use of a conductive energy device.” What happened hardly seems accidental. But the county has essentially taken a “Deputies don’t kill prisoners, tasers kill prisoners” stance. The use of tasers in the jail has been suspended, but no charges have been filed against anybody involved in the killing.

The outrage over McKenna’s death has grown over the months, as the Post’s continued reporting and editorializing on the matter have been picked up by other media outlets. But legal authorities in Fairfax County have done nothing obvious to quell it. The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office said shortly after McKenna’s death that the jailhouse incident was captured by security cameras, but those videos have not been made public. The names of the public servants who killed McKenna have not been released, either.

The behavior of the law enforcement community in the county, rather, has provided a study in stalling. Take the county’s inert handling of the taser used in McKenna’s killing. On April 21, about two and a half months after McKenna was killed, Fairfax County police posted a statement about how the weapon used to kill McKenna would be “inspected and analyzed to ensure it was working within designed specifications.” Subsequent updates—one on May 22, another on June 18—have reiterated that the weapon is being tested. Exactly why it’s taken nearly five months to perform these tests is unclear.

“I don’t want to die today!”

An awful truth about the glacial pace and complete lack of transparency in the investigation of McKenna’s killing is that this how it always goes in Fairfax County.

As the police Olympiad opens, in fact, the Fairfax County cops still have the killing of John Geer hanging over their heads. In August 2013, Geer was shot by an FCPD officer in broad daylight while standing in the doorway of his home, unarmed and with his hands up. The police had been called to investigate a domestic dispute between Geer and his longtime partner, and his killing occurred not long after Geer told the lawman who would end up killing him, “I don’t want to die today.” Friends, family and neighbors were among those who saw him killed. Several Fairfax County cops who were on the scene told superiors within the department that one of their own, Officer Adam Torres, had no good reason to fire the shot that killed Geer. Photographs taken by neighbors just before the killing show him with his arms up. But despite all the in-house testimony and civilian witnesses, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh declined to file charges against Torres. In fact, Torres remains on the FCPD payroll. The county refused to even tell Geer’s family who killed their kin for 16 months, and only released that information after the U.S. Department of Justice and Senator Charles Grassley got involved. Only because of that outside pressure, a grand jury was empaneled in early June to decide whether to indict Torres for the killing. But that grand jury won’t meet until the end of July; the hold-up makes no sense, unless Morrogh didn’t want the proceedings going on while the cop Olympics crowd was in town.

If Torres is indicted, it will be the first time in the history of the Fairfax County Police Department that an officer has been charged for an improper shoot. In recent years, FCPD officers have been cleared in the shooting death of Sal Culosi, an unarmed optometrist who’d been accused of accepting football bets from an undercover officer, and in the killing of David Masters, who was unarmed and sitting in the driver’s seat of his car. stopped at a stoplight when a cop shot him in the back. In explaining why he wasn’t prosecuting Masters’ killer, Morrogh initially told the public that the victim was not shot in the back by the police officer, despite eyewitnesses, an autopsy, and photographic evidence to the contrary. Those mulling whether to travel to Fairfax County during the cop Olympics should note that the place has a history of allowing police officers from other jurisdictions to get away with murder, too. In 2000, undercover officer Carlton B. Jones was sitting in an unmarked car when he shot unarmed Howard University student Prince Jones (no relation) five times in the back in the Falls Church section of Fairfax County in what the officer said was a case of mistaken identity. Former Fairfax County prosecutor Robert Horan declined to indict Carlton B. Jones or even bring the case to a grand jury.

“This is a very sad day in Fairfax County, when the commonwealth’s attorney legitimizes murder,” Ted Williams, an attorney for Prince Jones’ family, told the Washington Post at the time.

Fairfax’s reputation has led Geer’s loved ones to temper their expectations that they will get justice.

“I think we’re passed the stalling phase, and now we’re at the roadblock phase,” says Jeff Stewart, a close friend of Geer’s and witness to his killing. “I’m trying to keep an open mind about this. But no officer has ever been charged in the history of the department. How long do you go before that record becomes questionable? How long before that’s considered too good to be true? I know this: If this Fairfax County officer doesn’t get indicted, no officer ever will get indicted.”

FCPD’s investigation was moving so slowly, in fact, that Geer’s family settled its civil suit with the county without even waiting for the criminal proceedings to play out. The county will pay his estate $2.95 million.

“I have never seen anything like it in my 22 years in insurance,” says Chris Carey. He’s the administrator of the Virginia Association of Counties Group Self-Insurance Risk Pool (VACoRP), the insurance underwriter that holds the liability policy for the Fairfax County Police Department and its employees.

Carey says standard operating procedure for VACoRP in cases involving alleged police malfeasance is for all parties to wait until the criminal investigations and prosecutions run their course. “The criminal stuff [in the Geer case] took so long to adjudicate that we decided, along with the plaintiffs, to just get out of it.”

The settlement in the Geer suit is being called the largest amount ever paid by a county government in Virginia in a wrongful death suit. Fairfax County is responsible for the first $1 million. The rest will come from VACoRP’s coffers.

The policy with Fairfax County has an exclusion against covering “personal injury or property damage brought about or contributed to by the fraudulent, dishonest or criminal behavior of any covered person.” That means that if Ofcr. Torres were convicted of a crime related to the killing of Geer, VACoRP would not have had to pay out a dime. Yet VACoRP agreed to pay out its share of the settlement—$1.95 million—rather than wait to see if that happened.

“I’m kind of thinking: Do I think there’s a chance he gets indicted? Do I think there’s a chance he gets convicted?” Carey says. “And, geez, I don’t think so.”

Anybody brave enough to visit Fairfax for the Games might be attracted to the featured entertainment offering from organizers: A tour of the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. Space is limited.

Contact the writer at dave.mckenna@deadspin.com. Illustration by Jim Cooke

Antonin Scalia is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Minions are cartoon characters from a series of popular family films. Dissents authored by Antonin Scalia are laced with quips, one-liners, and barbs designed to be stripped from their greater context and shared, by his ideological fellows and foes alike. Minion memes are images of Minions stripped from their original context, with humorous text added. Can you tell them apart?

On Wednesday, Bobbi Kristina Brown’s court-appointed representative Bedelia Hargrove filed a $10 million lawsuit against Brown’s boyfriend Nick Gordon, accusing him of violent physical abuse that resulted in “loss of teeth, pain and suffering, and trauma that has required medical treatment.”

“No human being, male or female, should endure what Bobbi Kristina endured,” said Hargrove in a statement.

According to the lawsuit, Gordon started abusing Brown last year, “punching her in the face, knocking out a tooth, and dragging her upstairs by her hair.” At the same time, Gordon allegedly began transferring “a large portion” of Brown’s funds into a personal bank account without her consent, including $11,000 after she was found unresponsive in a bathtub earlier this year.

The complaint also strongly implies that Gordon’s abuse was responsible for that incident, which has left Brown fighting for her life since January:

Just prior to January 31, 2015, Brown had confided to someone that Defendant [Nick Gordon] was not the man she thought he was and set up a time on January 31, 2015 to meet with this person to further discuss this revelation.

Brown, however, never made it to the meeting. Instead, on the morning of January 31, 2015, Brown became embroiled in a loud argument with Defendant in her townhome. The loud argument ended and Brown was later found unresponsive and unconscious, face down in a bathtub, with her mouth swollen and another tooth knocked out.

In February, WSB-TV anchor Dave Huddleston reported that authorities had launched a foul play investigation into the Bobbi Kristina case focusing on injuries to Brown’s mouth and Gordon’s hand.

Gordon has yet to respond to the lawsuit, only tweeting a hopeful message about Brown’s recent transfer to hospice care before deleting his account earlier today.

[Image via Getty Images]

On Thursday, a small aircraft carrying eight cruise ship passengers and their pilot was discovered crashed on a cliffside in Southeast Alaska, KTUU reports. All nine were reportedly killed in the crash.

In a statement, Holland America Line confirmed that the flight was sold as a sightseeing excursion for passengers on their MS Westerdam cruise ship.

“We are incredibly distressed by this situation, and our thoughts and prayers are with those on board the plane and their families,” said the Seattle-based cruise line. “Holland America Line is extending its full support to traveling companions of the guests involved.”

According to The Seattle Times, rescue personnel are currently on their way to the site of the crash.

UPDATE - 12:20 a.m.: NTSB Alaska Chief Clint Johnson has confirmed that all those on board the plane died. From the Associated Press:

Clint Johnson, head of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska office, confirmed weather is preventing the recovery of bodies Thursday evening off a cliff about 20 miles northeast of Ketchikan.

Attempts to recover the bodies will resume Friday.

UPDATE - 12:05 a.m.: According to the Associated Press, federal officials say nine people died in the crash.

BREAKING: Federal agency says 9 people killed in small plane crash in southeast Alaska

June 26, 2015

[Image via AP Images]

According to The New York Times, authorities in Detroit have issued a warrant for artist Shepard Fairey’s arrest, charging the outdoor graphic designer with two felony counts of malicious destruction of property.

Police say Fairey—famous for having seen They Live once and also another thing—caused over $9,000 in property damage by pasting posters to buildings during a recent visit to the city.

Having been arrested an impressive 15 times, Fairey is presumably pretty used to this sort of thing by now, but Detroit Police insist that the case will be treated like any other.

“Just because he is a well-known artist does not take away the fact that he is also a vandal,” Sgt. Rebecca McKay told the Detroit Free Press. “And that’s what we consider was done, in these instances, was vandalism.”

The charges against Fairey reportedly carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and fines that could exceed $10,000 or 334 “Hope” posters.

[Image via AP Images]

In case you missed our insightful and thought-provoking live-blog, the 2015 NBA Draft happened tonight, and, after what seemed like an eternity, the first round is finally over.

The Minnesota Timberwolves kicked things off by selecting Kentucky center Karl-Anthony Towns, a move that was pretty much locked up a month ago. But because it’s Minnesota—which is a mystery state, apparently—nobody really cared.

All eyes were on the New York Knicks and whether they would take the obvious best player, Frank Kaminsky, any of the available dual-threat wings, or go with a less popular foreign selection. Thankfully for those of us who love basketball and hate the Knicks, Phil Jackson and the Melos opted for the latter.

Aside from the Knicks—who ended up doing something actually awesome and trading Tim Hardaway, Jr., for human trampoline Jerian Grant—the night belonged to Miami, who presumably got the steal of the draft in Duke’s Justise Winslow at No. 10.

Of course, this is all being said before any of the players have even played in the league, so who knows—Porzingis and Kaminsky could end up snatching the league next year.

Here’s the full list of first round selections:

1. Minnesota Timberwolves: Karl-Anthony Towns
   
2. Los Angeles Lakers: D’Angelo Russell
3. Philadelphia 76ers: Jahlil Okafor
4. New York Knicks: Kristaps Porzingis
5. Orlando Magic: Mario Hezonja
6. Sacramento Kings: Willie Cauley-Stein
7. Denver Nuggets: Emmanuel Mudiay
8. Detroit Pistons: Stanley Johnson
9. Charlotte Hornets: Frank Kaminsky
10. Miami Heat: Justise Winslow
11. Indiana Pacers: Myles Turner
12. Utah Jazz: Trey Lyles
13. Phoenix Suns: Devin Booker
14. Oklahoma City Thunder: Cameron Payne
15. Atlanta Hawks: Kelly Oubre, Jr.
16. Boston Celtics: Terry Rozier
17. Milwaukee Bucks: Rashaud Vaughn
18. Houston Rockets: Sam Dekker
19. Washington Wizards: Jerian Grant (traded to Knicks)
20. Toronto Raptors: Delon Wright
21. Dallas Mavericks: Justin Anderson
22. Chicago Bulls: Bobby Portis
23. Portland Trailblazers: Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
24. Cleveland Cavaliers: Tyus Jones (traded to Timberwolves)
25. Memphis Grizzlies: Jarell Martin
26. San Antonio Spurs: Nikola Milutinov
27. Los Angeles Lakers: Larry Nance Jr.
28. Boston Celtics: R.J. Hunter
29. Brooklyn Nets: Chris McCullough
30. Golden State Warriors: Kevon Looney

Photo: AP

Women in Japan are reportedly very horny over a sexy, barely legal 18-year-old gorilla named Shabani, currently living in the Higashiyama Zoo in Nagoya. But how sexy is this gorilla, really? Is he that much sexier than an average-looking gorilla? Take our quiz and find out if you can tell which gorilla is the sexy, famous one and which gorilla is a garbage nobody like the rest of us.

To give you a bit more info about the famous and sexy gorilla: CNN reports around 100 fans “constantly surround his exhibit”; he has two wives, Ai and Nene; and he has two children, Kiyomasi and Annie. Sound like too much drama? Well, just wait until you see how handsome he is.

—If you can even tell, that is.

Images via Shutterstock, AP, Twitter, Flickr. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

Occasionally, against all odds, you’ll see an interesting or even enjoyable picture on the Internet. But is it worth sharing, or just another Photoshop job that belongs in the digital trash heap? Check in here and find out if that viral photo deserves an enthusiastic “forward” or a pitiless “delete.”

Image via Tumblr

DELETE

After White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters last week that President Obama believes the Confederate flag “belongs in a museum,” several right-wing blogs seized upon this image supposedly demonstrating the president’s hypocrisy.

The button seen above, however, wasn’t an official pin issued by the 2012 Obama campaign, but a design created by Zazzle user pinbacksvt, whose email address (pinbacksvt@hotmail.com) is still barely discernible at the bottom of the button. In 2012, the merchant created several similar pins, including “Israeli-Americans for Obama,” “Chinese-Americans for Obama” and “Anglo-Americans for Obama,” each bearing a flag and quotation representing a different demographic of Obama supporters.

Schultz, it should be noted, was merely reiterating the president’s position on the Confederate flag, Obama having first made his “belongs in a museum” comment back in 2007.

Image via Twitter

DELETE

When the story of a German man who, post-divorce, vengefully sawed his belongings in half came out last week, news outlets went bonkers for the pictures, which were soon reposted by Time, Fox News and Gawker Media’s own Gizmodo. But as is so often the case online, the too-good-to-be-true tale was just that.

As Factually’s Matt Novak explained on Monday, the whole thing was a viral advertising campaign for the German Bar Association. From German magazine Deutsche Anwaltauskunft (translated via Snopes):

Why did we do this? Martin G. may not be genuine, but in Germany every year there are a large number of very real divorces that end up like Martin’s — or worse. Because too few couples are legally prepared for a separation, a divorce often results in a “War of the Roses” scenario in which not only furniture and cars suffer, but also the couple themselves and their children.

To raise awareness of this serious issue, we wanted to do something in a humorous but careful manner — with a small, viral story: 16 eBay auctions and a video on YouTube. We hoped it would especially appeal to young people, who are at risk to be the warring couples of tomorrow.

Image via Twitter

FORWARD

This dramatic photo of the sky over Fenway Park shot to the top of Reddit on Tuesday, eventually becoming the most popular image on this site’s /r/pics page this week. Even more incredible than the photo itself, however, is the fact that it’s totally real.

Earlier this week, Deadspin posted a roundup of Fenway Park photos taken after Tuesday’s series of (later cancelled) tornado warnings in Boston, each one arguably more spectacular than the last.

Image via Twitter

DELETE

On Thursday, Twitter’s deceptively chaste photo-sharing account @SciencePorn posted the above image, attributing it to NASA’s Curiosity rover. That supposed origin, however, was debunked by Bad Astronomy author Phil Plait back in 2012.

As Plait pointed out then, the image shows a small “NE” in the bottom-left corner—a telltale sign that the image was rendered on a computer. From Slate:

Programs like Starry Night, SkySafari, and so on will put the cardinal directions (north, south, and so on) along the horizon to indicate what direction you’re looking. And many of them will display the appearance of the sky from other planets. It’s clear that’s what we have here: a rendered view from Mars using planetarium software.

Furthermore, Plait notes that such an incredible rover photo would be unlikely to come from NASA unnoticed.

“Thing is,” writes Plait, “had one of the rovers taken this picture, it would’ve been all over the web at the time.”

Image via Twitter//h/t @PicPedant

DELETE

Lastly, the long, dumb saga of the Kentucky Fried Rat finally reached its conclusion on Monday, when KFC announced that independent DNA testing had proven the alleged breaded rodent to be—surprise, surprise—a piece of goddamn chicken.

“The right thing for this customer to do is to apologize and cease making false claims about the KFC brand,” the not-rat retailer told the L.A. Times.

Image via Facebook

Kristin Cavallari, whose debut book is due out in 348 days, recently filmed a television show, according to Kristin Cavallari. To inform the public of this new venture, she posted a photo of herself standing next to a (Catholic?) church clutching her pregnant stomach on Instagram.

“Just finishing filming...” Kristin wrote in the caption. “Will let u know what show when I’m allowed to ;)”

What could it be? The outfit screams “Mad Men: The Next Generation.”

The flirty wink suggests porn.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

President Obama just finished delivering a eulogy for his late friend, state senator Clementa Pinckney, who was killed last week in Charleston. You should watch the entire thing.

“We are here today to remember a man of God who lived by faith,” Obama said as he began the speech before a crowd of approximately 5,000 people at the Charleston college arena. “Sometimes I think that’s the best thing to hope for...to just say somebody was a good man.”

Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer could not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group. The light of love that shone as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle. The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would respond when they saw him in court, in the midst of unspeakable grief, with words of forgiveness. He couldn’t imagine that.

During the 40-minute eulogy, Obama spoke frankly about race relations and gun control, saying, “It would be a betrayal of everything Reverend Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again.”

History can’t be a sword to justify injustice or a shield against progress, but must be a manual to avoid repeating mistakes of our past.

Relegating the Confederate flag—a symbol of “systemic oppression and racial subjugation”—to the past is part of that progress, he said.

For too long we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens. It’s true, a flag did not cause these murders. But as people from all walks of life, Republicans and Democrats now acknowledge — including Gov. Haley, whose recent eloquence on the subject is worthy of praise — we all have to acknowledge the flag has always represented more than just ancestral pride.

For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation. We see that now removing the flag from this state’s Capitol would not be an act of political correctness, it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers, it would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought, the cause of slavery, was wrong.

The imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people, was wrong. It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history. A modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds. It would be an expression of the amazing changes that have transformed this state and this country for the better because of the work of so many people of good will. People of all races striving to form a more perfect union. By taking down that flag we express God’s grace.

He ended the speech with a choir-backed rendition of “Amazing Grace” before reading the names of the nine victims, who he said “were living by faith when they died.”

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

After a New Jersey family says they were driven from their $1.3 million dream home by a demonic tormenter (or prankster) called “The Watcher,” we were surprised by how little anyone knew about the creepy culprit. After visiting the sleepy (haunted?) neighborhood, we know a little more.

According to a Broaddus family neighbor who claimed to have known the Woods family (who previously owned the house at 657 Boulevard and were recently named in a lawsuit by the current owners) the threatening Watcher letters were sent not from within Westfield, NJ but Newark. The neighbor, who said he was familiar with the Watcher’s notes through firsthand experiences with the Broaddus family and police interviews, added that they were sent via USPS and appeared to have been printed through a computer, as opposed to scarily handwritten.

“In my opinion the police did nothing,” he told me, echoing the sentiment of other neighbors (and Gawker commenters). “The police didn’t seem concerned.” Nearly a year later, the case remains open, and the identity of The Watcher entirely unresolved.

Know anything about The Watcher? Literally, anything, even crazy speculation? Send me an email.

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

During his emotional eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney this afternoon, President Obama addressed the need to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s capitol building. “For too long we were blind to the pain the Confederate flag stirred into many of our citizens,” the president said.

“It’s true a flag did not cause these murders,” Obama added. “But as people from all walks of life now acknowledge…the flag has always represented more than just ancestral pride. For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation. We see that now. Removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness. It would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought—the cause of slavery—was wrong.”

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

President Barack Obama closed his eulogy for his late friend, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney—who was gunned down last week by racist mass shooter Dylann Roof—by leading the crowd at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in singing “Amazing Grace.”

Before singing the hymn, Obama acknowledged the racist motivation behind the shooting, saying it “raises questions about a dark part of our history.” So does the Confederate flag, “a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation,” he added.

“By taking down that flag we express God’s grace. But I don’t think God wants us to stop there.”

If you see one film about a woman who can only orgasm when she sees her husband weeping, see Australian writer/director/actor Josh Lawson’s The Little Death. The anthology film intertwines stories about five fetishes—rape fantasy, role play, dacryphilia (arousal by crying), somnophilia (arousal by a person who is sleeping), and telephone scatologia (arousal from obscene phone calls)—in a playful, often hilarious manner. The scenarios tease out absurdity with cleverness (isn’t a rape fantasy a paradox, after all?). It all culminates with the knock-out final segment, “Sam & Monica,” in which a deaf man uses a Skype sign language interpretation service to call a phone-sex line. The three-way call segment is one of the most brilliant pieces of short-form filmmaking that I’ve ever seen.

Here are the first 10 minutes of The Little Death (writer/director Josh Lawson can be found in the first segment, playing “Paul”):

I love this movie, so I talked to Lawson by phone about it. What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of our conversation.

Gawker: It seems like you have a lot to say about a lot of fetishes.

Josh Lawson: You have to as a writer, you have to take a stand, for better or worse. The job of a writer isn’t to make you agree with him; it’s to say, “This is what I think, make up your own mind.” Now with that said, I was never really making any political statement, but this is my view on relationships and that’s the only way I can write: through my looking glass.

A slight political undercurrent that I detected, though, is that your characters discover what they’re into and then embrace it. They don’t freak out about who they are, they do what they must to make it work. Nobody ever says anything like, “There’s something wrong with me.”

That’s right. I never wanted to judge any of the characters or say, “You’re weird for having this fetish.” I’m sure people would look at what I’m into and go, “Well, you’re weird.” As long as we’re having consensual sexual encounters, we’re allowed to do this stuff. It’s a comedy after all, so I didn’t want it to be too much. There is a bit of self-shame from a few of the characters, and that does manifest itself in how they lie. Instead of saying, “This is what I am,” they deceive a little bit to get what they want instead of openly saying, “This is my fetish.” But ultimately, then, the lesson those characters learn, I think, is that it would have been better if you just said, “This is me.” The characters that do say, “This is me, this is my fetish,” I think they ultimately do have a more hopeful future than the ones who don’t.

Were there any fetishes you considered but ended up rejecting?

Oh yeah. There was at one point a fetish called dendrophilia, which is a sexual attraction to trees. I think I wrote up an entire story on that, but it just didn’t fit ultimately. It didn’t feel part of the bigger picture. That’s the only one that comes to mind. There were lots I made outlines of, but discarded before really delving into it.

Anthology films are hot right now—Wild Tales, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. Is it a coincidence that you’re joining the fold with The Little Death?

I wrote my first draft eight years ago. I’ve been trying to make it for that long. Is it a coincidence? Yeah, but there were always anthology films. They’ve always been around: Magnolia, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), Burning Palms…at least once a year, you’ll see a couple.

Was getting this movie made difficult?

Yeah, it was really difficult. It was my first film as director and a lot of people didn’t want to take that risk. So getting financing was really, really tough. And on the page, a lot of that material made people really nervous. People responded to the script a lot, but were like, “Sex is divisive.” But I don’t think the film is divisive. I think overwhelmingly it’s a positive experience for people. But it’s hard to know that when you’re reading it. It takes a great deal of faith to invest in a film. Even though this is a very low-budget film, it’s still a lot of money to someone. But yeah, I think we made the film that we wanted to make.

Were you forced to soften the movie anywhere along the process? It’s not very explicit.

No, I never tried to soften the approach. I just didn’t think going any more extreme than what it is added any value. I don’t know what nudity would have added. If anything, I think that might have taken away from the overall tone of the film and made it more jarring. I wanted it to feel like a smooth experience. But I didn’t pull any punches when it comes to the language. I felt like I was pretty explicit and candid with that.

Was there a particular reason why you didn’t include gay or queer story lines?

No. No political motivation behind that at all. Like I said, I wrote it eight years ago, I was in my early 20’s and these characters came out the way they did. The world has turned in the last eight years, and those sorts of stories are becoming much more prevalent. It’s awesome to see, but that just wasn’t, for whatever reason, the film I wrote. If I had written the film right now, I can say almost certainly one of the couples would be gay. Just for whatever reason, it wasn’t what came out of me. If there were to be a sequel, and I hope there is, I would definitely make sure it had a wider cross-section of sexualities and a more truthful look at middle-class suburbia.

Did perceived audience puritanism also play a role in the difficulty that you had getting this made?

I think there’s a real double standard. You can put movies out where people are getting murdered left, right, and center. Just blood everywhere with total disregard for life. Heads exploding. Just death death death death death. No one flinches. And yet, you have a conversation about sex onscreen and people get really nervous. I never get nervous talking about sex. I find it a really fascinating subject. I wish we did it more. I guess that’s one of the reasons I made the film: to try and open up more conversations about sex. Do people have negative reactions? Yeah, I’ve seen one or two. Overwhelmingly, I’ve found it to be a positive experience. When it comes to critics, it’s a mixed bag, but I certainly don’t make films for critics.

Being an American, I didn’t know anything about golliwogs, on which there is a thread throughout the film in the form of cookies. From what I gleaned from the movie, there’s a strong cultural association people have with them. A nostalgia almost.

It was a cookie in the ‘80s. At the time, as a little kid, I had no idea of the racial connotation. It was just a chocolate cookie. But I remember when they got discontinued and looking back going, “Oh my god, that was so offensive. I can’t believe how recently in Australia’s history that was even a thing.” But it’s something that a lot of Australians my age remember. I feel like it was a real turning point in Australia’s history where we were starting to really rapidly mature and starting to become international. That little island in the middle of nowhere needed to start growing up and getting with the times. So that’s part of the reason why it’s in there. It’s definitely in there to remind people of the embarrassing recent history of Australia.

Your final segment, “Sam & Monica,” plays at the end of the movie almost in its entirety, as opposed to being cut up and woven throughout like the other four story lines. It’s the ace in your pocket.

In any anthology film, you’re going to be like, “I like that one better than that one,” and, “I connect with this more because of who I am and where I am in my life.” “Sam & Monica” needed to be at the end because I felt like that was the great unifier. It was like no matter what your experience up until that point is in the film, we can all come together and get behind this young couple. That’s the empathy gene in human beings. We want to root for the good guy. That’s why stories work—we know who’s good and we know who’s bad and we want Sam and Monica to get together and have a beautiful experience. It was very important at the end of the film that we all got on the same page and had a beautiful, joyous, almost emotionally orgasmic experience.

To unify via a character with a disability also seems like a statement.

It just feels like a contemporary love story to me. In a way, everyone’s complicated. No matter how weird and wonderful we think we are, we all deserve love in a way that makes sense to us. I suppose it is affirming in that way, but for me it came from the story, the comedy first. Only after I came up with that did I start to construct who Sam was, who Monica was. Props to the actors, T.J. Power and Erin James. They made those characters even more beautiful.

The Little Death is in theaters and on demand today.

The slaughter of 28 people in the Tunisian tourist city of Sousse has yet to be directly attributed to ISIS, but given the extremist organization’s call for its followers to escalate their attacks during the holy month of Ramadan, it seems likely. Of course the response to Tunisia will be we must do more and where’s the Marines?, but lost in all of this might be accountability for what the United States is already up to. It is all over the continent—U.S. intelligence, diplomats and military personnel are scurrying and turning Africa into the latest theater of war. Whatever they are doing, it clearly didn’t prevent today’s attack, maybe because our African mission seems to be as concerned with ordering stationery and writing regulations as fighting terrorists directly or protecting civilians.

I’m not arguing that the U.S. military could or should do more, but I am asking what are they doing at all. And one might think that at least the “special operators” would be able to cut through the bureaucracy and achieve more than just kill the latest al Qaeda or ISIS number three; that there might be some benefit from their core pre-9/11 mission, which is building internal capacity.

But I’ve gotten a peek at the special operations annex to the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) Five Year plan and I’m still recovering from acronymic shock. The plan, prepared by the theater special operations entity called Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA), is more than 500 pages long, including chapters, appendices, sample orders and documentation, tables, glossaries, etc. Even here, even with the supposed elite, I smell a paper dragon.

The Five Year Plan is not a strategy. It’s not an operational plan. It’s not the actual “SOF Annual Deployment Schedule” that it makes abundant reference to. It is more a guidebook, a template, a manual that purports to lay out what the command might do between now and 2020. At the same time, it is completely divorced from the reality of either what U.S. national security strategy is, who is (or might be) president, or what the situation on the ground might demand, either on a country-by-country basis or in aggregate as a region.

The “plan” is meticulous, down to the specifications regarding everything from rules for vaccines to adhering to U.S. and international human rights policy. For any and each planned activity, it lays out the preparation of the requisite policy letters, Terms of Reference (TORs), Request for Deployment Orders (RDOs), MOIs, Letters of Instruction (LOIs), fact sheets, messages and After-Action Reports (AARs) addressing all deployment matters. This is the exhaustive and exhausting standard paperwork required for planning and operations.

I’ll just share with you some of the parameters of the activities and players, which in itself describes the frenzied crush that the drives the bureaucracy to master the new continent—well, new to the Pentagon.

Operations in Africa fall under one of two categories, theater-named operations and contingencies; and deployments. Named operations and contingencies include:

• Operation Enduring Freedom—Trans-Sahara (OEF-TS), the original war against al Qaeda and affiliated movements (AQAM); focus includes Ansar al Sharia in Tunisia (AAS-T) among its targets.
• Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), the original Djibouti-based post-9/11 al-Qaeda-oriented campaign focusing on Somalia and other countries in the region, but also including support for counter-piracy. “Combined” means the United States, Djibouti, and France.
• Operation Javelin Strike. (Got any idea what this is? Not the PACOM exercise; send us an Email).
  
• Operation Lion Archer. (Got any idea what this is? Send us an Email).
• Operation Objective Voice: “OPERATION OBJECTIVE VOICE (OOV), known previously as OPERATION ASSURED VOICE - AFRICA (OAV-A), is an operation that strikes at the heart of violent extremist efforts—ideology. OOV is a proactive effort where multiple agencies partner with African governments to broadcast messages to counter extremist propaganda. Military Information Support Teams, in conjunction with DOS public diplomacy, have demonstrated success in several countries including Nigeria, Mali, and Kenya. We continue to work with participating nations, Embassy Country Teams, and DOS to enhance this program.”
• Operation Odyssey Dawn (and the NATO Operation Unified Protector).
• Operation Onward Liberty: United States’ support to the government of Liberia.
• Operation Trident Reach/Ocean Look.
• Operation Trident Reach II. (Got any idea what this is? Send us an Email.)
  

• Operation Tusker Sand: Reconnaissance operations reportedly aimed at locating Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony.
• Operation Creek Sand: air operations in Mali.

• The integrated survey program (ISP), a special operations red-team that assesses the security of U.S. government facilities in Africa.
• Emergency non-combatant evacuation (NEO) operations.
• Contingency support beyond NEO.
• Foreign internal defense (FID).
• Crisis military operations in support of failed governments as directed by the President of the United States.
• Unilateral (UNIL) operations.

Deployments include:

• Security Force Assistance (SFA).
• Counter Narco-Terrorism (CNT), which really means counter-drug operations coordinated with host-nation forces and agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
• Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET).
• Medical Readiness Training Exercise (MEDRETE).
• Organized (regular) bilateral and multilateral exercises (e.g., African Lion, Judicious Response, Phoenix Express).
• 1208 projects (Assistance for Forces Assisting the U.S. Combat Terrorism under the National Defense Authorization Act).

“Al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and other extremist organizations are using wide and multiple areas of Africa, particularly from northern Mali to southern Libya, as safe havens in order to train and funnel troops and funding and launch attacks against various targets throughout Africa. They then return to those safe havens to rest, refit and re-equip. Is special operations uniquely qualified to capitalize on its Title 10 authorities such as counterterrorism, direct action and FID to control, manage and/or dismantle those sanctuaries? If so, how and what skills would be most effective?”

Special Operations Research Topics 2015

Every operation and deployment has to be coordinated with a set of at least a couple of dozen entities, which gives some sense of the paperwork of war:

• The Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon.
• Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Florida and Washington.
• Department of the Army and the other service departments.
• USAFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany; and its subordinate components (AFAF (Air Force), USARAF (Army), NAVAF (Navy), MARFORAF (Marine Corps), and CJTF-HOA).
• Military Group (MILGP)/Country Teams at the Embassy level.
• USAID representatives at the country level and in Washington.
• The service special operations commands and entities that have responsibilities in Africa, including AFSOC (Air Force), NAVSPECWARCOM (Navy), USASOC (Army), USASFC (Army), and MARSOC (Marine Corps).

“The threat of al-Qaeda and other groups remains an area of concern for the U.S. and its allies around the world. The reach of al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks can now be found not only in the U.S. Central Command AOR, but expanding into the U.S. Africa Command AOR as well. In particular, there is concern for militant groups operating in eastern Central African Republic, Northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, South Sudan, and Sudan, including their operating areas, membership, ideology, and smuggling routes. Additionally, research in the area should include those territories that are transitioning to Sharia Law.”

Special Operations Research Topics 2015

The specific units that operate in support of SOCAFRICA when it is conducted either operations or deployments (and have regular Africa-related missions), include:

• Naval Special Warfare Group 2 (NSWG-2), NSWG-10, and Naval Special Warfare Unit 10 (NSWU-10)
• 19th & 20^th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
• C-2/10th SFG(A)
• 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR)
• 16^th Special Operations Wing (SOW)
• 720^th Special Tactics Group (STG)
• 6th Special Operations Squadron (SOS)
• 75th Ranger Regiment

AFRICOM now has a command presence in 33 countries, and operates 17 Offices of Security Cooperation (OSCs), each responsible for coordinating and fostering bilateral activities with host nations. There is also one Security Assistance Office, and three permanent Liaison Officers in unnamed countries. It’s all so organized, one might even believe we have a clue what we are doing there.

[Top photo courtesy of Department of Defense. Second and third photos courtesy of AP. All other imagery obtained by author.]

You can contact me at william.arkin@gawker.com, and follow us on Twitter at @gawkerphasezero. If you are into the theater of being underground, you can anonymously deliver tips through Gawker Media SecureDrop.

Couples, gay and straight, can get married anywhere in the country now—anywhere, that is, except Pike County, Alabama, where one judge was apparently so perturbed by the landmark Supreme Court ruling that he pulled the plug on weddings all together .

Wes Allen, the probate judge in charge of issuing marriage licenses when he’s not quoting scripture on Twitter, did not explain whether he merely wants to prevent gay people from marrying or whether his is a more general issue with love and happiness and cake.

Allen’s Pyrrhic victory, via the New York Times:

The Supreme Court’s decision, Judge Allen said, had not voided a provision of Alabama law that says “marriage licenses may be issued by the judges of probate” in the state.

“The word ‘may’ provides probate judges with the option of whether or not to engage in the practice of issuing marriage licenses,” Judge Allen said, ‘and I have chosen not to perform that function.”

I don’t want to point fingers here, but someone’s definitely not getting any plus ones when all this nonsense is sorted out.

Hope it feels good.

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

According to reports, escaped convict Richard Matt was just shot near Malone, New York and may be dead. He was free for almost three weeks.

The Buffalo News quotes a source who says authorities caught up to Matt Friday afternoon before exchanging gunfire around 4 p.m. It’s still unclear if the second convict, David Sweat, was with him at the time.

According to the Times, he was cornered in a “remote terrain” in Franklin County, not far from where authorities discovered his DNA in two different hunting cabins. CBS says he was about 40 miles away from the prison.

Update 4:30 p.m.

Matt is reportedly dead.

Richard Matt, one of the Clinton prison escapees, has been shot and killed. http://t.co/MdBbRrEbgl

June 26, 2015

According to CNN, authorities are “still pursuing” David Sweat.

Update 5:20 p.m.

Matt was apparently attempting to carjack a camper when authorities caught up to him. According to CNN, Matt shot at the driver, who called 911.

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.