According to The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, Doug has died. He was 85.

[Image via The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead]

Whoa, @DDLovato. What do you think of the star's latest look: Hit or miss? http://t.co/NxVJVjSHVD pic.twitter.com/Fs2GDvssbZ

July 2, 2015

NASCAR effectively revised its prior stance on the Confederate flag today, where the series wouldn’t allow the stars and bars to fly in any official capacity, but would permit fans to fly it as they please. Now the series’ tracks have banded together in asking fans not to fly it at all.

A statement released today emphasized the need to ensure NASCAR is a welcoming environment for all, including those who associate the flag with racism:

To do that, we are asking our fans and partners to join us in a renewed effort to create an all-inclusive, even more welcoming atmosphere for all who attend our events. This will include the request to refrain from displaying the Confederate Flag at our facilities and NASCAR events.

It is unclear if or how this request will be enforced, however, the message from the series is clear. Both the International Speedway Corporation and Speedway Motorsports, Inc., the two companies who control most of NASCAR’s tracks, signed the statement along with numerous other tracks on the NASCAR calendar.

This may not come as a surprise given NASCAR chairman Brian France’s statement on the Confederate flag this Sunday, where he reiterated the series’ official stance as well as hinted at possible changes in the future in regards to the parts of the race weekend that NASCAR doesn’t control.

“We have been clear in support of this position throughout our industry and to those across the country who have called for the eradication of the Confederate Flag,” France explained. “We will be as aggressive as possible to disassociate NASCAR events from an offensive and divisive symbol. We are working with the industry right now to achieve that goal.”

For now, how the industry discourages the fans from displaying the Confederate flag seems to be left up to individual tracks to enforce.

As for this weekend’s Coke Zero 400 at Daytona, the last statement from the Florida track said that they would permit fans to fly whatever they wanted. However, the Wall Street Journal reports that a flag exchange would be offered for those fans who wished to trade their Confederate flags in for new American ones.

“We want to have an event open and inclusive of everyone,” Daytona President Joie Chitwood told the Wall Street Journal. “Celebrating our nation’s birthday, we thought this was the best thing to do.”

Chitwood explained that change needed to happen, but the track neede to be “thoughtful on how we get there.” The Confederate flag is still a staple at fans’ campsites throughout the South, and many fans associate the flag with their own regional identity as opposed to any racist sentiments.

NASCAR and its track partners, however, want to nudge fans into being more considerate of others who may view the flag in a different, more menacing light.

Photo credit: AP Images

Contact the author at stef.schrader@jalopnik.com.

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Today, Honduran-American actor America Ferrera expressed her gratitude to Asshole-American Donald Trump in the form of an open letter, thanking the odious toilet-man for “igniting a fire” in the Latino community with his recent, incredibly racist comments about Mexican immigrants.http://gawker.com/a-comprehensiv...

“You see, what you just did with your straight talk was send more Latino voters to the polls than several registration rallies combined! Thank you for that,” wrote the Ugly Betty star on The Huffington Post’s Latino Voices blog Thursday. “Remarks like yours will serve brilliantly to energize Latino voters and increase turnout on election day against you and any other candidate who runs on a platform of hateful rhetoric.”

Ferrera went on to explain that “racist remarks that play to extremists” would do little to change the nation’s progressive trajectory, likely only accelerating the arrival of the purported bilingual apocalypse. From The Huffington Post:

Thank you for reminding us that there remains an antiquated and endangered species of bigots in this country that we must continue to combat. Thank you for reminding us to not sit complacently at home on election day, but to run to the polls and proclaim that there is no place for your brand of racial politicking in our government. Thank you for sending out the rallying cry.

You have made your thoughts on the Latino community clear and you continue to stand by them. And in return, we will do more than tweet about our indignation and beat piñatas of your likeness. We will silence you at the polls. We will vote and use our growing position in U.S. politics. Our fellow Americans who understand and value our contributions will join us. We know there is nothing that scares you more.

“Keep it up!” Ferrera closed the letter. “Sincerely, America.”

[Image via Getty Images]

Manhattan eatery Per Se—named the best restaurant in the city by The New York Times and the third most expensive restaurant in the world by The Daily Meal—has agreed to pay waitstaff $500,000 for allegedly withholding money from workers that a “reasonable patron” would consider to be tips, Reuters reports.http://gawker.com/new-york-s-bes...

“Today’s agreement ensures that workers at Per Se will not continue to be cheated out of their hard-earned tips — tips that customers intended for them,” Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said in a statement Thursday. “And it reaffirms the right of satisfied restaurant-goers not to be misled about whether a ‘service charge’ is actually paid to workers as a tip, which the law requires.”

According to state investigators, Per Se violated New York labor laws by misrepresenting a 20% operational fee as a gratuity charge. From The New York Times:

The violations at Per Se, which lasted from January 2011 to September 2012, center on the language the restaurant used on bills for private dining events to describe an additional 20 percent charge. Per Se called it a “service charge,” terminology that could lead customers to believe it represented a tip for employees. The restaurant also told some customers who inquired that the extra charge was a gratuity, the attorney general’s office said.

In fact, the agreement said, Per Se used the money “towards the operational revenue of the restaurant.”

In doing so, the restaurant violated a state labor law that bars restaurants from collecting mandatory service charges that are purported to be tips for service staff members.

In a statement, Per Se denied underpaying its staff.

“Our employees were never short-changed and no monies intended for employees were withheld,” said the restaurant. “Our employees are among the best compensated in the restaurant industry because they are the best in the business.”

[Image via Wikimedia User Gwernol]

If you tried to visit r/IAmA (one of Reddit’s biggest subs) recently, you were probably greeted by the image above. And if you’ve been absolutely anywhere else on the site at all in the past few hours, you probably noticed that everyone is flipping their collective shit over speculation that Victoria Taylor, the high-profile coordinator that kept IAmA afloat, was suddenly and mysteriously fired. Also, something about Jesse Jackson.

What’s actually going on?

In addition to being one of the internet’s premier incubators for racism and bigotry of all sorts, Reddit is also perhaps best known for its AmAs (otherwise known as “Ask Me Anything”)—in which people with varying degrees of celebrity will come and answer questions for the masses to see. Coordinating and verifying all those celebrities takes a massive amount of work, which is why Victoria Taylor, the site’s Director of Talent, seems to have been so immensely beloved by the site’s many, voluntary moderators—she was good.

Apparently, where other Reddit “admins” (read: actual, paid Reddit employees) usually brush off moderators’ questions and concerns, Taylor seemed to have a reputation for actually giving a shit. When asked why r/AmA had gone private, one of the subreddit’s mods, karmanaut, explained:

And as AmA mod brownboy13 said in response to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s attempts to defuse the situation:

To be honest, this is just wrong. I don’t think you were still involved with Reddit when we started getting very very popular and had a regular stream of celebrity AMAs incoming. We didn’t have the ability or resources to walk them through it, or to schedule AMAs, or provide any other form of support.

/r/IAmA limped along without her. We managed to move from fire to fire and had some truly poor quality posts from people who didn’t understand Reddit or what the AMA format was all about. Woody Harrelson, of course, is the prime example. Another would be the fake Emilia Clarke AMA that blew up and everyone thought was real until her manager personally contacted us to tell us that it was wrong. And it translates into bad press for Redditwhen that happens.

The subreddit is going to continue to grow by what, 7 or 8 thousand users per day? By saying that we’re returning to the pre-Victoria status quo, you’re admitting that you’re shooting us in the leg but still expecting us to run the same speed. We can’t do that.

---

And frankly, interactions with other Reddit admins have not been amazing. We’re constantly ignored by the community team even when discussing serious issues that need some admin resolution. And as someone else already pointed out, one of the main times that we relied on the general admin team to set up and run an AMA, it was a clusterfuck: Morgan Freeman. Because no one thought to get clear proof that it was really him. Victoria wouldn’t make that mistake.

Its not just moderators for that specific subreddit, though. Taylor’s loss is apparently having ripple effects over major portions of the site. One r/Science moderator (another of the site’s biggest subreddits) even threatened to shut that down over the unexplained loss:

I fully support this decision to shut down /r/IAmA, letting Victoria go is a slap.

To back this up, I am the mod in /r/science that organizes all of the science AMAs, and I am going to have meaningful problems in the /r/Science AMAs, Victoria was the only line of communication with the admins. If someone wants to get analytics for an AMA the answer will be “Sorry, I can’t help.”

Dropping this on all of us in the AMA sphere feels like an enormous slap to those of us who put in massive amounts of time to bring quality content to reddit.

I personally feel like shutting /r/science down as well, that’s how much of a bad taste this leaves.

And this is just the latest in the recent string of Redditor revolts. Granted, most recently the issue was the Nazi-themed protests in response to the banning of five, small, particularly toxic subreddits—but regardless, tensions are high.

Compounding the issue is the fact that, other than Ellen Pao, Reddit’s almost universally user-despised interim CEO (due to the fact that she does actually enforce the site’s new harassment policy), Taylor was one of the only visible women playing any sort of key role in the company.

While Reddit declined to comment to Gawker on the circumstances surrounding her leaving, we do know that she certainly wasn’t expecting it. In a thread requesting some sort of comment from her, Taylor responded saying that she was “dazed.”

Why is Victoria Taylor out?

There are two possibilities that seem likely at this point. The first being that Reddit had announced months ago that it would start requiring its employees to relocate to San Francisco. Taylor is currently living in New York.

The second (and my favorite) theory:

So the current rumor is Jesse Jackson's AMA led to Victoria being fired at Reddit, and this shitstorm starting up.Unconfirmed, of course.

July 3, 2015

Yes.

Yesterday, Jesse Jackson hosted an AMA that went absolutely to shit. Jackson seemed to be providing arbitrary answers to questions that had never been asked, regardless of what he was responding to. When asked “What are some things that the average African-American can do to help reduce racial tensions in his area?” Jackson wrote three, non-sensical paragraphs that started with “Well, the source of those tensions often come from denial of an even playing field. You know, we are very good at athletics.”

One particularly vicious post asked, “My question is simple; how is your relationship with the illegitimate child you fathered in 1998 while cheating on your wife? Bonus question: How much money have you extorted from various people and companies over the years of practicing your shakedown scheme? Do you think Al Capone would be jealous of your business model if he were still alive?” To which Jackson offered:

Which, though an absolute and utter mess, isn’t necessarily Taylor’s fault, so it doesn’t seem like a fireable offense in itself—although the timing does raise an eyebrow.

Either way, Taylor has yet to make any substantial statement on her apparent dismissal, but if you have any more information about what the hell is going on over at Reddit, you can send me an email here.

Update 10:15pm:

As of right now, the following default (i.e. major) subreddits have shut down, according to Reddit user Greypo, “in protest of the admins’ lack of communication with the moderators and ignoring their opinions, ideas, and requests. The firing of Victoria was the catalyst.”

• /r/Art
  
• /r/AskReddit
  
• /r/books
  
• /r/gadgets
  
• /r/gaming
  
• /r/history
  
• /r/IAmA
  
• /r/LifeProTips
  
• /r/movies
  
• /r/Music
• /r/videos
  
• /r/Jokes
• /r/Documentaries
• /r/listentothis
• /r/pics
• /r/dataisbeautiful
• /r/TodayILearned

We’ll update this list periodically, but you can see a more complete list (including non-default subreddits) here.

Update 12:10am:

To the three subscribers of /r/sexwithbears, we are so sorry for your loss.

Update 1:42am:

An image of what is allegedly a now-deleted post on Quora from Marc Bodnick, the site’s Business and Community Leader, has been making its way around Reddit:

I’ve reached out to Bodnick for confirmation, but it certainly seems like the most plausible explanation so far.

Now, at this time, we would like to also extend our condolences to the bereaved members of /r/TreesSuckingOnThings.

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

On Thursday, state health officials announced that a Washington woman has died of measles, becoming the first American to be killed by the disease since 2003, the Associated Press reports.

In their announcement, the Washington State Department of Health said the woman presented few of the disease’s common symptoms and her infection was only discovered upon autopsy. From USA Today:

The woman was probably exposed to measles at a medical facility during a measles outbreak this spring, according to the health department. She was at the hospital at the same time as a patient who later developed a rash and was diagnosed with measles. Patients with measles can spread the virus even before showing symptoms.

The woman, who died of pneumonia, had other health conditions and was taking medications that suppressed her immune system, the health department said.

“This tragic situation illustrates the importance of immunizing as many people as possible to provide a high level of community protection against measles,” said department spokesman Donn Moyer in a statement. “People with compromised immune systems often cannot be vaccinated against measles. Even when vaccinated, they may not have a good immune response when exposed to disease; they may be especially vulnerable to disease outbreaks.”

[Image via AP Images]

A lawsuit filed last month in Miami-Dade County court alleges a woman suffered serious and permanent injuries after being attacked by a fake shark during a 2013 Miami Marlins game. The Marlins, like most shitty (and a few good) teams, hold a mascot race between innings in a futile attempt to distract fans from the putrid baseball being played upon their diamond. Beth Fedornak claims one of these mascots, a shark, bit her on the head and caused permanent, serious damage to her neck, back and extremities.

Fedonrak states these injuries have impaired her ability to work and that she is seeking damages based on the Marlins’ alleged negligence. Read the suit below.

[New Times]

Hours after authorities announced that all 187 passengers and crew members aboard a ferry that capsized in the Philippines had been accounted for, rescuers recovered five more bodies, the Associated Press reports. This brings the death toll to 50.

The M/B Kim Nirvana, a 36-ton wooden vessel, flipped in rough waters off Ormoc City on Thursday. According to the AP, the bodies were discovered on Friday as a floating crane pulled ferry to shore, Commander Armand Balilo said.

Balilo said that the unexpected bodies raised questions about the number of people who had actually been on board when the ferry capsized. CNN reports that, according to Philippine Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Ganet, the ferry, when it flipped, was barely 200 meters from shore.

The captain and some of the crew are reportedly in custody, pending an investigation. “Among the things we will look into is if there was a faulty maneuver, the stability of the vessel, and of course the weather,” Balilo said.

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

The MMA gods can go fuck themselves.

Jose Aldo vs Conor McGregor was supposed to be the biggest fight in UFC history, and it had the makings of something that would actually deliver. A volcanic rivalry between a shit-talking Irish hothead and a stoic Brazilian badass? Check. Two fighters with exciting, crowd-pleasing styles? Check. Characters who felt larger than life, like embodiments of their respective homelands—stuff of Rocky-style flag-on-the-back legend? Check.

After months of build-up—a hype machine in overdrive, cylinders churning away to create the most expensive marketing campaign the UFC’s ever undertaken—it all went down the toilet this week. The injury bug bit Aldo, and it bit him hard. He had to pull out of the fight at the last possible second. Worse, there’s a good chance that this fight—which UFC president Dana White thought would be “everything Mayweather vs. Pacquiao was not”—is permanently ruined. I’m gonna recount how we got here and explain why the future isn’t exactly looking bright.

OK, so why is this fight such a big deal?

The short version? Conor McGregor. He made it a big deal.

Conor “The Notorious” McGregor burst onto the UFC scene after making a name for himself in Ireland’s regional MMA circuit. He’s a crafty knockout machine with a weird stance (that’s almost reminiscent of the old-timey boxing style people like to joke about these days) and dynamite in his fists. He mixes strong fundamentals with wild capoeira kicks and other showy techniques. Fightland’s Jack Slack did an excellent breakdown of his unorthodox style.

Seriously, watch this shit:

But that’s only half the equation—and a startlingly small half at that.

McGregor can talk. He wields the mic like a goddamn scepter, like it was made to fit his holy palm, to guide his conquest. Other MMA fighters, they tend to say an extremely narrow, often boring range of things. “I trained really hard for this fight. I’m in the best shape of my life. I really respect my opponent, but you know I just think it’s my night. And I have to win, because I have a wife and a kid and maybe a sports car that I haven’t fully paid off yet.”

That right there? That is 95 percent of all MMA interviews. I follow this stuff obsessively, and sometimes it is boring as shit. That’s kinda the sport’s dark secret: these dudes and ladies who punch each other in the face for a living—one of the most extreme careers on Earth—are total snoozers as people. The UFC works incredibly hard to play up rivalries, but they usually come off as forced, inauthentic.

“I like to look good and whoop ass. It’s what I do best.”

Combat sports thrive on characters. Hell, professional wrestling decided to throw out real combat altogether and become a character factory. But boxing and MMA, they need people who can walk the walk and talk the talk. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, flow like a poet. Or at least a marginally clever human.

That’s McGregor. Widely acknowledged as MMA’s best trash talker, he’s the complete package. He’s looked untouchable in all his UFC fights (admittedly against some less-than-stellar competition) and he makes even the smallest verbal clash look like goddamn World War III. I mean, listen to this dude go:

If you can think of an even slightly high-profile UFC fighter, odds are, McGregor’s talked trash about them. After only a few fights in the UFC, all anyone could talk about was McGregor. Every ad was McGregor. Every headline was McGregor. Every guest appearance was McGregor.

He strolled into the UFC, and he livened the place up. This during a time when the UFC badly needed new star power, especially after losing the likes of Georges St-Pierre and Brock Lesnar.

Big whoop. What makes his trash talk any more interesting than any other jerk’s?

There’s a slightly mythical quality about him. For one, he’s got the whole nation of Ireland in his corner—that definitely helps—but he also talks all this new age-y shit about balance and movement and artistry. He’s deep, man. Or at least, he acts like he is, and he sells it extremely well. Case in point, this video from Fightland:

Despite tipping the scales at a scant 145 lbs, he seems larger than life. That’s backed up by his tendency to predict how and when his fights will end. And in a startling number of cases, he’s been right. He’s called knockout after knockout, right down to the round.

So he’s got the Irish crowd—previously lacking an MMA hometown hero—literally screaming his praises at the top of their lungs, and he preaches like he ate the ghost of The Old Warrior Spirit. At this point, the folk hero aura is so pervasive that Sinead O’Connor is gonna sing McGregor into the ring at UFC 189 with a famous Irish folk song.

Don’t fights usually involve more than one person?

Right, I was getting to that. So in one corner you have McGregor, the wild-eyed Irish phenomenon. In the other, you have Jose Aldo, the UFC’s reigning featherweight (145 lbs) king since the title was invented in 2011. In case you hadn’t guessed it, he’s a monster.

Considered by some to be the top pound-for-pound MMA fighter on Earth, Aldo has destroyed countless top tier challengers with relative ease. He has, in some cases, looked almost human in the octagon (he used to be prone to getting tired as fights wore on), but his striking is dynamic as it is devastating. Watch:

Dude is scary. A former soccer player, you do not want him to kick you in the legs—or anywhere, for that matter. He once reduced ex-WEC champ Urijah Faber to literally crawling at him, a whimpering puddle of sweat and blood. He kicked the poor guy’s legs so much that he couldn’t stand anymore. It was a terrifying display of dominance, and a signal of things to come. For years and years and years.

Wow, why hadn’t I heard much about him before?

Because, like many UFC fighters, he’s not all that interesting of a person. He’s generally quiet and respectful, if a bit arrogant. He’s also champ in a lighter weight class, which generally have a harder time gaining traction (which sounds more interesting to you: small people punching each other or giants punching each other?). He just didn’t have that crossover appeal. It took McGregor to bring it out of him.

What’s their rivalry like? Why is it so special?

Oh the dynamic they have. McGregor pushes and pushes and pushes. Every time he can say something snide, he does. Every time he can throw Aldo off his game, he goes for it. At first Aldo attempted to remain stoic, unflappable in the face of The God-King Of Flapping. After Aldo won a massive victory over number two featherweight Chad Mendes in what many consider to be last year’s best fight, he coined a now-famous line in reference to McGregor as his next challenger:

“I think the court is complete,” he said to a blaring audience during his post-fight interview. “I’m the king, Chad’s the prince, and now we have a joker.”

McGregor, in turn, amped up his antics even more. After a decisive knockout win over German kickboxer Dennis Siver, McGregor leaped out of the cage and tore into the crowd, straight to where Aldo was seated. This was the result:

McGregor screaming, Aldo laughing. One of the most iconic images in this fight’s entire build-up.

But that, as it turned out, was only the beginning.

I am spellbound by this tale of a strange yelling man and a dude with a cool facial scar. Keep going.

Thanks! So anyway, earlier this year the UFC did something it’s never done before: a ten-stop multi-country world tour to build up the fight. This meant two things: 1) more people than ever would know about this fight and its ramifications, and 2) McGregor and Aldo would be in relatively close quarters for more than a week. The latter took this wacky odyssey from great to amazing.

The UFC does this cool series called “Embedded” where they follow fighters around for set periods of time, usually in the weeks leading up to a fight. Here, however, they did it during a promotional tour, and they got so much gold. McGregor pestered Aldo like a hummingbird with the roar of a lion. Poking, prodding, yelling, laughing, almost as if he’d already beaten Aldo in the ring. Day in and day out, he wore away at Aldo’s resolve. The once stoic Brazilian couldn’t keep up his facade. He got angry. He got emotional. He got tired. McGregor even won over portions of the Brazilian crowd—Aldo’s beloved home country—and held it over Aldo’s head every chance he got. Aldo did his best to keep up, but he could hardly get a word in edge-wise.

And then McGregor started messing with Aldo’s championship belt, and things... escalated.

You might think McGregor seems like kind of a complete asshole, and you’re right. Some people love him, others despise him. But no one can look away.

This sounds amazing. So what happened? Why did the fight get called off?

After the promotional tour, Aldo and McGregor returned to their respective homelands to train for the big fight in July. (And then McGregor temporarily relocated to Las Vegas to train from a mansion, but that’s A Whole Other Thing.) The UFC plastered all their events with ads for Aldo vs McGregor, and everything seemed to be going according to plan. People were amped about this fight. I got a text from my dad about McGregor. My dad doesn’t watch fights at all, but he wanted to know more.

And then, a couple weeks from the day of the fight, disaster struck. Aldo injured his rib in training. Initially, there was debate over whether it was bruised or fractured, and whether Aldo would be able to resume training after a few days of rest. But I mean, look at that injury. Gnarly, right? And all indications point to it feeling even worse. Rib injuries like that make breathing, walking, and even lying down excruciatingly painful—even for seemingly invincible man machines who get punched in the face for a living. So Aldo pulled out of the fight, promising to return once he’s all healed up.

Anticlimax, thy name is UFC 189.

grieving pic.twitter.com/TwWm00h2WU

July 1, 2015

That sucks, but they can just duke it out later, right?

Maybe. And it’s a big maybe.

See, McGregor is still fighting at UFC 189. He’s just dealing with a last-second opponent switch.

Now he’s facing Chad Mendes, who you’ll remember Aldo defeated in a barn-burner of a battle late last year. Thing is, Mendes is a completely different type of fighter than Aldo. Where Aldo is largely a striker—someone who can be extremely proficient on the ground but prefers to keep things standing—Mendes is a musclebound wrestle mountain. His takedowns hit people like freight trains driven by The Incredible Hulk, and once he’s got you down, he keeps you there. Then he rains down punches, and after that, it’s often lights out.

There’s a saying in MMA: “styles make fights.” Certain fighters match up better with certain styles than others. McGregor has embarrassed pretty much every striker he’s faced, but his ground game remains a giant question mark. Worse, his only losses (admittedly in the distant past) have come on the ground, by way of submission.

So here’s the situation: McGregor spent months preparing to fight a striker—possibly neglecting his takedown and submission defense in favor of devoting more time to punches, kicks, counters, and the like—and then had the rug pulled out from under him this week. He’s now got only a handful of days to prepare for Mendes, a monster in his own right, the dude who gave Aldo the biggest test of his entire career. And some of that valuable time—those precious flecks of sand in the hourglass—are being used up on more promotional efforts, something I was worried was taking away from McGregor’s training time even before the Mendes swap happened.

Much as I’d like to see McGregor get the win and storm back into contention against Aldo, his chances don’t look great.

What happens if McGregor loses to Mendes?

I don’t think the McGregor-Aldo fight would lose all of its steam, but it’d lose a hell of a lot of it. McGregor’s sauntered through the UFC like he owns it. If Mendes beats him in lopsided fashion, a part of his larger-than-life mystique will evaporate into thin air. He’ll have to work damn hard to get it back.

In more tangible terms, it also means there’d be no reason for McGregor to fight Aldo at all in the near future. His title shot would go down the drain, and he’d have to earn it back with another win or two. Meanwhile, Mendes and Aldo would fight again, which might throw things even further into disarray. And all the while, memories of McGregor and Aldo’s rivalry for the ages would fade, a shadow of a husk of a distant memory.

Damn.

Yeah.

But what if McGregor wins?

Presumably, he’d then fight Aldo sometime later this year, but that all depends on how long it takes Aldo to get better. Also, there’s always a chance Aldo will get injured again. He’s a bit injury prone, as it turns out.

However, if all goes according to plan, the end result might actually benefit. Some people feel like McGregor didn’t really earn his title shot, and beating Mendes would destroy all doubt. It might be tough for the UFC to get hype levels back to where they were before Aldo got injured, but their fight would still be A Big Deal.

So I should be rooting for McGregor, then?

Yeah, unless you just really don’t like the guy and want to see him get his clock cleaned, thrown to the floor, and busted into shards so tiny that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will say, “Fuck this. Just go ahead and behead me.” I could understand that. McGregor’s a polarizing figure.

You still seem kinda down. Is there any real bright side here?

Well, I mean, one way or another McGregor was gonna face Mendes someday. They’re both near the top of their weight class. Also, Mendes and McGregor don’t like each other much either, so they’ve got a pseudo-longstanding rivalry going. It’s nothing like the special hatebond shared between Aldo and McGregor, but still, moments like this interview (from late last year) were fun:

The UFC’s already started an Embedded series focused on UFC 189, and the fight doesn’t happen until July 11th. If we get an episode every day until then, there’s room for a fun, if truncated build-up here. Will it lead to the biggest fight in UFC history? No.

But it’ll be another episode of The Conor McGregor Show, and so far every episode has been gold. McGregor loves his hyperbole, but perhaps there’s a degree of truth to what he said in a recent media call about the Mendes fight:

“People are showing up to see me,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s Jose or Chad. I mean, it would have been nice if Jose didn’t pussy out, but we’ll take the substitute. We’ll take the B-level guy, and we’ll still break records with this.”

To contact the author of this post, write to nathan.grayson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @vahn16.

There is, among a particular cohort of New York City transplants, a belief that we hold dear. It is entirely based on our collective upbringing in a coastal city, small town, or neighborhood not named Manhattan, Brooklyn, or whatever other boroughs make up this fair metropolis. This belief: New York City-area beaches are not real beaches.

Or, put another way: New York City beaches are, literally and metaphorically, trash.

Weeks ago, as the promise of summer drew near, I shared this sentiment with coworkers, many of whom disagreed. “Coney Island is the quintessential beach of the American working class,” one coworker replied. “Accessible and open to immigrants and working people for generations.”

But this is exactly what makes Coney Island, like so many of its sister beaches, terrible; it is overrun with germ-infested kids, panhandlers with ill intent, street performers with little talent, and pot-bellied New Yorkers with mango skin the texture of leather who caution, “It didn’t always used to to be this way. It wasn’t always this bad.”

Do not believe them. It has always been this way.

Ok, sure: Coney Island, Fort Tilden, Rockaway, Orchard, Jones, and Jacob Riis are all beaches in that they contain sand and border an ocean or large body of water. Yet beyond these qualifications, I wouldn’t call these oases of bacteria much of anything.

According to the most recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, New York’s overall beachwater quality ranks 20th out of 30 states. Despite a small improvement from 2013, 20 out of 30 (or 67 percent) is still a failing grade. And yet these beaches remain open and free to the public.

The Welcome to New York brochure should read: From our wonderful rides and world-famous beach, visit beautiful Coney Island. The water is contaminated but don’t worry; that’s just part of the gritty New York experience. You’ll love it!

Here is something else to consider: Last July, Alex Williams, writing for the New York Times, christened Fort Tilden everything but a beach. The writer labeled the Queens waterfront “remote, graffiti-scarred and a bit industrial; in short, it’s Bushwick by the sea.” This was meant to be a compliment. It is not.

“Part of the charm is its ruins,” Williams continued, perhaps unaware of the irony contained in the sentences he’d just written, “hollowed-out military buildings and machine shops from its Army days. Fort Tilden is beautiful in the complicated way that Detroit is. It’s a ‘Mad Max’ aesthetic that feels like home to the average L train denizen.” Maybe I’m old fashioned, but labeling a beach “Bushwick by the sea” with a “Mad Max aesthetic” doesn’t make me want to visit.

All of which brings me to my main point: an authentic beach experience offers more than visual (half-naked bodies) or emotional (surfing) sensation—even if “charming” ruins is your thing. Real beaches provide escape, whether by illusion (Miami) or access (the Seychelles). Here in New York City, our proximity to the city denies us this pleasure.

It does not matter which New York City-area beach you journey to, whether alone or with a group, because the reality of what awaits upon your return—work, school, kids!—never fully dislodges from memory. Maybe this dread is triggered by the sight of the city’s skyline, buildings which, no matter the distance, always seem to tower somewhere in the horizon, or the realization that you are only a subway ride away from the real world: emails, chores, and a pile of bills. These thoughts, which gnaw at your sun-soaked joy, are not so easily suppressed. You see the illusion for what it is: a false, man-made paradise.

This is not true of beaches beyond the reach of de Blasio’s walled megacity. From the crystal blue waters and pillowy sands of Del Mar or Coronado in San Diego to the vibrant colors of Ipanema in Brazil, a real beach allows for complete immersion with your surroundings. These places, and those similar to it, grant beach-goers true escape: they unburden the mind, and free it of daily anxieties. This euphoric state of being, which is impossible to achieve at a New York City-area beach, is brought on by the feeling of true detachment. A lot of it, too, has to do with the fact that these beaches, unlike in New York City, are subject to ideal weather conditions year round. They were always meant to, and will always, be beaches. Whereas in 30 years, Rockaway and Fort Tilden will be blanketed in 50-story residential condominiums that offer “beach amenities,” which is code word for an in-door gym, a tanning booth, and a rooftop pool.

The other truth is, I’m spoiled. I grew up in Los Angeles—regularly went to Santa Monica, Venice, and Dockweiler—and have been fortunate enough to visit Condado and Ocean Park Beaches (Puerto Rico), Pigeon Beach (Antigua and Barbuda), Labadi Beach (Ghana), and the many beaches that dot Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlán in Mexico.

What can I say? I just know a real, quality beach when I visit one.

[Image via Getty]

Three days after the late, big-dicked Richard Matt escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility, his daughter received a letter from him. “I always promised you I would see you on the outside. I’m a man of my word,” it read, according to the Buffalo News.

Police said the father and daughter maintained a correspondence, though she had no knowledge of his escape plan. In fact, she cooperated with investigators after Matt and David Sweat broke out earlier this month.

“Richard Matt was a sociopath, and they were all afraid of him,” a law enforcement official told the News, referring to Matt’s brother Wayne Schimpf. Both Schimpf and Matt’s daughter reportedly requested police protection out of fear that he would attempt to see them.

A portion of the letter was provided to the News by law enforcement officials. It was postmarked prior to the June 6 escape and arrived at Matt’s daughter’s home, in a suburb of Buffalo, on June 9.

While he was still in prison, Matt persuaded Joyce “Tillie” Mitchell to contact his daughter. From the News:

In the initial phone call from Mitchell, the daughter told investigators that she did not recognize the incoming phone number but decided to accept it.

“I’m a friend of your father’s,” Mitchell said, introducing herself.

Mitchell was actually more than a friend of Matt, authorities say. She is accused of supplying him and Sweat with hacksaw blades and other material to help them escape the prison.

Also they banged.

After a three-week-long search, Matt was shot and killed last Friday. Sweat was captured two days later.

Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Will the drama ever cease in the Kardashian household? Hot on the heels of the startling tabloid revelation that Scott has cheated on Kourtney over 100 times (who has that kind of energy?), TMZ has uncovered more proof that Disick is probably getting it on with another woman. Possibly right now as you’re reading this!

According to TMZ, Disick was spotted last night canoodling (I love this word and will use it at any opportunity) with a “fringe celebrity” in “romantic” Monte Carlo. The photos you can see on TMZ are hardly incriminating (Scott being fed). In fact, if you had shown me the photos without the headline I would not be surprised to see that Lord Disick was being fed by a woman who is not his wife. But that’s not because I think LD cheats on Kourtney, it’s because I fully believe that he never does a thing on his own and would pay someone to actually feed him so his arms don’t get tired. (How great would it be if the next Kardashian spinoff was a show in which Scott Disick has others do things for him while his muscles slowly atrophy and he becomes bed-ridden? I think it would be an excellent SyFy crossover.)

TMZ reports that Kourtney K went to a gun range this week, which could mean that she just likes shooting guns in her spare time or is preparing to shoot Scott dead once he returns home and the E! cameras are rolling. (Another spinoff idea: Kourtney Kardashian, Bounty Hunter.)

[TMZ]

Another big scoop from TMZ: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are on vacation together in the Bahamas. Apparently, the vacation was set before the divorce (inconvenient) so the soon-to-be divorcees decided to go for the sake of their children. According to sources, Ben and Jen’s top priority is their kids and they’ll do anything to keep them happy, even a sequel to 13 Going On 30 (come onnnn, Jennifer Garner! Judy Greer needs work!).

While the divorce seems amicable, a source reports to TMZ that there’s a lot of tension between Ben and Jen right now. Uh, yeah, that’s because they’re getting a divorce. [TMZ]

• Speaking of Judy Greer, she’s just joined the cast of Wilson, a movie based on a Daniel Clowes book. She’s kept humble, though. Her latest few tweets are about drinking whiskey and sneaking cats into the house when her husband isn’t paying attention. Right there with you, Judy. Just because it didn’t work for me, doesn’t mean it won’t work for you! [A.V. Club]
  
• Christy Carlson Romano, who brought us the most interesting rendition of “Colors of the Wind” is upset with VH1, which lumped her into a post about Disney stars who failed to ignite the same buzz as Miley or Shia. Carlson tweeted “Too bad I only have an Ivy league education,multiple Broadway credits & Emmy nom to fall back on. #shittyjournalism” in response to the accusations before retweeting a Chris Crocker quote about haters and wishing Ashley Tisdale (another fallen star who made the list) a happy birthday. [Twitter]
• Matt Damon has a weave now. I wish Ellie was around for an emergency “Would U” but she’s probably on the jitney to the Hamptons right now, so we’re just going to have to settle it in the comments. WOULD U: Matt Damon with a weave? [Celebitchy]
• Roberto Cavalli (74) bought his girlfriend (29) an island with an actual fortress on it in Sweden. There’s no joke here because I am jealous as fuck. [The Daily Mail]
• Vince Vaughn allegedly hates disabled kids, everyone, probably you. [Celebitchy]
• Calvin Harris loves his girlfriend Becky. [Just Jared]
• It’s Kimmy Gibbler’s birthday! [Dlisted]
• Marisa Tomei, who remains ageless due to her strict diet of cantaloupe, melba toast, and the still-gushing blood of Hollywood hopefuls, will play a lesbian billionaire on next season’s Empire.

It’s Friday, so I’d like to help you end your week/start your drinking with a very special video which has always been close to my heart. Yes, it’s the one in which Steve Guttenberg is revealed to be a naked jogger. Happy Independence Day, Steve Guttenberg’s balls!

Contact the author at mark.shrayber@jezebel.com.

Lead image via Getty

America’s First Teen, Malia Obama, is interning this summer for Lena Dunham on the set of Girls, TMZ reports.

According to Page Six, Malia was seen hanging out with the show’s crew on Thursday outside Aurora Ristorante in Williamsburg.

Malia Obama hangs with Lena Dunham on the set of "Girls" in Brooklyn http://t.co/dABScnN7yS pic.twitter.com/pW7PWBPWO5

July 3, 2015

UGH! Malia Obama Set to Work on THIS Despicable TV Show http://t.co/RBBK0VNiCp pic.twitter.com/C1OaVWt8VG

July 3, 2015

“UGH!” is right, Young Conservatives! You have to be pretttyyy cool to have access to important career opportunities like this.

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

The subreddit at the eye of the shitstorm currently spreading across Internet hellhole Reddit.com, r/IAmA, has come back online after being set as private for less than a day.http://gawker.com/reddit-in-chao...

Victoria Taylor, a Reddit administrator and the site’s Director of Talent, was recently and unexpectedly fired, sending the subreddit she worked most closely with into a tailspin. Other subreddits began closing down out of... solidarity? Or something.

Upon re-opening to the public, the subreddit’s moderators wrote,

We have taken the day to try to understand how Reddit will seek to replace Victoria, and have unfortunately come to the conclusion that they do not have a plan that we can put our trust in. The admins have refused to provide essential information about arranging and scheduling AMAs with their new ‘team.’ This does not bode well for future communication between us, and we cannot be sure that everything is being arranged honestly and in accordance with our rules. The information we have requested is essential to ensure that money is not changing hands at any point in the procedure which is necessary for /r/IAmA to remain equal and egalitarian. As a result, we will no longer be working with the admins to put together AMAs. Anyone seeking to schedule an AMA can simply message the moderators or email us at AMAVerify@gmail.com, and we’d be happy to assist and help prepare them for the AMA in any way.

That post was followed shortly by an AMA request for Taylor herself.

Update 2:20 pm – Someone claiming to be former Reddit employee David Croach has set up an AmA in which he alleges CEO Ellen Pao fired him in February of this year, “stating that work would be too demanding for my health (something that I still, personally, should have been decided by me and my doctor - not someone who I had effectively never worked with while she was CEO).” This person claims that they were diagnosed with leukemia in 2012.

Incidentally, as the New York Times’ Mike Isaac points out, David Croach is the community manager who banned all links to former Gawker writer Adrian Chen’s 2012 profile of infamous Redditor violentacrez.

Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

At the summer Consumer Electronics Show in 1991, Sony announced that it was jumping into the video game hardware market for the first time, partnering with Nintendo to release something called a “PlayStation.” The device never made it to market—for reasons I’ll explain shortly—but someone on reddit may have come across a very rare prototype.

Here’s what Sony Computer Entertainment president Olaf Olafsson announced in the summer of 1991, according to Console Wars, Blake Harris’s history of the early ‘90s videogame boom:

In late 1992, Sony would be releasing the Nintendo PlayStation, which would be a peripheral device that attached to the Super Nintendo and play [sic] games on CD. At this time, it was generally understood by both experts and laypeople that CDs would soon become the standard delivery mechanism for all entertainment: music, movies, and videogames. It just made too much sense. A CD could hold ten times as much information as a 16-bit game cartridge at one-tenth of the price. Perhaps there was a whimsical charm to game cartridges, but this was a matter of technological Darwinism. And Sony was thrilled to be evolving with Nintendo.

But the Nintendo PlayStation was not to be. The next day, Nintendo held its own press conference to announce it had developed a partnership to produce CD technology... with Phillips.

After being spurned by what was then the biggest player in the video game industry, Olafsson continued to push Sony to develop its own console internally. A few years later, the Sony PlayStation as we know it was born.

The picture above is allegedly a Sony prototype from the days when PlayStation was just Olafsson and hardware developer Ken Kutaragi’s pet project. It’s not clear whether it’s from before or shortly after Nintendo’s backstabbing announcement, but the design makes sense given the history: that’s basically a Super Nintendo controller, but there’s a CD drive on the front of the device.

Here’s a closer look:

The backstory of the device is also pretty convincing. The poster of the photos claims,

“My dad worked for a company, apparently one of the guys he used to work with, I think his name was Olaf, used to work at Nintendo and when my dad’s company went bankrupt, my dad found it in a box of ‘junk’ he was supposed to throw out.”

Olaf Olafsson didn’t work for Nintendo, technically, but if anyone would have one of these prototype consoles, it would be him. (There were only 200 produced, according to Wikipedia, but that number doesn’t appear to come from any independent source.)

Still, this could be a really elaborate fake. The history of the machine has been documented thoroughly enough that it wouldn’t be impossible for a skilled engineer to marry parts from a PSX and a Nintendo and make something good enough to fool the internet.

“It’s real,” seems like the simplest explanation, though. I want to believe.

[h/t GamesRadar, photos: Reddit]

Do you love watching fireworks? What about watching fireworks that blow the shit out of poor, unsuspecting mannequins? Well, have we got a treat for you.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission recently conducted their annual fireworks safety demonstration on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. And just like past safety demonstrations, it’s more hilarious than frightening. Okay, it’s a little bit frightening. We’ve cut the original video down to just the most explosive parts.

In more somber news, two people have already died this week in the US from fireworks related injuries. One was a 12 year old boy in Nashville and the other was a 47 year old man in Michigan. So yeah, be careful out there. Don’t try this at home, kids.

[Consumer Product Safety Commission]

GIF by Andrew Liszewski/ Video edited by Michael Hession

“Adding Trey to the mix is just going to bring in a bunch of Phish fans (no offense guys) that just don’t get us Deadheads.” The Sixties are over, man.

On Thursday, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, in an on-stage conversation with actress Goldie Hawn, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner postulated that the rarest kind of person is a woman who is both beautiful and funny. “From my position, the hardest artist to find is a beautiful, funny woman,” Eisner said.

“They usually—boy am I going to get in trouble, I know this goes online” (yes, hello!) “but usually, unbelievably beautiful women, you being an exception, are not funny,” he continued.

According to the Atlantic, Hawn agreed, saying that she may owe her sense of humor to having thought of herself as an “ugly duckling” when she was young.

“You didn’t think you were beautiful,” Eisner, who was the CEO of Disney from 1984 to 2005, said, helpfully. “I know women who have been told they’re beautiful, they win Miss Arkansas, they don’t ever have to get attention other than with their looks. So they don’t tell a joke.”

“In the history of the motion-picture business, the number of beautiful, really beautiful women—a Lucille Ball—that are funny, is impossible to find,” he said.

Ha ha, all right, man.

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.