Hillary Clinton supporters clash with protestors during the Democratic presidential candidate’s appearance at a Fourth of July parade in Gorham, New Hampshire.

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

Taylor Swift, the patron saint of girl squads and well-curated Instagrams, had a Fourth of July celebration worthy of a Vogue spread. Swift gathered her famous friends, a professional photographer (likely) and a seemingly endless supply of American flag accessories to produce the world’s most perfect, most Swift-like Fourth of July celebration. There were A-list Swift friends, a Hadid sisters, an ex boyfriend, a new boyfriend, pool floats, and Ed Sheeran. It was truly the perfect pose of Americana and youth. Everyone was happy and nothing hurt! [Us Weekly, Just Jared, Instagram]

Kelly Rutherford has been reunited with her two children. After a long custody battle with her ex-husband, a Monaco judge ordered that her two children, Helena and Hermes, could spend the summer with Rutherford. She’s apparently using the time to catch up on missed celebrations. [People, Instagram]

Apparently Holly Madison’s tell-all, Down the Rabbit Hole, has a chapter dedicated to her ex-boyfriend, the super magician Criss Angel. According to Madison, Angel was manipulative and had an “explosive temper.” For all his fame, fortune, and success, Criss, to me, seemed cripplingly insecure. This was starting to feel all too familiar,” Madison writes in the book. “Hef was a master of manipulation and knew how to cripple a girl’s self-esteem. Criss, on the other hand, just scared me.” [Too Fab]

• Scott Disick is still in Monaco with his “ex-girlfriend.” [Us Weekly]
  
• Billy Joel got married. [Us Weekly]
  
• Kit Harington’s hair is fueling speculation about his GoT future. [Huffington Post]
• Teen Mom Jenelle Evans turned down a $1.5 million offer from Vivid Entertainment to make a sex tape. [Us Weekly]
• Diana Douglas, mother of Michael Douglas, died last night. [E!]
  
• Kim Kardashian’s Fourth of July getup was very patriotic. [People]
  
• Do you think Kesha will let us borrow this outfit? [Just Jared]
  
• Channing Tatum’s abs aren’t drawing people to the movie theater. [The Hollywood Reporter]
  
• Princess Charlotte has some very rich godparents. [Us Weekly]
• Tiffani Amber Theissen gave birth to a baby boy. Congrats to the Kapowski family! [Us Weekly]
  
• Just double checking and yes, there’s another episode of Poldark tonight.
  

Images via Getty and Instagram.

In an interview Saturday with Fox News, Donald Trump expressed surprise that there has been such an extreme backlash to his assertion that Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists. “I knew it was going to be bad,” Trump said. “I didn’t know it was going to be quite this severe.”http://gawker.com/a-comprehensiv...

“This isn’t just a Mexico thing,” Trump insisted. “I have great relations with Mexico. I love the Mexican people and the spirit of the Mexican people.”http://gawker.com/donald-trump-t...

This week, NASCAR announced that it would not hold its postseason award ceremony at the Trump National Doral hotel in Miami. “I’m very surprised at NASCAR,” Trump said. (Same.) “Because these are people that want to stop illegal immigration, they want to stop crime.”

“It’s about safety. All we’re talking about is safety.” Uh huh.

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

Today’s world-class Peachtree Road Race came down to a photo finish as American Ben Payne lost out to British former Olympian Scott Overall thanks to a brief celebratory hesitation just shy of the finish line.

[WXIA]

Update: Due to some confusion on both our part and that of the television station, we initially stated this was the conclusion of the Peachtree Cup which also featured elite runners; in this case, Payne and Overall were not racing as part of that specific competition.

h/t to Tom

To contact the author of this post, write to tim@deadspin.com (PGP key) or find him on Twitter @bubbaprog.

Escaped convict David Sweat, shot and captured by police last weekend, has returned, after four weeks on the outside, to prison. Sweat and his deceased partner-in-crime Richard Matt escaped from Clinton Correctional early last month.

In a press release, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision announced that Sweat was released from Albany Medical Center on Sunday and transferred to a maximum-security prison in Romulus, NY, the Five Points Correctional Facility, where he will spend his first 24 hours in the infirmary.

According to prison officials, once he is healthy enough—Sweat was shot twice by a federal officer—Sweat will be held in the prison’s special housing unit. From the Times:

Officials said that after he is discharged, he will be transferred to a single cell in the prison’s special housing unit, where he will be confined for 23 hours and placed on suicide watch.

His cell will have a bed, a writing platform, a toilet and sink, and a shower that will limit movement, officials said.

The Five Points Correctional Facility is about 250 miles from Clinton Correctional, from which Sweat and Matt fled early last month. Sweat was serving a sentence of life without parole for murder.

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

“It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding. It does not matter if the destruction springs from a foolish policy… The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions.”

Remember a few weeks back, when we learned that Google’s artificial neural network was having creepy daydreams, turning buildings into acid trips and landscapes into Magic Eye pictures? Well, prepare to never sleep again, because last week, Google made its “inceptionism” algorithm available to the public, and the nightmarish images are cropping up everywhere.

The “Deep Dream” system essentially feeds an image through a layer of artificial neurons, asking an AI to enhance and build on certain features, such as edges. Over time, pictures can become so distorted that they morph into something entirely different, or just a bunch of colorful, random noise.

Now that the code for the system is publicly available, anyone can upload a photo of their baby and watch it metamorphose into a surrealist cockroach, or whatever. If you need some inspiration, or an excuse to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over your face, and wait for the world to end, just check out the hashtag ‘DeepDream’ on your social media platform of choice.

Here are some highlights:

@kcimc this little monster is a half eaten doughnut :D https://t.co/zZ5euPgvsF #deepdream

July 2, 2015

Well, I’m never eating again. NOPE NOPE NOPE.

The Thing - another #deepdream nightmare. @LaurenAMarsden, generated from pic of Baby: https://t.co/i2bM6pAtuM pic.twitter.com/rWq08W7Mh0

July 5, 2015

This, if you can believe it, used to be an adorable cat.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD #deepdream pic.twitter.com/8P6ZYf5Dab

July 4, 2015

So that’s what shine’s really about....

This 9/11 pic is definetely the best #DeepDream pic.twitter.com/YWkCY4ahRv

July 3, 2015

Is it just me, or does Google have a bit of a dog fetish?

walking in sand #deepdream pic.twitter.com/N4ynU46Mkh

July 3, 2015

Oh look, the beach seems to have caught a case of chicken pox. NOTHING WEIRD ABOUT THAT.

Before #deepdream 'it' was a sheep. pic.twitter.com/8s5nhVXQid

July 2, 2015

It’s official: Androids dream of creepy insectoid sheep. And I’m done.

You can find plenty more Google dreams over on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google + on the hashtag ‘DeepDream,’ or if you’re feeling particularly brave, you can create your own.

[Google h/t The Guardian]

Contact the author at maddie.stone@gizmodo.com or follow her on Twitter.

Top image via Google

Look at it: A baby. The royal baby! One of two, actually.

See? There’s the other one.

There they go: Just a couple of babies.

What’s that baby doing in there?

Difficult to say.

Maybe it pooped!

Photos via Getty Images. Charlotte, the youngest royal baby, was christened on Sunday. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

The problem with planning hedge-funder parties: “They’re never going to dance. The band is going to play louder, but you have all these dudes trying to get rid of Greek bonds, and they can’t do it because they can’t hear anything. Now, no one is having a good time.”

If you’re former second baseman Chuck Knoblauch and you want to engage in some weird Twitter beef, live your life, man. But if you’re former second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, and people are sick of your nonsense after you stopped being able to throw to first base and have had multiple domestic violence incidents since retiring, then we feel obligated to shit all over your lame-ass Twitter comebacks.

Knoblauch started getting some heat Saturday night when he went all retired ballplayer on Tom Verducci, tweeting, “What is Verducci talking about? Has he ever been between the white lines in a big league game? Um. NO. SHUT UP,” which can really only be read in the cadence of a spoiled teenager. That spurred some of Knoblauch’s followers to remind him of his issues toward the end of (and since) his playing days, and Knoblauch, perhaps weary from a day of celebrating America’s independence, mustered up some of the weakest, most childish Twitter comebacks we’ve ever seen. Such burns include:

@AaronGleeman Go back to being a loser. Oh. That's right. You are already.

July 5, 2015

@royalsreview and you're a World Series loser.

July 5, 2015

@outtasightsp Are you old enough to pee?

July 5, 2015

Wait. Let’s stop here. Are you old enough to pee? ARE YOU OLD ENOUGH TO PEE? If so, I guess we can continue.

@h8rproof82 And I'm still not as fat as you.

July 5, 2015

@jamesnewburg you're so tough with your rebel flags.

July 5, 2015

@NikRitter You Royals fans need to get over yourselves.

July 5, 2015

Chuck Knoblauch sorely needed to take a goddamn nap and pipe down. The July 4th holiday is not about Twitter beefs, it’s about celebrating our freedom to engage in such shenanigans. I just hope Knoblauch remembers that, SMH.

Photo via Associated Press

Two are dead and three missing after a pontoon boat hit a barge and capsized in the Ohio River, the Associated Press reports. Louisville Fire Chief Greg Frederick said that the fatalities included one adult and one child.

Frederick said nine people were aboard the boat when the accident took place on Saturday night. Four people were rescued. The barge was in a construction site.

One child is still missing.

Photo credit: WHAS-TV via AP. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

On Sunday, Greece overwhelmingly rejected the bailout terms proposed by its European creditors, with a projected 61% of the country voting “no” to further austerity measures via a national referendum, the Associated Press reports.http://gawker.com/greece-misses-...

“The mandate you’ve given me does not call for a break with Europe, but rather gives me greater negotiating strength,” wrote Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Twitter. “The Greek people made a historic and brave choice.”

The result of the referendum, which European leaders urged Greeks to vote “yes” on, leaves much of the future of the country, the eurozone and the European Union as a whole uncertain. From The New York Times:

[Prime Minister Tsipras’] victory in the referendum settled little, since the creditors’ offer is no longer on the table. There remains the possibility that they could walk away, leaving Greece facing default, financial collapse and expulsion from the eurozone and, in the worst case, from the European Union.

At stake, however, may be far more than Greece’s place in Europe, as experts have offered wildly differing opinions about what the referendum could mean for the future of the euro and, indeed, the world’s financial markets.

Even before the voting was over, some European leaders began making efforts to contain the potential damage. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said she would travel to Paris on Monday to meet with the French president, François Hollande, for a “joint assessment of the situation after the Greek referendum.”

According to European Parliament President Martin Schulz, eurozone leaders now plan to meet Tuesday to discuss a potential humanitarian program to address the Greek financial crisis.

“Ordinary citizens, pensioners, sick people or children in the kindergarten should not pay a price for the dramatic situation in which the country and the government brought the country now,” said Schulz in a statement Sunday evening. “I hope that the Greek government will make in the next coming hours meaningful and constructive proposals allowing that it is meaningful and possible to renegotiate. If not, we are entering a very difficult and even dramatic time.”

[Image via AP Images]

Authorities say a 28-year-old Texas man was attacked and killed by an alligator “almost immediately” after being warned by a bystander not to swim in the water, replying “fuck that alligator” before jumping in, Buzzfeed reports.

“I asked him please do not go swimming, there’s a bigger alligator out here, just please stay out of the water,” an employee of Burkhart’s Marina in Orange, Texas told KFDM. “The next thing I know, I don’t even know how long it was, I saw his body floating face down and then he’s up there for a couple seconds and then he gets dragged back down and pulled off.”

According to police, marina employees put up a sign forbidding swimming after recently spotting a “pretty damn big” 11-foot alligator in the water. From the Houston Chronicle:

But that didn’t deter [Tommie] Woodward, who showed up early Friday with a young woman, telling the staff closing the marina’s burger joint that he was jumping in. They begged him not to, but the 28-year-old did anyway and his friend followed. Suddenly, witnesses told police, a large alligator emerged from under the dock.

[...]

Sheriff’s deputies and park rangers found Woodward dead in the water more than two hours later at about 4:30 a.m. near the marina in the 1800 block of Mississippi Street. Orange Police Capt. Robert Enmon said he suffered major trauma to his left arm and puncture wounds to his upper left chest. The alligator attack, the second one in the region this week, is believed to be the first fatal encounter in Texas in at least two centuries.

“Whether it’s a speed limit sign on a freeway, a fireworks message, whatever, heed the warning sign,” Orange County Justice of the Peace Rodney Price said Friday, “follow that because a failure to heed that can result in a terrible tragedy for your family.”

[Image via CNN/KFDM]

On Sunday, the United States won the Women’s World Cup final, defeating Japan 5-2. The victory, which began with the U.S. team scoring four goals in 16 minutes, gives America its first Women’s World Cup title since 1999 and third overall, the most in the history of the tournament.http://screengrabber.deadspin.com/u-s-obliterati...

At least 24 people, ranging in age from 5 to 94, were injured in North Carolina on Saturday after a deck collapsed under a family posing for a group photo, dropping them 10 feet to the ground, WNCT reports.

“The family was on the deck preparing to take a family photo when the event occurred,” Emerald Isle Police said in a statement. “Due to the number of casualties involved, neighboring agencies were called in to assist in transporting and dealing with the victims.”

According to officials, preliminary findings indicate that corroded nails were responsible for the collapse. From the Associated Press:

Nails deteriorated by years of exposure to the sand, salt and moisture from the ocean gave way, causing a deck collapse that hurt 24 people as they posed for a picture at a North Carolina beachfront home, authorities said.

The deck was likely up to code when the house was built in 1986, but the nearly 30-year-old nails simply fell apart under the weight of the people standing on small part of the deck Saturday night, Emerald Isle Town Manager Frank Rush said in a news release Sunday.

As of Sunday, five of the victims reportedly remain hospitalized with two in critical condition.

“It was tragic. It was truly, truly, truly sad to watch,” one witness told NBC News, describing the scene as “a whole bunch of people just on the ground laying on top of the planks from the deck.”

[Image via WRAL]

A Maine man was killed instantly on Saturday when he ignited a fireworks mortar he had placed on his head, WCHS reports, an incident the victim’s brother described as “a freak accident.”

Authorities say 22-year-old Devon Staples had been drinking and setting off fireworks with friends when he placed the mortar tube on his head at around 10 p.m. From the Associated Press:

Staples, 22, of Calais, a small city on the Canadian border, placed a reloadable fireworks mortar tube on his head and told his friends he was going to light it, [Department of Public Safety spokesperson Stephen] McCausland said. But his friends urged him to stop.

“Apparently, he thought that was a great idea,” McCausland said. “His friends they thought dissuaded him from doing it, and the next thing they knew, he ignited the fireworks and he was killed instantly.”

“There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there,” brother Cody Staples told the New York Daily News. “Devon was not the kind of person who would do something stupid. He was the kind of person who would pretend to do something stupid to make people laugh.”

[Image via WCHS]

Burt Shavitz, the iconic bearded co-founder of Burt’s Bees, has died. He was 80. “We remember him as a bearded, free-spirited Maine man, a beekeeper, a wisecracker, a lover of golden retrievers and his land,” said the company in a statement, “Above all, he taught us to never lose sight of our relationship with nature.”

Now that Greece’s citizens have overwhelmingly rejected the idea of continued financial austerity, the rest of Europe—particularly Germany—must decide whether to continue to hound the broke-ass Greeks to repay their debts. And Germany’s own moral superiority is far murkier than Germans might think.

With all of the political and economic machinations surrounding the Greek debt crisis, it is easy to lose sight of the basic situation, which is this: Greece’s leaders unwisely borrowed money that was freely loaned to them, and they blew it unwisely, and now they can’t pay it back. (More precisely, they can’t pay it back the way that creditors want without imposing a severe level of suffering on Greek citizens.) Wishing that Greece could pay it back, or harshly scolding Greece for being unwise with its spending habits, will not make the country any more able to pay the money back. The question that Europe’s bankers (and German leaders, who tend to provide most of Europe’s money via their strict German sense of propriety) now face is whether to keep pumping money into Greece in order to try to right the nation’s economy so that they might be able to, one day, repay some of their debt; or whether to just say “Fuck you, Greece,” and demand their money, and chase Greece away from a united Europe for good.

There is a moral element to all of this. Most people believe that if you borrow money, you should pay it back. And because most people believe this on a personal level, they believe it for entire nations as well. But nations do not operate like individuals. It’s counterproductive to throw a poor person in debtor’s prison, and even more counterproductive to push a nation to the point of war because it can’t pay off its creditors. Any moral discussion of Greece’s debt must contend with the question of how much average citizens—who will do the real suffering under austerity—are responsible for the economic mistakes of their leaders.

In an interview with the German paper Die Zeit (translated into English by Gavin Schalliol, though his translation has since been taken down for copyright reasons), Thomas Piketty tells Germany rather stringently that they are full of shit—after all, Germany spent many years rampaging through Europe and destroying neighboring countries and accumulated tons of debt during WWII, and they were never required to pay all of that debt back.

“After the war ended in 1945, Germany’s debt amounted to over 200% of its GDP. Ten years later, little of that remained: public debt was less than 20% of GDP. Around the same time, France managed a similarly artful turnaround,” Piketty says. “We never would have managed this unbelievably fast reduction in debt through the fiscal discipline that we today recommend to Greece. Instead, both of our states employed [inflation, a special tax on private wealth, and debt relief].”

Now that Germany’s economy is strong and the debt shoe is on the other, Greecier, foot, though, Germany would like to see Greece exercise the sort of “fiscal discipline” and austerity that could prove ruinous for the Greek people. Piketty does not deny that the Greek government was crooked, but he asks Germans to look at the big picture: “Europe was founded on debt forgiveness and investment in the future. Not on the idea of endless penance. We need to remember this.” He calls for the same sort of European conference on debt that took place after WWII—one that benefited broke-ass Germany then, and which would ask the Germans to now, in essence, pay that historic debt forward to broke-ass Greece, so that the indebted nation of the moment can move forward without being ruined.

All of this is a wonderful primer on the point at which debt stops being a math issue, and starts becoming a moral issue. No people on earth want to be made to do penance for a debt that they don’t feel responsible for incurring. When debt reaches the point that paying back would severely damage the economy of the nation being asked to pay it back—or when the payback might extend longer than a single generation, with the debt burden of past fools being shifted on present strivers—it is probably time to get more flexible about payback terms. Otherwise, people tend to start breaking things.

Remember that those who extend too much easy credit are just as foolish as those who accept it.

[Photo: AP]

Ray Velcoro is alive. God damnit.

Also “Stan” is dead. Paul Woodrugh is alive, and probably gay. Frank Semyon is alive, too, but increasingly convinced that the killer is coming for him. And Ani Bezzerides is doing pretty all right, all things considered. Let’s get into it, fellow detectives.

True Detective episode three, explained:

In hindsight, it was a fantasy that True Detective would kill off the poached-egg detective at the center of its most compelling storyline just two episodes in. Episode three opens on a brief dream sequence featuring Ray’s drunk dad and a maudlin, pompadoured crooner whose dinner jacket might not be velvet, but it is definitely blue. In the dream, Ray Velcoro faces off with pops over the same barroom table where he usually meets with Frank Semyon, and pops basically tells him that he isn’t a man, which is very sad for Ray. Maybe if Ray wasn’t eternally in the pocket of a mobster who knows his deepest, darkest secret, he would be more up to the task of adult masculinity. Maybe not.

In defiance of all good sense, Ray soon wakes up. It turns out that the freaky bird guy who got him twice in the chest with a shotgun last night was actually firing rubber bullets—what else would you expect the R&B-listening guardian of a gruesome murder scene to be packing? When Velcoro debriefs a pissed-off Ani Bezzerides about the shooting, he mentions that he was hit with “riot shells—you know, like cops use.” Interesting.

Meanwhile, Frank is busy becoming the season’s second brooding man in three episodes to be too obsessed with his own perceived failures to enjoy a blow job. And in episode three, Frank is only failing harder: cash is so short that he’s resorted to shaking down a friendly-seeming business associate; he picks a possibly ill-advised fight with the guy who has FUCK YOU written on his teeth; the rich Russian Osip is exiting the railway real estate deal entirely; Frank’s good buddy “Stan” is dead. Poor, sweet “Stan.”

Quien? What, you don’t remember motherfucking “Stan”? The guy who stood silently in the background when Frank told Ray where to find his wife’s rapist in episode one? The guy who silently pepper-sprayed some other guy in episode two? The guy who Frank helpfully reminded you was worth caring about when he asked “‘Stan’—why isn’t he here?” just before learning of his death? It’s “Stan,” man. “Stan”! Anyway, he’s dead, and it looks like the same acid-wielding freak who killed Ben Caspere did him in.

State trooper Paul Woodrugh is not the one-dimensional ladykiller he initially seemed. After a few unsubtle teases in the first two episodes—remember when he surreptitiously mentioned his urge to punch a “fag” who hit on him?—we learn once and for all that Woodrugh is gay, or maybe bi, and that he’s deeply uncomfortable with it. When an old war buddy with whom Woodrugh once spent a few steamy nights overseas asks him if he’d ever be interested in rekindling that passion, Woodrugh answers, “Dude—chill,” then throws him to the ground. Just as he’s wiping his hands of his-ex-lover and leaving the scene, we see that the fat drunk cop is there and has presumably been recording it all.

Finally, Velcoro and Bezzerides visit the home of a young man who quit his film production job just before one of the crew’s cars was stolen and used to transport Caspere’s body. Might this guy have some connection to the killing? It doesn’t seem like it, but fortunately, a man in a mask happens to set fire to the very same car, just outside the kid’s house, just as the detectives are standing at the door. They take off on a sprint, and Bezzerides almost catches the masked man—before Velcoro, still limping from the rubber bullets, tackles her out of the way of an oncoming truck. Bezzerides thanks Velcoro for saving her, and he says that if she wants to really thank him, she should tell him what state officials have on him in their corruption investigation. Perhaps a genuine kinship is beginning to form? “I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. Perhaps not.

But of course, vastly more important than the complex web of evolving relationships between our protagonists is a simple, five-word question:

Who will be the true detective?

If you’re watching True Detective with anything in your mind beyond the above query, allow me to inform you in the parlance of our times that you’re doing it wrong. True Detective is about who will be the true detective—no more; no less. Who’s the birdman? Will officer Steve Mercer ever taste true love’s first kiss? Do Ben Caspere’s sexual proclivities have anything to do with the circumstances of his death or are they only brought up in the interest of titillating the viewer? If these questions don’t lead you closer to the true detective’s true identity, it’s best to try to put them out of your mind.

This week, my money’s on Cary Fukunaga. Why else would True Detective creator Nic Pizzolato include an obvious caricature of the show’s first-season director in episode three, if not to send a message about Fukunaga’s cosmic importance? The filmmaker character seen in the episode’s final third is an Asian-American director, just like Fukunaga, and as Vulture points out, he wears his hair in a goofy extended man-bun, just like Fukunaga. He doesn’t get much screen time, but he’s portrayed as a slimy hack who likes to drink and may or may not also like hookers. His own set photographer calls the post-apocalyptic action flick he’s shooting “about two tons of shit.”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Pizzolato is acting a little petty about the guy who departed his show after one season and somehow managed to take most of the audience’s goodwill with him. The guy with whom Pizzolato insisted he didn’t have a speck of beef in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last year. But I do know better—I know that the Pizz wouldn’t stoop that low—so I can only assume that the Fukunaga character is a sign that the sorely missed director’s presence is hovering over season two in ways we can’t even begin to comprehend. I can only assume that Cary Fukunaga is the true detective.

Or else the true detective is “Stan.” RIP, buddy.

Cary Fukunaga image via Getty. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.