Thomas Piketty, the French economist and author of Capital in the 21st Century (reviewed here by A Dog), has given an searing interview about the European debt crisis to the German newspaper Die Zeit. (Hamilton Nolan has written it up here.) Unfortunately, the only English translation, an unofficial one posted to Medium by Gavin Schalliol, has since been taken down. http://www.zeit.de/2015/26/thomas...http://gawker.com/all-debt-is-ne...

With any luck, Die Zeit will put up its own English translation soon. Till then, here’s a small portion of what you’re missing:

On Germany reckoning with history

ZEIT: But we Germans have already reckoned with our own history.

Piketty: But not when it comes to repaying debts! Germany’s past, in this respect, should be of great significance to today’s Germans. Look at the history of national debt: Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today’s Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted. The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem. There have been many ways to repay debts, and not just one, which is what Berlin and Paris would have the Greeks believe.

On Germany’s standing to “lecture other nations”

ZEIT: But surely we can’t draw the conclusion that we can do no better today?

Piketty: When I hear the Germans say that they maintain a very moral stance about debt and strongly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: what a huge joke! Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts. It has no standing to lecture other nations.

On two methods of nations paying back debts

ZEIT: Are you trying to depict states that don’t pay back their debts as winners?

Piketty: Germany is just such a state. But wait: history shows us two ways for an indebted state to leave delinquency. One was demonstrated by the British Empire in the 19th century after its expensive wars with Napoleon. It is the slow method that is now being recommended to Greece. The Empire repaid its debts through strict budgetary discipline. This worked, but it took an extremely long time. For over 100 years, the British gave up two to three percent of their economy to repay its debts, which was more than they spent on schools and education. That didn’t have to happen, and it shouldn’t happen today. The second method is much faster. Germany proved it in the 20th century. Essentially, it consists of three components: inflation, a special tax on private wealth, and debt relief.

ZEIT: So you’re telling us that the German Wirtschaftswunder [“economic miracle”] was based on the same kind of debt relief that we deny Greece today?

Piketty: Exactly. 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. 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 the second method with the three components that I mentioned, including debt relief. Think about the London Debt Agreement of 1953, where 60% of German foreign debt was cancelled and its internal debts were restructured.

On whether Germany is “generous”

ZEIT: Do you believe that we Germans aren’t generous enough?

Piketty: What are you talking about? Generous? Currently, Germany is profiting from Greece as it extends loans at comparatively high interest rates.

Contact the author at max@gawker.com.

The man who was filmed as he repeatedly had sex on a Florida beach last year has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Jose Caballero, 40, was convicted in May of two counts of lewd and lascivious behavior.

Last July, Caballero and Elissa Alvarez, 20, had sex on Florida’s Bradenton Beach for nearly half an hour in front of dozens of on-lookers, including a three-year-old girl and a grandmother, who reportedly filmed part of the act. The exhibitionist couple then passed out for hours before waking to have more public sex.

While Alvarez was sentenced to time served in May, prosecutors sought a tougher punishment for Caballero because his prior criminal record, which includes a conviction for cocaine trafficking. Both Alvarez and Cabaellero are required to register as sex offenders.

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

In a recent Sunday Times profile, R&B singer Miguel claimed that he possesses more musical talent than Frank Ocean and The Weeknd, two contemporaries to which the 29-year-old is often compared.

“To be completely honest—and no disrespect to anyone—I genuinely believe that I make better music, all the way around,” Miguel says in the interview. He never names Ocean or The Weeknd outright, but it’s clear to whom he intends no disrespect. At one point, he states that he and Ocean are not friends, but “cordial.”

Miguel, who released his third studio album Wildheart on June 29, adds that he was raised to be “super-competitive.” To be fair, the statement about him making “better music, all the way around,” does seem to have been at least partially goaded by the profile’s author, Paul Lester, who is intent on positioning Miguel as Frank Ocean’s musical nemesis throughout the piece. (“I venture that Ocean will listen to ...Goingtohell, a new track from Wildheart—to the motorbike revs at the start and the idiosyncratic rhythm—and kick himself for not thinking of it first,” writes Lester.)

As for what Miguel thinks of Ocean’s “status as R&B’s complex ‘trouble man’”?

“But that’s Frank. Frank is the tortured. That’s his thing. That’s not who I am. I may not be dark—as dark—and I may not be as poetic, but I’m living my real shit.”

And, finally, here is Miguel on the infamous leg drop from his 2013 Billboard Music Awards performance:

“It just reminds me that I’m not afraid to fail,” he says of the BMA incident. “You just have to take the leap of faith. Yeah, they’re gonna call you crazy. But nothing was ever achieved without being a little delusional.”

It’s always good to believe in yourself.

[Image via Getty]

Seamless, the once-simple and reliable food delivery app, has undergone an unwanted and ill-advised redesign. Archived orders? Gone. A user-friendly interface? L-O-L. A functioning website? Depends on how you define “functioning.” Fare thee well, Seamless and burn in hell: you’ve ruined a good thing for absolutely no reason.

Calling the travesty a “site refresh,” the company claims the redesign makes it “easier to eat all the foods you love on our new Seamless site.” Except it doesn’t. Because it doesn’t work.

The results—apparently a back-end integration with GrubHub, paired with a botched front-end facelift—are counterintuitive, at best. Restaurant-specific searches are all but disabled. Saved addresses and credit cards have disappeared or reset without warning (hope whoever’s living in my old 3rd Street apartment liked the sushi I sent them last week.)

Not all of the restaurants listed on the old site made the switch, prompting a new FAQ “Where is my restaurant/my favorite restaurant.” This, at least, was apparently an unintentional screw-up among the maelstrom of intentional garbage updates.

Same goes for your order history: here’s the 411, they were “unable to transfer some of your past orders,” and you’ll just have to deal with it.

Hmmm. Well, as they say in breakups, maybe it’s not the Seamless redesign. Maybe it’s me. Who’s to say? Wait, no, it’s definitely the Seamless redesign.

I thought everyone complaining about the @Seamless redesign was a whiner, but tried last night and it's totally unusable (mobile & laptop).

June 27, 2015

Surprisingly @Seamless is making our food ordering process EXTREMELY painful. New website / app design is terrible. Disappointing. #hungry

July 6, 2015

No way to stay polite. Dear Seamless, new app SUCKS. Can't find restaurants, past orders or even meal add ons #fail pic.twitter.com/NmVp248Jls

May 10, 2015

The @seamless redesign sucks. Menus are incomplete, order history is not saved, etc. Sacrificing functionality for design.

July 3, 2015

The new @seamless web layout is quite possibly the worst layout I've ever encountered, and it sucks donkey balls, and that's being nice

June 26, 2015

Hey @Seamless, your new app sucks. Haven't been able to order properly since it upgraded. Calling restaurants directly now.

July 3, 2015

.@seamless, please improve your service, not make it worse. pagination in a live scroll world just sucks. this is new to you. stop it.

June 24, 2015

new seamless layout/app blows 🙈

July 3, 2015

HI @SEAMLESS UR MOBILE REDESIGN IS RUINING MY LIFE I CAN'T ORDER ANY FOOD AND NOW I'M GOING TO STARVE

July 5, 2015

@brookekelty @Seamless bummer. It is changing my work address (which was saved prior to new design) to a random STATE ROUTE. LOL I can't.

July 6, 2015

I pretty much hate the Seamless desktop redesign. Terrible UX.

July 5, 2015

Wow, @Seamless just continues to have problems since their redesign & what I assume is backend integration w/GrubHub! pic.twitter.com/BHcqmCEk4L

July 3, 2015

How not to do a redesign @Seamless: LTE mobile experience slow to sign in, doesn’t remember my addresses, sacrifices dt ux. bad > good atm.

July 3, 2015

The @seamless redesign is a perfect example of a beautiful site/ios app that is totally broken. I guarantee it was a top-down project.

July 3, 2015

Trying to order food on @Seamless and I keep getting an error. Plus my order history is gone. Really hating this redesign thus far.

July 3, 2015

.@melissamoriarty I agree. The @Seamless redesign is terrible

July 3, 2015

@Seamless the redesign simply doesn't work - literally can't place an order and the design is counter intuitive

July 3, 2015

@zabusky, please fix @Seamless disastrous redesign. Unspeakably buggy and awful. I love your service, but can't use it if it never works.

July 3, 2015

WTF, @seamless. My lifeline. Redesign left off many options upon selecting and ENTIRE categories from menus. It's been over a week. PLS HELP

July 2, 2015

I'm a fan, @Seamless, but your redesign is awful. Far less intuitive, and crashes all the time. Can we just have the old interface back?

July 2, 2015

So this @seamless redesign seems to have removed key functionality (bookmarks, favorites) and added nothing at all. Baffling.

July 1, 2015

So @seamless losing my order history in favor of a redesign seems like, really dumb.

June 27, 2015

And there’s no way the company is unaware of how badly this update has gone. Or at least their social media team does: the Seamless twitter page is filled with replies apologizing for the company’s shitty new website.

@vornietom Sorry for the trouble. We're working through some hiccups in our site but we should be up soon. Thanks for your patience!

July 5, 2015

@SheviNY Yikes! We'll look into it! Can you DM us the email address or the login ID to the account?

July 6, 2015

@mayajimenez So sorry to hear that! Could you DM your email address if we can help?

July 6, 2015

Maybe this is for the best. Maybe it’s time to get off our computers and venture out into the world, to gather our food from the source (Chipotle, anyone?) like our forefathers before us. I could be mad, but I think I’ll just dance in the embers as Seamless burns instead. And then we can all go out for brunch.

Update 5:30 p.m.

A Seamless/GrubHub spokesperson says they’re well-aware of the website’s issues and are “working quickly to resolve them.”

“We are aware of some technical issues and are working quickly to resolve them so that people can get back to easily ordering food from their favorite local restaurants. The happiness of our diners is incredibly important to us and we’ll continue to use diner feedback to make improvements to our refreshed site.”

Additionally, to clarify one topic of commentary on the article, we do not charge a fee to delivery drivers; we receive a commission from restaurants for each order placed on our platform. Further, per New York state law, restaurateurs are required to give delivery drivers the full tip provided by each diner.

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

On the Confederate flag controversy: “Now come all these self-righteous liberals from cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington, doing what the Charleston shooter failed to do — sowing division and discord where none exist.”—Marc Thiessen, a white Republican who grew up in Manhattan and works in Washington.

Most people attend a Broadway show with the understanding that cellphones aren’t allowed, you should turn them off, and you won’t need them for the next couple of hours. Most, but not all. Not the guy who tried to plug his iPhone into the set (which is located on the actual stage, to which the entire audience is directing its attention) just before a recent performance of Hand to God.

Playbill.com reported on the incident, quoting a Facebook post from one Chris York:

At ‘Hand to God’ tonight I saw on audience member climb onto the stage right before the show and plug his cell phone into a (fake) electrical outlet on the set. ON. THE. SET. The crew had to stop the precook music, remove the cellphone, and make an announcement as to why you can’t do that. Truly. I am a quiet and reserved person and I took great joy in loudly heckling the idiot when he returned to take his phone back. Moron. Has theatre etiquette—heck, Common Sense—[really] fallen that far??

We don’t know the name of the person whose battery life trumped common courtesy, or what he was doing on his phone that was so important he couldn’t let it die, but we know his stunt didn’t even score him any extra juice. According to cast members, the outlet wasn’t real. It was a nonfunctional prop.

A guy jumped on the stage and plugged his phone into the fake outlet on our set just before we started. @HandtoGodBway #fullmoon or #idiot ?

July 3, 2015

@MarcKuds @lisagoldbergpr Would you believe that kid's parents were in the audience? Presumably, that means someone said, "Good idea, son."

July 4, 2015

This is the beginning of a slippery slope that leads to “tweet seats” at movie theaters and a bunch of clowns talking loudly while you’re trying to concentrate very intently on Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (now in its 12th week). If we can’t keep our kids off Tinder long enough to sit through a Tony-nominated show—with puppets, for chrissake—we deserve whatever our malfunctioning robot replacements have in store for us.

[Screengrab via Playbill]

There’s nothing like a man who can dance. A man who can move his body in time. A man who can tap his toes on the sidewalk and belt out a ballad! I love men like this. Consequently I have dated many gay men.

I first realized I was straight after seeing Singin’ in the Rain when I was a teenager (I developed late). I had never seen a man as handsome as Gene Kelly. I felt very confused. I wanted to watch his arousing dance over and over again. I wanted to say to him: “Dance for me, Gene!” I wanted him to dance with me like he dances with this newspaper (Gene is Gene, and I am the newspaper):

Pure sex!

Being a straight woman has been my lifetime burden, because straight men are horrible. But I find solace in men who can dance, and the objectification of them. Gene, a technical dance master who blended forms and delighted the prudish audiences of the 1800s, carried grace and charm in his broad shoulders, straight teeth, dark hair, and tight butt. While he did not take off his clothes, he did wear very nice clothes, like baby blue trousers.

Channing Tatum, however, takes off his clothes in the Magic Mike films and others, and that’s why modernity is great. In the history of men who can dance, from Fred Astaire to Mikhail Baryshnikov to Justin Timberlake, no one is as special as Channing Matthew Tatum, a little doe-eyed blockheaded beef man who can spin his body like cotton candy and hump the floor until it consents to sexual intercourse with him.

Channing Tatum is our Gene Kelly—and more. Channing similarly carries grace and charm in his broad shoulders, straight teeth, dark hair, and tight butt. He also has hard abs and seems like a genuinely nice human, as well as in tune with a woman’s pleasure centers. Gene Kelly, on the other hand, was supposedly an asshole. In conclusion, Channing Tatum is not only the better dancer but the better person. Truly the ideal man.

Contact the author at leah@gawker.com. No trolls

Foo Fighters frontman, guitar guy, and defender of ye mighty chalice of the shred Dave Rock ’n Grohl took a tumble last month in Sweden that caused him to break his leg and get some surgery. We’ve all been there, some of us while working restaurant jobs or not having millions of dollars to ease the unfortunate toll we must bear at the hands of the pricey American medical system. But when a 20th-anniversary Foo Fighters concert is scheduled, a 20th-anniversary Foo Fighters concert must go on, whether Dave Grohl is in Grave Danger or not.

After Grohl’s leg-breaking incident in June, the Foo Fighters were forced to cancel the remainder of the European leg ;) of their tour, much to the dismay of all the dozens of European Foo Fighters fans out there, whoever they may be. But Grohl simply could not let down his fans anticipating the Foo Fighters 20th-anniversary blowout in D.C. scheduled for the Fourth of July.

But just like this sonic highway we drive down that some call life, we must ride 295-South to the 20th anniversary Foo Fighters concert at RFK Stadium to hear Dave Grohl tell a little story about how he came to sit on a throne, a throne made from the bones of Foo Fighters’ most beloved fans. A throne that he dreamed up when he was high on so many drugs. Drugs that he takes because he is a cool rock guy, you understand.

“A funny thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago,” he begins.

If you have the patience, you can watch all ten minutes of Grohl’s wistful storytelling about his leg-breaking. “How many of you motherfuckers saw that on YouTube?” he asks. All of us, we are thinking. If not, now you can. The rock guy fell and now the rock guy shreds from atop a cool throne. Such is the life of the rock guy.

OK, Dave Grohl, we get it. You’re one rock and roll motherfucker. You broke your leg because you fell off the stage doing what you love: rocking out on the guitar in front of a crowd of people who want to see you rock. Your whole life, it is dedicated to shred. You love to use curse words and do drugs and party and look at you now, on a throne that is made out of guitars. You’re a bad boy with a broken leg but that won’t stop you from playing such hits like “Everlong” and “Learn to Fly” for your fans. Much like your quest to save rock music, we get it. We get your whole thing and we have since 1995. It’s a lot. Enough already. No more stories, especially about breaking your leg. Thanks.

Images via AP. Contact the author at dayna.evans@gawker.com.

Over the weekend, Reddit’s users had themselves a fit, shutting down almost all of the major subreddits and likening the site’s interim CEO, Ellen Pao, to as many genocidal dictators as they could manage. Now, Pao has come to the message board on bended knee to offer up a mea culpa of her own. And it’s a bad one.

Pao starts off by admitting Reddit administrators been generally awful at listening to users’ complaints. This is something she already admitted over the weekend. Now, apparently, she’s adding “three concrete steps” to the mix.

Except that “concrete” is a misnomer. They’re more like wet cement steps, laid on a hot, rainy day. The first of the three promises Pao makes is that Reddit administrators will try to figure out some better tools to make, and then make them. The second is to appoint a Reddit employee to be “Moderator Advocate,” so she can maybe try to figure out a way to make things better. And the third, at least, is giving the users something they’ve been asking for—reverting to the old search option.

Some redditors were actually at least mildly receptive to her attempt to apologize on her own platform and attempted to engage her in mature, healthy debate.

While others did this.

Everyone copes in their own way.

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

The South Carolina senate today took the first step to removing the Confederate flag that waved proudly for years above the statehouse with full legal protection for years—even as the nation mourned a racially-motivated shooting this month in Charleston.

Even so, the 37-3 vote doesn’t ensure the flag will come down immediately—the bill must first pass the house before it reaches the desk of Gov. Nicki Haley, who called for the flag’s removal in the days after the shooting. That final vote is expected to occur on Tuesday.

(As the AP takes pains to point out, “lawmakers had largely ignored the flag until the killing of nine black people during a Bible study at a historic African-American church.”)

The Statehouse flag did come down, albeit briefly, last week when a hero activist scaled the flagpole and removed it. She was immediately arrested and jailed, and the flag was replaced—for now.http://gawker.com/confederate-fl...

But as it turns out, someone’s having an even worse time with this flag thing:http://morningafter.gawker.com/senator-freaks...

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

One year ago this month, Kristin Cavallari went shopping. I mean, of course she did, but I know for a fact she went shopping at a certain bargain home furnishings chain store in Los Angeles because there are many, many, many meticulously staged paparazzi photos of this shopping excursion available for purchase and publication online.

Here’s one:

You can tell from Kristin’s color-coordinated outfit, natural pose, subtle make-up, carefully tousled beachy waves, and the fact that she has but a single pink pillow inside her enormous HomeGoods® shopping bag that this shopping day was just like any other.

(Actually what you can tell is that, prior to this outing, Kristin had no idea what a HomeGoods® shopping bag looked like, which is why she accidentally dressed in a nearly identical print for her spontaneous trip. Oh, Kristin.)

Kristin went to her favorite store which is HomeGoods® and surveyed the merchandise. She made her selection, choosing just one item, most likely randomly.

And then she carried her own bag.

All the way to her car.

Very slowly.

There was a lot of time for the paparazzi to take photos.

So many of them! There are currently 38 different photos of Kristin holding that shopping bag on SplashNews.com. Can a gal get a little privacy around here while shopping at HomeGoods® which she loves?

We can’t say for sure what happened to Kristin after she left the parking lot of her favorite store that day—there aren’t any paparazzi photos of that. Maybe she drove home to figure out where to put her new pillow or went to pick up a check from HomeGoods® or something.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photos via Getty and Splash News]

Evangelical Christians in Brazil are going louco for Faceglória, a new, “sin-free” Facebook knockoff for the very religious. Since launching a month ago, Faceglória has over 100,000 users pressing “Amen” instead of “like.” It also has strict posting policies: No swear words, no violence, no gay content or erotica, definitely no gory gay erotica. The emphasis on purity made us wonder: How hard is it to get kicked off South America’s holiest social site?

I made a profile to find out, choosing the digital mien of an ardent fan of the rap-rock pioneer and Florida native William “Fred” Durst. The Faceglória team has an automated moderation system that prohibits posting over 600 bad/offensive/swear words—if you try to publish a status update with an offending word or phrase, it won’t let you. After Googling “most offensive Brazilian Portuguese swears” I tried to tell my new Faceglória friends that they are fuckers, but I was quickly rebuffed by this system.

HOWEVER: It does not have a filter for English swear words, which means I could spout all the derogatory nonsense I wanted in my native tongue. To test the waters, I posted the lyrics to his group Limp Bizkit’s seminal 1999 anthem “Nookie,” which contains an explicit description of the emotional effects of cuckolding.

It went up without a hitch! I even got an “Amen” from one of my new internet friends. The posts on Faceglória aren’t so different than stuff you see on Facebook: Boring photo albums and inaccurate Morgan Freeman quotes abound, and none of my new friends so far have deemed it necessary to flag my sinful postings.

Faceglória is moderated by volunteers who scrutinize content for unholiness, including bikini selfies and photos with cigarettes and alcohol. Still, when I attempted a posting spree that checked off every no-no sinbox on the list, all of my posts went through.

I considered posting Goatse to truly test the outer limits of the community tolerance, but it makes me physically ill to look at Goatse so I didn’t do that. Instead, I went the full throttle Jesus erotica route.

Yet, still, my Fred Durst profile remained active, my feed full of exuberantly profane posts. The Facebook imitator’s content moderation is too full of holes to stay holy.

Contact the author at kate.knibbs@gizmodo.com.

Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: FF8F 0D7A AB19 6D71 C967 9576 8C12 9478 EE07 10C

The last we heard from the music writer who calls himself M.T. Richards, he was harassing the female rapper then-known as Kitty Pryde via email over the July 4 weekend of 2013. Nearly two years to the day, Richard once again rose above the music-writing flotsam thanks to a weird and gross album review published by Spin.http://defamer.gawker.com/read-the-insan...

The review in question concerns the rapper Vince Staples’ new album Summertime ‘06, which has been welcomed by critics with universal acclaim. Richards’ review is equally as effusive but it also takes great joy in painting Staples, who is pictured above, as something that he is not: an amoral thug in the lineage of the Los Angeles rappers who shocked white America in the late-‘80s and early-‘90s.

Here is Richards going to town in the first graph:

Vince Staples is hardly the ingratiating type. “Don’t shake my hands unless you passing payment,” instructs the redoubtable young’un on “C.M.B.,” a paean to ruthlessly mercenary, Randian capitalism. “Keep your salutation / I need my 40 acres.” This ice-grilling Left Coaster is more Mack 10 than Myka 9, a verbal marksman who refuses to placate admonishers or admirers. He’s one of the most depraved minds in his discipline (Cali stick-up kid rap), and new album Summertime ’06 bears that out.

This is, at best, a poor understanding of Staples’ persona. Staples is not a “depraved mind.” He is instead an analytical and considered rapper, who uses his music to examine the treatment of black people in America. The first line on Summertime ‘06 is, “Hey, I’m just a nigga, until I fill my pockets / and then I’m Mr. Nigga, they follow me while shopping.” When Staples does rap about violence—as Richards’ characterization of him as a “stick-up kid” would indicate—it’s only as a hopeless punctuation at the end of a grander societal critique: “Waiter still ain’t bring the chopsticks, [I] should have brought the chopper,” goes one indicative line.

The paragraph quoted above is almost drowning in cognitive dissonance. Richards opens his review by quoting Staples demanding reparations, but describes it as a celebration of “mercenary” capitalism, instead of, you know, a response to the most extreme version of mercenary capitalism, aka slavery. There is bad music criticism (oh, is there ever), and then there is using a young, black rapper’s claim to his 40 acres as an example of his “depravity.” The latter begins to bleed very quickly into veiled racism.

Richards does nothing to absolve himself in the rest of the piece. He constantly misreads Staples as a way of molding him into a very specific and—as so many recent deaths have taught us—pernicious stereotype: “he’s a squinting, largely unfeeling brute,” Richards writes at one point, which is a description that might as well be on loan from the Fraternal Order of Police. Richards calls Staples’ Compton childhood “wickedly backward” when the point of his music is how grimly typical it all is, and the actions recounted in his raps “rankly unconscionable” when the point of his music is that racism made it so.

As is often standard with these sorts of reviews, Richards at once portrays Staples as a monster while also reveling in what the writer argues should disgust us. “On record, Staples totes more iron than a nutritionist,” Richards cracks in a groaner worse than much of what you would hear in a lunchroom cypher. Later, he describes Staples rapping as the MC “doing his thug dizzle.”

After the review was passed around social media this weekend, Spin attached an editor’s note to the top of the review. It reads:

Editor’s note: It has been brought to SPIN’s attention that this review, published last week, includes factual inaccuracies about Staples (such as an implication about drug use) and language that has been interpreted as stereotypical or racially insensitive. We regret these oversights during the editing process, take full responsibility for the error in judgment, and apologize to anyone who was offended.

What the “editing process” exactly was is a great question. Spin (where I worked for nine months in 2013) has cycled through dozens of editors in the last several years, and their masthead is currently broken, so it’s hard to tell who might have assigned and/or edited Richards’ review. I reached out to one editor there about the review and did not hear back.

In any event, the first step in the editing process of this specific review would have been googling M.T. Richards, who appears to be a huge schmuck, and whose past incessant badgering of a female artist—which boiled down to him mocking her because he was on a PR firm’s mailing list—should have probably disqualified him from any future bylines. Clearly, the man can’t help but leer and drool.

[image via Getty]

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

According to the Associated Press, Bill Cosby said in a 2005 deposition that he bought Quaaludes with the intention of giving them to women he wanted to have sex with. In the same deposition, he reportedly admitted to giving drugs to a female former Temple University employee who filed a lawsuit accusing him of rape that same year. The suit claimed that the comedian drugged and raped the woman—later identified as Andrea Constand, the former director of operations for Temple’s women’s basketball program—at his Philadelphia mansion in 2004.

From the Associated Press:

The Associated Press went to court to compel the release of the documents, and they were made public Monday. Cosby’s lawyers had objected on the grounds that it would embarrass their client.

The 77-year-old comedian was testifying under oath in a lawsuit filed by a former Temple University employee. He testified he gave her three half-pills of Benadryl.

The AP reports that Constand’s lawyer, Dolores M. Troiani, expressed doubt that the drug used on her client was actually Benadryl. Two other women reportedly testified that they knowing took Quaaludes from Cosby.

Constand’s lawsuit, which she filed with 11 other women in 2005, was settled out of court in 2006.

Since the lawsuit, Cosby has been accused of drugging and raping dozens of women. In December of last year, he finally resigned from the board of trustees at Temple, where he’d remained a popular figure. The 77-year-old has never been criminally charged with rape, in part because the statute of limitations has expired for most of the alleged assaults. http://deadspin.com/the-former-bas...

UPDATE 6:06 pm: From the Hollywood Reporter:

In a deposition on September 29, 2005, the comedian was asked, “When you got the Quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these Quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?”

“Yes,” responded Cosby.

UPDATE 6:31 pm: From the Associated Press:

Cosby had fought the AP’s efforts to unseal the testimony, with his lawyer arguing the deposition could reveal details of Cosby’s marriage, sex life and prescription drug use.

“It would be terribly embarrassing for this material to come out,” lawyer George M. Gowen III argued in June. He said the public should not have access to what Cosby was forced to say as he answered questions under oath from the accuser’s lawyer nearly a decade ago.

“Frankly ... it would embarrass him, (and) it would also prejudice him in eyes of the jury pool in Massachusetts,” Gowen said.

U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno ruled against Cosby last month, asking “Why would he be embarrassed by his own version of the facts?”

UPDATE 7:56 pm: Deadspin has a collection of the unsealed court documents here. http://deadspin.com/here-are-the-d...

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

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Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, who’s just one pass completion short of getting everything he ever wanted in life, really wanted to date Ciara. Now he is dating Ciara. What he’s not doing—he claims—is having sex with Ciara.

In an interview over the weekend at San Diego’s The Rock Church, Wilson told an audience that God came to him and told him to “lead” the pop singer in a life of abstinence before marriage.

“I need y’all to pray for us,” Wilson told the crowd, pointing to a photo of Ciara projected behind him, “Cause I know y’all seen her on the screen now.”

If anyone can survive a 6-month relationship without having sex, it’s too-blessed-to-be-stressed Russell Wilson. He has the heart of a champion and the Twitter favorites of a champion who’s bookmarked PornHub.

“I was married before… That didn’t work out unfortunately,” Wilson casually mentioned in the middle of fantasizing out loud about all the sex he’s allegedly not having.

His ex-wife, Ashton, was with him when he was drafted by the Seahawks and definitely didn’t cheat on him with his former teammate Golden Tate (as Tate will tell anyone, sometimes totally unprompted). Lions tight end Joe Fauria also accused Danger Russ of having an affair with his girlfriend, former WWE diva Erika Hammond, but nothing was ever proven (and Russell Wilson would never have sex outside his marriage). He was also rumored to be dating big-booty Instagram model SnowPhat (that was also never confirmed).

Ciara’s son, Future—a product of Ciara’s past with her ex-fiancé, Future—turned 1 last month.

From all of this, we can only conclude that Russell Wilson and Ciara are not having wild, passionate early-relationship sex while both of them are at their physical peaks. Where would you even get an impure thought like that? Russ is obviously masturbating in secret to the “Promise” music video until he gets the heavenly signal to put a ring on it, just as God would want.

[h/t Gossip Cop]

If I ever become an actor and get famous enough to have my own episode of Inside the Actors Studio, when James Lipton asks me, “If Heaven exists what would you like to hear God say at the Pearly Gates?,” my answer will be: “Yomma kippee yabo, said erayfa kabo in da Latin he quoth: You, Jay, soffa saray!!!”

The video above has been on YouTube since February 22, 2011 and in those four years, it’s amassed 27,722 views. That’s paltry for something so brilliantly full of shit (and scatting). And I haven’t even mentioned the he-dogs and she-dogs yet!

We should change that. Watch this. Tell your friends to watch it. Memorize it. Think about it at least once a day. I have and, believe me, it’s made my life better.

I’m not sure of the source of this video (its randomness probably makes that much more effective). I do know that Kim Cattrall and the man to whom she is married in the video—sound designer/musician Mark Levinson—divorced in 2004. Before that, they co-wrote the sex manual Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm. I’m assuming their written collaboration was founded on the same principles as their musical one. As Cattrall explains in the video above: “We just have a good rhythm together, you know? He sort of feels me out, I feel him out, and uh, we go for it.”

A South Carolina couple was arrested on Friday after allegedly making their 14-year-old daughter live in a tent in the woods as punishment for eating a Pop-Tart without permission, the Associated Press reports.

Police say James Allen Driggers, 33, and Crystal Lynn Driggers, 36, sent the teen to camp in a forested area “known to have wild hogs” for a week with only a roll of toilet paper, a flashlight, a whistle and a watch. From The Item:

They allegedly told the child if she wanted food she had to meet at specific times by a fence to receive it, otherwise she wouldn’t eat.

And, when severe thunderstorms rolled through the Sumter-area Thursday night, the child was left to fend for herself in the woods.

The reason behind doing this, according to a release from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office, is the parents wanted to punish their daughter for eating a Pop-Tart toaster pastry.

Authorities reportedly found the teen Friday night, two days into her weeklong punishment.

The Driggers now each face one count of unlawful neglect of a child.

[Image via Sumter County Sheriff’s Office//h/t Uproxx]

On Monday, Deadspin’s Diana Moskovitz obtained a disturbing collection of documents from a 2005 civil suit against Bill Cosby by former Temple University employee Andrea Constand, who accused the comedian of drugging and raping her. While the suit was settled out of court in 2006, the case’s records remained sealed until today, when a federal judge released the documents over objections by Cosby’s legal team.http://deadspin.com/here-are-the-d...

In the documents reviewed by Moskovitz so far, Cosby does not confess to raping women or drugging them without their knowledge. However, the comedian admits to getting Quaaludes to “use” on young women he “wanted to have sex with,” having sex with one woman in particular after giving her the drug, and offering Constand money “for her education” after she sought an apology.
http://defamer.gawker.com/report-bill-co...

Below are some of the most chilling revelations from the files, with additional excerpts to added as further revelations are discovered.

Cosby admits to getting Quaaludes to “use” on young women he “wanted to have sex with”:

After defendant testified that he obtained seven prescriptions for Quaaludes, the following testimony was elicited:

Q. You gave them to other people?

A. Yes.

(9/29/05, 66)

Q. You gave those drugs to other people knowing that it was —

MR. O’CONNOR: He said he gave it to T—- right now.

MS. TROIANI: He said other people. He did say other people.

BY MS. TROIANI:

Q. Knowing that it was illegal?

***MR. O’CONNOR:

Whatever the legality of it is, it will stand. I’m instructing him not to answer. He gave the Quaaludes. If it was illegal, the courts will determine that.

BY MS. TROIANI:

Q. Did you ever get another prescription for Quaaludes from another doctor after that time?

MR. O’CONNOR:

This is in the ‘70s?

THE WITNESS:

A. No.

BY MS. TROIANI:

Q. Who are the people that you gave the Quaaludes to?

MR. O’CONNOR: Keep it to the Jane Does. I’m not going beyond it. I’m instructing him not to answer it beyond the Jane Does.

(Tr. 9/29/05. 66-68)

BY MS. TROIANI:

Q. When you got the Quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these Quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you ever give any of those young women the Quaaludes without their knowledge?

MR. O’CONNOR: Object to the question. Restrict it to the Jane Does, would you, please

Cosby admits to having sex with a woman after giving her Quaaludes:

Defendant was questioned about a Rule 415 witness’ statement, in which she stated that at age 19, she met defendant who had sex with her after giving her Quaaludes. Her statement was ambiguous about whether or not they continued to see each other or simply met again two years later. Defense counsel repeatedly interjected himself into the testimony, giving his version of the incident and once again denying the applicability of Rule 30 (c) to the proceedings.

THE WITNESS:

A. That’s her statement. I don’t know. How many years ago are we talking about? 197 what?

MR. O’CONNOR: 6.

BY MS. TROIANI:

Q. You thought it was later than that?

MR. O’CONNOR: He met her two years later.

THE WITNESS:

A. I meet Ms (Redacted) in Las Vegas. She meets me back stage. I give her Quaaludes. We then have sex. I do not I can’t judge at this time what she knows about herself for 19 years, a passive personality.

Cosby details the terms of the “education trust” he offered Constand:

Defendant testified that even though both Plaintiff and her mother told him that all they wanted was an apology, he called Plaintiff’s home and spoke to her mother to offer money for Plaintiff’s “education.” The following occurred during questioning about that event:

Q. So, are you saying that Andrea would have to prove to you that she got a 3.0 average wherever she went in order for you to pay for her education?

A. She would have to prove to me that while she was at said university that she was maintaining a 3.0.

Q. But you didn’t require that of T———, did you?

A. T——-, yes. How can you say, but you weren’t? Do you know the deal with T——?

Q. You told us earlier.

A. What did I say it was?

MR. O’CONNOR: That wasn’t the deal.

MS. TROIANI: I’m not talking about the deal.

Constand’s lawyer summarizes Cosby’s testimony wherein he admits to offering other women money for their education:

Defendant admitted to the police and in his deposition that the plaintiff and her mother did not ask for money or the “educational trust” which he called to offer to her after the initial phone conversation with plaintiff and her mother. He further admitted that he had previously used the “educational trust” device to pay one of the Rule 415 witnesses, when he believed that she was going to reveal their liaison. The thrust of plaintiff’s defamation claim is that defendant knew that she had not asked for money or attempted to extort or embarrass him when he gave that statement to the police and the National Enquirer.

Cosby recounts the 2005 conversation where he apologized to Constand and offered her money for her education:

In his deposition, the statement Defendant gave to the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania authorities concerning his January 16, 2005 telephone call with Plaintiff and her mother was read to him and he admitted as follows:

Q. First I apologized twice. Then she said—I said, what do you want me to—and I assume the word do is left out. I said, what can I do? And she said, nothing. She said, your apology is enough. I asked that twice. She said, nothing, there’s nothing you can do. We hung up. I know Andrea so I called her back thinking, listen, I know that Andrea has talked about graduate school, why don’t we have a conversation and talk about what she wants to be. Whatever graduate school, we will pick up the tab, but she must maintain a 3.0 GP A.” When you say we, who do you mean?

A. Well, like our family, when we write a check, that’s what we do.

Q. What was the response?

A. She did not accept, nor did she reject it.

[Image via Getty Images]

Hollywood legend Jerry Weintraub, who produced films such as The Karate Kid and Ocean’s Eleven, has passed away, his publicist told CNN. He was 77.

According to USA Today, the three-time Emmy winner died of heart attack at a Santa Barbara hospital on Monday, having recently experienced poor health.

Weintraub had a career in the entertainment industry spanning five decades, first as a promoter for musicians like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley before entering the film business as a producer in the 1970s—but it was his outsized personality and talent for storytelling that friends remembered today.

“We’ll laugh at his great stories, and applaud his accomplishments. And in the years to come the stories and accomplishments will get better with age, just as Jerry would have wanted it,” said George Clooney in a statement. “To his family and friends, Amal and I send our love. And to those who didn’t know him we send our deepest sympathy. You would have loved him.”

Former President George H.W. Bush also honored Weintraub, characterizing his longtime friend as “an American original, who earned his success by the sheer force of his instinct, drive, and larger-than-life personality.”

“He had a passion for life, and throughout the ups and downs of his prolific career it was clear just how much he loved show business,” said Bush.

As news of Weintraub’s death spread, many more took to Twitter to remember the legendary Hollywood figure.

So sad at loss of Jerry Weintraub, you were 1 of a kind, my friend. Last of a breed. So glad I got to be "that kid" pic.twitter.com/ebN7p8ptUL

July 6, 2015

Jerry Weintraub is larger than life. He was a giant in Hollywood & his heart was so big it lit up the town. My thoughts are with his family.

July 6, 2015

Just heard Jerry Weintraub has died. He was a giant and a good friend. No Jerry, no "Diner" No "Karate Kid"... And a lot less fun. RIP.

July 6, 2015

He has stopped talking. RIP Jerry Weintraub.

July 6, 2015

[Image via Getty Images]