A German man admitted in court that he drugged his girlfriend’s tea one summer night last year so she wouldn’t interrupt his computer game session with a friend. He confessed his crime to her the day after it happened, and was finally convicted of assault this week. He’ll be fined 500 euros.

“I only put four or five drops into her tea,” the 23-year-old told the judge, according to German newspaper WAZ.

That was enough to knock her out from around 10 p.m., when she got home from a long shift at her job, until midday the next day. She told the court that after she woke up, she kept falling asleep on her drive to work.

“Your girlfriend slept long and deeply, which didn’t harm her, but this is certainly a premeditated bodily harm,” the judge said.

The victim is now the man’s ex-girlfriend, but their breakup wasn’t exclusively about the time he roofied her tea—his awfulness is many-layered. She said she dumped him because he was on drugs himself at the time.

The unemployed, girlfriend-drugging video game enthusiast claimed in court that he’d been clean for 10 months and plans to start an internship soon.

“It was stupid, but now I’m on a straight path,” added the man who cared more for his Xbox than he did for his ex.

[h/t The Local, Photo: Luke Hayfield Photography/Flickr]

In April 2014, the media critic Michael Wolff published a column in British GQ about the then-ongoing phone hacking trial against several journalists and editors employed by Rupert Murdoch’s shuttered tabloid News of the World. Titled “The court without the king,” the critical article is now at the center of a complaint lodged by England’s attorney general, whose office believes GQ should be held in “contempt of court” for implying, with Wolff’s column, that Murdoch was somehow culpable for the hacking charges. As reported by the Guardian, the magazine’s publisher Condé Nast is rightfully fighting this accusation. At the same time, and without any public notice, Condé appears to have taken several highly unusual steps to prevent anyone from reading what Wolff wrote.

Wolff’s piece occupies six pages, 124 though 129, of the original April 2014 issue of British GQ, the cover of which reads: HACKING EXCLUSIVE! MICHAEL WOLFF AT THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY. But if you download a digital copy of the magazine today—in our case, from the third-party platform Zinio—you will not find any trace of Wolff’s words. The cover’s teaser text, for example, now refers to an article about Monty Python:

The article is no longer listed in the issue’s table of contents:

And, according to Zinio’s own software, pages 124-127 simply do not exist (while 128-129 have been entirely replaced with ads):

The only online evidence of the article’s existence is a page on the magazine’s website listing the April 2014 issue’s table of contents. According to the Internet Archive, GQ never created an online version of Wolff’s column.

Why would Condé go through all the effort of ensuring Wolff’s article could not be read not only by its English readers without access to a print copy, but by readers in other countries as well? Nothing in the actual piece, whose text was obtained by Gawker via an eBay auction of the original print edition, would strike the ordinary American reader as illegal, and there’s no indication that Wolff or GQ published anything inaccurate. Here, for example, is one of the sections the attorney general of England appears to focus on:

Just to utter the word “Murdoch” could, from the prosecution’s perspective, have tarred the defendants. Indeed, so powerful is the word that it may arguably be prejudicial in and of itself, or perhaps a distraction from the people actually on trial. The more guilt that might be ascribed to him, the less for the defendants. That might logically have been a defence ploy: to make the defendants victims of the far-off monster. On the other hand, arguably, the more you say the name Murdoch the more you ascribe a negative aura to all. Guilt by association.

Also, not incidentally, Murdoch is paying for much of this grand defence, by some estimates the most costly in British legal history. From the defence’s point of view, there’s only so much you’d want to bite the hand that feeds. And perhaps he is more useful in his absence. Without Murdoch as the anchor, it is natural to wonder just exactly why we are here.

Condé did not acknowledge our requests for comment, but the likely reason for the article’s erasure, it seems, is England’s notoriously strict laws governing speech. In the United Kingdom, judges can compel news outlets and other publications to refrain from publishing information or works that could somehow interfere with “the course of justice.” They can also attempt to punish outlets after the fact, as is the case here. According to the attorney general’s office, the above passage builds the argument that Murdoch “was, or probably was, implicated in voicemail interception and that he should have been prosecuted and in his absence the trial had an air of unreality about it.” Since the hacking trial’s prosecution team deliberately avoided going after Murdoch as part of its legal strategy, the attorney general contends, jurors were in danger of reading Wolff’s article and arriving at the conclusion that the prosecution had formed “a misleading picture” of what had actually happened.

These laws are self-evidently ludicrous, and the fact that a Western government is harassing Wolff and GQ for publishing opinions about a public figure is preposterous. Thankfully such codes are largely unthinkable in the United States, where journalists like Wolff enjoy, and deserve, strong press protections under the the First Amendment. But in this particular instance, the U.K.’s speech laws are acting as a de facto restraint on Wolff’s First Amendment rights, here in the United States. After all, Condé clearly felt the need to prevent the article’s text from reaching American readers—a large, and possibly the largest, share of Wolff’s audience—and, as you can see above, even attempted to create the perception that Wolff’s column was never published in the first place.

In response to a direct inquiry about his column’s disappearance, Wolff sent Gawker a link to a recent USA Today column of his about the upcoming jury trial between Gawker Media and Terry Bollea (a.k.a. Hulk Hogan). In that column, Wolff argues that although “Hogan’s suit will likely be defeated on constitutional grounds,” the prospect of Gawker being financially crippled by an unconstitutional jury award would serve as part of a set of “checks and balances” against irresponsible or “feral” journalism.

Wolff’s premise that the law should be used to slap around unruly journalists strikes us as a bad one, and we wish him and GQ success against the attorney general.

Email/chat: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · DM: @jktrotter · Photo credit: GQ, Getty

Going to an EDM show is already self-troll of sorts, but it helps if the DJ has contempt for the crowd too. Hope you brought enough “molly” pills to ride this one out!

[via Digg]

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

Join us at the screening of The Manchurian Candidate (the original, obviously) on July 14, 7:30 pm, at the Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn, for the third installment in our It’s A Conspiracy series. We’re thrilled that Malcolm Nance, aka Kinja user kingpindaddyhoho (really), will be joining us for the panel following the movie. We plan on having alcoholic root beer floats and tater tots.

Nance is a 34-year veteran intelligence officer who has worked the Iraq mission since 1987, fighting in all of our Middle East wars since 1983. He has lived in and out of Iraq since 2003. Nance runs his own analytical organization, TAPSTRI, the Terror Asymmetrics Project and is author of, most recently, The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency, 2003-2014.

We have a limited number of tickets left, so buy yours today!

Contact the author at sultana.khan@gawker.com.

Police have evacuated the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison because of a “credible bomb threat,” WITI reports.

People continue to evacuate the Capitol after bomb threat. Gathering across the street per Capitol Police order. pic.twitter.com/buf2EKKnmy

July 8, 2015

The threat was reportedly made against the building, as opposed to an individual. No other details are known at this time.

Lawmakers, aides, media all gathered outside the capitol square. pic.twitter.com/HeYsuWho29

July 8, 2015

According to WISN reporter Kent Wainscott, the evacuation was “very orderly” and all lawmakers are now outside the building.

UPDATE 7:00 p.m.: After reportedly searching the building with bomb-sniffing dogs, police have given an all-clear and are allowing people to return to the Capitol.

[Image via Getty Images//h/t Buzzfeed]

Gizmodo Senator: I Don’t Believe the NYSE and United Failures Are a Coincidence | io9 Terminator Genisys: The Spoilyr FAQ | Jalopnik Here’s What Random Strangers On The Street Think About My Hummer | Jezebel Men Delivering Babies: The End of a Two-Century Fad | Kinja Popular Posts

After Reddit effectively consumed itself this weekend over the firing of beloved AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor, redditors have been clawing at themselves for a chance to hear Taylor’s side of things. And now, at long last, the ex-employee has made her first public statement since the real chaos began. http://gawker.com/reddit-in-chao...

Posting on the subreddit /r/self, Taylor wrote:

All of which is very nice and heartwarming and inspiring, what have you, but more importantly, it doesn’t really tell us much of anything at all.

The prevailing theory of why she got fired seems to be some combination of her refusing to move to the West Coast and a reluctance to experiment with new formats for the site’s AMAs, the latter of which was pointed out in a now-deleted post on Quora from Marc Bodnick, the site’s Business and Community Leader:

Hopefully some more concrete information about what happened will make its way to the surface soon. But in the meantime, hey, at least you know someone out there believes in you.

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

Two New Jersey high school students have been arrested for animal cruelty after allegedly luring a family of geese into the street, running them over and uploading footage of the crime to Snapchat, NBC New York reports.

According to the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the two 17-year-olds planned the sick video beforehand, one teen telling the other, “You kill them and I’ll shoot it with my phone.”

After the footage was posted to social media, the NJSPCA says they were alerted to the video’s existence by “several concerned citizens.” From NJ.com:

“After several days of investigation the two youths were found and admitted to their involvement in the events while being questioned with their parents permissions,” the agency stated.

At least one goose was found dead on Dorset Drive around the corner from the 300 block of New Dover Road where the attack occurred. The vehicle used to run down the goose family was located in the school parking lot and still had goose feathers embedded into the front license plate, grill and bumper, investigators said.

Each teen now faces a single charge of third-degree animal abuse, but authorities say more charges may be filed against others.

[Image via NJSPCA]

Speaking with NBC News this week, presidential candidate and open-faced quesadilla Donald Trump defended his recent, racist comments about Mexican immigrants, saying “there’s nothing to apologize for” and even claiming, remarkably, that he would win the Latino vote in 2016.

“I have a great relationship with the Mexican people,” Trump told reporter Katy Tur on Wednesday. “They love me, I love them. And I’ll tell you something, if I get the nomination, I’ll win the Latino vote.”

Admittedly, “if I get the nomination” is a pretty major caveat, given Trump is as likely to be in the general election as Herman Cain was in 2012, but in the same interview the human Cheeto revealed his secret weapon: Jobs. Loads and loads of unspecified, mysteriously-generated jobs.

“Hillary Clinton is not going to be able to create jobs, I will tell you right now,” said Trump. “Neither is Jeb Bush going to be able to create jobs. I will create jobs and the Latinos will have jobs that they don’t have right now. And I will win that vote.”

Well, there you have it. Mexican immigrants might be mostly rapists according to Trump, but under his administration they’ll at least be employed mostly rapists.

[Image via Getty Images]

On Tuesday, TMZ published security footage that appeared to show human-kitten hybrid Ariana Grande licking donuts that weren’t hers and saying “I hate America.”http://defamer.gawker.com/demon-popstar-...

Earlier today, Grande apologized for the wrong part of the video, writing, “I am EXTREMELY proud to be an American and I’ve always made it clear that I love my country.”http://jezebel.com/ariana-grande-...

And this evening, authorities have finally decided to take Grande’s salivary transgression seriously, reportedly launching “an investigation” into the incident. From The Hollywood Reporter:

Police in Lake Elsinore, California, where the donut shop is located, said they and Riverside County public health officials were investigating the leaked video, which appeared to show the 22-year-old singer and a man with her “maliciously lick” the donuts.

Asked about the police investigation by the Associated Press, a Grande spokesperson said the pop star had no further comment—a degree of lingual restraint she should really start practicing around baked goods.

[Image via AP Images]

It seems fairly easy to be a corrupt cop in America these days and still hold down a job. Don’t do anything insanely horrendous or stupid and you’ll probably be fine. Hell, do something both horrendous and stupid and you’ll still probably be fine. Officer Wardell Johnson of the New Orleans Police Department did both but, well, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be fine.

On June 20, another New Orleans officer, Daryle Holloway, was transporting a domestic violence suspect named Travis Boys to central lockup in the back of a police SUV. At some point during the ride, Boys shot and killed Holloway.

The obvious question is: how did Boys, who was handcuffed, manage to shoot and kill a police officer? The answer, it was revealed recently, is that the arresting officer failed to properly search Boys, who may have killed Holloway with the same weapon that prompted a call to police in the first place. That arresting officer was Wardell Johnson.

Wardell Johnson is a bad, neglectful cop. He’s the type of cop who takes it upon himself to dispense justice outside the letter of the law, and this has gotten him in trouble in the past. A thorough piece in the New Orleans Advocate published yesterday explains in great detail Johnson’s history of overlooking evidence in domestic violence cases specifically.

By the time Johnson responded to the domestic violence call about Travis Boys on June 20, he had already been suspended two times for improperly handling domestic violence cases. In 2006, he broke and disposed of two guns related to an incident instead of bringing them in as evidence, and in 2010 he failed to file an incident report regarding a disturbance he had responded to. Between the two incidents, Johnson was suspended for a total of 12 days.

The obvious question is: why was Johnson never fired? His 2006 suspension was handed down by New Orleans PD superintendent Warren Riley, his second by a different superintendent named Ronal Serpas. The current superintendent, Michael Harrison, did not mince words in a press conference on Tuesday:

At a news conference Tuesday, Police Superintendent Michael Harrison ripped Johnson’s conduct and said he was “far past disgusted. I’m actually quite pissed off at it.”

Cops are notoriously hard to fire, and the New Orleans’ PD has been singled out in the past for protecting its officers. A Department of Justice investigation into the police force conducted in 2010 found that officer-involved shootings were frequently not referred to the city’s Public Integrity Bureau (PIB), which is supposed to handle investigations into officers accused of misconduct. The DOJ stated that the mishandling of internal probes “was so blatant and egregious that it appeared intentional in some respects,” and as recently as this year federal monitors of the city’s PIB believed the organization was not properly handling bungled domestic violence cases:

In their most recent quarterly report, the federal monitors also noted they had prodded the PIB to further examine complaints about mishandled rape and domestic violence investigations.

It’s possible, if not likely, that the New Orleans PD declined to fire Johnson simply because they could not afford to lose an officer, even a crooked one. The department is severely understaffed, and after Holloway’s death, the department noted that its officers typically have to transport suspects by themselves because there are not enough officers to double up.

Whatever the case may be, the New Orleans PD endorsed Johnson’s method of policing by only twice slapping him on the wrist. He was either lazy or corrupt, and his bosses basically told him it was no big deal. On June 20, Johnson again chose to be lazy or corrupt, but this time it cost a fellow officer his life.

So, once again, Johnson found his conduct under review, though this time the consequences of his conduct were far more tragic. And when it became clear to the PIB officers investigating Holloway’s murder that Johnson’s flippancy had led to Holloway’s death, Johnson panicked.

Here is the point at which a remarkably shitty cop reveals himself to also be a profoundly and pathetically stupid one (via the Advocate):

When he was confronted Monday during a Public Integrity Bureau interview with body-worn camera footage exposing his sloppy police work, Johnson left abruptly, police said, claiming he had to pick up his child from day camp. While detectives tracked him, Johnson threw a box containing the .40-caliber bullets into a canal near Morrison and Downman roads.

Johnson was wearing a body camera. That body camera revealed his bad policing—he left a shell from a bullet Boys had fired at his wife on the scene, and sloppily frisked the suspect before putting him in Holloway’s SUV. When he was confronted with this information, Johnson thought up an obvious lie and immediately fled the meeting. For some reason, he thought he had escaped cleanly, like he’s Jason Bourne, and during his getaway he tossed further evidence into a canal as his coworkers trailed him.

Wardell Johnson, you evil, dumb motherfucker.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

Stoop shrimp: When you got some shrimp and you put it on the stoop and it’s hot outside and then the shrimp is cooked. Serve it up: Time for some stoop shrimp! You’re gonna love it. I know you will.

That is unless you’re Vinny V., a resident of Brooklyn neighborhood Dyker Heights who captured photograph evidence of some stoop shrimp grilling in the wild last month. He submitted this angry claim to the Brooklyn Daily:

“I thought, ‘Man, that’s dirty if somebody’s gonna eat that,’ ” said Vinny V., who lives nearby on 74th Street and asked that his last name not be published for personal reasons. “What if a dog comes by and pees on it?”

Vinny wasn’t convinced residents were actually cooking the shellfish — rather than just defrosting them — until he returned to the block later that day.

“We came back and the shrimp were on the sidewalk,” he said. “They were following the sun with the shrimp.”

When a reporter for the Daily went to find out whether anyone at the residence knew about the elusive stoop shrimp sighting nearly a month after it happened, a woman “said she did not know anything.” But Vinny V. claimed he saw the same woman at the end of that hot summer day packing up the stoop shrimp, one presumes for a big fun party:

“We saw the woman come out and put them into a basket,” Vinny V. said. “That’s hopefully the first and last time I see someone try to cook shrimp on a sidewalk.”

Regardless, is stoop shrimp the most beautiful phrase in the English language since “cellar door”? All signs point to yes.

Image via Brooklyn Daily. Contact the author at dayna.evans@gawker.com.

Major rewrites, a scrapped pilot, and a lead actress presumably fired: What on earth is going on on the set of Cameron Crowe’s new show, Roadies? According to Deadline, nothing good.

Originally conceived as a Showtime comedy about the “day-to-day life of a successful rock tour as seen through the eyes of the crew members who help get the show on the road,” Crowe’s first foray into television is now reportedly falling apart.

Showtime gave Crowe—who’s writing, directing and executive producing—a pilot order last June. Christina Hendricks and Luke Wilson signed on as leads in December, and things looked good. At the time, co-producer J.J. Abrams praised the script, calling it “funnier and sweeter and wilder than I had ever imagined.”

Cut to a year later, and it’s all falling to shit. The resulting pilot was apparently so untenable that Crowe is in the process of completely rewriting Hendricks’s character. According to Deadline, she’s leaving the show entirely, and at least part of the pilot, if not all, will presumably be reshot.

Deadline has learned that the female lead role of Shelli, played by Christina Hendricks in Showtime’s Roadies pilot, written, directed and executive produced by Cameron Crowe, is being completely revamped and will be recast. The decision to re-conceive the character was made after the pilot was shot, and Crowe is currently in the process of re-writing, according to industry sources close to the production. The source emphasized that it was a creative decision to revamp the character and the parting was amicable

It hasn’t been an easy year for Crowe, whose film Aloha bombed, both in terms of the box office but also in terms of common sense. Not that the writing wasn’t already already on the wall—Sony executives tore the film apart in a series of hilariously eviscerating leaked emails. http://defamer.gawker.com/cameron-crowe-...http://defamer.gawker.com/leaked-emails-...

“I’m never starting a movie again when the script is ridiculous and we al [sic] know it I don’t care how much I love the director and the actors it never not even once works,” then-Sony president Amy Pascal wrote last November.

Wise, if not spell-checked, words.

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Like our brains, the human penis hasn’t evolved in tens of thousands of years — and that’s a real shame. Our favorite male body part is capable of so much more. In consideration of pending advances in science and technology, here’s what to expect with penis 2.0.

Before we get started it’s important to point out that much of what I describe below is pure speculation; think of this post as a “wish list” of features we’d like to see in a future version of the human penis. Indeed, many of the proposed enhancements and augmentations are nowhere near prime time, and many have never even been considered by the scientific and medical communities. With all that said, I did my best to describe how we might actually make some of this happen.

Disease Resistance

First and foremost, the penis of the future must be resistant to sexually transmitted diseases. According to the Center for Disease Control, there are about 20 million new infections of STDs in the U.S. each year, burdening the American healthcare system to the tune of $16 billion in direct medical costs. STDs are transmitted a number of ways, including through the blood, vaginal fluids, and semen. They can also be spread via infected skin or mucous membranes, such as sores in the mouth. Exposure typically occurs through vaginal, anal, or oral sex.

Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have developed temporary electronic tattoos. Similar technology could be applied to penis 2.0. Image credit: Todd Coleman/UCSD

Consequently, penis 2.0 won’t be able to account for all the various ways STDs are contracted and transmitted. But a ramped up genital system, in conjunction with a juiced-up immune system, could help mitigate risk. For instance, a high-tech penis could be implanted with bio-sensors that detect specific foreign pathogens, alerting the rest of the body to their presence. Once alerted, the heightened immune system could attack the pathogens any number of ways, such as dispatching genetically engineered viruses, nanobots, or chemical compounds toxic to the offenders. What’s more, a cybernetic penis — which would be more synthetic than biological — is less likely to be susceptible to infection. (Then again, any penis with blood flowing through it would probably give pathogens access to the rest of the body.)

Birth Control on Demand

Men will eventually have a birth control pill to call their own. But even then, there will be side-effects and inconveniences to consider. Indeed, the detrimental effects of hormonal male contraception is well known, including weight gain, loss of libido, gynecomastia (enlarged breasts), liver function impairment, acne, and changes in good and bad cholesterol. Not to mention any unknown side effects to offspring. Moreover, a daily regimen of pill-taking is not anything anyone should have to endure, whether they be male or female. What’s needed is something a bit more on-demand.

A future male reproductive system might feature a fertility toggle switch that could block the passage of sperm to the seminal fluid. This could be done by stationing nanobots in the vas deferens, the channel where semen and sperm combine; a simple command, either via chemical circuits or some other chemical or viral signaling mechanism, could mobilize them to construct a sperm-blocking barrier—like a temporary vasectomy. Or, the nanobots could be on the hunt for sperm-specific proteins, and take evasive action. (Image: Eubios)

Alternately, the body could be programmed to produce a potent spermicide in the testes that kills sperm on contact. The challenge will be to find a way to quickly disable this feature and restore sperm to nominal levels. Scientists might also devise a genetic switch that can turn sperm production on and off — but again, it could take time for the sperm to bounce back (it takes 60 days to make sperm), not to mention peripheral side-effects related to testosterone production.

Speaking of which, a future reproductive system — or reproductive system 2.0 — should also ensure consistent levels of testosterone production to stave off age-related issues such as disturbed sleep, loss of libido, and reduced muscle mass.

No More Erectile Difficulties

The National Institutes of Health estimate that erectile dysfunction (ED) affects as many as 30-million men in the United States, and that by 2025 it could affect as many as 300-million globally. Products like Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis have helped tremendously, but they’re expensive, they can cause side effects (like flushing, stomach upset, diarrhea, flu-like symptoms, muscle and back pain, and more), and can result in inconveniently long-lasting erections.

Future interventions to treat ED are on their way, and they may arrive before the cybernetic penis. Advances in pharmacotherapy, gene therapy, regenerative medicine (like nerve grafts), and a new drug called avanafil all look promising.

But mechanical things can also go wrong with the penis, including damage and age-related impairments to nerves, arteries in and near the corpora cavernosa (the sponge-like cylindrical structures in the shaft of the penis), smooth muscles, and fibrous tissues; erectile function depends on the structural integrity and organization of collagen fibers around the corpora cavernosa, and collagen has a notoriously bad time repairing itself. To alleviate these problems, a future penis could be made capable of self-repair, both to tissues and cells. Genetic engineering would likely be the best approach. More practically, an artificial penis (more on this later) could be designed to withstand age-related degradation.

Multiple Orgasms

Speaking of erections: After a man ejaculates, his penis goes limp. Depending on the guy (age is definitely a factor), it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to regain the capacity for an erection. This variable length of time, called the refractory period, constrains a man’s ability to achieve orgasms in relatively quick succession.

There are a number of theories that attempt to explain the refractory period, but many scientists believe there’s a chemical link. Males release a significant amount of the oxytocin hormone during ejaculation, along with prolactin — a compound that suppresses dopamine, which is responsible for sexual arousal. Consequently, the refractory period isn’t caused by a deficiency in the penis per se; rather, it’s something that stems from the brain.

One way to shorten the refractory period may be to introduce prolactin inhibitors. In future, the body could be engineered to automatically synthesize these compounds and trigger their release after an orgasm. Ideally, however, penis 2.0 should be able to get erect on demand, and not be limited by autonomic bodily processes.

Enhanced Sensitivity and Climaxes

The penis in already quite sensitive in its natural state, but there’s no reason we can’t make a good thing better.

The skin tissue around the penis is equipped with nerve fibers that detect touch, temperature, pain, pleasure, and itch. But as for the experience of pleasure itself, that happens in the brain, particularly in the so-called hedonic hotspots, including the nucleus accumbens, posterior ventral pallidum, amygdala, and other cortical and subcortical regions. So, to make the sensations around the penis feel even more pleasurable, and to make orgasms feel even better, neuroscientists of the future will have to find a way to trigger and excite these brain areas as they correspond to incoming sensory information from the penis. This could be done in conjunction with treatments that increase the nerve density of the penis, but this would have to be done in such a way that the penis doesn’t become hyper-sensitive.

Scientists have already used deep brain stimulation to affect and excite the nucleus accumbens, but finding something less invasive will prove to be a challenge. One possible avenue might be to link signals coming from the penis’s nerve fibers to a transcranial magnetic stimulation device (TMS) or a transcranial direct-current stimulation device (tDCS). In the future, such devices could be made internal via implants. To assist with this, advanced electronic skin patches, like the one developed by researchers from Seoul National University, could be used to collect and transmit data to and from the area being stimulated.

Adjustable Shape and Surface Structure

Some guys would like their penises to be of a certain size or girth, either for aesthetic or functional purposes. At the same time and for similar reasons, a penis should be able to meet the demands of a discriminating partner. Ideally, men should be able to change the smoothness of their penis, or its surface structure. Penis 2.0 should be like an on-demand French tickler, with modifiable ridges, grooves, and bumps to enhance the sexual pleasure of the receiver.

Something like this? Credit: Crystal Condoms

Engineering a penis with these features will be a monumental technical challenge, and may require considerable advances in both cybernetics and materials technology. It may even require an entirely new penis design altogether. But penis transplants are not as outrageous as they may seem; physicians have already transplanted fully functional penises in patients. In the future, a synthetic penis, composed of both natural and artificial components, could be prepared in the lab for eventual transplantation.

Vibrator and Hands Free Modes

If we’re going to start bioengineering and transplanting cyborg penises, it should be capable of much more than just changing shape. A future penis should also act like a vibrator, buzzing away for the pleasure of both sender and receiver. Armed with this feature you’ll finally be able to throw away your awkward Fleshlight. With the vibrating, hands-free penis, you’ll be able to bring yourself to climax simply by thinking about it.

Internet Ready

Last but not least, our penis of the future should be able to connect to the Internet.

Once your dick is online you’ll be able to participate in virtual sex. Today, this is done through teledildonics; Internet sex toys are already making it possible to “access” your long-distance partner. But with the enhanced, Internet-ready penis, no external devices will be required.

You could also use your bluetooth-enabled penis to track and transmit biometric data and other statistics to an online app. You’ll be able to set weekly goals for your sex life and monitor health-related issues. Call it quantified cock. Oh, and a connection to the Internet will also allow you to update any software that’s resident in your upgraded penis.

Contact the author at george@io9.com and @dvorsky. Top image by Jim Cooke.

James Tate, a Pulitzer prize and National Book Award winning poet who had published sixteen full-length collections of poetry, died yesterday at 71 according to Masslive. He was also a longtime English professor at the University of Massachusetts. Want to read a good poem? Here’s one by Tate that you’re sure to love.

Contact the author at dayna.evans@gawker.com.

Just days after some rude dummy tried to charge his phone by plugging it into a Broadway set’s prop outlet, a different rude dummy with a phone struck the theatre once again. But this time, Tony-winner and hero Patti LuPone was there to put some necessary fear into the audience.

The fiery LuPone, who once flipped out on an audience member for inconsiderately shooting flash photos, was partway into Act 2 of Shows for Days Wednesday night when the offending phone came out somewhere in the second row. And rather than shouting down the obnoxious texting theatergoer, LuPone snatched the phone from her hands and carried it offstage.

“As of curtain call, not sure it was returned,” one witness wrote on Twitter.

Good. (The Lincoln Theater later confirmed the texter got her phone back after the show, according to Gothamist.)

LuPone sent Playbill a statement bemoaning the distracted, inconsiderate audiences plaguing Broadway today, and explaining that this bullshit is really starting to get to even the most professional of performers:

“We work hard on stage to create a world that is being totally destroyed by a few, rude, self-absorbed and inconsiderate audience members who are controlled by their phones. They cannot put them down. When a phone goes off or when a LED screen can be seen in the dark it ruins the experience for everyone else - the majority of the audience at that performance and the actors on stage. I am so defeated by this issue that I seriously question whether I want to work on stage anymore. Now I’m putting battle gear on over my costume to marshall the audience as well as perform.”

The problem is that making a spectacle of the assholes in the audience could backfire—it’s so satisfying to see the discourteous get their comeuppance that we’re starting to think of it as part of the entertainment.

In fact, Gothamist points out that someone predicted this incident months before it happened:

Watch out theatre cell phone users! Mt @broadwaycom Patti LuPone is returning to the NY stage! http://t.co/C85GcEk1VL pic.twitter.com/0NdWaik935

February 6, 2015

[h/t Gothamist, Photo: Joan Marcus/Lincoln Center Theater]

A figure caught my eye as I passed through one of the supposedly haunted rooms of the supposedly very haunted Merchant’s House Museum in NoHo last week. I gasped, a reflex that was embarrassing even though I was ostensibly alone. “Ah!,” I thought—“Was that a ghost?”

No. It was a very scary mannequin.

The mannequin, placed in a bed with his arms folded into a rudely human-like pose that, once I realized he was not a ghost, made me worried he was a real man who might pop up and yell at me, was meant to approximate Seabury Tredwell, eponymous merchant and patriarch of the family that lived in this house for nearly 100 years.

Seabury, a hardware merchant, purchased the house in 1835 and it remained in his family until his youngest daughter, Gertrude, died there in 1933. In 1936 it was turned into a museum, founded by a cousin of the family, and it remains a museum today. The Tredwells’ furniture, household items, soothing old-house-smell, and spirits???, are well-preserved inside.

The house, I learned through a binder provided to those taking a self-guided tour of the museum, is a National Historic Landmark. It is also the oldest in-tact site of Irish habitation (the family’s servants were young Irish immigrants) in New York. And, if you believe the New York Times, it is “Manhattan’s most haunted house,”—a very silly, hard to quantify, and spooooky assertion that I, on this muggy Manhattan afternoon, hoped to prove.

To help detect any paranormal activity, I brought with me an EMF ghost meter that Hamilton Nolan received on a trip to Branson, Missouri and later gave to Taylor Berman, who loaned it to me with great hesitance. (“I need it back,” he told me more than once, about the ghost detector.) I also downloaded two ghost hunting iPhone applications: “Ghost Hunter M2” and “iEMF.”

Does the iPhone really come equipped with the sort of technology that allows it to find, track, and communicate with the dead? you might be wondering. Uh, yeah—why would they sell me two $.99 apps if it didn’t.

The “iEMF” app is just another EMF tool that I purchased in case the Branson, Missouri EMF ghost meter—now mine to keep—proved to be more of a novelty item than an accurate ghost detector.

Ghost Hunter M2, though, is “quite an amazing piece of technology,” according to Ghost Hunter M2. It is a device whose power “greatly exceeds that of many traditional ghost-hunting tools” and contains “an array of sensors controlled by powerful firmware and operating system [sic].” It comprises many different-yet-similar-and-uniformly-confusing ghost hunting tools: EMF, EVP, FFT-V, Geoscope Instrument, P-EVP, Sensor Sweep Instrument, Spatial Instrument, Twilight Instrument, and an audio recorder.

As far as I can tell, most of them are meant to tell you—with various charts and in bright, flashing neon green—whether or not there’s a spooky ghost around. “Twilight” takes pictures with different filters, one of which is bright neon green, another of which is just bright. Every once in a while EVP tells you a word that, I guess, a ghost is trying to tell you. Guitar. Notebook. Philip.

EVP is, by far, my favorite part of Ghost Hunter M2.

Juliann. Lake. Furious.

According to Emily Wright, Communications and Programs Manager of the Merchant’s House, whom I spoke with after my visit, the house typically has between six and 12 new reports of ghostly activity every year, including weird feelings, unaccounted for noises, sightings, etc. The most recent came earlier this year, when a visitor ran downstairs from the upper floors, telling the docent at the admissions desk that a woman in a long, black dress had followed her down a flight of stairs. Later that day, Wright tells me, another visitor had the exact same experience—chased down a flight of stairs by a woman in a long, black dress.

Damn. Sounds like a rude, fancy woman.

—Or a ghost.

If it was a ghost, it was likely the ghost of Gertrude—Seabury’s youngest daughter, and the only Tredwell to have died in the house. “Gertrude is probably the family member who is most frequently seen in the house,” Wright said, “but we’ve had sightings of other family members as well, including her father, a sister, a brother, and at least one servant.” The first recorded ghostly experience came shortly after Gertrude’s death in 1933.

Juggling my self-guided-tour binder, ghost meter, cell phone, and notebook, I set out to find Gertrude, or her father, her sister, her brother, or at least one of her servants. At the advice of the woman at the admission’s desk, I began my tour in the garden, where I sat on a bench and read the introductory section of the binder. What sort of interesting facts did I read in the introductory section of the binder? Huh, very rude of you to ask. You may visit the museum yourself if you want to know what sort of interesting facts I read in the introductory section of the binder. It costs $10.

I pulled out the ghost meter while sitting with a few other museum guests in the garden and turned it on. “BEEP-BEEP-BEEPBEBEEPBEPBEEPBEBEEP” it yelled at me, so loud. It made this noise not because it detected a ghost—don’t get excited—but because that is the insane noise it makes every time you turn it on. Fine—make your noise, if you must. It registered a 0 milliGauss reading and I put it in my purse, leaving it on so it will make that noise again ONLY to alert me about the presence of a ghost.

I ran through a few other tests while I hung out in the garden. I received no blips or beeps. The results mean, I believe: there are no ghosts in this garden.

Next I toured the front and rear parlors, which was incorrect. I was supposed to begin with the dining room and kitchen in the basement, and tour the rooms from there, as instructed by the binder, but instead I fucked it up. Truly, I never said I was perfect and it is your fault if you assumed as much.

The thing that struck me immediately as I toured the front and rear parlors was: They’re just going to let me walk around this house. By myself! Because the home is so well-maintained—the couches, the lighting fixtures, the doorway enframements, the mirrors, the souls of the dead, etc., they’re all right there—walking around feels almost invasive. Just strolling through this New York City time-warp, no one telling you what to do; smelling the old smells; learning from your binder; checking your ghost apps periodically. It’s good. You should go, alone.

—Or will you be alone?

According to the ghost meter and ghost apps, I was, in fact, alone as I toured the front and rear parlors. Multiple EMF detectors read 0 mG. Ghosts didn’t have any words to say. I took this photo in neon green just to make sure:

Hmm. Looks like: no ghosts in the parlors.

Next, I travelled upstairs to the bedrooms. In the second-floor hallway I received one of the highest EMF readings of my visit: 7.22 mG. This reading—7.22 mG—is, I’ll be honest with you, still just barely near the “medium” section of the mG ghost meter scale, and this reading only came in on the Ghost Hunter M2 app. Did a ghost breathe its death breath into this particular app out of pity, neglecting the other ghost hunting devices I was juggling, sometimes dropping?

Yes, I bet.

I was hot on the trail of a ghost.

The first bedroom had another scary mannequin in it, like Seabury’s bedroom, which I visited next, but she was placed in a way that, at least, seemed less like a mean trick. Was I startled? Of course. Did I gasp, like I did later, again? None of your business. In any case, my ghost detectors remained at a steady zero. No ghosts. At this point I began to wonder why all of my ghost detectors were refusing out of spite or laziness to alert me to the one, two, three, four, or even five spirits that almost certainly surrounded me as I took my self-guided tour.

In Seabury’s bedroom, I sat down in a chair to record audio and video, and to take an EVP reading. The first word that popped up on the EVP—which, you will recall, is meant to tell you a word a ghost is trying to tell you—was “phone.” Yes, I was on my phone. “Do you want me to not be on my phone?” I attempted to think at the ghost of Seabury Tredwell, whom I cannot imagine would be able to recognize my iPhone as a phone, no offense. I opened my mind to receive his thoughts: —-. Hmm, nothing.

The next word popped up: “guitar.” Yes, I play guitar. What about it? Seabury? HELLO? The next: “Hoyt.” Not sure what that has to do with guitar or phone, but sure—a word I encounter almost daily. The next: “red.” Huh. The next: “Doreen.” OK, enough.

The audio recorded only fan noise, and here is the video:

Let me know if you see any ghosts.

Up, up, up the stairs to the servants quarters. The binder describes the Tredwell’s servants as uneducated, young, Irish Catholic girls, which is not entirely dissimilar to the way one might describe me. It is possible, I thought, that we might bond over our similarities.

On the final staircase before the servants’ bedroom, I got another “strong” EMF reading—somewhere around 5 mG. I sat down on the stairs to investigate further and the reading immediately dipped back to nothing. Damn, ghost. Come back! On the folding chairs set up outside of the bedroom, I set up my devices to do some scanning and recording—hoping that the ghost would come back—before another young woman walked upstairs to whom I must have looked like an idiot. That is, unless she was also there to hunt ghosts. In that case I looked only like a hinderance. I waited for her to leave—looking at my watch, sighing loudly, tapping the face of my watch, waving goodbye eagerly to see if she would get the hint—before continuing my investigation.

I recorded five minutes of audio that turned up nothing, and let the EVP go for a bit. The EVP was very active, actually, turning up these words with my notes in brackets beside them:

• Observing [What I am doing.]
• Run [Ghosts want me to run?]
• Read [What I am doing.]
• Leave [Ghosts want me to leave?]
• There [Where?]
• Adeline [Age of Adeline.]

It was in the servants’ quarters that I felt, most acutely, like I was trivializing what is, genuinely, a fantastic little piece of history and a neat museum that I loved. Walking around with my damn cell phone, writing down “Adeline, Age of Adeline?” A true moron. Guilty, I later asked Emily Wright how the museum feels about, in so many words, ghost hunters and their stupid bullshit.

“For many years in the ’60s and ’70s, and into the ’80s, there was a real effort on the part of the museum to distance itself from this haunted reputation,” she says. “Curators were worried that it wasn’t serious enough.” But in the early ’90s, the museum started to embrace it. “We’ve found that by not ignoring that part of the museum, we’re able to introduce it to new audiences that may not be as interested in a history house museum without the paranormal angle.” Ah—like a Goosebumps book about the signing of The Declaration of Independence, or if The Shining were based on real events.

“We’ve also found that it’s a great way to educate the public about 19th century death and mourning practices,” Wright explains. Every October, the house reenacts a 19th century funeral during an annual exhibition about death and mourning. “We’ve found that using ghosts is a way to explore another aspect of the house, and to bring in people who wouldn’t be a traditional museum audience.”

So come, ghost dummies and moody teens whose parents are trying the best they can to make this vacation fun for the whole family. You might actually learn something while you’re stumbling around, looking for ghostly cold spots—what a treat. Your EMF detectors and your ghost-searching Instagrams tagged “Merchant’s House Museum” help maintain the museum as much as that of, say, a serious woman with glasses and a little cardigan who is wandering around thinking, “Hmm, ah.”

—If you dare.

Finally, I made my way towards the basement’s dining room and kitchen, which is where I should have started. All was quiet until I got to an informational family tree display:

When I reached the little card about Gertrude—not lying—I would never lie—the ghost meter, the noise aspect of which I’d nearly forgotten about, started screaming:

“BEEPBEBEEPBEPBEEPBEBEEPBEEPBEBEEPBEPBEEPBEBEEPBEEPBEBEEPBEPBEEPBEBEEPBEEPBEBEEPBEPBEEPBEBEEPBEEPBEBEEPBEPBEEPBEBEEP.”

Ah! There were French tourists nearby, which was embarrassing. It would not stop beeping, intensely resolute in its detection of a ghost, or maybe it was broken. I checked my other EMF detectors, and they each had only minor readings. Gertrude! I fumbled for the neon green camera aspect of my ghost app and took a picture of the corner where maybe there was a ghost:

Hmm.

Well.

Let me know if you see a ghost.

Merchant’s House Museum by the Numbers:

• Ghosts Perceived: 0
  
• Ghosts Allegedly in Residence: 5
• Recorded Deaths in Location: 2
• Rooms Investigated: 8
• Binders Read: 1
• Ghost Meters Obtained for Free: 1
• Ghost Meters Obtained at Cost: 2
• Museums Enjoyed: 1

Photos by Kelly Conaboy. Image by Jim Cooke. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

Can’t join the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children dressed up as their favorite characters at San Diego Comic-Con? We’ve got the next best thing. It’s a video of the best of the floor from preview night 2015.

Above, you can check out coolest stuff on the convention floor of Comic-Con. We’re talking the Batman v Superman costumes and gadgets everyone was talking about, Warcraft statues and weapons, Lego creations, Mattel and Hasbro goodies, Rey’s speeder from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Ash’s complete trailer from Ash vs. The Evil Dead, the amazing Entertainment Earth booth and much, much more. Plus, this is only the beginning. Comic-Con runs through Sunday so you know we’ll have more interviews, coverage, trailers, images and general madness from San Diego.

New video of the deadly February three-car accident involving Caitlyn Jenner appears to show Jenner crashing into both vehicles, sending the female driver of a white Lexus sedan head-on into oncoming traffic, where she was struck and killed. http://gawker.com/bruce-jenner-i...

Entertainment Tonight first broadcast the video, which was apparently obtained from a security camera on a passing bus. The footage is fuzzy, and it’s hard to see the initial impact, but Jenner, driving a black Escalade, appears to strike the Lexus at an angle before crashing into a black Prius a few seconds later.

The bus footage also shows the third, fatal crash as the Lexus is smashed head-on by a Hummer traveling in the opposite direction. The Lexus driver, 69-year-old Kim Howe, was killed by the impact.

Jenner is currently being sued by Howe’s family and the driver of the Prius, but she has not been charged with any crimes stemming from the accident. The New York Daily News reports a criminal investigation is set to conclude in mid-July but a source tells the paper Jenner is expected to be charged—at worst—with misdemeanor reckless driving charges.

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

The last thing people in the Mid-Atlantic want to hear is more rain and storms, but that’s exactly what’s in the forecast today. Cities from Pittsburgh to Philly and D.C. to New York will see the risk for strong thunderstorms this afternoon, some of which could produce damaging winds and even a few tornadoes.

According to the Storm Prediction Center, an enhanced risk for severe weather—a three on a scale from zero to five—exists across much of southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland in anticipation for widespread severe weather this afternoon and evening. A wider slight risk (two out of five) radiates out from there, encompassing the entire D.C. metro area and locations west through West Virginia, east into the Newark area, and north up through Scranton.

We can’t ignore the risk anywhere, but if you live in or around places like Philadelphia, Allentown, Baltimore, Wilmington (DE), or Trenton, I’d keep a really close eye on the radar and listen up for watches and warnings this evening.

The severe weather is a result of an approaching cool front making its way across the Appalachians—when you combine the lift from the front, powerful wind shear in the atmosphere, and instability resulting from the warm, muggy air along and east of the mountains, the setup is ripe for an atmospheric temper tantrum.

This afternoon’s storms will come in two modes: lines and supercells. We’re already seeing this come to fruition—a peek at the radar from 2:35 PM EDT shows discrete storms/supercells beginning to take shape across west-central Pennsylvania, while a more linear storm mode is taking shape across the Appalachians.

Discrete supercells will carry the greatest risk for tornadoes, as they can tap into the atmospheric dynamics required to support their formation. As the evening wears on, however, the threat will transition more toward damaging winds, with gusts up to (or even exceeding) 70 MPH possible in the most organized storms that develop. Tornadoes are always concerning, but 60+ MPH winds can produce just as much damage as a tornado but over a much wider area.

As usual, the threat for severe weather will start to approach the major cities during rush hour, which could create a commuter mess for thousands of people trying to get home before the skies open up. However, current models suggest that the worst storms won’t arrive in the Interstate 95 corridor until the tail-end of rush hour, but it’s a good idea to keep an eye out regardless.

Destructive thunderstorms have already created one commuter hell so far this year—storms tore through the I-95 corridor on the evening of June 23, knocking out power to nearly a million people and stranding travelers on trains, planes, and automobiles while officials rushed to clean up the damage and restore electricity.

You can follow the latest severe weather watches from the Storm Prediction Center and the latest warnings from the National Weather Service. As a reminder, a watch means that conditions are favorable for the development of severe weather over the next couple of hours, and a warning means that damaging winds, large hail, or a tornado is imminent and you need to take immediate action.

[Maps: author]

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