Round two of a three-day severe weather outbreak across the eastern half of the United States is getting ready to unfold across the Midwest this evening and tonight. The atmosphere is getting antsy, and it looks primed to produce more destructive straight-line winds and maybe even a strong tornado or two. The storms also have the potential to develop into another derecho, much like the one we saw today.http://thevane.gawker.com/intense-severe...

Mesoscale convective systems—or a squall line, which is an organized line of thunderstorms—are nothing if not impressive. Monday’s severe weather event played out much as forecasters expected, with a couple of intense supercells in western Minnesota and eastern North Dakota merging into a potent squall line that continues to chug along as of the writing of this post. You can see the progression of the squall line above (times in CDT)—as of 4:00 PM EDT, the squall line is still producing damaging winds in excess of 60 MPH as it sweeps through eastern Kentucky on its way toward the Appalachians.

If you were wondering, the storm has likely produced enough damage over a long enough path to be considered a derecho. A derecho is a long-lived, intense squall line that produces significant wind damage over a path at least 250 miles long.

Today’s Threat

Risk Level: 4 out of 5, or a moderate risk

Hazards: Destructive straight-line winds, a couple of strong tornadoes, hail larger than golf balls in any supercells that form.

Storm Modes: A handful of intense supercells at first, morphing into a dangerous squall line this evening that will last through tomorrow as it races southeast. The storms have the potential to become a derecho if they last long enough.

Select Cities at Greatest Risk: Chicago, Peoria, Champaign, Lafayette, Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Louisville, Evansville, Lexington.

Discussion: Just like we saw yesterday, supercells will likely develop near the Mississippi River in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin—these discrete storms will be intense, and if they have the right interaction with surface features (like outflow boundaries), they could produce some strong tornadoes. These supercells will congeal into a squall line in northern Illinois, which will make its way southeastward just like the one still raging today.

Here’s a look at the threat for damaging winds this evening. The black hatching indicates the risk for significant wind gusts of 75 MPH or stronger. Higher percentages equate to a greater risk for strong, damaging winds.

Stay alert if you live in or around the edges of a higher risk area—the threat for wind damage will follow the path of the storms (thank you, Captain Obvious), so the storms (and the strongest winds) may wobble beyond the areas forecast. Nature often does things we don’t expect.

We can’t ignore the threat for tornadoes, especially in the supercells that form as a precursor to the squall line. The Storm Prediction Center has a 10% risk for strong tornadoes across portions of northern Illinois, which doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a lot more significant than a 10% chance of rain.

Nighttime Storms

I hope you’ll forgive me if I copy and paste a few paragraphs from the post I wrote about yesterday’s severe weather. The majority of the storms that unfold during this second outbreak will occur at night. Nighttime storms are even more dangerous than ones that occur during the day because people just aren’t paying attention.

Severe thunderstorms are dangerous enough, but what’s most concerning is that the majority of the storms anticipated over the next couple of days will unfold overnight when people are tuned-out or asleep. Every year, people stumble to the nearest news camera and shout out “WE HAD NO WARNING” when their homes are demolished at 3:00 AM, and without fail, news organizations manage to spin “we had no warning” into a failure on the part of meteorologists instead of a failure on the part of residents in the path of the storms.

You need to be proactive about your own safety. Make sure you have a way to receive alerts both day and night, ensuring you can quickly act if dangerous storms threaten even if you’re dead asleep. Go to Walgreens or Walmart or Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy a weather radio that, when properly set-up, automatically activates a loud tone when a warning is issued for your county. The baseline models are $20-$30, but they’re well worth the cost. Email me if you can’t figure out how to set it up and I’ll gladly guide you through it.

Tomorrow’s Threat

The risk for severe thunderstorms will continue on Tuesday, dependent on how much rain and clouds linger in the area as a result of tonight’s event. If the atmosphere is able to recover from today’s leftovers, all signs point to another dangerous severe weather day, this time across much of the southeast.

The Storm Prediction Center has issued a three out of five—or enhanced—risk for severe weather in the southeast in anticipation of a widespread risk for severe thunderstorms capable of producing damaging winds and large hail. The greatest risk for severe weather as of this afternoon’s forecast is along and west of the Appalachians in the enhanced risk zone, but any severe thunderstorm is dangerous.

Pay attention to the weather tonight and tomorrow, especially if you live in an area at heightened risk. Make sure you have a way to receive alerts tonight. You can keep up with the latest severe weather alerts for your area by frequently checking the Storm Prediction Center and your local National Weather Service office.

[All maps by the author—please let me know if you have suggestions on how I can improve them.]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

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Joining the illustrious company of fellow murderers Robert Durst and Aaron Hernandez, Charleston shooter Dylann Roof has allegedly had a jailhouse letter put online, and it can now be yours for just $1,000.

The letter is up for sale on a website called True Crime Auction House, which is exactly what it says it is. It was purportedly written by Roof shortly after his capture, and in the letter, Roof remarks that he’s surprised the person who wrote him first was able to find him so quickly.

Photos of the letter are below, via Radar. It is mostly banal aside from one part in which Roof inquires about the purity of the letter writer’s last name, though Roof’s droll tone throughout is noteworthy considering he had just committed a massacre for which he will surely spend the rest of his life in prison. (A transcription follows these images):

Hello Andrew,

My health and spirit are doing fine. Your letter is dated 6/18 and to be honest its surprising you could write me a letter so quickly. Where in Burlington is Washington located? Is Burlington the second or third biggest city, or a smaller town? I don’t see how anyone could work 80 hours a week and not quit. To tell the truth, I don’t really have any hobbies, and I can appreciate any type of music as long as it sounds good. I also want to ask you the origin of your last name. Is Dodge an English surname? Or is it anglicized (?) name of a different origin? To be honest, I don’t think I need 30 dollars right now. I’d rather you send me a book. But it has to be sent from the publisher. If you think you could do this for me, just tell me in your reply, and then I can tell you the name of the book I want when I write you again. Either way, thanks for writing me, I appreciate your letter. It is nice to receive mail in jail. Most people probably would be too scared to send me a letter.

Thanks again,

Dylann Storm Roof

P.S. I had some money put in my account, if that was you, please ignore what I said about the book.

Is the letter real? It seems so, but a confirmation has been hard to come by. According to a spokesperson for the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office, officials are looking into the letter’s authenticity but were not sure of its origin. My inquiry there led to a series of transferred calls, each picked up by a person who had no idea what I was talking about.

Though the letter sent to Roof was written on the day of his capture, it’s unclear when it arrived at the jail, when Roof received it, or when he wrote back. Roof appears to have been contacted by an Andrew Dodge of Burlington, Washington—records show a person with that name and location does exist, but I was not able to contact him. It’s unclear if Dodge is the one attempting to sell the letter, or if it made its way into the hands of a third party.

The auction page hawking the letter shows an accompanying envelope said to be addressed by Roof. It includes his inmate number and postage from Charleston, which appears to be dated June 30, though an enterprising faker could certainly have mocked all of that up if motivated. Roof’s inmate number is available online, and forging an envelope would only require a printer.

If this is a fake, the hoaxer is deft. The website its being sold on is so under-the-radar that only a local news station and Radar have picked up on the letter’s existence, and it certainly doesn’t contain any explosive revelations or sentiments.

It’s more likely that we’re peering into Dylann Roof’s future: a life of being locked in a cage, conversing either with fellow white supremacist fanatics or people looking to profit off of his notoriety while he begs them for money.

[top image via Getty]

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

With 20-odd US presidential candidates in the mix, everyone’s trying to pick the winning position on the issues that matter most to Americans. The future of the internet is obviously a big one. Here’s what’s been proposed so far — the good, the bad, and the utterly insane.

With the Federal Communication Commission’s new open internet rules hung up in litigation, pretty much anything goes. The craziest of candidates are talking about how liberals want to create a government-run internet that would amount to an apocalypse. (This will never happen.) The most sensible of candidates are proposing ways we could break up the big cable monopolies that provide Americans with shitty service at high prices. (This is harder than it sounds.) Inevitably, the would-be winner will help decide the fate of the network of networks, for better or for worse.

Here’s what’s being proposed so far:

8. Ted Cruz - Net Neutrality = Obamacare

The Republican senator from Texas says a lot of dumb stuff. Perhaps the dumbest came during the heat of the net neutrality debate, not long before he declared his candidacy for president:

"Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.

November 10, 2014

As we said at the time, this take isn’t just dumb, it’s dangerous.

7. Jeb Bush - Stuck in 1934

Dubya’s brother is almost as clueless as Ted Cruz. This past march, Bush said of net neutrality: “The idea of regulating access to the Internet with a 1934 law is one of the craziest ideas I’ve ever heard.” The Republican presidential candidate apparently doesn’t understand how the FCC’s open internet rules work, nor does he know that the 1934 Telecommunications Act has been updated many times.

6. Carly Fiorina - What Is Internet?

The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard should realize that the FCC’s open internet rules are good for Silicon Valley. Instead, she doesn’t seem to know how they work. She claims that the rules would give the government “nearly unlimited authority to micromanage how, when and where Internet companies innovate.” That’s just wrong.

5. Rand Paul - Deregulate Everything

Quite ironically, Rand Paul’s take on preserving the open internet misunderstands what liberty is. “This regulation by the FCC,” Paul said of the FCC rules, “is a textbook example of Washington’s desire to regulate anything and everything, and will do nothing more than wrap the Internet in red tape.” But the fact of the matter is we’ve learned that lack of regulation has actually led to monopolies that create bureaucracies that create ... red tape.

4. Chris Christie - More Networks, Fewer Rules

The New Jersey governor is famous for appealing to all kinds of voters, and he gets the internet half right. In a policy speech, he said quite clearly, “The fact is we need more broadband and wireless networks, not fewer.” But in the same breath he said that the government wants “to set prices and rules.” Which isn’t really true.

3. Mike Huckabee - Still Driving On the Information Superhighway

This one’s a bit of a mystery, but it’s a hopeful one. Huckabee’s stayed quiet on the internet issue this year. However, when he ran in 2007, the Republican suggested he was open minded about net neutrality: “In many ways we can look at the Internet kinda like we do an Interstate highway. Everybody has a right to get on that highway.”

2. Hillary Clinton - More ISPs, More Consumer Choices

This Democratic frontrunner knows how to look for middle ground. In an economic policy speech in July, she said she’d “make sure there is a greater diversity of providers so consumers have more choice.” This is an agreeable way of suggesting a policy that appeals to business interests and consumer advocates alike. Competition is good! Heck if Obama thinks it’s a good idea, Hillary should, too.

1. Bernie Sanders - No More Monopolies

Vermont’s favorite hippie lawmaker is not beating around the bush. Sanders sent a letter to the FCC asking them to investigate “de facto monopolies” in the cable business. “This lack of choice has resulted in huge price increases and often poor service customers for consumers,” he wrote. Nobody likes monopolies. Whether the president could break them up, however, is a whole other issue.

Image via Getty

Once again, Comic-Con was a massive Thunderdome in which entertainment properties entered...and only some of them left. Studios and creators battled to create buzz for their projects, and some triumphed. Here are the biggest winners and losers of Comic-Con 2015.

We spent the past few days debating this list—but opinions can differ. Go ahead and share your thoughts in the comments!

WINNERS

Star Wars

Basically, the ultimate winner of Comic Con. They just crushed it. Even if they hadn’t had that concert after their panel, the love still would have been palpable.

Deadpool

The footage was so great, and it was all anybody could talk about. The shot of Deadpool shooting through three heads at once was THE shot of the con.

Satan

We loved both Lucifer and Damien, two new TV shows about the Prince of Darkness. And we had a lot of fun running into pro-Satan protestors who were up against the Jesus protestors, and also finding pro-Satan religious pamphlets scattered everywhere.

Limitless

This show based on the Bradley Cooper movie was just great. People were buzzing about it all weekend.

Warcraft

We finally saw some footage, and OMG. Duncan Jones is clearly going all-out to get this right. Also, the display of giant statues and gear was to die for.

Ash Vs. Evil Dead

This panel had one of the longest lines that wasn’t for Hall H, and everyone seemed to feel it was totally worth it to see new footage—and Bruce Campbell! People were so pumped.

The Expanse

This Syfy series is based on incredible books by James S.A. Corey, so it had a lot to live up to. But we saw the first episode, and it really was spectacular. They’re doing everything right, and the love for this show was everywhere.

Women Who Kick Ass

Everywhere we looked, female heroes were rocking out, from Hunger Games to Supergirl. And the Women Who Kick Ass panel was one of the best panels at the show. More than ever, everybody was accepting that female badassery is just a normal part of our heroic narratives.

Zombies

Zombies ruled Comic-Con. The Walking Dead launched its spinoff, Fear the Walking Dead, and the first episode was great. Plus these shows OWNED the floor. And even though there was no Zombie Walk this year, Zombies were everywhere.

Con Man

This webseries with Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk was all people could talk about, because the love for fandom was so apparent, and it looks like so much fun.

LOSERS

Containment

This virus outbreak show screened its whole pilot, and people were laughing during the serious parts. In general, this CW show seemed to generate very little excitement, sadly.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents

There was a lot of excitement going into Comic-Con, because this classic comic book had scheduled a panel during a primetime slot, promising to announce a new TV and movie franchise. We were told Hollywood A-listers would be there. And then... the panel was canceled, with zero fanfare. Just deleted from the schedule, as if it was never there.

Blindspot

People were seriously mocking this “tattooed naked lady with amnesia is covered with clues” show, and you saw her naked body everywhere you looked. We love Jaime Alexander, but nobody seemed to think this mystery-procedural show looked good.

Minority Report

We weren’t the only ones who thought this show based on the Spielberg movie looked like a misfire. We saw lots of negative reviews of the footage screened, and a general lack of excitement for what should have been a thrilling idea.

The DC Cinematic Universe

With Marvel not showing up this year, DC had a chance to make a big splash. They could have brought out the entire Justice League on stage, or broken some big news. Instead, it was just some neat new footage, and not much else. Huge wasted opportunity.

Jared Leto

In general, people seemed to like the Suicide Squad footage. But we interviewed fans leaving Hall H at the end of the day, and one common note was that Jared Leto’s Joker was a bust. There was a lot of disgruntlement with his version of Mr. J.

Kevin Smith

He really needed to get people pumped about his Canadian monster movie, Yoga Hosers. Unfortunately, Star Wars took everybody out of Hall H to go to a concert, and his panel was a
disaster through no fault of his own.

Fantastic Four

After seeing that insane Deadpool and X-Men footage, who even remembered having seen Fantastic Four stuff as well? They had a last chance to spark some fan interest in this new movie, and it just didn’t happen. The fact that the trailer included dialogue like “If we do this, we’re doing it my way” didn’t help.

So there you have it:

Back in March, a 29-year-old Vallejo, Calif., woman disappeared from her home, and her boyfriend was left tied up and drugged with a note demanding a ransom for her return. Suspicion initially fell on the boyfriend, but when the victim returned two days later and refused to cooperate with investigators, authorities thought she may have staged the whole thing, a la Gone Girl. Which brings us up to this week, when a real suspect has been charged with the “hoax” kidnapping.http://gawker.com/woman-i-mean-k...

After police in Dublin, Calif., arrested a man for a home invasion June 5, the FBI noted similarities between that crime and the alleged kidnapping of Denise Huskins. They now believe that the alleged home invader, former Marine and Harvard Law graduate Michael Muller, was behind the elaborate abduction plot.

CBS Sacramento reports on the FBI’s theory of what happened that night:

They allege that in the early hours of March 23, 2015, Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, were sleeping when Quinn was awakened by a bright light shining in his eyes. He says he heard a noise similar to a “stun gun,” and came face-to-face with a man who demanded both he and Huskins lie face down on the bed. The suspect ordered Huskins to bind Quinn with zip ties and ordered them to get into a bedroom closet. The suspect then put swim goggles that were covered by tape on Quinn’s eyes and headphones on his ears that played a prerecorded message saying the break-in was being done by a professional group collecting on financial debts and that both victims would receive electric shocks and cuts on their faces if they didn’t cooperate.

Muller then allegedly got financial account numbers from Quinn and information from the victim’s WiFi router, his laptop and other Internet accounts. Quinn was placed on the couch where he fell asleep. When he woke up his was able to free himself. He found that Huskins, his laptop and his car were missing. Huskins was located two days later.

Muller, possibly working with others, allegedly left the $8,500 ransom note that Quinn turned over to police.

That means the bizarre, 9,000 word “manifesto” the kidnappers sent to the San Francisco Chronicle, which Huskins’ lawyer insisted contain details only the two victims and the kidnappers could know, was likely real as well.

In the note, the kidnappers claimed to be three college-educated “gentleman thieves,” who wanted to pull a few big jobs and then retire.

They also said they let Huskins go because they had kidnapped the wrong woman.

“We dropped Ms. Huskins off at her home in Huntington Beach because it was more or less equidistant to the Bay Area and because we were horrified at what we had done,” they wrote.

The FBI believes Muller may have committed other, similar crimes. Their investigation is ongoing, ABC News reports.

[H/T SFist, Photo: Dublin Police Services]

A decent way of evaluating a newspaper’s priorities is simply glancing at its front page, where editors typically place the stories they deem most important or newsworthy. Judging from the Saturday and Sunday editions of the New York Post, the most important and newsworthy event in New York City is the existence, and micturition schedule, of a 49-year-old homeless man named John Tucker.

From Saturday (“20 years of cleaning up NYC pissed away”):

Wrapped in rags and a Mets blanket the hobo wandered into traffic at around 10:30 a.m. and relieved himself as cabs, cars and buses whizzed by between West 83rd and 84th streets on the Upper West Side. He finished his business at a nearby garbage bin, then strolled back to the front of a Victoria’s Secret store at Broadway and 85th Street, where he camped out for the rest of the day.

From Sunday (“Peeing menace cuffed by cops, only to be back on the streets”):

New York’s revolving door of justice sprang a scary leak Saturday when a threatening, public-urinating, jagged-glass-waving homeless man was twice hauled away by cops — only to each time be quickly released to terrorize the same stretch of Broadway on the Upper West Side.

From today (“Vagrant back to peeing in the streets after hospital release”):

A disgusting derelict who’s turning the Upper West Side into an open-air toilet was back at it Sunday — just hours after two hospitals deemed him fit to wander the city’s streets. The foul-smelling vagrant, whom police sources identified as John Tucker, 49, was spotted urinating in the street on Ninth Avenue at West 47th Street at around 1:30 p.m. ... Tucker’s reappearance outraged residents who recognized him from the front pages of The Post, which showed him taking a leak in the street and then in handcuffs before one of his psychiatric evaluations Saturday.

The unambiguous cruelty of publicly embarrassing someone as beleaguered as Tucker—not just by soliciting the details of his body odor and urination habits, but by publishing over a dozen pictures of him in various states of undress—is not exactly unheard of at the Post. But it’s hard to remember the last time the Post enlisted 16 different reporters—

1. Tom Wilson
   
2. Melkorka ­Licea
   
3. Philip Messing
   
4. Danika Fears
   
5. Larry Celona
   
6. C.J. Sullivan
   
7. Michael Gartland
   
8. Kirstan Conley
   
9. Harry Shuldman
   
10. Carl Campanile
    
11. Bruce Golding
    
12. Kevin Fasick
    
13. David K. Li
    
14. Aaron Feis
    
15. Georgett ­Roberts
    
16. Stephanie Pagones
    

—to publicize the bodily functions of a person hanging from the bottommost rungs of society. (If homelessness is concerning to the Post, at least a handful of those 16 writers and reporters might have been better used looking into the city’s careening real estate market, social service cuts, and growing population of for-profit homeless shelters.)

In any case, the Post’s current editorial strategy does not seem to be working. As an 87-year-old retiree named Pinky Light told the paper today: “He’s been on the cover of the newspaper . . . and he’s back in the same spot. I can’t believe it!”

General Motors recalled nearly 200,000 Hummer H3s last week over fears that they might catch fire. But it turns out that GM knew that flaming Hummers were a problem for several years before that. And what’s worse, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration exclusively told Jalopnik that GM did not act until the feds threatened to launch a formal investigation.

Hummer H3 owners had been complaining to NHTSA for years, pleading for some sort of recourse after a problem was noted with the blower motor in the heating and air conditioning system. The connector and the resistor could short out, quickly causing a fire.

The first reported Hummer H3 caught fire in August of 2008, and its owner notified NHTSA just a month later. In total, there were 73 incidents involving the HVAC blower motor, including reports of burned or melted components, smoke, and fire itself up to and including total loss of the vehicle, by our count.

One person’s car was completely immolated, preventing them from opening the doors of the burned-out hulk.

It’s known by now that despite all of these complaints NHTSA generally ignores them, so it’s up to GM to notify the regulators if it thinks there’s a safety issue. In fact, as part of a GM settlement with the government, the company is required to meet with NHTSA every single month to notify the Feds if they think there’s a potential safety issue.

But despite the first fire occurring at the latest in 2008, GM still waited until January of this year to notify NHTSA.

And when the automaker did, it tried to downplay it, NHTSA told us.

(In response to our inquiries over the matter, a General Motors spokesperson told us that “GM routinely has discussions on open investigations with NHTSA, and we do not characterize the nature of those discussions.”)

GM listed the H3 resistor failures on an accounting of safety concerns presented to NHTSA in January of this year, NHTSA said, but the GM count of complaints and fires was revealed to be lower than that compiled by NHTSA after the agency reviewed all of its own data.

Clearly, there was some sort of discrepancy, though it’s still not quite clear whether it was by miscounting or because GM was simply unaware of the complaints.

NHTSA went back to GM in June, specifically noting that there was a problem with GM’s numbers. Since GM had a history of trying to downplay potentially life-threatening safety issues, NHTSA says they gave them a choice: Issue a recall or face formal investigation.

GM quickly capitulated, and on July 9th, they issued the first recall notice.

This is all to familiar territory for GM customers, as it’s a company with a checkered history of dealing with recalls.

Starting over a decade ago, it put faulty ignition switches into its cars, which the company knew about and ignored, until it became a catastrophic problem. Eventually, those faulty switches resulted in the deaths of over 100 people and GM finally issued a recall.

This angered many, including NHTSA, which is responsible for keeping us safe on the roads. At the time of the government’s eventual settlement with GM, United States Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx had harsh words for the company, saying that “what we cannot tolerate, what we will not tolerate, is a person or company who knows danger exists and says nothing.”

It turns out, that once again, GM could have known, or should have known, there was a danger was lurking in its cars, and let out barely a whimper.

Photo credit: AP Images

Contact the author at ballaban@jalopnik.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: 0D03 F37B 4C96 021E 4292 7B12 E080 0D0B 5968 F14E

A Pennsylvania man who worked as a houseparent at the Milton Hershey School was arrested for a number of sexual offenses this weekend after authorities say he molested an 8-year-old student, PennLive.com reports.

According to police, the girl told another houseparent on Saturday that 41-year-old Fernando Zagaceta had “touched her inappropriately.” From WPMT:

The girl said she was sleeping in her bed when Zagaceta began touching her arm and pulled her blanket down. She said he then pulled her pants down and began to touch her.

Police say Zagaceta admitted to being in the girl’s room and touching her hand to see if she was sleeping. He said he was taught by another house parent to do that. “Zagaceta initially couldn’t remember if he touched her legs or removed the blanket,” police wrote in an affidavit of probable cause.

In a statement, the Milton Hershey School said it reported the incident to police immediately and has barred Zagaceta from returning to the campus.

“Such behavior is reprehensible and unacceptable, and we are taking this matter very seriously,” said a school spokesperson. “The safety of the children in our care is our highest priority, and we are focused on providing all the care and support that this student needs right now.”

Zagaceta now faces charges of indecent assault, unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of a minor and endangering the welfare of a minor.

[Image via WHTM]

A 16-year-old girl who was one of three people on board a missing aircraft was found in the mountains of Washington today, KING-TV reports.

“A motorist brought in a young woman who they found near Easy Pass,” a witness told KOMO-TV. “She said she had been in a plane crash on Saturday and had been wandering in the woods since then.”

Police confirmed the girl is 16-year-old Autumn Veatch, who went missing this weekend along with grandparents Leland and Sharon Bowman. All three were flying from Montana to Washington on a small plane piloted by the girl’s grandfather when the aircraft dropped off the radar over north-central Washington.

The girl has reportedly been taken to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and is doing fine.

“We’re not going into the status of the grandparents. She was the only one who walked out,” said Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers on Monday. “She just said they came out of the clouds, and it crashed.”

Yesterday, Autumn’s father David told KOMO-TV he was “really sad, tired, hopeful.”

“I can’t imagine anybody having to go through something like this,” said David Veatch.

UPDATE 9:00 p.m.: Officials have confirmed the found teen’s identity, saying she was “the only one who walked out” from the crash.

[Image via KING-TV]

Yeah, pretty much.

According to the Associated Press, an autopsy has found that B.B. King died of natural causes with no evidence of foul play, ending the official inquiry of the blues legend’s death. In May, King’s children claimed their father had been poisoned by his business manager, prompting the examination.http://gawker.com/b-b-kings-kids...

According to NBC News, the City of New York has agreed to pay $5.9 million to the family of Eric Garner, who was killed by Staten Island NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo a year ago this week.http://gawker.com/i-cant-breathe...

“I believe that we have reached an agreement that acknowledges the tragic nature of Mr. Garner’s death while balancing my office’s fiscal responsibility to the City,” said City Comptroller Scott Stringer in a statement Monday evening, noting, “the City has not admitted liability.”

In October, the family filed notice of a $75 million lawsuit against the NYPD, claiming Garner’s chokehold death was the direct result of the police force’s “negligence, recklessness and carelessness.”

The death had previously been ruled a homicide by the city’s medical examiner, but Staten Island D.A. Daniel Donovan was unable to indict Garner’s killer for criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter and reportedly chose to leave out a lesser reckless endangerment charge for unexplained reasons.

Today, Donovan is a United States congressman and Pantaleo—the subject of two previous civil rights lawsuits—remains employed by the NYPD, performing crime analysis.

A Justice Department investigation into Garner’s death is ongoing.

[Image via AP Images]

On Sunday, Reddit user SeagoatCM uploaded a video simply titled “The legend” showing a man performing an animated recorder breakdown to Z.Z. Top’s “La Grange” while simultaneously navigating L.A. traffic.

Soon, another video of the mysterious car flautist surfaced, this time accompanying a more appropriately experimental tune.

But who was this mobilized jazzman? Unfortunately, SeagoatCM had little information to offer, but other users chimed in to report their own sightings.

13lauGrana:

I’ve seen this guy driving around Pasadena. He literally has no fucks

unclever:

I saw him on Colorado a month or two ago! I think he was in a van or SUV though when I saw him. Gotta love his enthusiasm.

Kjlee:

He was in an suv/van when I saw him on Green St this past February, I couldn’t stop laughing.

Finally, one commenter claimed the flute rocker was none other than his dear old dad.

arffarffarff:

Dad has always been a, well, “artistic” kind of a guy. In the late 80’s he was in a jazz band that toured with Kenny G. He was a big fan of acid jazz which is why you hear him playing that wild style. Sadly, my mother divorced him in 1996 because of his weird behavior and lack of money. I think it was the right decision. I still see him sometimes, but he lives in tiny apt on Fair Oaks which smells like cat. Nice enough guy though, wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Of course, arffarffarff’s testimony is still completely unverified—leaving just enough uncertainty to let the legend live.

[h/t Daily Dot]

You may remember the insanely popular video, “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman,” which featured a woman being catcalled and harassed on the street more than 100 times over a 10-hour period, which circulated last November. It inspired mocking parodies, copycat experiments, hoaxes, and even a T.G.I. Friday’s commercial. Now, months after the video’s peak, TMZ reports its star is suing the director.

Shoshana Roberts, the woman who was catcalled repeatedly in the video, believes she didn’t get everything she was promised for appearing in the video, although her attorney admits she didn’t have a written contract. She’s suing director Rob Bliss and street harassment awareness campaign Hollaback for $500,000.

Roberts’ lawyer refused to confirm to TMZ whether she was paid to appear in the video, but she told something called Enchantress Magazine a couple of months ago that she was—just not very much:

Believe it or not, I only got paid $200 after the fact; the director put it on his YouTube account. I signed up to raise awareness and was told nobody would be making money. It all went to the director; He didn’t give any of that money to Hollaback! But I’ve met so many wonderful people and had so many amazing conversations as a result of this. I’m happy I did the video, but I’ve had a lot of emotional repercussions as a result of it, as well.

In that interview, she also lamented that no good acting gigs had emerged as a result of her viral fame. She still refers to herself as #catcallgirl on Twitter and Instagram, though.

Roberts is also suing YouTube—where the video has 40 million views—and its parent company, Google. TMZ doesn’t specify whether she’s seeking money from them, or just to have the video taken down.

And’s she suing T.G.I. Friday’s over this ad, where her role is played by various fried appetizers. Sure, why not?

[h/t TMZ]

Of all the unfair things in the world, perhaps the most unfair is the belief held by some that a person in the public eye retains the right to—for months—not tell us about her boyfriend and whether or not she likes him. Tell us. Women—tell us. It is our right and your duty.

We may now forgive Kristin Chenoweth for her boyfriend-related sins.

At her Social Life Magazine cover party in New York City on Monday night, the Broadway and television star spoke to People about her boyfriend of three months, Andrew Pruett:

“He’s a good man.”

He works in advertising.

Image via Getty. Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

Running for president doesn’t have to be this hard: Today Donald Trump posted a campaign poster of sorts to Twitter. It features a stylized graphic of the American flag overlaid across Trump’s face, the hashtag #MakeAmericaGreatAgain, a plea to “put the U.S. back into business!” aaaaaaand a stock image of what appears to be war reenactors wearing replica Nazi uniforms.

Here is the full tweet, which has already been deleted from Trump’s account:

You can see the soldiers there on the bottom stripe of the flag, underneath a stock image of the White House and another stock image of $100 dollar bills. The three pillars of the Trump candidacy: money, power and...Nazis. They look like real soldiers, but, via Mother Jones, it looks like they’re just stock photo models who for some reason are wearing replica Nazi uniforms.

The fuck-up appears to have been caught first by a blogger named John Schindler, who noticed that the men are wearing the uniforms of the Waffen-SS. For untrained eyes (like mine), it’s difficult to notice. But if you focus on that one image, you can see what looks like the Waffen-SS crest on the arms of the fake soldiers.

Here’s an isolated shot of that photo:

Better view of the Nazi soldiers that @realDonaldTrump has on his campaign picture. Good one! pic.twitter.com/DXaYiyai5i

July 14, 2015

Here is an example of one Waffen-SS insignia, via the fine folks at ssrelics.net:

Here is a Wikipedia entry dedicated to the specific version of spotted camouflage called flektarn apparently being worn by one of the men pictured. It was used by the Waffen-SS.

Per Schindler, some of the men in the photo appear to be wearing a version of this uniform:

See also Waffen-SS tunic with unit cuff title & SS eagle on left arm, as in Trump pic https://t.co/b3pwWmdwHY pic.twitter.com/IdQlwcIebJ

July 14, 2015

Donald Trump, whose staff is unable to differentiate between actors wearing American and Nazi uniforms, is currently the most popular Republican candidate for president and führer.

UPDATE (4:35 p.m.) Trump’s campaign has blamed the bad shop on a “young intern.” If that intern is lucky, he or she is no longer an intern for Donald Trump.

[image via Getty]

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

It’s looking more and more like Ellen Pao was, in some sense, set up to fail by her male board of directors. Her predecessor Yishan Wong says it. A top Reddit engineer said it right after quitting. It might sound conspiratorial if it weren’t about this particular site.http://gawker.com/top-reddit-eng...

But this is Reddit. To the site’s super-dedicated core, an overwhelmingly male group of very vocal power-users whose understanding of progressive politics is limited to the idea that their pirated ecchi torrents have just as much a right to bandwidth as Netflix, few things are more offensive than being told what to do by a woman. And when harassment was banned and their fat-hating subreddit was shut down, they plugged their ears and screamed and stomped and spammed swastikas until they got their way. (It obviously didn’t hurt that their way also happened to align with the interests of the site’s founders.)http://gawker.com/ellen-pao-offi...

So Ellen Pao’s first mistake might have been thinking she could ever actually lead Reddit. But Reddit can’t even be governed by the white guys who founded it, let alone by an Asian American woman who’d fought a highly public court battle over gender discrimination. The truth is that no one can run Reddit, because Reddit already has a boss: an organized, malignant band of the adolescent and adolescent-at-heart, ready to topple any would-be savior who attempts to clean house.http://internet.gawker.com/redditors-stag...

Pao could never have been that savior. It doesn’t seem like she was a particularly good CEO, which isn’t to say that she was a particularly bad CEO. Given that Reddit is ostensibly a business and has never made any money in a decade, it’s fair to say it’s never had a very good CEO.http://gawker.com/was-ellen-pao-...

But for the purposes of this particular public blowup, business acumen doesn’t actually matter. Ellen Pao could have taken Reddit public or negotiated a merger with Exxon—nothing would’ve negated the fact that she was an Asian American woman who took her former boss to court for sexual discrimination, placed in charge of an unruly mob of mostly white, mostly male users unable to countenance the idea that anyone could tell them how to behave. Pao was toast from day one.http://gawker.com/did-reddits-fo...

If her first mistake was taking the job in the first place, her second was trying to do anything at all from her position. When the site announced a new policy that would constrain the ability of men to post photos of naked women without their permission so that other men could jerk off to them, Redditors reacted as if ISIS paratroopers were just spotted over the Capitol dome.http://internet.gawker.com/the-creeps-of-...

To the Reddit shock troops, a common-sense policy against sexual harassment and violation was nothing less than the trampling of liberty. Remember SOPA? Hate it. Remember CISPA? No way. Remember the possibility of a rule that could make it a little more difficult to call your ex-girlfriend a whore [MORE PICS INSIDE] because your relationship disintegrated after you spent too much time on Reddit? Same principle. Ellen Pao was now an official enemy of “free speech,” and therefore the web itself. When Pao later banned a discussion section devoted to ridiculing fat strangers, it was open war, her or us, the CEO or the community.

But Reddit isn’t a community. A community compromises; it changes; it adapts as it grows. Communities are sites of give and take. A community has a sense of common culture and purpose. What Pao found herself up against was not a community but a vicious, malevolent movement that can only accept direction in the form of upvotes. The extremists were not interested in compromise and unable to see why it was in their interests to make their favorite site a more welcoming place for new users. They could not open and would not budge—the idea of sacrificing the divine right to mock the obese was unfathomable, too much to bear.

This is Reddit’s political reality: an aristocracy of the crass. Conde Nast, Y-Combinator, Snoop Dogg, Alexis Ohanian—all the people who’ve built and invested in Reddit are just figureheads and potential TechCrunch Disrupt panelists; emperors to the toxic praetorian guard of the men’s rights-Gamergate axis.

To this increasingly vocal coterie, anything resembling compromise away from adolescent male white mores is seen as the fascistic social justice agenda. Never mind that no one is being asked to do anything more than grow up: Fucking grow up, you don’t really need giant jiggling breasts in your Xbox games. Fucking grow up, it’s obnoxious, boring and lazy to make fun of obese strangers. And fucking grow up: if you have to go 4chan to make the same stale jokes about the holocaust, you are no less free than you were the day before.

So who would would ever come in from the outside to try and run this website? Its current leadership is tolerated only because it’s agreed to not lead at all, to permit the same laissez-faire operation that allowed /r/CoonTown to cheer on and advocate for the murdering of American blacks immediately after Dylann Roof’s Charleston massacre. (Reddit’s new CEO, Steve Huffman, has hilariously suggested that these vile sections of the site be “appropriately quarantined” and left alone.)

The real power, the administrative and bureaucratic power that keeps the site chugging along for its day-to-day users, is a collection of unpaid moderators who wield more power than any office executive. They can—and have!—shut down the site at will, using the same mass disruption tactics deployed to bring down Digg a decade ago.

Why would an outside chief executive expect to be treated any differently than Ellen Pao? Who going forward will dare tell Redditors that if they want to jerk off to teens or harass women, maybe they’ll have to go to another website? For Reddit to become something resembling a viable business, it has to make money, and that means making the bigots and stalkers and imbeciles feel less welcome—how many firms will do business with the company that pays to keep /r/GasTheKikes running? Any outside CEO is therefore facing an impossible job: fumigate Reddit sufficiently for advertisers while placating a hostile militia of superusers that can’t seem to distinguish between mild rules and a prison sentence on Robben Island.

Without cleansing itself a little, Reddit will continue on its current course: a petri dish for the web’s dullest, dumbest impulses, a lowest common denominator clearinghouse of lazy memes, stolen porn, casual racism, a recruiting ground for hate groups, and an overall bummer. Because Reddit is a place for cowards, run by cowards afraid to take responsibility for the machine they engineered, populated by cowards who won’t reckon with the adult world around them.

Illustration by Jim Cooke

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

In addition to transforming the beloved Atticus Finch into a racist, Quartz reports that Harper Lee’s new novel Go Set a Watchman includes at least eight passages that were published nearly verbatim in To Kill a Mockingbird. http://review.gawker.com/nyt-turns-out-...

That the novels include duplicate passages shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, though it does reenforce arguments that perhaps Lee never meant for the books to be published separately. While Watchman has been billed as a follow-up or sequel to Mockingbird, in reality, the New York Times reports, it was conceived as earlier (rejected) version of the same book. When Lee turned in a draft of Watchman in 1957, her editor Tay Hohoff called it “more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel.” Hohoff worked with the young writer for three years to transform the manuscript into Mockingbird, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and sell tens of millions of copies. It’s unclear whether Hohoff, who died in 1974, would have approved of Watchman’s subsequent publication as a standalone novel, and many have questioned whether the 89-year-old Lee, who suffered a stroke in 2007 and is in poor health, ever intended the book to be publicly released.

Two of the most egregious examples of duplicated passages from the books are pasted below. You can read the rest at Quartz.

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

Once upon a time, both of the two most popular albums in America featured bitchin electric guitar work by Eddie Van Halen. Once upon a time, Eddie Van Halen held a cigarette in the headstock of his electric guitar, so he could slowly poison himself while he shredded. Once upon a time, the electric guitar was pretty cool. Not anymore.

This week at the National Association of Music Merchants’ summer convention, the boutique luthier Evolution Guitars unveiled an electric guitar with a vape pen built in. The coolness of the electric guitar has been on the decline for some time now. This thing probably seals the deal. Watch it in action below.

Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.