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Supermodel Wakes Up Bridesmaids for 7 (A.M.!!!!!!) SoulCycle Class the Day After Her Wedding [UPDATE: The Spin Class Was at 9:30 A.M.]

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Supermodel Wakes Up Bridesmaids for 7 (A.M.!!!!!!) SoulCycle Class the Day After Her Wedding [UPDATE: The Spin Class Was at 9:30 A.M.]

Strong-jawed supermodel Hilary Rhoda married former hockey player and Dancing with the Stars contestant Sean Avery in a beautiful outdoor ceremony in the Hamptons last weekend. According to Page Six, she did not relax the next day. [SEE UPDATE BELOW]

Hilary allegedly forced her bridesmaids—who looked great, I’m sure—no really girls, you looked great—to attend a SoulCycle class the day after her wedding at 7:00.

A.M.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Per Page Six:

Rhoda...was overheard at a Dress Barn event saying she saw fitness guru Tracy Anderson the morning of the ceremony, then did a 7 a.m. SoulCycle class with her bridal party the day after.

You can sleep when you’re dead of exercise-induced heart failure, am I right gals? Good morning!

Can you imagine being Hilary Rhoda, I can’t.

UPDATE, 12:15 p.m.: Hilary Rhoda responds via Twitter that she actually told E! News about the morning-after SoulCycle class first.

Also the spin class was at 9:30 a.m.


Photo via Instagram. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.


Reports: Lamar Odom Able to Leave Bed, Has Started Physical Therapy

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Reports: Lamar Odom Able to Leave Bed, Has Started Physical Therapy

Six days after being found unconscious in a Nevada brothel, Kardashian in-law Lamar Odom is reportedly able to leave his bed and has begun physical therapy.

From the L.A. Daily News:

[…] Odom has shown enough steady improvement in recent days at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center that he has started physical therapy, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

Odom has not experienced any setbacks after breathing without the help of a ventilator in the past three days. He showing marked improvement with his breathing, vision and the ability to have simple conversations, sources said.

The therapy this week, the Daily News reports, will determine whether Odom will be able to walk again. If he is, the recovery process will reportedly take months and he will likely have some permanent damage. From TMZ:

Doctors are telling Lamar’s friends and family rehabilitation will take many months, and they believe an undetermined amount of damage to his body will be permanent.

We’re told Lamar will have physical, speech, and other therapists working with him for the foreseeable future.

E! News, perhaps not the most reliable source, also claims that Odom has passed a “swallow test” and is able to communicate “mainly with hand signals, thumbs up or thumbs down.”

On Friday, Odom woke from a coma and reportedly said something, though it’s unclear what. Three days, earlier he was found unconscious at Dennis Hof’s Love Ranch South brothel, where the former NBA star had reportedly gone on a three day bender that included cocaine and “herbal Viagra.”

Image via AP.

Woman Arrested After Man Who Bit Passenger Mysteriously Dies Mid-Flight

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Woman Arrested After Man Who Bit Passenger Mysteriously Dies Mid-Flight

According to reports, police have arrested a Portugese woman who was aboard the bizarre Aer Lingus flight this weekend that landed in Ireland with one passenger dead and another injured.

http://gawker.com/aer-lingus-pas...

The mystery began when a 24-year-old man reportedly became “extremely violent” on the flight, bit another passenger and then died.

The second passenger was reportedly hospitalized upon landing and may or may not be infected with some sort of zombie virus—or they’re treating him for the bite. Honestly, there’s no real way to say.

To that end, it’s still unclear what caused the first man’s death, though an autopsy is reportedly underway. But one woman, believed to be in her 40’s, was apparently taken into custody after cops found drugs in her luggage. The details, via the Guardian:

Luggage was examined and a substance was discovered in the bags of the woman who was arrested. The substance has yet to be analysed. The woman was taken to Togher Garda station for questioning.

It’s reportedly unclear if police believe she’s connected with the man’s death or if Aer Lingus is just the Con Air of Dublin flights.


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

Man Shot With Actual Bullet as Tombstone Actors Recreate O.K. Corral Gunfight 

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An historical reenactment of the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral turned bloody Sunday afternoon when one of the actors involved fired real bullets instead of the planned blanks, Tombstone, Ariz., marshals said.

Tom Carter of the Tombstone Vigilante reenactment group allegedly arrived late and didn’t have his six-shooter properly checked before the O.K. Corral skit. Another actor, Ken Curtis, was shot in the upper groin.

Marshals inspected Carter’s gun and determined he’d fired five shots. Tucson news station KOLD reports two of the live rounds struck local businesses, and shrapnel hit a female bystander, who refused medical treatment.

Curtis, who’s also the assistant chief of the Tombstone Vigilantes, had a bullet removed at a Tucson hospital.

“Tombstone takes pride in the safety and security of its townspeople and tourists alike and the citizens of Tombstone can be assured that stringent safety protocol will be enforced prior to allowing any further gunfight skits,” the Marshal’s Office said in a statement.

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral pit legendary lawman Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and ex-dentist Doc Holliday against the outlaw Cowboys, including the brothers Clanton and McLaury.

Here’s Tom Carter, the accidental shooter, playing Cowboy Tom McLaury, who died in the (actual, 1881) gunfight.

[Video: Tombstone Vigilantes]

Thousands of Financially Vulnerable People Using Russell Simmons's Rushcard Just Got Screwed

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Around 68 million Americans are unbanked or underbanked—either living without a bank account, or relying on “alternative,” predatory financial institutions like payday loan shops, check cashers, and prepaid payroll cards. One product on the last category, the Russell Simmons-founded Rushcard—which puts people in a labyrinth of jacked-up transaction fees for the privilege of getting their paycheck two days early—froze thousands of its users out of their accounts last week, leaving them stranded and moneyless during an absurdly protracted period of the company trying to get their system back up after what they’re calling a botched “technology transition.”

One user named Nicole Blackshear told HipHopDX:

“There are thousands of us that have been locked out of our accounts, can’t access accounts, money is missing, direct deposits not posted. They keep lying on their Facebook page that the system is back up, and it’s not. When you call, you stay on hold for hours and then the line just hangs up on you. I have not received my direct deposit and the money that I had in there already is not available. Try to swipe the card at a store or ATM and it declines. Tried to log in online and it says my card is deactivated. If you go to Facebook and go to RushCard’s or Russell Simmons’ page you will see that there are a million on us suffering. People are being evicted, can’t get to work because they can’t get gas. People are needing milk and pampers for their children. People’s utilities have been disconnected. There is so much pain and suffering and no explanation.”

Dozens of ConsumerAffairs reviews rolled in, evincing fear:

I was loving RushCard but now I’m very upset. I got paid but I can’t use my card. I don’t have any cash cause it’s all on my card. My child doesn’t eat air.

And confusion:

I am paid on Tuesday. It is now Wed and I still don’t have my paycheck. I call customer service am told my account don’t exist. I then try and speak to someone and it tells me high call volume. This is not okay. I rely on my paycheck as I live paycheck to paycheck and now have no clue what’s going on. I am extremely upset and not sure what to do.

The comments on their Facebook page are painful, as are Russell Simmons’ frenzied, haphazard messages and image macros assuring his customers that the company hasn’t lost their money. Five days ago, he posted the above video, stating that Rushcard was “addressing every issue as quickly as possible.” Since then, Simmons has since posted many more vague assurances and apologies for having “bad info.” His Twitter account over the last few days is also just pure bluffy struggle, including this recent thoughtful message:

Nice.

Minority households comprise a disproportionately large percentage of the unbanked—a population that’s 21 percent black, 19 percent Hispanic, 15 percent Native American—as well as the underbanked. It’s not a voluntary state of being: living outside the financial system usually signifies some combination of poor credit, lack of financial literacy, language barriers, or unstable and inadequate income.

Russell Simmons, who in 2011 published a book called Super Rich: A Guide to Having It All, has long defended Rushcard as “empowering” for black and low-income communities, going so far as to say that he will continue to “fight this fight, provide a voice for the voiceless and seek ways to provide financial freedom to those in need.” But Rushcard has become notorious for its fine print contradicting its big promises: it’s got a $20 activation fee, a $10 monthly fee, transaction fees up to $2.50. It doesn’t actually help build credit the way it advertises, it reportedly leaves its users little recourse in the case of identity theft, and its users, when they sign their contract, lose their right to sue under any possible condition.

It’s expensive to be poor. Rushcard is proving that and then some.


Contact the author at jia@jezebel.com.

Former Obama Spokesman Pens Pathetic and Evil Defense of Amazon

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Former Obama Spokesman Pens Pathetic and Evil Defense of Amazon

Two months ago, the New York Times published a major article describing the means by which Amazon breaks down the minds of its employees and reassembles them into miserable, weeping productivity nodes. Today, Amazon’s flack-in-chief Jay Carney responds while denying nothing.

http://gawker.com/here-s-to-anot...

Carney’s main retort, drawing upon years of professional truth-deflection as the White House Press Secretary, is based on one premise: angry people can’t tell the truth. The post, “What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You,” tries to undo the damage done by one particularly brutal quote from the original Times piece: “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.” (Which is not very different from what multiple Amazon employees told us, as well.) The quote comes from ex-Amazonian Bo Olson, and Jay Carney wants you to know something about Bo Olson:

Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately.

The implicit claim here is that Bo Olson fabricated the scene of constantly crying Amazon employees as a form of revenge, that he’s nothing more than disgruntled, a liar to the end—but Carney doesn’t say that because public relations requires both malice and cowardice. Carney also doesn’t say, at any point in the post, that what Olson said is untrue, that Amazon is so crushing and cruel a workplace that its employees really do regularly cry in large numbers. Instead, we’re given a political attack ad-style innuendos: If Bo Olson did THIS, can you really trust Bo Olson? Amazon hired Jay Carney for a reason.

After not denying the fact that Amazon breaks its workers down to the point of tears, Carney goes on to try to discredit other sources the Times reporters used, while at no point ever denying their claims, either:

Elizabeth Willet, who claims she was “strafed” through the Anytime Feedback tool, received only three pieces of feedback through that tool during her entire time at Amazon. All three included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement. Far from a “strafing,” even the areas for improvement written by her colleagues contained language like: “It has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.”

Carney argues what it means to be “strafed” via software, but doesn’t address the negative feedback she received, nor her claim that she was pressured out of the company for taking care of her baby. From the Times article:

After she had a child, she arranged with her boss to be in the office from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day, pick up her baby and often return to her laptop later. Her boss assured her things were going well, but her colleagues, who did not see how early she arrived, sent him negative feedback accusing her of leaving too soon.

“I can’t stand here and defend you if your peers are saying you’re not doing your work,” she says he told her. She left the company after a little more than a year.

Carney again tries to disqualify a source by releasing portions of his internal HR performance record:

Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review. Had the Times asked about this, we would have shared what it said. “Overall,” the document reads, “you did an outstanding job this past performance year.” Mr. Brucia was given exceptionally high ratings and then promoted to a senior position.

Notice how deftly Carney avoids Brucia’s claim that “he was berated in his performance review,” adding only that he “also was given a written review” with some nice shit in it, as if these two are mutually exclusive.

And then, there’s Dina Viccari:

Dina Vaccari, the former employee who is quoted saying she didn’t sleep for four days straight to illustrate just how hard Amazon forces people to work, posted her own response to the article. Here’s what she said:“Allow me to be clear: The hours I put in at Amazon were my choice. I was enrolled in the University of Washington’s Foster Technology MBA program while I was in charge of building three new Amazon retail categories and going through an emotional breakup when I didn’t sleep for those four days. No one ever forced me to do this — I chose it and it sucked at the time but in no way was I asked or forced by management to do this.”

Never mind that her statement sounds as about as at-ease as an ISIL prisoner’s video confession—here Carney shows that he either completely missed the point of the Times piece, or more likely, that he’s trying to skirt it entirely. Amazon isn’t just a place that’s vicious to its employees, it’s a place that literally changes their psychology, reshapes the way they think about labor, lays eggs of techie productivity worship in their skulls. “[Vaccari] and other workers had no shortage of career options but said they had internalized Amazon’s priorities,” wrote the Times. And that’s what Carney ignores: the fact that someone would choose to work four days straight without sleeping without even being asked is more damning of Amazon than if Dina Viccari had been ordered to do so.

Carney’s apologia is already earning him his paycheck. Silicon Valley sees a vindicated friend, and the easily impressed on Twitter can’t get over how “bruising” and “blistering” Carney’s response is—two months late to the Times, and years after we and others reported on many of the same practices:

Former Obama Spokesman Pens Pathetic and Evil Defense of Amazon

And all it took was attacking its employees characters, revealing their HR files, and trotting out the term “Journalism 101” with a straight face. No matter how toxic America’s corporations may be, never doubt the supreme toxicity of their PR staffs.

New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet posted his response to Carney’s, standing by the story in its entirety.


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

Man Allegedly Strangles Woman Over Reclining Seat

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Man Allegedly Strangles Woman Over Reclining Seat

Rage over reclining airline seats has allegedly hit a new peak: mid-air strangulation.

According to reports, a Southwest flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco was delayed for close to three hours Sunday night when an argument over legroom turned violent. Via NBC:

The pilot doubled back after a man began choking the woman sitting in front of him, who had reclined her seat, NBC News’ Tom Costello reports.

“Evidently, we’ve got two passengers who are in a physical altercation, so we need to get turned around back to LAX,” the pilot told air-traffic control in a radio transmission obtained by NBC News.

“An individual was detained for questioning following the return of a SW aircraft to LAX based on allegations of an assault involving a fellow passenger,” FBI Public Affairs Specialist Laura Eimiller reportedly confirmed in a statement. “No arrest has been made at this time and the investigation is continuing. The flight left for San Francisco shortly after midnight as I understand.”

It’s still unclear if the plane actually made an emergency landing or merely returned to the gate over the “rapidly escalating situation” but either way, the reported outcome is the same: the FBI boarded the plane and took a very angry, very cramped man away for questioning.

The airline, for its part, is expected to continue to force passengers to pay outrageous fees for seats that aren’t made for dolls.

http://gawker.com/stop-fighting-...


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

Wesleyan University’s student assembly is considering substantial cuts to the student newspaper’s bu


Twyla Tharp Is Feisty as Hell, Man

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Twyla Tharp Is Feisty as Hell, Man

“I never had anybody in 12 years of doing this who gave me as hard a time [as you],” Tavis Smiley told dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp at the end of their 30-minute interview, which aired Friday. At 74, she’s a firecracker, man—and one who referred to Smiley as “man” about half a dozen times. Highlights are in this reel, man:

Things got off to an awkward start when Smiley asked Tharp if she was being “particularly modest” because she was on TV. “I’m always modest,” said Tharp. “I’m gonna have to pull you out of that, then, ‘cause I got 30 minutes to do this and need a little bit more from you than just your modesty,” said Smiley. Tharp responded by kind of yodeling. She asked if he was going to cut that part of the interview out. Smiley said no. And so he didn’t.

The interview was peppered with eccentricity from Tharp, who at one point during a discussion about artistic creation asked Smiley, “Have you ever been a mother?” She also had pointed words for Dancing With the Stars, on which Smiley appeared: “We won’t go into whether it’s really dancing or not, but anything that eliminates someone is not dancing.” She admonished him for asking a convoluted question.

After thanking Tharp for coming on the show while concluding the interview, Smiley asked, “How much longer before you wrap this...?” He was referring to her current 50th anniversary tour, but Tharp responded, “I’m outta here right now.” That’s when Smiley told her she gave him a hard time. She reasoned that he needed a hug and after their embrace, she hit him affectionately. And then she barked at him. This woman is incredible.

She also has a lot of smart things to say about dancing, artistry, and audience engagement. The full interview is here:

The Billionaire Shit List, #19: Larry Page

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The Billionaire Shit List, #19: Larry Page

Consider this: billionaires suck.

Income inequality is at an all time high. The world’s 80 richest people have as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent. By 2016, Oxfam International predicts the richest one percent of people will own more than every other human on the planet. Billionaires, however, are not a necessary part of our great economy. They are, in fact, a giant vacuum sucking wealth from those who create it, and hoarding it until there’s none left for the rest of us.

So it’s time this circle-jerk of policy creation and wealth hoarding was opened up to the masses. In the second installment of Gawker’s ongoing series, the Billionaire Shit List, we peek inside the world of Larry Page, the world’s 19th richest man.


Who is he?

Larry Page

Sector he made his fortune?

Technology

How much is he worth?

$29.7 billion (553,515 times the median American income)

What is he known for?

Page is the co-founder of Google, the former CEO of the company, and the current CEO of Alphabet, the new umbrella company created by Google’s board in August to encompass Google in addition to other ventures

Is he evil?

Yes.

How evil is he?

Kind of evil. Like fellow Googler Sergey Brin (#20 on this list), Page doesn’t seem too concerned with unfairly influencing the (semi) democratic process of the U.S. with his billions. Unlike Brin, however, Page isn’t concerned with using his money for real good. Whereas Brin has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to various charities, Page once said he would rather give his money to fellow billionaire Elon Musk than to charity (he urged audience members at the TED Talk to do the same). Page apparently believes humanity would be better served helping Musk get to Mars than by helping... literally anything or anyone else. The millions Page has given to charity have gone to the Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation, which he founded in 2006. The CVP Memorial Foundation doesn’t produce records on how its money gets spent.

But even Musk is worried about Page’s seemingly unwavering belief that advances in technology will always make the world a better place. Google has been developing an entire army of terrifying robots, some of which will likely be used by the U.S. military to kill people. “I’m really worried about this,” Musk said. “[Page] could produce something evil by accident.”

Page’s business practices also seem to be less-than-stellar. He’s been accused of ripping off ideas from several companies, most notably Oracle, which sued Google in 2010 for using its technology without paying. “Larry makes the decisions over there. He runs that company. No one else runs that company,” Oracle founder Larry Ellison said. “They decided—let me be very clear—when you write a program for the Android phone, you write using the Oracle Java tools, for everything. And at the very end, you press a button that said, ‘Convert this to Android format.’ We don’t compete with Google. We don’t do anything Google does. We just think they took our stuff and that was wrong...I think what they did was was absolutely evil.”

Page is also notoriously difficult to work for. He sends angry emails to engineers and seems to have no problem belittling people in front of others. One time, he unilaterally tried to fire all of the company’s product managers en masse because he decided the company needed a different direction.

Google likes to present itself as a company of ideas, but increasingly it’s one of physical products—robots, laptops and tablets, Android phones, and data centers—all of which have an impact on the environment. Its data centers in the U.S. consume 300 million watts of energy a year, about the equivalent of running 1 million dishwashers. In other countries, its environmental and labor practices are worse: in 2011, Google bought mobile phone manufacturer Motorola, a company which previously used sweatshop labor to produce its products (like some of Google’s Nexus phones).

“Sometimes I want to die,” one worker at a factory that produces Motorola products said. “I work like hell every day for such a dull life. I can’t find a reason to live. Given that living is too tiring, seeking death might not be a silly thing!”

Well, at least that worker is helping Larry Page maintain his position on Forbes’ list of the richest people in the world.

Evil rating

7/10

Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

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Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

Here are the best of today’s deals. Get every great deal every day on Kinja Deals, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to never miss a deal, join us on Kinja Gear to read about great products, and on Kinja Co-Op to help us find the best.


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Top Deals


Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

Today only, Amazon’s taking 50% or more off a variety of activewear for men, women, and kids from multiple manufacturers. Just remember that this is a Gold Box deal, meaning these prices are only available today, or until sold out. [Get 50% or More Off Active Clothing at Amazon]


Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

For a limited time, Amazon’s taking $20 off the sticker price of several e-Ink Kindle models, including the first deal we’ve seen on the new, 300ppi Kindle Paperwhite.

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The new Paperwhite’s screen is just as sharp as the $200 Kindle Voyage’s, which I can tell you from experience looks basically indistinguishable from paper. And of course, its edge-lit screen makes it perfect for reading a chapter before you go to sleep. This is a steal at $100, and a great gift idea for the holidays if you know any voracious readers. [Kindle Paperwhite, $100]

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Need a case to go with it? This one’s only $13, and will lock and unlock the device automatically with a built-in magnetic clasp. It even comes in multiple colors.

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The base model Kindle is also marked down to $60 right now, but you’ll sacrifice the Paperwhite’s sharper screen and edge lighting. Still though, it includes a touchscreen, and full access to Amazon’s extensive ebook ecosystem, which is well worth the price of admission. [Kindle, $60]

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And if you have kids, the Kindle for Kids bundle is down to $80. This is the same base model Kindle I described above, but it includes a $20 protective case, and two years of SquareTrade accident coverage in case your little bookworm finds a way to destroy it (likely!). [Kindle for Kids Bundle, $80]

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If you’re really serious about reading, we recommend checking out Kindle Unlimited, which gives you free access to over 1,000,000 Kindle books, and thousands of audiobooks to boot. It costs $10 per month, but you can start a 30 day trial here. [Kindle Unlimited]


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$8 is a pretty solid price for a Lightning cable by itself, but today, that gets you the cable and a 3-port car charger to go with it.

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If you have any old hard drives or SSDs lying around, these cheap docking stations will allow you to access their contents over USB. The 2-port model even has a built-in cloning function that doesn’t require a PC.

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Kmashi’s stupid-cheap battery packs have been incredibly popular this year, and their massive 20,000mAh model is down to $24 today. This battery actually comes with an optional dedicated wall charger that can juice up the entire battery in under four hours, which is far faster than you could recharge over USB. [Kmashi 20000mAh External Battery Power Bank, $24 with code AH9D5CYE]

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Just because your house or apartment doesn’t have a doorbell doesn’t mean you’ll have to rely on knocking like a caveman. This $14 kit has everything you need to install one, no wiring required. You can even choose from 52 different chimes! [iClever Updated Smart Wireless Doorbell, $14 with code MER3TRBL]

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Want to see how a fitness tracker can fit into your life without investing a ton of money? Best Buy has Jawbone’s clip-on UP MOVE available for just $20 today. [Jawbone UP MOVE Activity Tracker, $20]

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Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

If you must have a Bluetooth selfie stick, $5 is about as cheap as they get. Just don’t be this guy. [Mpow iSnap X One-piece Selfie Stick, $5 with code 8LLGBIGV]

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Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

If you’ve missed out on a few recent deals, the incredibly popular OxyLED T-05 night light is back on sale. This time around, it’s a straight BOGO offer, so stock up and outfit your entire house.

In case you need a refresher, these lights are battery-powered, so you can stick them anywhere, and turn on automatically when they detect nearby movement. [BOGO OxyLED Stick-on Anywhere Motion Sensor LED Night Light, $13. Add two to cart and use code B5EZHCHL]

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We love Bluetooth speakers, and we love external USB chargers. So as you might imagine, we really love the JBL Charge 2, which combines both products in one. [JBL Charge 2, $80. Multiple colors available]

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If you don’t mind sacrificing the USB battery pack and some sound quality, MPOW’s Armor water resistant Bluetooth speaker is also on sale today. These are awesome for listening to music and podcasts in the shower. [Mpow Armor Water Resistant Bluetooth Speaker, $26 with code 4UFYKQDR]

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Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

Cowboy Bebop has one of the most popular anime in the western hemisphere over the last couple of decades, and if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s only $7 on Amazon today. Be sure to check out Kotaku’s review if you’re on the fence. [Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, $7]

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A handful of popular Studio Ghibli Blu-rays are down to their lowest prices ever right now.

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Castle in the Sky (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) ($13) | Amazon

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If your Xbox Live Gold subscription is running low, pick up an extra 12 months for just $36 today. [Microsoft Xbox LIVE 12 Month Gold Membership, $35]


Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

The Eneloop Power Pack is within a few cents of its all-time low price and will sell out quickly. [Eneloop Power Pack, $31]

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You named these your favorite rechargeable batteries by a mile in a recent Kinja Co-Op, and they’re by far the best selling batteries we’ve posted.

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Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

Victorinox’s Fibrox 8” chef’s knife is one of your favorite chef’s knives period, and by far the best value in the industry. It’s also the knife I’ve used almost every day for over three years. Amazon has it for $30 right now, which is an absolute steal for the quality you’re getting. [Victorinox Fibrox 8” Chef’s Knife, $30]

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Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

Unlike traditional suction cup-based mounts, this Mpow Grip won’t obscure your view of the road, and when your phone is mounted to it, it’s in fact completely invisible. A big worry about these things is that they’ll cover up a valuable vent during the hottest and coldest times of the year, but I’ve found that you can stick the mount on the very top of the vent, and the magnetic plate against the very bottom of you phone, and only block a small fraction of your airflow. [Mpow Grip Magic Air Vent Magnetic Car Mount, $5 with code VQRXXDSS]

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Grab a car charger with Quick Charge capabilities to go with it. [Aukey Quick Charge 2.0 30W 2 Ports USB Car Charger, $8 with code ZXPJ655P]

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Today's Best Deals: $20 Off Kindles, Activewear, Nightlights, and More

We find deals pretty regularly on Lodge’s standard skillets, but this is one of the first we’ve seen on this deep skillet with lid, and its best price ever by far. [Lodge 5 Quart Cast Iron Covered Deep Skillet, $32]

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While you’re there, grab a pair of Lodge’s pan scrapers, also on sale today. [Lodge SCRAPERPK Durable Polycarbonate Pan Scrapers, Red and Black, 2-Pack, $2]

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7,000 People Were Detained at Homan Square, Chicago PD's Secretive "Black Site"

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7,000 People Were Detained at Homan Square, Chicago PD's Secretive "Black Site"

In February, the Guardian published a deep investigation into Homan Square, a shadowy facility where the Chicago Police Department takes suspects without booking them, entering them into any official database, or giving them access to a telephone or their lawyer. A new Guardian report claims that more than twice as many people have been “disappeared” into Homan as officials initially disclosed.

http://gawker.com/the-chicago-po...

The paper obtained documents showing that more than 7,000 people were detained at Homan between 2004 and 2015—about 6,000 of whom were black. Less than one percent of those detainees were allowed to see their lawyers during interrogations. Attorneys described a system that seems deliberately engineered to make it difficult to find their clients; others said that they were turned around at the door. “Try finding a phone number for Homan to see if anyone’s there. You can’t, ever,” an attorney named David Gaeger told the Guardian. “If you’re laboring under the assumption that your client’s at Homan, there really isn’t much you can do as a lawyer. You’re shut out. It’s guarded like a military installation.”

Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian’s earlier reporting on Homan detailed allegations of beatings and long, unexplained detainments with no access to counsel. One attorney described a client whose name was changed on his records before a transfer to Homan. He emerged from the facility with a head wound:

“He said that the officers caused his head injuries in an interrogation room at Homan Square. I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and every department member I talked to said they had never heard of him,” Solowiej said. “He sent me a phone pic of his head injuries because I had seen him in a police station right before he was transferred to Homan Square without any.”

And as unsettling as it is to think that 7,000 people were subjected to such treatment without even being formally booked, that number is almost certainly low: those who were taken to Homan but not ultimately charged with crimes do not figure into the records the Chicago PD has disclosed thus far, meaning that many more detainees may be missing for the record.


Image via Google Maps. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

San Francisco Uber Driver Fired After Allegedly Threatening to Rape and Kill Female Customer

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San Francisco Uber Driver Fired After Allegedly Threatening to Rape and Kill Female Customer

A writer for San Francisco blog SFist says her Uber driver threatened to rape and kill her Thursday night after he became outraged that he couldn’t find her location. After she published her disturbing account of the incident, she reported Uber called to apologize and let her know it has cut ties with the driver.

Eve Batey said she was leaving drinks with coworkers Thursday when she got a call from the Uber driver en route to her location. He apparently couldn’t find her, and was already irate.

“I am at 400 Duboce Avenue and you are not there. Where the fuck are you? What kind of person isn’t there when they call an Uber?” she alleges he said over the phone.

Batey says she became uncomfortable at this point—understandable!—and cancelled the ride, but that wasn’t the end of the unpleasant encounter.

Here’s her account of what happened when the driver found her:

“How about I stick my dick in your pussy?” the driver screams. “I see you there, look at me, I see you there on your phone.”

“I canceled the ride” I said. (I will never forgive myself for not having a snappier comeback to the dick/pussy thing but like I said, I was tired.) I hang up.

The driver of the sedan backs down the Muni platform’s ramp, then drives forward, past me, slowly. This is when it occurs to me that this might actually be going from a conversation with an asshole to a truly fucked situation. I backed into the gate at 400 Duboce, vaguely thinking that I could start ringing the doorbells on the gate if things got more nuts. My phone rings again. I’m not sure why, but I answer it.

“CANCEL THE RIDE!” he screams. “I did!” I say. “You fucking bitch, I’m going to find you, rape you, and kill you” he responds. “I’m calling the police,” I say.

She did call the police—she says the abusive driver kept trying to call her phone while she was talking to them—and she also contacted Uber.

Although the company was initially slow to respond, someone from Uber’s “safety team” eventually contacted her after her story started getting traction on social media, with assurances that the driver never had her phone number and no longer had the ability to contact her through the app.

An Uber spokesperson followed up, letting her know the driver had been banned from using the app:

“We want to offer our deep apologies for this terrible ordeal and thank you for bringing this to our attention. This kind of behavior is absolutely unacceptable and the driver’s access to Uber has been permanently removed.”

Batey notes she’s cooperating with the SFPD’s criminal investigation into the driver, and points out that San Francisco’s District Attorney filed a complaint against Uber in August for allegedly using background checks less thorough than those of the taxi industry.

[SFist. Photo: Getty Images]

New York Times Ignores Pivotal 2011 Blog Post About Osama bin Laden Raid

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New York Times Ignores Pivotal 2011 Blog Post About Osama bin Laden Raid

On Sunday, The New York Times Magazine published a 7,500-word essay in which the reporter Jonathan Mahler attempts to untangle the knotty controversy surrounding the May 2011 execution of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It’s primarily pegged to a May 2015 report by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that purported to expose the Obama administration’s preferred narrative of bin Laden’s death as a hoax—alleging, for example, that the U.S. government discovered the al Qaeda leader’s whereabouts not by tracking one of his couriers but from an agent-turned-informant of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI. While Mahler questions some of Hersh’s sourcing, he also replicates one of his subject’s more egregious errors: Failing to note that Hersh’s most explosive claims were first floated over four years ago, by a blogger named R.J. Hillhouse.

Mahler’s piece has already been raked over the coals by Mark Bowden in Vanity Fair and Peter Bergen at CNN for giving Hersh’s “conspiracy theories,” as both men call his allegations, any more attention than they supposedly deserve. Their shared criticism of Hersh (and, by extension, Mahler) is somewhat complicated, but it centers on the perceived capability of dozens of government officials to decide upon and promote a series of carefully constructed deceptions. “For Hersh to be correct, every significant turn of events I reported was a lie,” Bowden notes, “and not just a lie, but a lie carefully and deftly coordinated.”

But the biggest issue with Mahler’s piece is not the fact that he bothered to take Hersh seriously. It’s the fact that he tells an incomplete story of Hersh’s allegations—which, placed in context, originated not in the London Review of Books, which published the Hersh investigation, but on an infrequently-updated website hosted on Blogspot called “The Spy Who Billed Me.”

Shortly after Hersh’s piece came out five months ago, dozens of outlets highlighted the fact that R.J. Hillhouse, a blogger and former professor who achieved some notoriety in 2007 for landing an exclusive interview with the former president of Blackwater, had alleged, in an August 2011 post on her own blog, not only the thrust but many of the specifics found in Hersh’s supposedly new and exclusive reporting. One of those outlets was the Times itself:

Mr. Hersh is not the first person to present this version of events. A similar account was presented on Aug. 7, 2011, on the blog The Spy Who Billed Me, which is run by R. J. Hillhouse, who tracks national security issues. Ms. Hillhouse lacks the pedigree of Mr. Hersh, who more recently detailed the abuse committed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Hillhouse may lack Hersh’s “pedigree”—her one-off Times byline on the same exact day of her August 7 post notwithstanding—but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that she reported largely the same story, including what Hersh called the U.S. government’s “most blatant lie”: The claim that the leaders of the ISI and Pakistan’s military were never made aware of the the U.S. government’s intentions to take out bin Laden. Hillhouse even leveled charges of plagiarism against the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter.

Why were the similarities between Hillhouse’s and Hersh’s stories worthy of inclusion in an 900-word writeup published on A7 of The New York Times the day after Hersh’s initial report, but not worthy of inclusion in a magazine feature eight times as long and published five months after the fact?

Mahler, who declined to comment on the record, was certainly aware of Hillhouse’s allegations. In an email to Gawker, Hillhouse said he got in touch with her several months ago, and they ended up talking on the phone for 25 minutes. Mahler, Hillhouse added, “was pretty clueless at the time. Sounded like an undergrad, concerned about narratives over facts.” (Asked to speculate on why he wouldn’t speak to us, Hillhouse responded: “Sorry, but no idea, except it’s sloppy journalism. He should be embarrassed.”)

There is, of course, an obvious reason why Mahler or one of his editors would be wary of acknowledging Hillhouse’s contribution. After all, Mahler portrays an explosive counter-narrative making the rounds among Washington’s whispering power elite until Hersh finally manages to sell the story to the London Review of Books. The fact that the counter-narrative existed on the Internet, where anyone with a working browser could read it several years before Hersh’s report saw publication, significantly undercuts Mahler’s portrayal not just of Hersh’s determination, but of the actual story he was so determined to tell the wider public.

“It’s not that the truth about bin Laden’s death is unknowable,” Mahler writes near the very end of his essay, “it’s that we don’t know it.” But we do know one thing, at least: Who reported this particular counter-narrative about bin Laden’s violent demise. And it wasn’t Seymour Hersh.

Email: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · Photo credit: NYT/AP

500 Days of Kristin, Day 267: Three Studies for a Self-Portrait

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 267: Three Studies for a Self-Portrait

Kristin Cavallari, whose debut book all about her life and opinions hits shelves in 233 days, is currently pregnant with her third child. Since she announced this news on her app, Kristin has provided the public with several images of her “baby bump” via Instagram. Here are three.

As she revealed in the caption of the second photo, Kristin’s future plans include trying to “really enjoy these last few weeks dressing the bump since I always miss it when it’s gone.”


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]


"Teen Stoner" Who Reportedly Hacked CIA Head: "i am pretty hype about it"

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"Teen Stoner" Who Reportedly Hacked CIA Head: "i am pretty hype about it"

Two self-described hackers say they’ve breached an AOL account belonging to CIA Director John Brennan, the New York Post reports. If their claim is true, this means a pair of teenagers has access to the personal files of one of the most powerful men in the world.

The duo, who enjoy recreational pot-smoking and call themselves CWA (“Crackas With Attitude”), told the Post that they were able to access Brennan’s AOL (!) account by resetting his password with personal information they tricked Verizon into providing them. (The similarities to Guccifer are more than just passing.)

Once inside, they say they were able to pull a variety of materials, including what they say is Brennan’s contact list:

—along with other documents they claim are Agency-related:

It appears they were also able to access Brennan’s AT&T wireless account:

Earlier this month, this same Twitter user provided screenshots he says are from inside various personal accounts of Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson:

Without access to the original documents (if they exist) it’s hard to verify their authenticity. Some of the addresses from Brennan’s purported email address book look incorrect, if not outright fabricated. Other entries could be real; contacts for CIA officers like David Shedd and John Moseman are part of the leaked list, all with “@ugov.gov” addresses, indicating an email system that was shuttered six years ago.

The CWA boys say they’re motivated by their support for Palestine, with numerous tweets in support of the Palestinian people sprinkled along with the CIA-related screenshots. And they do say they’re boys: talking to one of the alleged hackers over IM, he told me “since only 13 i am pretty hype about it.” When I asked how he felt about being labeled a “teen stoner” by the New York Post, he seemed fine: “Me and phphax know each other irl, most of our school and grade are smokers and stoners, so i mean it just kind of describes us in away...I dont find it insulting in anyway. [sic]”

The two have no firm plans to release more evidence of the compromised accounts, and wouldn’t tell me exactly what they’ve even gotten their hands on (they told the Post they have Brennan’s entire “47-page application for top-secret security clearance”). When asked if they would ever do a full release of their materials, I was told only, “We will do the dump when we have enough followers.”

Whether or not CWA are actually pot-smoking pro-Palestinian 13-year-olds, and whether or not they actually hacked Brennan, it’s probably still a good idea, if you work in or with the government, to stop using an AOL email address.

Update: The duo has published on Twitter a screenshot that appears to Brennan’s personal address: brennanva@aol.com. According to internet WHOIS records, the email was once used to register the website for a daycare center in Reston, VA.


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

AP BREAKING TWEET: This Kitty Is a Pirate

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AP BREAKING TWEET: This Kitty Is a Pirate

Earlier today, the Associated Press’s politics-focused Twitter account tweeted out perhaps the most important piece of news the venerated outlet will ever break—just in time for Halloween.

Because the above link contains an AP exclusive so groundbreaking you have to see it to believe it. OK, OK—I’ll describe it anyway: it’s a pirate kitty on Tyrese’s Facebook page. So it’s a regular kitty, okay, but instead of four legs it has two legs, and one of its little paws has a hook—like a pirate, right—and it’s also wearing a little pirate hat on its little kitty head. And when it walks, it’s so stiff and it looks like it has a little peg leg—it’s—it’s just—ugh. So cute. It really looks like a pirate:

Haaaa!!! When your Halloween costume is on point...

The perfect tweet has since been deleted and replaced with something about an email hack—who cares.


Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

What's Your Favorite Pen?

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What's Your Favorite Pen?

Sometimes it’s just better to write things down than type them in. What’s your go-to tool for the task? Write in and tell us.

Lifehacker asked about budget pens back in 2012 if you wanna go cheap or just can’t wait for the next round.

http://lifehacker.com/5947513/five-b...

And for something to write in:

http://lifehacker.com/five-best-pape...

1) Your nomination should contain:

  • The specific name of the product, not just a brand or series.
  • Why you think this item is the best.
  • A link where the item can be purchased.
  • An image of the item.

2) Vote by starring someone else’s nomination.

3) Please do not duplicate nominations.

What's Your Favorite Pen?

Images via Gizmodo

http://gizmodo.com/even-dysons-of...

More Gear for Work:


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Grindr Serial Killer Alert!

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Grindr Serial Killer Alert!

A 40-year-old man from East London named Stephen Port has been charged with murdering four men he met on “gay dating websites,” according to the Evening Standard. His weapon of choice? Lethal doses of the drug GHB, which is known as the “date rape drug,” but is also used recreationally, in bodybuilding, and by John Stamos.

Port’s alleged victims were all in their 20’s. They were killed between June 2014 and September of this year. The BBC has a breakdown:

  • Anthony Patrick Walgate, 23, from Barnet, who was pronounced dead on Cooke Street on 19 June 2014.
  • Gabriel Kovari, 22, from Lewisham, whose body was found near the churchyard of St Margaret’s Church, North Street, Barking, on 28 August 2014.
  • Jack Taylor, 25, from Dagenham, whose body was found near the Abbey Ruins close to North Street on 14 September this year.
  • Daniel Whitworth, 21, from Gravesend, Kent, whose body was also found near the same churchyard on 20 September 2014.

Port appeared at the Barkingside Magistrates Court earlier today and will attend another hearing at Old Bailey on Wednesday. There was no application for bail. The Standard reports that at today’s hearing it was disclosed that “Whitworth was said to have left a suicide note blaming himself for his friend’s death.”

Stories like this should remind us of how vulnerable we are when we enter intimate situations with strangers. We often like to think that there’s a gentlemen’s agreement to get off respectfully, but not everyone is a gentleman. This is the kind of worst-case scenario that’s popped up in my head time to time when sharing such close space with someone that could be any number of things, including a homicidal maniac. Be alert, be safe, and for the love of god, if you have to do G, do your own.

[Image via Evening Standard]

Driver Who Swerved And Hit A Motorcycle Charged With Aggravated Assault

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Driver Who Swerved And Hit A Motorcycle Charged With Aggravated Assault

William Crum, the Texas driver who hit two motorcyclists as they tried to pass him in a no-pass zone and whose “I don’t care” statement afterward went viral over the weekend, has been arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

http://lanesplitter.jalopnik.com/driver-who-swe...

The two riding the motorcycle that was struck by Crum, Eric Sanders and his girlfriend, were both hospitalized after the accident. Sanders’ girlfriend had to undergo surgery for injuries she sustained in the collision.

Dallas’ WFAA News 8 asked Crum if he would like an opportunity to apologize to the couple:

“To her,” he said, referring to Sanders’ girlfriend. “But to him, no. Because he was doing something illegal.”

Crum claims he did not intend to hit the motorcycle, saying:

“Man, I wish I could go back in time, but you can’t,” said Crum, who identified himself Monday as the driver in the video.

He told News 8 some sort of insect bit him near his groin as he was driving Saturday, which caused him to jerk the wheel and swerve into the left lane. He said he had absolutely no idea a motorcycle was on his side.

“I can’t do nothing about what happened. It wasn’t automatic,” Crum said. “I didn’t try to hurt anybody. It was a reflex from the pain.”

The Hood County District Attorney’s Office still charged Crum for the two counts of aggravated assault. They also cited Sanders for passing in a no-pass zone and driving with an invalid license.

WFAA News 8 also spoke to Sanders, who couldn’t believe Crum’s demeanor after running him and his girlfriend off the road:

“What was he thinking?” Sanders said.

“That’s the worst thing,” Sanders said, “when I saw that dude saying, ‘I don’t care, I don’t care.’ He says it four to five times. I’ve never seen this guy in my life. And he ran me over.”

We’ll see if a jury sides with Crum and his insect story, or Sanders and his injured girlfriend.

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