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Barney Frank Can't Smoke Weed, So He Eats It

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Former Congressman Barney Frank visited the Gawker office last week to discuss Compared To What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank, the documentary about his life that’s now running on Showtime (and on demand). In front of a crowd, Frank and I discussed his doc, the closet on Capitol Hill, and his own coming out (which happened way back in 1987).

I also took the opportunity to clarify what he (and his voting record) has hinted at: If in fact Barney Frank hits the doob. During a 2013 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher told Frank, “You were in a fairly safe district. You were not one of those Congresspeople that have to worry about every little thing. You could come on this show and sit next to a pot-smoking atheist, and it wouldn’t bother you...” “Which pot-smoking atheist are you talking about?” interrupted Frank, referring in part to himself.

In the memoir that Frank released earlier this year, Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage, Frank clarified the latter half of the distinction:

Subsequently, after leaving office, I half jokingly objected when Bill Maher, one of my favorite TV hosts, asked if I felt uncomfortable sitting next to a pot-smoking atheist on the set of his show. I replied that that there were two of us on that stage who fit those categories. The media reached the conclusion that I had come out as an atheist. In fact, I am not an atheist. I don’t know enough to have any firm view on the subject, and it has never seemed important to me. I have had a life-long aversion to wrestling with questions that I know I can never answer. My tolerance for intellectual uncertainty is very low.

http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Politics...

And so I asked Frank to clarify the first: If in fact, he smokes marijuana. He doesn’t, he says, on account of being unable to inhale (he also bemoaned having to employ that cliched excuse). He does, however, eat it. Full explanation is in the clip the clip above.

You can watch the majority of our interview with Frank in the full clip below, with an intro by Andy Tobias, the writer, treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, and friend of Frank, who was instrumental in getting the former congressman to come to our office.

[Still on top video via Getty]

How Sexism in the Church Almost Ruined My Life 

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How Sexism in the Church Almost Ruined My Life 

In July 2014, my husband Daniel, our two young boys, and I took a full U-Haul from Cleveland, Tenn., to Richmond, Va., for Daniel’s new job as a teacher at a Christian private school. The move had pushed us past broke, into donations from relatives, but we were eager nonetheless. After many years, my husband had finally figured out what he wanted to do with his life. He was thrilled for the opportunity to become a teacher, and I—coming off of a year nursing my youngest son, who would not take bottles—was excited to look for work in a new town.

At East End Christian Academy, Daniel signed a strict contract stating, among other things, that he would not drink in public, that he would regularly attend their associated church, and that he would live a Christ-like lifestyle. It was a conservative church, I knew, but I’d attended conservative-ish churches my whole life. My parents still vote Republican. I had different opinions and views, but I had always been able to get along.

A year later, Daniel was fired a week before a major surgery for failing to adhere to his contract.

Daniel was born with something called Hirschsprung’s Disease, which is almost always treated successfully in childhood via a pull-through surgery. But for him, there had been complications. He was dealing with a lot of pain and discomfort, for which a colorectal specialist recommended he have a major abdominal surgery that would require a temporary ileostomy and eventual reversal. He arranged his procedures around his school schedule, but his recovery from the first surgery was much slower than expected, and he ended up spending nearly all of June in the hospital.

In the last week of July, a week before his ileostomy was set to be reversed, Dan Helland, pastor of the church, and his wife, Sue Helland, director of the school, called him into his office and told him that they would not be renewing his contract. Among his offenses were “differences in beliefs,” things I had been posting to Twitter and Facebook (including articles written for Gawker), and a short video of Daniel drinking a beer while grilling burgers on the Fourth of July—the first he’d had all summer, since he’d been unable to eat or drink real food for nearly two weeks, receiving most of his nutrients through a PICC line.

During this conversation, the Hellands accused me of “throwing them under the bus” by posting controversial things: writing that I think it’s okay for Christians to drink, and that not all Christians are conservative. Daniel said to them, “I signed the contract, not her.” They responded, “Well, you’re supposed to be the head of the household.”

Even in the years when I considered myself conservative, Daniel and I have always had an egalitarian marriage. This, for many people, is simply “marriage”—partners treating each other like equals, relationship roles undetermined by gender, leadership shared rather than assigned automatically to the person who was born with a dick.

A complementarian view of marriage, on the other hand, is a Christian framework that pins your role in the partnership (by definition a heterosexual one, of course) on what’s between your legs. The sexes are made to complement each other, OK? It’s a relatively positive spin on a patriarchal relationship—God loves you and your husband equally, women! It’s just that one of you is going to stay home with the babies and let your spouse be in charge whether you like it or not.

I never adhered to this type of view, even though it’s impressed upon Christian girls from childhood. Men—fathers—are always viewed as leaders of the household, addressed as the head of the family. Sermons casually mention a woman’s need to remain “pure” before marriage or talk about the importance of a mother taking care of her family in the home. The insinuations start off relatively subtle. But by time you’re actually married, people in fundamentalist churches start explicitly discussing the fact that if you’re a “real” Christian home, the husband is supposed to be in charge. Anything to the contrary is borderline blasphemy. Several of my religious friends and family members have shared this image on Facebook, and it’s a pretty good representation of how fundamentalists actually believe a family should function.

How Sexism in the Church Almost Ruined My Life 

But for me and Daniel, the words “obey” or “submit” weren’t in our Christian wedding vows; they were replaced, instead, with “honor” and “respect.” Our mothers both worked our whole lives; I was raised around and by strong women who never felt the need to discuss the “role of women” or taught me to limit my hopes and dreams. I saw my grandmothers take on strong leadership roles in their churches, homes, and lives, and that’s how I aspired to be. But in an otherwise conservative environment, female subserviency was the norm: women who submitted to their husbands; the talents of women in the church ignored in favor of masculine leadership; feminine voices relegated to “women’s groups,” as if they weren’t good enough to address the entire congregation.

For a long time, I didn’t do enough to fight for women in the church. But after years of silence, I was finally getting bold enough to speak my mind. I was a freelance writer trying to find a place for my progressive religious voice, with the confidence and support that comes from an egalitarian partnership. And as a result of all this, my husband lost his job.

It wasn’t the case that Daniel ever stopped working hard for the church/school. In fact, it was the opposite. The year he’d taught in the high school had been full of drama, with two youth pastors coming and going, and the pews emptying out. The school’s teaching positions also often take the form of revolving doors, with people hardly staying past a year. But Daniel was there as often as he could be: volunteering, playing guitar for church services, skipping friends’ and family weddings as not to miss a Sunday, and helping to plan school and church activities above and beyond what was required. All of this, too, for a meager salary of $2000 a month. Daniel told me he felt called to it, that he would do anything for the church. And he never asked me to change anything about myself for his benefit.

So, in return, out of respect for his work, I went to the bake sales, offered to help with the website, attended the events. I sat through sermons I found difficult to listen to: hateful warnings about not getting caught up in the “love” part of the gospel, plans to march for “traditional marriage” in DC ahead of the Supreme Court decision, encouragement to shun girls who didn’t dress modestly. I tried to find connections instead of just focusing on the differences, because I wanted to support my husband’s career the way he supported mine. But as the church saw it, his job was not to support me to but to control me.

Two days after Daniel was fired, I was let go from the administrative assistant position I’d held at the Supreme Court of Virginia. This bad news was more expected—I’d known my department was being audited, that it was possible my position would be cut. But this timing was so bad that Daniel called the school back up to see if there was anything that could be done. We had been nearly broke even before he’d gotten the job offer in Richmond; we had far outspent the school’s $1000 moving allowance in the process of uprooting ourselves. My plan of transitioning to freelance writing full-time had depended on Daniel having steady income. But an unemployed teacher in surgical recovery was unlikely to get another teaching job right before school started.

Two adults, two kids, no income. It was the scariest situation of my life. The school offered no severance, no financial assistance, no advice, not even any consolation. They just said they’d pray for us. Some of the old church members were kind enough to reach out and ask how we were doing, but many never spoke to us again.

In the end, the story ended up okay for me. I have regular freelance writing gigs, and my friends, family, and online strangers rallied around me to raise a substantial amount of money so that we could get back on our feet. My husband recovered quickly from his second surgery and is healthier than he’s ever been. Miraculously, he did get another teaching position at a wonderful, much bigger Christian school that knows the story of how and why he got let go from his old place—and doesn’t care, because to them, quality education is the top priority, not what the teacher (or his/her spouse) does in his/her spare time. Best of all, we now go to a United Church of Christ congregation. Our pastor is a woman, and they participated in our community’s gay pride festival this year. The sermons focus on what we can do to help others, not pointing out our neighbors’ so-called sins.

But for so many others, it could have gone terribly wrong. Girls who are raised with a complementarian view of marriage may not be so comfortable speaking out about things they disagree with in their churches. The people at East End often poked fun at me—when my kids misbehaved, they’d smirk and reference the article I wrote about why I don’t spank my children. They didn’t like my clothes or my tattoos or even the food I ate. For me, it was fuel for the fire—proof that an institution I loved was worth spending effort remaking. For others, it could be devastating.

Millions of teenagers and young adults who sit in small, conservative churches all across the United States are being told that education isn’t a priority, especially for women. They’re being told that gay and trans people are sinners who are going to hell. They’re being told it’s a woman’s job to keep her body covered so that the men won’t lust or sin. They’re being told their occupation and familial roles are dictated by their gender. Worst of all, the young girls and women are told that if they meet a man they want to marry, they will have to submit their hopes, dreams, and opinions to him or risk being an outcast in their families and churches. That’s normal to them. It’s far more normal than you can imagine.

In several denominations, Bible study classes are divided by gender, with the men’s classes focusing on subjects such as “leadership” and “strength,” while women’s classes tend to be about “gentleness” and “sacrifice.” In the student handbook for East End’s school, they stated that boys should become strong and godly leaders, but girls are to become noble “Proverbs 31” women. (The famous Proverbs 31 verse isn’t that bad at all on its own, but in the hands of fundamentalists, it becomes a laundry list of things that are expected of women in order to be deemed a good Christian or a good wife.)

This tactic won’t work in the long run for the evangelical right. They’re already rapidly losing their grip on American politics. And the panic is making them paint feminists—anyone in an egalitarian marriage fits in this category, by the way—as hateful individuals destroying the fabric of society. They’re actively working to silence (and likely alienate) half the population they see in their pews—or even more, considering that women are more likely to be religious than men. This isn’t reflected in their leadership, of course: only 5 percent of churchgoers attend a church that is led by a woman. But the status quo, if it holds, will be hiding discontent and instability. The church’s systematic attempts to control women through usage of outdated theology and cherry-picked Bible verses is leading to severe consequences for people of faith.

For example: a few weeks ago, 103-year-old Genora Biggs was told by her pastor that she was no longer welcome to attend Union Grove Baptist Church, a church she had attended for 92 years, allegedly because she had the nerve to disagree with his style of preaching. When she showed up for services anyway, they called the police.

Churches that devalue women are contributing to the breakdown of religious faith in this country at large. If you tell a young girl that her voice doesn’t count in the house of God, why would she want to go there? If you tell a woman she can’t lead a congregation when her gift is public speaking, how could she believe that she has a purpose with that deity? And if a religious leader tells a man that he’s supposed to control his wife by being the “head of the household,” how can you be surprised when that same wife begins to resent her secondary place?

When you are spurned so thoroughly by an institution in which you have placed so much of yourself, it can break you to the extent that you lose your beliefs. I feel lucky to limit my loss of faith to complementarianism itself. I remember that the greatest commandment Christ ever gave was to love: God, your enemies, your neighbors, the poor, the dirty, and yes, the assertive woman posting things on Twitter that make you shake your head in disagreement. Without that love, your “church” is bitter, and will break.

Contact the author at jcm.the.writer@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @notreallyjcm.

Illustration by Jim Cooke

Christian YouTubers Welcome New Baby to a Lifetime of Monetized Surveillance 

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Christian YouTubers Welcome New Baby to a Lifetime of Monetized Surveillance 

On October 24, 2015, Finley Jay Lanning entered the world at 9 lbs, 0 oz. He was born into the loving arms of his parents and the hearts of his fans—people who knew his name and were waiting for him.

“FINALLY! Our finley is here! Welcome to the world baby!” one fan wrote on Twitter. “Finley is finally here and I’m so happy!” another commented.

Finley, now just two days old, is not the son of actors or pop stars or a royal family somewhere in Europe. His parents are Bryan and Melissa “Missy” Lanning of Murietta, California. They are YouTubers by trade.

“PREGNANCY TEST REACTION!”

Bryan and Missy are self-described God-fearing Christians who have been posting reality show-style videos about their family online every single day since 2012—videos that rack up hundreds of thousands of views, sometimes within hours. They collect ad revenue through Maker Studios, a YouTube creator network; they also sell merchandise emblazoned with the name of their YouTube channel, the “Daily Bumps.” (We reached out to the Lannings about how much they’re currently making and whether that will change with the introduction of YouTube Red; we’ll update if we hear back.)

The channel name comes from the title of Missy’s old blog, “The Bumps Along the Way,” but it also conveniently references Missy’s “baby bump,” which the couple has documented obsessively.

In March, Bryan and Missy—who worked respectively as a photographer and an “office worker” before their YouTube channel took off—announced that they were pregnant with their second baby. When Missy was just eight weeks along, the couple broke the news in a video titled “PREGNANCY TEST REACTION!”

In it, Bryan films as Missy prepares to take a pregnancy test in their hotel bathroom. “You gotta put your pee-pee on this thing right here,” he says.

The video garnered over two million views.

Its success was no accident—the Lannings have had plenty of practice marketing their ability to procreate. In 2013, Missy gave birth to the couple’s first child, Oliver. The Lannings played every moment of his gestation to the camera and have since thoroughly documented his young life for a legion of fans.

Now it’s little Finley’s turn.

“Honestly we could have had this baby days ago”

When Missy gave birth to Finley on Saturday, she was already 9 days past her due date. I know this because Bryan and Missy obsessively counted down the days until October 15 in their videos and on Twitter and Instagram, prompting many fans to be upset when Finn didn’t show up on time.

The fans might not have been so aggravated had the Lannings not fooled them many times before. When Missy was about eight months along, the Lannings began posting increasingly clickbaity videos with titles that suggested she had gone into labor when in fact she had not.

On August 29, they posted a video titled, “STRESSFUL EMERGENCY ROOM VISIT!” (Missy thought she was leaking amniotic fluid, but she actually just peed her pants.) Then on September 14, they informed their viewers that Missy was “COUNTING CONTRACTIONS.” (They were just Braxton-Hicks contractions.) On September 24, the Lannings posted that they were “OFFICIALLY ON BABY WATCH!”, but only on October 1 were they “PACKING THE HOSPITAL BAG.”

Each time, these videos racked up hundreds of thousands more views than the Daily Bumps’ average, and each time, they did not depict Missy going into true labor. When the Lannings posted “STARTED LABOR IN DISNEYLAND!” on October 10, viewers were ready to see a freakin’ baby.

But “STARTED LABOR IN DISNEYLAND!” only contains a few minutes of footage of the family leaving Disneyland because Missy was in pain. The video clocked in at 650,000 views. There was no baby.

The next day, after at least one fan stayed up all night to virtually witness Finley’s birth—

—Bryan took to Twitter to explain to viewers that Missy could have had the baby DAYS AGO...she just didn’t.

According to the Lannings, being “true to our audience” means taking every last stab at going viral. After the Disneyland birth that wasn’t, the couple posted several more fake-out videos in the remaining days of the pregnancy like, “CHECKING ON BABY!”, “WHERE’S BABY BROTHER?!”, “FINLEY’S DUE DATE!”, “I HOPE IT’S TODAY!”, “LABOR INDUCING CUPCAKE!”, and “THE BABY IS COMING!”

On October 22, Bryan teased the day’s video on Twitter by writing, “Missy had a long visit at the hospital and then we got a new family member!”

The new family member was a snail.

“Finley’s birth vlog is complete and I’m so proud of it”

After all that, fans were still excited to see Finley. And so the Lannings posted a 17-minute video of his birth on YouTube the day after he was born.

In it, viewers see Missy suffer contractions and cry when she learns she has to have a C-section. They see the exact moment Finley enters the world, goopy and screaming. They see Missy breastfeed him for the first time.

They also hear an original song by Bryan, who is an aspiring singer-songwriter. “Finley’s Lullaby” is available for purchase on iTunes.

“So blown away by what God is doing through YouTube ;)”

So what now? If their treatment of Oliver is any indication, the Lannings will start posting every moment of Finley’s young life for the fans. They’ll enjoy a bump in traffic for a few weeks that will eventually level off until they have another pregnancy they can film. This is the life cycle of the Christian family vlogger, where the best way to bring in views is to have a baby.

http://gawker.com/a-guide-to-the...

Bryan and Missy likely knew this secret to success before they ever posted a video on YouTube. In the first video Missy uploaded to the site in 2012, she admitted up front that she was “inspired” to start vlogging by watching other YouTubers document their pregnancies.

She also revealed that she once had a miscarriage when she was 10 weeks pregnant. Like Sam and Nia Rader, the popular Christian YouTubers spiraled out of control this summer (and who now say they are pregnant again), Missy discussed her struggle to stay pregnant openly on camera. That first video garnered over 80,000 views.

http://gawker.com/vlogger-couple...

And now, three years later, the Lannings have found both reproductive and financial success.

Bryan considers it all a blessing from God himself.


Art by Jim Cooke. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

Video Surfaces Showing Daring Special Ops ISIS Raid that Killed American Commando

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A week after a daring raid against ISIS that freed 70 Kurdish hostages and left an American special forces operator dead, NBC News has obtained what it says is body-cam footage from the assault.

http://gawker.com/u-s-soldier-ki...

NBC says it grabbed the video from a Jordanian news network:

The video, exclusively obtained by NBC News from Jordan-based news outlet Arab24, was apparently taken on helmet cameras at a prison near the northern town of Hawija. Arab24 said it received the video from Kurdish military officials.

In it, a barrage of gunfire is heard as what appear to be Delta Force and Kurdish soldiers hurry out a stream of prisoners through a badly damaged building. The two-minute video does not show the events that lead to the death of Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, the mission’s sole casualty.


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

Today's Best Deals: WD My Cloud, 4K Sony TV, iTunes Credit, and More

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Today's Best Deals: WD My Cloud, 4K Sony TV, iTunes Credit, 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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Dell includes promotional gift cards with a lot of the items they sell, but this is on a completely different level. If you buy a 55” 4K 3D Sony TV for $1498 (which is the market rate) today, Dell will throw in a $500 promotional gift card for your trouble.

That’s basically good for a free game console with games, or a 4K computer monitor, or even a mid-range computer. The only real caveat is that you have to spend the credit within 90 days. [Sony 55” 4K 3D Smart TV, $1498 + $500 Promo Gift Card]

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Note: It should go without saying, but make sure you see the $500 gift card in your cart before you check out. It should be added automatically, but Dell has been known to end these promotions without warning, so double check before you complete your order.


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No kitchen is complete without a good meat thermometer and a food scale, and you can get both for $10 or less today on Amazon.

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The 4.8 star rated thermometer is fairly self-explanatory, but if you aren’t sure why you need a kitchen scale, just know that it can help you cook your favorite recipes with much more consistency, and with fewer dirty dishes to boot. Plus, you can use it to weigh postage when you aren’t cooking, so you should definitely keep one handy.

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Western Digital’s My Cloud is the easiest option for anyone who want a network-connected hard drive without the cost or complications of setting up a NAS, and you can get the 4TB model for just $140 today on eBay. That’s roughly $50 less than usual, and barely more than a non-networked 4TB external drive. [WD My Cloud Personal 4TB Cloud Storage, $140]

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No matter how good Apple makes the battery life in their laptops, you’re always going to want a few more hours. And though it’s a little bit janky, ChugPlug’s external Mac battery is the best option you have right now.

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We’ve seen a handful of Quick Charge 2.0-compatible car chargers, but this is the first one we’ve posted with four total USB ports. Only one of those is a Quick Charge port, but the rest should still come in handy for your passengers. [Tronsmart 54W 4 Ports Rapid Car Charger with Qualcomm Certified Quick Charge 2.0 Technology, $13 with code OUJY9F3R]

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$20 is a great price for a waterproof Bluetooth speaker, but for that price, Aukey will even toss in a waterproof smartphone case. So let’s say you want to use the speaker to listen to music or podcasts in the shower. Now, you can take your phone in there as well to control playback. [Aukey Wireless Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker and Aukey Universal Waterproof Case, $20. Add both to cart and use code GYVW2V3D]

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How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

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How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

Hurricane Patricia—the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded—made landfall on Mexico’s west coast last Friday as a powerful category five, the first scale-topper to strike North America in eight years. The storm managed to pack winds of 200 MPH before making landfall, which is about as strong as a tropical cyclone can get—as far as we know, anyway.

http://thevane.gawker.com/at-200-mph-hur...

The storm, which claimed at least six lives and all but destroyed several small towns in the path of its eye, was the first category five to make landfall in North America since Hurricane Felix struck Nicaragua in September 2007.

Shattered Lives

How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

A category five storm making landfall anywhere in the world is one of the worst natural disasters possible, so the better outcomes in a situation like this are just lesser degrees of awful.

Even though Patricia lost a bit of its strength as it raced toward shore, it still smacked into Mexico with winds of 165 MPH, making it the most intense eastern Pacific hurricane to make landfall, and one of the strongest storms to hit the continent since reliable records began.

Despite its ferocious winds, the storm exacted a much smaller toll than feared due to the storm’s small wind field and the sparsely-populated land it hit. The extent of category five (157+ MPH) winds only stretched about seven miles on either side of the eye, and the entire hurricane force (74+ MPH) wind field was only about 60 miles across.

The storm made landfall on one of the least-populated parts of the country’s coast, laying waste to several small towns, but moving in just the right way that the worst conditions missed the cities of Puerto Vallarta (population ~200,000) and Manzanillo (population ~100,000).

Busted Reporting

While that was a less awful outcome than some of the other scenarios that were possible, the storm still hit several villages, killing several people and destroying hundreds of homes and businesses. The international media quickly lost interest in this storm once it was obvious that the forecast track would verify and the catastrophic winds would miss the big cities.

How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

The worst media report outside of the partisan sewagesphere came from the Associated Press by way of AL.com, which went so far as to use a Cavuto mark in a Saturday morning article to imply that meteorologists oversold a category five hurricane making landfall because it only leveled small towns and not big cities, which weren’t forecast to see a direct hit in the first place.

An interview with a Michigan family in Puerto Vallarta serves as the centerpiece for the report.

The Sokols, a family of five from suburban Detroit, were supposed to fly out of Puerto Vallarta on Friday but ended up for hours in a shelter at a university after their flight was canceled. By night they were back where they began: at their hotel, and no worse for wear.

“It’s amazing it went from the worst in history to just some heavy rain,” Susanna Sokol said, noting that at least the hurricane gave her daughter a birthday to remember.

“It was pretty stressful for a while,” Tom Sokol said. “I felt guilty for taking my kids here.”

Whew! The American tourists are okay! Now, how about the Mexican residents who aren’t in the resort with the tourists?

There were early reports of some flooding and landslides, but no word of fatalities or major damage as the storm moved over inland mountains overnight. Television news reports from the coast showed toppled trees and lampposts, and inundated streets. Milenio TV carried footage of cars and buses being swept by floodwaters in the state of Jalisco.

No word! So, to recap, the tourists are fine and we hadn’t yet heard from the areas leveled by 165 MPH winds, so that warranted reporting that the storm was “overblown” and fell short of the “catastrophic” label applied to it by everyone with a shred of common sense.

This ugly coverage/headline combo from the Associated Press is a stark example of the media’s bias in covering weather disasters.

The fact that anyone felt okay publishing a story discounting accurate, dire warnings as “overblown” because the Americans in a tourist city were okay and only small towns were affected highlights the growing city vs. rural bias in weather reporting. The lack of regard for those affected is compounded by the fact that the event happened outside of the United States, which is, of course, the center of the universe outside of which there is no important news.

Broken Records

How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

For 18 hours on Friday (October 23), Hurricane Patricia peaked with maximum sustained winds of 200 MPH and a minimum central pressure of 879 millibars. That’s insane. That’s record-breaking. It’s the most intense tropical cyclone we’ve ever recorded in terms of sustained winds, and the fourth-strongest we’ve ever recorded based on minimum air pressure.

200 MPH winds pretty much speak for themselves. These aren’t estimated values, either. Hurricane Hunters measured these winds on more than one occasion using dropsondes and advanced sensors on the aircraft as they flew through the thing several times on Friday.

That pressure reading of 879 millibars is also significant. If that doesn’t sound like much, standard atmospheric pressure at sea level is 1013 millibars. Most formidable hurricanes we see in the Atlantic bottom-out with pressures in the low- to mid-900s. Hurricane Katrina’s lowest surface pressure was 902 millibars. The lowest surface pressure ever recorded in a storm was Typhoon Tip’s 870 millibars back in October 1979.

Hot Water

How did Hurricane Patricia achieve such a feat? Very quickly, for one.

How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

Patricia went from a 65 MPH tropical storm at 10:00 PM on Wednesday to a 160 MPH category five hurricane by 10:00 PM on Thursday. The storm had a minimum central pressure of 980 millibars at 4:00 AM on Thursday morning, and 24 hours later on Friday morning, that pressure had bombed to 880 millibars; this 100-millibar strengthening is the fastest pressure drop we’ve ever recorded in a tropical cyclone.

A hurricane looks like a hurricane due to rising and sinking air throughout the storm. The thunderstorms that make up the eyewall suck up air from the lower levels into the upper atmosphere, leaving less air (thereby lower air pressure) at the surface. Air rushes down from the upper atmosphere toward the ground to fill the void, and this sinking air warms and dries as it descends. This is how a clear, striking eye forms.

How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

As the thunderstorms in the eyewall gain strength, their updrafts grow stronger, displacing more air from the surface and causing more air to sink to fill the void. Under ideal conditions—warm water, no wind shear, moist atmosphere—this process can evacuate enormous amounts of air and allow for a very deep center of low pressure to form. This process can occur very quickly in an event known as rapid intensification, and that’s what we saw last week.

How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

Patricia encountered the ideal conditions to catapult it into the record books. For that 24-hour window right before landfall, it encountered very warm waters, precious little wind shear, and ample moisture, and it used it as efficiently as a storm could. The water off the coast of western Mexico was warmer than 30°C/86°F, which is more than sufficient to sustain a monster like this.

Storms that rapidly intensify over the water are fun to watch, but when they’re this close to land, it’s downright scary.

Grading the Forecast

Meteorologists have gotten pretty good at predicting the track of most tropical cyclones, but there’s still a lot of work to be done in predicting their future wind speeds. A storm like this is rare and obviously on the extreme end of the scale—computer models predicted that Patricia would strengthen, but neither they (nor anybody else, really) knew that Patricia would get as strong as it did pretty much until it started happening.

The above graph shows various solutions from weather models on Wednesday morning showing what they thought then-Tropical Storm Patricia would do over the next two days. They were in pretty good agreement that it would steadily strengthen before landfall. That black line shows Patricia’s actual strengthening trend.

Thankfully, we knew it would be a violent hurricane early enough that many residents in the storm’s path had at least two day’s notice that a hurricane was on its way. (Though, someone who went to bed on Wednesday night and slept late on Thursday woke up to a much more dire situation than they’d anticipated.)

How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

The National Hurricane Center’s track forecast for Patricia was remarkably consistent. The center line just barely nudged westward, remaining within a few dozen miles of the actual landfall point between the time the storm formed on Tuesday and the time it made landfall on Friday. The actual point of landfall was solidly within the cone of uncertainty beginning with the first advisory.

There is no doubt in my mind that, despite the difficulty they had in predicting its intensity, the National Hurricane Center’s stellar track forecast and early watches and warnings saved lives. A storm this strong can kill hundreds of people even when it hits sparsely-populated areas. The fact that the reported death toll is below ten as of the writing of this post is astounding for a landfalling category five hurricane.

Conscious Uncoupling

How Hurricane Patricia Became the Strongest Storm Ever Recorded and Why It Killed So Few People

(Hey, mobile users: the above .gif is 8.34 megabytes, so be mindful if you choose to load it.)

Even the mightiest storm must come to an end. The storm began a swift weakening trend just before it made landfall as the eye started to fill with clouds, the eyewall started to deteriorate, and the storm encountered wind shear. Intense storms usually undergo eyewall replacement cycles, which is where one eyewall collapses as a new one forms to take its place. Microwave satellite imagery (above) shows that the storm’s eyewall started to deform just as it approached land, likely the result of interaction with land, increasing wind shear, and the beginning of an eyewall replacement cycle.

One of the strangest narratives that took hold during this ordeal is that the storm was hyped because it rapidly began to weaken once it made landfall.

Um.

That’s how hurricanes work!

Hurricanes derive their energy from warm ocean waters. Losing this bath water is like pulling the plug. This is why you hardly ever see hurricanes over cold water. This is why—except for one time in recorded history—hurricanes don’t make it to California.

A hurricane moving over land is like a human holding their head under the water. They survive for a little while, but they’ll die pretty quickly. It doesn’t help that rugged and mountainous terrain will kill a tropical cyclone at breakneck speed. The jagged land disrupts the winds and forces it to ingest dry air, killing the low pressure center at the surface and rapidly breaking apart the thunderstorms around its core.

One of the biggest examples of terrestrial destruction from this hurricane season was Tropical Storm Erika, the storm that threatened Florida for a few days this August. The storm shredded apart once it hit the mountains of Hispaniola, floofing away into nothing.

Another classic example is...well, Patricia!

Asterisk

It’s worth pointing out that “the strongest storm ever” has to be followed by “recorded,” or else it’s not exactly true. Even more accurately, Hurricane Patricia is the strongest storm ever recorded by wind speed. Some geeks will argue that it’s not really the strongest because it’s pressure that matters, not winds, but I don’t buy that because it’s the wind that shreds your house apart and sends shards of glass soaring through your skull, not the air pressure.

Hurricane Patricia is the strongest storm we’ve ever recorded in terms of winds. Despite what your local school board thinks, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Reliable wind speed records only go back into the mid-1900s, and even then, many of the early satellite reports were unreliable.

It’s impossible to truly know how strong a hurricane’s winds are unless you fly right in there and measure them or the eye passes over a well-built anemometer at sea or on land. It’s very likely that Super Typhoon Haiyan’s winds were stronger than satellite estimates of 195 MPH, for example, and there are countless more storms that have formed during the course of history that were at least as strong (if not stronger) than Hurricane Patricia, and we have no way of knowing it.

Hurricane Patricia likely wasn’t the strongest storm ever. We haven’t been smart enough for long enough to know that for sure.

Elusive Categories

Another (insignificant) debate that played out during and after the storm was whether or not “category five” truly captured the enormity of the storm. There were lots of Tweets and posts from folks who exclaimed that Hurricane Patricia was really a category seven hurricane if you were to follow the 20 MPH increments of the current Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale beyond its open-ended ending.

Engineer Herbert Saffir and meteorologist Robert Simpson teamed up to develop the eponymous scale in the 1970s as a way to easily communicate to the public the threat a hurricane’s winds pose to structures in the path of a storm. The scale works pretty well—the system is so ubiquitous that you know instantly that a category one hurricane will cause less wind damage than a category four. You know your house would probably stand up to a category one, while you’re taking inventory of your belongings if a category four or five looms offshore.

The biggest criticism of the scale these days is that it only conveys the threat of wind, when storm surge and freshwater flooding from prolific rain are often the most serious hazards with landfalling tropical systems. For example, Hurricane Sandy “only” had category one winds at landfall, and Hurricane Katrina was “only” a category three when it struck the northern Gulf Coast.

It’s rare that we get to entertain the idea of stretching the Saffir-Simpson scale beyond a category five, and thankfully so. It would be counterproductive to add a category six or category seven to the scale. The first reason is that the scale is outdated and we desperately need to develop a new system that can accurately reflect the threat of storm surge and flooding instead of just wind.

Second, category five is labeled “catastrophic” for a reason. Here’s the category’s description from the above-linked page at the National Hurricane Center:

A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.

Pretty hard to top that!

Hurricane Patricia was a meteorologically incredible storm that exacted a human toll that was much lower than one would expect from a landfalling category five hurricane. This storm should have done so much more damage than it did—though it destroyed hundreds of lives in a matter of minutes, it made landfall in the one spot where it did the least damage possible.

Hopefully the next time we see a storm of this caliber, it’s far out to sea where it’ll sit, spin, and burn out without so much as a breeze on land.

[Top Image: Associated Press | Map/Chart: Author | Screenshot: AL.com | Infrared Satellite: CIMSS | Visible Satellite: NOAA | Sea Surface Temps: NOAA | Animated Map: NHC | Microwave Image: CIMSS]


Email: dennis.mersereau@gawker.com | Twitter: @wxdam

My new book, The Extreme Weather Survival Manual, is now available! You can order it from Amazon and find it on the shelves and websites of retailers near you.

Batshit NYPD Union Wants New Yorkers to Boycott Quentin Tarantino 

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Batshit NYPD Union Wants New Yorkers to Boycott Quentin Tarantino 

On Saturday, an anti-police brutality rally in Washington Square Park got an unexpected guest speaker in Quentin Tarantino. Today, the perpetually seething chair of the union representing NYPD officers responded by calling for a boycott of the director’s films.

http://gawker.com/nypd-union-pre...

When it comes to fuming press releases, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch is a well-respected auteur with an unmistakable style. He’s spent years honing his gift, meticulously crafting missives, each more livid and sensational than the last. That’s why I’m disappointed to report that Lynch’s Tarantino boycott is a lazy and uninspired pastiche of his earlier work. From the New York Post:

“It’s no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too,” Lynch said in a statement.

“The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls ‘murderers’ aren’t living in one of his depraved big-screen fantasies — they’re risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem.

“New Yorkers need to send a message to this purveyor of degeneracy that he has no business coming to our city to peddle his slanderous ‘Cop Fiction.’ ”

No calling Tarantino an Inglorious Basterd? No quoting Ezekiel 25:17? Early Lynch would have thrown in an egregious “Kill Bill” just to make it known how much he hates the mayor, or said something incoherent about how he knows Quentin hates cops because Mr. Brown got more lines in Reservoir Dogs than Mr. Blue. But this? This is bland, uninspired drivel.

It’s a shame to see a true press release artist like Patrick Lynch descend into lazy self-parody. Zero stars.

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


Police: Binge-Drinking Walking Dead Fan Beat His "Zombie" Friend to Death With an Electric Guitar

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Police: Binge-Drinking Walking Dead Fan Beat His "Zombie" Friend to Death With an Electric Guitar

A New Mexico man who said he had recently binge-watched The Walking Dead has been charged with murder after telling police he attacked his drinking buddy. He said he believed the other man had started “to change into a zombie” and wanted to bite him, Albuquerque news station KOB4 reports.

Damon Perry, 23, allegedly punched and kicked his “zombified” friend, Christopher Paquin, then beat him to death with a microwave and an electric guitar, a Grants, N.M. police spokesperson told the Daily Beast.

“It was one of the absolute worst [crime scenes] I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been with the department for 15 years,” spokesman Marcus Marques told the Beast.

After attacking Paquin, Perry allegedly exited the apartment where they’d been drinking and ran through the housing complex chasing people with either scissors (according to the Beast) or a knife (according to KOB4). He was eventually subdued by two maintenance workers.

Police don’t believe mental illness was a factor, and are attributing the alleged attack to binge-drinking. They told the Beast that after sobering up, Perry expressed remorse for his friend’s death.

He’s being held on $800,000 bail.

[h/t Daily Beast, Photo: TheWalkingDead.com]

Frat Bros Allegedly Beat Student While Trying to Steal Another Frat's Donkey Statue 

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Frat Bros Allegedly Beat Student While Trying to Steal Another Frat's Donkey Statue 

Last week, five Pi Kappa Alpha bros at Ole Miss were arrested for allegedly beating a student “within an inch of his life” outside another fraternity house. Why? According to the Associated Press, the alleged assault happened while the bros were trying to steal the other frat’s donkey statue.

http://gawker.com/frat-bros-smil...

Ole Miss spokesman Danny Blanton told the AP this weekend that Pike brother James Basile and pledges Tucker Steil, Austin Rice, Christian Guy, and Kyle Hughes went to the Sigma Pi house at 4 a.m. on October 6 to steal the statue. They allegedly assaulted Sig Pi brother Jeremy Boyle sometime in the midst of the attempted theft.

The Daily Mississippian reported last week that Boyle suffered a “concussion, several broken teeth, a ruptured eardrum and a lung contusion” following the alleged attack. His grandfather Robert Boyle told WFLA, “They descended upon him and beat him unmercifully. Beat him within an inch of his life.”

Per the Daily Mississippian, Tucker Steil was charged with felony assault; James Basile was charged with assault, hazing, and larceny; and Christian Guy, Kyle Hughes, and Austin Rice were charged with larceny. As you can see above, they smiled for their mugshots.

Pi Kappa Alpha has since distanced itself from the incident, removing the five men from the chapter and insisting in a statement that “the assault was the action of individuals who made poor choices and do not represent the Chapter or the Fraternity.” National Pi Kappa Alpha spokesman Brent Phillips added in a statement to the AP that “the event was not a part of any chapter activities and chapter leadership initiated internal judicial proceedings upon learning of the incident.” But of course, the fact that stealing another frat’s donkey statue was not listed as an official Pike “chapter activity” doesn’t mean it wasn’t unofficially encouraged by other brothers.


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

Here's Why You Shouldn't Panic Over Processed Meats Causing Cancer

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Here's Why You Shouldn't Panic Over Processed Meats Causing Cancer

A startling report by an international team of scientists suggests that processed meats like hotdogs and bacon are a definite cause of cancer, while red meat is a probable cause. Here’s what this means to your health and why you have no reason to panic.

Eating processed meats like hotdogs, sausages, and bacon causes bowel cancer, while the consumption of red meats, including beef, pork, veal, and lamb, is probably carcinogenic, an international team of experts has concluded. They evaluated over 800 studies analyzing associations between more than a dozen forms of cancer with the consumption of processed or red meat in different countries and among populations with diverse diets.

That conclusion is causing considerable consternation and a rethink of what a healthy diet is supposed to look like. The Washington Post is calling it “one of the most aggressive stances against meat yet taken by a major health organization,” adding that it’s “expected to face stiff criticism in the United States.” No doubt, it’s an important report, but health experts say that we shouldn’t exaggerate the extent of the findings, or rush to completely eliminate red and processed meats from our diets altogether.

Definite and Probable Causes

Back in 2014, an international advisory committee listed the effects of consuming processed and red meats as a high priority study area for the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Monographs program. It’s well known that certain meats have an association with cancer; in this respect, the latest report, which now appears at The Lancet, offers very little that is new. It merely brought the existing literature together in a way that finally allowed scientists to make some definite proclamations about the cancer risks of eating processed and red meats.

Here's Why You Shouldn't Panic Over Processed Meats Causing Cancer

(Credit: PDPhoto.org/public domain)

After sifting through decades’ worth of scientific literature, an IARC working group of 22 experts from 10 countries classified the consumption of processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen to humans (processed meats are defined as meats that have been transformed through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavour or improve preservation). This conclusion was reached on “sufficient evidence” that the consumption of processed meat causes bowel, or colorectal, cancer.

Other forms of cancer, such as stomach and pancreatic cancers, have also been linked to certain meats, though these associations have been more difficult to prove. The IARC group categorized red meat as a Group 2A probable carcinogen to humans based on the “limited evidence” showing that the consumption of red meat causes cancers in humans.

When the researchers say that there’s sufficient evidence, they’re claiming that there’s enough convincing evidence to show that these types of meats actually cause cancer—evidence gleaned from animal experiments, studies of human diet and health, and so-called mechanical causes, such as cell mechanisms, of cancer. As for the limited evidence showing that red meat is probably carcinogenic to humans, the researchers are saying that a positive association has been observed as it relates to the onset of colorectal cancer.

As noted in The Washington Post, the report will “likely play out with political lobbying, and in marketing messages for consumers,” but negative reactions to the report also shows how difficult it is for scientists to link any food to a chronic disease:

Experiments to test whether a food causes cancer pose a massive logistical challenge - they require controlling the diets of thousands of test subjects over a course of many years. For example, one group would be assigned to eat lots of meat, and another less, or none. But for a variety of reasons involving cost and finding test subjects, such experiments are rarely done, and scientists instead often use other less direct methods, known as epidemiological or observational studies, to draw their conclusions.

“I understand that people may be skeptical about this report on meat because the experimental data is not terribly strong,” said Paolo Boffetta, a professor of Tisch Cancer Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine who has served on similar WHO panels. “But in this case the epidemiological evidence is very strong.”

Other scientists, however, have criticized the epidemiological studies for too often reaching “false positives,” that is, concluding that something causes cancer when it doesn’t.

The report will be subject to considerable scrutiny over the coming weeks and months.

Understanding the Risk

“For an individual, the risk of developing colorectal cancer because of their consumption of processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed,” noted Kurt Straif, Head of the IARC Monographs Programme, in a statement. “In view of the large number of people who consume processed meat, the global impact on cancer incidence is of public health importance.”

Specifically, the researchers say that risk of colorectal cancer increases by as much as 18% with each 50 gram (1.8 ounce) portion of processed meat eaten daily, and increases by some 17% with each 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of red meat consumption. But it’s important to keep these figures in perspective. Writing at Cancer Research UK, Casey Dunlop explains:

Remember these are all ball-park figures – everyone’s risk will be different as there are many different factors at play.

We know that, out of every 1000 people in the UK, about 61 will develop bowel cancer at some point in their lives. Those who eat the lowest amount of processed meat are likely to have a lower lifetime risk than the rest of the population (about 56 cases per 1000 low meat-eaters).

If this is correct, the WCRF’s analysis suggests that, among 1000 people who eat the most processed meat, you’d expect 66 to develop bowel cancer at some point in their lives – 10 more than the group who eat the least processed meat.

Tobacco smoking and asbestos are also classified as Group 1 carcinogens, but that doesn’t mean—as this Guardian article falsely suggests—that processed meats are as carcinogenic as those agents. Rather, the IARC classifications merely describe the strength of the scientific evidence as it pertains to a possible cause of cancer. Yes, processed meats and smoking both cause cancer, but to dramatically different degrees.

Recent estimates suggest that, around the world, 34,000 cancer deaths can be attributed to diets high in processed meat each year. Diets high in red meat, which has not been positively linked as a direct cause of cancer, could be responsible for as many as 50,000 deaths per year worldwide, though it’s difficult to know exactly. By contrast, smoking causes about a million deaths per year, while alcohol consumption results in about 600,000 deaths each year globally.

As to why certain meats cause cancer, here’s what the IARC has to say:

Meat consists of multiple components, such as haem iron. Meat can also contain chemicals that form during meat processing or cooking. For instance, carcinogenic chemicals that form during meat processing include N-nitroso compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Cooking of red meat or processed meat also produces heterocyclic aromatic amines as well as other chemicals including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are also found in other foods and in air pollution. Some of these chemicals are known or suspected carcinogens, but despite this knowledge it is not yet fully understood how cancer risk is increased by red meat or processed meat.

The jury is still out on red meat, and its carcogenic effects likely have something to do with how it’s cooked.

How Much Meat to Eat?

So what does all this mean in terms of adjusting our meat-eating habits?

“These findings further support current public health recommendations to limit intake of meat,” says IARC Director Christopher Wild. “At the same time, red meat has nutritional value. Therefore, these results are important in enabling governments and international regulatory agencies to conduct risk assessments, in order to balance the risks and benefits of eating red meat and processed meat and to provide the best possible dietary recommendations.”

It’s an admonition that’s echoed by many health and diet experts, including physician David Wallinga from the University of Minnesota:

These are WHO’s two highest cancer classifications. The risk rises with the amount of meat consumed. It would not be good medicine to wait longer before strongly advising the public to eat less red meat and especially less processed meat. WHO recommendations also include eating diets higher in whole grains and vegetables, in addition to limiting red and processed meats, because of evidence that dietary fiber protects against cancer.

Luckily, the WHO’s ruling comes on the heels of a growing trend toward eating less and better meat in America. American red meat consumption has already dropped about 25% since the mid-1970’s. But Americans on average still eat about 1.9 lbs of red meat per week - approaching double the E.U.-recommended amount of no more than about 500 grams (1.1 lbs) of cooked red meat per week.

Wallinga says that we should eat less and better meat.

Dunlop says that red and processed meat still have a place in a healthy diet. “Regularly eating large amounts of red and processed meat, over a long period of time, is probably not the best approach if you’re aiming to live a long and healthy life,” he said. However, “Meat is fine in moderation—it’s a good source of some nutrients such as protein, iron and zinc. It’s just about being sensible, and not eating too much, too often.”

Dunlop points to a government report advising people who eat more than 90g (3.2 ounces) (cooked weight) of red and/or processed meat a day to cut it down to 70g (2.5 ounces) or less.

Here's Why You Shouldn't Panic Over Processed Meats Causing Cancer

Credit: Cancer Research UK

It’s also a good idea to substitute these meats with chicken, turkey, or fish, while adding more fibre, fruit, and vegetables. And given the detrimental impacts of raising livestock on the environment, not to mention the intense suffering endured by factory farmed animals, it’s also worth considering a vegetarian or vegan diet.

Read the entire study at The Lancet: “Carcinogenicity of consumption of red and processed meat”.

[ Washington Post | NRDC Switchboard | Cancer Research UK ]


Email the author at george@gizmodo.com and follow him at @dvorsky. Top image by stux/pixabay/public domain

Prepare Your Nightmares: Our Annual Spooky Stories Contest Is Here!

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Prepare Your Nightmares: Our Annual Spooky Stories Contest Is Here!

Welcome, boys and GHOULS, to Jezebel’s annual Spooky Stories contest. Hope you brought your nappy bag because you’re about to wet your diaper.

While some people think that Christmas morning, graduation day, and birthdays are the most highly anticipated times of the year, our readers know better. Over the past few weeks, we have received countless emails asking when we’re going to post our scary story contest, proving to us once and for all that you Halloween heads really have your priorities in order.

The way this works is simple: You tell us about the spookiest, most freaky thing that’s ever happened to you (ghost encounters, moon-lit run ins with serial killers, etc). There are two caveats:

1. Your story needs to be bone-chillingly, hair-raisingly scary.

2. Your story has to be true. (You are all on the honor code.)

On Friday, we will post the 10 most frightening stories and—if the success of our previous contests are any indication—you will not sleep for weeks.

To set the mood, let’s take a look at a few of our past favorites:

Look at Me by thatredguy:

This happened in my junior year of high school.

One evening, my mother and stepfather had gone out to some event, maybe it was an extended dinner or a concert, it’s hard to remember. I had stayed at home to work on a paper that was due the next day (I was one of those kids who procrastinated until the last minute) and spent the whole night working at the desk in my room. To give you a picture of the room, my desk faces a wall and sits next to a small window that’s on the same wall, and from where I sit, my back faces my doorway. While I was working, I was wearing these great headphones that I had gotten for my birthday — the kind that are noise canceling.

My parents left the house around 6:00 PM, and the whole time they were gone, I sat at my desk, blasting music through my headphones and writing my essay. Occasionally, I would take breaks and watch the rain and lightning outside my window (we lived in Houston at the time and there was a big storm that night). I never left my desk.

My parents returned around 11:00 PM. At some point late late in the evening, I had removed my headphones, so when my parents came home (coincidentally just a few minutes after I had taken off my headphones), I clearly heard the garage door open and my parents open the door to the house. Seconds after I hear them enter, I hear my mother shout my name. “Adrian!” she screams, “what on earth happened in here!?” Confused, I get out of my chair and start walking through the house to them. There’s only a small hallway that separates my room from the living room. Due to my rush to figure out why my mother was yelling, I paid little attention to the hall and the house. After a few moments, I get to my parents. My mom looks livid. She’s pointing at the carpet floor yelling, “Was this you!? Did you have friends over!?” I look down. The carpet is ruined. It’s covered in muddy footprints.

I frantically explain to her that I have no idea how those got there, that I spent the whole night at my desk working on my paper. I watch as her face goes from anger, to confusion, to fear. We realize that someone else must have entered the house. Quickly we scan the footprints, trying to make sense of the situation. It only takes us a few moments to figure out where they start: our back door, which we usually left unlocked. Then we noticed something else. The footprints started at the backdoor, but there were no footprints exiting the back door.

We hear something pounding through our house. We hear the front door get torn open, then slammed shut with a sharp WHAM!

We all run into the garage and lock the door. My mom starts shouting at the police through the phone, “Please come quickly! Someone’s broken into our house!”After what seems like hours, the police arrive. An officer stays with us in the garage as his partner goes through the house room by room. His partner tells us that it’s safe to go back in, that there’s no one in the house. Then she asks us a question. She asks us whose room is down the hall to the left. My parents look at me and I tell the officer that it’s mine. She asks us to follow her down the hall.

As we go, it’s easy to see that the footprints weave through my house from the back door. They go through the living room, through the small hallway, into my parents room (which is down the hall to the right) and then turn around towards my room. They stop in my doorway.

Then the officer points at my door, which I had left open the whole night. On it, in black sharpie, was written the following:

My Log

8:47: I see you

8:53: You forgot to lock the back door

8:59: You seem focused

9:24: Turn around

9:47: Look at me

10:15: Look at me

10:37: Look at me

10:49: Look at me

For nearly two hours, someone stood in my doorway watching me. To this day, I shutter to think about what would have happened if I had ever turned around and looked at them.

Not Anything We Could See by Sorcia MacNasty:

We have never figured this out. And now, the three living witnesses have to be good and fucking druuuunk to discuss the whole thing.

I was 7, my brother 10, my mom in her early 40s, my grandmother (her mom) in her 60’s. So we were all cogent. No one was too young or too senile to not recall this nonsense. Yet, still no bloody answer.

Grandma lived on an isolated country road in NC that was named after her family since they were the only crazy fuckers who lived on the land for about 1000 acres. And I *do* mean crazy. We have stories about relatives that start with, “You remember that time Uncle Bob was in the ditch with a shotgun?” “WHICH TIME?!”

Her house had been empty for several weeks while she’d been visiting us in Florida, but we were all back, spending the weekend with her before trekking back to the Sunshine state. The house is in the foreal country, literally over train-tracks, past a salvage yard and her nearest neighbor (a cousin — everyone is related to everyone who owns a house on the road) ain’t within screamin’ distance. Yes, that seems to be a real system of measurement — “screaming distance.”

It’s early in the AM, like just before daybreak. We’re awake because these are farm freaks who wake at the crack of dawn from sheer ingrained habit. We’re eating cereal when we hear someone pull up outside. Curious, we all run to the big picture window that looks onto the front yard. There is a strange truck there. No one seems to be behind the wheel, though the engine is idling. The truck is... well, old, for one thing. It’s old-timey like from maybe the 1930’s? You could picture the Joad Family heading to California in this thing. It’s rusted but it was probably once painted blue.

We stare at the thing, bewildered. Mom asks grandma if she knows who that is. Nope, not a clue, says grandma. She runs to get the phone to call her cousin and ask him to come up — she thinks maybe it’s a hired hand and he’s just at the wrong farm. Just as she asks him to come on down, the phone goes dead. Well, that’s unsettling.

All at once, there is a loud, insistent banging on the front door. We all scream. My grandma, who is terrifyingly resourceful, huddles us all into the living room, away from a window where anyone can see us. Then, while mom, me and my brother tremble there on the couch, she grabs a serrated bread knife from the kitchen and cautiously approaches the front door. She peeks out a side window, very stealthily. She turns back to us and looks confused. She shakes her head, like, “No one is there.” We all kind of breathe easier.

Then EVERY goddamn door in the house is banging — relentlessly. I can still hear it. Rhythmic and terrifying, like all the doors are about to splinter and crack. There were two doors in the basement beneath us, so the sound is also a reverberation at our feet. The three ground-floor doors are shaking — we can see them trembling and jerking on their hinges from our vantage point on the couch. Finally, mom runs to the window — either from a psychotic break with reality or terror, I have no clue. She cries, “Oh thank Christ — Cousin is here!” We run to her and peek out the picture window — there is no one that we can see in the yard, but we can’t see all the doors from our viewpoint.

Cousin walks by truck with a shotgun in his hand. Cousin, it should be noted, has pretty much every gun ever made. He looks puzzled, looking at the rear of the truck, then he glances in the cab window and he stops. He goes pale, runs a hand down his face. Then he RUNS towards to house, towards us.

My grandmother flings open the kitchen door as she sees him coming. He shouts, “Everyone get behind the couch! Get DOWN!” He runs past us as we bolt for the couch. The banging starts AGAIN, all the doors and now we can hear the windows rattle. It’s like a tornado or the end of the world. We are too scared to even scream. Cousin flings open the front door and fires the huge shotgun, once, BANG, deafening. As he does, the truck roars into life and it sounds like a train. We scramble up; the banging stops, mercifully. Cousin is advancing onto the lawn, gun leveled at the truck. We run behind him, wanting to be out of that shaking, quivering house and near the dude with the gun. The truck peals out, backwards, cutting across the yard and racing into a breakneck speed. Tires sqeal, rubber is burned. Cousin fires again and we all cower behind him. He blows out the back window with the sound of a thousand plates smashing into linoleum but the truck never even hiccups, just roars down the road. No tags, not even a vanity plate on the back.

There was NO ONE behind the wheel of that thing.

We all had a clear view. Everyone agreed. Not a driver in the cab.

Well.

Not anything we could SEE, anyhow.

The police were called. The phone line had been cut. There was not a single boot print in the entire yard except Cousin’s, from where he’d run into and out of the house. Cousin reported that there had been no plate but when he looked into the cab, it looked like “something from a horror movie.” He said there were all kinds of weird restraints — handcuffs, c-clamps, nylon straps — and he said the floorboards looked covered in what “smelled like” blood to him (Cousin was famous for his keen sense of smell and the window was down, so it’s possible).

Cousin said he thought he saw a blur of something out the picture window and ran to fire the first shot, but “missed” because, once he stood there, nothing or no one was on the lawn or in the truck. Then it shot backwards out of the yard and out of our lives, leaving no answers, just a deep sense of unease every time we’d visit.

Grandma and Cousin have passed. Deeply religious people, they stuck by their unchanging versions of the story until they died. My brother, mother and I have never been able to figure it out — neither did the cops, I think it should be noted. We don’t know how all the windows and doors were banging, and we don’t know why we never saw a SOUL anywhere or how they could get around the sides of the house without leaving a trace in the damp earth.

She Never Left Our House by mindthemittelschmerz:

A few years later we left our little cabin in the woods to move to a new house a bit closer to town. I had my very own room and spent a lot of time in it playing alone and reading in it.

Every now and then, I would hear what sounded like footsteps or banging coming from below my floorboards. I guessed it was just normal house sounds, maybe pipes, and I got used to it. After a few months of pretty non-stop banging - which no one else could hear - things started to escalate. Heavy furniture started falling down on its own. A solid oak dresser simply toppled over as I was sitting on my bed, across the room, reading.

A few days later, I was playing with my Teddy Ruxpin doll when it suddenly drained of batteries. I asked my father to put new ones in, only to find that they ran down again almost immediately. We assumed the toy was broken and forgot about it.

From the day we had arrived in the house, I had known I wasn’t alone in that room. I had grown up in isolation and know what that felt like - this was different. I started responding to the knocking sounds, “Stop it! I’m trying to read.”

My mother was moderately concerned, but assumed I was just playing with an imaginary friend. A few months later, I had started to experience odd dreams in which I relived very commonplace memories in the house. For example, I remembered in vivid detail walking between the laundry room and my mother’s art studio, sliding my little body between the framing. I knew for certain that the framing had been up for some time before they got around to sheet rocking.I asked my mother over breakfast one morning when it was that we’d finished the basement. She looked at me, puzzled, and responded that the basement had in fact always been finished.

The banging sounds got louder, nothing battery powered would last more than a few minutes in my room and things were constantly moving around. Small items - diaries, stuffed animals, keep sakes, would rearrange themselves on a near daily basis. I felt that whatever I was sharing my room with was angry, scared - like the puppy we had adopted years ago. I started speaking to ‘it’ more, and at this point started to feel strongly that whatever it was I living with, was female. The more I spoke out loud, the less things moved about. I felt a kind of longing, like I had knocked on a door and was waiting to be let in.

One night I woke from sleep inexplicably. I decided to get up to have a drink of water, and walked across the hall into the bathroom. Now, I should mention that this house had been built in the 1970s and there were many small mirrors, gold flecked, throughout. The bathroom, however, had an entire wall of mirrors that you looked into as you sat to pee. Bleary eyed I shuffled into the bathroom and sat down. Suddenly my skin turned to gooseflesh and I felt as though cold water had been poured down the back of my neck. I stood up, panicked, only to line my reflection up with a figure standing to face me. A figure that wasn’t mine.

I tilted my head to the right and to the left. Our reflection did the same. It was me, but it wasn’t me. She had shorter hair and slighter features. She wore blue pajamas where I wore a long sleeping shirt. We regarded each and I lifted my hand slowly to wave. She smiled and faded out. I waited for an hour, sat on the bathroom floor, waiting for her to reappear. Finally, I crept back to bed but couldn’t sleep.

The next morning I was riding along in the car with my mother and asked, “Do you know who lived in this house, before we did?” My mother answered nonchalantly, “The woman who lived here before us was a reporter.”

I asked, “Did she have a daughter?”

My mother tensed, “Why would you ask that?”

I didn’t answer.

“She didn’t,” my mother went on, “but she was convicted of a crime that involved a little girl.” My mother trailed off.

She knew that I was a strange child, and I suspect at this moment she realized that in fact my imaginary friend might be something entirely different.

“What did they do to her?” I asked cautiously. “Well,” my mother began, “the woman who lived here helped her boyfriend to abduct this little girl, and she was never found.”

I sat quietly for a moment and then, as my mother reports it, said very slowly, “She never left our house.” I watched my mother’s knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. I thought I was in trouble.

You see, when my parents looked at our new home they had wondered about the low price. The house had been foreclosed when its previous occupant had been sent to jail. A few families had come to look at it, but in a small and very religious community, people were hesitant to move in to a house associated with so much darkness. We were poor, and my parents had two children living on top of one another in a cabin with no central heating - they didn’t have the luxury of worrying about the stigma of living in a house with a complicated history.

A few months later we moved into a condo on the other side of town. My parents never explained the move to us, as children, but I always suspected that it was because my mother was afraid of my relationship with the girl in my bedroom. In the few months we lived in the house I had never been able to look in the crawl space, a dark, meter high area that ran the length of the house. It had clay, dirt floors and a small light you had to crawl to on all fours. The day we moved our things away, I went down to the basement to say my good byes. She had been kept there, I was sure of it. How else would I have had her memories of the basement unfinished? As I turned to walk up the stairs, the lightbulb in the crawlspace flickered on, swinging. Just for a second. She was reaching out one more time, telling me where she was, asking me to free her, too.

Scared yet?


Contact the author at madeleine@jezebel.com.

Illustration by Jim Cooke.

Here Are the Photos Josh Duggar Used for His Ashley Madison Profiles

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Here Are the Photos Josh Duggar Used for His Ashley Madison Profiles

A little over two months ago, former conservative reality star, former executive director of FRC action, and current sex rehab resident Josh Duggar was one of the first major celebrities exposed in Ashley Madison’s unprecedented data dump. At the time, we were able to confirm his two paid accounts using the associated credit card info. But now, thanks to tipster Nathan Turner, we also have his profile pictures.

What’s more, this new Duggar revelation points to a potentially larger issue: Ashley Madison’s website is still dealing with some major security flaws. Though not entirely surprising, it is undoubtedly troubling news for the millions of individuals exposed in the company’s recent hack. Just because photos didn’t come in the massive data dump, and even if you’ve deleted your profile, apparently you’re still not safe.

The photos, which can currently be pulled up by anyone with a free, unverified account, appear to be the result of some leftover data in the wake of a deleted profile.

Here Are the Photos Josh Duggar Used for His Ashley Madison Profiles

Here Are the Photos Josh Duggar Used for His Ashley Madison Profiles

Of course, since both accounts have since been deleted, any message you send won’t actually be delivered to Duggar himself. But this does teach us at least two things: 1) Josh Duggar apparently used real (though slightly obscured) photos for both of his paid Ashley Madison profiles, and 2) anyone who had an Ashley Madison account may still have reason for concern.


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

Frankly, I Don't Trust What ANY Burnt Cast Member Says About Cooking

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Frankly, I Don't Trust What ANY Burnt Cast Member Says About Cooking

This guy from the movie Burnt says he cooks, too. Yeah right!

As you remember, Bradley Cooper recently claimed to have “worked” for “most of his life” as a cook. He then went on—in the very same article—to reveal he spent, at the very most, four years as a cook and one year as a busboy.

Incredible.

http://defamer.gawker.com/bradley-cooper...

Representatives for Bradley Cooper did not respond to a request for comment on this outrageous claim.

Later, “a spy” on the set of Burnt told Page Six that Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller, who both play chefs in the movie Burnt, pitched in and cooked food between takes on the set of Burnt. Yeah right. A “spy”? I know Bradley Cooper is an outrageous liar, but—A SPY?

http://defamer.gawker.com/how-are-we-exp...

Now, look at this. This guy, Sam Keeley, whoever he is, from the movie Burnt, told Page Six that he cooks Eggs Benedict for the women he has sex with, or would have sex with:

“I make a really good breakfast — a girl would fall in love with my Eggs Benedict,” he told us, adding that he became so confident with his culinary skills, “if she tries to interfere, I’m like, ‘Get out and leave me to it.’ As a cook, everything has to be completed by me.”

Disregarding the fact that he suspiciously begins in a hypothetical then shifts to an account seemingly based on at least one actual occurrence, the idea that a man who cooks one breakfast item would begin any sentence with “as a cook” and then end it the way a space alien would end a sentence if he were attempting to go undercover as a human cook seems suspect.

How are we supposed to believe what any cast member of the movie Burnt, a movie employing known liars, has to say about cooking?

We’ve reached out to representatives for Sam Keeley and will update when we hear back.


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

Parents Suspect Huggies Gave This Baby Diaper Model a Photoshopped Thigh Gap

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Parents Suspect Huggies Gave This Baby Diaper Model a Photoshopped Thigh Gap

Remember the thigh gap, the pointless and imaginary standard of female beauty? You’re never too young to have one of those. In fact, even a baby could/should have one! According to a handful of moms, this is true of Huggies, which possibly Photoshopped some non-touching baby thighs in a diaper ad.

http://gawker.com/what-is-the-po...

“Melody,” the mother of an 11-month-old, posted the photo on Reddit and asked, “Is it just me or did this Huggies ad photoshop thigh gap on a toddler?”

Melody also told Yahoo! Parenting, the image looked “really manipulated — like what you see in fashion magazines to make models too thin and too perfect,” and described the ad as “not cool.”

“I just felt like there’s no need for airbrushing to exist on an ad about babies. All babies are wonderful and super cute. A baby is perfect no matter what.”

But was this baby’s body actually airbrushed? Both possibilities—a company artificially creating a “baby thigh gap” for toddler models (moddlers?) or moms so worried about the actual culture of body-shaming that their kids will probably grow up in that they’re seeing a conspiracy where none exists—are roughly one part hilarious and four parts dystopian.

For its part, Huggies denies it airbrushed the baby.

“All babies are different - we look to celebrate those differences and everyday tests and messes in our photography and communication,’ a Huggies spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

“We always use real-life customers and users of our products, and do not airbrush the bodies of the babies in our advertising and photography.”

But that doesn’t mean other parts of the photo weren’t edited. Some commenters on Reddit proposed that perhaps the diaper had been Photoshopped on, creating the illusion that the baby’s thighs had been digitally thinned.

Without access to the unretouched images from the ad, we have no idea whether the thigh gap is just a weird pose, a Photoshopped diaper, or a normal-ass baby with a normal-ass body that isn’t at all worth getting worked up about.

Regardless, the way forward is the same: who cares about thigh gaps.

[h/t Daily Mail, Photo: Huggies, via Reddit]


500 Days of Kristin, Day 275: Shoes Come With Zippers

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 275: Shoes Come With Zippers

Kristin Cavallari—designer of shoes, jewelry, and a lifestyle that might ambitiously and generously be termed “natural”—posted a photo of a new pair of shoes she designed on Instagram today. Guess what: These shoes got zippers.

Says Kristin, “Liam [name of shoe] comes in distressed leather and has a zipper.”

Wow.

That will be $150, thanks.


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

Please Start Using Google Image Search to Kill Fake, Viral Pictures

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Please Start Using Google Image Search to Kill Fake, Viral Pictures

If you scrolled through Facebook or Twitter this weekend, odds are you saw at least a dozen different pictures of Hurricane Patricia. There’s a pretty good chance at least half of them were fake or misrepresented. If you have an internet browser, you have access to a quick and easy viral image debunker. The internet will be a better place if we all start using it.

Hurricane Patricia

Please Start Using Google Image Search to Kill Fake, Viral Pictures

Astronaut Scott Kelly took this gorgeous photo of an ominous Hurricane Patricia swirling off the western coast of Mexico last Friday as it approached its peak, record-breaking strength of 200 MPH. The storm’s expanse of clouds is enormous, with spiraling bands of rain and thunderstorms radiating out from an iconic eye that looks like a pit in the Earth itself.

That is a real image.

Please Start Using Google Image Search to Kill Fake, Viral Pictures

This, too, is real. This is an infrared satellite image of Patricia near its peak intensity on Friday. Infrared satellite images are typically shown with a rainbow color palette, with cooler colors indicating warmer temperatures and warmer colors indicating cooler temperatures (makes sense, right?). These images show us the temperature of the tops of the clouds—cooler clouds are higher in the atmosphere, the result of intense thunderstorm activity.

When you see the dark reds, blacks, whites, and pinks surrounding the eye on a satellite image like this, it signals the coldest cloud tops possible, the calling card of a powerful hurricane.

Lies...

Please Start Using Google Image Search to Kill Fake, Viral Pictures

This, on the other hand, is a real picture that’s incorrectly identified at Hurricane Patricia. This is a photograph of Super Typhoon Maysak as it churned in the western Pacific Ocean this past March. Astronauts on the International Space Station took several very impressive pictures of this iconic typhoon, including this picture and the one found at the top of this post.

There’s also this gem:

Please Start Using Google Image Search to Kill Fake, Viral Pictures

...which isn’t even a hurricane!, yet it somehow got tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of impressions on Twitter thanks to some very gullible people. This is a waterspout in Florida back in 2013. This image circulates every few weeks, with people claiming it’s anything from a hurricane to a tornado to a derecho hitting Chicago.

As usual, every time there’s a major weather event, people dredge up these old, impressive weather pictures as current in an attempt to build their viral reach.

Sadly, it works. Dozens of pictures are floating around social media right now—accounting for hundreds of thousands of likes, shares, retweets, and favorites—from old storms that claim to show the monster off the coast of Mexico.

How to Stop It

It’s easy to debunk that email your Great Uncle Jed sent you about Obama scheming to take away our Toaster Strudels with one stroke of his mighty, dictatorial pen. Plunk a few keywords into Google, find the post on Snopes, send along the link, and you’re done.

Finding an image or searching for the source of an image can be almost impossible, but Google makes it so, so easy. Say that you encounter this picture on Twitter one day:

Please Start Using Google Image Search to Kill Fake, Viral Pictures

“HEARTBREAKING,” reads the caption written by the tween meteorology sensation @B13ber4LyfeXOXO, “this is a picture of Hurricane Sandy making landfall in New York!!! #1Retweet = #1Prayer.”

Instant retweet, no questions asked, right?

Resist the temptation.

If you use Google Chrome...

I mentioned this technique last spring when someone started circulating a photo of a “hailstone” they made in their freezer with a water balloon. It’s effective most of the time during most events, whether it’s breaking news, severe weather, or even a convincing hoax.

In Google Chrome, you can right-click an image and select the “Search Google for this image” option in the drop-down menu.

Please Start Using Google Image Search to Kill Fake, Viral Pictures

The browser then searches for the image in a new tab. Often, if it’s a popular image, it’ll come up with the source right toward the top of the page. If it doesn’t show you the original source, you can look to see if the picture has been published previously. If an image purportedly showing Hurricane Patricia making landfall last week, an image floating around since 2009 probably isn’t it.

If you use another browser...

Some people hate Google Chrome. I get it. If you don’t use the web giant’s gateway to the internet, you can still search for images just as well. You can upload an image to Google Images by pasting a URL into the search box or clicking the upload button on the right side of the box.

Please Start Using Google Image Search to Kill Fake, Viral Pictures

Same result, just a few more clicks.

Everybody complains about hoaxes that spread like wildfire on the internet, but most of those people are too lazy to do anything to stop it. You’re the first defense against misinformation. Thanks to Google, it’s just as easy to check if something is true as it is to share the false article or misleading picture in the first place.

[Typhoon Maysak Images: NASA | Patricia Photo: Astronaut Scott Kelly/NASA | Patricia Satellite: CIMSS | Shelf Cloud: NWS]


Email: dennis.mersereau@gawker.com | Twitter: @wxdam

My new book, The Extreme Weather Survival Manual, is now available! You can order it from Amazon and find it on the shelves and websites of retailers near you.

Christ. It's Tim--The "Pneumococcal Pneumonia" Guy

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Don’t you hate it when you’re out with your wife for lunch and you walk up by the dessert counter and then who do you see? Tim—the guy who can’t shut up about pneumococcal pneumonia.

Tim, I have to level with you here: Diane and I were having a perfectly lovely lunch... until you showed up. I had the tuna melt, she had a salad. I made a lighthearted joke to her about picking up a dessert at the counter. I knew she wouldn’t. She never does. She’s actually very healthy.

Did you hear me? She’s very healthy, Tim.

So why, if I may be blunt, did you feel the need to launch into a long soliloquy to us about pneumococcal pneumonia, Tim? My stammering attempt to pretend I hadn’t heard this harangue before clearly went in one of your ears and out the other. I was trying to politely direct you to a more appropriate conversation topic. “Hey, how was lunch?” “Hey, you guys seen any good movies lately?” Things that normal people say, Tim. Try it some time.

But can we have a nice, normal conversation with you, Tim? Even once? No. Instead, it’s always “It’s estimated a quarter of a million Americans over 50 are hospitalized with pneumococcal pneumonia each year.” Okay, fine. Give it a rest. There’s more to life than this one particular lung disease, Tim. Frankly, your friends are getting tired of this.

I mean, Jesus. Just take a look at the expression on my face 40 seconds into this video. Enough with the pneumococcal pneumonia spiel!

Anyhow. I’ll see you at the Kiwanis Club meeting Friday. We’ll talk about football—okay?

[They show this ad in movie theaters before previews. You can also watch it over and over at WhoPneu.com.]

Two Videos Show Officer Violently Slamming High School Girl to the Ground in Classroom [Updated]

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A video circulating on social media today shows a South Carolina school officer choking a student, slamming her to the ground and then dragging her across a classroom floor while attempting to place her under arrest.

Update (6:45 p.m.) A Spring Valley student named Aaron Johnson who says he was in the class sent me this account via Twitter direct message:

The girl was asked by the teacher Mr. Long to leave the classroom and go to the discipline office, she ignored him, then an administrator came in and asked her if he needed to get the resource officer. She ignored him and then the officer came in. He asked if she was gonna go or if he had to make her go. Then he grabbed her and pulled her out of her desk and she fell on the ground with the desk still on her. He then threw her across the room and then got on top of her. Another student tried to stand up for her, which also led to her arrest.

We cannot confirm that a second student was apprehended in the aftermath of the taped incident. I asked Johnson about Fields’ reputation at the school and he said, “A few of my friends say he has a history of using aggressive force.” As for the student in the video, Johnson said, “All I know is she was really quiet and she transferred to our class.”

The video was shot at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, according to a local news report which confirmed its authenticity with the school. Per a statement from another officer, the one in the video was attempting to remove a student who refused to leave class.

School officials confirm the incident happened on Monday, but stopped short of releasing further details.

According to Sheriff Leon Lott, the school resource officer was acting in response to a student who was refusing to leave class.

“The student was told she was under arrest for disturbing school and given instructions which she again refused,” Lott said. “The video then shows the student resisting and being arrested by the SRO.”

WISTV has also posted a second video of the altarcation:

According to ex-Spring Valley students discussing the incident on social media, the officer’s name is Ben Fields. A news story from December 2014 identifies Fields as the school resource officer for both Spring Valley High School and Lonnie B. Nelson Elementary.

Ex-students on Twitter have also been discussing an incident in which Fields allegedly had a physical altercation with a pregnant student at the school, a story repeated in the comments of a 2012 blog post alleging an excessive force complaint against Fields, accompanied by a since-deleted video.

Just for good measure, here is a video of someone identified as Fields bench-pressing 600 pounds.

We’ve reached out to the Richland County Sheriff’s Office and will update if they respond. If you have any information about this incident or Deputy Fields, email me at jordan@gawker.com

[h/t Shaun King]

Stop Using My Song, Asshole: A Playlist of Campaign Songs Politicians Were Asked to Stop Using

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Stop Using My Song, Asshole: A Playlist of Campaign Songs Politicians Were Asked to Stop Using

When it comes time to run for President—few things are more crucial to any good campaign than a rockin’, vaguely patriotic tune to blast as your stuffy, out-of-touch candidate comes bumbles out onstage. The second most crucial thing: A slightly less-rockin’ backup song to play when your first one gets canned because, as luck would have it, every good band hates you.

Politicians—Democrats and Republicans alike—suffer from a long and storied history of being forced to pull campaign songs just as soon as they’ve pressed play. Whether the candidate in question has simply misunderstood the song (like Ronald Reagan’s misguided attempt to commandeer “Born in the U.S.A.”) or the musician simply prefers to stay out of the political realm entirely (Sam Moore’s cease-and-desist letters to Obama, for example), no party’s candidates are totally safe.

So for your listening pleasure (and with some help from FiveThirtyEight), we’ve compiled a Spotify playlist of some of our various presidential campaigns’ biggest musical upsets. And for those about to rock, we salute you (unless we don’t, in which case please stop rocking immediately or else you will be hearing from our lawyers).

Democrats

2000 - Sting asks Al Gore to stop playing “Brand New Day.”

2008 - Sam of Sam & Dave asks Barack Obama to stop playing “Hold On, I’m Coming.”

Republicans

1984 - Bruce Springsteen asks Ronald Reagan to stop playing “Born in the U.S.A.”

1984 - John Cougar Mellencamp asks Ronald Reagan to stop playing “Pink Houses.”

1988 - Bobby McFerrin asks George H.W. Bush to stop playing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

1996 - Sam & Dave ask Bob Dole to stop playing “Soul Man.”

1996 - Bruce Springsteen asks Bob Dole to stop playing “Born in the U.S.A.”

2000 - John Cougar Mellencamp asks George W. Bush to stop playing “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.”

2000 - Tom Petty asks George W. Bush to stop playing “I Won’t Back Down.”

2000 - Sting asks Bush to stop playing “Brand New Day.”

2000 - Sting then also asks Al Gore to stop playing “Brand New Day.”

2004 - John Hall of Orleans asks Bush to stop playing “Still the One.”

2008 - Boston asks Mike Huckabee to stop playing “More Than a Feeling.”

2008 - Van Halen asks John McCain to stop playing “Right Now.”

2008 - John Cougar Mellencamp asks McCain to stop playing “Our Country.”

2008 - John Cougar Mellencamp (once again) asks McCain to stop playing “Pink Houses.”

2008 - Heart asks Sarah Palin to stop playing “Barracuda.”

2008 - Jackson Browne asks McCain to stop playing “Running on Empty.”

2008 - Bon Jovi asks McCain to stop playing “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.”

2008 - The Foo Fighters ask McCain to stop playing “My Hero.”

2008 - Tom Petty asks McCain to stop playing “I Won’t Back Down.”

2008 - Abba asks McCain to stop playing “Take a Chance on Me.”

2012 - Survivor asks Newt Gingrich to stop playing “Eye of the Tiger.”

2012 - The Heavy asks Gingrich to stop playing “How You Like Me Now.”

2012 - Dee Snider of Twisted Sister asks Mitt Romney to stop playing “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”

2012 - Al Green asks Romney to stop playing “Let’s Stay Together.”

2012 - Silversun Pickups ask Romney to stop playing “Panic Switch.”

2012 - K’Naan asks Romney to stop playing “Wavin’ Flag.”

2012 - Survivor asks Romney to stop playing “Eye of the Tiger.”

2012 - Tom Petty asks Michele Bachmann to stop playing “American Girl.”

2012 - Katrina and the Waves ask Bachmann to stop playing “Walking on Sunshine.”

2016 Dropkick Murphys say this to Scott Walker over “Shipping Up to Boston.”

2016 - Neil Young asks Donald Trump to stop playing “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

2016 - Allee Willis asks Trump to stop playing Karate Kid’s “You’re the Best.”

2016 - Steven Tyler of Aerosmith asks Trump to stop playing “Dream On.”

2016 - R.E.M. asks Trump to stop playing “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”

Enjoy.


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

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