Barack Obama is going to reject the Keystone Pipeline. An official announcement is coming shortly.

The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, says that Obama “is expected to cite the urgency of climate change as a key reason behind his decision.”

The rejection comes on the heels of an attempt by TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline, trying to pull its application, likely with the hope that a Republican administration in 2016 might view it more favorably. Obama’s rejection of the pipeline project—which the scientist James Hansen famously said would be “Game Over for the Climate”—represents a major win for the environmental movement.

Rock bottom oil prices and the fact that Obama has only a year left in the White House no doubt made the choice easier.

[Photo: AP]

Another day, another dubious claim of violence from Dr. Ben Carson, a man who, for whatever reason, would very much like you to believe he stabbed a friend in the stomach and tried to attack his own mother with a hammer.

Carson’s stories of unbridled childhood violence have been well-documented in his books, which present varying accounts of a few key stories. There’s the time he punched a classmate in the head with a metal lock. The time he threw a rock at a friend’s face. The time he tried to hit his mother in the head with a hammer. And the cornerstone of his redemption story: the time he stabbed a friend.

http://gawker.com/dr-ben-carson-...

Carson’s accounts of these acts of violence—which allegedly occurred around 50 years ago—are, at best, inconsistent. He attributes the shift to the elapsed time, explaining to CNN, “Have you ever played that party game where you whisper into the person’s ear and then they tell it, and by the time it gets all the way back around it’s a different story? That’s what we’re talking about here.”

But CNN, in an investigation published Friday, couldn’t find a single person to play telephone with.

Nine friends, classmates and neighbors who grew up with Carson told CNN they have no memory of the anger or violence the candidate has described.

That person is unrecognizable to those whom CNN interviewed, who knew him during those formative years.

All of the people interviewed expressed surprise about the incidents Carson has described. No one challenged the stories directly. Some of those interviewed expressed skepticism, but noted that they could not know what had happened behind closed doors.

Gerald Ware, a classmate at Southwestern High School said he was “shocked” to read about the violence in Carson’s book.

“I don’t know nothing about that,” said Ware, who still lives in southwestern Detroit. “It would have been all over the whole school.”

Carson now offers several explanations for the apparent contradictions raised by the CNN report. The first, and least convincing: he had already changed his ways by high school.

“I don’t want to expose people without their knowledge, but remember, when I was 14, when the knifing episode occurred, that’s when I changed, that’s when most of the people I talked to began to know who I was, they didn’t know me before then,” Carson told CNN. (As CNN points out, several of its sources were Carson’s friends and acquaintances from elementary school and junior high.)

Second: he used fictitious names in his books.

“I don’t like to generally bring them in, the names I used for instance are fictitious names because I don’t want to bring people into something like this because I know what you guys do to their lives‎,” Carson reportedly explained during a book stop in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

The third: the stabbing victim he repeatedly refers to as a “friend” was actually a close relative.

“The person that I tried to stab, I talked to today and said, ‘Would they want to be revealed?’ They were not anxious to be revealed, and it was a close relative of mine. I didn’t want to put their lives under the spotlight,” Carson reportedly told Megyn Kelly Thursday.

Not buying the “stabb” story is Donald Trump, who tweeted and deleted a surprisingly cogent, typo-riddled response this morning.

So we have a presidential candidate—a front-running presidential candidate—desperately trying to defend the claim that he nearly murdered multiple relatives, while his rival tries to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of voters.

If Ben Carson didn’t attack his own mother with a hammer, what else isn’t he capable of?

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

There’s a persistent urban legend—it’s been around since at least 2004—about a Chinese woman who’d had plastic surgery, unbeknownst to her husband. Her secret was allegedly revealed after she gave birth to “ugly” children who didn’t look anything like her, and the couple divorced over the incident. The story has been debunked numerous times, but not before it wrecked the life of one actual Taiwanese model.

A week ago, the woman in that bizarre family photo you’ve probably seen—two conventionally gorgeous parents posing with three unattractive kids—told the BBC how modeling for a plastic surgery ad turned her into a meme and destroyed her career.

Heidi Yeh took a gig for a Taipei plastic surgery clinic in 2012, and posed for the now-infamous photo. The children were photoshopped to make their eyes look small and their noses flat, and the original caption read “The only thing you’ll ever have to worry about is how to explain it to the kids.”

Yeh says the image was only for that clinic, and was only supposed to be published in newspapers and magazines. Bu she alleges the ad agency, J Walter Thompson, allowed another clinic to use the ad online, and that the original clinic also posted it on Facebook.

Once it was online, the photo recombined with the old “man sues wife over ugly children” legend, which became even more viral now that it was backed by photographic “evidence.”

In 2012, the BBC reports, a Chinese tabloid attached the photo to its version of the story, which is where it first came to Ms. Yeh’s attention.

“When I first heard about this from a friend, I thought it was just a one-off rumor,” she told the BBC, “Then I realised the whole world was spreading it and in different languages. People actually thought it was real. Even my then-boyfriend’s friends would ask about it.”

The story made its way to major English tabloids including The Daily Mail, the Mirror, and the New York Post in 2013, and it picked up some juicy new (fake) details, including a name for the husband (“Feng Jian”) and a court-ordered payment of $120,000 for “marriage under false pretenses.”

The Post later appended a clarification kinda-sorta acknowledging the hoax:

Clarification: Reports of Feng’s lawsuit against his wife were originally reported in European and US newspapers in 2004, but with no details of any adjudication or payout. While many have cast doubt on the wild tale, details of an alleged civil settlement were reported on Chinese Web sites last year and English-language media this week.

The Mail and Mirror let their versions stand. None of the three included the “family portrait” ad, but a number of aggregators added it to the bogus reports. MSN had the story but deleted it, former viral trendsetter The Daily What ran the photo but later added a “correction” reading “UPDATE: We know this story is fabricated but hey, still funny!” and the Huffington Post ran the story but later hedged its bets.

The upshot, Yeh told the BBC, is that she’s been dogged by accusations that she’s had plastic surgery, and she’s no longer able to land major advertisements. She says a boyfriend broke up with her out of embarrassment and that her current fiancé’s family has even questioned her about the rumors.

She’s considering a lawsuit against JWT, but the agency told the BBC it can’t be held responsible: “As we all know, no one controls the internet... We can’t anticipate what degree of an impact it will have, how people will view it, and what they will do with it.”

Both JWT and the plastic surgery clinic claim they had the proper rights to use the image the way they did, and they’ve asked her to apologize to them in a press conference, lest they countersue her for hurting their reputations.

[h/t Reddit]

The disgraced Illinois cop who killed himself after allegedly embezzling thousands of dollars from a police youth group and attempting to hire a hit man to kill a town administrator was also accused of repeatedly grabbing women’s breasts at multiple Christmas parties, being a drunken nuisance at local bars, and using a donated gift certificate to get a free tattoo while on duty.

Lake County police say Lt. Joseph Gliniewicz “carefully staged” his own suicide on September 1 to make it look like he died while pursuing three suspicious men, triggering a days-long manhunt. Weeks later it was revealed Gliniewicz was shot by his own gun and then, on Tuesday, police ruled his death a suicide.

The story only got weirder: The next day police said Gliniewicz’s death came after investigators began looking into his alleged theft from the department’s Explorer Post youth group—he reportedly stole thousands of dollars, some of which he used on pornography. Later, Illinois officials announced they were also investigating Gliniewicz’s wife and son, who they say knew about the theft, that Gliniewicz attempted to hire a former gang member to kill one of the Lake County officials investigating him, and that cocaine was discovered inside the 30-year veteran’s desk after his death.

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Now the Chicago Tribune has obtained Gliniewicz’s personnel files, which include multiple accusations of sexual harassment, sexual assault, public drunkenness, blatant misuse of police property, and theft.

Gliniewicz was such a menace that several officers from his department wrote an anonymous letter to the Fox Lake mayor about the 30-year veteran’s behavior. From the letter:

- [Gliniewicz s]omehow obtained control over a certificate for a free tattoo that was donated to the department. Used the certificate to obtain a tattoo while on?duty. The time was later charged as a vacation or comp day after members approached Chief Behan.

- On several occasions at different department Christmas parties, inappropriately touched women (grabbed their breasts). Complaint was made to Chief Behan.

The letter also accused the former lieutenant of using his squad car for a family vacation, of allowing “several civilian vehicles to fill their tanks with gas at the village pumps,” giving civilians—some of whom had criminal records—unrestricted access to the police department. It also said bouncers at local bars had repeatedly complained about Gliniewicz’s drunken behavior. Another example of Gliniewicz’s drinking, via the Tribune:

Among their accusations backed up by other records in his personnel file was a report from May 1988 that Gliniewicz was found “passed out” in the driver’s seat of his truck on the shoulder of a Fox Lake road, with the engine running and his foot on the gas.

Officers took Gliniewicz home and towed his truck, but when he awoke later that day he had no memory of what happened and reported his truck as stolen to the Lake County sheriff’s office. He later said he’d been drinking after playing volleyball with friends.

The files also include more information about Gliniewicz’s alleged attempt to kill Anne Marrin, a village administrator. From the Tribune:

Detective Christopher Covelli with the Lake County sheriff’s office said Gliniewicz wrote that he was “being forced to retire” by Village Administrator Anne Marrin and was “close to entertaining a meeting with a mutual acquaintance of (ours) with the word White in their nickname” in Facebook messages sent to a woman in April.

The woman, who is not being identified because she is not part of the ongoing investigation, claimed that the message referred to a “high-ranking motorcycle gang member,” according to Covelli, and that Gliniewicz discussed hiring him to “initiate a hit” on Marrin.

Are there any crimes Gliniewicz wasn’t accused of committing? At this rate, it seems very unlikely.

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

Ben Carson’s campaign admitted Friday that his oft-repeated story about applying and obtaining a scholarship to the West Point military academy was a lie.

Carson first described the scholarship offer in his 1996 inspirational bestseller, Gifted Hands, writing that it came after he was selected from the ROTC ranks to march at a Detroit Memorial Day parade.

“Two soldiers who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Viet Nam were present,” Carson wrote. “More exciting to me, General William Westmoreland (very prominent in the Viet Nam war) attended with an impressive entourage. Afterward, Sgt. Hunt introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners. Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”

But his campaign now concedes: most, if not all of that passage was a lie.

The admission comes in response to a report, published Friday by The Politico, which indicates Carson never even applied to the school.

“In 1969, those who would have completed the entire process would have received their acceptance letters from the Army Adjutant General,” said Theresa Brinkerhoff, a spokeswoman for the academy. She said West Point has no records that indicate Carson even began the application process. “If he chose to pursue (the application process) then we would have records indicating such,” she said.

And records obtained by the publication indicate Carson couldn’t have met the general the way he claimed.

According to records of Westmoreland’s schedule that were provided by the U.S. Army, the general did not visit Detroit around Memorial Day in 1969 or have dinner with Carson. In fact, the general’s records suggest he was in Washington that day and played tennis at 6:45 p.m.

“When presented with this evidence,” Politico reports, “Carson’s campaign conceded the story was false.”

Carson’s campaign now says it’s been so long since Carson met the general that he can’t remember the specific details. But his campaign manager, Barry Bennett tells Politico the story isn’t totally fabricated:

“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors,” Bennett went on. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.”

Carson is also currently defending himself against assertions that he did not in fact try to murder multiple relatives.

http://gawker.com/why-wont-anyon...

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

Barefoot and frightened, Nicole Holder walked as fast as she could through the darkness, and the moment she saw the cops she ran. She headed west on Fifth Street toward North Church, away from the Charlotte., N.C., apartment of Greg Hardy, a star defensive end then with the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. Minutes earlier he had, she said, thrown her against a tile bathtub wall, tossed her on a futon covered in assault rifles, and choked her until she told him to “kill me so I don’t have to.”

Officer Jeffrey Kendrick ran after her, ordering her to stop. Holder turned and walked toward him, and Kendrick asked her why she was crying.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “Nothing is going to happen to him anyways.”

A year and a half after Hardy was arrested and charged with attacking Holder, it’s clear that she was mostly right. Last year, Hardy was convicted of assault in a bench trial, but the charges were dismissed on appeal and, it was reported yesterday, expunged. He missed more than a season of football, but went on to sign with the Dallas Cowboys, for whom he’s become a bigger star than ever despite (or perhaps because of) a series of incidents ranging from making sexist comments in a press conference to going after a coach on the sidelines. Jerry Jones, the Cowboys’ billionaire owner, calls him a “real leader” who has the respect of all his teammates and inspires America’s Team.

Unlike Ray Rice, the former Baltimore Ravens star who was filmed knocking his future wife unconscious in an elevator, Hardy hasn’t become a pariah. That’s partly because he’s more valuable on the field, but also because of the perception that nobody knows what really happened that night. Hardy won’t talk about it; Holder has gone quiet ever since, prosecutors say, she received a settlement, which contributed to the criminal case against him falling apart. And, crucially, no photos or videos ever came out. Police and prosecutorial records that detail what happened that night have largely been kept from the public—though not from the NFL.

Deadspin has obtained hundreds of pages of those records, some previously reported—police reports, interview transcripts, and more. Photos, dozens of them, show bruises over much of Holder’s body, including her back, her arms, her legs, her chin, her neck, and even her foot.

Below are many, but not all, of the photos taken of Nicole Holder within 24 hours of when she says Hardy attacked her. Many are disturbing and hard to look at; our decision to publish them was based on the convincing evidence they present of what happened that night.

(Some of the photographs in the gallery above appear to repeat; they are in fact distinct images of the evidence photos, shown at different levels of light exposure.)

Before publishing these photos and documents, I reached out to Holder’s lawyer, Daniel Zamora, who declined to comment. Hardy’s criminal case attorney, Chris Fialko, said he was done with the case and referred me to Ft. Lauderdale defense lawyer Frank Maister. He told me,“I’m not going to make any comments about the case whatsoever.”

Hardy’s version of events depicts him as the victim. To believe that requires ignoring a great deal of evidence. Police documents make clear that Holder wasn’t acting like a criminal fleeing the scene that night—the story Hardy’s lawyer would have you to believe—but like a battered woman. At one point, she even repeated to an officer the line that’s become universal shorthand for domestic violence: “I fell down some stairs.”

“It was either really good or really bad”

Greg Hardy and Nicole Holder met in 2012; Hardy, then a second-year player for the Carolina Panthers, was seeing her roommate. The two started dating in September 2013, while Hardy was on his way to his first Pro Bowl, and things got serious quickly. Holder said she moved in that November, which Hardy denied. Either way, she had the keys to his home, an apartment in the Ivey’s, a renovated mixed-use building just two and a half blocks away from Suite Charlotte, where Holder tended bar.

Things got bad, Holder said, starting around Christmas. He started asking Why did you do this to us? and calling her a slut, Holder told a detective. The details of the breakup depend on which person answers the question. Holder says he kicked her out of the apartment on the first of March; Hardy said it was right after the Pro Bowl because he was tired of arguing and needed to focus on football. It wasn’t quite over, though, and come May, Holder and Hardy were still in each other’s lives.

“It was very up and down. It always seemed like there was an issue,” her friend and co-worker Laura Iwanicki would later say in court. “It was either really good or really bad, and I felt I didn’t think there was any in between.”

“We were all having a great time”

On May 12, 2014, Holder got a text from Sammy Curtis, Hardy’s personal assistant and manager, asking her and Iwanicki to come hang out at Hardy’s apartment that Sunday night.

Curtis is a familiar type, a longtime friend of Hardy’s who moved to Charlotte two years after Hardy was drafted out of Mississippi by the Panthers so that he could, as he later said in court, “help Greg develop businesses and just with his day-to-day activities, relieve stress off of him so he could perform better on the football field.”

The two women got ready and arrived at Hardy’s apartment about 8 p.m., joining up with Hardy, Curtis, and Tormarco “Marco” Harris, another member of Hardy’s entourage, along with two other women the men had met that afternoon. Iwanicki noticed a pile of guns on the futon, took a picture, and shared it on Snapchat with the caption “Casual ...”

The photo posted by Iwanicki to Snapchat.

Holder brought a bottle of champagne, and the group drank and did shots until Hardy knocked over a glass, shattering it on the floor. Curtis called out, “Party foul!” Soon after this, Hardy left for his recording studio; the rest of the group drank, then headed over to Blackfinn, a bar where they hung out and drank even more. Holder and Iwanicki, according to Holder, did a bump of cocaine. (Iwanicki pleaded the Fifth to the cocaine question in court). Then Holder got a text from Hardy, asking her and Iwanicki to meet him at the Blind Pig, a dive bar known for arcade games and skee ball. The two women headed over, and Hardy arrived soon afterward with another assistant of his, Rachel Shipley, aka Shay. Iwanicki wanted to go to Bubble—a bar advertising itself as “a premium establishment that stimulates the senses”—and so they relocated yet again. Between it all, Holder estimated they went through four bottles of champagne, as well as shots of tequila and mixed drinks.

“To top everything off,” Holder would later testify, “a Nelly song came on.”

(Nelly had previously been a point of contention between Holder and Hardy. The two had plans to travel on her birthday in March, she told police, but he cancelled, and so she spent her birthday at her job and walked out with Nelly. From there, she went with the rapper to the Ritz-Carlton. Hardy, she told detectives, found out; she wasn’t sure how, though she believed one of his Panthers teammates saw her leaving Suite Charlotte with Nelly and told him.)

It was about 3 a.m. when group decided to leave without Iwanicki, who had slipped away and was with other friends at the bar. Hardy drove one car, Harris another, and Curtis took Shipley home, according to Curtis’s testimony in court, before going back to Hardy’s place as well. When the partying was done, Harris and Laurence were asleep in the master bedroom, Curtis was asleep on the living room couch, and Hardy joined Holder in a smaller room, an office with French doors that acted as a bedroom with a bathroom attached.

“His face, it was just blank ...”

“It all happened very, very quickly,” Holder told police. “None of it really made much sense.”

She and Hardy were on the bed inside the apartment’s smaller bedroom, getting along fine, when Hardy started bringing up the past. He called her a slut, she said, and accused her of ruining their relationship.

“I tried to get up, he pushed me,” she said, “then I started fighting back, he threw me into the bathroom, I hit the back of the shower wall and fell into the bathtub where he pulled me out.”

He dragged her out by her hair and picked her up again, she said, throwing her onto the futon, which had several weapons—what she described as “guns from ... the Army or ... I mean like from video games”—on it. She landed on top of the rifles and then fell onto the floor. In her telling, he stood above her and strangled her with both his hands. She would later tell Detective Faye Strother that she thought she was going to die. “His pupils were tiny,” she said. “I mean he looked ... crazy.”

A detail from Nicole Holder’s interview with Detective Faye Strother.

This is when Hardy snapped out of it, or at least when the worst was over. She said that Hardy jumped off of her, reached into his pocket, pulled out a cell phone, screamed for Curtis to come into the room, and started filming. (None of the other records I received mention any cell phone footage.) She told one officer that night that this was when Hardy began “agitating her several times trying to get her to flip out on him.” Curtis came in, grabbed her from behind and, restraining her in something like a bear hug, moved her to the kitchen.

Curtis, Holder said, didn’t say anything; he just did what Hardy told him. She struggled against him as Hardy called 911, claiming to have been the victim of an assault, before being let go. Holder would later give her accounting to police:

A detail from Nicole Holder’s interview with Detective Faye Strother.

This was allegedly not the first time their relationship got violent. Holder told police that it had happened two or three times before, but played it down. “It wasn’t like I got hurt,” she said. “There was no bruising.”

A detail from Nicole Holder’s interview with Detective Faye Strother.

“Security Acted As If Nothing Was Going On”

Kristina Laurence was wide awake one room over. The then-24-year-old had met Hardy and Marco Harris that day when she waited on them at her restaurant and exchanged numbers with them. She was part of the group that had started the night in Hardy’s apartment, where Holder was cold to her, and ended the night with the group at Bubble. She was, according to a statement she gave police, asleep in the apartment’s main bedroom with Harris when she woke up to yelling.

A detail from Kristina Laurence’s statement to police.

I overheard a friend yell, ‘What are you going to do, break my arm?!’ She was screaming and crying. I don’t recall what he said but it sounded like a body being pushed around/body slamming. The body slamming went from the hallway to the kitchen to the living room. As all of this is going on, I’m still lying in bed. The body throwing had been going on for a few minutes then subsided shortly. Then the arguing began again and I heard Greg say, I’m calling the police.

Marco noticed me awake and listening and he told me to go back to sleep. I began putting my clothes on and Marco said, ‘Where are you going?’ I told him I’m getting the fuck out of here ... I heard everything. Marco said, ‘You didn’t hear shit and she wanted it all.’ I then ran out of the apartment. I went downstairs to notify the security and he acted as if nothing were happening.

At some point, this changed, and security called police. A transcript of the 911 call backs Laurence’s account as described in a police report, in which, “because security was dancing around the subject, she then took the phone and began telling dispatch what was going on.”

Details from a transcript of a 911 call made from the Ivey’s by a security guard.

The second 911 call

Hardy also called 911. It’s unclear which call came in first—the one from Hardy or the one from Laurence—because the official transcripts aren’t timestamped. In his initial version of events, given while Curtis was restraining Holder and while Holder was lashing out, Hardy makes it sound like he was being assaulted by a girl that a friend of his had brought home:

Details from a transcript of a 911 call made by Greg Hardy.

Hardy would reiterate a version of this story in a statement he gave to police later on that night, that a woman attacked him. When asked to explain Holder’s injuries during his bench trial, he and Curtis would testify that Holder had jumped into the bathtub, then thrown herself on the couch, and then went crazy trying to attack Hardy. Hardy’s lawyer, Chris Fialko, would assert that Holder must have caused the injuries to herself. If the 290-lb. pass rusher had really wanted to hurt a woman who weighed well less than half what he did, his argument went, the damage would have been a lot worse.

I tried reaching out to all three people who were in the apartment that night with Holder and Hardy. Curtis—who said he is no longer Hardy’s manager and is working on his own business—declined to comment on my questions. Laurence and Harris could not be reached.

Police took pictures of three injuries to Hardy that night. During his bench trial, prosecutor Jamie Adams pointed out that one was a mark he’d had on his face in pictures from before May 12. Within 24 hours, police would go on to take and gather dozens of photos of injuries to Holder. First, though, they had to convince her to talk.

“If she ever did anything to damage his career ...”

Officer Jeffrey Kendrick, one of the first to arrive on the scene, saw Laurence walking out the Ivey’s front door, and Holder running. He and a second officer ran after Holder and told her to stop, which she did. She then walked back to the officers, who both wrote that she was visibly upset.

Officer Andrew Prentice asked Holder where the scratches on her arm came from. She said nothing had happened all. Later, she said she did it to herself. She refused to give a statement. One person was talking though—Laurence.

“Laurence,” wrote Officer Abraham Kim, “advised that she was upset because she heard Holder being beat and now Holder does not care about what happened. Laurence advised that she would tell officers everything because the assault that occurred needed to be documented.”

No matter how much Holder told them nothing happened, the officers wouldn’t leave. As they stood on the corner of Tryon Street and Fifth Street, next to the Ivey’s building, Sgt. Ivan Reitz tried again. He asked her if she could tell him what happened. She said nothing happened, then said, “I fell down the stairs.” He asked if officers could take pictures of her injures; she shook her head and quietly said, “No.” When Reitz walked toward Laurence, who was across the street talking to another cop, Holder told him, “That girl is crazy.” With 6 a.m. drawing near, police had taken some photos of her injuries, but Holder still refused to talk. She came close once, but stopped when she saw Officer Christopher Martin turn on an in-car recording device.

Bruises to Nicole Holder’s back.

After going off to make a phone call, Reitz returned and noticed that Holder’s bruises “were becoming much more visible.” She also was starting to open up to Martin, who had stayed with her while the other officers investigated. But she wasn’t willing to give an official statement. Reitz told Martin to start a report with what Holder had said, told two others officers to get warrants for Hardy, and had Prentice take Holder home—with his patrol car’s recording device turned on.

In a separate report, Martin summarized what Holder told him that night. Martin talked to Holder about why it was important for her to give a statement about what happened. She “admitted to me that the suspect ‘beat the hell’ out of her but would not elaborate,” he wrote.

She also told Martin “if she ever did anything to damage his career that he would kill her.”

Holder was taken home about 7 a.m., but when police went to her apartment later on in the afternoon, she was gone. They got a call from her then-lawyer at 9:04 p.m., saying she was afraid to go home and was instead was staying at a Sheraton after visiting a local hospital, where more photos were taken of her injuries. At her hotel, she gave a full interview to police and let them take photos of her injuries.

Bruises to Nicole Holder’s chin.

Inside the apartment

When the officers went up to Hardy’s apartment, they found him on a couch with Sammy Curtis nearby. Officer Prentice noticed a rifle leaning on the windowsill; Hardy said it was an air rifle and the police report says that from their distance, about 10 feet away, it did look like one. Asked if he had any other weapons, Hardy said he had a handgun in his bedroom. Asked again, Hardy said that the only other weapon he had was the handgun, Reitz wrote in his report.

When Hardy was forced by his arrest to turn over his weapons, he gave up 10 firearms:

The list of guns seized from Greg Hardy.

Where were they during the attack? When asked in court what happened to all the guns that Holder and Iwanicki testified to seeing, Hardy said, “They got put up.” Prosecutor Adams pointed out that at least half an hour passed before officers went up to the apartment, giving Hardy and Curtis plenty of time to clean up. Why did police take so long to go up to Hardy’s apartment? Overall, the documents portray a group of officers who took the case seriously and investigated it rigorously. But my emails and voicemails asking for comment from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police on this issue, among others, were not returned.

The guns weren’t the only part of Hardy’s story that evolved that night. The bit from his 911 call about how Holder was a girl a friend had brought home was gone. A report taken by Officer Prentice noted that Hardy said he didn’t know that Holder would be at the Blind Pig, then said he did. (Holder had shown another officer a text asking her to meet Hardy there.) Hardy said Holder was the only person left in the apartment in his written statement, ignoring that Harris and Laurence were there.

More significantly, Reitz called the police department’s communications supervisor after hearing Hardy’s story and asked her to listen to the 911 call and call him back to see if it matched what Hardy had told him. She told Reitz “it did not sound like what I had described to her.”

Reitz talked to Hardy again, asking if he could talk to him at the station and get a statement from him. He declined, saying he “did not believe it was a good idea to go to the police station.” The police took his written statement, took a few pictures of his injuries, and headed back downstairs. One officer saw Harris as he was leaving the bedroom inside Hardy’s apartment. Prentice asked Harris—who had, Laurence said, told her that she hadn’t heard anything and that Holder had been asking for it—if he heard or saw anything. He said no. He later changed his mind about that, and gave an interview to police in which he denied having told Laurence to ignore what happened, insinuated that Holder was a drunk and a gold digger, and said he was pretty sure Hardy never hit Holder because “it didn’t look like she was smacked.”

“Reliable information”

Despite all the notes taken by cops, despite Holder’s moving interview, and despite Laurence’s cooperation, all of which were enough to secure Hardy’s conviction at his July 2014 bench trial, it all fell apart on appeal.

Holder disappeared. District Attorney R. Andrew Murray later told the court in his Feb. 9 dismissal form that his office and law enforcement across North Carolina had conducted a thorough search, even “conducting surveillance of a new residence where she was believed to be living.” Her relatives and her lawyer refused to help. She could be found on Facebook, where pictures dated since the trial show her in Colorado, New York, Paris, and, yes, Charlotte.

Murray added that “The State further has reliable information that Ms. Holder has reached a civil settlement with the Defendant.” How much nobody has said.

With Holder gone, prosecutors had the choice of dismissing the charges or trying to introduce Holder’s statements as part of the trial. Murray’s office reviewed the interview that Holder gave to police and compared it to a transcript of the bench trial. (District court criminal trials aren’t recorded by a court reporter in North Carolina, Murray wrote, but Hardy’s defense team had hired one and eventually agreed to let prosecutors see it.)

“In comparing the prior statement with Ms. Holder’s District Court testimony, the State concluded that, in her absence, it did not have sufficient legal basis upon which to introduce the initial statement she provided to law enforcement,” Murray wrote.

What does that mean? My repeated attempts to reach Murray for comment got nowhere—he never returned a phone call or email I sent. The assistant district attorney who handled the case, Jamie Adams, has since left the office; I wasn’t able to reach her. At the time, the News & Observer reported that, “Several legal experts around town speculated that prosecutors spotted inconsistencies that prevented them from building their case around Holder’s former accounts.”

There are minor inconsistencies in Holder’s versions of events—in court, for instance, she added a part about Hardy ripping a necklace off of her and throwing it in the toilet, then slamming the toilet lid on her arm repeatedly when she tried to get the necklace, and left out the part where he takes out a cell phone—but the overall order of events stays pretty much the same. None of the inconsistencies in her tellings are nearly as significant as the discrepancies in the various versions of events that Hardy has given.

At any rate, the case was dropped, Hardy was declared legally innocent, and he went back to the NFL a bigger star than ever. (Both the NFL and the Dallas Cowboys declined to comment.) In the end, Holder was right. Her own prophecy came true, despite her own attempts to prove it wrong.

Additional reporting by Kyle Wagner and Deadspin staff. To contact the author, write to diana@deadspin.com (PGP key) or DM @dianamoskovitz.

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If your wardrobe’s feeling a little stale Amazon’s offering two great apparel Gold Boxes today. For the guys, there’s a wide selection of suits, sweaters, jackets, and pants from Perry Ellis, and for the ladies, 50% off women’s boots from a variety of designers.

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Of course, this is just the tip of the clothing iceberg, so be sure to check out our apparel deals post for everything else.

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Today only, Amazon’s offering big discounts on a great selection of pet supplies from a variety of manufacturers.

Inside, you’ll find everything from toys, treats, beds and more for your favorite rent-free roommates, so be sure to check out the full list. As with all Gold Box deals, these prices are only available today, but many items could sell out early. [Amazon Pet Sale]

Bonus Deal: Etekcity 2-Pack 16-26in Adjustable Pet Car Seat Belt, $6 with code P9BHIS9T

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It’s getting a little chilly for ice cream (though with El Niño, who knows), but this highly-rated Cuisinart soft serve machine is down to its lowest price ever on Amazon today. The ICE-45 even includes three mix-in dispensers that automatically add sprinkles, chocolate chips, or other small extras to your treat. [Cuisinart ICE-45 Mix It In Soft Serve 1-1/2-Quart Ice Cream Maker, $70]

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You might have a bathroom scale at home that you use to weigh luggage before you leave for a trip, but what about for your trip back?

This $7 hanging scale is small enough to take with you, so you can make sure you won’t get dinged for all of those heavy souvenirs on your return trip. All it has to do is save you from an overweight baggage fee once, and it’ll have paid for itself several times over. [Tiptiper Digital Luggage Scale, $7 with code OYAB9QDF]

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This great looking grinder is perfect for spices, herbs, or things that aren’t legal in Ohio. Add in its clever magnetic lid and 4.6 star review average, and it certainly seems like a steal at $9. [Ohuhu 4 Piece 2.38” Tobacco Spice Herb Weed Grinder, Gun Metal, $9 with code MLWLXBB3]

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You guys must have dark porches and yards, because these solar-powered motion-sensing outdoor lights have been really popular lately. [Mpow Super Bright 8 LED Solar Sensor Light, $14 with code HQNWQI8G]

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If the new international The Force Awakens trailer got your heart pumping, you can channel that energy into collecting the Steelbook editions of the previous films, all for just $15 each today.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops III is out today, and you can already save $10 on your copy.

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If your board game collection has gotten a little stale, you can liven it up with one of these great deals.

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It’s hard to believe, I know, but there are a bunch of awesome new Xbox One bundle deals running today.

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If any of your walls look a little bare, Amazon’s taking an extra 20% off nearly 100,000 pieces of hangable art from iCanvas, including Banksy prints.

Luckily, there are sidebar tools on the Amazon page to help you sort through the deluge, and the search bar is useful if you need something very specific. Just be sure to grab everything you like, because no matter how many pieces you buy, as long as they’re from iCanvas, you’ll automatically see a 20% discount at checkout. That’s in addition to any discounts listed on the product pages, so this is a great chance to rack up the savings and give your home a little personality. [Extra 20% off iCanvas Prints]

This well-reviewed (and obscenely popular) 10,000mAh external power bank from KMASHI can be had for just $9 today, which is about as good a deal as you’ll ever see on this sort ofthing. That’s enough power to recharge most smartphones about three times, making it perfect for long days at conferences, cross-country flights, camping trips and more. [KMASHI 10,000mAh USB Power Bank, $9 withe code ESVMTBOC]

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If you want to get your hands on a Steam controller before December, Amazon has them in stock for delivery next week. And while the controller itself isn’t any cheaper on Amazon, you won’t have to pay for shipping. If you bought it from Steam directly, that’d be an extra $8. [Preorder Steam Controller, $50]

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Whether you’re starting an Eneloop collection, or just adding to the family, you can get an 8-pack of rechargeable AAs for $20 today. If you’re unfamiliar, these were your favorite rechargeable batteries in a recent Kinja Co-Op, and it wasn’t close. [8-Pack AA Panasonic Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries, $20]

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Note: On a per-battery basis, the 16-pack is technically a better deal at $37, but that’s not a particularly rare price for that particular pack.

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Are Star Wars action figures a naked cash grab? Of course! Will you buy them anyway? Of course! [Star Wars The Force Awakens 11” 6 Action Figure Pack, $34 with code BESTGIFT]

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Tech

Storage

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Power

• Aukey 3-Port USB 30W / 6A USB Travel Wall Charger Adapter ($8) | Amazon
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Home Theater

• Klipsch SW-112 Reference Series 12-Inch Powered Subwoofer ($280) | eBay
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PC Parts

• OCZ ARC 100 2.5” 240GB SATA III MLC Internal SSD ($65) | Newegg
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Mobile Devices

• Microsoft - Band Smart Watch ($80) | Best Buy
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Photography

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Beauty & Grooming

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Kitchen

• Cuisinart ICE-45 Mix It In Soft Serve 1-1/2-Quart Ice Cream Maker ($70) | Amazon
• Bodum Chambord 8 cup French Press Coffee Maker, 34 oz. ($30) | Amazon
• Rachael Ray - 1-1/2-Quart Round Open Baker ($13) | Best Buy
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Fitness

• Adjustable Digital Resistance Upright Bike ($280) | Sears
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Apparel

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Camping & Outdoors

• Yukon Outfitters Mosquito Hammock ($30) | Woot
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Tools & Auto

• Maker Architect 3D Printer ($499) | Monoprice
• Digital Laser Distance Meter ($40) | Amazon

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Adele never had a drinking problem. She just got drunk and tweeted so often that her management decided it would be better if she had to clear all her tweets with two different handlers first. See? No problem!

The 19, 21, and 25 singer, who is 27, recently described her affinity for the tipsy tweet in a BBC fan Q&A, where she was asked: “Rumor has it, you’re not allowed access to your own Twitter account?”

Rumor has it right, according to Adele.

“I’m not a drinker anymore, but when Twitter first came out, I was like, ‘You’re drunk tweeting,’ and nearly put my foot in it quite a few times. So my management decided, ‘You have to go through, like, two people, and it has to be signed off by someone.,’” she said, laughing.

“They’re all my tweets, though. No one writes them for me.”

She didn’t say what inadvisable thing she posted that finally got her cut off.

Adele’s been on Twitter since August 2010, and told Vogue she gave up drinking cold turkey in May 2011:

“Don’t like drinking anymore,” she says in an accent that falls somewhere between Eliza Doolittle and David Beckham. “I think I got it out of my system. D’yaknowhaImean?”

That leaves less than a year where she could have tweeted (and possibly deleted?) something she shouldn’t have.

During the same period, she also wrote much of her best album, 21, based on notes she kept in her “drunk diary,” so all’s well that ends well, I guess.

[h/t Pitchfork, Photo: Getty Images]

Earlier this week, Leslie Miley, Twitter’s only black manager in the engineering department, quit because of how badly the company is managing its attempts at diverse hiring. In a blog post explaining his decision, Miley included a damaging quote from the company’s Senior VP of Engineering. Now the VP is saying he’s sorry.

An apologetic blog post from Senior VP of Engineering Alex Roetter includes a mix of earnest sorry-saying and earnest ass-covering:

“The comments attributed to me aren’t an accurate or complete facsimile, but they conveyed a meaning that was very far from what I intended, which means I did a poor job communicating. That resulted in unnecessary pain and confusion, for which I am truly sorry.”

Roetter also includes a list of initiatives Twitter will undertake in the near future to make itself more inclusive—but it’s hard to tell how this will differ from all the other times a technology company has sworn to do a better job of hiring people who don’t look like Mark Zuckerberg. Roetter concludes by noting “All of the above is only a small start, and we’re going to do a lot more,” and “Ultimately, it’s better to show the world rather than tell the world.” And yet.

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

Last night, Coldplay released their new song “Adventure of a Lifetime.” Let’s all agree that this song is 100 percent about having sex with a young movie actress immediately after your divorce.

Here are some of the lyrics, via Rap Genius:

[Verse 1]

Turn your magic on, to me she’d say
Everything you want’s a dream away
We are legends, every day
That’s what she told him

[Refrain]

Turn your magic on, to me she’d say
Everything you want’s a dream away
Under this pressure, under this weight
We are diamonds

[Chorus 1]

I feel my heart beating
I feel my heart underneath my skin
I feel my heart beating
Oh, you make me feel
Like I’m alive again
Alive again
Oh, you make me feel
Like I’m alive again

“Turn your magic on, to me she’d say.” “Oh you make me feel like I’m alive again.” Now, here is a guy who is talking about screwing a hot young lady, specifically Jennifer Lawrence, who Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin dated immediately after separating from Gwyneth Paltrow, who is much older than Jennifer Lawrence.

In a statement, Coldplay’s label Parlophone described the new album thusly:

“Revitalized, they’ve made an album that’s bursting with energy, colour and big, life-affirming moments.”

The singer in this group had sex with a 25-year-old.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

In Pennsylvania, the best kind of political scandal is unfolding: one with leaked emails, bad jokes, hardcore porn, photoshopped pictures of Sarah Palin, and a dash of old-fashioned racism. Best of all, it’s a scandal that absolutely no one will come out of looking good.

Kathleen Kane, the state’s attorney general, is awaiting trial on misconduct charges stemming from her alleged leak of confidential documents to the Philadelphia Daily News. Kane’s alleged leak was apparently intended as retaliation against investigators in her predecessor’s office who handled the child sex abuse case against Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Kane, a Democrat, made a campaign promise to find out whether her Republican predecessor purposefully prolonged the Sandusky investigation for political reasons. Her office’s investigation concluded that no such intentional delay had taken place, but the probe sparked a “bitter feud” with the investigators, the Associated Press reports.

The story might have ended there, except that Kane’s investigation also uncovered hundreds of porny emails and racist memes sent between state officials on government accounts. Many of them were sent by Frank Fina, a prosecutor formerly with the AG’s office who now works for the Philadelphia District Attorney. Kane claims that the criminal charges against her were trumped up to protect the men whose horny correspondence she uncovered, and began releasing the emails as a counterattack.

Here are some lightly censored-but-probably-still-NSFW highlights (the entire trove is at Metro Philadelphia).

Fina sent these particularly doofy instances of that doofy “fake motivational poster” meme, along with a bunch of other more sexually explicit poster parodies, many of which involve men in suits getting blow jobs. Here’s a censored version of one of the porny ones.

Another AG’s office official named Robert Soop forwarded a cache of faked nude Sarah Palin photos to his coworkers. The email originated with a man who does not appear to be a government employee, who included an expressively punctuated caption showing his appreciation of the craftsmanship that went into creating the images.

And Fina sent some bad “jokes,” including this one about tennis star Simona Halep.

Mostly, though, the boys sent around lots and lots of pictures of vaginas, some censored versions of which are presented below.

You get it.

Environmental Protection Secretary Christopher Abruzzo resigned over the leak, as did Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery. Frank Fina has thus far retained his job at the Philly DA.

Kathleen Kane has threatened to release more emails, and the Philadelphia Inquirer is attempting to legally compel her to publicize them. According to the AP, the state capitol is “ablaze with speculation” about who is next to be exposed. If you’re a horny old man in the Pennsylvania state government, you might start considering another line of work.

Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Few communities are more culturally rich than the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights, which boasts some 167 spoken languages, a strong LGBT presence, and some of the greatest restaurants in the city. Frederick Wiseman, the 85-year-old director of observational documentaries (whose narratives are never forced with on-camera interviews, but merely suggested through motifs and editing), turned his camera on Jackson Heights for about nine weeks, during the summer of 2014, to capture the neighborhood’s diversity and the looming threat of gentrification.

The resulting three-hour-ten-minute film, In Jackson Heights, is among Wiseman’s most compulsively watchable: It’s brimming with color and tension, harmony and impending discord. We see scenes as disparate as footage of the Queens Pride Parade, an eyebrow threading, community meetings from and about a dying mall, prayer at a mosque, and an impromptu concert in a laundromat.

All the while, Wiseman’s interest in humans remains affectionate and unyielding. I’ve spoken to the director twice before this, and will continue to do so for every film that he makes. A condensed and edited transcript of our chat by phone this week regarding In Jackson Heights appears below.

http://gawker.com/its-impossible...

Gawker: Why Jackson Heights? What led you there?

Frederick Wiseman: I was interested in making a movie about new immigrants to America. I’d read a lot of books about the Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th century. My father was an immigrant from Russia in 1885. It just seemed like an interesting subject, and a friend of mine lived in Jackson Heights and she took me around. The moment I started walking around there, I knew I wanted to make a movie. It’s so colorful. There are so many different colors. It’s very different than Manhattan, or at least the neighborhoods in Manhattan that I know. That interested me, and the mixture of people from all over South America, all over Asia, East Asia. I wondered how they were getting along and what relationship they had to their country of origin and how they were getting along in America. I didn’t really know anything about the subject. I hope I learned something.

I used to frequent Jackson Heights with my ex—there was an Indian restaurant there I liked that has since closed. But I didn’t realize just how diverse that neighborhood was. One hundred sixty-seven languages spoken? That’s unreal.

It’s unreal, but I think there is a Jackson Heights-like neighborhood, maybe not as dense and not as intense but similar, in almost every major city in the West now. Not immigrants from the same place, but the Turkish immigration to Germany or North African Muslims’ immigration to France or the Syrians and Iraqis in Europe or Central Europe. The countries of origin may be different, and the languages may be different, but the day-to-day issues of getting along in a new country are similar.

A Frederick Wiseman movie couldn’t be more different than a six-second loop on Vine, but nonetheless this movie struck me as incredibly modern, per the current call for diversity in media and hearing underrepresented voices. Was giving voice to the voiceless one of your concerns?

No... I’d like to say that was my original goal, but it wasn’t. I think that’s one of the things the movie does, but I didn’t set out to do that. I set out to make as good a movie I could based on the experience I had in Jackson Heights. I never set out with an idea like giving voice to the voiceless. That’s a bit too general and I would worry that for me it might seem pretentious. I make the choice of subject matter, hang around, collect a lot of rushes, and try to figure something out based on the rushes.

More and more, I read critiques admonishing outsiders for portraying and covering communities they are not part of. Throughout your career, you’ve been an outsider to your subjects.

I don’t prevent anyone else from making a movie!

Is there an advantage to being an outsider?

I think there can be an advantage to being an outsider because you see everything as fresh. At least 50 percent of editing one of these movies is figuring out what you’re watching. What is it you’re listening to and seeing and what significance does it have? That has nothing to with film technique, it has to with your general experience. Whether or not I’m right in my assessment of what’s going on, I have to have a view as to what is going on in each sequence both on a literal level and a more abstract level, because otherwise I can’t decide whether to choose the sequence, and then what to choose within the sequence, and then where to place it. So I have to at least delude myself into thinking I understand it.

Do you speak Spanish? There’s so much Spanish in this movie.

No. I speak French. I couldn’t understand [Spanish] with any degree of sophistication, but, for example, in the scene where the woman describes the trip with her daughter across the boarder, I got the gist and I knew it was a good scene. So when we shot at Make the Road New York, they had meetings every night at 6 or 7, and it was always on a subject like immigration ID, housing discrimination, job discrimination, etc. The meetings lasted about an hour, an hour and a quarter. I just shot the whole meeting and then what I did was have a transcript made in Spanish and then had the transcript translated. For the first time in my life, I used a transcript to edit. There was another step involved.

How did you actually gain access to what you did? It’s one thing to have the National Gallery on board with you filming there, but this is a vast neighborhood. Were you just knocking door to door?

Yeah. A lot of it is chance and luck. For example, the scene where the woman asked the group of Southern Baptists to pray for her dying father [outside on a sidewalk], I happened to hear these women with their Southern accents, and wondered what they were doing cleaning the streets of Jackson Heights. We were already shooting that and then in the midst of it, this woman comes up and asks the ladies to pray for her father. That’s an extreme example of chance.

For other things, I developed informants in the best sense of the term, and people know more about the place than I do. Someone introduced me around in the East Asian community, and the guy that ran the Jewish Community Center, which is no longer used exclusively as a synagogue or for Jewish-oriented events, because the Jewish population of Jackson Heights is so small, so this place gets rented out. So one day it’ll be Brazilian Pentecostal services, the next day senior gay rights meeting, another day an elderly women’s meeting. God knows what. Because I met this man who ran it, he gave me the schedule of events and I asked the people running the meetings whether we could shoot them. Similarly, I called up the Catholic priests and told them what I was doing. My East Asian contact put me in touch with the halal butcher. The taxi scene, for example, I was just driving close to the corner of Roosevelt and Broadway, and I saw this sign: Taxi School. I’d never heard of a taxi school, so I stopped and went in and asked, “Can we shoot a class?” He said, “There’s one beginning in 20 minutes.” That’s how I got the taxi school. It’s a combination of judgement, luck, and instinct, and then trying to figure out the best way to use it.

Did anyone say no?

No. I don’t think there was one person. Occasionally, one or two people say no, but it’s extremely rare.

There’s a huge motif in not just this movie, but many of your movies, of people watching people. And it’s through your gaze that we watch that. It’s a rabbit hole.

It is. It’s not unrelated to Alice in Wonderland.

The fundamental philosophy there is that people are fascinating.

That’s exactly right. In one sense what I’m doing is a form of natural history. I hope the films have a dramatic narrative structure, but in another sense, they’re movies about the way we live now. Historians 100 years from now, if the world is still revolving, are going to be more confused about the past, because in addition to drawing on written records or traditional artistic records, there are all these movies they’re going to have to look at. I would love to watch a movie about Washington during the American Civil War or have a movie about a plantation. All that’s possible now—not specifically about subject matter. What documentary does, if the negative or digital or HD master survives, is it leaves a trace of the past.

Had you ever done anything with this strong of a gay theme in it before?

No. I had no idea when I started that there was such a large LGBT community in Jackson Heights.

What was it like to be an 84-year-old man holding a camera in the middle of a gay bar, surrounded by strippers and loud music?

[Laughs] It was fun! It was really funny. It was interesting. It was bizarre. But it was fun!

Do you just blend in? It seems like in a situation like that, a camera might be in the way?

It’s odd. I still don’t understand how you can make these kind of movies in the sense that nobody ever objects. Someone told me that was an interesting gay bar. I went in, found the owner, who was an older man that was sitting in the back. I told him what we were doing, asked him if we could shoot in there, and he said, “Sure.” The people in the bar had no objection.

You got releases?

I don’t get written releases? I get tape recorded consents.

For everybody in there?

No, I get consent of the owner, and everybody sees that you’re shooting. If they don’t want to be shot, they can say something.

How precious are these movies to you on an individual level? You’re always working on one. How emotionally attached do you get?

I work so hard getting the editing done that by the time the color grading is done, I don’t want to look at it anymore. It took me about 11 months to edit Jackson Heights. I could recite the dialogue by heart and the order of the shots. Usually by the time the grading is done, I start thinking about something else. I like to keep busy

I think a lot about the economics of movies because I watch a lot of them. Hollywood movies are often a litany of compromises as much as they are a string of scenes.

That’s right.

How have you been able to do this for 40 years and feed yourself? I assume you make a pretty good living...

I make an adequate living. I’m not rich. I make a living because I try to make one movie a year. I own the movies outright, so I get income from ancillary rights: DVD, VOD, foreign rights, etc., though there’s not much of a market for foreign rights anymore. I get invited to give talks at colleges. You can make more money talking about a movie than making it, but you gotta make the movie in order to talk about it. So I make a decent living out of those three things. But it’s hard to raise the money. It was very, very difficult to raise the money for Jackson Heights.

So how do you do it?

Ultimately, I was saved by the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation has been extremely generous to me over the years and they came through for Jackson Heights.

If you were greedier, you wouldn’t be able to make movies like this?

What I’m interested in is getting enough money to make the movies. What I’m interested in is having the resources to continue to work. It has to be a commercial enterprise, because a movie has to pay for itself, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t, in which case the costs are paid for by other things that I mentioned. I work quite hard, and I like doing it. The money thing is the worst part of it, but you gotta do it.

If more people had your attitude, movies would be better.

I never understood why people spend so much money on movies. $50 million, $100 million. The production values aren’t that much better.

In Jackson Heights is now playing at New York’s Film Forum.

[Top image via Zipporah Films]

So far, America’s most powerful labor unions are more likely to endorse Hillary Clinton than Bernie Sanders, even though Sanders’ beliefs are more pro-labor than Clinton’s. This is dumb. And fearful.

It is fairly uncontroversial to say that Bernie Sanders has a stronger pro-labor record than Hillary Clinton, and a purer, more ideologically driven commitment to core labor issues than Hillary Clinton, whose career is a testament to a politically savvy tendency to support things based on political calculations. Sanders has spawned an entire grassroots “Labor for Bernie” movement, which is chock full of upset members of labor unions that have chosen not to endorse Bernie Sanders.

The LA Times notes today that Hillary Clinton has already won the union endorsement battle, mathematically speaking: “National unions representing more than half of America’s 14.6 million unionized workers are already in Clinton’s corner,” and a probably Clinton endorsement from the SEIU would add 2 million more union members to her side. But behind these numbers lies an equally widely acknowledged fact within the labor movement: they agree with Bernie Sanders more. They just think that Hillary Clinton has a better chance of winning.

And this gets to the larger issue that confronts not just unions or other interest groups, but voters on all sides of the political spectrum each time election season rolls around. Do you support the candidate that best embodies your own political and ethical beliefs? Or do you try to play political forecaster and cast your vote for the candidate in your party that you think has the best chance of beating the candidate from the other party at some point in the future?

Vote for your beliefs. Vote for your beliefs! This entire dynamic creates the most futile self-fulfilling prophecy in American politics. People bemoan our two-party system; they bemoan the fact that both major party candidates are beholden to rich and powerful interests rather than to common people; and then... they go out and vote for those same candidates, because they think that they are the lesser of two evils. It is not hard to see how this creates a situation in which the very things that we complain about will never change, because we support them with our votes. At least in the primary elections—the purpose of which is to produce the candidate that best represents your party’s beliefs—voters should go all out on behalf of whoever most embodies what they believe. Polls be damned. Polls reflect the way we vote, not the other way around. Humans are horrible forecasters, by the way. Just look back at a random sampling of old political or financial punditry if you don’t believe that. Voting based upon your own forecast of what will or won’t play well politically is as misguided as it is self-defeating. What will play well politically with you is what you believe, as long as you vote for the person who represents those beliefs. Don’t sell out your own vote.

If you are desperately worried about inequality and gross wealth disparity and Wall Street power increasing while the influence of average people decreases, you should probably vote for Bernie Sanders. (Hell, if you are most concerned with America’s careless stance towards the Great Pyramids, you should probably vote for Ben Carson. Same principle.) There is no reason for the labor movement not to back the most pro-labor candidate. There is no reason to do the job of your political enemies for them. It is true that when the final election rolls around, we may be stuck voting for the lesser of two evils. But for now, we can vote for someone we actually agree with. There is nothing more dispiriting than watching someone drop their progressive beliefs at the door of the voting booth. Nothing will change unless we change it.

[Photo: AP]

Parks aren’t always built just so we can enjoy the trees. On Governor’s Island in New York City, a truly unique public space will bring nature back to a former military base–and it’s engineered to withstand the catastrophic storms that climate change will bring. It’s called The Hills, and in this documentary, we talk to one of its principle designers.

I was given an extensive tour of The Hills by Jamie Maslyn Larson. She works at a company called West 8, which specializes in urban design and landscape architecture. At first glance, The Hills is exactly what it sounds like. The park is made up of sculpted, textured mounds overlooking New York harbor, perfect for climbing and frolicking visitors. But the park’s playful terrain is also functional, protecting the island against rising sea levels.

It’s fascinating to hear how Larsen and her colleagues made the park happen, engineering every natural space down to the last grain of sand. Take a tour with us in this documentary, and watch the park taking shape. The Hills will open to the public in 2016.

For more original documentaries, and other great videos, subscribe to Gizmodo’s YouTube channel!

Contact the author at mhession@gizmodo.com.

There are only several hundred more days until the 2016 presidential election—have you picked your favorite candidate yet? No? Well, perhaps it would help to imagine each one of them, who are all so confident that they should be the next person to run this country into the ground, as a dog.

What kind of dog is each presidential candidate? Through careful scientific calculations, we have determined which breed best matches each hopeful. The following assertions are final.

Hillary Clinton

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is intelligent, warm, and popular with old people. She’s a total teacup French bulldog.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump, still polling first among the Republican candidates, is clearly a teacup French bulldog. He’s a barker!

Martin O’Malley

Martin O’Malley, the cutest Democratic presidential candidate since 2004 John Edwards, is a teacup French bulldog. No duh.

Ben Carson

Republican neurosurgeon Ben Carson is soft-spoken and a little sleepy, just like an adorable teacup French bulldog.

Bernie Sanders

Vermont’s own Bernie Sanders has a vision for society “where poverty is absolutely unnecessary, [and] where international relations are not based on greed.” A teacup French bulldog through and through.

Marco Rubio

Would a teacup French bulldog show up to a Senate vote? Probably not, which is why Marco Rubio is that kind of dog.

Carly Fiorina

Some have called the GOP’s only female candidate Carly Fiorina a “pitbull.” Perhaps it would surprise you to know that she is actually a teacup French bulldog.

Jeb Bush

Just like his father and brother, Jeb Bush is a teacup French bulldog.

Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz likes to say he went to Princeton. But did you know he’s also a teacup French bulldog?

Chris Christie

This one was easy: Chris Christie is a teacup French bulldog.

Rand Paul

Rand Paul’s new book, Our Presidents and Their Prayers, has sold fewer than 500 copies since its release two weeks ago, per Nielsen’s BookScan data. He’s a teacup French bulldog.

John Kasich

Teacup French bulldogs are so cute, and I love to look at pictures of them online.

Mike Huckabee

Of all God’s creatures, teacup French bulldogs are probably #1, and I’m sure Mike Huckabee would agree. He’s a teacup French bulldog.

Lead image by Jim Cooke. Candidate photos via Getty. Dog photos via Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this: a lot of pricks typing “ya” now, when they’re saying yeah to you. These pricks. These fucking jerks.

“ya”

The response “ya” seems to have grown in popularity over the last few months, picking up steam mainly among a number of pricks I know, and then also some nice people who I think are doing it by mistake. Last year, I feel like no one was making me mad by typing “ya” to me. This year—a different story.

As if he’s attempting to signal a combination of boredom and resentment for your question: ya. As if you’ve bothered her somehow, even though you were just chatting and maybe you didn’t even want to know the answer to the question you asked, but you were just trying to be polite—or maybe she’s your superior and you were just asking about a work thing, and now what’s with all the attitude?: ya. As if you’ve mistakenly befriended a prick who holds himself in such high esteem that basic manners and conversational kindness are below him and he’s not afraid to show you this personality flaw outright: ya.

It’s possible I’m reading too much into this—but I do think I’m correct.

Here’s a thought exercise for you that I think might help prove my point: Think of the people you know who respond to you sometimes with “ya.” Now: Think of the people who have never responded to you with “ya.” Which group, would you say, is the group that contains the most pricks?

You see my point.

It’s easy to interpret any standalone affirmative response as a sort of “fuck you” if you’re paranoid enough, or if you deserve it. For example, imagine in each of these scenarios that the person giving the affirmative response is thinking “fuck this guy”:

You: Did you see that thing?
Someone: yes

You: Did you get that thing we were talking about?
Someone: yeah

You: Are you going to that thing—I think it’s later?
Someone: yea

Easy to imagine, right? Yes. An exception to this rule might be “yup,” which probably doesn’t ever seem like it means “fuck you.” However, that is exactly why “yup” is a good way to give a positive response that, in fact, means “fuck you,” especially if it’s to someone to whom you don’t want to be accused of intimating “fuck you.”

Your Boss: Hey, it’s already past noon. Can you get me that thing?
You: yup

With each of these affirmative responses, though, strong cases can be made against the idea that they were given with any sort of attitude. Each has an alibi earned from familiarity and sustained usage. (“Yea” not as much as the others, but please do not interrupt me while I am making a point.) “I was just saying ‘yeah’...” you can imagine someone saying. Or maybe something like, “I was just saying ‘yes’...”

“ya,” on the other hand, seems like a new thing—at least to me. Why are you giving me this new response all of a sudden? Why are you saying “ya” to me, even though I have known you for so long and you’ve never said “ya”? —Is it just to be a prick?! It’s worth noting also that “ya” is the laziest of the affirmative response, clocking it at a mere two letters, which is just like...oh, this person can’t be bothered to type any more letters? This fucking prick? Can’t type two more letters?

(This is excluding the simple “y,” which is for pricks also, but the sort of pricks who are trying to seem like busy business men. It’s hard to take that personally.)

Please don’t read this to mean that I am against any sort of “yeah” that secretly means “fuck you.” Frequently I’ll say “yeah” to someone when really I mean—“buddy, fuck you.” But I don’t use it to intimate superiority, and I certainly don’t display my bad attitude outright, as one does when one says “ya” to me, like a prick. Like some coward who wants to feel like a bad boy.

You’re no bad boy. You’re just a coward, you prick.

You’re probably thinking now, of me: “Maybe you deserve everyone saying ‘ya’ to you in a way that means ‘fuck you,’ you seem real sensitive and maybe crazy.” Well, let me assure you that I do not.

No one does.

Because the people who say “ya” are pricks.

And no one deserves this sort of shit from some fucking prick!!!!!!!!!!

Contact the author at kelly.conaboy@gawker.com.

Ben Carson is currently in trouble for, at the very least, embellishing his life story, including a moment in which he says he attempted to stab his friend. Here is video of that pivotal incident, as depicted in the Cuba Gooding Jr.-starring straight-to-TV adaptation of Carson’s memoir, Gifted Hands.

The stabbing scene is immediately preceded by one in which Carson attempts to bash his mother’s head in with a hammer because she bought him the wrong kind of pants.

The interesting thing about the film’s portrayal of the stabbing is that it represents an extreme escalation of the story.

In Carson’s book, he says that he went to stab his friend Bob after Bob changed the dial on the radio they were listening to, but the blade of his knife struck Bob’s belt buckle and broke. In the movie, Carson’s character dramatically plunges his knife into Bob’s gut like something out of Oz.

In interviews, the film’s producer Dan Angel has said that Carson was intimately involved with the film, visiting the set in Detroit and guiding the film so its story was accurate. Said Angel, in an interview with The Daily Caller:

“He would be there every step of the way whenever we needed to talk to him about reality checks,” Angel said of Carson. “We would have Cuba Gooding Jr. on the phone with him. And he gave complete access to his life, which is really important.”

It’s impossible to know if Carson was consulted specifically about the stabbing, but Carson certainly hasn’t protested the portrayal.

Gifted Hands has a rating of 7.8/10 from 5,313 IMDB users.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

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Did you hear? Kristin Cavallari, whose (baby) due date is fast approaching, is on the cover of the December/January issue of American Baby. In a new video promoting the issue, Kristin tells a story about seeing a penis.

“When we found out the sex of this baby,” Kristin says in the video (which you can watch here), “we had a 3D ultrasound, and 100 percent, we saw a penis.”

She continues:

But now, you can do a blood test. So about a week and a half later, I get a phone call from the woman, and she says, “So do you want to know the sex?” And I said “Yeah, but you know, we already saw a penis, so we know it’s a boy.” And she was like, “Actually, it’s a little girl!”

And I was like, “What? Are you sure?”

It is a little girl; Kristin announced the news in July by posting a photo of tiny pink sneakers.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

August Kreis III, a former Aryan Nation and KKK leader who once appeared on Jerry Springer to defend his white supremacist views, was sentenced to 50 years in prison on child molestation charges Thursday, Columbia, S.C. newspaper The State reports. Kreis’s message to the jury? Vote Donald Trump.

In the midst of his trial in Lexington County, S.C., Kreis reportedly held up a sign endorsing Trump, a billionaire Siberian Tiger hairball, for president. The judge instructed jury members to ignore it and focus on the facts of the case. Apparently, they did: they found Kries guilty on three counts of sexual misconduct with children.

Prior to the sentence that virtually guarantees he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison, Kries reiterated both his endorsement of Trump and his longstanding non-endorsement of the Jewish people:

“I will always hate the Jew. This government is run by an evil group of people, and please — vote for Trump!” he said, according to The State.

The newspaper points out that Kreis has been decried in the strongest of terms by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which called him “a hot-tempered, longtime white supremacist and Christian Identity minister ... (He) once headed one of a handful of competing splinter factions of the once-mighty Aryan Nations. Kreis has fervently advocated the mass murder of Jews, non-whites and ‘race traitors.’”

The organization’s “extremist file” on Kreis offers a great overview of his many alleged crimes, which include threatening neighbors, filing for fraudulent veterans’ benefits, and child sex abuses that predate the ones for which he was just convicted.

Strangely, Kreis didn’t make it to the internet vigilante organization Anonymous’s just-released list of known white supremacists, even though the memes on his Facebook page are shitty enough to qualify him.

http://gawker.com/the-shitty-mem...

[h/t Mediaite, Photo: Lexington County (S.C.) Detention Center]