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Have you gone to the store yet? You're working from home, right? Do you have extra batteries even though you do not own any battery-powered devices? Well, Jesus, get on it, because the "crippling," "historic," big-ass blizzard of 2015 is coming fast and furious and your mother is only concerned because she loves you.

We'd like to read all the texts and emails your moms have sent you about disaster preparedness in the last 24 hours—please post them in the comments below. For starters, here are the loving reminders that Gawker Media staffers have received so far. From basic inquiries:

To advice from Al Roker:

To "I know you can barely hear this advice because it comes from me."

Even Gawker parents who currently reside in Florida have something to add.

Post your texts below, and please, stop messing around, the big one's coming!

[Photos via Gawker staffers]

While liberal and left-wing Americans stare distastefully and apprehensively at their pitiful choices for next year's presidential election, Greek voters are celebrating the victory of Syriza, the young, pragmatic, and popular left-wing party led by a young atheist ex-communist with a son named after Che Guevara. Let us guide you through Greece's election and the ramifications for Syriza's victory.

On Sunday, Greek voters—fed up with "austerity" measures imposed after the country's economic collapse—handed their government to Syriza. And while financial and business columnists wring their hands about Greece being cut off from the euro, lefties around the world are energized by the party's clear mandate.

The left-wing coalition Syriza won Greece's parliamentary elections this weekend.

Greece voted for a new Parliament, and the party with the most support—nearly 10 percent more than its next competitor—was the Syriza party, a coalition made up of Trotskyites, Maoists, other assorted communists, socialists, and left-leaning partisans. We're not talking "Obama socialism" or some other mealy-mouthed American-style left project here; as leading party member Stathis Kouvelakis tells Jacobin magazine, this movement is pretty radical: "Syriza has a strong anticapitalist line, and it has very sharply set itself apart from social democracy."

Something relatively new and weird may be tried in Greek and European politics now. The global economy has been slowly recovering for years, and populist anger in Europe (and the U.S.) has led to some political gains among conservatives, notably in larger E.U. nations like Britain, France and Germany. But Greece, whose economy is one of the worst, has turned sharply left, thanks largely to anger over deals that previous Greek governments struck over the country's high debt burden.

Syriza could provide a path for similar left-wing coalitions to take elected power throughout Europe.

This could open a new battle over what future politics and governments will look like and Europe, and across the rest of the world. For better or worse, a lot of leftists have more hope of political representation now than they have in a while. The lovable lefties at Jacobin magazine have called Syriza "the Left's best chance at success in a generation" and dubbed Greece "Phase One" of a larger ideological shift. Syriza's victory, then, is seen by many as the beginning of a larger movement away from the neoliberal, conservative-friendly free-market policies that have long dominated most of the Euro zone.

Here, for example, is an AP photo of some supporters of Germany's left-wing Die Linke party, rallying after the election Sunday night:

The German placard in the center—'This is really a good night, Mrs. Merkel"—conveys a double meaning: a celebration of the Greek victory, and a boasting that Angela Merkel, the right-center German chancellor who spearheaded the European debt deal that rankled so many Greeks, might fall next.

Syriza's victory is in part a reaction to punishing austerity measures...

Austerity is what happens when the free market's invisible hand punches an entire society in the neck. Without question, past Greek governments spent way beyond their means, all the way back to when democracy was established after the overthrow of a military junta in 1974. The spending problem worsened in the boom years of the 2000's. But when the global recession hit, it hit Greece especially hard; as tax revenues fell (and as more corporate taxpayers found new ways to evade their obligations), the government fell behind on its debt obligations.

An inability to pay back creditors could have crippled the global economy, so Greece's partners agreed to bail the country out—but only if it put the brakes on spending. The way it's tried to do that has been by slashing the hell out of workers' benefits. Those "austerity" cuts included:

• A 22 percent reduction in the minimum wage.
• 150,000 public-sector jobs to be lost by this year.
• Numerous pension cuts, including one worth nearly $400 million in 2012 alone.
• Laws to make it easier for businesses to lay off workers.
• Cuts to health and military spending.

But these measures not only cut operating costs: They wrecked the country's already-teetering economy, dropping its GDP by another 20 percent, leading some economists to argue the country's debt problem is even worse now than it was before. Jobs and profits dried up. Recent figures pegged Greece's unemployment rate at nearly 28 percent—more than the U.S.'s highest estimated unemployment rate ever during the Great Depression, and almost three times higher than the U.S.'s worst unemployment statistics during the recent recession.

...that hit working citizens especially hard.

The opinion of shrieky conservatives, like this dude at the National Review who compared Syriza's election to Alice in Wonderland and Dumb & Dumber, holds that austerity measures were a just punishment for a lazy, greedy Greece. Certainly, those Greek governments curried favor with citizens by splurging on vast benefits that American workers can look at with envy. But a lot of that borrowed dough didn't go to entitlements: Greece historically spent more on defense as a percentage of GDP than any other country in NATO except the United States. Even after austerity measures were imposed on the government and the citizenry, Greece kept spending defense dollars at a fast clip. And most of that cash went right back to the U.S., Great Britain, and France—some of the same wealthy countries that were setting austere terms on bailout loans to Greece.

Beyond that, it's difficult to say that the austerity measures and their effects on everyday workers were just deserts. Just as it promised to repay rich creditors, the Greek government also made promises to generations of its citizens—promises around which millions of people ordered their lives and for which they dedicated themselves to their jobs.

Imagine you are a worker who put in 30 years at a job and watched her pension rise the whole time, only to be told at retirement time that those savings are needed to pay central bankers. Imagine if the new scheme of pay cuts reduces your income to where it no longer pays for the house you and your family have lived in for a decade—and even if you or your loved ones are willing to take on extra jobs to cover the debt, you can't, because there are no jobs to be found. The very workers who create value in the economy suddenly found food, shelter and health care scarce because their promised benefits were needed to pay for decisions they never directly made.

Now, consider: When the world's powers really grew concerned about a Greek default in 2011, the country's prime minister resigned and was replaced by an M.I.T.-educated central banker who had never held office before, then an unelected judge, and finally a center-right party politician. So a banker, a judge, and a conservative helped the European powers gut Greece's social safety net. That's part of the reason that radical, workers-first alternatives appeal to so many Greeks now.

Syriza, led by 40-year-old Alex Tsipras, was formed in 2004 as a loose coalition of left parties.

Syriza—which is an acronym based on the Greek for "Coalition for the Radical Left"—was formed as a loose leftist coalition in 2004. "It emerged from a series of splits in the Communist movement," says party higher-up Kouvelakis. In addition to being friendly to socialism and antagonistic to private-market solutions, he says:

It is a party that's at ease among feminist movements, youth mobilizations, alter-globalization, and antiracist movements and LGBT currents, while also continuing to make a considerable intervention in the trade union movement.

Its leader, 40-year-old Alex Tsipras—who was sworn in as prime minister Monday afternoon—is a lifelong leftist activist who reportedly met his wife at a Young Communists meeting and named one of his sons Orpheus Ernesto, after communist guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

Syriza's leadership is avowedly atheist.

While there are some Christian democrats in the Syriza coalition, its highest leaders—including Tsipras—are publicly avowed atheists, which is a rarity among leaders of non-communist countries. It's even more controversial in Greece, where the Orthodox Christian Church is given privileged constitutional status, prayers are organized at public schools, and priests are on the government payroll.

But despite misgivings about Syriza's attitude toward religion, leaders in the movement have appeared conciliatory recently. Tsipras met with Pope Francis last month in the Vatican, praising the Catholic Church's father as "the pontiff of the poor."

Syriza's victory isn't necessarily a clear victory for socialism.

The populist wave of Greek anger that Syriza rode to power has some sway beyond the left. Plenty of conservatives, for example, have praised the Greek party for what they see as its "Euroscepticism"—challenging a Europe-wide economic program that imposes conditions on its member nations. The disturbingly nativist right-wing French politician Marine Le Pen, for example, congratulated Syriza, calling its election "the start of the trial of euro-austerity." And Tsipras cemented power after Sunday's election by forming a coalition with the Independent Greeks party, a center-right outfit.

In a sense, there is nothing more libertarian or conservative than a group of citizens banding together to argue for their economic interests. And that's just what Syriza voters have done. Austerity might be good for the Euro zone; it might be good for central banks and their clients; it may be good for American workers' 401(k)s. But at the end of the day it means economic ruin for a large percentage of the Greek population. They didn't just lose government benefits, but also an infrastructure that enabled private citizens to build businesses, hire workers, and invest capital.

"The policies currently imposed upon Europe's periphery are worsening the crisis, threatening Europe's integrity and jeopardizing growth. A Greek government that rejects these self-defeating policies will do more help than harm," wrote economist James K. Galbraith and his University of Texas colleague Yanis Varoufakis in a 2013 New York Times op-ed titled "Only Syriza Can Save Greece."

For many Greeks, then, pushing back against the financial politics of strong European leaders like Angela Merkel and David Cameron isn't just an expression of left ideology or pure anger, but a calculation of personal interest.

The Greek election will increase economic uncertainty across Europe. That's why the UK must stick to our plan, delivering security at home.

— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) January 25, 2015

Syriza has the chance to be a stronger advocate for Greece.

The fearful delusions of some conservatives and naive hopes of some communists are probably equally wrong: Few experienced political and economic observers expect Greece to turn into a Marxist-Leninist state, or anything close to it. That hasn't stopped investors and markets from getting a little loopy—they fear that Greek repudiation of its debt deal could cause a domino effect on credit markets across Europe and the world—but those dangers may prove to be isolated. In all likelihood, the country won't even leave the Eurozone—but it may threaten to do so in order to negotiate a better debt-repayment deal from Europe's richer creditors.

Greece's new leaders won't get all they want, but they may get a little relief. Multiple members of the "Eurogroup" of national politicians that oversee the currency zone said Monday that forgiveness of more of Greece's debt was unlikely. (Several analysts have been saying the same thing.) But a restructuring of the current austerity-driven debt deal was possible. "We will not forgive any loans," one finance minister said. "However, we are ready to discuss extensions to [bailout] programs or extensions to loan repayment periods."

In terms of regional stability and governance, that may be a good thing: Greece gets a stronger advocate and a little more consideration from its creditors, while Europe gets guarantees that Greece won't pop the wheels off this sputtering macroeconomic vehicle.

On the other hand, as with Obama's 2008 hope-and-change voting bloc, some unemployed Greeks and far-left coalition members may get impatient with Syriza if it doesn't hold the line on some principled Left Platform demands. That could mean a defection from the coalition government down the line and another political crisis. "Hope has made history," Tsipras said in his Sunday victory speech. But whether hope has a future in Greece, nobody really knows.

[ Photo credit: AP Images]

Cartoonish evil billionaires The Koch Brothers have told their allies that the groups they support plan to spend $900 million to influence the 2016 elections. That's a lot!

Specifically, that means that the Kochs and their rich, conservative allies who donate to the various conservative groups that operate under the Koch umbrella will spend more than twice the $400 million they spent on the last presidential election, and much more than the $657 million that "the Republican National Committee and the party's two congressional campaign committees spent" in the 2012 presidential election cycle. It is an amount almost equal to the $1 billion that the Republicans are expected to spend on their nominee this time around. It means that the Koch brothers in effect represent a political money force equal to that of the Republican party itself. "And unlike the parties," the New York Times notes, "the Koch network is constructed chiefly out of nonprofit groups that are not required to disclose their donors. Among other advantages, it makes it almost impossible to tell how much of the money is provided by the Kochs — who are among the wealthiest men in the country — and how much by other donors."

The only people who stand to benefit from a system in which unlimited amounts of money from undisclosed rich people can be used to influence political elections are rich people themselves. Statistics tell us that you are almost certainly not rich. Therefore you should be enraged about this. Why did all of the Republican candidates dutifully troop out to the Koch's conference and listen to their concerns? Because the Kochs are buying these candidates, and you are not.

It doesn't have to be this way. But this is the way it is. Until some laws are changed.

(They won't be changed by the Koch bros. They will be changed by you, yelling at the Koch bros, profanely, for years.)

[Photo: AP]

New and a bit alarming. Who'd have ever thought that this could be? True that she's no Prince Charming. But there's something in Emma Watson that we simply didn't see—until this afternoon. As it turns out, what we did not see inside Emma Watson was her burning desire to play Belle in a live action version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Now her dream that we just found out about is coming true.

First-world feminist Emma Watson took to Facebook Monday to announce her future turn in the role of Belle, formerly-cartoon-now-human victim of multiple abusive relationships and owner of several beautiful aprons:

Unfortunately, Watson has clearly not yet carefully read through the live action Beauty and the Beast's script, nor has she recently watched the cartoon, or even clicked through a YouTube playlist of the major songs. Otherwise she would know that Belle does not dance to "Be Our Guest." Instead, she sits in a chair:

It almost feels surreal that you'll get to sit in a chair to "Be Our Guest," Emma. Dancing is an activity reserved for the cursed, unpaid servants who feed and dress you.

[image via Getty]

A former CIA officer who leaked classified documents to a New York Times reporter was convicted of espionage today in federal court and could potentially face decades in jail.

Jeffrey Sterling, who was fired from the CIA in 2002, had a contentious relationship with the agency, at one point unsuccessfully suing for racial discrimination. Not long after, prosecutors said, he began leaking information to Times reporter James Risen.

He was eventually indicted in 2011 after Risen published information about a failed CIA plan to sabotage Iran's nuclear program by giving the country "intentionally flawed nuclear component schematics," in a 2006 novel, State of War.

The court was prepared to compel Risen to testify against Sterling, but prosecutors ultimately declined to call him to the stand, relying instead on circumstantial evidence.

Via the Times:

The trial was part Washington spectacle, part cloak and dagger. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified, as did C.I.A. operatives who gave only their first names and last initials, with their faces shielded behind seven-foot-high partitions. A scientist was referred to only by his code name, Merlin. His wife was Mrs. Merlin.

He'll be sentenced in April.

[image via AP]

This weekend a gay Alabama politician, frustrated by her colleagues' reaction to a gay marriage bill, threatened to reveal which of them are currently having extramarital affairs.

State Rep. Patricia Todd posted the message on Facebook this weekend, promising to out the cheaters, the Times Daily reported:

"I will not stand by and allow legislators to talk about 'family values' when they have affairs, and I know of many who are and have," Todd, the state's only openly gay lawmaker, said on Facebook over the weekend. "I will call our elected officials who want to hide in the closet out."

Todd was responding to comments from her fellow lawmakers after Friday's decision by a federal judge to overturn the state's ban on same-sex marriages.

"It is pretty well known that we have people in Montgomery who are or have had affairs …" Todd told the TimesDaily this morning. "I just want them to be careful what they're saying, some of it might come back to stick on them."

And it could get good: Todd—the first and only openly gay politician in Alabama—tells the Huffington Post she's prepared to bring up rumors and see what happens.

"If certain people come out and start espousing this rhetoric about family values, then I will say, 'Let's talk about family values, because here's what I heard.' I don't have direct knowledge, because obviously I'm not the other person involved in the affair. But one thing you would never hear about me is that I ever cheated on a partner or had an affair," Todd tells the website.

[image via AP]

At least 40 dogs have mysteriously gone missing since November in a small North Texas town, but authorities say they have no idea who is taking them or why.

Dozens of residents reported their dogs vanishing from front yards and porches across Wise County, Texas, where authorities are reportedly baffled by the disappearances.

There's no physical evidence so far, and the only apparent clue is a strange car that someone reported the same day a dog went missing in the neighborhood. But police say they still don't have any suspect descriptions or specific vehicle details.

The town sheriff, David Walker, tells WFAA he's concluded the disappearances could be "suspicious."

"It does have some eyebrows raised. Could they be using them in dog fights? I guess that's possible. Selling them on some sort of social media sites or Craigslist or something like that."

The owners say they hope their pets are at least living with new families.

[image via WFAA]

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo officially shut New York City's subway system down Monday night in anticipation of a potentially "crippling" blizzard, but according to reports, the trains are still running—city residents just can't ride them.

Despite Cuomo's announcement, the Brooklyn Paper reports, the trains will continue to run mostly because they have to.

The halting of subway service is the first ever for a snowstorm. It is ill-considered because an actual turning-off of the entire system requires moving all the cars to far-flung facilities for storage, as the agency did during Hurricane Sandy, when flooding was a concern, and rebooting from that takes ages, the insider said.

Emergency personnel will be riding the trains overnight while no one else is allowed to, per the source. The closure will strand people and put lives at risk, not because the subways can't run, but because Cuomo wants to look good, the source said.

In fact, MTA employees were reportedly "blindsided" by Cuomo's decision to close the subway completely, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

By 11 pm Monday, non-emergency personnel were shit out of luck—LIRR, Metro North, New Jersey Transit and PATH trains also shut down, Uber suspended service, and a driving ban took effect across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

[image via AP]

Well, well, well. New Yorkers lucked out last night and were spared the feared three feet of snow predicted to hit the city. Forecasts put our friends to the north and east as bearing the brunt of the storm, with 18 inches already recorded in Massachusetts—and plenty of snow still headed their way. Here's what you need to know today:

What's coming today

New York: The National Weather Service expects just two to four more inches in the city today, at most; the blizzard warning—which is about visibility, and not about accumulation—has been removed. Snowfall will likely let up by this evening.

Long Island and New England: The cities and states that got the snow New York was expecting are still under a blizzard warning; as much as another foot of snow could hit Boston before it tapers off tonight.

When does travel start up again?

New York: Travel bans were lifted in New York and New Jersey at 7:30 a.m. this morning, following Gov. Andrew Cuomo's pointless freakout and insistence that MTA close service to pedestrians last night.

• Subways and buses, which began to resume at 9 a.m., will be up to Sunday service by noon.
• Commuter rail, including LIRR, will be up and running to Sunday levels by this afternoon.
• Bridges and tunnels are open
• Airports LOL.

The New York Times has a helpful live-updating list of transit statuses.

How much did we get last night?

Image above from the Times, totals from the Post:

New York:

• Central Park: 6.3 inches
• Queens: 10.1 inches
• Brooklyn: 4.3 inches
• Nassau County: 14.2 inches
• Long Island: 18 inches

Elsewhere:

• Philadelphia: 1.5 inches
• Hartford: 13.8 inches
• Boston: 14.5 inches
• Providence: 10.3 inches

Why didn't New York see more snow?

As The Vane's Dennis Mersereau wrote yesterday, nor'easters have an "ugly bust potential," because the slightest change to eastern winds can push the heavier snowfall eastward and "result in dramatically lower accumulations in places like central New Jersey and the New York City metro area," which is exactly what happened last night.

There were two competing models that forecasters were using to judge the storm: One that showed a large band of heavy snow stalling over New York City, and another that showed that band moving east to dump snow over Long Island. The NWS, basing its predictions on the first model, continued to warn of two or more feet of snow on the city, but the second model ended up predicting more accurately. (The Weather Channel, to its credit, had the most accurate snowfall predictions. Unfortunately, as Choire Sicha points out at the Awl, the Weather Channel's completely insane website makes it seem utterly unreliable.)

But just because New York missed out doesn't mean anyone else did. In places hit hardest by the storm, namely eastern Massachusetts, large snow drifts and whiteout conditions have been reported, and thousands are without power in Nantucket; as far as the New England coast and Long Island are concerned, this really was a "crippling" and "historic" blizzard.

Did Cuomo need to shut down the subway?

The consensus is: No. The MTA has a number of reduced-service options for inclement weather, allowing it to protect its trains and tracks while still providing limited service for the few people (emergency and service workers, stranded commuters) who need it. (The chair of the MTA said as much, before Cuomo made his unilateral decision.) As Benjamin Kabak of Second Avenue Sagas puts it:

The problem with Cuomo's decision is that it doesn't make sense. It's a noble goal to keep cars off the road so that emergency response teams and plows can move through the city unimpeded. But it ignores the reality of New York City — an often inconvenient one for Cuomo — to shutter the subway. Now, New Yorkers, from everyone building cleaning crews to service employees at bars who are on duty until 4 a.m. to nurses and hospitals on duty overnight, can't get around the city because the Governor decided it was somehow a danger for a subway system that operates largely underground to keep running through a massive but hardly unprecedented snow storm. Cuomo doesn't want to deal with headlines placing the blame for the next stranded subway on his shoulders so instead, the entire city is effectively shut down.

[ Image via AP]

The company that publishes those SkyMall airplane catalogs filed for bankruptcy last week. That's perhaps not a surprise, considering the kind of junk they sold. But there might be even more to the story, because it turns out that in 2013, SkyMall merged with a company called Xhibit Corp. that had some interesting characters behind it.

The story is full of so many weird twists and turns that it is almost impossible to untangle. But let's take a walk down the digital paper trail.

On May 17, 2013, SkyMall announced it was merging with Xhibit Corp. The CEO of SkyMall, Kevin Weiss, said he would stay on as CEO of Xhibit.

That alone was strange enough, because only five months prior to this, Xhibit had been called out as a pump-and-dump scheme in an article on Seeking Alpha, a financial news site. The headline bashed Xhibit for its "Management's Shady Ties, Millions of Shares Issued for Pennies and Absurd Valuation."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/109785...

Why would SkyMall merge with such an outfit? Why would any company, for that matter?

Weirder still, according to a later story in The Atlantic, SkyMall seems to have been generating about $130 million a year in revenue. Xhibit was doing about $9 million a year in revenue. Yet when the merger happened, Xhibit got 60 percent of the merged company, and SkyMall got 40 percent.

This seems to make no sense.

Xhibit's Background

According to Isaac Silbermann, who wrote the Seeking Alpha story, Xhibit had been formed in 2011 through a reverse take-over. That's when a private company buys a publicly listed shell company and thus become a publicly traded company.

That tactic sometimes raises eyebrows. But at Xhibit there were other red flags, including that some of its managers had "direct associations to multiple dubious and defunct penny stocks," Silbermann wrote.

The people who created the reverse takeover bought the shell company for $350,000, but by Jan. 2013 when the article appeared, the market value of Xhibit had climbed to nearly $300 million, even though the company hadn't done very much and wasn't generating much revenue.

Seeking Alpha listed some of the people involved and claimed they were tied to some other penny stock disasters — companies with names like Defi Global, Opexa Therapeutics, Clear Choice Financial and Big Bear Mining.

It gets better. There was a guy named Bobby D. Perry, and a thing called the Beaux Beaux Partnership. There was a company called Azul Dia and a woman named Fabia Daniele, whose LinkedIn page lists her as an attorney and former president of Azul Dia, but now a retail sales rep for a company called CieAura, which makes holographic chips that supposedly help with weight loss, allergies, libido, and other stuff. Seriously, click on that link and see the CieAura site, because there's an amazing video where a woman talks about the chips protecting you from electromagnetic fields.

I'm not making that up.

Another person involved, according to Seeking Alpha, was Larry Eiteljorg. LinkedIn lists a person by the name who claims to be associated with "biotechnology," as well as with Reliance Capitol (sic) Inc., which turns out to be a seller of replacement windows. Bloomberg lists a Larry Eiteljorg being involved with some window and building companies in the Southwest.

Another person named in the Seeking Alpha story was Michael Schifsky, whose LinkedIn page lists only one one job, as CFO of Xhibit Corp. Forbes has a Michael Schifsky profiled as a CFO for Xhibit, with a background in energy, gas, helicopters and other things.

And yes, this whole thing is starting to sound like a Coen brothers movie.

Xhibit claimed to be in the business of "cloud-based marketing and technology," although, as The Atlantic pointed out, Xhibit was an "entity which looks to be more of a parody of a tech company than a real company at all."

The Atlantic story was published in June, 2013, one month after SkyMall merged with Xhibit. The Atlantic picked up where Seeking Alpha left off, taking a deeper dive into the business of Xhibit. Turns out the "tech" company was actually making money by selling "nutraceuticals," stuff like coffee cleanse supplements and weight loss products.

The CEO of Xhibit prior to the merger was Chris Richarde, whose LinkedIn page is worth a look, just for the photo. He lives in Incline Village, Nev., and left Xhibit in 2013.

In other documents, Xhibit was listed as acquiring a few other companies, like SpyFire Interactive and Stacked Digital. Xhibit also claimed to have acquired a social network called TwitYap. Crunchbase lists a company called Twityap in Incline Village, Nev., with a slogan, "The most exclusive social network." But when you click on the URL for the company, Twityap.com, you zip to a site called The Bag Store, where you can buy Louis Vuitton bags at discount.

Crunchbase's file on Twityap lists the company as having a one-person team — a guy named Mirco Pasqualini, whose LinkedIn page has him now working at OgilvyOne Worldwide in New York.

Kevin Weiss, who was CEO of SkyMall and then became CEO of Xhibit, has also left the building and now is CEO of Unitrends, a tech company in Burlington, Mass. (That's him in the weird blurry photo to the left.)

A glance at Weiss's LinkedIn page shows a background in sales at IBM, BMC Software, Ariba, and McAfee, where he was president. Those are real companies! He also lists seven years of working at Bertram Capital, a private equity firm.

How did a guy like Weiss end up running SkyMall, and then end up getting into bed with the nice people at Xhibit? I reached out to Unitrends, and got this back from their PR: "As a rule, we don't comment on other companies' business affairs."

Ahem.

Anyway, somehow this guy with a background from IBM ended up doing business with the cast of characters up above — and now he is the CEO of a company that is supposedly doing $100 million a year in sales and is owned by a venture capital firm and even has ties to an investment company, Paladin Capital Group, run by people from the NSA, CIA and Department of Defense.

In case you're interested, you can see the homepage of Xhibit Corp. here. Or check out the Yahoo chart for shares in Xhibit Corp. (XBTC) from late 2011 to the present. Note the huge sudden run up to $7 a share in May, 2013, right after the SkyMall merger. Then comes a sudden, sharp drop, and then the stock treads water, and then everything just fizzles out.

Someone out there knows what happened. If you're one of them, and want to dish, get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.

If you woke up this fine Tuesday morning to find much less snow than forecasters predicted, you're likely one of the thousands of angry people sprinting to the computer to voice your outrage—outrage!!!—that those lowlife, idiotic, goodfernothin' meteorologists can't get anything right. Here's why you're wrong.

Regular readers of The Vane (and anyone who read the blog's two big posts on the blizzard) were well aware of the potential for the storm to produce much less snow than was forecast in and west of New York City. Each of my posts on the topic included the following disclaimer about the potential track of the nor'easter:

The Bust Potential

The scary thing about a potentially huge storm like this is the potential for a huge bust. Nor'easters are a tricky balancing act between track, cold air, and moisture. This system will have no trouble with moisture or cold air; the precipitation will be all snow. The problem lies in the track—if the storm scoots just a little farther east than the models are showing, snow totals could drop dramatically and the forecast will be a huge, embarrassing bust.

The preponderance of evidence suggests that this could be a "blockbuster" storm (as many are calling it), and forecasts reflect this fact. Weather forecast[ing] is an inexact science, however, so keep in mind that just the smallest shift in the storm's track off of what's forecast will result in far lower snowfall accumulations.

As it turns out, the storm did form a little farther to the east, keeping the deformation zone (shield of heavy, persistent snow bands) closer to the coast. This prevented the catastrophic, crippling snows from pushing farther west than central Long Island, shafting cities like New York and Philadelphia out of the heaviest snows—hell, Philly barely saw more than a dusting.

Here's what the radar looked like during at 11:00 PM on Monday:

And here's what it looks like as I write this post around 10:00 AM on Tuesday:

Meteorologists write forecasts to warn the public about what they think will happen based on the evidence before them. Forecasters look at all available data—surface observations, atmospheric observations, weather models, radar, satellite, climatology, analogous storms, and experience—to make their best prediction as to what the weather will do in the near future.

The models showed and forecasts called for a blockbuster snowstorm forming from the Delmarva Peninsula through northern New England last night and today, with the (admittedly not-very-well-advertised) caveat that any eastward shift in the storm's track would cause the deformation zone to shift east as well, keeping heavier snows confined to Long Island and eastern New England.

The storm wasn't "false advertising" or "hype" or "a bunch of bullshit" like so many people are angrily asserting this morning. Parts of Long Island just a few miles east of New York City are buried under two feet of snow, and it's still actively blizzarding (I declare that a word) in much of New England. The Big Apple missed the heaviest snows by literally just a few miles.

Meteorologists had to warn the public that New York City had the potential to see two or more feet of snow. Imagine that absolute disaster that would have unfolded if forecasters only predicted eight to twelve inches of snow in the Big Apple, and the deformation zone had formed 20 miles to the west. The city would have gotten slammed by an extra foot or more of snow, and those very people complaining about the relative lack of snow this morning would be equally outraged—outraged!!!—that forecasters underestimated the power of the Blizzard of 2015.

As of the writing of this post, La Guardia Airport has received a foot of snow, Central Park is closing in on double-digits, and parts of Long Island have seen more than two feet of snow. The blizzard wasn't a bust, especially up north towards Hartford, Providence, Boston, and Portland, where the snow is still coming down quite heavily. The deterministic forecasts—"New York will see 24 to 36 inches of snow"—were wrong, but there was and still is a nuance involved that many people don't wish to understand, and frankly, many forecasters aren't equipped to communicate.

Meteorologists and weather outlets need to do a better job communicating all possibilities and not just the worst case scenario. Out of all the coverage I heard and read about this storm, I think only The Weather Channel regularly mentioned that the models were disagreeing on track, and that an eastward track would result in less snow. Early on in the forecast cycle for this blizzard, The Weather Channel's snowfall forecasts were always on the conservative side, and people made fun of them for it. They discounted them for it. And now those same people bashing forecasters for overestimating the storm. Go figure.

Start digging Mr. Windex :) RT @4castrnh: @JimCantore @NWSBoston 4-5 foot drift west Falmouth ma! pic.twitter.com/9gJalQv9GW

— Jim Cantore (@JimCantore) January 27, 2015

New York City's Great Blizzard simply wasn't, and people in the city (as well as New Jersey and Philly) will lose trust in weather forecasts for months because of this painful bust. If the snow had formed 20 miles to the west (which was a very real possibility!), people would be heralding weather forecasters for their accurate predictions, just like those in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine are doing this morning.

@ryanhanrahan @NBCConnecticut Send someone to do a live shot in Ledyard. Drifts are huge & its coming down like crazy pic.twitter.com/9ndiimLAFo

— Jake Troy (@jake_troy) January 27, 2015

Weather forecasting is an inexact science, and it requires more nuance than a simple range of numbers and a three-sentence summary on your favorite weather site. New York City still saw a freaking foot of snow, two feet just a few miles away, and they're closing in on three feet up in Massachusetts. The city's "CRIPPLING AND POTENTIALLY HISTORIC BLIZZARD" ultimately failed to come to fruition, but just by a couple of miles.

[Images: AP, Intellicast]

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Doddering Reaganite Peggy Noonan can remember the olden days—yes, that is clear. The rest of it is a bit of a blur, though.

In Peggy's latest piece of hazy, wistful remembrance disguised as political philosophy, she applauds Republican senator Joni Ernst's post-State of the Union speech, in which Ernst spoke of being a simple lady who grew up in a simple America where her mama had to put plastic bread bags over her shoes, sometimes, because those were her only shoes, you see, and... well, it just makes Peggy reminisce.

I liked what Ernst said because it was real. And it reminded me of the old days.

Uh oh.

America had less then. Americans had less.

Bring it on home, you wild stallion.

In Joni Ernst's case there was no embarrassment: all the other kids on the bus were wearing bread bags on their shoes, too.

I liked imagining that. I liked her reminding me of not so long ago, before America got rich.

Then why are you a member of the political party opposed to taxing the rich???????????????

"The answer," Peggy replies, taking a sip of Lysol, "is bread bags."

[Photo: Getty]

Sorority rush is currently in full swing at many of our nation's top institutions of higher learning, and that means that a lot of young ladies' mothers and fathers have, perhaps unwittingly, paid for the production of extravagant videos to make their daughter's sorority look the best. Lucky for us, they're all on YouTube.

The rush video trend started around 2010, when instead of bothering to converse with potential new pledges, sororities began making digital slideshows of cute photos to show them how fun their lives would be if they chose to join up. ("I Gotta Feeling" by The Black Eyed Peas soundtracked roughly 66 percent of slideshows that year.)

Now, it's pretty much a given that every sorority will have a 4-8 minute video—impeccably produced by professionals—to debut during rush. It's a 4-8 minute respite from robotic small talk and a great opportunity to show potential new pledges what sisters look like in bikinis, which are not typically worn during official recruitment activities.

Here are the worst ones.

Parody Rap Covers

By far and away the most embarrassing rush videos involve rap songs rewritten to jam about sisterhood. Here, AEPHi sisters at one of the most expensive schools in the country, George Washington University, squeak out their version of A$AP Rocky's "Fuckin' Problems."

"I love all my sisters it's an AEPHi problem/And yeah we like to shop, we got a shopping problem!" they yelp. Later, the gals sound off about the fun of tagging photos of each other on Facebook and playing "Santa Claus" to their "littles." They also get buck in a Mini Cooper:

This video has been viewed over 80,000 times on YouTube.

In a similar vein, there is the now-famous Kappa Rap rush video, performed Baylor University's KKG sisters. It is, at least, not based on any recognizable rap song.

Here's the hook, which I know by heart, because I was a Kappa in 2011 when this was released:

Wanna be on top...like me?

All you gotta do is go K-K-G

Keep it classy every day and night, with blue on blue you'll look just right

We've got it all right here, just wanna make it clear that never whatsoever

Could I have chosen something better!

Lol naughty! The video has been viewed over a million times.

But as cringe-inducing as it is to watch blonde 20-year-olds gesticulate like Jay Z in unison, there is a worse horror, which is this folksy Lorde remake by Tri Delts at Duke. See if you can hang on for even 20 seconds:

Help!

Pinterest Explosion

Performing a rap song is clearly not the best way to endear other women to you for life, but is performing a Pinterest board any better? Here are the University of Alabama's Phi Mus, who turned their private pool (yeah!) into a craft castle last year.

They made bubbles:

And fake colorful henna tattoos:

And flower crowns:

And big cardboard letters that spell...something!

When they ran out of things to craft, they crafted this sister's hair:

Fuck finals, am I right? The video has over 70,000 views.

A Day in the Life

One of the most popular formats for rush videos is one that shows what life would be like every day OMG with your new sisters. This one, from Delta Gamma at Ohio State, is fun.

First, you enter the house:

And then you find yourself in a hallway to hell from which there is no escape:

Oh wait, there are the girls:

And now you're all breakdancing!

See? See how fun life could be?

Pure Profligacy

Without a cool hook like a rap song or a spelling contest, the only thing left to do is rent a bajillion-foot yacht, which is what the University of Miami's Delta Gammas did this year. Really!

The entire video is concerning not just for the surely massive expense it required to make, but also because whoever's filming it seems concerned with more than uh, sisterhood.

Backed up by pulsating house music, there are gratuitous cleavage shots:

And butt shots:

And oh my god, girls, who made this for you?

A highly-trained professional who is only charging the going rate, surely.

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Last night, Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch tweeted the following:

Po

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 27, 2015

Now, “Po” could refer to a lot of things: a river in Italy, the chemical element Polonium, the red Teletubby, and so on. Or the two letters could be exactly what they look like: The gibberish result of Murdoch tweeting while intoxicated. Shortly after he tapped “tweet,” another Twitter user publicly aired circumstantial though fairly convincing evidence that the 83-year-old regularly tweets under the influence of alcohol.

That Twitter user, Anthony Rooney, responded to Murdoch’s “Po” tweet with: “There’s [a] person I know in a senior position at News UK”—a Murdoch subsidiary—“who tells me they know RM is often drunk when he tweets”:

Five minutes later, Rooney tweeted at the Irish comedy writer Graham Lineman, “The wife of the Sun editor is on my quiz team, She says RM’s often shitfaced pissed when tweeting and the editorial staff worry...”:

To the untrained eye, @rooneypoos’ tweets might look suspicious, and hardly worth pursuing further. But there is reason to give them a closer look. Before he deactivated his 6-year-old account sometime in the past eight hours, Rooney was following—and communicating with—an account that appears to belong to the wife of a prominent Sun editor.

Here it is worth highlighting three key points:

1. The editor in question appears to be David Dinsmore, the London-based editor of The Sun, News UK’s marquee tabloid. He is the only Sun staff member @rooneypoos followed on Twitter.
2. According to an online biography, Dinsmore is married to a woman named Jill.
3. On Twitter, Dinsmore’s verified profile follows a person named “Jill Dinsmore” (@tartanbigbird) who follows Dinsmore back.

This is where things get interesting. A brief Twitter search indicates that Jill Dinsmore has used the site to coordinate after-work gatherings with a regular group of people, one of whom is Anthony Rooney. Their preferred venue appears to be the Prospect of Whitby, a 495-year-old pub in the East London district of Wapping which hosts quiz competitions. Both Jill Dinsmore and Anthony Rooney have referred to the pub on Twitter. Finally, several other third-party tweets indicate Dinsmore and Rooney have patronized the pub with the same group of people, at the same time:

@Olopoto @eastendwestend @potoft @Kate_Rooney @rooneypoos @tartanbigbird A lovely evening. Thank you :-)

— Prospect of Whitby (@ProspectWapping) December 21, 2013

All of this supports three conclusions:

1. Whoever owned the @rooneypoos account frequently associated offline with whoever owns the @tartanbigbird (Jill Dinsmore) account.
2. Going by the fact that David Dinsmore’s official account follows her, @tartanbigbird certainly appears to be Jill Dinsmore.
3. Anthony Rooney, a.k.a. @rooneypoos, did indeed have contact, either directly or indirectly (through a spouse), with someone in a “senior position at News UK”: David Dinsmore.

Of course, this is not enough to prove that Murdoch tweets while intoxicated, or that Jill Dinsmore ever claimed this. Anthony Rooney may have misrepresented or exaggerated what he’d heard. But Rooney is connected enough, and his claim explicit enough, to make both worth noting.

And this is to say nothing of Murdoch’s other tweets suggesting intoxication:

@rupertmurdoch

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) February 15, 2012

Oops! Better ignore last tweet.

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) October 14, 2013

Sorry, I have been busy lately with many preoccupations!

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) July 18, 2014

Louise Mensch

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) May 5, 2012

Update (1:25 p.m.): Murdoch responds on Twitter (without actually denying that he tweets while drunk):

Believe Gawker, believe any nonsense.

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 27, 2015

Update (2:15 p.m.): Former Fox News producer Joe Muto, a.k.a. The Fox Mole, weighs in:

For what it’s worth, he was pretty well known around Fox as a lush. During 2008 election he invited a bunch of senior staff to watch Democratic primary returns with him in a private suite in the Newscorp building. (I wasn’t invited, but a couple of higher-ups on the O’Reilly staff were reluctantly roped into it.)

Rupert ignored everyone and pounded red wine while staring at the TV all night. As the night went on he got drunker and drunker and started grumbling under his breath incoherently about Obama and Hillary.

Know more? Please get in touch.

Email: trotter@gawker.com · Photo credit: AP · H/T Alex

As more effort has gone into seeking out innocent people in prison over the last several years, the number of exonerations has been on the rise. Last year broke all the records.

The rise of exonerations is good and bad. Good for the innocent people who are exonerated, freed, and hopefully compensated in some way for the injustice done to them; bad, in the sense that the ample supply of people to exonerate is an indication of scary flaws present in our criminal justice system. Here are some key figures about exonerations in 2014, from the annual report of the National Registry of Exonerations, which was released today:

• There were 125 recorded exonerations in 2014, compared to 91 in each of the past two years. More than 30 of the exonerations came in Harris County, Texas alone, but the number of total exonerations was still a record even without the Harris County cases.
• Six defendants who had been sentenced to death were exonerated in 2014, the most since 2009.
• "In 58 of the 125 known exonerations in 2014—46%—no crime in fact occurred."
• Forty seven of last year's exonerations were of defendants who had pleaded guilty, a record high number.
• More than half of last year's exonerations "were obtained at the intiative or with the cooperation of law enforcement," a record percentage. Across the nation, law enforcement agencies are systematically examining cases for possible exonerations.

The most encouraging development would be for exoneration numbers to fall even though everyone was searching closely for possible innocent people in prison. Until then, the current trends are the best we can hope for.

[The full report. Image via NRE]

It was June 2009. The Glee cast's rendition of "Don't Stop Believing" was the most popular single in America. Swine flu was raging worldwide. The tax day protests that launched the Tea Party began popping up across the U.S. months before. Unbeknownst to all but a handful of devoted Pokémon fans, against that backdrop unspooled a message board thread that ranks among the most perfect in internet history.

Titled "The name rater in Eterna City REFUSES to change my Duskull's name! HELP!", the post on RarityGuide.com's Pokémon board began simply enough. A poster named pokepizza had recently traded for a friend's Duskull (a type of Pokémon), which the friend had given the cute if unimaginative nickname "dudeskull," and pokepizza wanted to change it.

A few more experienced players drop in to commiserate and offer advice. Justin, a certified expert Pokémon trainer, explains that it's impossible to change the name of a Pokémon that's been traded to you. Perhaps if the friend could be convinced to assist?

That would be great, pokepizza counters, if it didn't force him to tell his friend that he thought dudeskull was a lame name. (He always chooses lame names for his Pokémons.) He proposes a more clandestine solution: steal the friend's DS, trade dudeskull back, rename it from the friend's DS, trade it back again, and restore the DS back to its owner before anyone is the wiser.

The only way such a flawless, well-considered scheme could go awry? If the friend himself—also a RarityGuide.com regular, perhaps—were privy to this very thread. And what are the chances of that?

Ethan is a regular at the RarityGuide, it turns out. As a matter a fact it was HIM WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT THESE FORUMS in the first place, pokepizza.

Right on cue, he arrives, materializing from the shadows like the Gastly in his avatar. And he thinks dudeskull is a cool name.

Oh, fuck.

"It's not what it looks like!", a less hardened Pokémon trainer might shout, sacrificing the naming endeavor to salvage his friendship with Ethan. But not pokepizza. Dudeskull might be a cool name, he shoots back, for a gangster.

Ethan, no slouch himself, is not going to take abuse laying down—especially not from guy who would name a Psyduck "yellowducky." That's even a more lame name!!

(Psyduck, for the illiterate, is a Pokémon that looks like a yellow duck. If naming a Duskull dudeskull is unimaginative, naming a Psyduck yellowducky is tantamount to suggesting that Picasso's Guernica be retitled Malformed Horse Yells At Lightbulb.)

And Ethan isn't finished. Pokepizza's literalist streak goes even further. He named his Zubat—a blue bat—bluebatty, and his Turtwig—a green turtle—greenturty.

Abashed, pokepizza proposes a compromise: if you hate yellowducky so much, just give him back to me. We'll reverse the trade—you can have dudeskull back, too—and pretend this dustup never happened. Friends?

Not friends.

Realizing how hard Ethan is owning him, pokepizza tries to save face, pretending that he never wanted the trade-back in the first place. You can't fire me 'cause I quit!

They squabble about trading some morebefore a third poster named scribble enters in an attempt to calm everything down.

"Why are you siding with Ethan?", pokepizza the paranoiac wonders. "Are you his friend?"

Oh my god, are you Sean who sits to the left of us in the chemistry class?

Then, pokepizza—something of a gender essentialist in addition to a bad friend and onomamaniac—reveals the true reason dudeskull has given him such angst and cognitive dissonance: Duskull is a female Pokémon, not a dude, dude.

(He even looked it up in the dictionary.)

Ethan, undeterred, has an epiphany: gender is a spectrum, not a binary, and the heteronormative status quo must be crushed. Maybe calling a female Pokémon dude makes it even a funnier and cooler name.

Plus "Dudetteskull" wouldn't have sounded as good.

The matter of gender set aside for a moment, the pair gets back to arguing about a potential trade. When that fails, another interloper advises pokepizza that Duskulls aren't so hard to catch—maybe he should just get another one and name it what he likes. That doesn't pan out either, and soon we're discussing another trade. Predictably, that disintegrates as soon as it begins.

Suddenly, Ethan is in a conciliatory mood, and reveals himself to be quite matronly about dudeskull's diet. If pokepizza is going to keep her, he should know that she prefers sour poffins to dry ones—because of her impish nature, of course.

Pokepizza, fixated still on the name, is having none of it. This friendship really is over.

Finally, after six pages of arguing, a forum moderator enters the fray and shuts the thread down. This is the way the greatest Pokémon flamewar in the history of internet message boards ends: not with a bang but a whimper.

Thread closed.

For more on the great dudeskull debate, see this helpful YouTubed version.

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Ever looked God straight in the eye? Here's the next best thing: the fellow who claims to have broken into Tayla Swift's Twitter account is tweeting what he claims are screenshots of her DMs with the stars. Take a look—just one peek.

Ms. Swift is back in control of her Twitter account, and there's no way to certify these screenshots as authentic. But scheduling a card game with Nick Jonas ("Are we bad kids now?") and making corny-flirty whale puns with musician BØRNS is pretty plausible as far as what we'd all guess she's saying in private. Swiftie also appears to be pals with geeky YouTube phenom PewDiePie, with whom she exchanges a new year's salutation like the cool-but-down-to-earth protagonist of a Disney Channel original movie.

It looks like there could be more, too:

Y'all want Taylor Swift and other celebs #? I mean she left them in her DMs:(

— veri (@tempveri) January 27, 2015

You're all whalecome.