At least a dozen people were injured when a Metro-North train slammed into a vehicle that was on the tracks Tuesday evening, according to reports.

Although most outlets are reporting one car, ABC says two cars were struck.

Around 750 to 800 people were on board when the train—reportedly "packed with passengers"—crashed around 6:30 p.m. Passengers were completely evacuated from the train while firefighters put out the flames that burned through at least two of the passenger cars.

Front of train. Talk of multiple fatalities in car. Truly tragic. My thoughts go out to their families pic.twitter.com/MASf1M95nL

— JB (@anabolicapple) February 4, 2015

Front of train completely burnt out @RidgefieldPress @NewsTimes pic.twitter.com/5xS3W5rGEJ

— JB (@anabolicapple) February 4, 2015

It's not yet clear if there were any fatalities or why the cars were on the tracks.

Update 9:15 p.m.

At least six people were killed in the collision, according to multiple reports. The incident began when a car got stuck under the railroad crossing gates, according to the Journal News:

The fiery scene began to unfold about 6:30 p.m. when the Harlem Line train out of Grand Central Terminal struck the black Jeep Cherokee at the narrow, two-lane Commerce Street crossing, causing an explosion that ignited both the car and the train.

"The gates came down on top of the vehicle, which was stopped on the tracks," he said in a statement. "The driver got out to look at the rear of the car, then she got back in and drove forward and was stuck."

Donovan said the force from the impact pushed the Cherokee about 10 train car lengths north of the crossing.

It's still unclear how many cars were struck by the train, but the New York Times is reporting two.

[video via @anabolicapple]

Joseph Carannate just got old enough to (legally) own his 9mm handgun and was ready for some next-level Second Amendmenting: He set up a sad-looking pile of dirt and wood in the yard of his suburban house as a makeshift firing range. He's just taking advantage of a pro-gun Florida law that leaves even the NRA aghast.

The Tampa Bay Times' John Romano has the story:

Residents in St. Petersburg's Lakewood Estates were horrified to discover one of their neighbors was planning to use a relatively small wooden target for shooting practice in his back yard. Their horror only grew when they discovered it appeared to be legal.

"I'm a military veteran, I'm a gun owner, but I'm not insane,'' said Patrick Leary, whose children often play in a yard that would be in his neighbor's line of fire.

"The Florida Legislature has turned Florida into a shooting gallery.''

Carannate, 21, told WFLA-TV he's just exercising his inalienable right to make sketchy decisions with pistol rounds on his jerry-rigged redneck shootin' gallery—which, Romano points out, is adjacent to "tree houses. A sand box in the middle of the yard. Children laughing and running while friendly dogs bark and give chase." Here's a shot of Romano's property in relation to, oh, probably a couple hundred neighbors in his subdivision, courtesy of Zillow:

It's not exactly an inalienable right he's exercising, but it's pretty solid in Florida. While most major municipalities around the country have ordinances against discharging a firearm in residential areas, the Sunshine State in 1987 passed a law expressly forbidding city and county governments from placing any limits on residents' gun rights.

In 2011, the allegedly small-government conservatives in Florida's Legislature, led by former NRA president and current gun lobbyist Marion Hammer (of Stand Your Ground fame), added muscle to the law, mandating fines and removal from office for any mayors, commissioners, or other local officials who tried to limit gun use within their boundaries. "If an amateur gun range does not involve shooting across paved roads or over an occupied premises, it's perfectly legal as long as the shooter is not acting negligently or recklessly," Romano writes.

The rub, of course, is that no law enforcement officers want to dub these gun-lovers "negligent" or "reckless," for fear that they may grow litigious and ruin the cops' livelihoods—in much the same way Stand Your Ground has been shown to make peace officers reluctant to immediately detain gunmen in some violent shootings.

But even the NRA's woman in Tallahassee can't believe these boneheads, according to Romano:

She said the part of the statute dealing with reckless and negligent use of guns was added specifically to prohibit the discharge of weapons in neighborhoods.

"I have to side with the mayor on this,'' Hammer wrote in an email. "Shooting ranges don't belong in dense residential neighborhoods and, in fact, nothing in the law allows them.''

Florida Second Amendment Men beg to disagree with her. Like the 57-year-old snowbird who set up a range in front of his RV to teach his vision-impaired wife to shoot a pistol he'd bought her. Or the angry Boynton Beach man who vowed to set up a range on his one-acre plot to scare a daycare center out of its plans to move next door, because "noisy kids would ruin his dream-home plans." Or a Tampa-area man cited by Romano, who plugged his neighbor's house and sliding-glass door with at least nine shots while aiming for his backyard range last month.

It may seem insane to you, and even to the National Rifle Association: a reductio ad absurdum of America's 21st-century "I've got mine, fuck you" simulacrum of libertarianism. But on the other hand, the way things are going these days, maybe it's safer than a commercial indoor gun range.

Police are still trying to determine whether the actor who killed his roommate this weekend—apparently during an argument about the actor's girlfriend—should be charged with murder.

Ricardo Medina, Jr. was arrested and booked on murder charges Sunday after he killed his roommate with a sword. But prosecutors reportedly announced Tuesday they planned to release him without charging him, pending a police investigation.

According to reports, Medina—who's claiming self-defense—was arguing with his roommate about Medina's girlfriend when things turned physical.

Via the NYDN:

Charges have not yet been filed against Medina, 36, who argued with Joshua Sutter, 36, after the roommate expressed his annoyance that Medina's girlfriend hung out at their apartment when Medina wasn't home, unnamed police sources told TMZ.

The "Power Rangers Wild Force" star and his girlfriend retreated to his bedroom during the argument, but Sutter forced the door open, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office said. Medina grabbed a sword he kept next to his bedroom door and stabbed Sutter in the abdomen, police said.

[image via IMDB]

In apparent retaliation for video released this week depicting ISIS militants burning a Jordanian hostage alive, Jordan executed two convicted terrorist prisoners just before dawn Wednesday.

Sajida al-Rishawi—an attempted suicide bomber who participated in the 2005 Amman bombing—and Ziad al-Karbouli, who plotted terrorist attacks against Jordan, were both hanged early Wednesday morning, the AP reports.

Both prisoners had been sentenced to death after they were found guilty at trial.

Up until last week, Jordan had been prepared to trade al-Rishawi to ISIS in exchange for Moaz al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian pilot who crashed near Syria.

But when ISIS was unable to provide proof al-Kasasbeh was still alive, talks fell apart. On Tuesday, the terrorist group released video of him purportedly being burned alive.

[image via AP]

A small TransAsia flight crashed into a Taipei harbor Wednesday, injuring "a number" of the estimated 53 passengers who are still reportedly awaiting rescue.

Flight GE 235 crashed shortly after takeoff, via the Straits Times:

The ATR-72 turboprop aircraft with 58 onboard was flying from Taipei to the offshore island of Kinmen when it crashed into the Keelung River after apparently ramming into a highway viaduct, Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA) said. Taiwan's United Daily News said about 10 people have been sent to hospital, and more than 40 are still awaiting rescue.

The New Taipei City Fire Department has despatched five rescue teams, equipped with speed boats, to the accident site near the Nanyang Bridge in Xizhi district, CNA said.

It's also the second TransAsia crash this year—48 people died in July when Flight 222 crashed in a storm just outside of Penghu.

#Transasia #ATR72 - dashcam via @Missxoxo168 correlates w/wider pics of scene. Bloomberg: http://t.co/BOpbjokhfa pic.twitter.com/5AliUZ5TJs

— Tom Grundy (@tomgrundy) February 4, 2015

10 injured but so far looks like none dead in #Transaia #GE235 crash pic.twitter.com/Cg6PD04B6w

— Jonathan Levine (@LevineJonathan) February 4, 2015

TVBS: Taxi cab was clipped by #GE235 as it descended into river in Taipei. #Taiwan #TransAsia pic.twitter.com/YuvtTl9xUP

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) February 4, 2015

Update—2/4 12:15 a.m.:

Several news outlets are reporting fatalities—anywhere from two to eight or nine passengers were reportedly killed in the crash, while a few survivors were hospitalized, say Reuters, the BBC and the Straits Times.

The Guardian is reporting that the taxi driver whose car was clipped by the plane suffered a head injury and concussion but was hospitalized with stable vital signs.

Update—2/4 7:32 a.m.:

Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Agency confirmed to NBC News and the New York Times that 23 people are confirmed dead in the crash, and 20 remain unaccounted for.

Just before the crash, the Times reports, the plane's pilot radioed air traffic control to report an engine problem: "Mayday, mayday. Engine flameout."

[image via Twitter]

Americans are less stressed than they were a few years ago. But the Americans you'd expect to be stressed are really fucking stressed. I guess we all just need to get that $$$.

The American Psychological Association released its annual "Stress In America" report, and the good news is that overall stress is down, from 6.2 (on at 10-point scale) in 2007 to just 4.9 in 2014. We're less than 50% stressed! Although women, parents, and young people are more stressed than everyone else.

And what stresses us out? Besides the parents worried about their god damn kids, it's Money! Money money money.

• It's the single most common source of stress: "64 percent report that this is a very or somewhat significant source of stress." The second and third most common are "work" and "the economy," which are other ways of saying "money."
• Stress among low-income people is becoming more pronounced: "In 2007, average reported stress levels were the same regardless of income, but now, those living in lower-income households (making less than $50,000 per year) report higher overall stress levels than those living in higher-income households."
• American in lower income households are almost twice as likely to say that "their financial situation or lack of money prevents them from living a healthy lifestyle."

America will not be safe from stress until we achieve true economic independence for all, and also make all the kids disappear (which would save a lot of money).

[Photo: Shutterstock]

I don't watch MasterChef Jr., but I did see fifteen minutes of it last night and, uh, did you know a baby is competing on that show?

Or should I say, did you know a baby used to be competing on that show before he got (incorrectly) kicked off last night?

A baby did used to be on that show: a sweet baby named Riley. He was tiny and blond. I'm not sure of his age, but if I were to guess I would say he was, hmm, around nine months old—just a tiny little peach. Here is a clip from a few weeks ago:

He made it to MasterChef Jr.'s final eight and was kicked off (insane) last night, along with a young lady named "Ryan Kate." They each had to make a salmon dish, and each of them did it somewhat poorly. "More poorly than you'd expect a baby to make a salmon dish?" you're wondering, given you've just watched a clip that illustrates the fact that we are dealing with a baby.

No.

Each dish looked basically fine, like if you made it and you had a nice enough boyfriend he would eat it all and tell you it was great. "Looks like a baby made this," the judges didn't say. And yet, they were both kicked off—even the very cute tiny one who would have possibly guaranteed at least one repeat viewer, if she again came across this show on TV while she had some downtime.

Here he is getting kicked off of the reality show he should have won:

I'm crying, too, Riley.

[image via Fox]

"Make it happy!" Coca-Cola's new marketing campaign exhorts. The campaign, introduced during a Super Bowl commercial, is accompanied by a stunt through which Twitter users reply to negative tweets with the hashtag "#MakeItHappy"; Coca-Cola then transforms those tweets into cute ASCII art. "We turned the hate you found into something happy," @CocaCola chirps.

The Twitter stunt poses an interesting hermeneutical question. Below, for example, you will see the official Coca-Cola account tweet "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children."

This, the fourteen-word slogan of white nationalism, seems "off-brand" for Coca-Cola. But there it is, on its Twitter account, plain as day. Even when the text is shaped like a dog, it is disconcerting to see Coca-Cola, the soda company, urge its social-media followers to safeguard the existence and reproduction of white racists. Is Coca-Cola a white nationalist organization? Its Twitter says: Yes.

It's true—we asked Coca-Cola to tweet about its concern for the continuing existence of the white race. But this is not particularly different from asking for a retweet from a brand or a celebrity. If we asked Coca-Cola to retweet, for example, the first four paragraphs of Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf, would it?

As it turns out, yes. Gawker Editorial Labs director Adam Pash built us a bot to tweet the book line-by-line, and then tweet at Coke to #SignalBoost Hitler and #MakeItHappy. Below, read Mein Kampf, as told by the global soft-drink manufacturing and distribution corporation Coca-Cola:

It has turned out fortunate for me to-day that destiny appointed Braunau-on-the-Inn to be my birthplace.

For that little town is situated just on the frontier between those two States the reunion of which seems,

at least to us of the younger generation,

a task to which we should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means should be employed.

German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland. And not indeed on any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no.

Even if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it ought to take place. People of the same blood should be in the same REICH. The German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they shall have brought all their children together in the one State.

When the territory of the REICH embraces all the Germans and finds itself unable to assure them a livelihood,

only then can the moral right arise, from the need of the people to acquire foreign territory. The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.

And so this little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great task. But in another regard also it points to a lesson that is applicable to our day. Over a hundred years ago this sequestered spot was the

scene of a tragic calamity which affected the whole German nation and will be remembered for ever, at least in the annals of German history. At the time of our Fatherland's deepest humiliation a bookseller, Johannes Palm,

uncompromising nationalist and enemy of the French, was put to death here because he had the misfortune to have loved Germany well. He obstinately refused to disclose the names of his associates, or rather the principals who were chiefly responsible for the affair. Just as it happened with Leo Schlageter. The former, like the latter, was denounced to the French by a Government agent. It was a director of police from Augsburg who won an ignoble renown on that occasion and set the example which was to be copied at a later date by the

neo-German officials of the REICH under Herr Severing's regime. In this little town on the Inn, haloed by the memory of a German martyr, a town that was Bavarian by blood but under the rule of the Austrian State, my parents were domiciled towards the end of the last century.

My father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very conscientiously.

At this point, Coca-Cola stopped responding to our bot. We understand; its point had been made: Coca-Cola had republished a portion of Mein Kampf.

UPDATE 2:02 P.M.: It appears as though Coke has suspended the campaign. All Mein Kampf tweets have been removed and the @CocaCola handle is no longer responding to #MakeItHappy tweets with ASCII art, or at all really. We reached out to Coke for comment, and have not received a response. Happiness has been destroyed, for now.

[Top image by Jim Cooke, source photo via Getty]

Remember: Gawker is posting less often to the front page. Happening elsewhere: Defamer Girl Doesn't Care If It's Your Bat Mitzvah, She Will Get Nick Jonas | Newsfeed Watch Game of Thrones' "Mountain" Break a 1,000-Year-Old Lifting Record | Internet This Revenge Porn Creep Is Going to Prisonhttp://gawker.com/how-to-read-ga...

Last Monday, on the night of the blizzard that talked a big talk but then never came, I was batting around an idea, one of many that had to do with the dating app Tinder, with my colleague Sam.

"What if I asked guys out for drinks to see how many say yes?"

At that point, Governor Cuomo was halting public transport at 11 p.m. and snow panic was rampant. The joke was that haha, men sure are thirsty; even if they didn't come out to meet me during a citywide weather emergency, they'd certainly entertain the idea. Haha, silly men. Haha, what fools.

I sent off a few messages to random men that read "Hey want to get a drink tonight?" In response, I received a number of "sures," as well as a few questions, like "Isn't it supposed to storm tonight?" and "I'm stuck in Tribeca, where are you going to be?"

I quickly lost interest in the game. By the fifth or sixth message, I started feeling guilty at being flippant and dishonest and decided to stop. Pretending to want to go out with men just to have them respond that they honestly would be willing to meet up, despite the shutdown of the city's transit services and a possibly impending blizzard, brought me no joy. I closed Tinder and went out with my friends instead.

On Monday, Sam published the details behind a different kind of Tinder stunt, one that could only be crafted by a man (it was assigned, over Sam's protests, by Gawker editor-in-chief Max Read), but one that was the perfect fit for the dating app du jour. Sam relayed a story of a friend telling him that the greatest line to use when opening a Tinder dialogue with a woman is "There she is"—and then proceeded to, for the sake of journalism use "there she is" on more than a dozen Tinder matches in pick-up attempt assembly line.

This idea is flawed for a number of reasons. The first is that Sam didn't actually have success in any of the exchanges in which he used the line, success on Tinder being defined as going out with someone, not just getting them to respond to you (he mostly gave up after getting an initial response). The second being that it puts all the onus on the woman to embrace this brand of fuckery as something cute and worth entertaining.

Nevertheless, Sam argued, with confidence, that "There she is" is a lightyears better greeting than "Hey." He's not wrong. He may be throwing limp word-spaghetti at a wall, but he's not wrong.

After reading Sam's ode to "There she is," the deletion of Tinder seemed to me a foregone conclusion. "The Only Tinder Opening Line You Need" was actually an ode to The Last Tinder Opening Line You'll Ever Use. Tinder, one of the biggest timesucks on my phone (I tend to use it on weeknights, high, and in groups of my friends, probably three or four times a week) in its current zeitgeisty incarnation, is stupid and harmful because it only makes romantic human connection harder.

Here is a recent sampling of messages that men have sent me on Tinder:

Hey, how is your weekend starting?

Hi Dayna
What is your tune?

Guitar? How long have you been playing? :)

Any interest in a threesome with me and another girl? No pressure :)

Tell me something interesting

You look like trouble ;)

Hey there

[three days later]

Any clues on how to get your attention?

While my levels of interaction and action on Tinder vary depending on my current social commitments, interest in sex, or otherwise, this sample shows a spectrum of the kind of messages I receive. From the unthreateningly friendly to the outward sexual proposal to comments on my photos and—my favorite—the table turner: No, you tell ME something interesting, pal.

Fairly frequently men will message me about my bio, which is a cheap callout to an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia about online dating:

The messages I get and the messages I write (and even the stupid pranks that my colleagues and I dream up) are aligned with what Tinder demands of its users: not much. In fact, Tinder could be considered a perfect app in how precisely expectations are met from user performance. Several reviews of the app point to it being a perfect remedy for boredom, while many others explore its inability to filter matches. This Apple app store review of Tinder seems to nail it perfectly: "I've met a decent amount of people on this app, it works pretty well."

It works pretty well, yes. Sure. While Tinder's initial goal was more in line with Grindr—quick match-ups explicitly for sex—it's become so successful as a straightforward casual dating service that I've found that most of my friends ditched the clunkier OkCupid for it: Communication was faster, there were no quizzes to take or questions to answer, and, importantly, you can see how many friends you and your Tinder matches have in common. Tinder unseated OkCupid as the murky hookup-cum-dating app of my generation because it's the one people my age deserve: lazy, flaky, and frivolous.

But this all comes at a cost. Not until I used the app for a year did I begin to process the effects Tinder was having on my ability to find men attractive or desirable. Tinder is fun and lighthearted until it no longer is. I had told a female friend in a serious relationship that I'd "reached the end of Tinder," and she responded with shock. When I described what I meant—that I'd swiped right on everyone I liked already and was left with the Sisyphean task of swiping left until eternity—her boyfriend told me that he'd had that experience, too. I switched over to female-only Tinder in response and immediately felt revived by the prospect of future attractive and available mates. Tinder had bludgeoned my brain, stripping all the fun out of seeking chemical attraction in real life and in real places. I could swipe, laugh, send screencaps of goofy profiles to my friends, and not take any of it seriously.

But why would I do that if I was actually interested in meeting a future partner?

Tinder seems to both play to and manipulate the single men and women who occupy today's precarious dating landscape. By making the process so casual and disconnected, it recognizes that nontraditional relationships and sexual encounters are the norm today. But by allowing us to play into our desire for a simple, no-frills path to hookups and dating, the swipe-right culture makes you start to feel like everyone looks and is the same. Tinder gives us what we think we want, but without the spark or intrigue, or any of the human effort that normally goes into sex and dating.

A recent conversation I had with a female friend revealed that both of us would rather have kids than a spouse. Later, we discovered that out of our circle of female friends, several others felt the same. Not necessarily because it was "practical," (I was raised by a single mother so I'm aware of how furious this would make her) but because the likelihood of finding an adult man who would fulfill our reasonable needs seemed so preposterous and unlikely. Between Tinder (a bag of worms), bars (I don't really drink), colleagues ("There she is"), and pure happenstance (?), physically giving birth to a child seems like more of a surefire positive life choice than endlessly searching for a partner to whom I can relate.

Last Wednesday, my colleagues at Deadspin, a music blog for dads, published a guide called "How to Hit On Girls In The Club (Or Not)." Conveniently, I had been out dancing with a girlfriend only two weeks prior, so the advice writer Lily Benson doled out felt like hungover reverberations from my brain. "Don't lurk" would have been useful; "Say hi and introduce yourself" would have, too. What I wouldn't have expected is that "Hands off, Handsy" would have meant more to me than just pushing away men trying to grind.

While my friend and I danced, a man and his bros approached us with some benign comment about joining us. My girlfriend and I had decided that we just wanted to spend the night dancing with each other. She politely responded to the man, who was about six-foot-five, "No, thank you. We aren't interested." The group of men stalked away and we kept moving.

An hour or so later, the very tall man walked behind me and whether my fault or his, bumped into my back and spilled beer on himself. I turned around to apologize, but before I could say anything he had raised his fist above his head toward me and said, "I would sock you if you weren't so pretty." I was shocked into stillness and grabbed my friend to move to a different part of the room. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't attempt to have him kicked out.

I am not by any stretch saying this behavior is normal, nor do I encounter treatment like this every time I go out. But instances like these—of which every single woman you speak to has droves and droves to contribute—color the way I interact with men and find the ability to trust their gender in both public, private, and digital spheres. Tinder was very early on criticized for being a superficial simplification of dating, but ultimately, I don't think its image-focused setup is the app's greatest offense. Its enormous flaw is in the way it has further trivialized the communication between potential sexual partners. Its interface is an exact replica of the iPhone text message format, which removes another layer of seriousness because it suggests to us that we already know these people. We're live-texting them like we would our own friends. In a world where very few spaces are safe and comfortable for women, this minimization of the dating process can feel frightening, unwelcome, and most of all, disheartening. Tinder feels like one more arena where men feel entitled to accessing women simply because, on the app, women get to judge men's images as ruthlessly as men judge us every single day.

If Tinder has been successful in helping people reach sexual satisfaction, I applaud it. If certain interactions have borne lasting relationships, even better. But when we are living in a time where guides have been written to aid men to greater Tinder success alongside guides that explain how to interact with women in the real world, the middle ground isn't in a simple "There she is." While there is no prescriptive method for how any man should talk to any woman, Tinder's brand of hastening and streamlining the process of dating until it is crushed into glib or tawdry one-liners sent off to a dozen blank women is not really the best place to start, not even if your editor thinks it's funny. If men don't know how to talk to women already, Tinder sure as hell can't save them.

Last month, I got an email from my grandchild-obsessed mother with the subject "This sounded different!" Inside was a link to an app called Hinge and, before even clicking, I knew exactly what it was. Another dating app with a trends-well-with-millenials name and a marketing campaign featuring bland attractive white people having a blast at a rooftop bar or on a beach in Nantucket, huddled around a bonfire.

I deleted the email instinctively but dug it out of the trash again today, armed with nine parts curiosity and one part hope. I followed the link to Hinge's site and found images and words that I would never use to describe my dating life:

"Keep it real."

"No randos."

[Photo of an Audrina Patridge lookalike in a bikini having fun on a beach with two yelling bros]

Hinge was apparently supposed to be the answer to my Tinder woes by creating the possibility to "Meet real people, through your real friends, in real life." Sure.

But real people, real friends, and real life are worlds more complex than everything these apps (and their infinite cousins) attempt to imitate. When "real life" is peppered with men at bars raising their fists to you; or male friends slinging pick-up lines that will never work before your eyes; or the knowledge that no space is purely safe for a woman to just be, we can't rely on robotic dating apps to sort and harmonize our relationships with men. But it's not totally the apps' fault: we have to wonder what's wrong with the men.

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

Two employees of Christchurch, New Zealand insurance company Marsh, Ltd., engaged in an affair and in the throes of passion, started having sex in their office last Friday night. They apparently thought the building's tinted windows prevented others from seeing inside their well-lit sexscape. They were wrong.

In fact, the couple was in full view of the packed pub across the street, Carlton Bar and Eatery.

"Everyone knew about it," Alex Wilton, who was at the bar and uploaded photos and videos of the tryst to Facebook, told 3news. "The band that was playing at the time stopped because everyone else was more interested in watching them, and they finished up and had some wine. We all had a good laugh. It was the highlight of the night."

According to the New Zealand Herald, the man is married with children and the woman is recently engaged. The man's wife apparently found out about the affair after photos from the late night office rendezvous started spreading online.

Marsh confirmed the affair, with chief executive Grant Milne saying in a statement, "Marsh is very disappointed by the conduct of two colleagues at our Christchurch premises." Neither were seen at work Tuesday.

It was apparently quite the display for pub patrons, who claim the show across the street went on for about an hour. The band playing the bar reportedly honored them afterward with a rendition of Kings of Leon's "Sex On Fire."

[Images via 3news]

Art is free to create. Art is free to experience. Art belongs to all of us. Art is, in many ways, the opposite of money. And when you mix art with money, this is what you get: art that is wasted.

How does one "use" art? Well, the simplest way is by experiencing it. You listen to music, you look at a painting or sculpture. Visual art that is not ever being looked at or thought about is just as pointless as music that is not being listened to. We generally consider it to be good to put great art into museums where it can be experienced by the maximum number of people because we judge experiencing great art to be a valuable experience for everyone.

With that in mind, William Alden's little New York Times Magazine story on the luxury art storage and services market is one of those things that reveals itself as more and more monstrous the longer you think about it. Alden writes of a brand new $70 million climate-controlled warehouse with high-tech security in Queens, built for the express purpose of storing "thousands of works of art, from old masters to contemporary rising stars." The warehouse is a place where wealthy speculators hold the art that they have purchased while waiting for its price to rise so that they can sell it. Three out of every four art buyers polled last year "viewed their acquisitions as investments," Alden reports—now, thousands of these artvestments rest in locked storage spaces like the one in Queens, digitally tracked via bar code, which "helps make the art more like a tradable unit, able to change hands without even leaving a warehouse."

An aesthetic radical might argue that art is priceless, or that it should have no price at all. But even if you do believe in "the art market" and its spiraling prices, it is plain to see that for much of this art, those prices have become completely unconnected from any aesthetic value. Even if you believe that it is possible to declare art to be great based upon its makeup and to place a monetary value on art based on its greatness, that is not what's happening here. We know this because all of this great art is sitting in a warehouse, not in a museum. It is sitting in storage, waiting for esoteric financial circumstances outside of itself to change so that it may be sold for more than the speculator paid for it. This is not valuing art based on the art itself; this is a bubble, driven by the accumulation of vast sums of disposable income in a small number of hands, enough disposable income that it pours into the art world and invests in art as just another commodity, like pork bellies. To spend a large sum of money on a great work of art and then put that work of art in a warehouse where nobody sees it is a rejection of what art is. It is a statement of belief in the primacy of money over soul, and spirit, and creativity, and universal values, and all the other things that we think of when we experience a great work of art. Art is not to be experienced; art is to be bought and sold. The experience of art is not the point. It is not even beside the point. It is not a consideration.

This $70 million art-filled warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, is not far from the location of another famous art-related warehouse: 5 Pointz, where graffiti and street artists from across the world came to paint massive murals. For decades, anyone riding the 7 train or walking down the street could gaze upon this constantly refreshed tableau of art. Free art. Public art. Last year, 5 Pointz was whitewashed, shut down, and sold off as a site for luxury condos. The free warehouse of art is dead. The moneyed warehouse of art has risen. Public art for everyone disappears. Private art for one takes over.

No matter how much you pay for it, art in a locked room is worthless.

[Photo: FB]

According to a criminal complaint obtained by the Washington Post, Conrad Hilton is facing up to 20 years in prison for allegedly threatening flight attendants and passengers during a flight from London to L.A. last July. The complaint includes a detailed timeline of Hilton's alleged misbehavior during the flight, which quickly devolved into a hellish 11-hour nightmare.

From the Post:

It all started about 30 minutes into the flight when flight attendants were about to start drink service on the upper deck, but they couldn't because Hilton was standing in the aisle blocking their path.

One flight attendant described Hilton as flying from "one tirade after another," throughout the flight.

He complained that the flight attendants were ignoring him or "taking the peasants' side." He whined about being upset because he broke up with his girlfriend, one flight attendant said.

Hilton's bizarre tantrums allegedly held up drink service in the flight for more than 40 minutes as the 20-year-old paced up and down the aisles, threatening male members of the flight crew. At one point, he allegedly attempted to punch a male flight attendant but missed by "about ten centimeters." Hilton also threatened the flight's co-pilot.

"If you wanna square up to me bro, then bring it on and I will fucking fight you," he told the co-pilot, according to the complaint.

Later in the flight, Hilton reportedly accused a male passenger of giving him the "stink eye," which Hilton said was an indication that the passenger wanted to "fight or fuck him."

At one point, the flight's co-pilot gave him a "final written warning," which witnesses report Hilton tore up. "My father will pay this out, he has done it before. Dad paid $300,000 last time," he allegedly said, adding that he's been banned from other airlines.

During his court appearance Tuesday, Hilton reportedly admitted to intimidating some of the crew. Again, from the Post:

In his interview with the FBI, the agent read Hilton the part of that law that would apply to this particular case.

"An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or" the agent read.

Hilton interrupted him. "I did intimidate. But, through defense. He came up to me with his nose."

Hilton was released on $100,000 bond and ordered back to court in March.

[Photo via Splash News]

According to its publisher, at the spike of its popularity, two copies of E.L. James' 50 Shades of Grey trilogy were being sold every second. In accessible terms, that works out to more than one hundred million copies sold, to date.

Let's undertake a thought experiment. Imagine that—rather than paper and ink—each of those books were composed of: a look of unabashed contempt; a single embittered sigh; an explicit request that audiences not see the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey, vocalized by one of the movie's main stars. Imagine one hundred million pained expressions, one hundred million eyes rolled, one hundred million uncomfortable pauses that peter out into one hundred million dead silences.

You have imagined the press tour for the upcoming film 50 Shades of Grey—by now firmly established as among the most disastrous of the past decade, if not so far this century.

The most glaring problem with the press blitz—currently several months underway, though the film will not be released for another two weeks—is also the most damning for the upcoming film: Simply put, romantic leads Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan do not like each other. They dislike other things as well—the press; sex; the film in which they are starring—but it is clear their distaste for each other is the most keenly felt of all.

A routine visit to TODAY takes on the excruciating air of a court-ordered couples therapy session. The experience of filming is recounted Vogue in with a gravity typically reserved for describing a violent, horrific trauma.

It is not difficult to picture Dornan and Johnson luring one another into a "Red Room of Pain." It stretches the capacity of the imagination to think that both would emerge alive.

Perhaps the most concentrated example of their mutual repugnance is seen a recent Q&A video released in tandem with a Glamour cover story, where fans—fans desperate for the Q&A to be a fun activity, and, bless them, unflagging in their portrayal of it as a fun activity—ask the stars questions on iPads:

The casual interview presents a number of apparently baffling questions to the pair of actors: "What's the sexiest weather?" ("...Rain…??"); "What is the sexiest thing about women?" ("...Hair."); "What's the weirdest place you've ever been on a date?" ("I don't know.") ("I've never been on a date."). They struggle to name anything they have in common with their characters. They struggle more to come up with three positive words to describe one another, and they are visibly upset with each other's choices. The Q&A is a capsule representing the entirety of the 50 Shades press tour: awkward, tense, and astoundingly bad at selling the movie, from beginning to listless end.

Gunmetal Grey: "It was difficult, I'm not going to lie. We definitely fought..."

The film's romantic leads weren't the only two people on set who loathed one another. The movie's director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, has been vocal about how she and E. L. James fought endlessly about her cinematic adaptation. Vanity Fair devoted a dual-profile to their in-fighting.

Sam Taylor-Johnson, Vanity Fair, January 21, 2015:

"I kept trying to remind myself that they hired me for a reason. Some people said to me, 'I'm surprised you haven't quit.' I was like, 'Why would you think I'd quit?' I never quit anything. Not without a fight." She admits, of James, "We battled all the way through. She'd say the same. There were tough times and revelatory times. There were sparring contests. It was definitely not an easy process, but that doesn't mean to say that it didn't come out the right way."

Sam Taylor-Johnson, Porter, February 3, 2015:

"It was difficult, I'm not going to lie. We definitely fought, but they were creative fights and we would resolve them. We would have proper on-set barneys, and I'm not confrontational, but it was about finding a way between the two of us, satisfying her vision of what she'd written as well as my need to visualize this person on screen, but, you know, we got there."

Dishwater Gray: "It's not, like, a romantic situation...It's more like a task."

A recurring motif in 50 Shades' press interviews is the notion that filming the movie's sex scenes was not sexy, but uncomfortable, and choreographed to the point of absolute sterility. Of course this must be true. Few would expect that up-and-coming Hollywood actors having pretend sex in front of a film crew, over and over again, would be anything but mechanical and awkward. But, to rely so heavily (even eagerly) on the unbearable aspects of filming the erotic scenes for the romantic BDSM movie your advertorials are advertising is a curious choice.

Dakota Johnson, TIME, February 2, 2015:

"Filming a sex scene is not a sensual or pleasurable environment. It's really hot—not in a steamy, sexual way. It's just sweaty and it's not ver y comfortable. And on top of that, my hands and legs were tied, and I was blindfolded, and I was being hit with this bizarre tool. ... It was emotionally taxing. At first I was like, 'Oh my God, this is the worst thing ever,' and then I was like, 'All right, let's get on with it.'"

Jamie Dornan, The Guardian, November 2, 3014:

"Anyone who thinks actors get turned on doing sex scenes in films is mistaken. There are dozens of hairy men standing around, moving cables and lighting equipment. That's not sexy unless you're into being watched, which I'm not."

Dakota Johnson, Today, July 24, 2014:

"It's not, like, a romantic situation. It's more, um, like, technical and choreographed, and less—it's more like a task."

Jamie Dornan, Today, July 25, 2014:

The reality of it is, like, burly man you don't know very well three feet from your face, which isn't how you usually have sex.

Dakota Johnson, Vogue, January 20, 2015:

I still can't look at it objectively or wrap my head around it. The parts of the movie that are difficult to watch were even more difficult—and emotionally taxing—to shoot."

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson, Glamour, January 30, 2015:

"Those days on set were calm, but you could definitely feel tension."

Taupe Gray: "I had to do stuff to her that I'd never choose to do to a woman."

Because 50 Shades of Grey is a sex movie, Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan have routinely been asked about sex. Because Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan seem to dislike at least this specific sort of sex (fake sex, with a person they hate, in a movie they made for a job they regret), they routinely display discomfort (ranging from wide-eyed confusion to intense aversion) when talking about sex, in general.

Jamie Dornan, Glamour, January 30, 2015:

"Some of the Red Room stuff was uncomfortable. There were times when Dakota was not wearing much, and I had to do stuff to her that I'd never choose to do to a woman."

Jamie Dornan, Glamour, January 30, 2015:

"The first day [of filming] was kind of an out-of-body experience. I got there and they said, "Action!" I'm like, "What the f—k is happening? I'm a dad. What?"

Dakota Johnson, Glamour, January 30, 2015:

"I grew up in Colorado, and there are manly men there, so manliness is attractive to me. I think it's unsexy when a man chews with his mouth open or when a man is rude or wears fedoras. I hate fedoras. Oh God, I can find more things I hate about men than I like. I think it's just a phase!"

Jamie Dornan, GQ UK, January 6, 2015:

Your dignity is intact as much as it's all tucked away in a little flesh-coloured bag... As a guy you put all your essentials in a little bag and you tie it up like a little bag of grapes and it's tucked away.

Jamie Dornan, Elle UK, January 2, 2015, on visiting a sex dungeon:

"It was an interesting evening. Then go back to my wife and newborn baby afterwards … I had a long shower before touching either of them."

Beryllium Gray: "The chemistry, you'll see, is very much there, and appropriate."

Because Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson have appeared in photographs together and because the 50 Shades of Grey trailer includes (perhaps misguidedly) scenes from the actual movie, 50 Shades of Grey's enthusiastic fan base has recently become aware that the pair lack the chemistry necessary to portray two characters who want to be around each other. They and director Sam Taylor-Johnson have been aware of the severe chemistry deficiency for months. They reference it often.

Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, Today, July 25, 2014:

Natalie Morales: What is it like shooting together. I mean, is there that instant chemistry?
Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson: [Shake heads no.]
Natalie Morales: No. You hate each other.
Jamie Dornan [Nods head yes.]
Dakota Johnson: [Studies ceiling.]
Natalie Morales: He's hard to work with?
Dakota Johnson: [Loud exhale.]

Sam Taylor-Johnson, Elle, January 12, 2015:

"The chemistry, you'll see, is very much there, and appropriate."

Dakota Johnson, Elle, January 12, 2015:

"I think [the sex scenes] are really sexy. People will be very happy." She pauses. "God, I hope so. Or we have a giant failure on our hands!"

Jamie Dornan, Today, July 24, 2014:

"Yeah, I mean, I presume we [had chemistry], because they made it happen with us."

A Universal rep, Us Weekly, October 24, 2014:

"No one should question the heat or intensity of our actors."

Sad, Regular Gray Gray: "He has fans, I have no fans."

Neither Dornan nor Johnson received a particularly warm welcome from 50 Shades of Grey fans when the casting for the film adaptation was announced. Indeed, Dornan was not even the studio's first choice for Christian Grey—that was actor Charlie Hunnam, who quit shortly before shooting. If you were aware of these developments, it's probably because you heard about them directly from either Jamie Dornan or Dakota Johnson. They talk about how much they are disliked all the time.

Jamie Dornan, The Guardian, November 2, 3014:

"I am never going to please all 100 million people who read the book. I'll be lucky if half that number are happy with me playing Christian Grey. I know there are campaigns of hate against me already."

Dakota Johnson, Today, July 24, 2014, on whether it was intimidating taking part in adapting such a popular novel:

"Uh, I mean yeah, a little bit. But. I don't know. We'll see what [the fans] think, I guess."

Jamie Dornan, Elle, January 12, 2015:

"The other day, this woman came up and started shouting at me, 'Matt Bomer's the real Christian Grey,' " Dornan says. "And I was like, um, okay."

Dakota Johnson, Today, July 24, 2014:

"He has fans, I have no fans."

Storm Cloud Gray: "...I know that's going to be disappointing to some people."

These same one hundred million super horny die-hard fans, who hate Jamie Dornan and who despise her? Dakota Johnson, are expecting a certain level of sex and sexiness and specific, iconic, tampon scenes from their Valentine's Eve film viewing. This is a level of sex and sexiness that everyone involved understands will not be met.

Sam Taylor-Johnson, Variety, January 20, 2015

"[The tampon scene] didn't make it into the movie. It was never even discussed."

Jamie Dornan, The Guardian, November 2, 3014:

"There were contracts in place that said that viewers wouldn't be seeing my, um…"

Todger? He laughs. "Yeah, my todger."

Sam Taylor-Johnson, The Guardian, January 31, 2015

"I didn't want it to be graphically explicit, and I know that's going to be disappointing to some people."

Timberwolf Gray: "Think of Hitler!"

To sum up, in their own words: Jamie Dornan would like to point out that 50 Shades' success is certainly unlike Hitler's success, in many ways. Dakota Johnson would rather you not see this movie.

Jamie Dornan, Elle, January 12, 2015:

"Mass appreciation doesn't always equate to something good. Think of Hitler! But I think, in this case, it must. It simply must."

Dakota Johnson, Glamour, January 30:

"But I don't want my family to see [the movie], because it's inappropriate. Or my brothers' friends, who I grew up with. I think they'd be like, 'Blegh.' Also there's part of me that's like, I don't want anyone to see this movie. Just kidding."

Author E. L. James, for her part, is pretending everyone will like the movie.

E.L. James, Variety, January 20, 2015

"I'm pretty sure the millions of fans who have the read the trilogy will think there is enough sex."

O.K.

[Photos via YouTube]

Newsfeed Cheaters' Late Night Office Bone Entertains Pub Across the Street | Fortress America This Texas Open-Carry Activist Says He's Ready to Kill Legislators | Internet One Wikipedia Editor Has Spent Years Fixing a Single Grammatical Errorhttp://gawker.com/how-to-read-ga...

The Texas Legislature just cleared residents to legally carry guns on school campuses, and it's readying legislation to legalize open carry everywhere in the state. But the pace of its reforms is tyrannically slow, according to longtime gun activist Kory Watkins, and in a new video, he says if lawmakers don't speed up, they may face death.

Watkins—who runs the controversial Open Carry Tarrant County group, labeled too extreme even by the NRA for its antics—already took the video down from his own Facebook page, according to the Houston Chronicle. But the vertically shot phone video of Watkins in an apparent stupor remains available on an activist's YouTube page:

In the four-minute clip, Watkins explains how he believes Texas' new expansions of gun rights to schools and open carry are, in fact, hallmarks of tyranny and treason, and it might be time to put those alleged traitors to death. It's worth quoting at length; emphasis added:

Last week we got to see the games of the legislators… they tested us last week, and they're already doing it again this week… Now it's "Oh, well, open carry with a license, we'll pass. But not so sure about constitutional carry." You see, they gave us the low hanging fruit and then they said, 'Well, maybe open carry. We'll give them a maybe on this one and see if they go away."

Texans, are you gonna go away? Are you gonnna settle for the low hanging fruit that your masters are putting on the tree for you? Or are you gonna to the top of the tree and grab that fruit at the top? Constitutional carry? That fruit's looking pretty sweet. They don't wanna give it to us. But it's up to us how bad we want it, to go get it…

Texans, I'm tired of jackin' around. I'm tired of playing politically correct games. I'm tired of saying "Well, this is chess, and we gotta take this slowly." No no no no. This isn't a game. This is reality. And these are our rights that they're playing with. Okay? And I don't know if they forgot what their duty is but it's to protect the Constitution. And lemme remind you. Going against the Constitution is treason. And my friend, that is punishable by death. That's how serious this is…

I don't think they wanna mess with us too much longer. They better start giving us our rights, or this peaceful non-cooperation stuff is gonna be, uh, gamed up. We're gonna step it up a notch. I think here in Texas we're tired of jackin' around with people in suits who think that they can take away freedoms in the name of safety…

You don't have a right to bear arms in Texas. Nope. You gotta ask your master and you gotta pay a tax. Yeah. That's your free country for ya, keep singing the Star-Spangled banner and the national anthem, hope that makes everybody feel real good. Go watch Honey Boo Boo…

I wanna put my foot— I wanna put more than my foot in that door. We should be doing way more than that. We should be demanding these people give us our rights back, or it's punishable by death. Treason. You understand how serious this is, Texas? We need to start sticking more than foots [sic] in doors. Okay? This is treason against the American people. You don't sell my rights back to me, you're gonna find trouble.

Watkins, who made an abortive congressional run as a "Liberty Republican" last year, has been a controversial figure for his publicly confrontational behavior in the ongoing open carry saga in Texas, criticized even by others in the gun-rights community. He made headlines during the legislative debate on campus carry last week, when he told Rep. Pancho Nevarez in his office that "you won't be here very long, bro." Nevarez told the Chronicle that he now travels with a security detail.

Though it's not stated in his video, part of Watkins' anger over Texas' proposed open carry law is that it would bar him from obtaining a carry license, because he's been arrested for interfering with a police officer—a disqualifying factor.

He's been called "most effective campaigner for gun control in Texas" and "a cop-hating anarchist" by Bob Owens, editor of the popular gun site Bearing Arms.com. In a recent post titled "Stop 'Helping' Us, Kory Watkins," Owens ridiculed the activist's tactics:

Watkins is one of the knuckleheads that thinks slinging an AK across your back and walking into a store filled with families doing their grocery shopping is going to somehow to normalize or acclimate people to firearms, instead of generating the much more likely response of, "who is this idiot, and what are his intentions? Is he a threat to my family?"

It's to their credit that many gun-rights activists have drawn a line in the sand and set themselves apart from increasingly erratic fringe activists like Watkins. Unfortunately, their efforts don't extend to guaranteeing that he isn't armed and dangerous in the future.

Today, a jury found Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht guilty of seven charges related to his alleged role in running the deep-web bazaar for drugs and other contraband. Ulbricht admitted in court to creating the site, but insisted that he sold it to another operator and left the business before the FBI arrested him in 2013.

Ulbricht's trial has been a spectacle befitting an internet drug lord: in recent weeks, attorneys have presented transcripts with apparent Hell's Angels about murderers-for hire, given wild theories about a fallen Bitcoin entrepreneur, and argued about the lexical power of emoji. Ulbricht's defense hinged on the claim that he had been framed as Dread Pirate Roberts—the online pseudonym adopted by The Silk Road's leader—because he made a "perfect fall guy" as the avowed founder of the site. (The defense attorney claimed that Ulbricht created The Silk Road as an innocuous "economic experiment" before the real kingpins took over.)

In the end, Ulbricht was found guilty on all charges leveled against him, including money laundering and drug trafficking. He will be sentenced on May 15. According to reporter Patrick O'Neill, Ulbricht faces 20 years to life in prison.

As we left, an activist shouted, "Ross is a hero!" #SilkRoadTrial

— Sarah Jeong (@sarahjeong) February 4, 2015

Family is devastated. Mother said something about not being able to bring witnesses— doesn't think this trial was fair. #SilkRoadTrial

— Sarah Jeong (@sarahjeong) February 4, 2015

Ross Ulbricht now faces 20 years to life in prison, sentencing takes place in May

— Patrick O'Neill (@HowellONeill) February 4, 2015

[Image via AP]

Two Connecticut Muffin locations in Brooklyn both shut down simultaneously last week leaving only five remaining Connecticut Muffin locations in Brooklyn. Does anything good come out of Connecticut?

Originally I was just going to ask: "Hey, what's up with Connecticut muffins?" But after lengthy consultation with a round table of expert Gawker staff members, I've determined that there's an even more provocative question here:

Can you think of one good thing that comes from Connecticut?

I can't.

Think about it. Don't just say "Oh some college sports team is good." Try to think of one specific product or institution or cultural attribute that belongs to Connecticut alone, and that is good.

Are there any? Damned if I can come up with a single one. Florida has oranges. Michigan has cars. New York has bagels. Connecticut has... muffins? Those aren't even that good. Why would anyone want a muffin specifically from Connecticut, of all places? For that matter, why would anyone want anything specifically from Connecticut? It doesn't add up.

Anything good from Connecticut? That's a head scratcher.

[Pic via]

Since visiting Iraq in 2003, NBC and its star news anchor, Brian Williams, have maintained that Williams was aboard a Chinook helicopter when it was hit and grounded by enemy fire over Baghdad. But after repeating the claim last week, Williams was forced by contrary reports from the helo's crew to completely recant his story today.

Stars & Stripes, the military-focused newspaper which first interviewed the CH-47 Chinook's crew members, got Williams to reverse himself, though he was unable to account for his divergence from the truth:

Williams himself repeated the claim Friday during NBC's coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry.

The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment's Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.

"I would not have chosen to make this mistake," Williams said. "I don't know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another."

Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, a flight engineer on the helo that carried Williams in Iraq that day, says they never came under enemy fire. Nevertheless, Williams repeated the claim that he'd withstood the attack at last Friday's hockey game:

"The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG," Williams said on the broadcast. "Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry."

After Stripes induced Williams' sudden total recall of the events, he penned an apology to the crew of the aircraft that had gone down that day. Here it is in its entirety:

To Joseph, Lance, Jonathan, Pate, Michael and all those who have posted: You are absolutely right and I was wrong.

In fact, I spent much of the weekend thinking I'd gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in '08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp.

Because I have no desire to fictionalize my experience (we all saw it happened the first time) and no need to dramatize events as they actually happened, I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area — and the fog of memory over 12 years — made me conflate the two, and I apologize.

I certainly remember the armored mech platoon, meeting Capt. Eric Nye and of course Tim Terpak. Shortly after they arrived, so did the Orange Crush sandstorm, making virtually all outdoor functions impossible. I honestly don't remember which of the three choppers Gen. Downing and I slept in, but we spent two nights on the stowable web bench seats in one of the three birds.

Later in the invasion when Gen. Downing and I reached Baghdad, I remember searching the parade grounds for Tim's Bradley to no avail. My attempt to pay tribute to CSM Terpak was to honor his 23+ years in service to our nation, and it had been 12 years since I saw him.

The ultimate irony is: In writing up the synopsis of the 2 nights and 3 days I spent with him in the desert, I managed to switch aircraft. Nobody's trying to steal anyone's valor. Quite the contrary: I was and remain a civilian journalist covering the stories of those who volunteered for duty. This was simply an attempt to thank Tim, our military and Veterans everywhere — those who have served while I did not.

Update: Serious questions have been raised about the account Williams tells in his apology—supposedly gleaned from his 2008 notes—as well. Above, he tells the soldiers of the 159th that "I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp." That actually accords with the abundance of vivid details he provided in this 2005 interview with Tim Russert, via Lexis-Nexis:

General Downing, who knows a thing or two about this, looked out that window and said, `This is hot,' meaning it was full of enemy. It was full of unpoliced Iraqis. He might have used one or two other choice words there but I'll leave it at hot, Tim. It was no more than 120 seconds later that the helicopter in front of us was hit. A pickup truck stopped on the road, pulled a tarp back; a guy got up, fired an RPG, rocket-propelled grenade. These were farmers or so they seemed. And it beautifully pierced the tail rotor of the Chinook in front of us.

This raises two serious questions:

First, at what point exactly did Williams begin to misremember being in the afflicted helicopter, since a decade ago he was telling the same story he is now, of actually being in a nearby aircraft?

Second, how reliable is the 2005/2008/2015 account, given that the soldiers present told Stripes that Williams was "nowhere near" the entire formation surrounding the struck aircraft, and that his unscathed helo followed the others an hour later?

If David Axelrod—the former Obama adviser whose memoir is soon to be published—is to be believed, the president received some advice on charm from an unlikely source early in his first term. The Daily News, which obtained an advance copy of Axelrod's book, relates the story:

On a trip to New York City in 2009, then Mayor Mike Bloomberg offered unsolicited advice about Obama's demeanor. "'You know what his problem is? You have to like people to be successful. You have to connect," Bloomberg told Axelrod. "I saw him greet people at the golf course. You probably told him to do it. But he doesn't feel it. You have to have that!"

Assuming the veracity of this quote, there's a lot to unpack here. It really is something for a mayor—even a generally popular big city mayor—to give a popularly elected president advice on how "to be successful," especially when that mayor's national, aisle-spanning unpopularity thwarted his plans to run for higher office.

It's even funnier that "you have to like people" is advice Mayor Michael Bloomberg would have given to anyone, considering that his considerable political success happened in spite of his irritable, hostile personality and obvious misanthropy. If Bloomberg liked people, as opposed to considering them a pesky but necessary nuisance in his otherwise perfectly engineered technocratic dream city, he managed to hide that fact for three long terms in office. Bloomberg didn't much seem to like critics of his treatment of pregnant employees, uneducated parents, New Yorkers of color who were tired of being routinely harassed by the NYPD, and people who criticized his atrocious homelessness policies. Not to mention reporters! ("'Miss!' Mr. Bloomberg began. 'I'm sorry that my English isn't apparently good enough for you.'" He hated reporters, but that doesn't count because everyone hates reporters. In general, Bloomberg just hated critics.

Funniest of all is that in 2009, Bloomberg was in the midst of reelection campaign based not on attracting the support of the largest number of people possible, but rather on suppressing turnout in order to win by default—which he did, barely, spending $157.27 for each vote he'd receive. (Which, honestly, was a bargain for Mayor Mike. The former mayor's actual, not particularly complicated secret to success was always simply to turn on his firehose of money and point wherever his support needed shoring up.)

This advice seems strange and insincere, considering the source, until you get to the bit about the golf course and remember that you have to interpret it in the context of the megarich global elite. Bloomberg is not referring to "connecting" with millions of people, as Barack Obama clearly did in 2008, but rather to "connecting" of the golf-course variety. And when he says "you have to like people," he does not mean "people" in the aggregate, but rather the specific sort of people a billionaire or senator or president would meet on a golf course. You know, "philanthropists" and oligarchs and war criminals and tech billionaires and real estate barons and Thomas Friedman. Those people, not people people. For Bloomberg, it's self-evident that you have to like those people—or at least make them feel liked—to be successful. And Barack Obama has never been particularly good at pretending to like people, it's true. It's one of his last remaining unambiguously admirable qualities.

But for a certain sort of "success"—and keep in mind Bloomberg might be overstating the degree to which people like him, as opposed to liking what he can do for them—Bloomberg is absolutely right. Bill Clinton knows how successful you can be when you like the right people. You get free private plane travel, for one thing. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie certainly knows what "connecting" can do for you.

So Michael Bloomberg was just looking out for Barack Obama, in his way. If you don't work on your glad-handing skills, Mr. President, you'll never get a ride on Air Epstein!

[Image of President Obama and then-Mayor Bloomberg "connecting" in Martha's Vineyard in August 2010 via AP]