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There are many radical things about Spike Lee's newest joint, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, but you might not get that from hearing him talk about it. As a remake of 1973's Ganja & Hess, Sweet Blood pays tribute to experimental black cinema of the past. It stars Stephen Tyrone Williams as Dr. Hess Green, an affluent archeologist who develops a craving for blood (though Lee has warned repeatedly that Sweet Blood is not a vampire movie). Bloodletting aside, the film's centerpiece is a monologue on the strength derived from the difficult of growing up female and black, delivered by British actor Zaraah Abrahams as Ganja Hightower, Hess's love interest. Several scenes feature a black Baptist church service (in the Lil' Peace of Heaven Baptist Church, where much of Lee's Red Hook Summer was set). These are things we rarely see on film.

Earlier this week, I had a breezy conversation with Lee and Abrahams about their film at Lee's Forty Acres & a Mule HQ in Fort Greene. I found Lee to be as matter-of-fact as Sweet Blood. A quasi-vampire movie is a strange place to find Lee seeming so relaxed, but then, he's always existed to confound expectations. What Lee wouldn't talk about (his alteration of the Ganja & Hess plot, Kanye's wild night at the Grammys) is as notable as what he would talk about (horror, addiction). Below is a condensed and edited version of our chat. (Note: A major spoiler that's only sort of discussed is offset by a bolded warning.)

Gawker: What was your relationship with Ganja & Hess like before making Da Sweet Blood of Jesus?

Spike Lee: I had seen the film when I was in film school at NYU.

Did you like it?

SL: Yeah, I like it a lot.

It's insane. Had you seen it, Zaraah?

Zaraah Abrahams: I hadn't seen it, and Spike had said, "Don't watch it!" But I took some sneaky clips because I wanted to make sure I captured the style of it. For me, I wanted it to be classic, I wanted there to be that old-school feel of the delivery and how they moved on the screen. I didn't watch it for storyline as much. It watched it for style.

Do you think Ganja & Hess's themes remain relevant, 32 years later?

SL: Oh yes. The major theme, which [director/writer/actor] Bill Gunn talked about often when she spoke of the film: addiction. And blood was a metaphor for addiction. People are addicted now more to many different things than in the '70s when the film came out.

The internet.

SL: Social media. Video games. Porn, that's another one.

We don't have much to hold us back. Technology and society are engineered to give us unlimited access to these things.

ZA: I think that having the addiction to blood in the movie makes us realize how gross addictions can be. The sight of blood turns people's stomachs mostly, but it's something that these two people can't help.

SL: But, if I may piggyback on your astute assessment, if you saw Dr. Hess in the street, you would never think he's an addict. You think you know somebody, but behind closed doors, under the cover of darkness, you might find out some stuff that you would never thought (laughs).

The eating of the blood off the floor makes it particularly grotesque.

ZA: [Winces]

SL: That brought you back to a bad place?

ZA: Yeah.

SL: The floor was clean, though.

ZA: Yeah, Spike, it wasn't to do with the floor. The consistency of the fake blood was so real and the smell started to smell like it. It was just not nice to do. But it was great to film. It was a closed set and everybody was so respectful, but it was not nice.

SL: Drinking blood's not nice?

ZA: No. And I had just choked [Naté Bova who plays the character Tangier] as well, 'cause we did that in sync. It was a draining afternoon.

A lot was asked of you in this movie.

ZA: It was extremely difficult and there were highs and lows throughout the day. But I was in Martha's Vineyard and I'd look out and it was just so beautiful. To drag myself in and out of those places was very hard.

Was it difficult at all to do a same-sex love scene?

ZA: It was, yeah. (Laughs) I've never had to call upon those feelings and because in her head, [Tangier] was prey and I had to use the manipulation of a woman to gain that from another woman, that was difficult. And I've never experienced relations with a woman, but we hung out a lot and had a great connection. And I had no choice, so... But it was good.

***Spoiler discussion starts here***

I have a theory as to why Ganja and Hess's third, who eventually resurrects and joins Ganja at the end, is a woman as opposed to a man, as it was in Ganja & Hess. But I wonder what your reason is.

SL: Then I'd be giving away the end. I try to refrain from spoilers.

Fair enough.

SL: But we did flip it. In the original film, she chose a man.

For my information, then, as someone who's seen it and wonders about this, I thought it was tied to Ganja's monologue about how she has two strikes against her as a black woman and how that made her learn to take care of herself. At the end of the movie, that's what she does. To have a man in there might suggest that he would take care of her. Ending the movie the way you did was a final salvo on black women's supremacy and being equipped to survive.

ZA: I think what's good about the ending is we've had so many people interpret that and that is a popular interpretation.

SL: You've heard that before?

ZA: Yeah, I've heard that before.

You haven't?

SL: Mmm mmm. (As in "No.")

ZA: Me and Spike haven't ever really discussed it because he's left it open for people to think about it what they will.

SL: But it was important that Ganja be the strongest black woman possible. That's why she has that magnificent five-minute monologue—I wouldn't even call it a monologue, it was like you pouring our your heart—that we did without a cut. There's no cut in that scene. You just go on about the traumas about growing up a black girl and how it affects you into adulthood. To be a woman, that's strike one, but to be a black woman, that's a double whammy.

***Spoiler discussion ends here***

You've said repeatedly that this is not a vampire movie.

SL: Right, I'll say it again.

Say it again.

SL: Why don't you say it?

ZA: It's not a vampire movie.

But tell me how you figure. I've seen some riffs on vampire movies where the legend isn't strictly upheld, and yet there's enough of it where it's recognizable. I would say that this is that, so I'd like to hear the counterpoint.

SL: You think this is a vampire film?

Close enough.

ZA: For me, it's not a vampire movie because I think there's something very fantastical about vampire characters, and in this movie, it's very apparent that [Hess is] a successful human being, and this is put upon him. Not through the traditional vampire rules, either. He's stabbed with a relic. That is not how vampires exist. So for me, that's what kicks off the conversation of this is not a vampire movie. And we don't follow the rules of vampires where you have to hide when the light comes out. They're not biting on the neck, they're killing people for their addiction.

Spike, you talked to the Daily Beast about the affluence of Hess and how people jump to reading it as a statement. People have always read racial implications into the story of Ganja & Hess, and Hess's status in particular. I wonder if you'd talk a little bit about that. Even if it's matter-of-factly stated, pop cultural representation being what it its means that it's still a political statement to have a black man on film living this way.

SL: Well, I see them on Martha's Vineyard. There are black people of wealth that drive Rolls, live on the Upper West Side, Martha's Vineyard, Sag Harbor, private jet...

ZA: ...That aren't rappers...

SL: Aren't rappers. Aren't running up the court dunking. Aren't running up the football field.

It's a radical act still to present it, I think.

SL: Yeah, but it's the truth. But I think there was more criticism when Ganja & Hess came out on that aspect of wealth than today. No one's really said to me that's not believable. I mean, I remember after Do the Right Thing, people said to me that the streets were too clean. That block was too clean. People want to see needles and crack pipes and broken bottles, and we weren't doing that.

You called Da Sweet Blood of Jesus a "semi-genre film" on its Kickstarter page...

SL: I said that?

Yes. You wrote, "I'm doing a semi-genre film about ADDICTION. These people are ADDICTED to BLOOD—"

SL: I was trying to get money! (Laughs) Come on, I was trying to get money! I was trying to get that million 250!

It made me wonder what your relationship to horror movies has been.

SL: I like 'em. It's not something that I ever really wanted to make. But I wouldn't consider this a horror film.

No, it has elements.

SL: Elements, yes.

In that case, "semi-genre" makes sense to me.

SL: Yeah, I was trying to get that money, though.

What is your favorite horror movie?

SL: Night of the Living Dead...I would say Alien. When that thing jumps out on that man's face...

ZA: (Groans)

You don't do horror movies?

ZA: I don't do horror movies.

SL: You know what else? You ever see Magic? With Anthony Hopkins, Burgess Meredith, Anne Margaret?

No.

SL: Check it out.

I was reading the recent Hollywood Reporter interview you did, and you were talking about the outrage about Selma's Oscar snubs versus the recent protests for Eric Garner and Michael Brown. You said: "People are protesting about stuff that really matters, sir: the jury decision in Ferguson [and] Staten Island. That's why people are storming the streets — not because of what the Academy says. There are more serious matters in this country than how the Academy votes." In light of that, I wonder what you thought about Kanye at the Grammys.

SL: I don't watch the Grammys.

Well, he got upset. Did you hear that he got upset?

SL: I heard about it, but...that's my boy. That's Kanye. I'm not going to say anything about him. That's him.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is in theaters and available on demand today.

[Image via Getty]

Everyone has a David Carr story. Here is mine.

In the summer of 1999, I was 26 years old. I'd just impetuously quit a job at Mother Jones magazine in San Francisco, packed up a Saturn wagon, and moved into my mother's basement in Washington, D.C. I had no job and no real prospects, and like many 26-year-old jobless journalists, I set about seeking "informational interviews" with various grandees in the hopes of stirring something up for myself. My friend Clara Jeffery, who had worked under Carr at the Washington City Paper, suggested I give him a call, and told me to use her name.

I knew nothing about Carr at that time. This was in Google's beta days, and if I had thought to look him up I would have simply found that he ran the City Paper and had written some stuff. He was just a name on a list of potential career saviors I was going down. I left a voicemail for him at his office: Hi, I'm some kid, you don't know me, Clara Jeffery said to call, I need a job, would you buy me lunch.

I didn't hear back—and please understand that this is just an unverified recollection, because there is no one left to verify it with—for a day or two, so I tried again and left another message. A day or two after that, he calls me back.

"I'm sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. I'm calling you from a hospital in Minneapolis. My mother is dying."

"Oh Jesus I'm sorry, I'll just circle back in a month or so."

"Don't be silly. She probably won't last the week, in which case I'll be back next week and we can maybe do Thursday. If she lasts longer than that, we'll have to wait and see...."

"Mr. Carr, please, I don't want to bother you at a time like this. I'm so sorry."

"It is what it is. I'll call you next week."

She died, he called. He showed up for lunch wearing bermuda shorts, bunched-up socks, and a baggy, garish Hawaiian shirt. He didn't have a job for me, but he asked me about my life, my work thus far, how I knew Clara. I asked him to tell me how he got where he is. I was anxious. I wanted to succeed, quickly. How do you get to be the editor of the City Paper? What does the career arc look like? Where are the handholds?

I don't recall the particulars, but it went something like: "I started out in state politics, and wrote a little bit, then I was a crackhead for a few years..."

"Excuse me?"

"Yeah, full-on crackhead. Welfare. Trailer park. Then I cleaned up and became the editor of a paper in Minneapolis...."

This was before David had become a North Star in the journalism business by way of his Times gig, and before his candid memoir The Night of the Gun. His tour of duty as a crackhead wasn't that widely known, not that he ever sought to hide it. But the knowledge of it was a shock and a release to me. A lot of people in this business get mired in anxiety in their mid-20s—you see your peers succeeding suddenly and spectacularly, getting launched into notoriety on the strength of one good story. How will I get there? Am I spinning my wheels? How do I achieve launch velocity?

I was a young man in a hurry, deeply worried that I would miss my moment to penetrate the upper echelons of the career I had chosen. As David spoke, I started running the numbers in my head, and a wave a relief washed over me: At my age, David had just started freebasing coke, and had a good three or four more terrifying and lost years until he started to get his life, and those of his twin daughters, in order. He wasn't telling me this to encourage me to go fuck off for a while. It was: Slow down. Do the work. There is time.

It wasn't that many years before I found myself counseling aspiring reporters a few years younger than myself who were struck with that same sense of urgency and despair at not having made quite the splash they had hoped. And I would always answer: Do you know who David Carr is? Do you know what he was doing when he was your age?

Over the years of my friendship with David—we worked together at Steve Brill's operation after Steve bought Inside.com, and he's been a reliable friend and mentor and defender and critic of Gawker Media for most of its life—he would occasionally shit on my work, and I would occasionally shit on his. But we didn't take the shots we traded personally; he would crankily let me know when Gawker's coverage of the Times fell short, and acknowledge a clean hit with the composure of a professional.

I am a cynical person. I was often tempted to view David's gregariousness as mercenary, or self-interested. There's no doubt that he was an operator. He cultivated relationships and traded on them and championed favorites and enjoyed his proximity to celebrity. He hung out with Judd Apatow, and he liked being that guy. He leveraged the access his job as a reporter got him into personal friendships with a lot of powerful people.

But every time that temptation arose—David Carr the influence-peddler—I remembered the skinny guy with plucked-chicken legs in an ugly shirt who literally walked away from his mother's deathbed to return the phone call of some annoying, entitled kid that he'd never heard of. And I don't know, but I certainly believe that the same impulse motivated his relationships with people far more worth knowing than me.

Last night I started running the numbers again, and discovered that next year, I'll be the age that David was when he sat down to that lunch with me. I realize now that the sense of peace and optimism our conversation instilled in me was somewhat misplaced—as it turns out, I wasn't able to achieve a fraction of what he achieved in the decades between his 20s and 40s, even without the albatross of addiction that he faced.

I don't mean to say that I hoped to simply enter into a slipstream and advance methodically up some media-status ladder until I reached his rank. For a lot of reporters my age, Carr was the guy you aspire to, either to be or to impress. His was the bell you wanted to ring. A little over a year ago, the reporters in my tribe lost another father figure, Peter Kaplan. They were the two men that, for many of my peers, served as internal editors. We fine-tuned our work to hit their sensibilities, to hopefully prompt a congratulatory note or a flicker of recognition. Losing both of them in a span of months feels like losing a rudder.

Now, as I survey the gulf between where David finally ended up and where I am today, I am forced to amend the lesson I took from him. Yes, if you are willing to do the work, there is time. But never as much of it as you thought.

[Photo by Victor Jeffreys]

Last Friday, TL;DR, the internet-centric spinoff of WNYC's On The Media, devoted an episode to an interview with the writer Amelia Greenhall about Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur and writer on Silicon Valley known for loudly advocating for women in the technology industry. This past Tuesday, it unceremoniously disappeared from WNYC's website. What happened?

The podcast episode hasn't entirely disappeared. You can still listen to it in the Soundcloud stream below, or at this mirror here.

Greenhall's criticisms of Wadhwa, as articulated in the interview and in a blog post called "Quiet, ladies. @Wadhwa is speaking now," are manifold, but they boil down to this: He's built a successful career and public image by sticking up for women, often drowning out their own voices in the process. See, for example, last month's much-criticized Newsweek cover story, "What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women," where Wadhwa was quoted extensively. In it, he seems to blame women for industry discrimination:

"Women won't make the ridiculous projections about their companies that the guys will. They won't say the really stupid thing the nerds do. They are a lot more realistic and practical and humble."

And see this recent tweet, responding to his critics:

I have done more for the cause of women in tech than almost anyone. Spoke up before others dared; took intense fire; did what was right

— Vivek Wadhwa (@wadhwa) February 3, 2015

The TL;DR piece is built around direct quotes like this—but also around Greenhall's strong opinions, both about how Wadhwa could be a better advocate for women, and about his personal behavior.

On Tuesday, Wadhwa publicly took issue with the piece, accusing TL;DR of "libel" and "knowingly publishing lies"—although he didn't specify any facts Haggerty and Greenhall had gotten wrong.

@kevinmeyers @manymanywords @tldr Can't believe a @npr affiliate commiteed libel and knowingly published lies—without verification

— Vivek Wadhwa (@wadhwa) February 10, 2015

And then, suddenly, the episode was pulled. In a post on her blog, Greenhall wrote that she believed it was due to pressure from Wadhwa. On the Media's website promised a different piece would replace it. Here's Greenhall:

Hilariously, On The Media put up a placeholder text for the now un-named "Episode 45" that stated "TLDR Episode 45, published Friday, February 6, has been removed and will be replaced with a future story in which Vivek Wadhwa will be given an opportunity to comment"

But someone must have thought that it was little too ironic, because then they changed the text to: "TLDR episode 45, published Friday, February 6, has been removed. We are working on a piece for On the Media that will include a range of views on advocacy for women in technology."

Why take it down, though? Wadhwa told Gawker via email that he actually requested that WYNC leave the episode up, and "post my response alongside it so that viewers could judge for themselves who is right and who is wrong."

It may have to do with the most controversial section of the podcast, where Greenhall alleges that Wadhwa has privately contacted a number of women on Twitter, asking them to take their public criticisms of him up in private instead, either online or at his office.

"It's kind of like 'come over here and, like, sit on my lap,' you bad little young women," she says.

That discussion could be read as accusing Wadwha of sexual harassment, which may have spooked On the Media. But no one is actually making that accusation. It comes after host Meredith Haggerty and Greenhall explain why men sliding into women's DMs makes them uncomfortable—Haggerty calls it "the hand on the knee of social media"—and it's Greenhall's interpretation of the situation, not a literal allegation that Wadhwa is some kind of predator.

In the comments section of the deleted piece, a woman named Kelly Ellis wrote,

And by the way, for people saying that it was unfair to paint Wadhwa as a "predator" - I don't think that's what happened, she spoke the truth and accurately described my feelings on the matter (I was the recipient of the DMs). It IS inappropriate to send a woman you don't know a private message saying you're disappointed with her, then repeatedly ask her to come visit you after she's declined. Which is EXACTLY what Wadhwa did to me (see screenshots). Something doesn't have to be overt or physical to be inappropriate, intimidating, and creepy.

A couple of days after deleting the episode, On the Media added this explanation to its website:

WNYC decided to remove this episode, because it centered on an internet debate about author Vivek Wadhwa and we failed a basic test of fairness: we did not invite him to comment. We are planning a follow-up that will address both the original issue and the ensuing conversation around the removal of the episode. We are keenly aware of the discussion out there and will release the new piece as soon as it is ready.

Was the segment unfair, though? It was certainly a one-sided presentation of Greenhall's opinions about Wadhwa, but is that a problem? It depends on what On the Media wants TL;DR to be. If it's straight reportage, then, as clichéd as it is, you gotta hear both sides. If it's commentary, then there's no obligation to share the platform so Wadhwa can respond to Greenhall's opinions right then and there—he's a popular man who has his own powerful platform to respond.

There is still an obligation to get the facts right, though, and Wadhwa has claimed both on Twitter and in an email to Gawker that TL;DR lied about him. If that's the case, it should come out in their follow-up.

But if there were no wrong facts, only harsh opinions, then nixing the episode only bolsters Amelia Greenhall's point: That the media gives too much weight to Wadhwa's voice at the expense of the perspectives of women in tech.

[Photo: Getty Images]

SWIMCITY, U.S.A.—The climate of SwimCity is humid subtropical, with temperatures hovering around an equatorial 78 degrees between the hours of 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. It is a small city, boasting about 60 full-time residents, though quadruple this number in tourists and drifters clog its thoroughfares at any given time, giving it a bustling feel. SwimCity has no post office, no church, and no jail, though it is not devoid of punishment. The official currency of SwimCity, if it has one, is survey feedback. It has one restaurant, which serves hamburgers. The entire municipality is contained within an enormous tent, more longhouse than circus big top, but made of clear plastic. Geographically, it is located firmly within the bounds of New York State, though it operates as an independent entity. Its main export appears to be walls.

I have been plopped down in the middle of Manhattan's Herald Square, inside a Sports Illustrated Hooverville, for the sole purpose of gawking openly at my favorite supermodels, though I will also accept two Old Spice Fresher Collection Timber Body Washes and a bandana in a color of my choosing (to be revealed later). Laborers working on behalf of the magazine recently constructed the temporary swim-themed town for the first in a set of twin events dubbed "the first-ever SI Swimsuit Fan Festival," tied to the release of this year's eponymous Swimsuit Issue. Tomorrow it will move to Nashville, where it will be re-incorporated as "SwimVille" for 48 hours, and then cease to exist.

It's 11:15 a.m., and a sticky warm front composed of hundreds of New Balance-wearing adult human males is headed toward the town square.

I'm one of a handful of women who is not a wearing a crop top and five-inch heels. Everything in SwimCity is free and open to the public, which immediately alarms me.

Although it was founded on the breezy idea that city should be swim, SwimCity is not a free-for-all vacation destination, zoned for the pursuit of happiness. It is a regimented, horny hell. The most famous models like Twitter phenom Chrissy Teigen and Real Housewives daughter Gigi Hadid are sequestered from visitors by stages and roped-off lines. Lesser-known swimsuit gals pose for photos on the floor with the men who have come to see them in the middle of a work day. Gray-suited bodyguards flank them, sometimes correcting visitor behavior. No hands! Don't lean! Move it along!

It is a real bummer town.

Before I am permitted to transverse the clear plastic border that separates SwimCity from the rest of the United States, my bag is inspected by no fewer than three male guards. Dozens of jumbo posters depicting models in various states of swimsuited undress hang dramatically from the sky, providing each new visitor with a good, angled look at a well-groomed, barely-concealed larger-than-life crotch. A man wearing a tuxedo vest offers me a gray-looking slider from SwimCity's sole dining establishment, which is a cardboard, Route 66-inspired diner, complete with one Tiffany blue booth seat and a shiny, silver table. I decline.

SwimCity's residents include about two dozen Sports Illustrated t-shirt-wearing male and female day laborers, who function as its traffic cops, directing the crowds and mediating minor offenses. There are the same number of male bodyguards for half the number of models.

At 11:15 a.m. when I arrive, the visitors are almost exclusively male. They range in age from late teens to late seventies, and very few of them are wearing what might be deemed "work slacks." Throughout the day, I spot four nylon Knicks backpacks and one Yankees sweatshirt, which bears a large grease stain. Many of the men are wearing genuine Hawaiian leis—"from Oregon," I am told—that are being passed out, for free, at a tropical display. Nearly everyone is holding an iPhone, tapping their screens to snap photos ad infinitum.

At lunchtime, a moderate number of female tourists join the mix. Some of them are teenaged girls accompanied by their mothers. Some of them do not appear to know where they are. I spot three babies during the course of the day, but I do not think SwimCity is a good place to bring your baby.

The mayor of SwimCity, if it has one, is surely the gray-haired man who sits in the only chair available to visitors for the entire duration of my visit.

For a town with no standalone structures, there is a suspiciously high number of walls in SwimCity. Within its tented borders stand an Old Spice wall, a Tennessee Farmland wall, a Hawaiian Surf wall (with sand floor), two Route 66 Diner walls, and a Body Paint wall. The last of these, much like the Berlin Wall prior to its collapse, is covered in colorful graffiti and tags. Visitors are allowed and encouraged to take photos of themselves in front of the walls, but traffic cops herd everyone into lines first.

The first wall I visit is located in the Old Spice district of SwimCity, where an animated blond model poses with a parade of men of various ages in front of the Old Spice wall. She puts her arms around each one, giggling and dancing to "Superstition," which the official SwimCity band is playing at a breakneck clip. Her taut, tan torso peeks out between her periwinkle blue crop top and matching high-waisted pencil skirt. I ask a traffic cop handing out samples of Old Spice body wash near the wall if he knows who she is, and he says, "nah."

A clean-cut, J. Crew t-shirt-wearing man to my left does. "That's her," he says, pointing up at the poster of Kelly Rohrbach hanging directly above my head. I look up at her belly button on the poster and then back at her face in real life. "Cool," I say. I am dazzled that her beauty in print transfers so seamlessly into flesh and bone.

I ask the man if he lives in New York City, and he says yes. "So you took off work for this?" I ask. He tells me that he is a professional dog walker and had "a little break in my schedule." I ask his friend, a red-haired man wearing track pants, if he's taken any photos with the models.

"I tried earlier," he tells me. "But the bodyguard kept saying 'No hands! No hands!' But then I look at this girl and she's hanging all over the guys. She's loving it."

I was not able to confirm whether or not she was loving it.

Swimming through the city, I feel like an anchovy being buffeted about in the vast ocean. At 5'2, I am seven inches shorter than the average American man, and this tent is packed full of them. At least six different times, I find myself in line for things I didn't even know I was in line for, because fog of visitors is so dense that my visibility is limited to the three feet directly in front of me. In one of these instances of serendipity, I end up in a line to have my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition signed by two models. This is my first direct interaction with the living gods of SwimCity, and I am nervous.

I approach to the table and hand my magazine—purchased the night before for research purposes—to the mononymous Solveig, a strong-browed brunette. Solveig looks slightly confused by both my gender and the fact that I am backpacking through her city alone, but she signs her bare breasts on the page all the same, even adding "To Allie," a heart, and "xoxo." XOXO to you, Solveig. I slide down the table to the second model, feeling confident. I am thrilled to realize I recognize her right away.

"Oh, you're the cover girl!" I screech, wildly smiling.

She looks down like she is going to absolutely scream.

She is not the cover girl.

"I mean, you're all so beautiful!" I offer to her silence.

She gives me a "hah" and hands me back my magazine (signed with "xx" kisses but no hugs).

In SwimCity, unlike anywhere else on Earth, mistaking someone for the model on the cover of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition is one of the rudest things a person can do.

While everything in SwimCity is technically free, a pound of flesh is still exacted in exchange for body painting and bandanas. In order to get my body painted in front of the Berlin Body Paint Wall, a female SwimCity traffic cop informs me that I must sign it. She also tells me that I should take a photo with the model standing in front of the wall, whose name is Hailey.

After we take the photo, a male traffic cop shoves a bright green pen into my hand. "You have to sign the wall before you get painted," he says, repeating his coworker's command. I do. A frantic "Allie!"

Finally, I sit down in the designated body painting chair, where another female traffic cop shows me a variety of temporary tattoos from which I can select one design. I do not voice my disappointment that temporary tattoos are not the same thing as body paint, and pick a gold bracelet-style tattoo. I guess it looks like a bracelet, in the same way that a bright blue splash of color painted over a nipple looks like a bikini top. While she applies it, I ask her what SwimCity plans to do with the Body Paint wall.

"Oh we're just having everyone sign it," she says.

"I know," I say. "I mean after." Tomorrow, when SwimCity is a distant memory in the lives of Old New Yorkers; when my gold bracelet tattoo begins to fade.

"I don't know," she replies.

A short while later, I'm approached by another female traffic cop who asks me if I want an official SwimCity bandana. I say yes, and she informs me that before she can give it to me, I must take a survey on an iPad.

The survey is about the brands displaying their wares in SwimCity. Am I aware of Old Spice? she asks. Schick? Lexus? I say yes, yes, yes. The survey, which is several pages long, grows tiresome, and eventually she just fills in the answers for me, click click click. I notice that she answers that I am aware of the brand Maui Jim, but I was not and am not aware of the brand Maui Jim.

The bandana I pick is: baby blue.

SwimCity has allocated no municipal funds for an official prison within its borders. I expect misbehaving guests are simply asked to leave. Models, however, can apparently run afoul of some unknown higher power ( Sports Illustrated?) and thereby be forced pay a penalty, which is playing Connect Four with jittery visitors for endless stretches of time.

The Connect Four game is located in the cardboard Route 66 diner. The models sit on the blue booth seat, facing a line of male visitors—a line that, to them, must look unending—who come bearing nothing but their own faltering attempts at conversation and a pronounced eagerness to stare at a human woman for two to three minutes.

Wishing to observe this practice more closely, I hop in line behind six men who are waiting to play Connect Four with the unlucky Sara Sampaio. I was not able to confirm whether or not she was loving it.

Shortly after I get in line, a female SwimCity employee approaches us and asks, "Does everybody know what they're in line for?" The middle-aged male in front of me, who possibly does not speak English, does not. He leaves.

The traffic cop then asks the three younger men who've lined up behind me to leave as well, since Sara will get a break from her punishment soon. "There are plenty of other girls for you to see," notes madame.

With luscious heaps of dark brown hair and large pale green eyes, the willowy Sampaio is easily the most beautiful woman I see all day. When it's finally my turn to play, I compliment her red polish manicure and ask her how long she's been playing. "Too many games," she says in a sad Portuguese accent. "I played yesterday, too." I feel bad for her. This is not why 23-year-old women cross oceans—to work in the Connect Four factories of fake cities. Lost in private reverie, I become distracted from the game at hand. I realize too late that I've—almost immediately—set Sara up with the perfect diagonal win.

"It's okay!!!" I say, when she realizes it, several (like...20) seconds later.

She stands up automatically to pose for a photo.

"Nice meeting you," she says after the shutter clicks.

I expect a guard to usher Sara away for a moment of peace, but as I turn to leave, she sits back down. I realize that this is because the traffic cop has begrudgingly allowed one more pleading visitor to get in line to play Connect Four: a tall, thin woman wearing a snakeskin-printed crop top and five-inch stilettos, which is a louder approximation of the outfit Sara picked for the day. A couple hours earlier, I overheard this visitor telling a male companion that she "basically knows" Chrissy Teigen through a girl her half-brother is dating in Texas. Today is the day she is going to really know each and every one of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, because she's going to get discovered and become one of them, right here in SwimCity.

She takes swift, sure steps toward the drained Sara, right hand extended. "Hiiiii!" she exclaims, eyes gleaming. I think she wouldn't mind playing Connect Four all day if she had to.

I return to New York.

Photos by Allie Jones

We don't know for sure whether, when Craig Stephen Hicks allegedly set out to kill his neighbors Tuesday night, he was targeting them as Muslims or he was "merely" pent up about the parking situation at his condo complex. What we do know is that he seems to have been a visibly unstable, volatile man, and he was licensed by the state of North Carolina to carry a concealed firearm.

Hicks' defense team, led by his wife Karen and her attorney, is attempting to convince the world that when he apparently fired rounds into the heads of three young Muslim college students in their Chapel Hill apartment, it was not a hate crime but rather a "simple matter," a "mundane issue of this man being frustrated day in and day out," and a consequence of the victims being "there at the wrong time at the wrong place."

The time was 5 p.m. and the place was inside the apartment where the victims lived. Never mind what the motive may or may not have been. Rather, mind the outcome. Mind the fact that in America, in 2015, a little over two years after 20 small children were murdered with a legally bought assault weapon in their elementary school and the gun lobby's prescription to prevent future tragedies was to arm more Americans, we could attempt to file away as "mundane" a triple-slaying by a licensed gun owner with a history of making threats and brandishing his weapons.

Two sentences, juxtaposed in the Washington Post's latest report on the Chapel Hill shootings, stand as a perfect accounting of this moment in our national history:

An attorney for Karen Hicks said that the shooting highlighted the importance of improving access to mental health care, but would not comment on whether Hicks had a history of mental-health issues. Another of her attorneys said that Hicks had a concealed weapons permit.

He was sick, but we don't have to tell you how sick. Also, he was empowered to move among you, armed.

Hicks is not alone. By one estimate, concealed carry licensees have killed 722 people in the past eight years, including 17 law enforcement officers. They have committed 28 mass-shootings and 44 murder-suicides.

I am not saying the licenses are without value. Quite the contrary. I am a concealed-carry licensee, albeit a circumspect and conflicted one. And 722 deaths is a fraction of the fatalities caused by firearms in a single year in the U.S.

But these licensees represent the most thoroughly vetted of gun-wielding private citizens in America, and even that vetting cannot keep out the mortally dangerous ones. Rather, it deputizes a good many of them. Like Hicks.

The New York Times described him thus:

Neighbors knew Craig Stephen Hicks. He was the angry man on Summerwalk Circle, they said — irritated about noise, irascible about parking, hostile to religion. And armed.

Mr. Hicks was such a disruptive presence in the Finley Forest condominium complex that last year, residents held a meeting to talk about him...

"I have seen and heard him be very unfriendly to a lot of people in this community," said Samantha Maness, a resident of the complex. She said that Mr. Hicks had displayed "equal opportunity anger" and that "he kind of made everyone feel uncomfortable and unsafe."

Here's what Amira Ata, a friend of two of Hicks' victims—Deah Shaddy Barakat and his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha—recalled about the would-be murderer:

In October or November, we went to dinner at Yusor and Deah's house. Right after we left, Yusor heard a knock at the door and it was Hicks. [Yusor] told us he was angry and said we were noisy and there were two extra cars in the neighborhood. We used visitor parking but he was still mad... While he was at the door talking to Yusor, he was holding a rifle, she told me later. He didn't point it at anyone, but he still had it. Yusor called to check on us after we left, to make sure he hadn't approached us. We thought that was so weird—our neighbors don't come to the door with guns! So when I heard the news it was shocking, but it wasn't a surprise that it was the neighbor.

Yusor's father also told the Times that his daughter and son-in-law "had been harassed for their appearance by a neighbor who was wearing a gun on his belt." Presumably that, too, was Hicks, who had proudly posted photos of his armaments on Facebook.

It wasn't clear if the victims had called the police after Hicks first confronted them with a gun. If not, you could hardly blame them. If they had summoned law enforcement, and if they had arrested Hicks, and if they had convicted him of "communicating threats," then he could have had his carry license revoked, but not his right to possess guns. That would have been the best case. Every other scenario would likely have struck Hicks as a further provocation.

And that's just in North Carolina. In other states, like Florida, the brandishing of a firearm has been decriminalized along with "warning shots," because legislators were concerned about infringements on the freedoms of concealed carriers whose guns were poorly concealed.

In fact, when cases like Hicks' raise questions about whether gun licensing could be more exacting, the nationwide trend has been to water down licensing regulations. Some concealed-carry states are expanding the spaces where such carry is legal. Others are becoming open-carry states. Open-carry states are forgoing carry licenses altogether. More states are removing a gun owner's responsibility to retreat from a threat before shooting, and scrutinizing police officers who scrutinize shooters.

Advocates acknowledge that this may all lead to more shooting deaths like Tuesday's in Chapel Hill. They don't really give a shit. They see it as the cost of freedom. Freedom comes with risks, and what are you going to do, limit freedom out of fear? That's just wrong. Better to take advantage of your freedom to arm yourself. Be the good guy with a gun who stops that bad guy who managed to get a license to carry his gun to your front door.

Exactly what kind of freedom is that?

It is not freedom for the average gun-free citizen. It is not freedom for the average gun-owning citizen who keeps their weapons and their ammunition separate, under lock and key, in the house. It is not freedom for the average mother and father, armed or unarmed, who see their children off to a schoolyard in the morning and entrust their progeny's welfare to teachers and peace officers. It is not freedom to anyone who believes in the old classically liberal values of rights being senseless without attendant responsibilities.

It's freedom for a certain kind of person who sees every man as an island, with some islands more volcanic than others, and fancies himself ready to withstand any nearby island's eruption. It's freedom for the pessimist who believes the best about himself and the worst about others, who believes it's a jungle out there, and consequently endeavors to make the out-there especially jungly. It is the freedom to fulfill a self-perpetuating prophecy of violence.

It is the freedom to be a corpse-making misanthrope. And it is increasingly the American way.

[Illustration by Jim Cooke]

Valentine's Day is right around the corner, ladies—and we mean, like, tomorrow. If that Hallmark-propelled fact leaves you sad-face-emoji rather than heart-eyes-emoji, don't fret. There are still a number of attractive, eligible bachelors right here in New York City. (And we're sure there are a bunch in other cities, too! Just focusing on New York City specifically for this article.)

You might be thinking, "Thanks to this New York Post article about a dating app, I've already gotten my fill of eligible bachelors. I know what's out there, and I love it—but, frankly, I know it!" We get that. But trust us when we say you're gonna wanna meet these guys, too.

And hey—there's no such thing as too much of a good thing.

Especially not on Valentine's Day.

Airplane Man

Occupation: Real estate developer

Best date ever: "Rather than go out for dinner and a movie, or stay in for take out and Netflix, I decided to spice things up. Why not, right? So I planned a ride on my airplane wings to the tippy top of a building, and then a picnic under the stars. She was a little scared at first, but ended up loving it."

Ideal date: "A ride on my airplane wings is a must."

Go-to date dinner: "Steak and potatoes au gratin."

Most embarrassing dating moment: "Haha. Oh, god. I had so many bugs on my wings. I normally keep them pretty clean because I don't want to corrode the aluminum, but I was super busy at work and had to run right to drinks afterwards. She was like, '...Uhhhh.' Didn't end up with a second date, but I like to think things like that are meant to be."

Sex on a first date is: "Hey, if you're feeling it, you're feeling it!"

Secret solo behavior: "I know it sounds crazy, but every once in a while I love to crawl around on the ground like a little train."

TV Guy

Occupation: Financial services

Worst date: "Had to be the time this girl showed up an hour late. (Mostly I was embarrassed that I hadn't left yet.) We were supposed to go out for a movie after grabbing drinks, but the sparks weren't flying, so we decided to call it off. At one point she was like, 'Why do you even want to see a movie?' There are a lot of rude people out there."

Ideal date: "A walk in the park, leading up to my favorite little spot where I've stashed champagne and other goodies. And, you know, I'd love it if the girl could keep her eyes up here, for once! Just kidding."

Secret solo behavior: "Turning myself on and off. Ah, I know, I know."

Sex on a first date is: "Hah. I'm down for whatever, but I'm not pushy."

Ideal girlfriend: "Michelle Obama."

Little Sandwich

Occupation: Advertising

Go-to date dinner: "I know what you're thinking—no, not a little sandwich! Haha, wouldn't that be funny, though? Steak and potatoes au gratin."

Ideal girlfriend: "Taylor Swift, but with a little Beyoncé in there, too."

Date he'd love to go on: "I'd love to take a trip on a boat, way far out there."

Worst walk of shame ever: "Night after my office Christmas party, shoeless, in a snowstorm—god, don't ask!"

Best pickup line: "Hungry?"

iPhone 6

Occupation: iPhone 6

Best date ever: "As long as I've got a full charge and I'm with someone I care about, every date is the best date ever."

Ideal date: "I know that men are supposed to surprise women with fancy dates, but I'd love it if a woman could surprise me. Take me to my favorite bar, have my favorite record on the jukebox. Maybe some sort of vacation. I don't know, I'm not picky!"

Go-to date dinner: "I don't eat, to be honest."

Most embarrassing dating moment: "Oh, god, I've got a whole host of them! I guess—and I hate to admit that this has happened more than once—the most embarrassing thing is always when I run out of battery. It's like, 'uh, hello?'"

Sex on a first date is: "I don't do it, generally, but I can be convinced."

Secret solo behavior: "Video games."

Jesse Eisenberg

The "Comedian"

Occupation: "Comedian"

Go-to date dinner: "Anyplace where splitting the bill won't cost me an arm and a leg! Haha. No, no—I'm just kidding."

What he finds sexy in a date: "Oh, you know, eyes, a face, the basic ability to function as a human. Haha!"

Go-to pickup line: "Wanna hear a joke from a comedian?"

Pickup line success rate: "100%"

Favorite flirting emoji: "Flame."

Why he'd make a great boyfriend: "I don't take myself too seriously—I mean, that's kind of my job."

Fork

Occupation: Fork.

First date prep: "Shining my body, which sounds weirder than it is, I swear."

Go-to date dinner: "Salad."

Favorite flirting emoji: "Is there a fork? I don't have emojis on my phone, but they do seem fun!"

Longest date he's ever been on: "Three days."

Dating strategy: "Always always let her know in advance that I'm a fork. I've run into trouble in the past and I've learned that leaving it as a surprise almost never works out."

Why he'd make a great boyfriend: "I'm a fork. I hate to be boastful, but what more can I say!"

[image via Shutterstock, Jesse image via Getty]

Justice NYPD Beat the Shit Out of a Brooklyn Street Vendor, Then Lied About It | TKTK Williams May Have Lied About the Berlin Wall, Navy SEALs, and the Pope | Newsfeed Comcast Cashed an Elderly Woman's Rent Check, Offered Her Credit Insteadhttp://gawker.com/how-to-read-ga...

For almost 20 years, I have thought that penis-reduction surgery was a real thing, thanks to the Chinese restaurant scene in Waiting for Guffman, but supposedly a Florida teen just had the world's first. What are you going to tell me next? That vagina enlargements aren't real, either?

The Daily Mail reports that a teen complained to his doctor that his penis was too big for him to play sports or have sex (not that teens should be having sex anyway, but that's another matter for another post). It was seven inches long (which is great for him but not surgery-worthy) and ten inches in circumference (enough to make my butt spontaneously seal itself forever). His doctor described compared its shape to a football. You be the judge:

Other things that various Gawker writers thought it looked like: a baked potato and a football player with a broad chest.

This is something I wondered as soon as I set eyes on that thing, so I was happy to see it answered by the Mail:

Though his penis was so large, it did not grow when he had erections - it merely became firmer.

His penis was once a relatively normal size, but became misshapen after several bouts of priapism. From that point on, he woke up like this. His doctor, Rafael Carrion, said he found no medical precedent for treatment, and ended up cutting through the teen's circumcision scar to remove tissue on both sides. "A bit like having two side tummy-tucks," is how the doctor described it.

Here's the after:

Carrion reports that the teen is "ecstatic" and "all smiles" over his newly manageable penis that remains above average length and thickness.

The moral of the story is: Have a normal dick.

[Top image via Shutterstock; Dick images via The Journal of Sexual Medicine/Metro]

South Sudan's cabinet has called off the general election scheduled to take place in June and plans to submit a proposal to parliament asking to extend President Salva Kiir's term, Reuters reports. New elections are to take place in 2017.

This is the second such postponement since war broke out between Kiir and former vice president Riek Machar 14 months ago. According to Reuters, thousands have been killed and more than a million displaced since December 2013. Kiir and Machar had begun negotiating a power-sharing deal earlier this month, terms of which included a transitional government in place by July. http://gawker.com/why-is-south-s...

"The cabinet decided yesterday to give peace a chance by calling off the elections and amending the constitution," Michael Makuei, a government spokesman, told Reuters. The proposal to extend Kiir and parliament's term's is intended to avoid a vacuum of power should peace negotiations fall through, Makuei said.

The South Sudanese parliament—populated almost entirely by Kiir supporters, Al Jazeera reports—must still pass the cabinet's resolution. Makuei told the AFP that the term extension "would give us a chance to negotiate without pressure."

There are few good journalists left. David Carr—the New York Times media columnist, veteran reporter, and author—was one of the last good journalists. I didn't know him personally (we met twice on different occasions last year; he was kind and attentive, gracious with his time) but as a writer I have followed his reporting and criticism through the years. Writing should be work; it should inform and challenge readers, but equally challenge the writer to voice uneasy truths and confront his or her own limitations. I think Carr understood that better than most writers. He wrestled with his demons, sometimes publicly and on the page, but never lost sight of what we journalists and editors hold dear above all else: truth. Thursday night, as news spread of his passing, Gawker CEO Nick Denton captured Carr's magnitude in all its grandeur. "A light went out," he tweeted.

"David Carr, Your Best Friend" by Hamilton Nolan

He was a big guy, and he walked with a hunched-over shuffle, and when I spied his indistinct shape walking towards me from a couple of blocks away I assumed he was a homeless man in a trenchcoat, struggling for each step. The fact that he was a feared and respected media figure at a fancy newspaper always seemed like a wonderful cosmic prank against the existence of stereotypes. Within five minutes of meeting, he was telling the sort of personal stories that most people reserve for their very, very closest friends. Before you knew it, you were telling the same kind of stories. And then you were friends for life.

http://gawker.com/david-carr-you...

"Leaving Las Vegas: On Jerry Tarkanian, the Last Hometown Hero" by Foster Kamer

But that's the thing: His greatest legacy is the one so few people understand. Like I said: There aren't a lot of people from Las Vegas. Every day, all the time, people leave Las Vegas. They leave it with something more, or something less. Nobody who leaves ever really brings all that much back, but Tark the Shark did, and we all shared its glory together, as a city, as a community, for once. If that's not a hometown hero, I couldn't tell you what is.

http://triangleoffense.com/features/leavi...

"Being Real Black For You: Who Kendrick Lamar Is Rapping to on 'The Blacker the Berry'" by Rembert Browne

Kendrick is attempting a lot in one song. It's an internal monologue, made public, in which he's working out his own issues, acknowledging his own demons. Is it conservative? Is he coming down hard on black people? Is he coming down surprisingly hard on white people? Does he fully understand race and power and inequality as much as one perhaps should before jumping in this sea of generalizations? There are days and weeks and months and infinities left to parse out these ideas. But what is true from even the first listen is that Kendrick is talking directly to black people.

Kendrick's fed up. And if you're black, he seems to think you should be, too.

http://grantland.com/hollywood-pros...

"Brands Are Not Your Friends" by Sam Biddle

What's been lost in the friendification of corporate brands is that by their very nature of brand-ness, brands are diametrically opposed to our interests as humans. They exist solely to distract, deceive, and manipulate us out of our money—and in the case of Coca Cola, freely dispense diabetes and obesity. There is nothing relatable in a brand. It's an entity designed for the single purpose of extracting money from you by any legal means, no matter if you don't need or even want what's being sold. Even if the thing being sold is very, very bad for you—the brand will persuade you it's silken and lovely. A brand will systematically and perpetually convince you that your best interests are incorrect—this is the behavior of an abusive partner, not a friend. Not even a stranger! Brands hate you.

http://gawker.com/brands-are-not...

"How Drunk Is Too Drunk to Have Sex?" by Amanda Hess

Last year, my colleague Emily Yoffe recounted the Occidental case in a piece arguing that college sexual assault disciplinary processes infringe on the civil rights of men. Yoffe recommended that campus rape cases ought to be handled by police and prosecutors, and that schools could do their part by attempting to reduce binge drinking. I don't view the issue exactly the same way, but I do think that certain university policies around drinking and sex do a disservice to students by redefining the sexual assault of women to include "sex while drunk," and creating a double standard for men.

http://www.slate.com/articles/doubl...

"A Chat with Malcolm Brenner, Man Famous for Having Sex with a Dolphin" by Jia Tolentino

But Dolly was a very unique dolphin, because she was allowed to perform with a riverboat. She was the only dolphin outside the US navy who could do open water work. She could have left the amusement park any time she wanted to, but she kept coming back. So I started wondering, what was the big draw? I really don't have a satisfactory answer, but I really think she was studying human behavior. I really do.

http://jezebel.com/a-chat-with-ma...

"A River Runs Through It" by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah

Tucked into the whirl of Greenwich Village, Electric Lady could have become a priceless real-estate curio. Instead it has continued to be a place where great American music is born. Unlike many historical sites in Manhattan, Electric Lady Studios has a strict but logical door policy: no tours, no strangers. For the most part, the only people admitted are those who have come to make music—the artists and their retinues.

Maybe that's why it's difficult not to feel sentimental, blessed even, when one gets a chance to go inside. There is something about Electric Lady that feels sacrosanct. From the moment the discreet, glass-paned door buzzes and lets you through, disbelief sets in and does not fade as you walk down the bordello-red staircase. These are the steps where a very shy Jimi Hendrix, only weeks away from his death, told a very young Patti Smith his never-to-be realized plans for a universal love orchestra, an orchestra where, as Smith wrote in her memoir, "musicians from all over the world in Woodstock… would sit in a field in a circle and play and play. It didn't matter what key or tempo or what melody, they would keep on playing through their discordance until they found a common language. Eventually they would record this abstract universal language of music in his studio."

http://www.believermag.com/issues/201501/...

[Image via Page One documentary]

According to the BBC, three police officers were shot and wounded today at a panel debate in Copenhagen organized by controversial Swedish artist Lars Vilks, famous for depicting the prophet Muhammad as a dog. After firing up to 40 shots, the two gunmen reportedly escaped.

Titled "Art, blasphemy and freedom of expression," the debate was also attended by France's ambassador to Denmark, Francois Zimeray, who sent out this tweet shortly after the shooting:

Still alive in the room

— Frankrigs ambassadør (@francedk) February 14, 2015

Since Vilks' Muhammed drawings were first published in 2007, the artist has been the target of multiple assassination plots by Islamic extremists. A page promoting Saturday's event included the following security warning:

NOTE: THERE IS ALWAYS STRICT SECURITY WHEN LARS VILKS APPEARS AT A PUBLIC EVENT.

BRING ID. NO BIG BAGS ALLOWED. SAFETY CHECK BEFORE ENTRANCE TO THE HALL.

UPDATE - 12:20 p.m.: According to The Local, authorities have confirmed that one civilian has been killed in addition to the three officers who were wounded. Vilks was reportedly unharmed.

UPDATE - 12:45 p.m.: In an account of the shooting to reporters, Ambassador Zimeray compared the incident to last month's Charlie Hebdo attack. From The Daily Telegraph:

"They fired on us from the outside. It was the same intention as (the attack on) Charlie Hebdo except they didn't manage to get in.

Intuitively I would say there were at least 50 gunshots, and the police here are saying 200. Bullets went through the doors and everyone threw themselves to the floor. We managed to flee the room, and now we're staying inside because it's still dangerous."

UPDATE - 12:55 p.m.: Copenhagen Mayor Frank Jensen released the following statement on Facebook, translated by the New York Daily News:

It is too early to conclude definitively on motive. But it looks like, unfortunately, a violent attack on freedom of expression. [...] Unfortunately, there are people who react with violence when their fixed mindset meets with free debate and speech. We must stand up for the values our society is built on, and never give in to fear.

UPDATE - 1:25 p.m.: In a brief press release, The Danish Security and Intelligence Service confirmed that they are investigating the shooting as a terror attack:

Everything indicates that the attack was planned, and the circumstances surrounding the shooting indicate that this was a terrorist attack. [...] The attack confirms that the terrorist threat against Denmark remains serious.

UPDATE - 2:25 p.m.: Copenhagen police now say there was only one shooter and have released a photo of the suspect:

Krudttønden: Fotoefterlysning! Hvem er denne mand? Ring 114. RT gerne. Tak. #politidk http://t.co/q4AS9A8eRR pic.twitter.com/I0hspYBwc5

— Københavns Politi (@KobenhavnPoliti) February 14, 2015

According to The Local, police describe the suspect as "male, 25-30 years old, around 185cm tall, athletic build with an Arabic appearance but with lighter skin than normal and with black, slick hair."

UPDATE - 3:35 p.m.: The BBC has published a chilling audio recording of the moment the gunman began shooting, interrupting a speaker mid-sentence:

There will be always, "Yes, there is freedom of speech, but..." And the turning point is "but." Why do we still say "but," when we— <gunfire>

UPDATE - 8:02 p.m.: Three people were wounded in a shooting tonight at a Copenhagen synagogue, though Danish police say it's too early to know if the attacks are linked.

[Image via AP Images]

Canadian police say they uncovered a plot to commit a mass shooting in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, The Guardian reports. The plot involved four people, three of whom have been arrested and one of whom reportedly shot himself when police surrounded his house.

In a statement, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said that they had obtained information that suggested a 19-year-old man from Timberlea, Nova Scotia and a 23-year-old woman from Geneva, Illinois intended to acquire firearms on February 14th before going to a public venue in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they would shoot people before killing themselves.

According to the Associated Press, the 19-year-old man killed himself when police surrounded his home. The 23-year-old woman was arrested at Halifax airport. The AP reports that she confessed to the plot and told officers "that she had prepared a number of pronouncements to be tweeted after her death," according to an anonymous official.

The Guardian reports that the police statement did not suggest a motive, although NPR reports that authorities have said that the plot was "not related to Islamic terrorism."

Two other Nova Scotia men—a 20-year-old and a 17-year-old—were arrested as well, although The Guardian reports that investigators are still determining their role in the plot. The 20-year-old was arrested with the woman at the airport.

The 17-year-old, who was arrested elsewhere, had an outstanding warrant and was wanted "for threatening to shoot up a high school," according to the AP. Canadian police reportedly received a tip over the Crime Stoppers hotline.

Federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay took the opportunity to press for more aggressive legislation to broaden authorities' investigative purview, The Halifax Chronicle Herald reports. "Based on what we know so far, it would have been devastating," MacKay said.

"While this particular incident doesn't appear to be motivated by terrorism," he said, "we believe, in particular, some of the online investigations that are required to avert this type of activity do require changes in the legislation and that's why current legislation is before Parliament."

Update, 2:07 p.m. – CBC reports that police have charged 23-year-old Lindsay Kantha Souvannarath, from Geneva, Illinois, and 20-year-old Randall Steven Shepherd, from Halifax, with conspiracy to commit murder. An investigation into the 17-year-old is ongoing, but, according to the CBC, police say there is currently no evidence linking him to the charges.

Also from the CBC:

It appears at least one of the suspects was part of an online blogging group and the suspects likely corresponded online, MacKay said.

[Image via CTV]

Gary Busey struck a woman with his car as he was pulling out of a parking space at a shopping center in Malibu, TMZ reports. The woman suffered minor injuries.

According to TMZ, paramedics treated her there in the parking lot, after which she left.

The 70-year-old Busey was not cited by police, Page Six reports. Investigators said there was no evidence that he was under the influence at the time.

I met Marlon Peterson in 2009, a few months after he'd completed ten years of a 12-year sentence for first degree assault and third degree weapons possession. While Marlon was inside, I read his blog and some of the correspondences he'd exchanged with Nadia Lopez's eighth graders. I was amazed not simply by Marlon's generous precision in the letters, but by how descriptive and honest Ms. Lopez's students responded to his prose. Without a drop of condescension, Marlon's letters encouraged the students to reckon with their thoughts, feelings, senses, and imaginations.

When Marlon got out of prison, even though I hoped he'd join me at Vassar, he enrolled in NYU. For the past five years, we've been friends, taking turns leaning on each other when the world tilts a little too unexpectedly in unfamiliar ways. I don't know another person who has literally given every drop of their life to making sure his community and this nation confront its reliance on structural and interpersonal violence. He has made that his work. Those of us who know Marlon have seen him change our world—while changing us and himself—one sentence, one child, and one block at a time. Even before Humans of New York ran a spectacular piece on Marlon, I knew I had to ask him to be a part of our Times Six series.

Two of the questions focus on memory, love, misogyny, and blackness. Two of the questions place us at 12 years old, the same age Tamir Rice was when he was gunned down by police in Cleveland, Ohio; and the same age Davia Garth was, who was killed by her stepfather in the same city. One of the questions asks us imagine two incredibly needed national policy proposals. The final question ponders how black lives can actually matter in 2015.

Laymon: Tell me about the first time you remember your love for black folks being threatened?

Peterson: I don' think my love for black folks was ever threatened. I do know, however, that it took some time for my love for black folks to develop. Though I respect and always pay homage to my upbringing as a Jehovah's Witness, I don't recall any particular love for my blackness and black folks until I was a pre-teen when I read books like The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Also, seeing Rodney King get beat, and then the subsequent acquittals of the officers that almost batoned him to death, enraged me even as a young kid. Though I lived 3,000 miles away, I felt a collective responsibility to be in solidarity with black folks. I remember reading an article for a school assignment titled, "A Nation Divided" by Anna Quindlen, and declaring which side of the divide I was on. So, I guess, anti-black love by the state inspired my love for black folks.

When you were twelve years old, can you describe for me what a perfect day would look like?

Perfect is relative to me. For me this day would have to be during summer in Brooklyn. I'd ride my 20" BMX bike to my friend's block in Bed-Stuy. It was about a half-mile from my apartment in Crown Heights. Eating 25-cent BonTon BBQ chips—the red bag—with an orange quarter water, and maybe an order of French fries from the Chinese takeout spot for lunch. On Mondays, I would ride to my friend Joseph's house, then go to the JHS 35 park across the street from where he lived. We'd play basketball and just crack jokes.

Every other day I would journey a little deeper into Bed-Stuy, by my friend Dwayne's house. We'd ride our bikes with no hands around Bainbridge and Rockaway Avenue. Playing tag and riding bikes until around 7 or 8 p.m., when I had to ride back home, was also the perfect day to me.

If twelve-year-old you, could describe the most exciting thing you did last night, what would she say?

Twelve-year-old me: "Last night I watched the first episode of season 4 of The Wire with the kids that were my age. I had to hide because I didn't want daddy to catch me watching it. It had a bunch of cursing. But, it was so good, especially the parts with the kids. Plus, Marlo is the name my family calls me, and there is a Marlo in the show. My name is cool now. The shooting in the show was crazy, though. It was like when we used to live on Nostrand Avenue. We used to always hear gunshots. Anyway, The Wire was mad good. I stayed up mad late to watch it too. I was so sleepy for school today."

Can you describe your first memory of misogyny and anti-blackness colliding?

Jennifer Corbett. Seventh grade. My crush. She sat behind me in homeroom and English class. I had never heard of big words like "misogyny" or terms like "anti-blackness," and the Rodney King decision had not happened yet. But, I vividly remember hating that she was smarter than me. I hated her test scores and the way the teacher affirmed her answers to questions in class. I was my sixth grade valedictorian. How dare a girl be smarter than me, I thought. Above all that, Jennifer enunciated her words clearly, without all that slang I loved. Almost every day, I would chide her saying, "You talk like a white girl!" or, "You think you smart 'cause you talk like a white girl?!" There was the natural, immature boy-having-a-crush-on-a-girl thing happening here. But, in hindsight, that was not happening in a vacuum. The fact that she was a girl who was smarter than me, that spoke like an intelligent young black girl, was also operating. Also, I was equating whiteness back then with good diction, and my black slang had less value, even though I knew I was smart. Eventually, Jennifer cursed me out and told me to stop calling her a white girl. Actually that was the first time someone had actually cursed me out, too. Good for her—standing up for herself against my silly, insecure self.

If you could concretely propose any two new national policies, what would they be?

First, I'd create zones where no guns were allowed—no police, nobody. The policy would not come with a criminal penalty, though. It would be agreed upon by local communities, lessening the likelihood of folks violating it.

Second, I'd also create a national holiday acknowledging the atrocity of slavery in this country. Maybe it could be a national day of white apology. This isn't a policy, but it's an official acknowledgement of the stain of white supremacy in this country.

How can black lives really matter in these United States of America?

Black lives can never truly matter in this country, or any other country in this world filled with black people and other people of color, because we have to ask that question. Think about it, despite the Holacaust, did anyone ever have to question the value of Jewish lives? Black lives didn't matter to white folks in the 1600s when they first started kidnapping and jailing us into slavery. Since then, Lincoln freed us, LBJ enforced our right to participate in this democracy, and Obama is supposedly repping blackness in the White House, right? Yet we're still asking for relevance and value to our lives. Kiese, bruh, who do we have in mind when you ask that question, "How can black lives really matter?" Black lives mattering in these Unites States of America is a battle to uproot the foundation of this country. If we mattered, we'd never be here. Sorry for the pessimism. I'm still resisting and fighting, but I do have hope. It's just that I always find history conflicting. James Baldwin was so truth-telling when he said, "To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time." Rage ain't healthy, bruh. That's probably why so many of us have heart disease. It ain't the food; it's the racism.

Marlon Peterson is a social and criminal justice advocate, writer, organizational trainer, community organizer, and educator who spent 10 years in New York State prisons. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Previously for Times Six:

• Finding a Language for Borders, Theft, and History
• Why True Justice Won't Come Without Sacrifice

[Photo via AP]

If you'd like to be considered for the Times Six series, please send your thoughtful responses to kiese@gawker.com.

According to an assistant imam, investigators have found signs that a fire at an Islamic center on Friday was set deliberately, the Houston Chronicle reports.

"I hope it's not a hate crime," Ahsan Zahid told the Chronicle. "Preliminary results say it's arson."

The Houston Fire Department has yet to make an official statement on the investigation, but KTRK-TV reports that nearby Islamic leaders have also been told the fire was arson. From KTRK-TV:

The cause of the fire is under investigation, but we've learned HFD says the accelerant was used, which usually points to a purposeful act. Those same investigators met with leaders at another Islamic center just miles away, letting them know that this was an act of arson and to be on alert.

On Saturday, an FBI spokesperson told Reuters that they are monitoring the situation and are "not going to jump to any conclusions." Should the fire qualify as a potentional hate crime, the agent said the bureau would become more involved.

[Image via WPVI-TV]

Montana state representative David Moore (R-Missoula), who told the Associated Press that he thinks yoga pants should be illegal, was, he tells The Guardian, just kidding. Classic!

"At no time during the hearing of that bill was yoga pants brought up," Moore told The Guardian. "The whole was a off-the-cuff remark in the hallway, and the whole thing just exploded."

The Associated Press is backing its reporter. "Our reporter spoke to him at length," media director Paul Colford told The Guardian. "She asked him about that statement twice. After the story appeared, Mr Moore told associates he was making a joke. Our staffer did not report that the bill would go so far as to outlaw yoga pants. Or that he intended to, we stand by our coverage."

The Guardian reports that Moore's indecent exposure bill was inspired by a naked bike ride through Missoula last summer.

In the interest of avoiding government overreach, maybe just make naked bicycle rides illegal? Just a thought.

[Image via Shutterstock]

An excessive force lawsuit filed in Georgia this month claims that a police officer slammed a pregnant woman to the ground so hard she blacked out, causing her to miscarry, allegedly because the officer didn't like her tone of voice.

According to the lawsuit, the incident occurred when Kenya Harris' minor son was arrested in Albany, Georgia in 2011. After 5 hours at the Albany Police Department, Harris says she insisted she leave to take care of her other children, angering the officer. From Courthouse News:

"Defendant Officer Jenkins stated that he did not appreciate the tone in which she was communicating with him, and further stated that if she continued he would take her head and 'put it to the floor,'" the complaint states.

Harris says when she again tried to explain that she needed to leave, Jenkins followed through on his threat.

"Defendant Officer Jenkins, without provocation, grabbed plaintiff, who weighs less than one hundred twenty (120) pounds, by her neck and slammed her to the ground. Plaintiff momentarily blacked out and came to with defendant Officer Jenkins sitting on her back, and with his knee on her arm. Plaintiff was pregnant at the time."

Subsequently arrested on obstruction of justice charges, Harris says that she was denied medical attention, only learning she had miscarried after making bail and seeking care.

Harris now requests $50,000 and punitive damages, arguing that the officer caused "her severe physical harm and the loss of her baby, when less force was required and should have been used."

Saying the city has yet to be served, attorneys for Albany told WFXL they could not comment on the case.

[Image via AP Images//h/t Daily Mail]

Republican senator Thomas Croci of the New York state senate introduced a bill this week to establish a "New York State Terrorist Registry," the New York Daily News reports. It would be modeled on the existing registry used to track sex offenders.http://gawker.com/terrorism-work...

According to the Daily News, Croci's bill would require all New York residents who have been convicted of a state or federal crime of terrorism to register their addresses as well as submit DNA samples and annual photographs.

"It will provide our law enforcement with an important new tool, to immediately arrest a terrorist who has not registered and submitted to monitoring once their presence in New York State is discovered," Croci told the Daily News.

Also required to register: anyone who has committed a "verifiable act" of terrorism.

"This legislation will send a clear message to all terrorists," he said. "Stay out of New York."

[Image via Shutterstock]

The Lexington Dispatch regrets the error.

[Image via R.L. Bynum/Twitter//h/t Christian Nightmares]