Two teenage sandwich artists thwarted an attempted robbery this week using nothing more than their natural apathy and the weight of their crushing indifference, WPRI reports.

According to police, a man wearing “what appears to be a white t-shirt on the top of his head and a tan plastic shopping bag tied around his face” entered a Subway franchise in Coventry, Rhode Island on Tuesday and demanded money.

Presumably mistaking him for an actual customer, however, the Subway employees just pretended he wasn’t there. From NBC News:

The man — who looks exasperated in security camera video of the incident — “became agitated and mumbled something under his breath as he walked out of the business,” police said.

“Sure, whatever,” the teen heroes probably added.

[Image via Coventry Police Department]

On Friday, the hunter became the hunted.

America’s most reviled dentist, Dr. Walter James Palmer, disappeared this week after news broke of his involvement in the hunting death of a beloved Zimbabwean lion named Cecil. At first, it was just the outraged public looking for him; then, later in the week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Now Zimbabwe would like a word—via an extradition request.

Zimbabwe’s environment minister Oppah Muchinguri announced the action Friday at a press conference, saying, “We are appealing to the responsible authorities for his extradition to Zimbabwe so that he can be held accountable for his illegal action.”

(Two Zimbabwean guides involved in the hunt were arrested earlier this week for illegal poaching, and Muchinguri said the Prosecutor General has started the process to bring Palmer back to Zimbabwe to face similar charges.)

To which I say, good luck—‘cause Palmer’s in the wind.

Investigators for the service have knocked on the front door of Palmer’s house, stopped by his dental office, called his telephone numbers and filled his inbox with e-mails.

“I’m sure he knows” the government is looking for him, Ed Grace, chief of law enforcement for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, told The Washington Post on Thursday. “We’ve made repeated attempts to try and get in contact with him.”

Not that you can blame him? Activists have been planning his death since he admitted, essentially, that, Yes, I slaughtered, skinned and beheaded that famous lion for sport but I thought it was legal. (The preferred methodology differs depending on who you ask—internet users would like to see him hunted with his own weapons, PETA has called for him to be hanged.)

But in a letter emailed to patients Tuesday, Palmer indicated he would cooperate with authorities if and when they requested his extradition.

That statement, one might conclude, was a lie.

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

The plane debris that washed up on an island shore this week match the part number of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, authorities announced Friday, rather loudly, one imagines, so as to be heard over the joyful sobbing of CNN producers.http://gawker.com/debris-found-i...

The roughly six-foot piece of debris found on a French island in the western Indian Ocean Wednesday is believed to be part of a Boeing 777 flaperon. While the part number doesn’t definitively prove it came from the Flight MH370 wing, process of elimination suggests it did: investigators say that’s the only missing 777 on record.

Via the AFP:

“From the part number, it is confirmed that it is from a Boeing 777 aircraft. This information is from MAS (Malaysia Airlines). They have informed me,” Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi told AFP.

The wing component found on the French island of La Reunion bears the part number “657 BB”, according to photos of the debris.

The discovery doesn’t do much to indicate what actually happened to the plane (other than to prove it’s not parked in say, Kazakhstan) but authorities say they’re now “highly confident” it’s somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. CNN reports additional debris, apparently resembling a suitcase, were found in the same area Thursday. http://gawker.com/which-flight-m...

The pieces are being shipped to the French city of Toulouse, where aviation investigators are expected to begin an analysis Saturday morning.

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

Whitney Cummings, comedian and actor, has a body. But does she have 25 pounds more of a body than she did a little bit ago, and is it because she thought she was too skinny before? Hmm, lemme see.

Ah, yeah. I guess she gained 25 pounds.

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

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If Hillary Clinton’s stance on the minimum wage is any indicator, the Democratic party can expect a leader who specializes in the party’s greatest talent: capitulation.

For well over a year now, a national labor-led movement has been pushing to raise the wage of low-paid workers across America to $15 an hour. The movement has been more successful than one ever would have imagined. Several cities have in fact raised pay for some or all workers to that level; last week, New York state announced plans to raise fast food worker pay to $15 an hour over several years.

A nice thing, but one which raises the obvious question: why just raise wages in a single industry? (The real answer in this case is “that industry waged the best PR campaign for itself, which is not a wise way to set policy.”) If we believe that some low-wage workers deserve a $15 an hour minimum wage, we should believe that all low-wage workers do. We believe, in other words, in a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour. The minimum wage is at its heart a philosophical and moral issue: we choose to throw a wrench into the workings of the hallowed free market because we believe that there is a level of poverty that is unconscionable for working people to suffer in our country. One could reasonably argue for some slight variations—for example, a $15 an hour minimum wage that is indexed to the cost of living in a particular state—but fundamentally, Democrats who believe it’s good for fast food workers to get paid this much are obligated to extend that wage to everyone else.

And if Democrats don’t fight for this, I assure you that no one else will.

Bernie Sanders, the lone true progressive in the Democratic presidential race, supports a $15 an hour federal minimum wage. And Hillary Clinton? The face of the Democratic Party? The front-runner? The presumptive nominee? Yesterday—after a meeting with labor leaders!—Hillary voiced her support for a $12 an hour federal minimum wage bill that has been introduced as a sort of quasi-moderate counterweight to the $15 an hour movement. In order to be sure to have it both ways, she also voiced support for the municipal efforts happening across America that set wages higher. Why $12 an hour for America’s poorest workers, instead of $15?

“Let’s not just do it for the sake of having a higher number out there,” Hillary said, “let’s actually get behind a proposal that has a chance of succeeding.”

Certainly, the $15 an hour wage for the working class has no chance of succeeding if the Democratic presidential candidate does not support it.

[Photo: AP]

On July 23, The New York Times reported that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was facing a “criminal inquiry” from the Department of Justice regarding the way she handled sensitive government correspondence with her private email account. The story, as you might have heard, has since imploded—Clinton was not specifically targeted; there was no criminal inquiry in the first place—and required two serious corrections, a lengthy editors’ note, and an entire column from Public Editor Margaret Sullivan. “We got it wrong,” deputy executive editor Matt Purdy told Sullivan, “because our very good sources had it wrong.”

This explanation raises two salient questions about the Times’ reporting process. Did these sources intentionally mislead the Times? And if so, why won’t the paper reveal their identities?

Everything the Times has published about this story suggests their sources were capable of determining whether the Department of Justice had been asked to open a “criminal inquiry” involving Clinton’s email correspondence. The accompanying editors’ note describes these sources as “multiple high-level government sources,” and Purdy characterized them as “reliable” and “highly placed” to Sullivan:

The story developed quickly on Thursday afternoon and evening, after tips from various sources, including on Capitol Hill. The reporters had what Mr. Purdy described as “multiple, reliable, highly placed sources,” including some “in law enforcement.” I think we can safely read that as the Justice Department.

Because all of these sources are anonymous, however, it remains unclear which parts of the Times story—the nature of Clinton’s involvement, the classification of the initial inquiry—came from which sources, and who those sources were affiliated with. The Clinton campaign noted this discrepancy in a letter addressed to executive editor Dean Baquet (which it published last night):

Times’ editors have attempted to explain these errors by claiming the fault for the misreporting resided with a Justice Department official whom other news outlets cited as confirming the Times’ report after the fact. This suggestion does not add up. It is our understanding that this Justice Department official was not the original source of the Times’ tip. ... This raises the question of what other sources the Times may have relied on for its initial report. It clearly was not either of the referring officials – that is, the Inspectors General of either the State Department or intelligence agencies – since the Times’ sources apparently lacked firsthand knowledge of the referral documents. It also seems unlikely the source could have been anyone affiliated with those offices, as it defies logic that anyone so closely involved could have so severely garbled the description of the referral.

If the “criminal inquiry” characterization didn’t come from the State Department, or an intelligence agency, or the Department of Justice, where exactly did it come from? The answer appears to be Capitol Hill, specifically the Republican-controlled Benghazi Committee of the House of Representatives, and its chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy. As Vox’s Jonathan Allen reported last night:

I don’t know who the Times’s sources are, but I do know this: My reporting suggests that House Benghazi Committee Chair Trey Gowdy was fully aware of the request to the Justice Department at least a day before the Times broke the story. If he or his staff were sources, it should have been incumbent upon the Times to check every detail with multiple unconnected sources. Gowdy’s team has been accused of leaking something untrue to a reporter before. Clearly, Sullivan thinks her colleagues didn’t do a good enough job of vetting their sources.

Sullivan entertained Gowdy’s involvement in her column as well:

I heard from readers, like Maria Cranor who wanted clarification and explanation on The Times’s “recent, and mystifying, coverage of the HRC emails. It appears that your reporters relied on leaks from the Gowdy committee to suggest that Clinton was involved in some kind of criminal malfeasance around the emails. The subsequent walk backs have not been effective, or encouraging. Please help us retain our wavering confidence in the Times’ political coverage!” (Her reference is to the Republican congressman, Trey Gowdy.)

If Gowdy or his staff were indeed the original source for the Times report, it would make sense why they might be inclined to mischaracterize (or exaggerate) the nature of the inquiry into Clinton’s email. For one, it seems plausible that Gowdy’s staff did not have a copy of the actual referral. More to the point: Gowdy is a Republican, and the Benghazi attacks of September 2012 have animated much of the GOP’s attempts to bring down Clinton as she ramps up her campaign for the Democratic nomination.

What doesn’t make sense is the Times’ implication that several other sources, presumably those with direct knowledge of the inquiry’s nature, mischaracterized it as a criminal one. That would suggests an enormous conspiracy—involving several different agencies and branches of government—to mislead the Times about something that turned out to be a mundane bureaucratic action.

Such a conspiracy is not impossible. But the premise behind offering sources anonymity is that it allows them to offer information more frankly and honestly than they could if their names were attached; protecting a source who leaks falsehoods defeats the whole purpose of the arrangement.

Now, there’s no indication the Times is actively lying about their sources and reporting, but it seems clear they haven’t yet determined how exactly they were misled. If they determine the inquiry’s mischaracterization was intentional, they should name those who hoodwinked them. And if the paper’s main informant was in fact Rep. Trey Gowdy, they should disclose why they trusted his or his staff’s word in the first place, and if they ever will again.

Email the author of this post: trotter@gawker.com

You just found a bag filled with $150,000 in cash, mistakenly left behind by an ATM worker. What do you do? The answer, dear readers who work in law enforcement, is obvious—you turn it in. What do you definitely not do? What this guy did.

Earlier this week, 42-year-old Alton Harvey had a real shot at living out my dream: the ATM shoots free money at you, you take it home and roll around in it, Indecent Proposal-style—woah, you’re 10 pounds lighter and your hair is perfect, and your high school crush is calling you to tell you they made a huge mistake, Yes, yes you did, you think, hanging up the phone because Scottish rugby player Thom Evans is trying to buzz into your apartment building again and this time he has a gift for you, geez does this guy ever give up?

But where another, smarter man might buzz Evans in, or inform police of the bounty, or, perhaps (I don’t know, just playing devil’s advocate here) lay low for a little while and see how things shake out, Harvey allegedly threw the bag of cash in his van, drove to a car dealership just “hours later” and purchased a $46,000 SUV.

At some point, cops say, he also apparently decided now was as good a time as ever to steal some tires, to which I guess there’s a certain criminal logic. When you’re hot, you’re hot, right?

Except he wasn’t.

Cops found his van two days later and arrested him. The brand-new car, which he thoughtfully parked right next to the van, was impounded, along with his plausible deniability, and Harvey is now in jail .

And the dream, the glorious dream, is dead.

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

Larry Clark and Harmony Korine’s Kids was released 20 years ago this week, but if you want to have a celebratory home screening of it, you’re going to have a harder time than you might have expected. Once as controversial a cultural property as the soon-to-be-a-Broadway-musical American Psycho was back in the day, Kids was released by the then-Harvey-and-Bob-Weinstein-controlled Miramax under the rubric “Shining Excalibur Pictures,” contrived to deflect attention from Disney, then Miramax’s parent company. The initial DVD release of the movie’s been out of print for some time, and it’ll likely be a while before the new owner of Miramax’s library gets the film onto a screening service, or puts out a new DVD or Blu-ray. You can watch it on YouTube as of this writing, but of course almost anytime some schmuck announces the unauthorized availability of a copyrighted property on YouTube, some legal department comes along and takes it down. Sorry!

Kids’ significance as an alt-cultural touchstone is pretty undeniable. The movie, the feature film debut of the uncompromising photographer and multi-media artist Larry Clark, introduced the world to cinematic enfant terrible Harmony Korine, who wrote the script and appears in a telling cameo. It launched the acting careers of still vital performers Chloe Sevigny, Rosario Dawson, and Leo Fitzpatrick. The movie still pulsates with color and energy, and its near-documentary depiction of a still-raw Manhattan is bracing. For all that, it’s not necessarily a movie one would want to have a celebratory commemorative screening of anyway. Even without the knowledge that at least two of the movie’s young principal performers are now dead—and under circumstances that are terribly sad but likely unsurprising—Kids is a relentlessly unpleasant experience.

Born in Tulsa in 1943, director Clark got into photography, starting in the early ‘60s, by shooting his teen and twenty-something cohorts doing drugs and having sex. The photos of young people, their needles, and their couplings, collected in Clark’s book Tulsa made no pretense to sociological value as such. Nor do they seem voyeuristic; because Clark was a part of the tribe he was shooting, the pictures have a perspective that feels almost feral, pre-phenomenological. That’s why they’re such powerful works of art. For better or worse, Clark has since rarely trained his eye on a state of being past adolescence, or immediate-post-adolescence. It’s interesting, though, that for his first film, he chose to frame his views within what it would be an understatement to call a cautionary tale. Indeed, Kids is, in a sense, a super-lurid variant of the 1955 evil-urban-teen chestnut Blackboard Jungle, only more ostensibly terrifying because it takes place entirely outside a realm in which any authority figure can make a difference. As such, it’s one of the most conventional films Clark’s put his name on, and it’s definitely the most straightforward thing in Korine’s filmography almost to the point of being an anomaly.

Kids opens in the middle of a wet hot open-mouthed kiss between two fresh-faced adolescents; it’s a shot that feels very close to Clark’s photographic work, because it’s so in their moment. But of course it’s terribly uncomfortable as a movie opening, particularly any viewer over 30. What are these kids doing? Exactly what you think they’re doing, and are going to do. The seemingly sweetly cocky boy Telly (Fitzpatrick) is telling Sarah Henderson’s “Girl #1” how good it’s gonna be for her: “I think if we fucked you’d love it.” And so they do. The movie’s depiction of sex is far less explicit than in Clark’s photos or many of his subsequent films, but the sex scenes here are still shot and edited with squirm-inducing what-do-I-think-I-almost-just-saw precision. And then Telly leaves the girl’s apartment, releasing a gob of spit down the stairwell on his way out, and downstairs brags to his homie Casper (Justin Pierce), “Virgins, I love ‘em.”

Like N.W.A.’s now-classic 1988 hip-hop album Straight Outta Compton, Kids depicts a mode of existence that’s never not incredibly intense. But now as then, from where I sat, the movie overplays its hand. The Telly character, who can’t even shoplift from a deli without being a complete dick about it, is Exhibit A in this respect. (Fitzpatrick’s portrayal of the character was so convincing I worried that he’d get the shit kicked out of him by an angry moviegoer some time.)

He’s even more of a scumbag than he knows, as it happens: he’s HIV positive, and he’s infected Jennie (Sevigny), a girl he used his “you’d love it” schtick on the summer before. After his morning cherry-popping work out, Telly and Casper go hang with some lowlife buddies, decline whippets, and talk about sex. This discourse is intercut with a similar colloquy between Jennie (who’s not yet aware of her diagnosis) and pals including Rosario Dawson’s Ruby. The differing perspectives allow Clark and Korine to indulge some not-unpredictable battle-of-the-sexes irony. “Bitches love sucking dick,” boasts one fellow. “You know what’s the worst? Sucking dick,” laughs one girl.

The eyebrow-raising naturalism of the dialogue cleverly disguises the plot points being set up. Ruby and Jennie have an appointment at a clinic later that day, to get HIV test results; Ruby, the more experienced and reckless girl, will come out clean, while Jennie, whose only experience has been with Telly, will learn she’s positive. Kids then becomes something of a stop-the-killer-before-he-strikes again story. Jennie, in spite of her emotional devastation, makes it her mission to find and confront Telly. Telly, on the other hand, is already in hot pursuit of another virgin, the fresh-faced innocent Darcy.

Prior to the hunt, though, Telly and Casper wend on their electrically awful way. One may feel like definitively defenestrating both these rampagers, who take nothing seriously yet are utterly devoid of humor, by the 20 minute mark. At this point, though, their tediously sexualized conversation is interrupted by a legless subway beggar rolling his way through the cars, giving the guys pause. Casper seems almost human as he gives the guy some change, but the moment seems forced, contrived. And the pair’s contemplative side doesn’t get too much more time. Soon—and this is where the over-determination really kicks in—they make it to Telly’s apartment; Telly’s haggard, lumpen mom is both smoking a cigarette and nursing an infant; she refuses Telly’s request for a loan; out of mom’s earshot, Casper “compliments” Telly’s mom’s “titties” and puts one of her tampons up his nose while Telly steals from her purse.

The pair decamp to Washington Square Park, where they meet up with Frankenstein-browed skateboarder Harold (Harold Hudson)—an actual African-American, unlike these very pale wannabes. (It is no accident that the movie’s soundtrack features several Beastie Boys tracks; the whole thing’s like The Dark Side of Licensed To Ill.) This leads to one of the movie’s most disturbing (it’s like a Can You Top This contest by this point, really) scenes, in which Harold leads a skateboard gang attack against another African-American who dared talk shit to him. Today, the spectacle of mostly white kids using their bodies to more or less bury a black man alive, topped off by Telly’s slo-mo dropping of another gob of spit on the man’s unconscious skull, is—if such a thing is even possible—more repellent than it was in 1995. I mean, fuck these guys. Seriously.

And on it goes, into the night and the pursuit of more virginity, the relentless coarse vulgarity (correctly, I suppose) sucking all of the titillation potential out of the material. At a sneak night swim at a public pool—one reason authority figures are completely impotent in this world is that, apparently, there are none even around, for Christ’s sake— Telly lays his “charm” on Darcy. He tells her “I was thinking about you when I woke up,” and Clark flash-cuts to him banging Girl #1 lo, those many hours ago. Okay, we get it, man.

Jennie remains one or two steps behind Telly, and once she stops at a hot nightspot she encounters a club kid who indirectly seals her doom. Played in a rather meta touch by screenwriter Korine, he offers her a drug that he says makes “Special K look weak” and which will have her “kissing Leo Gorcey on the chops,” a very Korine pop culture reference that even the Beasties might have found forced. Said drug incapacitates her to the extent that not only does she fail in her mission, but…

“Sometimes when you’re young, the only place to go is inside,” Telly says in a voiceover monologue as the film draws to a close. Like the subway bit, this attempt at lyricism falls flat in the context of what I remember more than one critic called “a wake-up call” to parents across this nation. Which perception was in keeping with the film’s canny marketing: this was not merely an Art Film, but a Movie of Social Significance. The end credits specified that a portion of the film’s revenue would be donated to teen crisis centers.

The actor who played Casper, Justin Pierce, was a real-life skateboarder who committed suicide in 2000; Harold Hunter, also a boarder, died of a heart attack in 2006. HIV infection among sexually active teens is not as much of a hot-button topic as it was in 1995, but it hasn’t disappeared either. Director Clark remains at the well of teendom, while writer-turned-director Korine mixes it up a bit. The latter’s 2012 Spring Breakers is very nearly, in many respects, a garish neon burlesque of some of Kids’ concerns. It’s too soon to tell, but it may well turn out to be the more durable film.

Longtime film critic Glenn Kenny was 35 when ‘Kids’ was released, and at the time he felt guilty and creepy for finding Rosario Dawson ‘cute’.

The late Meek Mill, who passed away Wednesday as a result of getting bodied by Drake’s “Back to Back” diss track, continues to talk shit about Drake from beyond the grave. His rebuttal song, released Thursday, was generally viewed as soft and wack, but Ghost Meek did score one good hit: What’s this about Drake getting pissed on in a movie theater?

“You let Tip homie piss on you in a movie theater, nigga, we ain’t forget.”

Indeed? Indeed, sayeth Thirty Mile Zone, which reports the peeing went down in 2010, when Drake hit up a private Sony screening of “Takers,” starring T.I. Everyone was allegedly intoxicated, and Drake ended up in a fight over a seat with one of T.I.’s childhood friends.

Drake wouldn’t move, so, allegedly, T.I.’s childhood friend peed on him. Just totally normal dude stuff. “We’re told Drake ran out of the theater, screaming ‘motherfucker,’” TMZ reports.

That’s funny—almost as funny as the time Drake exposed Meek Mill as a Twitter warrior and called him out for piggybacking on his girfriend’s world tour.

Ghost Meek continues to take shots at Drizzy on Instagram in the throes of rigor mortis, even as his followers tell him to requiescat in pacem. This is a very sad rap beef.

[h/t TMZ]

There are many media organizations that espouse progressive values—in their editorial product, and in their stated corporate beliefs. Now, employees are asking for unions. How progressive are these good liberal businesses, really?

On July 2, the editorial employees of noted left-wing publication Salon unanimously announced their intention to unionize. A month has now passed. The editorial employees of Salon still do not have a union. That is strange, because they unanimously requested a union, and—as their own publication enthusiastically trumpets at every opportunity—unions are good for workers, and indeed, could be the salvation of the middle class.

Salon is not a neutral media outlet that sometimes runs liberal views. Salon is an explicitly left-wing media outlet that exists to publish stories that promote things like unions. But, as any publisher can tell you, words are cheap. Actions are much more dear. And the actions of Salon’s management are not reflecting well on their progressive credentials at the moment.

In order for Salon’s employees to get their union going, all that needs to happen is for Salon’s management to recognize them—in essence, to accept that their union exists, and prepare to negotiate a contract with them. This can be done in a day. Instead, it hasn’t been done in a month. Salon’s employees have taken to complaining (quite politely, so far) on Twitter, under the hashtag #SalonUnion. They would be justified in complaining less politely.

Here is what Salon’s management did when their employees requested a union: first, they hired a PR firm and a labor lawyer; then, they made a response that was considered scoff-worthy and unserious; now, employees hope that by next week another, more acceptable response will be forthcoming. You will notice that this list is markedly different from what progressive values would have dictated, which would have been to just recognize the union. Organizers say they are “losing patience,” though they remain hopeful. When I asked for a comment from (well compensated) Salon CEO Cindy Jeffers, I received a reply from a spokesperson at Edelman, the PR firm, who offered this on Jeffers’ behalf: “Our employees are very important to us and we respect their right to organize. We are in the process of considering their request and hope to reach a mutually satisfactory conclusion in the very near future.”

Hope is not a union.

I will pause here for disclosures: Gawker Media organized our own union just a month before Salon; the union that we joined, the Writers Guild East, is the same union Salon is seeking to join; Salon is working with the same organizers that we worked with, and using the same union personnel that we are now using in our process of negotiating a contract. The theoretical conflicts of interest in this story are infinite. Still, what I am saying here is true.

The unionization of new media organizations is becoming a popular idea. Union drives are quietly proceeding apace at news outlets as we speak. This week, the Guardian’s US staffers announced a unanimous request to unionize. Their union was recognized immediately. The Guardian certainly tends liberal, but it is not as fiery and outspoken in its progressive ideals as Salon is.

So why won’t the leaders of Salon recognize their workers’ union? There is no excuse. Perhaps if they had saved the money they spent on a PR firm and a labor lawyer and put it towards a contract for their employees, they would not be so fearful.

The Huffington Post is a progressive news site. It is only a matter of time before some of their employees ask to unionize. Will Arianna Huffington, a good liberal, support their request?

Buzzfeed has publicly stated its commitment to a variety of progressive ideals. It is only a matter of time before some of its employees ask to unionize. Will Ben Smith and Jonah Peretti support their request?

Vice prides itself on telling the real story. Vice is superficially opposed to the entrenched corporate power structure. It is only a matter of time before some of its employees ask to unionize. Will Shane Smith, the hero of the grown-up counterculture, support their request?

Words are cheap. Unions can cost money. This is where we learn how real all of these nice progressive media bosses really are. If they won’t support their own workers’ union, they were lying the whole time.

[Photos via AP]

Privacy advocate Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla are proud to announce that they are pregnant with Earth’s newest mega-heiress.http://valleywag.gawker.com/happy-belated-...

The Silicon Valley power couple broke the news on Twitter (just kidding) today, including some very personal and touching words about their earlier struggles with miscarriage:

Priscilla and I have some exciting news: we’re expecting a baby girl!

This will be a new chapter in our lives. We’ve already been so fortunate for the opportunity to touch people’s lives around the world — Cilla as a doctor and educator, and me through this community and philanthropy. Now we’ll focus on making the world a better place for our child and the next generation.

We want to share one experience to start. We’ve been trying to have a child for a couple of years and have had three miscarriages along the way.

You feel so hopeful when you learn you’re going to have a child. You start imagining who they’ll become and dreaming of hopes for their future. You start making plans, and then they’re gone. It’s a lonely experience. Most people don’t discuss miscarriages because you worry your problems will distance you or reflect upon you — as if you’re defective or did something to cause this. So you struggle on your own.

In today’s open and connected world, discussing these issues doesn’t distance us; it brings us together. It creates understanding and tolerance, and it gives us hope.

When we started talking to our friends, we realized how frequently this happened — that many people we knew had similar issues and that nearly all had healthy children after all.

We hope that sharing our experience will give more people the same hope we felt and will help more people feel comfortable sharing their stories as well.

Our good news is that our pregnancy is now far enough along that the risk of loss is very low and we are very hopeful.

Cilla and our child are both healthy, I’m extremely excited to meet her and our dog Beast has no idea what’s coming. In our ultrasound, she even gave me a thumbs up “like” with her hand, so I’m already convinced she takes after me.

We’re looking forward to welcoming her into the world and sharing more soon when she’s ready to come out and meet everyone!

The post has over 250,000 likes, which in itself is a great blessing.

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

Unlike a certain companion animal that will go unnamed, dogs lose their minds when reunited with their owners. But it’s not immediately obvious why our canine companions should grant us such an over-the-top greeting—especially considering the power imbalance that exists between the two species. We spoke to the experts to find out why.

Call of the Wild

In order to gain an appreciation for dog behavior, it’s important to understand that dogs are descended from wolves (or at least a common wolf-like ancestor). Clearly, the two species, separated by about 10,000 to 15,000 years, share a lot in common.

Like dogs, wolves greet each other with vigorous face licking (Credit: Sander van der Wel CC A-SA 2.0)

But there’s only so much we can extrapolate from wolves; dogs are categorically different by virtue of the fact that their ancestors actively sought out the company of humans. Making matters even more complicated is the realization that Paleolithic era wolves are not the same as the ones around today. Consequently, any inferences we make about dog behavior and how it relates to wolves is pure speculation.

Neuroscientist Gregory Berns, author of How Dogs Love Us, says there’s a fundamental difference between modern wolves and those that lived long ago.

“The most social of those ancestral dogs who were hanging around humans had to have been the most social of those wolves,” he told io9. “They joined humans and eventually evolved to become dogs. The remainder of the wolf population were among the most antisocial of those animals, and did not want to have anything to do with humans.”

That said, however, Berns says we can clearly see behaviors in wolves that are similar to those expressed by dogs. For instance, wolves greet each other by licking each others’ faces. For these pack animals, this licking behavior serves as an important social greeting, but also as a way to check out and determine what the other wolves have brought home in terms of food.

Wolves, says University of Trento neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara, greet each other in different ways depending on the type of individual relationships they’ve forged. Feral dogs, he says, behave in similar ways. But the big change in terms of adaptive sociality has been the ability of domesticated dogs to interact with humans using our own communicative signals, such as gazes and gestures.

Dog expert Jessica Hekman, who blogs at DogZombie, has witnessed greeting behaviors among wolves first hand.

“When I’m at Wolf Park in Battle Ground, Indiana, I am always struck by how much some of the specific wolf behaviors resemble behaviors I see in dogs—but so much more ritualized, and sort of writ large,” she told io9. “I witnessed one behavioral study there in which wolves who knew each other well had been separated for a few days and were put back together. The greeting rituals were fascinating, with lots of crouching and chin-licking from the subordinate wolves. You do see these behaviors in dogs, but more sporadically, without such intensity.”

At the same time, dogs exhibit behaviors that are markedly different from wolves. As Hekman explained to me, one of the most dramatic differences between dogs and wolves is the ability of dogs to accept novelty. Simply put, dogs are less fearful than wolves.

“It may sound a little odd to say that a wolf, who can easily kill you, is afraid of you, but that is precisely why they can be dangerous: because they may choose to take proactive measures to protect themselves, using their teeth,” says Hekman. “Dogs are a lot less likely to do this.”

Indeed, given their wolf ancestry, it’s remarkable that dogs get along with humans so well. But as Berns pointed out to me, sociability has turned out to be a rather powerful adaptation, one that has worked a lot better for dogs than it has wolves.

“I mean, look around the world and see how many dogs there are,” he says. “With dogs, it’s proven to be a highly effective evolutionary strategy. There are on the order of tens of millions of dogs in the world, so in many ways, dogs have out-evolved wolves.”

Berns says that whatever the sociality that dogs have evolved, one of the defining traits of a dog is the degree to which they will interact with humans as well as other animals.

How Dogs See Humans

A key aspect of Berns’ brain imaging research is to study how dogs perceive us. We humans know that dogs are a separate species, but are dogs cognizant of this as well? Or do they see us as members of their pack, or as some kind of weird dog?

Callie gets outfitted with ear protection prior to entering the noisy fMRI machine. The research team includes, from left, Andrew Brooks, Gregory Berns and Mark Spivak. (Credit: Bryan Meltz, Emory University)

According to Berns’ research, dogs that are presented with certain smells in scanners can clearly tell the difference between dogs and humans, and also discern and recognize familiar and strange odors. In particular, the scent of a familiar human evokes a reward response in the brain.

“No other scent did that, not even that of a familiar dog,” Berns told io9. “It’s not the case that they see us as ‘part of their pack as dogs,’ they know that we’re something different— there’s a special place in the brain just for us.”

Berns stresses that dogs are social with us not just because of their scavenging tendencies.

“What we’re finding with the imaging work is that dogs love their humans—and not just for food,” he says. “They love the company of humans simply for its own sake.”

Hekman says it’s hard to know what dogs are thinking, but she suspects they understand that we’re not quite like them. As evidence, she points to aggressiveness in dogs as it’s directed to other dogs and humans—differences that aren’t correlated. She says it’s quite common for a dog to have a problem with one and not the other. In other words, dogs appear to perceive other dogs as one group, and humans as a separate group. What’s more, dogs will seek the help of humans and not other dogs—a possible sign that dogs understand that humans have resources that dogs do not, and are thus a different kind of social entity.

But do dogs see us as part of the pack?

“It’s important to note that a pack of wolves is a family—literally, usually mom, dad, puppies, and some young offspring from previous years who haven’t gone off on their own yet,” says Hekman. “Do dogs see us as part of their family? I think they do.”

So Happy to See Us

Virtually all experts agree that the happiness dogs feel is comparable to what humans experience, and that it’s similar to how humans feel towards each other.

One happy dog (Credit: Lars Curfs/CC-A-SA 3.0)

“All the things that we’ve done with the brain imaging—where we present certain things to the dogs and map their reward responses—we see analogous brain responses in humans,” says Berns. “Seeing a person that’s a friend or someone you like, these feelings are exactly analogous to what a dog experiences.”

Berns says that dogs don’t have the same language capacities as humans, and that they’re not capable of representing things in their memory like we can. Because dogs don’t have labels or names for people, he suspects that they have an even purer emotional response; their minds aren’t filled with all sorts of abstract concepts.

It’s also important to consider the dog-human bond and the degree of attachment each feels toward each other. When used with dogs, the “Strange Situation Test” devised by developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, suggests that during absence and then at the rejoining with the owners, a dog’s behavior is very similar to that observed in children and mothers in similar situations. As Vallortigara pointed out to me, it’s appropriate and correct to speak of the dyad dog/owner in terms of “attachment.”

A dog’s particular greeting, however, is dependent on several factors, such as the dog’s temperament, the personality of the owner, the nature of their relationship, the level of stress and anxiety, and the dog’s tendency/capacity for self-control.

It’s important to note, however, that stress manifests differently in dogs than it does in humans.

“The separation from the owner for the dog is not voluntary,” says Vallortigara. “It is always unnatural for a dog to detach and abandon the pack.”

Dogs will sometimes go solo on a temporary basis if they’re sufficiently motivated to do so, but they do it knowing that social contact can be resumed at virtually any time.

“The exaggerated level of greeting that can be observed in some dogs is likely due to the fact that they have not yet learned to accept the possibility of non-voluntary detachment,” says Vallortigara.

When trying to appreciate a dog’s over-the-top greeting, Hekman says we need to imagine what it was like for a dog to be alone all day while we were gone.

So bored. (Credit: Pixabay/Pinger/10 images/CC0 Public Domain)

“This dog probably had a pretty boring day without much enrichment, and moreover may have been alone all day, which is unpleasant for a social animal,” she told io9. “So in addition to being glad to see us, they are probably feeling some relief that they will get to do something interesting, like go for a walk, and have someone else around. Some people are able to have a dog walker come in or send their dogs to daycare—this is a great solution to what can otherwise be a difficult lifestyle for a dog.”

And as Berns points out, the greeting ritual is a social bonding mechanism—but it’s also a function of curiosity.

“When they jump up, they’re trying to lick you in the face,” says Berns. “Part of that is a social greeting, but they’re also trying to taste and smell you to figure out where you’ve been and what you’ve done during the day. So some of it is curiosity. If I’ve been with other dogs, for instance, my dogs know it, and they resort to sniffing intensely.”

How to Greet Your Dog Back

It’s obviously important to respond to your dog when you get home, but according to Marcello Siniscalchi, a veterinary physician from the University of Bari, how you should react will depend on the context of the situation and the needs of the dog itself.

“The greeting ritual will vary from dog to dog because any individual dog perceives and reacts to detachment from the owner in a very personal way,” he told io9. “Some dogs need to be greeted, in others it is better to avoid any escalation in the level of excitation, others need to learn strategies for coping the stress associated with detachment.”

Hekman says there’s definitely a tension between our buttoned-down greeting rituals (“Hi, honey, I’m home!”) and theirs (“I want to lick you on the face repeatedly!”).

“My dog Jenny is a very enthusiastic greeter, and I hate having her jump all over me in her efforts to get at my face,” she says. “So I have taught her to get on a couch when I come home. I generally have to remind her to ‘get on your couch,’ but now she does with great enthusiasm, and waits for me to come over. The couch puts her more on my level, so she doesn’t have to jump, and I can bend forward and let her lick my cheek, which is a very important part of the ritual for her.”

Hekman stresses that, for any dog, it’s important for us not to tell them what not to do (e.g. “don’t jump on me!”), but to tell them what to do.

“Many is the retriever owner who has taught their dog to get a toy when they come home to channel their excitement,” she added.

The main point, she says, is that it’s important for dogs to have the greeting ritual, but it can be redirected in ways to make it easier on the owners such that everyone enjoys it.

Contact the author at george@io9.com and @dvorsky. Top image by Tara Jacoby

On June 19, a fisherman found the body of Dr. James Bradstreet—a forceful proponent of the bunk theory that vaccines are linked to autism—in a North Carolina river, with a gunshot wound through his chest. Three days later, chiropractors Bruce Hedendal and Baron Holt were separately found dead, and eight days after that, Dr. Theresa Sievers was murdered in her home. What the hell is going on here?

The truth-seeking measles-lovers of America would have you believe that an anti-alternative medicine conspiracy is afoot. “5 Holistic Health Doctors Found Dead In 4 Weeks, 5 More Go Missing – After Run-Ins with Feds,” shouts a headline on the reliably paranoid website The Free Thought Project; “5th holistic doctor (age 33) died in Florida making 5 dead and 5 more missing” reads a similar article on Health Nut News. (The fifth doctor is Lisa Riley, a Georgia emergency room physician who was murdered in her home on July 10.) Both articles imply that mysterious forces may have punished the dead and missing doctors for heroically standing up against the FDA’s and pharmaceutical companies’ attempts to poison your children. Needless to say, they’re wrong.

Dr. James Jeffrey Bradstreet

The most visible of these doctors, and the only one with any real link to the FDA, is Bradstreet. Because of his prominence within the anti-vaxxer movement—he twice testified about autism in front of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Washington Post notes—and because the FDA really did raid his Buford, Ga., practice the week before his death, conspiracists began theorizing almost immediately after Bradstreet died. The sheriff’s office in Rutherford County, N.C., where Bradstreet often vacationed and where his body was found, said that his gunshot wound appeared to be self-inflicted, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post. But Bradstreet’s family and supporters do not believe he committed suicide: A GoFundMe page with the stated intent of financing “an exhaustive investigation into the possibility of foul play” has raised $38,000 at the time of this writing.

Why did the FDA raid Bradstreet’s office before he died? The anti-vaxxers are probably right that it had something to do with his controversial practices, which were legitimately dangerous and deserving of government scrutiny. The Washington Post has a good rundown of Bradstreet’s bad medicine: Beyond his conviction that the MMR vaccine causes autism—an idea that has been roundly disproven, and which has led to a new surge of measles cases in the U.S.—there’s also his use of chelation, a practice involving chemicals that remove metals from patients’ blood. Those metals can include mercury, which anti-vaxxers mistakenly believe is linked with autism, but they can also contain necessary stuff like calcium. Forbes reported that the FDA’s warrant cited Bradstreet’s use of an experimental compound called GcMAF.

But that the idea that the federal government would order a hit on an American doctor, then dump his body in a river, is completely ungrounded in reality. That should be self-evident. The real story is likely much sadder than that, and perhaps harder for loved ones to accept: For reasons known only to himself, James Bradstreet decided to end his own life.

The remaining doctors, as Snopes points out in a thorough examination of the conspiracy theory, have nothing to do with Bradstreet or the FDA.

Baron Holt and Bruce Hedendal

The Free Thought Project article crows about how no cause of death was reported for either Holt or Hedendal, which the reader is encouraged to take as evidence of a coverup. However, the Raleigh News & Observer reports that Holt’s family is awaiting an autopsy report, meaning the cause of death has not yet been officially determined, and according ABC affiliate WZVN, 67-year-old Hedendal may have died of natural causes. Both men were ordinary, locally practicing chiropractors with no national media presence or controversies to their names. Despite the Free Thought Project’s misleading headline, there’s no evidence that either had run-ins with the feds. Really, there’s no reason to believe that the FDA or big pharma would be interested in them at all.

Dr. Teresa Sievers and Dr. Lisa Riley

Then there are the murders. Dr. Teresa Sievers, of Bonita Springs, Fla., was killed with what may have been a hammer in her own home in late June. No arrests have yet been made in the case, but investigators told a local NBC affiliate this month that they are pursuing “several leads.” Sievers was what you might describe as a holistic doctor—her website’s “about” page uses phrases like “ancient discipline” and “quantum energy”—but again, there is no evidence of a link between Sievers and the FDA or any other branch of government.

Lisa Riley’s death is easier to pin down: her husband, boxer Yathomas Riley, was arrested for her murder. In 2010, he was charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting his then-girlfriend in the head—the same method by which Lisa Riley was allegedly killed. (Koketia King, Yathomas Riley’s previous girlfriend, survived the shooting.) Moreover, Lisa Riley was an emergency room doctor at a conventional hospital and had no apparent ties to the alternative medicine movement. How her killing fits into the conspiracists’ alleged pattern is unclear.

Finally, the five missing doctors, whose connections to the imaginary FDA plot are just as tenuous as Riley’s.

Dr. Patrick Fitzpatrick

A North Dakotan former ophthalmologist named Patrick Fitzpatrick disappeared while driving near Three Forks, Montana in early July, another piece of evidence in the conspiracists’ logbooks. Like Riley, Fitzpatrick was a relatively small-time practitioner of traditional medicine—not homeopathy. Even if big pharma did have a reason to feel threatened by him, that threat was no longer imminent: he was retired. At 76 years old, Gallatin County Sheriff’s lieutenant Arlyn Greydanus told KPAX, Fitzpatrick “could suffer from confusion.” Sadly, it’s much more likely that he got lost and wandered in the wrong direction than got picked off by jackbooted hitmen.

The Hernandez Party

The remaining missing doctors are four Mexican practitioners who disappeared while traveling through the state of Guerrero. There’s no indication in a deeply reported Daily Beast article about the so-called Hernandez party—named for Marvin Hernandez, one of the missing—that the disappeared doctors practiced anything but traditional medicine. In Guerrero, where drug cartels and vigilante defense forces rule, and murders and kidnappings are horribly common, it’s possible that they were abducted for ransom or caught in some drug war crossfire. If, for some inexplicable reason, the U.S. FDA really did come after them in Mexico, it was way out of its jurisdiction.

If you’re inclined to believe that Obama is a communist and fluoridated tap water is used for mind control, you could look at the above stories and conclude that hey, it’s a lot of doctors to die or disappear in one month. But lots of doctors die every month! Roughly 6,700 people die in America every day; some of them are bound to practice medicine. The theorists’ point about alternative health is similarly tortured, considering that half of the cases used as evidence don’t involve holistic doctors at all.

A federal government-funded murder spree against doctors who give out herbs and gemstones instead of aspirin and penicillin makes for great dystopian fiction. Fortunately for us, fiction is all it is.

Conspiracy theorist art via Whale.to. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

In January of 1991, producer/rapper and then-N.W.A. member Andre “Dr. Dre” Young attacked hip-hop journalist Denise “Dee” Barnes in a nightclub. If you hadn’t heard about the incident going into F. Gary Gray’s N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, which hits theaters in two weeks, you’d leave the theater none the wiser. It’s never mentioned.

The movie is a well-acted, energetic neo-blaxploitation throwback that I suspect will be a hit. It’s also a refreshing counter narrative for a group of guys who were mostly vilified by the mainstream media during their short stint as the most notorious rap act in the country. In Compton, you’re given a sense of how creative energy and oppressive persecution by authorities helped foster a brotherhood in this group of young, black men. The movie, which surviving group members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre had a hand in producing, exists partly to humanize. It depicts an N.W.A. that is kinder and gentler than any previous existing conception of the group.

But in order to do that, Andrea Berloff and John Herman’s script omits any explicit discussion of N.W.A.’s open misogyny in their music and lives, while implicitly condoning it by keeping female characters on the outskirts of the story in small roles that service the film’s central men. They are mothers, wives, girlfriends, and sex objects at parties (the colorism in last year’s casting call for female extras is palpable in the movie). Though they were relatively low in number, the group’s female collaborators are nowhere to be found in Compton; singer Michel’le is mentioned twice in passing and rapper Yo Yo isn’t acknowledged at all. While audiences are left with a clear understanding of the social conditions that would drive young black men in South Central Los Angeles to write and perform “Fuck tha Police,” we have no concept of what propelled Ice Cube to write “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” or just how much of the pornographically demeaning second half of N.W.A.’s 1991 album, Niggaz4Life, fit the group’s “reality rap” ethos.

I suspect that much of N.W.A.’s anti-woman rhetoric, and the ensuing, widespread criticism of it, is suppressed in the film to keep its heroes looking like heroes. Tabling the misogyny makes liking the men behind the group much less complicated. It keeps the narrative clean and straightforward, and it keeps the indefensible unmentioned.

In doing this, Straight Outta Compton glosses over a defining moment in N.W.A.’s legacy that I think warrants reexamination. It may be too ugly for Hollywood, but it’s as real as any reality in N.W.A.’s rap music.

On January 27, 1991, during what many reports say was a record-release party for the feminist-bent rap duo Bytches With Problems (BWP) at Hollywood’s Po Na Na Souk club, Dr. Dre brutally beat up Dee Barnes, the host of a well-known Fox show about hip-hop called Pump It Up!

From what I can tell, the Los Angeles Times ran the first major-outlet story on the incident on June 28, 1991. The paper ran a follow-up a few weeks later, on July 23 that included Barnes’s description of the attack:

He picked me up by my hair and my ear and smashed my face and body into the wall...Next thing I know, I’m down on the ground and he’s kicking me in the ribs and stamping on my fingers. I ran into the women’s bathroom to hide, but he burst through the door and started bashing me in the back of the head.

In the interview, Barnes pointed out that she is 5’3” and that Dre is 6’2” (around the web, his height is printed as 6’1”).

Journalist Alan Light devoted many words to the incident in his profile, “N.W.A.: Beating Up the Charts,” which ran in the August 8, 1991, issue of Rolling Stone. To Barnes’s account, Light added that Dre attempted to throw her down stairs and failed. He also printed quotes from N.W.A.’s MC Ren and Eazy E regarding the incident:

Ren says, “she deserved it – bitch deserved it.” Eazy agrees: “Yeah, bitch had it coming.”

Dre also weighed in:

People talk all this shit, but you know, somebody fucks with me, I’m gonna fuck with them. I just did it, you know. Ain’t nothing you can do now by talking about it. Besides, it ain’t no big thing – I just threw her through a door.

As this story was circulating, MTV News ran footage reportedly filmed in March of 1991, in which Ren discussed the incident:

That’s what you get. I hope she get it again. She got beat down. The host of that show, there’s something that she know that she did, and got beat down, and I hope it happen again. See you ‘round, buddy boy...What did she do? Try to make us look stupid. Tried to play us...Tried to play us in front of millions of people. It’s not over yet.

And what did Barnes do to have it coming? She interviewed Ice Cube, who had left the group in December 1989 because of a dispute over royalties. The bad blood between Cube and his former group members grew over the next year, as they traded insults on tracks—first, Cube was referred to as “Benedict Arnold” on N.W.A.’s first Cube-less release, the 100 Miles and Runnin’ EP. Ice Cube struck back on his Kill at Will EP, and then more thoroughly on “No Vaseline,” from his 1991 album, Death Certificate.

The interview in question was reportedly aired during a Pump It Up! package that focused on N.W.A., and aired in December 1990. The Los Angeles Times summarized Dre’s beef in this way:

Young—who faces one misdemeanor battery count related to the Barnes incident—allegedly attacked her in late January because he was upset that a television spot featuring former N.W.A member Ice Cube had unexpectedly been inserted into a segment on her Pump It Up! show last December spotlighting N.W.A.

In the December 1992 issue of The Source, Barnes described the package:

A year or two into the show, as things are going well, I tried to get N.W.A. on ‘cause they don’t really talk that much. I got ‘em on and we do a nice little interview. This goes on October ‘90. About a week later, I do an interview with Yo Yo on the set of Boyz N the Hood and Cube was there. And Cube came in the middle of the interview and said some things about N.W.A.—‘cause at the time they were having a riff out here.

The producer at the time, Jeff Shore, he was the one that put [the segment] in. Cube just said it joking and I was left standing there. The cameras were still rolling so I said, ‘Sister Dee, always in the middle of controversy right here on Pump It Up!’ You know? What am I gonna do? Then [Jeff Shore] said, ‘Cut! That’s great! I’m gonna put it on the N.W.A. show’...He said it right there and I said, ‘Naw, you crazy?’ I didn’t want those two groups fighting anymore. I didn’t want it to be because of Pump It Up!, like we instigated something.

Barnes also shared even more details of the beating in this interview:

Dre picks me up by my shirt in the front and I can’t even say, ‘Help,’ ‘cause I’m choking. The next thing I know, the guy on my right tries to help me and gets knocked out by Dre’s bodyguard. Then Dre picks me up by my hair and ear and starts slamming my face up against a wall. It was a brick wall.

Exactly what Cube said is somewhat hard to discern. Though many of Barnes’s interviews with N.W.A. and Ice Cube are available on YouTube (including this one, in which Cube obliquely refers to his former group before proclaiming, “No more N.W.A.! No more N.W.A. questions!”), the offending clip is nowhere to be found.

N.W.A.’s former promoter Doug Young, perhaps the “guy on my right” that Barnes referred to in her Source interview, described the Pump It Up! segment in an interview that’s available on YouTube:

I used to watch Pump It Up! religiously, ‘cause that was the 100 Miles and Running EP that they was doing for the whole show, talking about that. And then, you know, I thought the show was off, over with, right? And I was just about to get up to get another brew or something out the kitchen, and I look, and she was interviewing Cube and that’s when he said that verse...“If I have you...something something marked something something, I’ll have you 100 miles and running.” And I was like, “Oh shit, no she didn’t! No she didn’t do that!”

Young added that at the January 27 party, he was inebriated and trying to “mack on” Barnes when Dre walked up and said, “That’s some fucked up shit you done, bitch,” before laying into her. “So I jumped in the fight to help Dee, and his bodyguard hits me in the side of my mouth here with his gun...It wasn’t no Suge [Knight] that did that, Suge wasn’t even at the fuckin’ party. It was Dre’s bodyguard that did the shit.” Young says two of his teeth were knocked out, and that no one who could see the fight, including DJ Ed Lover of Yo! MTV Raps, made no attempt to intervene. “They just sat up there and watched and shit,” said Young.

Young said that he confronted Dre about the incident the next morning in the office of N.W.A.’s record company, Priority, asking if Dre remembered what he did the night before. “Not really,” was Dre’s reported initial answer, before copping to beating Barnes.

In an interview that ran in the June 1991 issue of The Source, Eazy E provided the clearest explanation for Barnes’s perceived infraction against the group:

The Source: Now in all fairness, Dre isn’t here. I wanted to talk about the incident with Dre and Dee. Do you care to comment?

Eazy E: Oh yeah, we will. It’s like this: We did Pump It Up!, we did a little something on him [Ice Cube]. She [Dee] set it up. Then she had him come back and do his little clip on us. So we figured everybody that’s gonna be settin’ us up to do these TV shows and interviews—that all of a sudden slide him in after they hear our side of the shit—that make us look like clowns. We’re fuckin’ up everybody! Everybody. I don’t give a fuck who it is.

MC Ren: That was an example.

The Source: Don’t you think that was ill—beating up a girl?

Eazy E: Nah, it’s not ill. The bitch deserved it. She knew that. We were closer than that, we were like family, we’ve been knowin’ her a long time. And anyway, if my brother fucks up, we’re fuckin’ him up, too. It’s business.

The Source: Is there a lawsuit?

Ren: No.

Eazy E: We hope not.

But there was. Barnes pressed charges and the Los Angeles Times reported that on August 27, 1991, Dre pled no contest to misdemeanor battery. (The Washington Post reported in June 1991 that, “A misdemeanor battery charge was filed by the Los Angeles city attorney in April and was upgraded to aggravated battery in May when Dr. Dre failed to show up in court.”) He was fined $2,513, sentenced to 240 hours of community service, and given 24 months of probation. He was also ordered to pay $1,000 to the California Victims Restitution Fund, and film an anti-violence PSA. Barnes also filed a civil suit against Dre for the assault, as well as against Eazy E, Ren, and Yella for libel, undoubtedly based on their very public comments on the incident. She sued for $22.7 million in damages.

In the aforementioned Barnes profile in the 1992 issue of The Source, Barnes discussed the state of her case:

Dee decided to take the group to court for their statements in the press, but Eazy and Ren got off by invoking their First Amendment right, freedom of speech. “Right now, we’re gonna appeal,” she explains. “I dropped Yella from the case. I held onto Eazy and Ren ‘cause they were talking the most shit. But I’m taking them back. Then, towards Dre, I took him to court and tried to get a restraining order. And I’m continuing with the civil suit against him. Dre’s just still in the denial stage, like he didn’t do it.”

Barnes also expressed a feeling of betrayal not unlike that expressed by Eazy E—the piece states that she once considered Dre her “homie”: “Never in a million years did I think he’d turn around to smack me...to punch me. And when you look at his size, you know, he could’ve knocked me out with one punch—BAM!—but he just had to keep beating me. It’s not like I was swinging at him.”

Dre publicly eased into denial over time after his initial “I just threw her through a door” statement to Rolling Stone. In July of 1991, he reportedly told Entertainment Weekly, “They blew it all out of proportion...It’s not like I broke her arm.” And then in November 1992, he reportedly said to The Source, “I didn’t do shit, I didn’t touch her ass.”

According to Yule Case, a Pump It Up! producer, Barnes hired Rook of the rap group the Boo-Yaa Tribe to be her bodyguard because “they were the only people that anyone was scared of.” Barnes settled out of court with Dre, reportedly in the fall of 1993, for an undisclosed amount.

In the initial interview Barnes gave the Los Angeles Times, she underlined the larger implications of her lawsuit:

My lawsuit is not just about one five-foot three-inch woman getting slapped around by a six-foot two-inch guy...It’s about how N.W.A rages violence against women in general. Millions of little boys listen to this crap—and they’re going to grow up thinking it’s all right to abuse women.

O.G. hip-hop journalist and total badass dream hampton wrote an op-ed in a 1991 issue of The Source, responding to Dre’s beating and the misogynistic air in hip-hop at that time. Part of her essay read:

It infuriates me that witnesses reported that Dr. Dre’s bodyguard held the crowd back as Dee received multiple blows to her womanhood. I find it intolerable when brothers ask, “So what did Dee do?” I will be outraged to learn that Dr. Dre is not underneath jail when this is published. Historically, Black women have been reluctant and intimidated to confront their abuse because of the “division” it would cause within the race and because of the racist, classist institutionalization of the judicial system and the white women’s liberation movement.

Violence against Black women by Black men did not begin with rap music. Sexism did not begin with the black community. These minor revelations are not enough. Sexism exists in the hip-hop generation. Manifestation of sexist behavior is first verbal and mental abuse (BBD, Big Daddy Kane, Too Short, HWA)—it evolves into its inevitable counterpart, physical violence (Dee Barnes, [the mother of three of Flavor Flav’s children] Karen Ross, one out of every four Black women between 18 and 25). Hip-hop music must take responsibility for eliminating the perpetuation of the destruction of the Black community, i.e. the abuse of the Black women. It has no place in revolutionary music.

Almost 25 years later, it seems like members of N.W.A. have finally gotten Barnes’s and hampton’s message. But the method being used in Straight Outta Compton to reconcile that message is erasure. Don’t forget about what happened to Dee.

(Or Michel’le, or Tairrie B, or any other woman that Dre beat.)

I’ve reached out to Barnes to discuss this incident further. If she agrees to talk, I will run a separate interview with her.

[Top image by Sam Woolley]

Ice-T and Coco finish each others’ sentences. It’s something you might expect from newlyweds, or couples otherwise in the dawn of their relationships, but the duo has been married since 2002, and their tangible affinity for one another has been a representation of relationship goals since Ice Loves Coco, the reality show chronicling their lives that ran on E! from 2011 to 2014.

Next week, the duo will start their newest endeavor: a daytime talk show called Ice-T & Coco, when they commence their deserved place in history as a gangsta Regis & Kathie Lee. Last week, while filming the show in front of a live audience, Coco also announced that she is pregnant with the couples’ first child together (Ice has a son and a daughter from prior relationships), putting her in the fun position of starting a new job and being pregnant for the first time simultaneously.

These two are fucking great. I called them to discuss their new jobs, new bundle of joy, and the secrets to having the kind of relationship we all wish for.

Hi Ice and Coco!

COCO: You know what, I feel like I’ve been a part of Jezebel’s lives for a very long time! I’ve been on Jezebel since, I think, day one! Ice is gonna get on the line in a second, he’s playing XBox as we speak.

ICE: Hello!

Hi! What are you playing?

ICE: I’m playing Payday, Payday 2.

I have no idea what that is. I play, like, Candy Crush.

ICE: Oh, like games you play on your phone.

COCO: I like Waze!

Waze?

ICE: It’s a game you play in the car.

That seems dangerous!

COCO: It’s meant for the passenger, though, so the passenger plays while the driver is driving, and it gives them something to do. It’s stupid really, but it’s fun.

Whatever works. So, you just announced that you’re having your first child together. Congratulations!

COCO: I knew that was coming! Thank you so much!

ICE: Thank you! We announced it on Friday. We were taping our premiere show on Friday that’s gonna show on Monday, and we told the studio audience about it and then it took a couple of days and it just popped off really heavy.

COCO: But I just really put it out on my social media, like, hey: I’m confirming it today. No speculation, it’s really happening, I’m glad that’s out there, BOOM. I am pregnant.

ICE: Done.

So the timing is pretty crazy, with you starting a new talk show and having a new baby.

COCO: We didn’t plan for this! Everybody’s thinking, well did you guys plan…

ICE: I’m not that good, I’m not that accurate. [laughs]

COCO: Yes! To people who are like, how is that possible that you’re coming out with a talk show and then you break the news... did you guys plan that? I’m like, no, everybody knows you can’t plan a pregnancy like that! I guess it’s just meant to be and then actually it was perfect timing because I don’t think I could hide this baby bump for too long, it’s gonna come out any day now. Coco’s changin’!

How does it feel to be having a new career and and your first child together, as well?

COCO: I’m definitely like a multitasker, I feel like I can do everything. I already have it in my brain that I can have a baby and can still do my businesses and make sure my man is happy so I don’t have a problem with that. Everybody is like, ‘Well that’s gonna change.’ Of course it’s gonna get a little hairy when I have a baby, yeah, it’s another human being. But I’m just gonna have to figure it out. I mean, there’s people who have like, nine babies in their household and they figure it out. I just really want to stand up for that strong woman crowd of women who follow me—as it is think I’m a strong woman. I can’t just have a baby and turn around and like, fail. They’re relying on me! I hope I can do a good job!

ICE: You’ll do great!

COCO: I’ve never had a baby before, so I’m just going with the rhythm of everything else.

I don’t think anyone would expect you to fail. Were you planning to have a kid or was this just like… oops!

ICE: No oops.

COCO: The thing is, I already knew my whole life that 35 is a good age to have a baby, I think you’re away from your 20s, you’re out of that crazy era, and when you move into your 30s you know what you want out of life. So I thought 35 was like the golden age and, what do you know, when I hit 35, Ice and I talked about it and were like, okay, let’s make this happen. I was on the pill for 17 years so I was kinda concerned about that, and I talk about that on the show, because you know, you’re on the pill for so long you think that then you won’t be able to get pregnant for quite some time.

And what do you know, it was a miracle: I got pregnant instantly. I’m 36 now but I got pregnant at 35, so it was like perfect timing. We talked about it, we knew we wanted to do it that year and it happened. So we got what we want.

That’s great! So about the show, you’ve said it’s going to be pop culture-y. What is your vision for it?

ICE: Well we already know what it’s gonna be because we shot five days of it, it’s gonna be madness. One thing it’s not: it’s not gossip. We’re not dealing with today’s current events, so to speak. We’re just kinda like vibing off things that are hip now, people that are hip now, and that wanna come on the show and have some fun. One of my favorite people is Jimmy Fallon. I love Conan O’Brien. And I always love going on their shows cause they don’t dig up any dirt, they just kinda roll with you and what you wanna talk about. And I feel those are the best in the business, that’s the top of the food chain. So we’re gonna kinda reenact that with a husband and wife but with just a bunch of madness. It’s insane, I just can’t even explain. You just gotta watch it.

COCO: Everything is funny, from the moment you click in to the moment you click out, it’s funny. It’s like a feel-good show, when you’re watching it you should be laughing. If you’re not laughing you should just watch another show, honestly. I’m not saying that I’m funny, I think Ice is funny and I just chime in whenever someone needs to say something, and I think that we just bring in this element of his side and her side.

ICE: And a lot of love. We love the people that are on the show, we love each other, our dogs are there. Soulgee is there. If you watched anything of our reality show, it’s just that cool energy we like, and I’m digging it. I tell people, if you watched the first show, and you don’t like it, then don’t even waste time watching the second show. It’s not your cup of tea.

Coco: Ice is right, you feel like you’re watching Ice Loves Coco in a talk show format.

You’ve worked together for many years but this seems like it’s in a different capacity. Has it changed much?

ICE: Nah, it’s work you know. And Coco has a crazy work ethic. We’ve got a bunch of producers—a couple of the producers are actually from Oprah, imagine that. They know what they’re doing, Candi and Bridgette. They make it easy for you because they set up the segments, they come to us and say, What do you think about this, what about this, what about this, yeah, no, yeah, no no, yeah. Oh that’ll be fun, no, oh yeah. And they only pick the ones that you’re excited about and they just set it up. Just imagine coming into work everyday and they say “Julianne, you’re gonna meet five people today.” And you just meet ‘em! You know, it’s easy like that. You just meet ‘em!

You sound so excited.

COCO: We are! Now that we’ve been shooting we’ve been like wow, this is fun, going to work is fun! We actually get to act like ourselves on the set. That’s how we are normally at home.

ICE: And I would let you know if I didn’t like it. I think that Coco and I, when you’re buying into the brand, you’re buying into us as people. You like us, and you just wanna see how things bank off of us. You’re not buying us to change Coco or to change Ice. You just see what happens when you put this person in front of Ice, you sit back, and you go ‘This is gonna be good.’ [laughs]

What are your secrets for working together as a couple? That situation seems like it could get a little hairy sometimes.

COCO: I think you just let the other person be themselves. Ice knows who he is, and he knows who I am, so he just lets me talk.

ICE: I also think you’re gonna bump heads if you have real control issues but I think the fact that I’ve been in the business 20 years before Coco, she has that little bit of willingness to say, okay, Ice knows what he’s talking about. And if I give her a pointer she doesn’t say, ‘Oh, you’re trying to tell me what to do.’ She’s like, me and Ice have got this far. She respects my opinion, and I respect her opinion. But when you have two people and both people wanna be in charge, then you have a problem.

I guess that’s how you have to work the balance in any relationship.

Ice: Yeah, and sometimes you gotta say, You know what honey, you drive. I don’t mind that, and my attitude is, if you wanna drive, well take the wheel! I don’t have a problem sittin’ back ridin’ either, you know! When both people really understand that it’s their benefit to work with each other, it’s a blessing to have somebody, then you really work well together. We call ourselves “teammates.” You have to be teammates, not opponents. Assets, not liabilities.

I look up to you two as a platonic ideal of a good relationship. What are your secrets to longevity?

ICE: You know what it is, you just have to admire the person you’re with. I gotta look at Coco and say, Coco’s the baddest model, she does her shit, girls love her, they wanna be her, she’s such a sweetheart, she’s the nicest person I ever met. And Coco has to be able to look at me and say, Ice has done a lot of shit, he deserves the respect. You know, I can’t walk into Ice and act like he’s just some bum on the road, he’s really done some shit. And if you have that kind of admiration for each other, the love is absolute. If one person is looking at the other saying you really ain’t shit, well there you go. You got a problem.

And that’s when you gotta dump your man. So Ice, in the trailer for this show, you mentioned that you invented gangsta rap. Obviously you were vilified for it, and I think maybe people who are younger have forgotten a bit. Do you think gangsta rap was misunderstood?

ICE: Nah, gangsta rap is what it was. I was a bad person. I mean, I spent most of my life as a career criminal. I was robbin’ banks, I was doing all kinds of things. I just think that, you know, it doesn’t have to do with where you start in life—it’s where you end up. My road has gone very different than the way I planned it. I play a cop on TV! Maybe you can take away from this and say, people have options and don’t think just cause somebody starts one way in life they end up another way. If you caught me at 18, you would have said, He’s never gonna be anything, he’s just a problem. But with the right guidance, the right opportunities, you can change your life. Who would ever thought I’d be doing daytime talk shows with middle class white American women? What the fuck! Me? I’m like the worst person.

But they would never get a chance to even hear my brain without stuff like this. Even when I’m on Twitter, you should see the women who follow me who are like, I love you, I love the shit you say. It’s very hardcore stuff, but they’re not gettin’ it from their corny husband. A lot of women really deep down inside want a bad boy, someone who really pushes the system. So when you watch this show, you’re not looking at Coco and husband. You’re looking at two extremes. Coco is an extreme blonde bombshell. And I’m an extreme black male. And we found peace and happiness somewhere in the middle. So it’s a very hip, unique thing.

This is off the topic, but me and Coco wanted to write a relationship book. And the square lady that sat there was like, It’s just too edgy. And I’m like, Well, bitch, this is an edgy relationship! Who do you want to write the book? Ozzie and Harriet no longer exist! And I think why Jezebel might like us is, we’re like a rock and roll couple. We’re the couple where the girl wants her husband to be a rock star, the guy wants his wife to be a hot model.

COCO: It’s a new age in relationships. And that’s another thing when you watch the talk show, if you didn’t get Ice and Coco before, if you never saw a reality show, you’ll understand when you watch us, because we might look completely different together, yes we do, but at the same time when you watch us, we have so many similarities. I think people will get a kick out of it.

ICE: I just don’t look as good in a bathing suit.

COCO: You know what, he wishes he had the balls to do that though.

ICE: Of course I do.

COCO: A lot of people wish they had the balls to do what I do, just to be out there, have that confidence. Believe me, half the time I’m kinda unconfident inside, but I have to act confident.

ICE: I tell people all the time, the kind of modeling Coco does? Before you diss it, go stand in front of your mirror butt naked and just look at yourself, and then say, do you feel like doing a photo shoot? [Laughs]

COCO: Yeah, it’s hardcore, but I’m blessed to continue. I’ve been modeling for 18 years now.

ICE: She just did a photo shoot! She’s 35, she’s still doing swimsuit shoots!

COCO: I did a photoshoot while pregnant and no one even knew! So it’s a nice thing for the supporters that have been like, Right on Coco, we love you, we love you. There’s a lane of women who still—

ICE: Strong women.

COCO: The strong women love me. It’s the iffy women who are like I don’t know about that Coco, but I think you should give me a chance. Just a little chance.

ICE: Or watch the show just to hate on her.

COCO: You can hate on me, but I think you should give me a chance if you didn’t watch my reality show. You can pick me apart, do whatever you want to do. But at least give me a chance.

Ice & Coco debuts Monday, August 3, on FOX-owned stations in New York (WNYW), Los Angeles (KTTV), Washington D.C. (WTTG), Atlanta (WAGA), Phoenix (KSAZ) and Detroit (WJBK).

Contact the author at julianne@jezebel.com.

Image via AP.

Two University of Cincinnati police officers who witnessed fellow cop Ray Tensing fatally shoot unarmed black driver Sam DuBose will not face criminal charges. Officers Phillip Kidd and David Lindenschmidt gave accounts of the shooting that turned out to be inconsistent with the footage from Tensing’s body camera. A grand jury declined to indict Kidd and Lindenschmidt, prosecutors announced Friday.

Tensing, facing murder charges for killing DuBose, said in a police report that he fired his weapon only after DuBose’s car began dragging him down the street. The same report notes that Officer Kidd claimed he saw Tensing being dragged and saw him fire a single shot.

“It was unclear how much of this incident OIT Lindenschmidt witnessed,” the report noted.

A body camera video released Wednesday called into question the officers’ claim that Tensing was dragged before he fired the shot that killed DuBose. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters argued Wednesday that the car began moving only after DuBose was dead, and that his foot must have pressed the accelerator after he was shot. http://gawker.com/video-of-sam-d...

Kidd and Lindenschmidt were placed on leave Thursday amid protests calling for the DA to “charge the second officer”—meaning Kidd—with lying.

Videos from their body cameras show both Kidd and Lindenschmidt at the scene, listening to Tensing say he was dragged and agreeing that’s what happened.

But Deters on Friday said “no charges were warranted,” because both officers had changed their story in their official interviews. According to a statement from his office:

“Two UC officers arrived on the scene as Tensing was reaching into Mr Dubose’s car. Both officers made comments at the scene but later were interviewed in depth by Cincinnati Police Officers about what they had had witnessed. In their official interviews, neither officer said that they had seen Tensing being dragged.”

Deters acknowledged there was “confusion over the way the initial incident report was drafted,” but noted that it wasn’t a sworn statement. In official interviews and in front of the grand jury, their testimony has been consistent: there was no dragging.

Tensing pleaded not guilty Thursday.

[h/t Guardian, Photo: DuBose family via WCPO]

Yesterday’s high temperature in Seattle was 94°F, breaking the record as the city’s tenth day so far this year with a high temperature at or above 90°F. This brutal July smashed extremes across the Pacific Northwest, shattering record high temperatures and giving many cities their warmest Julys on record.

To say it’s been hot in the northwest this year is an understatement. Coming off of a record warm winter, the ridging pattern that kept the left coast so warm and dry sustained itself through the spring and summer, exacerbating the drought and creating significant problems with both water supplies and human health.

What Kind of Month Has It Been

The United States as a whole has been slightly cooler than average this year, taking a quick look at the above map—generated by WeatherBELL—which shows month-to-date surface temperature anomalies in degrees Celsius. The two regions of the country that stand out as abnormally warm are the Pacific Northwest and the southeastern United States, which endured an excruciating and record-busting heat wave of its own last month.

Average Temperatures

For the purposes of this post, I’m using average monthly temperature as a measure of record warmth. The average monthly temperature is the average of all the average daily temperatures for that month. If the high is 70°F and the low is 50°F, that day’s average temperature was 60°F—it’s this value that’s added up for all the days in the month and averaged together to arrive at the average monthly temperature. High averages indicate warmer high and low temperatures.

Fun!

Also, all temperatures from here on out are in degrees Fahrenheit, because it’s superior to Celsius when talking about air temperatures.

Seattle

Let’s start with the northwesternmost major city in the lower 48. Seattle just broke its record for the most days with high temperatures at or above 90°F ever recorded in one year, marking ten days yesterday (and likely eleven days today). This breaks the old record of nine days set back in 1958 (records at Sea-Tac Airport go back to 1945).

Not only did Seattle just break one record, but it’s closing out its warmest July ever recorded, exceeding July of 2009 by 1.5°F. The city is also within one-tenth of one degree of tying the average temperature seen in its all-time warmest month on record at Sea-Tac. The average temperature this July has been 71.0°F in Seattle, and the record for the warmest average monthly temperature was 71.1°F, seen back in August 1967.

Portland

Yesterday’s high temperature of 103°F at Portland International Airport is the warmest temperature they’ve recorded since the heat wave of 2009, where the city reached a mind-altering high of 106°F two days in a row, on July 28 and 29.

Even though it’s been unusually toasty in Portland this month, it’s probably not going to beat July 1985 for first place, though with today’s forecast high of 102°F, it’s possible that this month will eek out July 2009 for the second-warmest July on record. Records at the Portland International Airport go back to 1938.

San Francisco

We haven’t heard much about San Francisco this year, with even the recent O. M. G. EARTHQUAKE HYPE PANIC focusing on the Pacific Northwest and not San Francisco like is usually does. Of course, that’s probably because there’s nobody left who can afford to write about San Francisco, but anyway...

The city by the bay is poised to record its second-warmest July on record, coming within two-tenths of one degree of the previous warmest month, which was last July. High temperatures have been a couple of degrees above average almost every day this month in San Francisco, with a couple of relatively warm days—88°F on July 19 and 87°F this past Monday—helping bump the month up to the number two spot on the list.

Also in Oregon: Medford, Salem, and Eugene

Smaller cities get smaller mentions (sorry!), but it’s worth noting that both Salem and Eugene saw their warmest July on record, and Medford recorded its third-warmest July. Salem and Eugene beat their records by 0.2°F and 0.3°F, respectively, so in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t exactly a photo finish.

Here’s the chart for Medford...

...and Salem...

...and Eugene:

August probably won’t be as god-awful as July was, but with the way things have been going this year, it’s all downhill from here. Have a great day!

[Image: AP | Charts: author, using data from xmACIS2 | Map: WeatherBELL]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

Malcolm Read passed away on Monday, July 20. Not a particularly masculine man, Max leaves behind a bad, unwanted website, 20 dirty children, and a cat named Khaleesi. His spirit has retreated to Italy, where he will wander the stalls of the Palazzo de Amore, gently picking up and putting down various cashmere scarves until he finds one that fits him just so.

From his proudest times to his saddest times, from the whalebone-strewn beaches of Rhode Island to the ancient alleys of the Continent, throughout his rise from obscure night-shift blogger to famous editor in chief, the one unchanging feature of Max Read has been how spectacularly ownable he is, on social media or in chat or on his rare and tentative ventures into meatspace. In honor of his departure, the staff of Gawker has compiled the best of Max Read owns, of which there are many. God, there are so many.

Ciao, Max Read, you are deeply loved and Myst.

Max Read is confident.

Every day is casual Friday for Max Read.

Max, were you aware that Gawker is not a magazine when you asked The FADER to identify you as an anonymous “magazine editor” in their extremely long piece about Everlane?

For someone from New Jersey, Max Read has done a remarkable job of assimilating.

Max Read is the finest editor-in-chief from Princeton Junction, New Jersey in quite some time.

Max Read can really handle his two glasses of red wine.

Trax Read.

Max Read went to the same college as Obama.

Max Read wears sweatpants from Germany.

“Max Read is my friend.”—Sam Biddle

Max Read’s cat’s name is Khaleesi.

Max Read will never let his unique head shape hold him back from wearing baseball caps.

“MAH WIFE.”-Caity Weaver

Max Read considers it a “fun fact” that he and Bruno Mars were born on the same day.

Max Read and Bruno Mars are both Libras.

Max Read uses Venmo as a social network.

Max Read is the precocious only child at the party entertaining the grown-ups with his big talk and little bowties.

Max Read whisper-sings Joni Mitchell songs at his desk.

Yes @max_read is humming aloud along with "Born to Run" on the office sound system.

November 3, 2014

Max Read once wore a vest to work and was so mercilessly teased he never wore it again.

Max Read is cool.

Max Read has definitely felt a boob.

Max Read wrote Horrible Cruise Ship Capsizing Actually Sounds Sort of Funny.

Max Read orders all of his upper-body clothing via Everlane’s 1-hour express delivery service.

Max Read is a part-time Everlane model.

Max Read has opinions about restaurants.

All the Ramones are dead and @max_read is humming along out loud to Fleetwood Mac in the workplace.

August 28, 2014

Max is short for Malcolm X.

Max Read archives his tweets.

Max Read has read receipts on.

Max Read’s fancy sweatpants cost $120.

Max Read is a Vanderbilt.

Max Read is a Yankees fan.

Max Read had his birthday party at Hot Bird.

“MAH WIFE.”-Caity Weaver

Max Read is interviewing at the BuzzFeed offices right now.

Max Read refuses to capitalize the f in BuzzFeed.

Max Read is a literally a chathead.

Max Read liked 20 posts on Instagram.

Max Read was a child model.

Malcolm "@max_read" Read currently tapping his toes vigorously to "Sandstorm - Original Mix" by Darude on the office sound system.

December 9, 2014

Max Read is The Awl’s biggest fan.

Max Read is normcore.

Max Read spells it v*gina.

Max Read doesn’t want to splurge on the newest version of Fantastical.

Max Read supports KONY.

Max Read will ask you, enthusiastically and out loud, if you saw the funny image macro he just retweeted.

Max Read is his parents’ second coolest child.

Max Read “lifecasts.”

Max Read banned Caity Weaver for “MAH WIFE.”

Max Read is typing.

Max Read and Tom Scocca are typing.

Max Read and John Cook are typing.

Max Read reads Slack analytic reports before he goes to bed.

Max Read is a cat person.

Max Read coined the term “bad Slack.”

Max Read hates bad Slack.

Max Read wrote this: “The word ‘massive’ is never to appear on the website Gawker dot com. Here’s a handy list of synonyms for your headline toolkit.”

Max Read is a huge, enormous, vast, immense, large, big, mighty, great, colossal, tremendous, prodigious, gigantic, gargantuan, mammoth, monstrous, monumental, giant, towering, elephantine, mountainous, titanic; Herculean, Brobdingnagian; monster, jumbo, mega, whopping, humongous, hulking, honking, bumper, astronomical, ginormous turd.

Max Read recently stated in public that he is reducing his wardrobe to only include various shades of white.

@caityweaver Max Read at last fully turning, over the shoulder. "Ciao."

May 29, 2014

Max Read sent the following text to Dayna Evans: “I can’t come to your drinks till later tomorrow promise me you’ll still be out

...(i know i was not technically invited).”

Occasionally, against all odds, you’ll see an interesting or even enjoyable picture on the Internet. But is it worth sharing, or just another Photoshop job that belongs in the digital trash heap? Check in here and find out if that viral photo deserves an enthusiastic “forward” or a pitiless “delete.”

Image via Twitter

DELETE

Casual eyeball use should be enough to raise questions about this photo’s authenticity, but the picture blew up online anyway last Thursday after it was shared by popular Twitter account @History_Pics.

As user @JournoJenkins67 points out, the image is actually an altered version of a decidedly skateboard-less shot taken during the filming of A Hard Day’s Night.

Images via Twitter//h/t @PicPedant

DELETE

While most of the factoids in this dumb viral image are either misrepresented or grossly exaggerated (comparing the effects of caffeine to those of heroin is an especially absurd touch), the graphic’s claim about vomiting from “overwhelmingsweetness” has the distinction of being an outright falsehood.

“This statement is not true,” nutritional biologist Kimber Stanhope told Buzzfeed. “We have studied 100s of participants in our studies who consumed beverages that contained more than 10 teaspoons of sugar, but no phosphoric acid. Not one ever vomited due to the sweetness, and I don’t remember any of them ever reporting that they felt nauseated due to the sweetness.”

Even the image’s creator doesn’t stand by its claims, telling the website he isn’t sure “exactly how accurate that infographic is for every single person,” having lifted the text from a Blisstree blog post.

Image via Imgur

FORWARD

Fake X-ray photos are pretty much everywhere online, so it was easy to be suspicious of this photo that hit Reddit’s /r/pics page on Wednesday. The picture, however, shows a real CT scan produced by researchers working at Amsterdam’s Meander Medical Center in December.

“It was not uncommon for monks to practise self-mummification but to find a mummified monk inside a statue is really extraordinary,” paleontologist Wilfrid Rosendahl, who led the imaging project, told The Telegraph in February. “It’s the only known example in the world.”

Image via Twitter

DELETE

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! encouraged Facebook users to do the latter this week when it posted this photo supposedly showing the Great Pacific garbage patch, estimated by some to cover 5,800,000 square miles.

In reality, however, the garbage patch is an area polluted by small plastic particles that are not clearly visible to the naked eye, which is why there are no satellite images of a location “TWICE the size of the continental U.S.”

As Snopes explained on Monday, the above picture actually shows a beached vessel among debris scattered by the tsunami that hit northern Japan in 2011.

Image via Facebook//h/t Snopes