Thanks to tighter borders and declining numbers of Mexican immigrants, America does not have enough farmworkers to meet demand. Has anyone told the Republicans this???

The issue, as summed up by the Wall Street Journal here, is fairly straightforward: picking fruit and vegetables is hard labor. American workers tend to not want to do it for the typical wages offered. Consequently, (often illegal) immigrants, particularly seasonal immigrants from Mexico, have long made up the bulk of farmworkers. They will do the hard work for lower wages than American workers would.

Over the past decade, illegal immigration from Mexico has fallen significantly, due to both demographic changes in Mexico and our nation’s own crackdown on immigration. Wages for farmworkers have risen to more than $11 per hour, yet big farmers still cannot find enough workers to pick their crops, which causes billions of dollars worth of losses each year to fruit and vegetable growers.

There you have it. Simple supply and demand. We cracked down on immigration, there are not enough farmworkers, wages are too low to attract enough American farmworkers to fill the gap, and therefore the crops are not getting picked, costing our economy billions.

And what is the response from the presidential candidates for the nomination of the party that is supposed to be supporting business in America? Is it to raise wages? No! Is it to relax our border restrictions to increase the labor supply? No! On the contrary, Republican candidates spend most of their time arguing over who can build a bigger fence on the border. The current leading candidate has based much of his campaign on demonizing “illegals” as dangerous criminals who are “detrimental to the fabric of our once-great country.”

Republican primary voters will presumably go straight from the polling place to their local farm to sign up for those $11 an hour jobs picking grapes in the summer sun. Anything to help this country become great again.

[Photo: AP]

There was a time—say, in January—when getting an interview with President Barack Obama was the biggest fish a budding new media behemoth could reel in. But now we have way too many of those fish.

On Monday, the website Mic—the news source for people too smart to read Upworthy, but not smart enough to read anything else—unveiled a 14-minute video interview with President Obama, conducted by editor-in-chief Jake Horowitz, who you might know from... something? Possibly. Do you read Business Insider?

In any event, the video focuses on the president’s nuclear deal with Iran. The compromise is briefly explained via sleek graphics and charts. Obama tells us why the deal is good, and we see Horowitz nod his head very seriously to make it clear that he is interviewing the president. Then Obama fields questions from two millennials and one 30-year-old, and he explains why their concerns are invalid.

What is gleaned from this interview? I have no idea. Barack Obama is very optimistic about the treaty he has negotiated. The president needed to sell this major piece of international policy, and that is what he did. The main thing you get from this interview, especially if you access it via Mic’s special landing page at mic.com/obama, is that Mic was able to land an interview with Barack Obama.

Will anyone remember anything said in this interview? Of course not. The more important question—for Mic, certainly—is whether anyone will remember that Mic secured time with a sitting president. Alas, the point at which Mic can get an interview with Obama is exactly the point at which interviewing Obama is no longer novel or meaningful.

This has been the year of the special Obama interview. Back in February, Obama played kingmaker by granting time to both BuzzFeed and Vox, with the latter racing its video out to beat its competitor by a day. The net result of these interviews (plus this) was that Buzzfeed and Vox—and Ben Smith and Ezra Klein and Matt Ylgesias, all one-time anti-establishment upstarts—got to hold a ruler up to their blood-pumped dicks in public. The New York Times drably reported the meaning of it all, which is that both websites are certainly important. Mission accomplished.

Vice, which has been running up the score in the new media valuation game, has gotten several opportunities to whip out its gnarled, diseased dick, too. In March, co-founder Shane Smith got face time with the president, though that is not an abnormal occurrence for people who can afford $23 million mansions in Santa Monica. Obama also participated in a “roundtable” on the “cost of education” hosted by Smith, whose company launders goodwill on behalf of Bank of America. In July, Vice accompanied Obama to a federal prison in Oklahoma—it will broadcast that special in a few weeks.

Not every one of Obama’s carefully curated interviews has been functionally worthless—Marc Maron and Grantland’s Rembert Browne both got good quotes out of the president. But in the cases of BuzzFeed, Vox, Vice, and now Mic, the interviews have merely been transactions. Obama can parcel out prestige, and the websites can offer some cool. It is, if anything, a logical pairing. The trades only require a facade of substance, and that’s a charade all parties are happy to facilitate.

But, with one year and change left in the Obama presidency, the returns on a grand sit-down with the leader of the free world have greatly diminished. In its first 24 hours, Mic’s Obama interview was watched less than 10,000 times on YouTube (see update below). The market, it appears, is fully saturated with Obama’s goodwill.

All that said, the Obama administration is free at any time to respond to Gawker’s repeated requests for an interview. Now, that would be a cool moment.

UPDATE (1:20 p.m.) James Allen, VP of communications at Mic, emailed to argue that Mic’s internal numbers tell a less embarrassing story about the play count of their interview. He says that the number displayed publicly on YouTube is deceptive because of how Mic presented the video on its site:

Because we used a custom image on the landing page that a user clicks to start the YouTube video, all of those views are not included in the public YouTube count. Using a custom image makes for a much better aesthetic and experience but does not register as a YouTube view because it’s not their native play button. We chose a better user experience instead of just focusing on making sure we hit a certain view count on YouTube.

Here’s a breakdown of the 155,000 views (noon today, 48 hours after publishing):

23K via Mic’s custom play button

14.5K via YouTube play button

118K via Facebook play button

Here’s a breakdown of the view count as of yesterday at noon (24 hours after publishing):

121.6K total views16.6K via Mic’s custom play button

We’ll take your word on the count via YouTube play button

95K via Facebook play button

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

On July 25, the day after she was arrested and jailed on charges of alleged assault, 37-year-old Ralkina Jones asked officers for medical treatment, saying, “I don’t want to die in your cell.” Less than 15 hours later, she was found dead in her cell. http://gawker.com/another-black-...

Cleveland Heights police released about 30 minutes worth of body cam video showing Jones explaining her medical history, around five of which were released by the New York Daily News. In the clip, Jones lists five medical conditions, including a serious heart condition, to two seemingly sympathetic officers. Via Cleveland.com:

Jones told the officers she suffered from postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which causes lightheadedness and fainting upon standing up. She also said she was taking medication for seizures, ADHD and depression.

Jones also told police about a brain injury she received from abuse from her ex-husband, the man who Jones was accused of assaulting the night of her arrest.

Jones’ sister in an earlier interview also said Jones had a heart murmur.

She tells the officers her main concern was the POTS syndrome, which may have affected her later that night—cops reportedly found her “lethargic” in her cell and briefly hospitalized her “for problems with her blood pressure and blood sugar.” They say she appeared fine during “periodic checks” they made throughout the night

But by 7:30 the next morning, Jones was dead.

Her family says they “do not fully understand all of the facts and circumstances surrounding her death but look forward to the results of the pending investigations.”

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Late last month, Recode reported that NBCUniversal is preparing to invest $250 million in BuzzFeed, a play that would value the site at $1.5 billion. This newest round of funding (last year, it was merely $50 million from Andreessen Horowitz) raised a still unanswered question: How is BuzzFeed doing financially? According to internal documents obtained by Gawker, the answer is: Good. The company’s revenue tripled from 2012 to 2013, and reached $46 million in the first half of last year. Its investment in editorial has doubled each year. The documents also prove clearly for the first time that BuzzFeed pays millions of dollars to sites like Facebook to boost its clients’ advertising campaigns.

While BuzzFeed trumpets each new round of venture capital, the state of its financial situation has remained almost completely opaque. CEO Jonah Peretti, for instance, has limited himself to saying the company is “profitable”—at least since August 2013. The documents, some produced internally and others by a major accounting firm last year, reveal an unprecedented amount of information about BuzzFeed’s financial condition.

The documents comprise three consolidated financial statements, which refer to tables outlining the company’s assets, operating costs, and revenues. The first and second statements, from the years 2011, 2012, and 2013, were produced by an accounting firm using normal auditing standards. The third statement, which details BuzzFeed’s finances in the first six months of 2014, appears to have been written by BuzzFeed’s own accountants, and was not audited by a third party.

We’ve pulled out some of the more important numbers (and other highlights) below. You can read the documents for yourself here, and view a searchable copy here.

Finances

Profits/Losses

• In fiscal year 2011, BuzzFeed posted a net loss of $3,349,741
• In 2012, the company posted a net loss of $4,026,079
• In 2013, the company posted a net profit of $7,038,721
• In the first 6 months of 2014, the company posted a net profit of $2,748,017 *

* The financial statement labels this figure as a “Net Loss,” but when one deducts the various costs from the stated total revenue for this period, it’s clear the figure refers to a net profit, not loss. A source intimately familiar the production of financial statements such as BuzzFeed’s told Gawker that he is confident the figure is simply mislabeled.

Revenues

• In fiscal year 2011, BuzzFeed had $4,127,935 in revenue
• In 2012, it had $20,333,560
• In 2013, it had $64,095,207
• In the first 6 months of 2014, it had $46,159,098

Editorial budget

• In fiscal year 2011, BuzzFeed’s editorial budget was $858,780
• In 2012, it was $4,724,608
• In 2013, it was $11,739,790
• In the first 6 months of 2014, it was $10,449,422

Analysis

What do the numbers above say, exactly? Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive who co-founded the media industry website Monday Note, said the financial statements indicated BuzzFeed was running a healthy business, but otherwise nothing in particular caught his eye. Regarding “real revenue, growing, moderate cash use,” he wrote in an email to Gawker, “the company is, as accountants say, a ‘going concern,’ it has cash to last several years. Perhaps forever, meaning some day, revenue is large enough to provide positive cash flow from operations and, voilà, you have a real, autonomous business.”

Gassée declined to comment on whether BuzzFeed’s books accorded with its reported valuation, and cautioned that others in his field were unlikely to weigh in as well. “I don’t see anyone who’d be incautious enough to comment on what a16z is doing,” he wrote, referring to the aforementioned venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. (Gassée’s prediction turned out to be somewhat accurate—one industry analyst responded in an email: “If the data is not public I won’t look at it.” A BuzzFeed spokesperson answered our inquiries with: “We are not going to comment on this—appreciate your checking in!”)

However Michael Dempsey, an analyst at CB Insights focused on the vagaries of startup financing, was able to provide some context about the company’s financials, and how they compare to other shops in the media industry. In an email to Gawker, he highlighted BuzzFeed’s investment in their editorial department:

It’s hard to say about valuation being wildly out of proportion because the company saw such great revenue growth from 2012 to 2013 at 215% growth ($20.33M to $64.1M). This growth was concurrent with when they disclosed that they raised their $19.3M round at a $200M valuation in December 2012 (was reported January 2013). It was also in 2013 where they actually had a positive net income of $7M, and then spending on editorial shot up and looks like Buzzfeed really “poured gas on the fire” as they say ...

Their revenue to valuation multiples are pretty high compared to public comparables like New York Times (NYT is currently trading around 1.38x 2014’s revenue, vs. BuzzFeed which you can peg somewhere south of 9.2x if you very conservatively pro-rate 1H [first half] 2014 revenue ($46.16M) to $92.32M and use the $850M valuation from their August 2014 $50M financing.

“You have to remember,” Dempsey added, “that BuzzFeed doesn’t operate on any sort of subscription model, is growing at a significantly higher rate versus traditional media companies, and also is doing a lot in their original video content, which is largely viewed outside of BuzzFeed.com, almost making this part of the business more comparable to an original content company vs. digital media publication.”

Dempsey emphasized, however, that BuzzFeed’s stratospheric rise and unique corporate arrangement—in which long, reported essays by BuzzFeed News reporters sit beside goofy videos produced by BuzzFeed Motion Pictures—make it difficult to compare BuzzFeed to other, older entities. “Long story short,” he wrote, “many public market investors may find the potential valuation multiples high, but the growth and difference between Buzzfeed’s structure isn’t a perfect comparison to the large, public, traditional media companies.”

Miscellaneous highlights

The same financial statements revealed other insights about BuzzFeed’s business model, including:

1. BuzzFeed pays millions for Facebook traffic

One of the more interesting line items in the financial statements is “cost of revenue,” which “consists primarily of amounts due to third party websites and platforms to fulfill customers’ advertising campaigns.” (An unspecified percentage of “cost of revenue” refers to the cost of maintaining BuzzFeed’s own servers.)

In other words, “cost of revenue” appears to refer primarily to the money BuzzFeed is using to buy traffic from Facebook (and likely other websites too) on behalf of brands advertising on BuzzFeed. And that traffic isn’t cheap:

• In 2011, BuzzFeed’s cost of revenue was $662,436
  
• In 2012, it was $3,627,594
• In 2013, it was $9,907,232
• In the first 6 months of 2014, it was $5,818,808

2. An unnamed publisher paid BuzzFeed $3.5 million to produce “original videos”

The appendix of BuzzFeed’s 2011/2012 financial statement details the precise terms of BuzzFeed’s partnership with an unnamed “Publisher,” who paid BuzzFeed $3.5 million in March 2013 to provide “original videos” for the publisher’s platform:

On March 7, 2013, the Company entered into a Distribution Agreement with a publishing platform (“Publisher’’) to provide certain audiovisual content to the Publisher. The agreement provides for a $3,500,000 guaranteed payment to the Company, in exchange for the Company providing original videos (the “Content”) for platform distribution. Under the Agreement, the Publisher retains 100% of advertising revenue sold by either the Company or the Publisher against the Content until it has fully recouped the payment amount, at which point advertising revenue is shared in an amount determined in the Agreement.

The identity of the “Publisher” is not entirely clear, but the only distribution agreement BuzzFeed appears to have entered around that time was with Google. Under the terms of that agreement, which were announced in May 2013, BuzzFeed and CNN collaborated on videos that were uploaded to YouTube under the banner of “CNN BuzzFeed” and targeted millenials.

3. BuzzFeed paid $1,000 in cash and 99,089 in vested shares to acquire Ze Frank’s game studio

From the 2011/2012 financial statement:

On September 11, 2012, the Company completed the acquisition of Ze Frank Games, Inc. for $1,000 in cash and 99,089 vested shares of our common stock valued at $0.80.

4. BuzzFeed paid $1,000 and 70,776 vested shares to acquire Kingfish Labs, a startup devoted to mining Facebook data:

From the same 2011/2012 statement:

On September 11, 2012, the Company completed the acquisition of Kingfish Labs, Inc., for $1,000 in cash and 70,776 vested shares of our common stock valued at $0.80.

Read the rest of BuzzFeed’s financial statements here. You find a searchable copy of the same documents on DocumentCloud.

With additional reporting by Tommy Craggs.

Email or gchat the author: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · Photo credit: Getty Images

Last week, Jane Ward, associate professor of women’s studies at the University of California, Riverside, penetrated the internet with one of those ideas that people were maybe thinking but just weren’t saying: Male sexuality is as fluid as female sexuality and “white straight-identified men manufacture opportunities for sexual contact with other men in a remarkably wide range of settings.” These opportunities include fraternity hazing and online cruising. This sexual contact, Ward detailed, is often conducted in the interest of affirming their heterosexuality as opposed to subverting it.

Ward’s book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, published last month by NYU Press, got tons of pickup, including an enormously popular Science of Us interview. (Note: Ward’s focus on white men primarily serves to circumvent racist discussions of “DL culture” and to shine a light on behavior she feels white guys could get away with without scrutiny as forbearers of the so-called norm.) That most of this coverage has relayed Ward’s message without much skepticism comes as no surprise—we barely have a language with which to describe self-identified “straight” men’s sexual engagement with other men. Ward’s idea that our cultural understanding of men’s sexuality has been way too simplistic for way too long is fundamentally sound and refreshing. Ward’s reach suggests she’s well on her way to enacting the change she intended with her writing. Greater understanding of any cultural phenomenon is only a good thing for the world.

But several of Ward’s claims deserve the same level of scrutiny that she affords to supposedly “straight” men who have, or come close to having, gay sex. Ward writes that “a good number” (whatever that means) of straight-identified men “feel at least somewhat open to the possibility of a sexual interaction with another man and do not view this possibility as a challenge to their heterosexuality.” A “good number” might mean “majority,” as Ward also writes of the “all-too-often ignored probability that straight men, as a rule, want to have sex with men. And they want to live heterosexual lives.”

Of course they do. There are many reasons why a man who sleeps with men would want to pass as heterosexual without a stated queer identity, the foremost being that life is easier without the stigma of sexual difference upon you. And let’s not ignore the wide-ranging data on male/male sexual attraction that suggests it’s extremely common or predictably rare, depending on what study you’re reading and deciding to intellectually invest in. (Here are 30 pages from a psychologist Ward cites that explore just how difficult it is to nail down a number.)

“I am not concerned with whether the men I describe in this book are ‘really’ straight or gay, and I am not arguing that they (or that all men) are really homosexual or bisexual in their orientation,” writes Ward. “Instead what I am arguing is that homosexual sex plays a remarkably central role in the institutions and rituals that produce heterosexual subjectivity, as well as in the broader culture’s imagination of what it means for ‘boys to be boys.’”

While Ward reasonably demonstrates the second sentence in this statement (though “remarkably central” is a stretch), why isn’t she concerned about whether the men described are really gay or straight? Given the cultural incentives that remain for a straight-seeming gay, given the long-road to self-acceptance that makes many feel incapable or fearful of honestly answering questions about identity—which would undoubtedly alter the often vague data that provide the basis for Ward’s arguments—it seems that one should care about the wide canyon between what men claim they are and what they actually are. Ward cites a 2010 Good Men Project article in which “developmental psychologist Ritch Savin-Williams describes his interviews with ‘securely’ heterosexual young men who report that they occasionally experience attraction to other men.” Had I been one of the subjects in a similar 2001 study, I also would have been one of those “securely” heterosexual men; I would have been lying and not worth listening to. I would have skewed the data.

Obliterating the identity boundaries between circumstance and desire while discussing the idea hardwiring, Ward goes as far as to claim:

No amount of homosexual sex or desire can change nature’s heterosexual design. If one knows one is not born gay, then one’s homosexual desires and behaviors simply cannot be gay, regardless of their content or frequency…To be very clear, I agree with the contention that when straight-identified people participate in homosexual behavior, they are still best understood as straight.

I read all 240 pages of Ward’s book and still don’t understand why they are “best” understood as straight in any context other than to bolster her argument, to fill her book with pages, and to sell said book. Just who is identity for, anyway: the self-identifier or the people he is relaying his identity to? Ward’s argument that our cultural conception of male sexuality needs expanding notwithstanding, when a guy says, “I’m straight,” he knows that what he is conveying is he is exclusively attracted to women. I, as the hypothetical recipient of his claim, then understand at the very least, his sexuality vis a vis mine. If his behavior and attraction is more complicated, we have words for that. (Ward cites “heteroflexible” and “straight but not narrow” as examples, which are clearly more useful than “straight,” but she returns to “straight” most frequently.) If he doesn’t like those words or is allergic to labels, as many people claim to be, he can use a sentence. If that’s too reductive, he can construct a paragraph. He can furthermore recite a book’s worth of explanation about his interests and behavior.

“…When a heterosexual need or impulse is a man’s primary alibi for homosexual sex, he is/becomes heterosexual,” writes Ward. “His heterosexuality is defined by his investment in heterosexuality. Gay men, in contrast, are men who have sex with men without an alibi.”

Are the terms “gay” and “straight” similar to the word “feminist,” which is to say that they have a useful and descriptive function but because of baggage attached to them (by either society, history, or self-creation) pose problems to many would-be adopters? Are many of Ward’s discussions subverted by the semantics of label-phobes? As Slate’s J. Bryan Lowder extensively explored earlier this year, there are plenty of gay people who don’t feel queer, who don’t subscribe to gay culture, who feel “normal” but for the same-sex attraction that makes them exceptional. That doesn’t make them straight. A single word couldn’t possibly convey the totality of a human’s emotional and sexual experience. It’s just shorthand that allows for people to begin to understand you.

“The reason that many of us feel ‘born this way’ is because your dick gets hard at what your dick gets hard at. I was popping boners at age 5 at the mere prospect of male nudity on my TV screen. My brain knew nothing about rejecting societal norms and queer iconoclasm; my body just knew what it wanted.”

While a word on the tip of the examined “straight” guys’ tongue would seem to be “bisexual,” Ward provides an opaque dismissal of the term “bisexual” being applied to the men she describes:

Because I understand bisexuality as a mode of queerness, one marked by sexual desire that is not gender-specific (or that extends to masculinity, femininity, and genderqueerness), it would be troubling to conceptualize as bisexual the desires expressed in [Craigslist] ads, as their authors have gone to great lengths to circumvent the imposition of this kind of queer meaning.

Elsewhere, Ward describes the “straight-identified men who are the subjects of this book” as “men who prefer to be partnered with women, who are typically repulsed by the idea of a gay life, who feel no connection to gay or bisexual culture, and who, in various ways and for a variety of reasons, have sexual encounters with men.” Ward’s argument is contingent on her accepting self-identified straight men at face value, while elsewhere explaining why things like the fraternity-hazing ritual of the elephant walk are gayer (in terms of pleasure and being an elected activity) than they are made out to be. “Straight” sexuality is understood as a fluid concept, while cultural queerness is far more rigid—why shouldn’t, for example, the men in the paragraph quoted above be considered queer? Why isn’t it useful to distinguish them from heterosexual-identifying men who only sleep with women and have never once been aroused by the idea of sex with another man? Such a designation could only broaden our understanding of the world and the fascinating gradations of sexuality.

Throughout the book, Ward claims that the true sexuality division does not come from sexual activity but from one’s relationship to heteronormativity: those who embrace it are straight, those who reject it are queer. While I do agree that “born this way” arguments can be reductive and condescending, the Freudian basis of Ward’s claim—“It is only through disciplined conformity to societal norms, typically directed by parents, that young children’s sexual impulses are redirected toward a sanctioned, and most often singular, object of desire (most often, a person of the ‘opposite’ sex)”—is outrageous. Her conclusion regarding this “choice” is fundamentally impractical:

This investment in heteronormativty is itself a bodily desire; in fact, I believe it is the embodied heterosexual desire, more powerful than, say, a woman’s yearning for male torsos or penises or a man’s longing for vaginas or breasts.

Yeah, but that’s not how dicks work. Ward’s perspective is that of a queer woman who elected to start sleeping with women as a rejection of the misogyny evident in virtually every male sex partner she had. “I discovered that the object of my desire was not a person or even a class of people (like women or men), but queer spaces, queer ideas, and queer possibilities.” I do not wish to challenge Ward’s well-articulated and singular experience, but I do want to challenge her application of complex female sexuality on men. By and large, men are more simple than she describes—I guarantee you that no straight dude has ever identified as someone who enjoys heteronormativity more than pussy or tits (that’s another example of Ward arbitrarily choosing to impose what men really mean over what they project while still taking “straight” for an answer). The reason that many of us feel “born this way” is because your dick gets hard at what your dick gets hard at. I was popping boners at age 5 at the mere prospect of male nudity on my TV screen. My brain knew nothing about rejecting societal norms and queer iconoclasm; my body just knew what it wanted.

If Ward had actually talked to some of the men she is describing, perhaps her findings would be different, perhaps her book would be shorter, perhaps she’d have to face the reality of theory’s failings. Instead, her most thoroughly quoted firsthand source is gay psychologist Joe Kort who runs straightguise.com, and shares findings like, “Straight guys, they might have a penis fetish, or maybe they’re into giving blow jobs…but it’s not about the entire man.” For a real sense of straight-guy-on-straight-guy sex outside of institutions like fraternities, the military, and pornography, Ward analyzes a series of Craigslist ads posted by supposed “str8 guys.” That Craigslist has been largely outmoded by geolocation apps like Grindr and Scruff is of no concern to Ward, nor is the fact that lying while cruising for sex online is an oft-used means to an end. I couldn’t even count the amount of guys I hooked up with who lied about their dick size or their looks or their affect or preferred sexual role before we met (so often do “tops” turn into bottoms when thrust from shadows of online to IRL encounters). If a guy really wants to get laid, it behooves him to call himself “str8,” regardless of his self-identity or actual behavior. It’s just good strategy.

Nonetheless, Ward reports, “Sexological survey research conducted with straight-identified men who post ads for sex with men on Craigslist suggests that, in fact, these men quite commonly report actual heterosexual identification.” The article she cites, however, suggests no such thing. Ward’s handling of the truth here, in fact, is as dubious as those str8 dudes’. What she points to is a 2013 paper from Culture, Health & Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care by Brandon Andrew Robinson and David A. Moskowitz called, “The eroticism of Internet cruising as a self-contained behaviour: a multivariate analysis of men seeking men demographics and getting off online.” The fascinating study is not about the real life identification of guys who claim to be “str8” on Craigslist—it’s about cruising for sex online being the means and the end (think of it being used as an erotic aid similar to porn). And even if it were about whether those guys are telling the truth about their identities on Craigslist, what would stop them from deviating from their Craigslist claims in the self-reporting they’d be asked to do in a survey? How much “proof” could they possibly supply?

Regardless, Robinson and Moskowitz report that 4.01 percent of their subjects identify as heterosexual, which is far from “quite commonly” by any standard. I have no idea what Ward was going for with this. It certainly seems foolhardy to glean any notion of sexual practice from online ads, which tend to be overly specific, idealistic, and rooted in fantasy. How often does any sex go according to plan?

Ward examined this subject in a 2008 article for Sexualities titled “Dude-Sex: White Masculinities and ‘Authentic’ Heterosexuality Among Dudes Who Have Sex With Dudes.” While many of her previous findings are repeated in Not Gay, Ward’s earlier writing takes less of a hardline in its claims about male sexuality. “This study demonstrates how a heterosexual culture is constructed online without making any claims about the ‘true’ heterosexuality of the men who post ads on Craigslist,” she writes, and indeed, that is sound and fertile ground for exploration. Granted, heterosexuality as an active construct runs counter to masculinity’s fundamentally effortless ideal. True, idealized masculinity just is, and made realer by its matter of fact. There are few things less masculine than a guy who identifies strictly as “masc” and makes great effort to display that for the male gaze. Understanding that “masculinity” or “str8ness” is a pose, a form of drag, though is more in line with the playful nature of man-on-man sex that often involves switching roles at will, playing with “toys,” and eroticizing symbols like piss and raw sex. Gay sex offers infinite possibility.

In “Dude-Sex,” Ward also provides a useful refutation for the position I have taken in this piece:

To de-queer the sex described on Craigslist is to give up the epistemological pleasure of self-righteous knowing, owning, outing, and naming. In the face of homophobia and heterosexism, honing one’s “gaydar” and revealing that “we are everywhere” have been among few queer luxuries. Yet as others have argued, political solidarity built primarily around sex acts misrecognizes what is most threatening, and subversive, about queerness. Queer culture—including a collective rejection of the rules associated with normal, adult, reproductive sexuality and (nonconsensual) heterosexual power relations—may better help scholars and activists determine the meaning of queer.

But what of the nonacademic who’s just trying to have a conversation or understand the world? How is he or she at all helped by shifting this divide? Perhaps I am exercising “self-righteous knowing, owning, outing, and naming,” and a more gentle approach to the sexual identification claimed by “straight” guys who sleep with guys would be the compassionate route. But I think it would also blind me to the reality, and I am suggesting that in order to write so many words about this topic, Ward had to willfully blind herself.

Words exist for a reason. They have use and describe actual phenomena. Though we sometimes have no choice but to rely on self-reporting in matters of identity, it is not always the case. I by no means want to pathologize sexuality with the following examples, but I want you to think about how guilt drives people to false self-reporting. Think of the crook who claims, “I am not a crook,” the rapist of underage girls who claims, “I’m a good person,” the stalker who claims, “I’m actually a nice person,” the monster who claims, “I am not a monster.” People attempt to distance themselves from themselves all the time, and it’s because they feel bad; they’re delusional, or stupid, or they think you’re stupid enough to buy into their delusions. Self-awareness is a rare commodity. You are what you think you are and what you do.

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

Another day, another Uber driver arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a passenger. At this point, could you blame a person far more cynical than I for concluding the mandatory $1 “safety fee” is complete and utter bullshit?

And while the details are vague, the background is pretty horrifying. The AP reports this accused Uber driver isn’t just another man with a license who allegedly tried to rape an intoxicated woman. No—this accused Uber driver, who allegedly tried to rape an intoxicated woman, is also also a molder of middle school minds.

Multiple media outlets report that according to an arrest affidavit, 39-year-old Patrick Aiello of Charleston demanded sexual favors Sunday night from a 23-year-old intoxicated female passenger in his car. The woman says Aiello attacked and sexually assaulted her before kicking her out of the vehicle.

Aiello, a teacher at Zucker Middle School in North Charleston, was arrested Monday on charges of kidnapping and first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

An Uber spokesperson tells the AP Aiello has been removed as a driver, which seems like the least they could do. How about better oversight? Real background checks? Seems not unreasonable—if, say, you’re going to charge passengers not to get raped—to ensure passengers don’t get raped.

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

A new reality show is throwing folks in front of a green screen and jamming them into wind tunnels to see if they have the guts to be America’s next great weatherperson. It’s common to brush off meteorologists as a group of lying guessers, but it takes an incredible effort to accurately predict the future every day.

Meteorologists on Twitter are rumbling with an uneasy curiosity over a new reality show on a cable network famous for Conan and preempting episodes of Seinfeld to show midday baseball games. This new program on TBS, America’s Next Weatherman, is supposed to be a reality show that parodies other reality shows, cable news, and the goofy seriousness of your friendly neighborhood weather dork. The show asks a handful of weather enthusiasts to perform wacky stunts in order to compete for a sum of money and a chance to present the weather on CNN for a few minutes.

I would rather whack a piñata full of tsetse flies than watch this show.

It’s not that it’s a particularly bad program for casual viewers—disclaimer: I’ve only seen the commercials—but no matter what they say or do, the first five minutes would induce a rage stroke worse than the one I got when I hate-watched the debate last week. To give TBS some credit, though, at least the program is sort of about the weather. You just know that there’s a mid-level Weather Channel executive kicking the wall of a dank control room in some forgotten part of the building because they passed up the chance to create a show like this to air alongside Scruffy Huffing Woodsfest, Rushing Cussing Truckers, and Where The Hell Did We Send Mike Seidel This Time? (I would so watch that—Mike Seidel is awesome.)

There is a palpable fear among some meteorologists that America’s Next Weatherman will give its seven viewers the wrong idea about the work that goes into becoming a meteorologist and forecasting the weather on a day-to-day basis. Choosing meteorology as an academic pursuit and eventual career can be rewarding, but it is tough as hell.

Here’s a small sampling of what it takes to be a meteorologist, and some advice if you want to get into the field someday.

I’ll start by saying that I do not hold a meteorology degree. I completed a minor in meteorology, so I’m not faking my way through The Vane or anything. That being said, I’m no Greg Forbes.

I grew up wanting to be a meteorologist. I chose a college based on my desire to be a meteorologist. I dreamed of one day running The Weather Channel or growing old in a comfy position with the National Weather Service. A lifelong career as a meteorologist was a foregone conclusion for me until I actually started taking meteorology in college. Two years into the degree, though, I realized my heart just wasn’t in it anymore (he says on the weather blog he runs), but everyone’s experience is different.

Math and Physics

. @UGAAtmosSci students had thermodynamics test today. their review board. This is meteorology. luv this pic.twitter.com/whfxSmcvTK

March 19, 2015

If you want to be a meteorologist, understand that by the time you graduate, you’ll also have a minor in physics and you’ll stand one or two courses away from double-majoring in math. Unless you channel your inner indigo child and figure out a better way to do it without numbers, meteorology is almost all math and physics. Whether you’re running complex computer models or calculating how much instability is available for thunderstorms to develop, everything in weather is math and physics. It’s a deeply technical science. You can’t escape it.

I went to the University of South Alabama in Mobile. It’s a great little school—good people, good professors for the most part, terrible food that almost killed me (another story), and solid academic programs that give you a big-school education at a slightly reduced price. The exception is their math department. I had two professors who were good at teaching math. The rest of them were terrible at it, and it was up to you to teach yourself the entirety of the course material.

Few subject matters are out of reach if you have a great teacher who can guide you through the material. I once took a statistics course with a professor who was so good that not one person who showed up to the exams failed. He didn’t pad our grades. He didn’t give us easy exams. A class of more than 40 people understood the complicated material because he was good at his job.

The number one reason that meteorology students drop out of the major is because they can’t handle the math or physics. I failed Calculus I twice. No amount of tutoring or online guides or textbook reviews helped. The instructors taught the lessons as if we already knew the material and new concepts were simply review, and had fits if we asked questions or got lost. The ineptitude of the math department at that school was (and probably still is) a major point of contention for science majors at the university, and it’s a theme I see play out again and again when I talk to meteorology students at universities around the country.

You need to have a solid foundation in math and physics if you want to be a meteorologist. Don’t brush off high school algebra and trigonometry—the stuff you learn here is material you’ll have to recite by heart in higher-level courses. If you’re shaky on math and still want to pursue a career as a master prognosticator, seek out colleges with stellar math departments, or at least get ready to take advantage of tutoring programs in your spare time.

If you’re an aspiring meteorologist, don’t get scared off by the math and physics. It’s what helps you understand why the atmosphere does what it does. It’s hard, but many meteorology majors get through it with flying colors.

Forecasting

Let’s say you’re a math whiz and you got through all of that without issue. Now comes the forecasting. It’s a running joke that meteorologists don’t know what they’re doing, that they’re just guessing, that they can be wrong half the time and keep their jobs. Ha ha, so witty!

Weather forecasting is one of the only careers where you’re expected and able to predict the future with a scary level of accuracy. For example, across much of the United States, The Weather Channel’s forecasts are accurate something like 80% of the time, if not higher. Local news stations and National Weather Service offices also do a very good job at predicting weather for their jurisdictions. Accurately predicting what the atmosphere will do days before it happens is phenomenal when you think about it. This isn’t some Miss Cleo routine.

The forecasting process is a rigorous exercise of knowledge, experience, and the “art” of instinctively knowing what different weather features will do. Contrary to popular belief, models don’t forecast for you. Forecasting is very much a value-added process—reading a model verbatim and passing that off as your forecast will give you a wrong forecast every time.

A more accurate term for these computer programs is “model guidance”—the models are guiding you through the process of creating your own forecast. The latest runs of the GFS, NAM, and Euro models could all show three wildly different solutions. Your job is to figure out which ones are spitting out junk and which ones are closer to what will really happen, and working toward your forecast from there.

Oh, and not to mention the fact that if you’re wrong, people could die! But no pressure.

The forecast process can be a lot of fun, and it’s satisfying when you predict something that happens just as you expected. There are thousands of meteorologists out there, and if you ping any one of them on Twitter right now, they’ll shoot back that they’re having the time of their life in their dream jobs. Meteorologists love what they do. You should be excited to go to your major classes. This is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life.

Most people will love it all—the math, the physics, the forecasting, the intricate, detailed workings of our atmosphere and the processes that influence it. If you find that you dread it, change majors like I did, and do it soon enough that it doesn’t screw with your transcript or finances.

The Minor

If you’re a diehard weather buff but can’t stomach the thought of going all-in and pursuing a degree in meteorology, check out a minor in the discipline. It gives you the best of both worlds: you get to satiate your interest in our atmosphere while working toward the degree of your choice. Most minors in meteorology give you the added benefit of teaching you many of the things you would learn as a major, just without the complex math and physics to go along with it. With the exception of a few programs, courses offered for meteorology minors teach you how to get from A to Z without the twenty-four agonizing steps in between. They teach you how to predict the formation of a surface low near the right-entrance region of a jet streak without forcing you to figure out the equation that makes such a phenomenon possible.

You won’t rise to the level of Ted Fujita as a meteorology minor, but it’s a satisfying academic pursuit for weather geeks who have their heart set on another career path.

Busted Egos

When you forecast the weather, as you will find through much of your life, you need to learn how to be wrong. A lot. And not only that, but you need to learn how to be wrong with grace and humility and harbor a sincere willingness to learn from your mistakes. Meteorology is a discipline that will shatter your ego and dance a jig of glee on its tiny remnants.

Even if you think you know a good bit about the weather, it’s always shocking to realize how little you really know once you start taking classes on the topic. There are so many unbelievably cocky, smug, know-it-all meteorology majors who walk into class on the first day like it’s a speed bump on their road to greatness, only to look like they ran through a meat grinder by the end of their first semester. You kind of have to be full of yourself to want to predict the future for the rest of your life, but you have to learn how to be full of yourself in a constructive manner. Be Kanye West with purpose instead of Kanye West for the sake of Kanye West.

Here’s a thoroughly embarrassing case in point from a couple of years ago. When I was still in college and before I started The Vane, I used to blog about the weather at a well-known political website. One day, I opened my laptop to see people freaking out because the weather models showed a catastrophic hurricane hitting a densely populated area six days out.

Weather models have a colorful history when it comes to spinning up scary hurricanes in the medium and long range that never come to fruition, or if they do, the storms are considerably weaker and stray far away from the model’s predicted track. Faced with yet another round of social media panic, I wrote a post telling people not to freak out over the models because the potential storm was still six days away, lots will change, and based on the history of models showing cataclysmic storms that never develop, the storm probably wouldn’t play out as they were showing, eventually curving out to sea. My thinking was in line with the National Hurricane Center’s official forecast at the time, so I felt pretty confident in saying what I did since the experts were on my side.

The storm was Hurricane Sandy.

My naive desire to calm the early panic blinded me to the fact that the models were eerily and unusually correct so far ahead of the storm. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. I still cringe when I think about it. Most meteorologists (and active weather geeks) will have an experience like that. I’ve grown and learned since then. It’s what you have to do. The very nature of predicting the future means you’re going to be wrong, and sometimes when you screw up, you will go down in a spectacular ball of flames. “Live and learn” has to be your motto if you don’t want to find another line of work.

Jobs

It probably won’t come as a surprise that meteorology is a highly competitive field. Graduating with a degree in the field today is like attending a giant cake walk with hundreds of participants all vying to plant themselves in enough seats for a just few of them.

Don’t set your heart on getting a job with the National Weather Service or a media outlet. There are hundreds of private companies searching for meteorologists. Agriculture, aviation, energy, transport, shipping, space, engineering, and even tech companies all need meteorologists to achieve their various goals and keep their employees and operations safe. It’s pretty hard to fly an airplane without a meteorologist there to tell you if you’re running into a hail storm. (Okay, bad example.) There are even jobs in the field that you wouldn’t think exist, kind of like mine—angry weather blogger—which I plan to fill for a long time to come, but thanks for your résumé (and please don’t fire me).

Don’t think that all of meteorology is forecasting, either. There is always a need for engineers and technicians and developers who can invent and maintain new technologies to predict and detect the weather. For example, meteorologists are currently developing the next generation of weather radar called phased array, which will be light years better than what we have today.

Regardless of your career path, the most important skill a meteorologist (or weather geek) can possess is communication. You need to be able to tell your audience what’s going on and what they need to do to plan their actions. Your goal is to make people care about the weather even if they don’t. Your weather forecast is useless if you can’t effectively present it to your audience.

People

Speaking of audiences, people suck. Meteorologists have to know how to deal with people. I have the great pleasure of mercilessly mocking my detractors (because most of them are unhinged chemtrail truthers), but places like the National Weather Service or Conglomocorp won’t let you treat your angry annoyances in such a fun way.

You will bust a forecast. People will get very angry with you. Quite honestly, people will get angry with you over nothing. You can predict a 100% chance of rain on Saturday afternoon, and you’ll get hate mail or angry phone calls because people will brush off your forecast and go about their outdoor plans anyway. Meteorologists in the media have gotten death threats when they call for snow in their forecast. Like I said, people suck.

You’ll have to learn how to brush off the misdirected anger and accept constructive criticism when it’s valid. It’s hard to deal with people venting at you—especially if they make it personal—but people suck, and meteorology is a people business. If you scare off the people, your forecasts are useless blips in a vast expanse of nothing.

Weather Is Awesome

There aren’t many things on Earth more exciting than the weather. It never gets old listening to a deep crack of thunder that rumbles without end, or watching a hurricane swirl over the ocean in near-real-time thanks to a satellite orbiting thousands of miles above our heads, or even spotting the first snowflake of what could be the biggest blizzard in decades. There’s almost always something exciting going on with the weather, and no two events are ever the same.

Meteorology is an incredible field that people take for granted. They don’t appreciate the intense work that goes into this science until the fruits of that labor save their butt one day, and even then they don’t give it much thought. As the human population reproduces like bunnies and expands into areas we didn’t care about a few years ago, accurate weather forecasts and the development of new technologies to monitor hazards are more important than ever.

So many people have this mistaken idea that meteorology is standing out in a storm or pointing at cities on a green screen. That’s just the surface. You don’t see the hundreds of scientists who made it possible to choose that live shot location or predict the temperatures in those cities on the map. No reality show will ever be able to explain what goes into being a meteorologist. It’s not a field for everybody, but it’s one that provides a great reward if you’re up for the challenge of becoming America’s next great weatherperson.

[Images: AP, Tropical Tidbits, NOAA, AP, Gibson Ridge]

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

If you enjoy The Vane (of course you do!), then you’ll love the author’s new book—The Extreme Weather Survival Manual—which is available for pre-order on Amazon and comes out on October 6.

Pepper Ellett, 25, alleges she was raped at Manhattan’s Happy Ending Lounge late last month. Yet she feels that the police aren’t taking her case seriously, nor is the bar, which immediately fired the employee in question—but didn’t turn him into the police. A rep for that same bar, which has been in the news for another incident in which one of the owners was accused of assaulting a woman, later claimed that there was only a “10 percent” chance Ellett was actually raped.

Ellett’s story became fodder for New York gossip blogs after she wrote a post on Facebook detailing how, after finally mustering the courage to report her rape to the police, she spent “10 straight hours without food between the hospital, SVU (Special Victims Unit) and in the care of policeman,” who, for the most part assumed they were dealing with a “party girl” who had gotten too drunk, even though the rape kit’s results were reportedly consistent with sexual assault. Ellett’s name has been circulated throughout the media because of her own wish to raise awareness. Because of her willingness to be identified, it’s her story that has become an object of speculation—as opposed to her alleged assaulter’s, whose identity still has not been made public.

On August 5, a spokesperson for the bar said, “The CCTV tapes show clearly that the alleged victim was seen kissing at the bar with the employee and was seen entering the bathroom of her own free will. It shows a 90 percent chance it was consensual behavior.”

Max Levai, one of Happy Ending’s three owners, later retracted that initial statement, but linked the case to another in which he feels a woman is overreacting after allegedly being assaulted.

He said:

On a separate note, the statements released by an external communications representative to Page 6 of the New York Post yesterday were not approved or corroborated by the establishment; we have severed our relationship with that firm as a result. We want to make plain that, at this early stage in the investigation, the details of what happened on the night in question are not yet clear, and it is not our place to opine on the veracity of the complainant’s allegations—that is for the police to determine.

However, we do know that certain third parties are attempting to use those very serious allegations as part of a broader scheme to extort money from the establishment and others in connection with an entirely separate dispute that does not involve either the complainant or the accused. Our attorneys are conducting their own inquiry into these matters, and will pursue all appropriate legal action.

According to Ellett, she and her friends Rachel and Desiree arrived at Happy Ending Lounge on the Lower East Side around 12:30 am the morning of July 29. The women had been slowly drinking for the past several hours after a night out that included an after-work dinner, and they had chosen the bar as a last stop on the way to Rachel’s apartment.

Ellett says she had only half of her vodka soda before she began to feel seriously disoriented and confused about why she felt so drunk so quickly. Moments later, she says, a barback approached her and began talking before quickly leading her into one of the bar’s single stall bathrooms. At that point, Desiree and Rachel went outside for a cigarette.

When they returned, they saw Ellett stumbling out of the bathroom, shaken up, “her clothes a mess… like someone else tried to put them back on,” Desiree told Jezebel, and Ellett begged to leave. Shortly after, Ellett alleged to her friend that inside the bathroom the employee had forced her to fellate him before he pinned himself on top of her and began to rape her.

Ellett now believes she was drugged because of how little she can recall: “The only thing I do remember is crying on the sidewalk after,” she said.

After comforting her friend, Desiree ran back inside to confront the employee, who was still standing outside the restrooms. “He was just looking at me and he’s like, ‘Oh, I couldn’t help myself. She’s so beautiful,’” Desiree said. “At that point, I just wanted to choke the guy.” Instead, she found security.

At 4:43 am on Friday morning, Jezebel received an email from the address of Happy Ending owner Oliver Stumm, linking to a video entitled, “Cameras Don’t Lie—Happy Ending’s Response to Pepper Ellett On The Night Of Alleged Rape,” which purported to depict images of the club’s security footage from that evening. The footage—which was clearly clipped and edited from a longer video and marked up with captions—showed Ellett and her friends enter the club. In a bit of footage that’s seemingly irrelevant to Ellett’s accusations of rape, she and her friends are seen emerging from one of the club’s single stall bathrooms, during which time the alleged assaulter is not present. The next portion depicted Ellett dancing with an employee, which the video labeled “the accused,” and then walking in the direction of the bathroom. The video cut to a point after Ellett and the employee exited the bathroom, and then shows her standing on the street with a friend, which is consistent with her story.

Accompanying the video, which has since been made private, was the following statement:

The alleged rape victim Pepper Ellett went public on social and other media (Facebook, Gothamist, NYPost, The Observer) and gave a detailed account of the incident while the surveillance cameras show something completely different.

Gothamist: She claims she was “using the restroom at Happy Ending when a man she believes to be an employee at the bar allegedly followed her inside and raped her.”

The footage reveals that Pepper after using the single stall bathroom together with her 2 friends embraces, dances and kisses the accused before following him into the bathroom.

NYPost: “I just remember going into the bathroom and running out screaming and crying...”

The footage reveals that Pepper exits the bathroom and continues to talk, embrace and be intimate with the accused. It further reveals that after she exits the establishment she hangs out on the sidewalk without asking for assistance or approaching the security guards.

Gothamist: Pepper states that she believes she was drugged.

The footage reveals that Pepper stays in contact with her 2 friends without any signs of distress or intoxication. We believe that if there was any irregular behavior from Pepper, her friends should have noticed and intervened.

So far the majority of the detailed account that she publicly gave seems inconsistent and untrue.

In all of her 5 public accounts Pepper goes into detail of how Happy Ending responded in negligence but barely mentions the accused or goes into any detail of their encounter before the incident. She hasn’t even mentioned if she is pressing charges against the accused. We are not claiming that there was or was not a rape incident. It is not for us to judge. All we know are the events leading up to and after the alleged incident in the bathroom from the camera footage.

Pepper decides to take judgment into her own hands on social media and other media outlets condemning Happy Ending and the New York law enforcement agencies without allowing them to do their job.

We however take these accusations seriously, are cooperating with law enforcement and have contacted the Ellett family numerous times.

Happy Ending Team

After being public for almost a full day, the video was made private without comment, but Gothamist ripped it and it is available to watch here. At that time, both Oliver Stumm and Pepper Ellett stopped speaking to Jezebel and, at press time, neither had responded to requests for further comment about the video.

That night, once Ellett’s friend Desiree says she located security to report Ellett’s alleged rape, “The manager literally said nothing the whole time, he just looked at me. The two security guards told me there was one guy who was working there that night who fit the description and they would figure out everything.”

It wasn’t until the three women began to walk home that Desiree saw a number of missed texts from Ellett. “Des, please help me,” one read. “I’m scared.” “I’m trapped,” said another.

“What does it say about our culture that it took one phone call to the office manager of Happy Ending, while the investigator handling my case was doing nothing, to learn that the bar was made aware of the assault the night it happened (only because of my friend) and after reviewing security footage and verifying that what they saw corroborated my story, the owner did not call the police but thought firing the guy was an adequate solution?” Ellett wrote.

This is not the only dark incident in Happy Ending’s recent history. The converted Asian massage parlor, which has hosted celebrities like Johnny Depp, Jonah Hill, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, has been the unhappy recipient of much media attention since it reopened eight months ago under new owners Oliver Stumm, Max Levai and Teddy Perweiler, three art and restaurant scene socialites (Levai and Perweiler are in their mid-twenties).

Here’s what we know about them:

Teddy Perweiler, who seems to have graduated from Hampden-Sydney in 2013, has been on New York’s club scene since he was 15 or 16. In an interview with Bullett, he once outlined his goals for Happy Ending:

“I would rather have people intrigued by their uncertainty of what and where they just spent their evening, then to fall in love at first sight; that means our ‘goal’ is being met,” he said.

Happy Ending soon developed a reputation as a “drug den” and, according to Page Six, the Olsens left a party that they had thrown at the location because Perweiler’s partying made them uncomfortable.

In May, Perweiler allegedly physically assaulted his ex-girlfriend, designer Julia Fox, who is also an investor in the lounge.

According to Fox, Perweiler flew into a rage after seeing her talk to another man in the club, and dragged her across the room, attacked her in the kitchen, and snapped her cellphone in half.

“They never took me seriously. They said that I was crazy,” Fox told Jezebel in an interview early last week, referring to the other owners. “They were kind of defending him and saying well, I’m crazy so I deserved it.”

Perweiler was eventually charged with harassment, criminal mischief and misdemeanor assault, but since Perweiler had no prior criminal record, he was able to pay $600 and take an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal (ACD)—in other words, if he stays out of trouble for one year, the charge will go away.

Both Perweiler and Fox were banned from the club. Fox also told Jezebel that a number of her friends for whom she had helped secure jobs at the club were told not to come back after the incident. (Late last week, Fox stopped talking to Jezebel, saying Max Levai’s lawyers had issued her a cease & desist from discussing the case further.)

The club was later defaced with large chalk letters reading “WOMAN BEATER,” on the sidewalk in front.

Image via a tipster.

Perweiler’s Facebook page now says he works at Marlborough Gallery Chelsea, which is owned by Happy Ending co-owner and friend Max Levai.

Levai, also in his mid-twenties, comes from a powerful art family: his father is the French-born Pierre Levai who owns the Marlborough Gallery on 57th Street, and his great-uncle, Frank Lloyd, was a founder of Marlborough in London in 1946.

A New York Times profile paints Levai to be an eager burgeoning gallery owner, trying to live up to the expectations of his dad:

He goes to Knicks games with his father, hangs out with artists and hits the occasional club, too. Lately he’s been cooking in his East Village apartment for school pals, many who live in Bushwick or Greenpoint, Brooklyn, or with parents. He also smokes. “But only recently in front of my father,” he said while inhaling a Camel Light in front of his gallery on West 25th Street in the dusk. “I guess that means I’m really a grown-up now.”

Max Levai’s Marlborough Chelsea is a new, hipper outpost of the venerated institution. Of the fifteen artists listed on the gallery’s website, not a single one is a woman.

In statements to The Observer, Levai denied that Perweiler is guilty of anything more than being an angry ex-boyfriend—he called it “an event symptomatic of a long-term romantic relationship gone sour”—and now accuses Fox of extorting him.

In the Observer’s exceedingly positive article about him, Levai said:

“To resolve the issue of Ms. Fox’s investment, we offered her full investment in the club back, but in return, she has demanded nearly double the amount and utilized harassment via text message, e-mail and social media, both towards the gallery and me personally.”

In response to Levai’s extortion claim, she offered Jezebel a screenshot of a text conversation between the two of them:

“What’s the deal here?” Levai asked Fox in the text. “Are you going to continue this defamation of happy ending [sic] and my gallery until you get the right price?”

“It’s not about the money max [sic],” she responded.

The third owner, Oliver Stumm, is a slightly older Swiss DJ and owner of a number of scene-y restaurants in the city, including Cafe Select and Rintintin. Page Six has reported that “he just yells and screams at the DJs.”

Last Wednesday evening, Levai’s attorney Derek Schoenmann told Jezebel, “Mr. Levai was not personally involved in the incidents at Happy Ending, and he has no direct knowledge of those events other than what has been reported publicly.”

That same evening, Stumm provided a comment:

“We cannot comment on this until the NYPD has finished their investigation. NYPD has been very competent and diligent and takes this seriously as do we at Happy Ending. We will release a statement as soon as the NYPD has finished their investigation. We believe in the legal system and the authorities in charge and will wait their decision and final report. Social Media [sic] is not the judge here.”

Stumm appears to be referring to either Ellett’s initial Facebook post or several Yelp reviews of the restaurant, some of which were deleted, according to tipster who wished to remain anonymous.

Levai has since apologized for Stumm’s remarks:

“The comments made by both my partner in Happy Ending and my former communications representative in recent days were unfortunate,” he said in an email to Jezebel. “They are not reflective of how seriously I take this situation. I have reiterated to all involved, time and time again, to keep any speculation to themselves. I apologize for our communications failures. We will continue to do all we can to assist the authorities as their investigation reaches its conclusion.”

When I visited the bar on August 5 around 9:00 pm. the venue was empty, save for one ultra-fancy family that mused, “It’s usually so packed.” Both bathroom stalls have pasted printed-out signs to the doors reading, “Only one person at a time permitted.”

Ellett has not been contacted by the police since she filed her report. Last she heard, she tells Jezebel, the cops were filing her report as indecent exposure rather than rape. A spokesperson from the NYPD confirmed to Jezebel that “indecent exposure” was the only thing written on the police report, other than the note that Ellett had gone to the hospital (the NYPD does not disclose rape kit results to the press). There has not yet been an arrest made in conjunction with the case.

Contact the author at joanna.rothkopf@jezebel.com.

Screenshot via Happy Ending Lounge/Gothamist

Videos and photos posted to social media show series of enormous explosions in the northern Chinese city Tianjin. Early reports indicate the explosions, which caused a huge mushroom cloud and triggered shockwaves that could be felt miles away, occurred on a dock near a giant fuel depot.

UPDATE 1:53 pm: State newspaper People’s Daily China reports the explosion was caused by “explosive material in container at terminal in Binhai District.” Several people have been rushed to the hospital, though it’s unclear how many were injured. There are also reports that the explosion was seen from space.

UPDATE 2:08 pm: Hundreds of people were reportedly injured in the blast.

Update:#Tianjin explosion reportedly caused by inflammables & explosives at container terminal, hundreds hospitalized pic.twitter.com/c2BUYhkrE1

August 12, 2015

From local Chinese media: in one hospital in #Tianjin... doctors are treating more than 400 injuries, most burn related.

August 12, 2015

UPDATE 2:28 pm: The fire caused by the explosions, which reportedly took place just after 11:30 pm local time, are now under control, according to China Xinhua News. Two firefighters have been reported missing.

UPDATE 3:15: Chinese state media reports that at least 300 people were injured in the explosions. Most of the injuries appear to be burns or cuts from broken glass.

UPDATE 4:35 pm: At least seven people were killed, according to Chinese state media.

Reported security camera video from the #Tianjin explosion via weibo pic.twitter.com/9hsC6weuzv

August 12, 2015

Our reporter says at least 2 or 3 explosions. First in #Tianjin dock area, then "something related to gas or oil" pic.twitter.com/ZU7QOYZaPW

August 12, 2015

Video of the enormous explosion in Tianjin #Chinapic.twitter.com/NF0BtdIOMS

August 12, 2015

#Breaking: Massive explosion rocks N China's #Tianjin, cause & casualties unclear yet (web sources) @BreakingNews pic.twitter.com/GOG8Q7OWew

August 12, 2015

UPDATE 7:45 pm: According to the BBC, at least 17 people were reportedly killed and more than 400 were injured—11 of them critically—by the explosions.

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

This is no doubt the worst sketch of Tom Brady ever created pic.twitter.com/mFuHjfF3kS

August 12, 2015

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

The Perseids is my favorite meteor shower of the year, and this year is likely to be the best one in recent memory. Here’s when, where, and how to watch it—and just what is going to make this year so spectacular.

Top image: 2010 Perseids / image courtesy of Michael Menefee.

What Are the Perseids?

The Perseids are an annual meteor shower that greets us at the end of each summer. We’ve actually been seeing a few Perseids scattered around the sky since early last month, but the bulk of them will spill over into the sky tonight and tomorrow night. But if the Perseids are just one meteor shower out of several a year, what is it that makes it the absolute best?

Part of it is timing. Some astronomers will try to convince you of the superiority of cold-weather meteor showers, mumble-lying something (usually through chattering teeth) about “clarity” and “crispness.” Don’t be fooled: Summer meteor showers are absolutely where it’s at, and the Perseids peaks at exactly the right moment of the season, just as summer is winding down, but well before any sort of cold snap has fully hit.

But even more than the season, the Perseids appeal is really all about the fireballs.

Image: 2012 Perseids over Wyoming’s Snowy Range / David Kingham.

Comet Swift-Tuttle is responsible for the Perseids—the dust and ice from its trail is what we’re watching burn up in our atmosphere when we see meteors. Swift-Tuttle orbits Earth every 133 years and the closer it is to us, the thicker that trail—and the Perseids that we see here below—becomes. The comet is not due to come closest to us again until 2126, but that still leaves a pretty thick cover for us to see this year, with NASA estimating rates of at up to 100 meteors visible per hour.

Image: GIF of Swift-Tuttle orbit, made from data generated with JPL’s small body database.

That meteor shower rate alone would make for a pretty fantastic show. Fireballs, however, are a very special subsection of those meteors. They are unusually big and flashy, with a brightness higher than that of either Jupiter or Venus, and often even brighter than the moon.

Image: 2010 Perseids: Yes, they really are that bright / David Kingham,

The number of fireballs that you see during the Perseids simply blows every other meteor shower out of the water. It has more on average than every other meteor shower combined, excepting the Geminds and the Orionids.

Image: Fireballs over five years charted / NASA.

Even the Geminids, the only shower that comes close in number, just doesn’t touch the Perseids in terms of brightness. The Perseids are simply the biggest, baddest, and brightest meteor shower around.

Okay, but why is this year so special, then?

So, if the Perseids are pretty active every year, what makes this year exciting? Well, it’s more about what we’re not getting, than what we are. That’s right, I’m talking about our old enemy, the moon.

Image: The moon’s phases for all of 2015 timelapsed / NASA.

The new moon actually falls on August 13th, but the moonlight tonight from the almost completely waning crescent should also be pretty much negligible, meaning that for the two nights when the Perseids will be falling the thickest, we’ll have almost complete darkness against which to watch.

Image: 2010 Perseids / Fred Bruenjes via NASA.

Of course, moonlight isn’t the only enemy of the meteor shower: There’s also cloud cover. But even that is looking likely to be not much of a problem for most areas this year, with the weather looking relatively clear around the country.

When (and where in the sky) can I see the Perseids?

At a rate of over 100 Perseids per an hour, simply looking up should be enough to see at least a few. The majority of them, though, will be clustered around the top of the constellation Perseus. If you’re having trouble tracking that, look for Cassiopeia first, Persesus is below it, and the radiant—the spot where the meteors appear to branch out from—should hover somewhere right between the two:

Image: International Meteor Organization.

As for timing, you’ll see a few as soon as it gets dark but things will start to really heat up at around midnight. From then, you’ll have all night until the dawn to catch the show.

Okay! I’m in. So, how do I get ready to watch this thing?

Let’s get this out of the way: This particular meteor shower is going to be bright enough and bold enough that even a quick trip to your own backyard or rooftop is likely to yield at least something to be seen. But with just a bit of time and preparation, we can do far, far better. So let’s do it.

Where do I watch it?

The first thing you’re going to want to do is pick out a place to watch from. Make sure you drive out far enough that you’re out of range not just of the light, but of anything—whether buildings or trees—that’s going to get between you and your view of the sky. Keep an eye on the terrain around you, both natural and human-made, and try and get yourself to some higher ground, particularly those of you reading us from out in the mountains.

Image: Star trails from the 2013 shower at the Mount Lemonn Sky Center, Adam Block / University of Arizona.

If you want, you can connect with a local astronomy group, many of whom are planning group events this week. Not only will they know the good spots near you to set up camp, there will also likely be plenty of telescopes, binoculars, and cleverly-aimed cameras among the crowd to get a closer look at what you’re seeing.

But really, there’s no need to overthink it: a blanket spread out in the grass, any likely-looking patch of dark sky, and nothing but your own eyes will also do you just fine.

2010 Perseids / image courtesy of Michael Menefee.

What do I need to bring?

You don’t really need much, but there’s a few things you may want. You (wisely) chose to check out a summer meteor shower, but a light jacket isn’t a bad thing to have on hand—you may be out there for quite some time and it can get cooler around dawn. Similarly, some water, snacks, bug spray, and a blanket or two will probably be appreciated at some point in the night. I also have an old star wheel I like to bring, for ease of constellation tracking. But there are plenty of good apps as well that will get the job done (Sky Map is my personal choice). Just make sure you’ve downloaded your star map app of choice to your phone before you head out.

Image: GIF made via footage from NASA.

Some people will also tell you that this is a good time to break out the camping chairs. Those people are wrong and possibly seeking some kind of obscure and elaborate revenge against you for murky reasons. Keep an eye on them, and then remember that you’re going to be tilting your head upwards for hours, possibly from midnight clear up until dawn. So make it easy on yourself and your neck: reclining chairs, a lie-down on that blanket you brought, even the hood of your car will all do quite nicely for our purposes.

Ugh, it’s cloudy/my car broke down/I’m trapped in a submarine. Why is everything the worst?

Why, indeed? But, cheer up, friend! It’s meteor shower day, the most wonderful day of the year. And, even if you can’t see it yourself, you can still share it with the rest of us through these sites:

• NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will be livestreaming the shower starting at 9 p.m. (Central time) tonight, complete with an astronomer’s commentary and a Q&A session.
  
• The Slooh Observatory will be broadcasting their view of the Perseids tonight as well, beginning at midnight.
• If you’re in the mood for something a little different, you can also opt to listen to the meteor shower as well, or to be more accurate the sounds of the meteors echoing against our radar. Pair it with your own IRL skyview—it’s delightfully eerie.

Image: 2010 Perseids / ESO.

The latest Fantastic Four flick is an abysmal flop of such proportions that multiple outlets have run what-went-wrong-style pieces in its wake. Today’s comes via The Hollywood Reporter and it is utterly delicious. Kim Masters’s “Fantastic Four Blame Game: Fox, Director Josh Trank Square Off Over On-Set ‘Chaos’” tells the story of a spandex-hungry studio that made a superhero movie “for the wrong reasons” and a relatively inexperienced young director who was in over his head when tasked with crafting a blockbuster and, as a result, behaved like an utter maniac.

The first exquisite detail comes via the anonymous response to a deludedly self-assured email that Trank sent:

Days before Fantastic Four opened, director Josh Trank sent an email to some members of the cast and crew to say he was proud of the film, which, he wrote, was “better than 99 percent of the comic-book movies ever made.”

“I don’t think so,” responded one cast member.

Cast member, I may hate your movie but I fucking love you. Who the hell are you? We are given no indication of who actually sent this, but here are my guesses in order of strongest suspicion to weakest:

1. Miles Teller, whom we now know is a dick far bigger than a highball glass.

2. Tim Heidecker, who maybe was just being funny?

3. Chet Haze, who is douchey enough to write something like that without even realizing that it’s funny.

4. Dan Castellaneta, who’s been in the business long enough to recognize a debacle when he sees one.

Trank, it seems, was way more eccentric on set than he ever allowed his characters to be. He acted like Michael Shannon’s and Ashley Judd’s meth-addict characters in Bug, in fact. Writes Masters:

...By several accounts, he resisted help. “He holed up in a tent and cut himself off from everybody,” says one high-level source. Literally, there was a tent on the Louisiana set. “He built a black tent around his monitor,” says a crewmember. “He was extremely withdrawn.” Between setups, this person adds, “he would go to his trailer and he wouldn’t interact with anybody.”

Trank reportedly micromanaged down to the breath, which makes his failure that much more damning to his ability:

“During takes, he would be telling [cast members] when to blink and when to breathe,” one person says. “He kept pushing them to make the performance as flat as possible.”

And then there is this utter insanity:

As THR reported in May, Trank and his dogs allegedly caused more than $100,000 worth of damage to a rented house in Baton Rouge that he and his wife occupied while the film was shooting there. Sources say now that after landlord Martin Padial moved to evict Trank, photographs of the landlord’s family that were in the house were defaced. Padial made a complaint to the local sheriff’s department and filed a civil suit in Louisiana that is sealed. Padial’s attorney, Michael Bienvenu, declined to comment on the matter. The sheriff’s department says the case was “closed as a civil matter between landlord and tenant.”

Trank is but one spoke on this bike ride to hell:

A crew member acknowledges that Trank bears much of the fault for the film’s problems but also says the Fox studio should not escape blame. The movie was “ill-conceived, made for the wrong reasons and there was no vision behind the property”...

To that, I say: NO. SHIT.

Masters’s piece, which I urge you to read, is, in a word, fantastic. It is far more entertaining than the movie it covers and, from my spectator perspective, almost makes the entire disaster worth it. It seems to me like there’s a great movie to be made about the behind-the-scenes madness of Fantastic Four. Trank’s vision is worth observing, just not via the package he intended.

[h/t Kyle Buchanan]

[Image via Getty]

In a new (free to access) post on the Official Kristin Cavallari App for iPhone and Android, future published author Kristin Cavallari reveals one of the fastest-growing problems now facing our nation’s Whole Foods class: “inflammation.” Inflammation—a word that, in the way Kristin is using it, means “feeling puffy”—is a plague that requires treatment by a professional. A professional Integrative Nutrition Health Counselor that is. Good thing Kristin knows one.

In the app post, which is titled, “Inflammation: #1 Cause of Stress and Weight Gain,” Kristin turns to her friend and Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Counselor Sarah Moore for information about why inflammation is bad—real bad. Who is Sarah Moore, and why should anyone trust her? Kristin explains in this beautiful introduction she wrote herself:

My friend and certified integrative nutrition health counselor, Sarah Moore, is incredibly knowledgeable about the importance a good diet has on your health. It’s no surprise that inflammation is a huge problem when talking about the body, and Sarah goes into depth about the issues associated with it.

Yes—it’s no surprise that she is incredibly knowledgeable about the importance a diet has on your health when going into depth about the body.

Inflammation is the #1 cause of stress and weight gain.

That’s all you need to know.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

People.com points out that Deee-Lite’s enduring dance-pop staple “Groove Is in the Heart” turns 25 this month, which is insane because it means everyone is old. The song and its day-glo retro video brought club kid culture into heavy rotation for a period of time. The NYC-based trio were signed to a decent-sized label (Elektra) with major distribution (Atlantic) at an idealistic time when house music was starting to really break, and it seemed like the sky was the limits for the acts who were making it. (I mean, Uncanny Alliance were on A&M!) Record companies would soon discover the financial folly of their investments, as these club-oriented acts left and right proved to be one-hit wonders, if that. Regardless, some wonderfully enjoyable, often inventive dance-pop came out of it.

After “Groove,” Deee-Lite never had another Top 40 single on the U.S. pop charts, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. They released two more albums after their debut, 1990’s World Clique, and both are full of gems that failed to resonate with the public for god knows what reasons (might I suggest Infinity Within’s “Thank You Everyday,” and Dewdrops in the Garden’s “Apple Juice Kissing?”). “Groove Is in the Heart” remains their signature, a relic of ‘90s nostalgia whose presence in the ether is still felt (at weddings, for example), but unlike many enduring dance songs (like, say, “I Will Survive”), “Groove” never turned into sonic wallpaper. Thanks to Lady Kier Kirby’s versatile delivery, its host of guest stars (Maceo Parker, Bootsy Collins, Q-Tip), and its patchwork of sounds and samples, “Groove Is in the Heart” is that rare crowd-pleasing track that sounds both familiar and like nothing before it or since. It’s disco, it’s funk, it’s hip-hop, it’s psychedelic, it’s a blur of a party.

The video above, of Deee-Lite performing “Groove Is in the Heart” during New York’s drag-themed Labor Day tradition of Wigstock in 1990, has been making the rounds, probably in celebration of the song’s silver anniversary. At that point, the song had just been released (and was not yet a mainstream phenomenon), and Kier, Towa Tei, and DJ Dimitry were really working it. The energy and joy of this performance reads not as a sales pitch, though, but as a group of people who knew they had something contagious on their hands and couldn’t wait to infect the world with it.

“They told us in J-school, to make it is not common/ And if you do, get used to the taste of Top Ramen/ Go to the first place that likes your resume tape/ It’ll be a small town there the weather ain’t great.” Here is a rap track about being a TV reporter. [Previously; Previously] http://gawker.com/5831320/dont-m...

Kevin Thomas Roy, a veteran Hollywood production assistant and assistant director, was fired from the set of the movie Allegiant after news that he’d pleaded no contest to invasion-of-privacy charges related to covert nude picture-taking. Last month, Jezebel reported that Roy had been accused of possessing more than 400 secretly filmed images of women changing and using the bathroom, many apparently taken of actresses and female crew members on film sets.

Lionsgate Films dismissed Roy after Allegiant cast and crew members began circulating the details of the voyeurism case that had been documented on Jezebel.

“He just kept on telling people that his ex-wife found a porn stash on his computer and that it was no big deal,” one stand-in from the Allegiant set told Jezebel the day after the story and a copy of Roy’s search warrant were published. “Lots of people on set believed that he didn’t do anything wrong and we were warned by production staff not to discuss it. Mentioning Kevin would get you suspended. So we decided to print out the article, and the warrant and distribute it on set since production staff wasn’t doing anything about it.”

The head of the Allegiant production crew did not respond to requests for comment at the time, but two days after cast and crew had circulated the warrant, Julie Fontaine, the head of PR for Lionsgate, sent Jezebel a text:

“He will not be returning to set. We are looking into the matter and won’t have further comment until we’ve completed our inquiry.”

Asked if those who hired Roy had been aware of his legal troubles, and what excuse he had given to leave the production to attend his court hearing in Los Angeles, Fontaine texted back the same message.

According to the search warrant obtained by Jezebel, Roy was in possession of five hard drives containing more than 40 videos and 400 images captured by secret cameras he had allegedly set up in his family home, on film sets, in changing rooms, and in bathrooms. Footage on the hard drives showed images of actresses, models, family members, friends, and strangers in various states of undress, showering, and using the toilet, according to the warrant and accounts of people who have seen the footage. Detective Thanh Flumerfelt, the senior investigator for the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office, described Roy in his warrant as “voracious consumer of voyeuristic matter.”

Investigators became aware of Roy’s hard drives after his ex-wife discovered them. According to the warrant, Roy’s ex-wife asked for him to get psychological help or she would turn in the tapes.

Roy pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor counts of secretly recording two identifiable women while working on a commercial. He was sentenced to three years summary probation and a 52 week sex-offender rehabilitation program, but he will not need to register as a sex offender.

Roy had offered a lengthier account of his side of the story on Facebook on July 18th, a day after Jezebel published Roy’s no contest plea and victim statement’s. This less than terrific screenshot was sent into to Jezebel by an online friend of Roy’s. It reads:

Ok, tough morning. After 9 years with an abusive woman (who I didn’t even realize was abusive until I left her and realized I was finally happy for real) my ex told me, “I will ruin your career because I don’t want you in the same industry as me.” I figured it was more of the hurtful mind game she always played with me and didn’t take it as seriously as I should’ve. Sine January when she had me arrested while staying at friend’s house in Los Angeles for “hiding camera in air vents that I could monitor over the internet” (none of which existed but they arrested me anyway) I’ve taken it more seriously and have had a tough and depressing months with friendships, my career, and my life. The hope is always that this will go away but this morning the paparazzi she sent to my court hearing last month posted an article in the Friday story dump which I’ve attached below. Unfortunately the article is based on conjecture and pretty damaging. In an effort to get ahead of it I’m positing here for all of you to read if you so choose. it’s pretty horrible and gasp worthy but isn’t that the point of news articles? My hope is that those of you who know will see through it and this massive speed bump will go away and stop affecting my life. I’ve already wasted 9 years with her abuse. I’m really anxious to keep moving on with my life if she can’t with hers. My email and phone number is on my facebook so feel free to email me or text me or facebook me any questions about what really took place the last few months. Just bear with me because it’s been a crazy morning already with phone calls etc and I’m tired of dealing with this. In other words you may get a cut /paste reply and I apologize ahead of time for that. Love you guys.

Roy returned Jezebel’s request for comment earlier this week via email:

The press has released misleading and false information about me based on accusations that arose during a divorce battle with my ex-wife who is closely associated with the media. I have been attacked unfairly and am exploring legal avenues to clear my name from those who have slandered me.

Jezebel spoke with one of Roy’s victims who was shown footage from Roy’s hard drive by Los Angeles County investigators. “You can even see his face setting up the camera in different dressing rooms and bathrooms,” she said. Roy filmed the victim while she vacationed with Roy and his then-wife in Nevada. “He set up a camera that filmed me while I was in the bathroom. When I saw the footage I was disgusted. I couldn’t believe it.”

Multiple women who have worked with Roy on set have reached out to Jezebel to describe interactions with Roy that left them feeling unsettled, particularly because now in hindsight, they suspect he was inviting women into scenarios where they would undress in a seemingly private setting. Jezebel was provided with two sets of text messages from two different sources. One young woman provided Jezebel with text messages of Roy inviting her to spend the night in his guest room.

Another young woman provided text messages of Roy asking her to do a photoshoot with him.

Two victims who were shown footage by investigators have told Jezebel that they feel that investigators have not done enough to alert women who were filmed outside of Los Angeles County. Indeed, Roy was only charged with the three counts of misdemeanor invasion of privacy because only three women could be clearly identified as Los Angeles County residents on the footage.

Jezebel has been able to confirm that Roy worked on film sets in the following locations outside Los Angeles:

Other cities in California (We Bought a Zoo, Seven Psychopaths, Blades of Glory)

Colorado (The Lone Ranger)

Georgia (Insurgent, Allegiant)

Massachusetts, (RIPD)

Louisiana (Pirates of the Caribbean: Stranger Tides)

Florida (Ride Along 2)

Maryland (Body of Lies)

New Mexico (The Lone Ranger)

Washington, D.C. (Body of Lies)

Utah (The Lone Ranger)

Puerto Rico (Rum Diary)

Morocco (Rendition).

“I don’t think it’s fair that other women were victimized and have not been told about it,” one victim told Jezebel. “Famous women and regular working women were all equally victimized by him.”

Contact the author at natasha@jezebel.com.

Image via Shutterstock.

Rapper/Are We There Yet? star/writer of lines like, “I once knew a bitch who got slapped / ‘Cause she played me like she was all that” Ice Cube reflects on the misogyny he and his former group N.W.A. have been accused of in Rolling Stone’s next cover story, on stands Friday. In a preview post on Rolling Stone’s website, his musing comes under the bolded heading “Cube laughs off N.W.A’s lyrical treatment of women (which, to be fair, got way worse after he left the group).” Cube’s quote is (and I hope you’re ready to laugh along with this nice man):

If you’re a bitch, you’re probably not going to like us. If you’re a ho, you probably don’t like us. If you’re not a ho or a bitch, don’t be jumping to the defense of these despicable females. Just like I shouldn’t be jumping to the defense of no punks or no cowards or no slimy son of a bitches that’s men. I never understood why an upstanding lady would even think we’re talking about her.

Got that ladies? Be upstanding and you’ll have no problems with Ice Cube, including the problems of being labeled a bitch and/or a hoe.* Kinda makes you want to dash out to see the movie this man produced about his life, Straight Outta Compton, doesn’t it?

Also in the story (and uh, completely related to the misogynistic culture endorsed by N.W.A.), Dr. Dre discusses his history of abusing women, including journalist Dee Barnes, whose face he repeatedly bashed against a wall in 1991:

I made some fucking horrible mistakes in my life. I was young, fucking stupid. I would say all the allegations aren’t true – some of them are. Those are some of the things that I would like to take back. It was really fucked up. But I paid for those mistakes, and there’s no way in hell that I will ever make another mistake like that again.

Have you paid, though Dre? Have you really paid?

[Image via Getty]

Fans of the Michigan football and men’s basketball teams hoping to find some recruiting or offseason workout news on the teams’ Facebook pages have been instead been greeted with softcore porn. A hacker has apparently taken over the accounts, and is posting wild, sexually-suggestive links.

Above is just one example of what you’ll find on the football and basketball pages right now. Here are some more:

Those last two screenshots were sent to us by readers from earlier this morning. Apparently, the hack has been going on for hours now, and at one point the school thought it had fixed the problem. Hence the following message you can still see on the page from a few hours ago:

Fans – Early this morning, Facebook accounts for Michigan Athletics, football and men’s basketball were compromised. Thanks to diligent work on behalf of our partners at the University of Michigan and at Facebook, we have resolved the situation and deleted any offensive posts.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate the support of our audiences throughout this issue. We greatly value our connections through social media. We continue to monitor our pages and will work with our partners to expedite all inquiries. Thanks for your patience and ‪#‎GoBlue‬.

Of course to read that post you’ll have to scroll down a bit past the half-exposed boobs and buttcheeks, seeing as the hacker still has posting powers. We’ll see how long this continues.

Update [1:37 p.m.]: Looks like they’ve deleted the hacker’s newest posts again. Will the hacker strike back? We shall see!

h/t Paul and Colin

Former President Jimmy Carter announced today that a recent liver surgery revealed that he has cancer. From his statement:

“Recent liver surgery revealed that I have cancer that now is in other parts of my body. I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment by physicians at Emory Healthcare. A more complete public statement will be made when facts are known, possibly next week.”

Carter, who served as president from 1977 to 1981, will turn 91 in October.

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

Bernie Sanders, the senator from the very great state of Vermont, is campaigning to be the next president of the United States of America. As such, he is giving speeches throughout the land. This past weekend, his ongoing tour took him to Seattle, Wash., where he stumped in front of people at Westlake Park until he was interrupted by Marissa Janae Johnson and Mara Jacqeline Willaford, the two co-founders of the Seattle chapter of Black Lives Matter. They were booed by those in attendance, but justified themselves by saying Sanders needed to release his plan on police reform and be held “publicly accountable for his lack of support for the Black Lives Matter movement and his blatantly silencing response to the ‪#‎SayHerName‬ ‪#‎IfIDieInPoliceCustody‬ action that took place at Netroots,” a conference at which he and fellow Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley were challenged and heckled by Black Lives Matter supporters in July. Even after winning a long moment of silence for Michael Brown, Johnson and Willaford refused to hand over the microphones back to Sanders, and the rally was cut short.

The protest was perhaps clumsy and perhaps in theory the sort of thing that could set your eyes to rolling if you’ve been on a college campus in the last 20 years—blatantly silencing?—but it forced Sanders to release a statement on police reform the very next day. Still, as news got out and swept across the nation, shit thereupon hit the fan, sparking a disjointed debate online and in real life about whether the good Mr. Sanders should’ve been interrupted, and how he should’ve been interrupted, and what This All Means.

Context, ho: Bernie Sanders has had a sweet couple of months on the trail, and surged early in polls that don’t matter, and is seen by many as an important figure. That’s because in a presidential race already packed to the beaucoup with unelectable jamokes and scrubs and villains, Sanders is thought by many—specifically lefter than left-leaning types—to be the least-bad candidate. His bonafides are legion. In a country that has been both shaped and plagued by white supremacy, he is a 73-year-old white dude who ostensibly Gets It at a time when racial inequality is the hottest and most important issue being discussed. Sanders marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. some 50 years ago, back when he was just a young, idealistic dude from Brooklyn, and ever since, he has just become more committed to righteous causes. He is a by-God socialist who’s dedicated his life to battling economic inequality and appears, unlike so many hem-hawing and flip-flopping candidates, to be uncompromising in his beliefs and dedication to closing this country’s monstrous, widening wealth gap. He is a throwback, as ornery as he is righteous, and his words and deeds over the years have positioned him, more than anyone else running for president, as a champion for the poor. Because our economic classes are so stratified by race, this—as the logic goes—positions him as a champion for minorities. Endearingly, he also doesn’t appear to ever brush his hair. Lil’ B, who is a prophet, endorsed him. Bernie Sanders is, perhaps objectively, dope as hell.

It’s important to note here that the protest wasn’t just directed at Sanders, but those in attendance who call themselves progressives. Still, it’s been posited that there are better candidates’ campaigns to challenge and heckle and hijack in the name of Black Lives Matter, which holds the position (among others) that law enforcement being armed with guns and granted nigh-immunity by local, state, and federal governments to kill black people every day, as if black people are subhuman, is racist, and a blight upon our nation, and should be stopped. Sanders, the argument goes, has black folks’ back. He is, as my colleague Hamilton Nolan wrote, our best friend.

Photo via Associated Press

Fuck that, I say. Sanders is many things, but he is not perfect, or close to perfect, or even anything other than a politician. In fact, Sanders and his plan to save blacks through redistributing wealth to narrow the wealth gap are deeply flawed, because the principle which serves as the scaffolding for his plan is deeply flawed. Sanders—like many other liberals of his race and age—believes that capitalism is inherently evil, and so that all evils can be ascribed to those of capitalism, and so in the idea that economic injustice is the root of all injustice. Racial injustice, in this reading, is treated as a side effect or function of economic injustice; concomitantly, racial inequality is treated as having the same causes and therefore the same solutions as economic inequality. If wealth is redistributed, the idea goes, then poor people of all races will have more money; then something else will happen; then racism will not matter or be healed altogether. I, and many in Black Lives Matter, and other people, too, believe that this line of theorizing has things backward.

I, and other people, too, tend to believe that racial injustice is different from economic injustice; that black Americans are poor because of racism, more than that racism is the result of black Americans being poor; and, further, that racism is the driving force behind the capricious and fluid idea of race. It is racism that has led to layers upon layers of policy that keep blacks as a social underclass being conceived and executed; racism that has led to policies like redlining, which still exist, in various forms, today; racism that has led to things like segregated neighborhoods and schools; racism that has led to millions upon millions of minorities today being corralled in ghettos; and racism that has led to the average white household having 16 times the wealth of the average black one in 2015. Black people aren’t systemically oppressed because they don’t have money; they don’t have money because they are systemically oppressed, because the American voting public is in favor of them being so.

This is also—at least according to one line of argument—why blacks are being lynched by the state, every single day, multiple times a day, in 2015. And if you credit this line particular line of reasoning, it’s hard not to look at Sanders’ proposed policies and sneer, because as well-meant as they are, they don’t address the fact that even if he wins, there’s still going to be racism and everything that comes with it, with blacks and browns and poor whites maybe—maybe—having a little more money to throw around before they get arrested and/or tased and/or beaten and/or shot to death. This is to say that Sanders’s best-case scenario is certainly a better situation than exists now, but not a good situation, and not one that seriously addresses state violence as an expression of the public will.

Sanders’s philosophy talks around racism by explaining, or suggesting, that it is mainly a function of economic imperatives, which can be addressed by changing the laws that create those imperatives. This is part of why he is beloved, and why he has surged, and why he has captured the support of those who want to support the best or at least least-bad of all semi-serious presidential candidates: We would all like to think that the worst problems in our society are fixable if people of good will address them rationally. It’s also part of why blacks are aggrieved, even as record crowds flock to him. (On Sunday, 28,000 showed up in Portland; earlier this week, 27,500 more showed up in Los Angeles). Sanders may be the least-bad candidate for everyone who holds to some progressive concern, and the candidate who best represents a chance of getting racial injustice talked about in Democratic debate; but he still falls short. And whether or not he does, he shouldn’t be immune from critique. There is a long history of well-intentioned liberals failing to adequately or accurately address the nature of causes of racial inequality, and each one who intends to do so should be challenged, if only to challenge other candidates in turn.

Photo via Getty Images

Because let’s address another reality: Even though Sanders is the best candidate, he definitely won’t win the Democratic nomination, and will never, ever win a general election. This is no knock on him; no socialist would have a shot. Even if he were to win—and again, he won’t—he wouldn’t be able to pass any real or magical panacea that fixes or lessens racism, because our racial caste system is an ingrained and vital aspect of American life, and anyway, he’s coming at it from the wrong angle. Though infinitely less bad, he is as popular and as much of a fringe candidate as Donald Trump. In all likelihood, nothing Sanders is saying will matter this time next year, unless his policy causes Hillary Clinton to say something about battling white supremacy that she’ll be held accountable for down the road.

Which brings us back to Black Lives Matter. All candidates should be challenged on race; blacks are being killed right now, today, just as they were yesterday, and just as they will be tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next, ad infinitum; and Sanders’s speeches and the large, mostly-white crowds they attract represent an opportunity for those who are currently fighting to end the ongoing lynching of blacks by the state to address those who view this violence as an accident, rather than an end. Taking those as priors, how does it not matter that what Black Lives Matter has to say is much more relevant and more important than what Sanders has to say? Taking as a given that they could protest people who are far more enthusiastic about the ongoing oppression of American citizens, what is the purpose of protest that doesn’t piss someone off? And who better to push and to sharpen than thousands upon thousands of white, left-leaning Americans who, like Sanders, claim they’re here to help?

Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Getty