On Wednesday, Russian media reported that Pyotr Verzilov, a member of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot, had been rushed to the toxicology unit of a Moscow hospital. His condition is critical and possibly the result of poisoning, according to the Associated Press.

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On September 11, 2001, during the hours following the terror attacks that killed almost 3,000 innocent people in New York, DC, and Pennsylvania, then-real estate tycoon Donald Trump called into a local news station, bragging about how the fall of the Twin Towers meant his building was now the tallest in lower Manhattan. Now, 17 years later, Trump's position in life has changed drastically. His ability to respectfully address the biggest American tragedy of his lifetime, though, has not.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump, current leader of the free world, arrived in Pennsylvania for a memorial service honoring the lives lost on United 93, and somehow thought, yes, this was the perfect time to pump his fists like the world's shittiest Rocky.

The celebratory move—both fists raised, his bottom lip clenched tightly between his teeth—doesn't seem particularly fitting for such a sad and somber day, but it doesn't really seem like the September 11 attacks were on Trump's mind when he rolled out of bed to begin with. The president began his morning tweeting about collusion, before quickly retweeting a post about 9/11 and slapping on a few hashtags, then launching into a rambling, congratulatory message about Rudy Giuliani.

And then, finally, like some kind of strange afterthought to make sure the world knew what day it was, he tweeted a simple statement of mathematic fact, punctuated by a particularly out-of-place exclamation point.

This is the President of the United States—a guy who once said he watched "thousands" of Muslims cheering in Jersey City with the towers fell and said he lost "hundreds of friends" in the attack but never named one. A guy who used the day in 2013 to tweet about all the "haters and losers" out there.

A guy who fist-pumps and thumbs-up his way through 9/11 memorials.

At this point, should we even be shocked?

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Jack in the Box's Teriyaki Steak Bowl features sliced steak covered in teriyaki sauce and served with vegetables (broccoli and carrots) over a choice of white or brown rice.

The bowl costs $6.09 at the nearest Jack in the Box but I had a coupon good for a bowl, an egg roll, and a drink for $5 (normally $7.79).

I went with the brown rice. It was cooked through with a soft (but not too soft) texture. Unfortunately, it was somewhat waterlogged through a combination of moisture in the bowl and the teriyaki sauce.

The sauce supplied the strongest flavor in the bowl with a blend of salty and sweet over a base of soy sauce and a touch of ginger. It didn't quite hit the right notes for me, however, and tended to cover the taste of the other components.

The steak was fairly tender with a proper meaty texture (as opposed to an overly smooth chewiness). Additionally, it was cut into rather good-sized strips. The meat-to-rice ratio was nice as well.

The broccoli and carrots were tender but not mushy.

Overall, Jack in the Box's Teriyaki Steak Bowl turned out pretty well for a burger joint. The steak, rice, and vegetables were rather good but the sauce was a tad overpowering. I probably wouldn't get it again but I have a lot of similar options in my neck of the woods.

Nutritional Info - Jack in the Box Teriyaki Steak Bowl with brown rice
Calories - 680 (130 from Fat)
Fat - 15g (Saturated Fat - 3g)
Sodium - 2440mg
Carbs - 104g (Sugar - 34g)
Protein - 35g

I mean.

A new study found that 7 percent of all speaking roles for women in television go to Latina actors. It was one of the only bright spots in the report from San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film; previously it was just 5 percent of all speaking roles. Oh yay! Crumbs? I love crumbs.

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This week, Deadspin and Jezebel swap beats to celebrate America’s most dangerous and controversial pastimes: football and fashion, two sports that have far more in common than you think.

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Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told supporters at a rally on Saturday that Democrats wanted to make Texas like California and listed off a few things as stereotypical staples of the blue state.

Well, he did it. John Legend’s win at Sunday’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Los Angeles has made him the youngest person to join the elite group of EGOT winners—people who have at least one trophy from each of the major U.S.-based entertainment awards (the Emmys, the Grammys, the Oscars, and the Tonys). He’s the…

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The fallout continues from the unfortunate end to the U.S. Open final.

Serena Williams has been fined a total of $17,000 for three separate violations that occurred during the U.S. Open women’s final on Saturday, according to the Associated Press.

Chair umpire Carlos Ramos argued with Williams throughout the match after charging Patrick Mouratoglou, Williams’ coach, with instructing her from the stands. Coaching mid-game is technically against the rules, but routinely happens without incident. The charge escalated tensions between Ramos and Williams, leading to numerous verbal altercations before Williams broke her racket in anger.

The tournament referee’s association charged Williams $10,000 for “verbal abuse” of Ramos, $4,000 for the coaching warning and $3,000 for breaking her racket.

The penalty-laden finale was an unfortunate end to an amazing tournament, and took the limelight away from 20-year-old Naomi Osaka who broke down in tears after the match telling fans “I know everyone was cheering for her, I’m sorry it had to end like this. Thank you for watching the match.”

On Sunday night WTA CEO Steve Simon issued a statement, saying “The WTA believes that there should be no difference in the standards of tolerance provided to the emotions expressed by men vs. women and is committed to working with the sport to ensure that all players are treated the same. We do not believe that was done last night.”

A research company called Morning Consult had 1900 people watch the new Nike commercial featuring Colin Kaepernick and record their reactions in realtime. The video above shows the commercial and the graphed reactions of four age groups: Gen Z (18-21, white line), Millennials (22-37, teal line), Gen X (38-53, yellow line), and Boomers (54-72, red line). The report also has graphs showing results by race and political affiliation (the dashed line is when Kaepernick first appears on screen).

Gen Z & Millennials rated the ad higher than the older viewers throughout and had a less negative reaction to the polarizing parts. Now, the report only mentions the effect of Kaepernick appearing on the screen, but to my eyes, there are four distinct moments when the opinions of some viewers (white, older, Republican) turn negative:

1. Right before Kaepernick is shown for the first time, ratings start to decline when the ad refers to LeBron James as “the best basketball player on the planet” and “bigger than basketball” for recently opening his I Promise School.

2. Kaepernick’s first appearance in front of an American flag with his large Afro triggers a steep decline in favorability among older viewers, particularly Boomers and Republicans.

3. Serena Williams being billed as “the greatest athlete ever” results in the steepest decline during the entire ad…and this was before the controversy at the US Open. Across all groups, only black Americans had no problem with that characterization whatsoever (Gen Z & Millennials showed only slight declines).

4. Immediately after that, Kaepernick is shown again and there’s a continued follow-on decline from Serena.

So that’s interesting! What’s going on here? [insert an entire apologist NY Times Op-Ed piece here about how famous athletes are polarizing no matter what, particularly when accompanied by best-ever proclamations, etc. etc.] But of course, it’s probably racism with a side of sexism — three outspoken black athletes, one of them a woman, are uppity. That’s the simplest explanation.

Tags: advertising   Colin Kaepernick   LeBron James   Nike   racism   Serena Williams   sexism   sports   video

Tucker Carlson, transcender of dog whistles, went full Stormfront on his show last night while railing against "elites" who love diversity and wish to see Donald Trump evicted from the White House. With a large graphic behind him, blaring "ANSWER ME THIS" Tucker Carlson, a white heterosexual man born into wealth and privilege beyond most of our wildest dreams, demanded that said "elites" explain to him just how diversity is supposed to be our strength, when he, Tucker Carlson, is most comfortable around people who are exactly like Tucker Carlson. Unlike all those elitists.

---

He asked:

"How precisely is diversity our strength? Since you've made this our new national motto, please be specific as you explain it. Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don't know, marriage or military units in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are? Do you get along better your neighbors or your co-workers if you can't understand each other or share no common values? Please be honest as you answer this question. And if diversity is our strength, why is it okay for the rest of us to surrender to one of our central rights, freedom of speech, to just a handful of tech monopolies?"

Is Tucker Carlson the mom in Janis Ian's "Society's Child?" Inquiring minds want to know.

There are lots of ways to answer this question, but I will say this. Tucker Carlson and I both have brown hair. We are both white people. We both work in media. He went to boarding school in Rhode Island, and my whole entire family is from Rhode Island (though, granted, not the boarding school part of the state). Yet we have nothing in common, share no common values, and I certainly don't understand him. He is an asshole, I am not. I am perfectly able to form cohesive relationships with people of all different backgrounds, ethnicities and races who are also not assholes. I would not be able to form a cohesive relationship with Tucker Carlson, an asshole.

If one were so inclined, one might suggest that surrounding oneself entirely with other Tucker Carlsons is precisely how Tucker Carlson became such an asshole in the first place. Or, at the very least, how he got so goddamned boring.

I read an anecdote somewhere, once -- about how back in the old days, the managers of textile factories in New York City purposely tried to engineer conflict between the Jewish and Italian immigrant women who worked there, in order to stem the threat of collective bargaining. What ended up happening instead was the women learned each other's languages, invited each other home and developed close bonds that soon led to the exact thing those managers had feared -- the formation of unions. The other result of this was linguistic -- Italians incorporated Yiddish words into their everyday language, and Jewish people started using Italian words in theirs, which is partially why, to this day, you'll hear Jewish people saying fongool and Italian people saying Oy. There are lots and lots of stories like this in our history, and they are stories of incredible strength and perseverance and human kindness, in the face of Tucker Carson levels of bullshit.

The reason diversity is a strength is because being the person sitting around whining about not getting to always be in a room of people you think are exactly like you is weak as fuck. It's babyish. It's childish. Diversity leads to people having a broader and richer worldview, to being stronger than those in their Tucker Carlson Types ONLY hidey holes, to considering different perspectives and, yes, to much better food. Unlike at the Tucker Carlson Lunch Counter where they serve only cucumber sandwiches and mayonnaise by the spoonful.

Now, I would be the very last person to say that Tucker Carlson should not stick to his own kind. On the contrary, I wholeheartedly support any steps he takes to ensure that the rest of us be deprived of the pleasure of his company. That being said, he ought to stop projecting and assuming that just because he is thoroughly incapable of bonding with people of different backgrounds, that other people are similarly myopic.

And now, your open thread! Don't forget to tip us on the way out!

[Mediaite]

LOTS to wear on the lanai.

And also showed some very charming looks, which is a tribute in and of itself.

And I bet we'll see some of it at an awards show.

Then welcome to Laurence & Chico.

A series of text messages sent to a private investigator appear to show George Zimmerman threatening Beyoncé over the recently premiered docuseries, Trayvon Martin: Rest in Power, produced by Jay-Z.

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Vice President Mike Pence said in an interview airing Sunday that he has not discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office.

As seen on the likes of Ruth Negga and GOOP.

Future Janelle Monae—Queen of the Space Nation we are forced to create when the rising sea levels and Elon Musk’s ego destroy what’s left of this godforsaken planet—paid a visit to Current Janelle Monae’s social media feed on Sunday, gifting us unfortunate 21st century-dwellers with a message from her enviable…

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GOWNS!

A jar of rillettes is a wonderful thing. French in heritage, it’s a seasoned meat spread slowly cooked in its own fat, then shredded and mixed with just enough of its fat to make a paste that’s spreadable on bread or crackers. Oh yes. Similar to a paté, but with no offal, it can be the hero of your next cheese and…

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Donald Trump went to Montana for one of his Please Love Me And Tell Me I'm Loved, NO, MORE! MORE! rallies, and while the words falling out of his dumb dough face were the usual random stream-of-sundowning brainturds we've come to expect, the crowd behind him was more interesting than almost anything he said. While the White House is clearly dysfunctional, the choreographers for Trump's Montana event were fine-tuning the composition of the chairs on the Titanic people standing behind him as the speech droned on and on.

---

For the "content" of Trump's speech, the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale provides his usual fine summary, instaquotes, and fact-checking on the fly, and Trump had a few noteworthy crazy things to say, like his very important question, "If I've 'lost it' like they say, how can I give a rally speech for an hour without notes?" Because as we all know, people who've lost it are only able to ramble on and on, telling demonstrable lies, for up to 55 minutes, and then must stop. Trump also said that since Lincoln's Getty'sburg Address was initially mocked and ridiculed -- a claim that irritated several historians -- then maybe in 50 years people will all recognize how truly brilliant Trump is. You bet!

Donald also had some difficulty condemning the anonymous author of that New York Times op-ed, largely because he couldn't manage to pronounce the difficult word "anonymous." Bad denture day, dementia, or drunk? YOU decide!

But the real show was in the bleachers behind the Great Man. For instance, there was this young lady who wiped her nose on the holiest patriotic artifact of all, the Beautiful American Flag:

Yes, yes, she's young, dazed by TV lights, and obviously not giving any thought at all to how it looks to be wiping snots all over Old Glory, but can you imagine if this had been a black teenager standing within a mile radius of any event involving Barack Obama, let alone right behind him? Fox News would be running the tape on a nonstop loop, the young malefactor would have been identified within 30 minutes, and creeps on Twitter and Breitbart would be calling for her to be sent to Gitmo at a minimum. Her family would have gone into hiding -- if they made it out of their firebombed home alive, of course.

None of which should happen to anyone, and certainly not to this kid. But remember, it's black athletes protesting police killings of unarmed black people who have no respect for Our Flag.

Then there were the strategic interventions in crowd makeup. This guy in the plaid shirt made too many funny faces, and appeared to be mocking the Great Man, so he had to go (no audio in clip, don't turn up the volume and hurt your ears when another vid plays, okay?):

Whoops, out you go, grimace-grin boy!

Yup, he was quickly Gif'd, too:

After that, just a little more tinkering with the audience was clearly needed!

Much better. Now, what's the crazy man saying? Screw it, there's no reason to listen. Call us back when he recites the Gettysburg Address from memory.

[Daniel Dale on Twitter / David Choi on Twitter / Susan Simpson on Twitter / Top gif image by Dominic Gwinn, from video by Unsilent Majority on Twitter]

When the going gets weird, Yr Wonkette keeps you going. Donate to keep US going!

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Failed blood-testing start-up Theranos, a $10-billion company that in 2015 was discovered to be an elaborate scam, is finally shutting down.

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Hey kids! What did you do this summer? This is the look I get when I'm not really listening, and just waiting for my turn to talk again. So, that is super cool, guess what I did! Yup, that's right, I became a beekeeper! Did you want to hear all about my bees, and their activities, their travails, and the super sweet and sticky goo they poop out? (Bee Fact #1 - Bees do not "poop" out honey, they puke it out of a special stomach called, uncreatively, a honey stomach.) You do, gre... what? Yes, actually, I am going to keep doing that, I don't fucking care if you don't like my Bee Facts. This is Wonkette, I can swear, and I don't have to care about what you think. Now, where was I, oh yeah, ...You do? Great! Let me tell you all about it, in exhaustive detail, replete with photographs and videos! Ladies and Gentlemen, and also you regular Wonkette readers, I give you...

The shyHive

Home on the Prairie

This is it. It ain't much to look at, just a couple of brood frames sitting up on an old Craftsman table saw stand. It lives in the far corner of our acre here at Wonkette World HQ. It sits up on a stand because we get skunks in our yard, and it has a rock on it because we sometimes get high speed winds off of Flathead Lake. But my bees seem to like it. It is their first permanent home.

---

This past May, my son bought me a beehive for my hatching day. Neither of us had ever expressed more than the most fleeting fascination with beekeeping, but he decided, in spite of the fact that he was saving up to transfer to MSU this fall, that he was gonna spend several hundred dollars on equipment and livestock. Rebecca was skeptical, but li'l Shy was adamant. Usually, when you start your first hive, you send away for bees, and they come in a box, early in the spring. By late May, the only way to get bees was to buy a Nucleus Box from a commercial apiary. These bees lived in the little travelling boxes that they take from farm to farm. My bees were migrant farm workers! DEPORT! Here is what I got:

A first peek at the new hive

And here I am transferring my bees to the shyHive:

Shypixel smoking out with his bees

And here they are all moved in, with Shy Jr.

Remember how I said that there would be video? Well, there is video. Here is one of the moving in process:

Pretty cool suit, huh? It's almost exactly the same one that Next Generation Beekeeper Sir Patrick Stewart got when he started beekeeping shortly after I did. Did your humble Shypixel start a trend among celebrities? Probably. Anyhow, we added the second brood box early in June, after they had filled the lower. (Bee Fact #2: Langstroth hives, like this one, have two types of boxes, deep brood, which is where the queen lays her eggs, young are raised, and nectar is stored, along with the honey the bees will feed on through the long, dark winter; and honey supers, which is where they store additional honey they create, which we then steal.)

Beekeeping

Moar BEES!

It turns out that Rebecca had been wrong, I love beekeeping, a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. No, not that much, dial it back, skippy. But it's pretty cool. There were two main worries, that having a giant swarm of bees in our yard would kinda suck, and that caring for the bees would be a major hassle. Well, it turns out that the a bee colony will range far and wide to gather pollen (Bee Fact #3 - Bees will fly anywhere from 1-4 miles away from the hive to forage, and a single hive can forage over 32,000 acres), so they only send the regular number of bees to poke around your garden. You really only notice them when you're within five feet or so from the front of the hive. Other than a few extra honeybees sipping out of Donna Rose's kiddie pool, you would have no idea that a swarming nest of flying venomous insects lived there at all. Most of my bees were flying up to 7-8' high to clear the shrubs, and off to parts unknown. You only really ever see them when they come home to eat and sleep at night. Kinda like teenagers.

My first worry turned out to be unfounded. What about the second? Was taking care of them a hassle? Yes, a little, but mostly no. It seems that there are many things that can go wrong with a honeybee colony. Colonies can suffer from all kinds of mites and a host of diseases with gross names like American Foulbrood, and European Foulbrood, and some that aren't even called Foulbrood. Bees have many predators, all manner of birds, dragonflies, wasps, hornets, skunks, and bears. They even fall prey to robbing by other bees, who will raid weak hives and steal their honey. The shyHive had two main problems, robber bees and skunks. Robbing was solved by reducing the size of the entrance, which lets my bees be like the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, just as naked but not all homo-erotic as in 300 (that we know of), and defend against much more powerful invaders. And the skunks? Well, I made a little something for them:

A "Welcome" mat

Mostly, my summer of beekeeping involved spending a few minutes each day, sitting by the hive, watching them come and go, learning how to recognize the different activities that I saw there, and just generally getting to know, and get known by, my bees.

Here, you can do it, too:

shyHive Front Door

A closeup of the activity at the shyHive's front door

Activity at the shyHive Entrance

A short video of the daily activity at the entrance to the shyHive.

The Honey - The Sweet Sweet Sticky Honey

The sweetest thing

The real reward for raising your own hive of honeybees is, of course, that warm feeling you get in your heart, knowing that you have helped stem the catastrophic drop in the world's bee population. Hahahaha, no. That's fine and all, but I want some shyHive honey! Even if everything goes well, you have to get lucky for there to be enough honey in the first season to harvest. We got lucky:

Unstrained, raw honeycomb

Only being able to harvest one frame of honeycomb, I opted to try the old fashioned method of extracting the honey, mashing up the comb, and letting the honey drip out. No fancy centrifugal extractors and heated knives for the Shypixel, just a few bowls, a strainer, some jars, and a huge fucking mess. Oh, and also every Yellowjacket in western Montana smelled the honey, and they are still swarming the area on my deck where I scraped the comb off of the frame, days later. After a few hours of patient work, I was left with six small jars of organic, raw, unfiltered honey. The taste? Liquid gold. [Rebecca here: Also, because the beeswax/honeycomb was mashed right in, it had a slight chew to it! DELIGHTFULLY SO!]

Here it comes

Those images are scratch and sniff. Go ahead and just scratch at your screen a little, and you should be able to smell it. Maybe lean your face right up to the screen. No? You must need a browser update. We did the math, and we hope to harvest around ten times as much honey next year, maybe more if we get another hive up and running. And then you will line up for miles for a tiny little jar of Montana Wildflower honey, raw, on the comb. Right? Of course you will. And now I leave you with a few more photos and another video, remember to donate!

A Pixel and his Bees

Brood frame with queen cup visible

Donna Rose says "I love my bees!"

Now we have told you about our bees, that is Donna Rose above and a donation form below. MASH THE DONATION FORM! MASH IT LIKE BEES. No, not bees. Like something else. Also it is your OPEN THREAD!

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The first episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's thirteenth season debuted this past week, and while the fate of Dennis is still up in the air—one thing is abundantly clear: Fat Mac is gone for good. In his place, like some kind of supremely buff statue whittled from a flabby brick of Fat Mac's flesh, is a whole new Mac. A very, very, very ripped Mac.

Why is Mac so jacked now, you might ask? Why does he suddenly have the body of an action figure from Small Soldiers? Well, these are all questions also posed by the Always Sunny characters in the latest episode, and one that Mac does not have a suitable answer for. We may not know why, but now, thanks to an Instagram post from actor Rob McElhenney, we at least have an answer as to how, exactly, the man wound up so jacked.

According to McElhenney, who plays Mac on the show, it's "not that hard." All it takes is giving up everything you love... and hiring the personal trainer who got everyone ripped for Magic Mike. Simple!

For those of you looking for a new exercise routine to help you get in shape just in time for cuffing season, Buff Mac's fitness regimen goes something like this:

• Lift weights six days a week
• Run three miles a day
• Cut out carbs and sugar
• Cut out alcohol
• Sleep nine hours a night
• Get your rich network bosses to foot the bill for an expensive celebrity trainer

"I don’t know why everyone’s not doing this," McElhenney writes. "It’s a super realistic lifestyle and an appropriate body image to compare oneself to."

If that all sounds a little too strenuous and/or you don't have the necessary assets to hire the person who crafted Channing Tatum's jacked stripper bod, worry not! You can always just go the opposite direction and follow McElhenney's Fat Mac routine, instead—eating five 1,000-calorie meals a day and topping it off with a couple donuts.

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No time for laundry? No problem.

President Trump called on the Department of Justice to investigate The New York Times’ publication of an anonymous, anti-Trump column by an author identified as a “senior administration official.”

The Scarlet Knights have a rich tradition of not scoring much against the Big Ten East’s best teams.

In the storied history of college football, Rutgers has played Ohio State four times.

Despite being pretty close regionally, the two had never met before the Scarlet Knights joined the Big Ten in 2014.

The Buckeyes had never scheduled Rutgers as a bodybag opponent throughout the decades, and there was little chance the Scarlet Knights were ever going to meet OSU in a bowl.

But now that the two have met five times, the Scarlet Knight offense has contributed mightily to series history.

Ohio State has combined to outscore Rutgers 166-3 in their last three games, and 271-27 in the five games they’ve played in total. There were RU touchdowns to speak of in the first two games between the two teams.

So let’s rank all of Rutgers’ touchdowns against Ohio State, ever.

3. 2014’s second touchdown

Score before the TD: Ohio State 56, Rutgers 10
Time remaining: 15 minutes
Final score: Ohio State 56, Rutgers 17

Think about it: did Rutgers really have to score this touchdown? Of course not. They could have taken their medicine and got right on the plane home with only one touchdown to their name. Yet they did not. They chose to stand up and fight.

I’m impressed with this resilience.

2. 2015’s only touchdown

Score before the TD: Ohio State 49, Rutgers 0
Time remaining: 13 seconds
Final score: Ohio State 49, Rutgers 7

There is a certain fortitude needed for a touchdown like this. Down 49-0 at home, most teams would have long folded. No — not Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights dug deep from the depths of their souls to come up with one score. This is a touchdown about self respect.

Look how excited the mascot is in the end zone.

Even Brutus the Buckeye got into it.

This is a touchdown of honor.

1. 2014’s first touchdown

Score before the TD: Ohio State 14, Rutgers 0
Time remaining: Like three whole quarters
Final score: Ohio State 56, Rutgers 17

To cap off a 10 play, 66-yard drive, the Scarlet Knights plunged into the end zone to actually come within one score. It was a blustery touchdown, befitting a team that’d recently joined the Big Ten.

We’ll update this post if Rutgers ever scores on Ohio State again.

Lindsay Lohan is planning to launch an island resort in Dubai called Lindsayland after the “Mean Girls” star’s managed to find success as a hospitality entrepreneur, with multiple clubs in Greece.