IKEA Monkey

Also, 32 percent say they're worried that they or a loved one will be the victim of gun violence, versus 67 percent who aren't as worried.

A French preschool teacher who ignited a manhunt in a suburb north of Paris after he said he was stabbed in the neck by an ISIS sympathizer admitted to police today that he actually just invented the entire story.

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Some very concerned citizens and their pastors in California are very concerned about their privacy. Ya see, right now, any old persons can walk into a public restroom, drop trou, do their business — and nobody has the right to sue ’em if the girl-wiener they’re packin’ doesn’t match the picture on the door. How unjust is that?! That’s why Privacy For All is gathering signatures

PITTSBURGH—Saying they should have known from the moment they walked in the unmarked speakeasy entrance and spotted the extensive wood paneling, customers confirmed Friday that, ugh, this is one of those places where the bartenders all wear bow ties. “Oh, Jesus, they’ve got tweed vests and everything,” said customer Tyler Healy, looking around with mounting alarm at the various bar employees who, sure enough, were sporting wax-sculpted mustaches and, Christ, garters on their arms. “It’s fine that there are no TVs in here, but come on, this old-timey piano music is a bit much. Oh dear lord, they refer to their drinks as “libations” on the menu. No, no, no!” At press time, Healy was frantically scrambling for the exit after one of the bartenders approached him and asked “What’ll it be, Mac?”

One mosque had "Jesus is the Way" spray-painted across the front. Another mosque was defaced and left with a fake grenade in the driveway.

Against Trump, the Democratic front-runner would win 50 percent to 40 percent.

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Stick with us.

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Before Lehman Brothers collapsed, pulling the trigger on the global financial crisis, a little-known bond trader was on a hot streak. Over two years, Jonathan Hoffman had brought the megabank more than $700 million in profits.

Just 35 years old, Hoffman was looking forward to an $83 million bonus....

In their last four games, the Charlotte Hornets have blown out two of the Eastern Conference’s better teams, beaten the Bulls, and whooped on the Grizzlies. Charlotte’s only lost twice since Thanksgiving, to the Cavs and the Warriors (which is forgivable, since losing to them is like losing to gravity or the ocean.) All of a sudden, they’ve found themselves in second place in the East, all without Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, a foundational starter. So, uh, how did this happen?

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The 1970s were possibly the absolute nadir of American eating habits. That’s common knowledge, but it’s still wild to scroll through photo after photo of revolting evidence. And now you can do just that, thanks to the Twitter account 70s Dinner Party!

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Earlier this week I wrote about Tinkerbell Cosmetics, my pink plastic childhood obsession. No doubt I begged, I pleaded, I whined. But everybody’s got some white whale from their early years. What was yours?

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Martin Shkreli, a man who holds the title “most hated” in the disparate fields of health care and rap , is back to his usual tricks: ratcheting up the price of life-saving medications and generally being vile.

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Noah Pozner's sister at his grave in Newtown, Connecticut. Photos courtesy of Lenny Pozner

This article originally appeared in The Trace.

A year and a half after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Lenny Pozner called to set up a meeting with Wolfgang Halbig. The 68-year-old security consultant was the de facto leader of a community of conspiracy theorists, known as hoaxers, who claimed that the shooting had been staged by the government. To the hoaxers, the 26 victims — one of whom was Pozner's six-year-old son, Noah — were fictional characters.

It was May 28, 2014, and Pozner, an IT consultant, was in Florida on business. He hoped to sit down with Halbig at a coffee shop near his home in Orlando, Florida. He wanted to talk to him face-to-face about Noah, who was his only son and never far from his mind. On December 14, 2012, the day of the shooting, Pozner had been the one to drop Noah off at school. As they drove, they listened to "Gangnam Style," Noah's favorite song. When they arrived, Pozner said, "Have a fun day," and watched as his child headed inside, fiddling with his backpack and brown jacket.

Ever since his son's death, Pozner had been dealing with the hoaxers. It was his habit to regularly post photos of Noah, a happy boy with soft blue eyes and a wide smile,on his Google Plus page. He would put up pictures of Noah hugging his twin sister, or playing on the beach, or showing off the tooth he lost less than two weeks before he was murdered. The hoaxers would see these images and offer comments: "Where's Noah going to die next?" read one.Another commenter, seemingly believing that Pozner had been recruited to help perpetuate the myth of the shooting, asked, "How much do you get paid?"

Pozner was one of the rare Sandy Hook parents who confronted those who questioned his child's murder. In response to their comments, he posted online his son's birth and death certificates. He shared the medical examiner's report and one of Noah's report cards. The hoaxers said the records were counterfeits.

Pozner remained undaunted. He thought that perhaps if he could show Halbig the documents in person, he and the rest of the hoaxers might at last relent. "I wanted to be as transparent as possible," Pozner says. "I thought keeping the documents private would only feed the conspiracy."

When Pozner did not receive a reply from Halbig, he contacted Kelley Watt, one of the more aggressive hoaxers who showed up on his Google Plus page. Watt wrote back on Halbig's behalf. "Wolfgang does not wish to speak with you," her note said, "unless you exhume Noah's body and prove to the world you lost your son."

Giving up on a meeting with Halbig, Pozner looked to engage in some sort of dialogue with the people who, around this time, made him their chief target. (One video montage that started making the rounds showed images of Noah set to a soundtrack of pornographic sounds.) In June 2014, Pozner accepted an invitation to join a private Facebook group called Sandy Hook Hoax. He told its members that he was willing to answer their questions. "I think I lasted all of eight minutes," he recalls. One participant said, "Man, I'm gonna have to coach you up if you wanna go on TV and make money Lenny." Another typical attacker proclaimed,"Fuck your fake family, you piece of shit."

Pozner eventually realized that, for Halbig and his brethren, this was a game without end. His efforts to combat them became a mission. "I'm going to have to protect Noah's honor for the rest of my life," he says.

Lenny Pozner in an undated photo with his son, Noah.

Every modern atrocity or disaster has its attendant conspiracy theories. Their shared thesis is that governments, needing a way to keep the populace in fear, orchestrate mock calamities, using the tools of the state to cover their tracks. Within 24 hours of the recent mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, videos claiming the event was "staged" surfaced on Youtube and received thousands of clicks.

It was the same in 2007, after a senior at Virginia Tech killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. The record death toll fed rumors that "black ops" must have been behind the incident. Five years later, in the wake of an attack on a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, Alex Jones, who runs the popular conspiracy site InfoWars, implied that the gunman was in cahoots with the government, pointing listeners to his graduate student work at a "government-funded neuroscience program," not mentioning the fact, that, like most grad programs, it also receives plenty of private funding as well. In one of the darker ironies America has recently produced, the sheriff investigating the October mass shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College was found to have shared mass shooting conspiracy theories on Facebook.

Yet even amid this terrible canon, the conspiracy theories that sprang up after Sandy Hook have been exceptional. Less than a month after the shooting, a video called "The Sandy Hook Shooting — Fully Exposed" had received 10 million views on Youtube. Driving some of these hoaxers, in part, was a panic over new firearms restrictions. An infamous conspiracy theorist named James Fetzer called the Newtown attack a "FEMA drill to promote gun control." The National Rifle Association laid the groundwork for such sentiments. In February 2012, Wayne Lapierre, the group's executive vice president, described then-first-term President Obama's hidden agenda: "Get re-elected and, with no more elections to worry about...erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and excise it from the U.S. Constitution."

Read: What We Know About Mass Shootings in America in 2015

In the wake of the massacre, Halbig started the website sandyhookjustice.com. He touted his credentials as a former security director for schools in Seminole County, Florida, and claimed he worked on the official investigation into the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. He said his knowledge of security protocols and procedures provided him with a singular ability to analyze what happened that day in Newtown, and highlight what he believed to be the government's many lies. Other hoaxers rallied around Halbig's alleged resume, and donated tens of thousands of dollars to his Gofundme account. On his show, Alex Jones championed him as a "leading expert" on Sandy Hook.

To press their case, hoaxers designated themselves experts on the physiology of grieving. The parents didn't appear sad enough in interviews, they argued; therefore, they could not possibly have lost children.

Halbig became known for asking a set of 16 questions that he argued proved the event was staged, carried out by "crisis actors," whom the government pays to pose as victims during emergency preparedness drills. Halbig claimed the authorities could not provide him with answers that, in fact, were available to the public in the Connecticut State Police report on the shooting. For instance, he wanted to know why paramedics and EMTs weren't allowed to enter the school (they were), and why helicopters weren't used to transport victims to the hospital (with the exception of four wounded individuals, who were taken by ambulance, the rest were dead). Supplied with those facts, he and the hoaxers insisted they had to be fiction, given their source. The whole point, after all, is that the government can never be trusted.

Frustrated by their inability to rattle government officials, Hoaxers began attacking the families of victims, accusing them of being "treasonous" government operatives. To press their case, they designated themselves authorities on the physiology of grieving. The parents didn't appear sad enough in interviews, they argued; therefore, they could not possibly have lost children. "They aren't behaving the way human beings would act," conspiracy theorist Jay Weidner said on his radio show. Hoaxers also latched onto time-stamping errors on certain victims' memorial pages, which, due to a common Google bug, made it seem like they were set up the before the massacre. The hoaxers found a photo of a little girl taken after the shooting. Mistaking its subject for her dead sister, they held it up as proof that the victim was still alive.

The conspiracy movement's personal attacks show no sign of abating. Early this November, a 32-year-old man was arrested for accosting the sisters of Vicki Soto, a slain teacher, at a Newtown charity event; he wanted to ask them whether a family photo of theirs had been photoshopped.

For the hoaxers, no private moment has been sacred. At one point, they vigorously picked over the details of Noah's funeral. Prior to the ceremony, the family opened Noah's casket for a private viewing, which was reported in the news. It's not an unusual custom for Jewish families, but hoaxers alleged it was against the laws of the religion, which somehow helped substantiate their claim that Noah wasn't real.

It was around this time that Pozner began to fight back. Halbig's sandyhookjustice.com had by then drawn a benificent counterbalance, blogs like sandyhookfacts.com, devoted to debunking every crackpot claim put forward by the hoaxers, whom they referred to as "conspiratards." Pozner began to work with the blogs' authors, who had no connection to Newtown or its residents, beyond a shared disgust with Halbig's campaign. "This became my catharsis, my path to healing," Pozner says. "It was how I was getting the pain out of me."

"I know that the more garbage that is out there, the more it ages over time, the more the myth becomes accepted as a disgusting historical fact that tries to dismiss the existence of my child," says Pozner. "I mean, damn it, his life had value. He existed. He was real. How dare they."

Pozner also began filing police reports against his harassers. The reports would never go anywhere, but Pozner didn't care. He put the documents online. "So the hoaxers could see what I was doing," he says. Often, it was enough to cause people to take down the offensive content in question.

During the summer of 2014, two months after Pozner had suggested they meet in Florida, he filed a complaint against Halbig with the Florida Attorney General. "I wanted the AG to know he was a fraud," Pozner says. The complaint read, "Mister Halbig is soliciting donation from people to fund his uncovering the Hoax at Sandy Hook... As a parent of a child that was murdered on 12-14-12 in Sandy Hook Elementary school, I feel his scam is just plain wrong."

After Halbig learned of the complaint, he tried calling Pozner several times, leaving messages on his voicemail. He sounded alarmed, and said it was "urgent" that they speak. Halbig denies reaching out, but Pozner saved the voicemails and phone records from that period. I asked Halbig about the discrepancy. "That's very strange," he told me. "Never called him in my life."

On December 16, 2014, shortly after the two-year anniversary of Newtown, Taliban gunmen opened fire at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing 141 people. Soon after, a poster of Noah inexplicably appeared at a vigil there. "I assume it was it done out of solidarity," Pozner says.

Halbig and the Hoaxers made much of this development. They began to sarcastically refer to Noah as the boy who was "killed twice." Halbig splashed the pictures all over sandyhookjustice.com. Then, in early 2015, he escalated his attacks, posting the Attorney General complaint on his website. The complaint contained all of Pozner's contact information.

"So I sued him in September," Pozner says.

The injunction required Halbig to remove the complaint from the Internet. Instead, Halbig took down his entire website. Pozner was pleased with the result, until a month later, when Halbig launched a new website, where he resumed what he calls his "investigation." Last week, Halbig used the site to recirculate photos of Noah that had previously appeared online.

"He does it to mess with me," Pozner says. "It's a taunt." He alerted Godaddy, which hosts the site, that Halbig was violating its terms of service. The photos have since been removed.

On VICE News: Gods, Guns, and the Mass Shooting in Tyrone, Missouri

To further his cause, Pozner has created an organization, called the HONR Network, whose goal is to "bring awareness to Hoaxer activity" and "prosecute those who wittingly and publicly defame, harass, and emotionally abuse the victims of high profile tragedies." Since there is no criminal law that protects families like Pozner's from the darker impulses of the Internet, he and his volunteers — folks he met virtually, when he began debunking — perform a slow and painful task. Whenever a video or a screed appears online attacking the victims of a horrible event, they alert venues like YouTube that their rules have been broken. The victories have been small. Though they've removed hundreds of links from the Internet, there are countless more like them.

"I know that the more garbage that is out there, the more it ages over time, the more the myth becomes accepted as a disgusting historical fact that tries to dismiss the existence of my child," says Pozner. "I mean, damn it, his life had value. He existed. He was real. How dare they."

In November, the HONR Network released an ebook on Halbig, called "The Hoax of a Lifetime." The volume runs more than 100 pages, and digs deeply into his past. One of the things the group reports is that it could find no evidence that Halbig ever worked on an official investigation related to Columbine. But that is not the most interesting revelation. It seems Halbig's tenure as director of security of Seminole County schools was rather unremarkable, save for one particular incident: in 1997, a student stole his gun. He expressed embarrassment to the Orlando Sentinel. "I mean, gosh, I'm the director of security," he said.

Halbig, for his part, insists he's just an investigator with good intentions.

"I'm not a conspiracy theorist," he assured me. "I don't even know what a hoaxer is."

Follow The Trace on Twitter.

It involves a party.

By day, Justin Tucker is the Baltimore Ravens place kicker. By night, he’s opera’s next big thing. The 26-year-old Tucker recently showed off his pipes at a charity Christmas concert at a Baltimore church by singing “Ave Maria” in front of about 700 people.

With his powerful resonant baritone voice, Tucker delivered a strong performance of “Ave Maria,” receiving a standing ovation from the packed crowd at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. One organizer said the event had to add seating because Tucker’s guest appearance had generated so much interest.

Luckily for them, he crushed it.

And if that wasn’t impressive enough for you, the kicker can sing in seven different languages. He also majored in recording technology while at Texas and studied under renowned opera singer Nikita Storojev while there, which leads us to believe that if the whole football thing didn’t work out, he’d probably be working in music right now. Fortunately, the football thing has been working out quite a bit, but, with a voice like that, it seems inevitable that he’ll be working in music long after his football career is over.

Also, kickers are the weirdest.

On special occasions, I want my dinners to feel celebratory, and nothing gets that job done better than a big, elegant roast at the center of the table. With these 21 recipes, you'll have a ton of options depending on your meat of choice (lamb, beef, pork, or poultry), how much you want to spend, and how fancy you want to get. We've even got an amazing vegetarian roast, because why should meat-eaters have all the fun? Read More

Nigella Lawson is not down with the clean eating trend. The British chef and author, famous for such decadent recipes as her Chocolate Guinness Cake, does not mince words when it comes to the healthy eating craze. At the JW3 Speaker Series in London earlier this week, Lawson said, “People are using certain diets as a way to hide an eating disorder or a great sense of unhappiness and unease with their own body.”

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Treasury Department official Adam Szubin said ISIS militants were selling as much as $40 million a month of oil.

It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Veridiana Pardo Meo Erbskorn

Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A 12-year-old boy wore eyeliner.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: His mother attempted to scrub it off with steel wool and soap.

Veridiana Pardo Meo Erbskorn was arrested at her home in Coweta County, Georgia, last Tuesday, after a 911 call was placed by one of her children. According to a report on Fox 5 Atlanta, police arrived on the scene to find the 47-year-oldVeridiana with a recently used Brillo pad—a steel wool scouring pad infused with soap.

Veridiana's 12-year-old son was, by that point, at a nearby hospital with his father, receiving treatment for injuries sustained when Veridiana allegedly used the Brillo to scrub eyeliner from his face.

The boy reportedly had a sore face and scratches to his right eye. At the time, doctors were not sure if the damage to his eye would be permanent.

Police say that Veridiana admitted to using the pad on her son's face, and said she did so because her son was going through "a rock and roll phase." According to Fox 5, this phase also included a leather jacket and red hair dye.

Veridiana was charged with two counts of child cruelty, reckless conduct, and battery.

Cry-Baby #2: Students at Lebanon Valley College

Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A college building, which is named after a person with the last name Lynch, was called Lynch Memorial Hall.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: Students at the college asked that the building be renamed, because the word "lynch" has racial overtones.

Lebanon Valley College is a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. There is a building on its campus called Lynch Memorial Hall, which is named after Clyde A. Lynch, who was president of the school from 1932 to 1950.

According to the Associated Press, students at the school are asking that the name be changed to something entirely different, or that Clyde A. Lynch's full name be added to the signage.

The request for the building to be renamed was one of a number of demands made by Lebanon Valley College students last Friday. The students also reportedly asked for "a more diverse curriculum, more sensitivity training for staff, and regular surveys of the racial climate on campus."

In a statement posted to the school's website, the school's current president, Lewis E. Thayne, said the list of demands "is being read with care." The college will respond to students at a forum next month.

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll here, if it's not too much trouble:

Previously: A guy who freaked out so hard over a spider that someone called the cops to report a murder vs. a judge who threw someone in jail for handing out fliers on jury rights.

Winner: The judge!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION—Persecuted and driven into hiding because of their beliefs, the nation’s oppressed Christians reportedly huddled in a secret underground bunker late Wednesday night to decorate and light a single withered Christmas shrub.

At great personal risk, the Christians were said to have smuggled in a few strings of colored mini lights, tinsel, popcorn garlands, Hallmark Keepsake ornaments, and other contraband in order to trim the shrub inside the subterranean chamber, the last place in America where they were safe to celebrate Christmas.

“We have come together today to observe a Christian holiday that has been all but stamped out on the surface,” said a man who wished to be identified only as “Greg,” after hanging a figurine of Mickey Mouse dressed as Santa Claus from one of the shrub’s boughs. “I can’t say this humble bush is much of a Christmas tree, but it was ...

The combination of thick clouds, steady rain, Seattle’s high latitude, and the sun’s low angle created the seriously gloomy conditions.

Look into the endless donut… You are getting huuungry. These infinite GIFs are brought to us by Polish artist Feliks Konczakowski. If looking at foodstuffs ain’t your thing, Feliks’s GIF art will also have you staring aimlessly into flowers, space, and an endless Hulk Hogan. Anyone hungry yet, brother?!? [link, via Bored Panda]

The keeper of the IKEA monkey , who’s been living in a Canadian animal sanctuary for three years now, tells Vice the primate’s life has improved: “Monkeys shouldn’t be wearing nappies, monkeys shouldn’t be on a leash, and they shouldn’t be wearing coats.” Mmm... disagree.

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Can you think of anything more fun than absolutely shredding a fiery guitar solo in honor of your Supreme Leader?

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Buffalo Wild Wings debuts new Mountain Dew-flavored wings as a tie-in to their sponsorship of the college football Citrus Bowl.

They're calling the flavor "Zesty Citrus" sauce and it features the citrus flavor of Mountain Dew along with lemongrass and red pepper flakes for a sweet and spicy combination. Zesty Citrus Sauce will be available at Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants from December 14, 2015 through January 2, 2016.

Fans attending the Citrus Bowl on January 1, 2016, can also purchase boneless wings tossed in either Zesty Citrus or Honey BBQ sauces at two Buffalo Wild Wings branded concession areas.

Photo via Buffalo Wild Wings.

Just over a year ago, we learned that Oreo churros came into existence for some reason that no one fully understands. That version was for the convenience-store market: stores would serve the choco-churros with cups of “creme.” Now the product that you never asked for is available: Oreo churros have found their way to store shelves.

Yes, someone actually saw these for sale in the frozen-food aisle at Safeway. Unlike their hot-lamp siblings, they come with Oreo creme in the middle, and are presumably heated in the microwave.

Well, it could be worse: Doritos Loaded could have made their way from 7-Eleven and Burger King to supermarket freezer cases. Wait… they did?

Robert Dear, the suspect in the mass shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood that killed two civilians and a police officer, reportedly had an outburst in court Wednesday. CBS Denver reports that he yelled, ““I am guilty. There will be no trial. I am a warrior for the babies” in the courtroom.

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An exhibition in Paris shows the important role women have had in the history of photography. It will be on display until January 24.

Video from the special episode hasn't been seen in almost 35 years.