IKEA Monkey

A flood in Australia, via Wikimedia Commons user Beao

There are usually only two types of weather in Los Angeles: It's either "nice," or "one degree off of nice and everyone's freaking out about it." For the most part, that's all you need to know. But then Angelenos found out that the normally icy Pacific Ocean had become a roiling jacuzzi. West Coast natives knew that could only mean one thing: El Nio!

In short, El Nio is a name for a wet winter weather along the Pacific Coast of the Americas every few years. In my experience, each severe El Nio comes with some warnings from the National Weather Service (NWS), and a lot of fruitless conversations about sandbags. I thought the biggest hazard I was in for would be my own inability to get through one lousy day without losing my umbrella.

But that changed when a friend of mine who just moved temporarily to Los Angeles from the East Coast told me he had to reassure his mom that he'd be safe from the horrors of an El Nio winter. I thought El Nio was a little bit of a joke, but after reading some of the scarier coverage, her fears seemed at least a little justified.

It seemed like a good time to settle the matter: How worried should I actually be about the nasty weather phenomenon that strikes my city every couple of years, and is named after Baby Jesus?

The 2015-2016 pattern, dubbed "Godzilla El Nio" by the Los Angeles Times, has been hyped as more powerful than previous El Nio seasons. According to Mike Halpert, director of the NWS Climate Prediction Center, "there will be a number of significant storms that will bring heavy rains." What that brings, Halpert told the LA Times, "will be floods and mudslides," which means I might actually have to check Yelp for good sandbag retailers this winter.

Here in LA, it's normal to cross the entire sprawling metro area in a single morning commuteso if there are hazards, the city's fair-weather drivers will often be forced to navigate them. But flooding and mudslides in neighboring cities appear to have already claimed the life of one Californian on the road this year. And the cash-strapped City of LA isn't particularly great at installing and maintaining useful little infrastructure things like culverts (ask a friend from Southern California if they even know what the word "culvert" means). Bearing in mind that the Great El Nio of 1997-1998 killed 17 people in California, it seems like there's cause for concern.

Any given El Nio winter starts off innocently enough, with warmer than average waters off the coast of Peru. If you imagine the shape of northwestern South America as a butt, the telltale El Nio warming pattern looks like someone lit its fart on fire. Stanford meteorologist and influential weather blogger Daniel Swain told me that waters as far north as Alaska are weirdly warm this year. "The Pacific's on fire right now," Swain said. So far, though, the effect has just been a shit ton of humidity.

"There is not a one-to-one correlation between tropical warming and California precipitation. The reality is much more complicated than that," Swain said, explaining that heavy rain is not guaranteed. Although he conceded that "California's wettest winters have typically co-occurred with its strongest El Nio events," adding that rainfall for those years was nearly twice the average.

In other words, it's safe to assume a hard rain is comingbut science works in probabilities not certainties. The question is, what should we be doing about it?

"We have plans in LA for pretty much anything that can happen, from flooding to mudslides," Chris Ipsen, a public information officer the city's Emergency Management Department assured me when we talked this week. I pressed him about whether my Silverlake street might be prone to mudslides. "That area's soil has pretty solid rock under there," Ipsen said. "From what I understand, I haven't heard of those kinds of issues. That's not to say it won't happen."

Malibu mudslide from a non-El Nio year. Image via FEMA / Wikimedia Commons

The neighborhood does get the occasional mudslide, but its generally just the kind that causes property damage, rather than horrific mud drownings. Even in areas like Malibu, which has seen at least two mudslide-related deaths, and houses were seemingly designed to slide into the sea, residents like Whoopi Goldberg still typically make it out alive.

A major priority Ipsen brought up was "keeping the storm drains clear of anything that might obstruct our flood control." The storm drain system can apparently be of life-or-death significancebut mostly for people who aren't me. The people who will be affected, Ipsen said, are the ones living in homeless encampments along the LA River. The wet season has barely started, and already we've begun to see a familiar piece of El Nino imagery: footage of people in the LA River, that concrete trench from Terminator 2,struggling to stay afloat in fast-moving floodwaters, and being airlifted out by fire department rescue crews.

"What we're hoping to do now is to identify exactly where they're at, and map it," Ipsen said. And he's got his work cut out for him. Recently, Los Angeles declared a state of emergency because of the record numbers of homeless people living in the city.

"We'd actually like to be proactive, and have a process in place so that we're able to notify these populations, and hopefully find somewhere to go, and provide services that they require," Ipsen added. A plan for putting the homeless in rain shelters has been announced, but Los Angeles County officials have criticized the outreach component for requiring homeless people to check a website. Also, the $100 million city officials have loudly promised to spend on addressing the homelessness crisis hasn't yet been officially approved by the city council.

Check out our documentary about the horrors that a flood can dislodge:

Of course, El Nio is mostly good news for California. "Obviously," Ipsen said, "we want to see the water." After four years of devastating drought, California is so thirsty, it can't wait to gorge itself on rain. Here in Los Angeles, though, I'll realistically just be inconvenienced by a couple of flooded intersectionswhich I'm pretty sure I'll survive.

But as Swain points out, I'm not being mindful of El Nio's effects globally. It seems mine isn't even the real story when it comes to El Nio. The weather pattern comes with a much higher body count in other parts of the world. After all, it was Latin Americaprobably Peruthat gave the weather pattern its name, and with good reason: The storms there are more intense, and the effects can be downright tragic.

In 1998, flooding in the border town of Tijuana, Mexico during an El Nio winter killed 14 people; a local police officer described it as being "like an avalanche that came at us from all sides." That was after an El-Nio-related hurricane further south in Acapulco killed 118 people. Storms in Peru that same winter killed 300 people, and left about 230,000 more homeless.

Swain also pointed out that "El Nio-related warming of the ocean surface can actually influence the large-scale storm track over the Pacific," which means its effects can be felt beyond North and South America, and are usually more unpleasant than some heavy rain. In Australia, for instance, El Nio is associated with harsh droughts. And in Pakistan, 1,150 people died this past summer in a record-breaking heatwave tied to the atmospheric effects of El Nio. Some areas there have seen temperatures rise up to 113 degrees, and the resulting power shortages have led to civil unrest.

So am I personally scared? Not really. My time might be better spent fearing the mosquitoes that result from all that extra standing water, or worrying about the way the heavy rains might interrupt the food supplies of local species. Or, I might look into charities in Pakistan.

But there is still that potential for flooding and mudslides, which does scare me a little since I live on a hill. Ipsen advised me to sign up for location-specific emergency updates from NotifyLA.org. "That's for, let's say, imminent danger. We only pull the trigger when it's something really imminent," he said. It's a pat on the head, but one that actually does ease my fears a little.

Final Verdict: How Scared Should I Be of El Nio?

2/5: Taking Normal Precautions

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

If you’re one to follow the American stories Ryan Murphy tawdrily tells, you’ve likely been hotly anticipating American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson. As is typically done for AHS, various teasers was released all at once today — all, except one, concealing the faces of the actors playing the participants in the infamous story.The one player we do see in full (otherwise, voices are heard, backs of heads follows, waists and arms strapped for a lie detector test) is John Travolta as Simpson’s attorney, Robert Shapiro.  If we’re being nitpicky, there is one other face: that of Nicole Brown Simpson’s dog, Kato, barking, as he was said to in neighbors’ descriptions of the crime scene. Watch the Travolta teaser below, and the rest of the teasers on /Film:

You obviously don’t need Ryan Murphy to see the Ryan Murphy-ish horror in many aspects of American life (the fact that his newest series is an anthology based on true cases clearly serves as the most immediate proof). But more proof is that people in Norway have, as Mentalfloss writes, taken to using “Texas” as slang for “crazy” — describing anything that’s “unpredictable, chaotic, exhilarating, or simply scary.”

As indicated above, today Björk announced a limited edition, live version of Vulnicura. (She’ll also, as it’s previously been reported, be releasing an all-strings version of her last LP). Rolling Stone reports that the live album was mixed by both Arca and The Haxan Cloak, both of whom collaborated with Björk on the original Vulnicura. Only 1,000 copies of the LP and CD (each) will be made available. The web has also been abuzz with (limited) news about Adele’s next album. Though everyone knew 25 was imminent, even just the naming of a date is enough to make the Internet go nuts.(Anticipation is, of course, heightened by her previous hiatus; if you’ve forgotten how long it’s been, you can handily measure by the gap between her album titles.) The track list was also shared, and it’s already being analyzed.

SNL‘s Sasheer Zamata has become an ambassador of the ACLU, which, as Indiewire reports, will see her “promoting the ACLU’s work combating gender inequality through advocacy and public education.” Her role as ambassador has already begun, with a comedic video she and the organization have released about white male privilege, in which she tries to explain to an unaware friend how he’s favored by the system. Watch it below:

Excellent fresh mozzarella is milky, tender, and mild with a faint layer of cream beneath the skin that gushes a little when you slice it. This is mozzarella you eat it when it's still warm and it never goes into the fridge. Here's how to make it at home. Read More

Although creating a brand new surname after marrying is a rare choice, it’s viewed by some as the most equal, romantic, and kid-friendly solution in an antiquated patriarchal system. But it’s also a very easy way to anger your loved ones.

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ANAHEIM, CA—As a reward for following directions the best of all his classmates, local first-grader Daniel Reinhart received a sticker Friday recognizing his good behavior during a lockdown drill at Paul Revere Elementary School. “You did such a super job, Daniel,” said teacher Anna Jarvis, handing the beaming 6-year-old a sparkly gold star for making less noise than anyone when the lights were shut off, the door was locked, and the entire class was ushered into the closet. “He was the quietest little mouse, but most of you did a great job too!” At press time, Jarvis was telling another student that if he wanted a sticker next time, it was very, very, very important he not giggle.

Hopes&Fears asked a group of scientists and researchers if reality is actually real or if it's all an illusion or hallucination.

How do we know this is real life? The short answer is: we don't. We can never prove that we're not all hallucinating, or simply living in a computer simulation. But that doesn't mean that we believe that we are.

There are two aspects to the question. The first is, "How do we know that the stuff we see around us is the real stuff of which the universe is made?" That's the worry about the holographic principle, for example -- maybe the three-dimensional space we seem to live in is actually a projection of some underlying two-dimensional reality.

Tags: drugs   physics   science

The federal government will require people buying unmanned aircraft systems to register with the DOT, after concerns over close calls with planes.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Mikhail Evstafiev

As someone who regularly finds himself immersed in terrifying news stories about shooting sprees, I sometimes feel like I'm living in a war zone.

Moments of everyday chaoscommotion in a movie theater, or a weird clatter in the furthest corner of my officehave become scarier lately. They don't make me lunge for the nearest exit quite yet, but the phrase "active shooter scenario" does briefly bubble up from the depths of my imagination. Just now, as I was writing this paragraph, I got a push notification on my phone about a "Doc Shot in LA's Boyle Heights," and my first assumption was that a nearby doctor was murdered. It turned out to be an ad for a documentary.

So as a sane American person, and non-gun owner, how scared should I really be of meeting my maker at the wrong end of a gun barrel?

The first place to look if you want to be scared is at data on the number of mass shootings in the United States. For this, I turned to Mass Shooting Tracker, which counts the number of incidents in the US in which four or more people were shot in one setting (the FBI, by contrast, only keeps statistics on mass murders.) According to a downloadable spreadsheet available via the Mass Shooting Tracker site, the number just hit 300 for 2015 on October 10, when someone opened fire at a party in Charlotte, North Carolina. There have now been more than 1,000 mass shootings in the US since 2013.

It's hard to make that number mean something, but I can try: If every mass shooting since 2013 happened in an Olive Garden, there could have been a mass shooting in every Olive Garden in America by nowactually we would have hit that mark back in 2014. At last count there have been 1,236 fatalities in all of the shootings since 2013; by comparison, 1,215 coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2011.

Scarier still is the fact that those numbers don't take into account all the people who have been shot in incidents that didn't qualify as mass shootings. After all, being gunned down by a mugger is no less scary a thought than being done in by a spree killer, and as Rachel M. Cohen recently wrote here at VICE, mass shootings aren't a very complete picture of gun violence in the United States. In fact, according to some number crunching by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, less than 1 percent of all victims of homicide in 2010 were killed in mass shootings.

According to Ted Alcorn, research director at the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety, because of the lack of data on gun injuries in the US, counting the number of gun deaths is actually the best way to measure the scariness of these weapons. "There's no census-style database for injuries," Alcorn said, so groups like his "have less ability to quantify them."

The raw numbers for gun deaths in the US are even more alarming. In 2013, the most recent year for which government data is available, 33,636 people were killed by gunsroughly 92 people each day and about twice the number of Japanese soldiers killed in the monthlong bloodbath that was the Battle of Iwo Jima. To get a better sense of what that means, we have to look at the rate, rather than just the raw numbers: In 2013, the rate of gun deaths was 10.6, which means that 10.6 people out of every 100,000 in the US died by firearm that year.

But even though these numbers are scarily high, they are absolutely dwarfed by the number of people killed by their own weak hearts each year: 610,000, or about one in every four deaths. So should I be more scared of heart disease than guns?

No, because heart disease tends to kill people when they are old, and death is inevitable. That may sound grim, but public health officials look at it the same way. "Things that affect young people have a disproportionate impact on the wellbeing of the population as a whole, and gun violence is among them," Alcorn explained, adding, "so are automotive injuries."

The car crash comparison turned out to be important. An April report from the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocacy group, pointed out that due to increased automotive safetyand increased gun violencethe numbers of deaths by car and by gun are now comparable: In 2013, 35,612 people died in auto accidents; 33,636 died by firearm.

Expressed as a rate, the average person's risk from gun homicides and car crashes is almost the sameabout 10.3 per 100,000, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In other words, if you're an American, you should be approximately as scared of being shot to death as you are of dying in a car crash.

That's a dramatic oversimplification, because unlike most car accidents, people generally choose who they shootor at least try to. "It's all very different depending on your circumstances," said David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. How scared someone should be of gun death, he explained, depends "on who you want to talk towho's of interest." Once you've determined that, Hemenway said, then you can "give what their likelihood is."

To figure out these likelihoods, we turned to the CDC database known as WISQARS, or "Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System," which houses these statistics. With WISQARS, you can choose what kind of people are, as Hemenway put it, "of interest," and look up their demographics to see how their chances of dying from a gun compare to the average.

So I chose to look at myself: a 31-year-old white guy. According to WISQARS, I'm at a little bit higher risk than most Americans, with a gun death rate of 18.36, compared to the national age-adjusted average of 10.3. Still, in my state (California), the overall age-adjusted rate is a little lower than average at 7.68, which is nice. If I lived in a state with higher rates of gun death, like say, Louisiana, the rate of risk for my demographic would go up to 19 deaths for every 100,000 30-something white dudes.

Graphic via CDC

But it turns out that, because of my age, my risk for gun death is among the lowest it will be in my lifetime. I was at a slightly higher risk when I was in my early 20s:

Graphic via Centers for Disease Control

In a couple of years, the odds that I will die from a gun shot go will go up again, and will keep going up all the way into my old age. That's largely because these numbers include gun suicides, and the suicide risk among menparticularly white menincreases with age. According to data from the Pew Research Center, American men age 65 and older die by suicide with guns at a rate of 10.6 per 100,000 people. Eventually, if I reach 85 or older, the rate will reach an eye-popping 41.85 per 100,000, according to WISQARS.

Read: Meet the South Central LA School Counselor Who Helps Students Combat PTSD From Gang Violence

Of course, one of my white privileges is that I am much less likely to be killed by a gun. A black guy my age is almost four times as likely to die this way than I am, with a rate of 70 deaths for every 100,000 people.

A close look at how scared I should be of gun death only makes this observation more critical: Black people should be really, really scared of being shot to death. A cross-sectional report last year from the British Medical Journal looked at demographics on gun deaths for all ethnicities in the US. Among other trends, it found that on average, people who are black are twice as likely to be shot to death than white people. Murderby gun or otherwiseis the single leading cause of death among black men between the ages of 15 and 24 in the US. Finally, while white people are about six times as likely to shoot themselves to death as they are to be shot to death by another person, for black people, the opposite is true. That's fucking scary.

Like guns? Check out our documentary on people who make their own:

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According to separate data from the CDC, all Americans between the ages of 15 and 34 are more likely to die from homicideby gun or any other meansthan of a more plausible-sounding cause like cancer or heart disease. As a white person, my odds of being shot to death by anyone, including by myself, are close to the average for Americans of any age in any state, meaning they're comparable to a fatal car accident. In fact, according to 2010 data from the National Safety Council, the lifetime odds of an American being killed with a gun are actually slightly greater than the odds of croaking in a car crash.

Again, your suggested level of fear may vary, particularly if you're a black male. It should also be noted that according to WISQARS data, women in my age range are much, much less likely to be shot to death than me: the rate is 4 per 100,000 for white women, and 6.8 for black women, compared to my 18.36. (Interestingly, the rates are much lower for Asian men and women, although the sample size for these groups are so small that WISQARS warns me against quoting it.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that the appropriate level of fear over dying by gun depends on who you areand I recommend digging through these numbers to find out how scared you should be. In my case, I've decided I'm a little scared.

Final Verdict: How Scared Should I Be of Getting Shot by a gun?

3/5: Sweating it

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

From pet photographer Amanda Jones comes a coffee table book featuring pairs of photographs of dogs, one taken as a puppy and again as an older dog.

See also The Brown Sisters by Nicholas Nixon and many other time passage photography projects. (via bright side)

Tags: Amanda Jones   dogs   photography

Eventually, these sensors could create a kind of artificial skin for prosthetic limbs.

I dunno, this burglar...this might be my favorite burglar of all time.

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Every fall, as the Earth crosses through the cosmic debris trail left by Halley's Comet, we see the Orionids meteor shower.

A class-action lawsuit on behalf of Subway customers has concluded with a promise that Subway will now require all employees to measure the bread for their footlongs and ensure each sandwich is a full 12 inches. What do you think?

In 1908, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. They haven’t won since. Entire generations of Cubs fans have lived and died without seeing their precious team win the championship. That streak may end in 2015, if they can come back to beat the Mets, thus making Doc Brown’s prediction from Back to the Future II come true.

If that changes, then the old jokes about “The last time the Cubs won the World Series…” will finally cease. We mustn’t let that happen without documenting what life was the last time the Cubs won it all [by documenting, we mean “besides unpacking all of the horrifying racism, sexism, and homophobia that are implicit in any 1908 conversation”] :

Sliced Bread Was Two Decades Away From Being Invented

Prior to 1928, people were buying entire loaves of bread from the bakery like goddamn Neanderthals and slicing it at home themselves. Ridiculous! So a guy named Otto Rohwedder invented a cool machine that sliced a loaf of bread and wrapped it, which revolutionized the baking industry and made commercially sold bread a common staple in the American diet.

“Drug Stores” Were Way More Literal

Cocaine, heroin, and marijuana were all technically legal in 1908, but marijuana just wasn’t as popular or important as heroin or cocaine, both of which were considered medicinal, safe, miraculous, and sold over-the-counter at pharmacies. In related news: pharmacies where waaaaay more fun back then.

Reportedly, heroin was excellent at suppressing coughs, while cocaine was a numbing analgesic. Both of them were pretty good at making your face feel like it was melting off.

People Weren’t Completely Sold On The Whole “Cars” Thing

1908 was a year that would forever change history, because it marked the introduction of Henry Ford’s Model-T car and the invention of the assembly line. New technology takes a little while to catch on, and one of Ford’s cars cost a whopping $850 (which was more than the median yearly salary, at the time) so we can assume that when the Cubs last won the World Series, many people, if not most, were still using the ol’ horse and buggy route.

Teddy Roosevelt Was The Country’s Idea Of A Republican

Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most eccentric and interesting presidents in our history. It may not seem that long ago, except when you consider that Mount Rushmore (on which President Roosevelt’s face appears) was still almost two decades away from being started, four decades away from being completed, and a century away from tourists getting freaked out by Shia LaBeouf. And one of the most beloved children’s toys, the teddy bear, wasn’t popularized until his presidency (hence the name)! There have been 18 other presidents since Theodore Roosevelt left office.

Most surprising: the guy who called U.S. National Parks “America’s best idea” was a republican. See, there was a time when you could be a republican and still advocate for nature without being called a “tree hugger.”

There Were Only 46 States

You probably expected that Alaska and Hawaii weren’t part of our United States yet, but neither were New Mexico or Arizona. No Arizona? Where did people retire?

Both states joined the union in 1912. Oklahoma had only just joined that year.

Senators Were Elected By State Legislature

Prior to 1913, U.S. Senators were elected by the state legislatures. So if you were from Tennessee and wanted to be a senator, you’d just have to ask your politician buddy in Nashville to nominate you, and you were good to go. This system was obviously abused, so in in 1913 they changed it to allow voters to directly elect senators instead. However, women, Native Americans, African Americans, and people under age 21 were still either overtly or covertly prohibited from voting.

People Thought The Eiffel Tower Was Tall

These days, buildings like the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower), the Empire State Building, Shanghai Tower, and Burj Khalifa laugh in the face of the Eiffel Tower, which stands at a puny 986 feet tall. But the Eiffel Tower held the “tallest building” title for over 40 years — from 1889 to 1930 — when the Chrysler Building was built. And also, did you know the French intellectuals originally hated the Eiffel Tower? Now it’s one of the most visited structures on the planet and is the thing most readily associated with France (acting snobby to U.S. tourists is No. 2).

We Still Had Carrier Pigeons

At one point, carrier/passenger pigeons accounted for almost a quarter of all American birds. Deforestation and hunting led to the species’ decline in the late 19th century. The last passenger pigeon, kept in captivity, died in 1914. Other animals that were alive in 1908 that are now extinct? The California grizzly bear, dozens of species of tigers, marsupials, and wolves, and the black rhinoceros.

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan is seeking unity in a place it's rarely found, telling House Republicans he will serve as their speaker only if they embrace him by week's end as their consensus candidate.

It's a big "if" for a House GOP that's careened from one crisis to another in recent years, with...

A week before Quinn Duane’s wedding day, her fiancé decided to call the whole thing off, leaving Duane’s family with an empty banquet hall, a boatload of decorations, and enough food to feed over 100 people. So, what to do? The food was already paid for; the canceled wedding was still going to cost the Duanes $35,000. Instead of letting it go all to waste, the mother of the bride had another idea: have the reception, but use the opportunity to give back to the community.

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The Hood Internet has released their ninth mixtape. Ninth! The highlight so far as I listen for the first time: Daft Punk's Around the World mixed with The Weeknd's Can't Feel My Face. (via @mathowie)

Update: Downloads and track listing are available on The Hood Internet's website.

Tags: music   remix   The Hood Internet

In Chicago on Saturday night, a 6-year-old boy fatally shot his 3-year-old brother after their father, who prosecutors said had acquired the gun for protection after testifying in a murder trial, showed the older boy where it was kept, above the refrigerator in their Humboldt Park home.

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An armed man attacked people at a bus station in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba Sunday, the Associated Press reports.

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First of all, James Franco had a bar mitzvah at age 37, and secondly, Miley Cyrus performed at it while wearing a blue thong leotard, Star of David wristbands and silver thigh-high boots.

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Yep, you guessed it: Florida.

Admittedly I had trouble with Friday night’s Final Jeopardy, mostly because I didn’t pay attention to the key word in the clue. To be fair, I wasn’t the only one. All three contestants missed it as well.

“When translated the full name of this Major League Baseball team gets you a double redundancy.”

At first glance I thought it was the Minnesota Twins, I was stuck on the redundancy part and assumed Minnesota-Twin Cities-Twins. It seemed obvious to me but nope, I’m just an idiot. Here is Alex Trebek explaining the question in vintage Alex Trebek fashion:

“When you think about, translate Spanish los, the, Angeles, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Angels, thee thee Los Angeles, the Angels Angels.

That’s a mouthful huh?

And it was so simple and straightforward and stumped everyone.

Let’s all take a lap and celebrate our stupidity together.

Maggie Goldenberger, now in her mid-20s, tells Vanity Fair the photo that made her famous was taken as a joke.

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

Cry-Baby #1: Jackie Anselmo

Screencaps via WKRC

The incident: A woman's nine-year-old daughter thought that some Halloween decorations were real dead bodies.

The appropriate response: Taking five seconds out of your day to explain to your child that she is looking at Halloween decorations.

The actual response: The mom complained to the city in an effort to have the decorations removed.

Late last week, Cincinnati, Ohio's WKRC ran a story about the Halloween decorations at a suburban home in the nearby town of Parma. The decorations, which you can see above, consist of several mutilated plastic bodies hanging up around the house's front yard. Despite the fact that they're all pretty standard Halloween decorations, a local mother named Jackie Anselmo took issue with the fact that the house is less than a block from a school.

"You take a double take because it is a very realistic display," Jackie told the network. "And almost horrified that somebody would think it's OK to put it that close to an elementary school."

"I felt scared cause I thought they were real people," said her daughter, who saw the display while being taken to school.

Instead of expressing her concerns with the homeowners, Jackie took a photo of the display and emailed it to city officials. She says that the city told her there was nothing they could do about the display.

Speaking to WKRC, Vicki Barrett, who lives in the Halloween-y house, said that nobody had approached her to complain about the display, and that she would consider toning the display down. "We don't want to scare any kids," she added.

The network asked Jackie's lame daughter if she had any suggestions for a more appropriate Halloween display. "Like, fake plastic sculls or little tiny skeletons or blow up pumpkins," she said.

Cry-Baby #2: Some parents in Georgia

Screencap via ABC

The incident: A school taught kids about ISIS.

The appropriate response: Nothing. Schools exist to teach children about the world.

The actual response: Several parents filed complaints.

Last week, 7th grade students at Jones Middle School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, were taught about ISIS during a social studies class. As part of the lesson, students were given a homework sheet that featured an explanation of what ISIS is. It included information about the group's killing of journalist James Foley.

On the back was the cartoon shown above, which shows a man holding a bloody knife.

ABC 6 reported that a "handful" of parents had lodged formal complaints about the lesson. Many more reportedly expressed outrage on social media.

"This does represent the rigorous integrated lessons that we want our students to be exposed to," school spokesperson Sloan Roach told ABC. "It was really designed to help make students think."

One unnamed mother who was interviewed by the network said: "There is zero tolerance for weapons in Gwinnett Country, but yet this was OK to send home." This is, presumably, because a drawing of a knife is not a weapon.

The mother reportedly wished to remain anonymous "out of fear of retribution." It was not specified whether she was concerned these retributions would come from the school or ISIS.

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A guy who threw a tantrum over bacon jalapeo mac and cheese vs. a woman who fired a gun at some suspected shoplifters.

Winner: The fucking bacon jalapeo mac and cheese guy.

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

Some plants may be luring bees with caffeinated nectar.

Who is a good dog? Finally, we have the answer: Tillie. Tillie is a good dog.

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