IKEA Monkey

President Donald Trump said he has called off a planned ceremonial visit to Britain because he didn't want to be associated with what he called a bad real estate deal in which the U.S. Embassy is being relocated from central London to "an off location."

In a Twitter message shortly before midnight...

A high-ranking Obama administration official unlawfully billed taxpayers more than $4,000 for taxi rides from his home to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office headquarters, an internal investigation has found.

Located on over two acres overlooking Lake Michigan

Have a nomination for a jaw-dropping listing that would make a mighty fine House of the Day? Get thee to the tipline and send us your suggestions. We’d love to see what you’ve got.

Location: South Haven, Michigan

Price: $1,195,000

A 1980-built home with strong midcentury-modern vibes is on the market in the beach town and port city of South Haven in southwest Michigan. Located on 2.4 acres with 350 feet of shoreline frontage on Lake Michigan, the post-and-beam measures 1,152 square feet and features two bedrooms and two full baths.

Floor-to-ceilings windows and sliding glass doors are found on every side of the house, bringing sweeping views of the water inside to create a majestic but cozy indoor-outdoor living experience, which is enhanced by extensive decking.

The open living area encompasses a kitchen with breakfast bar and what appears to be original orange-and-red themed cabinets, dining, and, the best part, a conversation pit of sorts with built-in sofa anchored by a brick fireplace. Clerestory windows compliment the walls of glass on either side.

Flanking this main space are the two bedrooms, each with their own baths (the master even boasts a fireplace), as well as ample lake-framing windows. Surrounded by woods, the property, located at 76800 14th Avenue, can be your private getaway for $1.195 million.

Courtesy of Coldwell Banker/Choose Chad (h/t Estately)

The nation's psychiatrists should stop analyzing public figures in the media unless they've actually examined the person, the American Psychiatric Association warned Wednesday, stating that the practice stigmatizes patients and can “negatively impact” the profession.

Millie Bobby Brown’s storyline in season two of Stranger Things wasn’t the best, but pretty much any enjoyment that was to be found in her extended digressions from the main plot was all because of how rad Brown herself is. Now, Deadline is reporting that she’s parlaying that radness into a sweet gig starring in and…

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Savage season.

There are pranks, and there are NBA pranks. And Bucks rookie guard Sterling Brown fell prey to one of the oldest pranks in the book when one of his teammates absolutely stuffed his Hummer with fresh popcorn Tuesday.

The reason? Giannis Antetokounmpo said the young Buck fell behind on his rookie duties.

The popcorn prank is especially foul for a few reasons: First, that butter is going to take ages and a half to come out; and, second, it seems like it never ends — the victim literally has to open each door as mound after mound of buttery goodness continues to pile on. Just look at how much clean-up Brown is gonna have to do!

Here’s Door 1

Damn, look at Door 2

Bruh, it doesn’t stop

This is wayyyyy too much popcorn

Lastly, no one ever comes out and owns up to the deed. Brown thinks it was Khris Middleton, but could it have been Middleton? Sure, but it could have just as easily been any of his other teammates. (It was probably Antetokounmpo, who was talking the most trash in the video.)

It doesn’t seem like the popcorn prank is going anywhere any time soon. So let this be a reminder to Brown and all other rookie watching: don’t slack on your rookie duties.

And Ashley Graham, Law, and Drew, too.

We all know to save bird bones to make stock, but the excess skin and fat you find yourself with after butchering a piece of poultry is just as valuable. With very little effort on your part, you can render out some of the tastiest cooking fat around.

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To avoid spreading germs, Justin Karubas opted to phone in his comments and votes during Monday's Indian Prairie District 204 meeting — a courtesy his fellow board members likely appreciated.

Karubas, of Naperville, is among the many who are experiencing the misery of one of the worst flu seasons...

In a turn of events that probably surprised someone who’s regularly flummoxed by Weekly Reader crossword puzzles, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Tuesday that no new oil or gas drilling will be allowed off the coast of Florida. Zinke had unveiled a new Drill Baby Drill plan last week that opens virtually all US coastal waters to offshore drilling, but after meeting with Florida Gov. Bat Boy, Zinke explained why Florida is just too gol-durn ecologically and economically sensitive to risk any Republican votes this fall or in 2020:

That’s nice! He values local input! Especially the potential impact on tourism. Or really, one particular tourist who keeps flying a big white and blue 747 in to go golfing.

Wonder if Zinke will give equal weight to the objections of virtually all other governors of coastal states that will be included in the drilling expansion? (The one exception, of course, is Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who not only welcomes offshore drilling but has requested Interior to allow oil exploration in food stamp recipients’ homes.) Obviously, the Trump administration will feel free to ignore the Democratic governors, but maybe they’ll find some important reasons to listen to Republican governors, or at least governors from other states where Donald Trump owns coastal properties. If the man doesn’t want his view sullied by offshore wind farms, we doubt he wants any unsightly crude oil washing up on his personal beaches either. Unless maybe it triggers the libs — he might be OK with it then.

Zinke’s announcement was not greeted with cheers by everyone. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanted to know what he might do to get Zinke’s ear. (Answer: Open some coastline for a Trump golf course and private cemetery. And lose to a Republican.)

Or consider this note from a resident of Zinke’s “home” state, even though Montana is landlocked:

Looks like somebody’s not going to be in line for any sweet no-bid contracts after the next big natural disaster.

Yr Wonkette is supported by reader donations. Please click here to send us money, unless you’re Ryan Zinke, in which case you have a different assignment.

[CNN]

A woman who was gunned down last week in a suspected domestic violence attack in Lake Forest had made a video two years ago to raise awareness of abusive relationships.

Claire VanLandingham, a 27-year-old Navy officer and dentist, was fatally shot the morning of Jan. 3 in the downtown of the affluent...

DURHAM, N.C.—Federal judges have yet again struck down North Carolina’s congressional districts as an unconstitutional gerrymander, dealing Republicans a blow and throwing the state’s maps into chaos just months before a pivotal midterm election.

A three-judge panel, including one circuit-court judge and two district-court judges, ruled Tuesday evening that the Old North State’s redistricting plan relied too heavily on partisan affiliation in drawing constituencies, violating citizens’ rights under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the First Amendment, and Article I of the Constitution. The decision is the first time a federal court has ever struck down a redistricting plan as a partisan gerrymander. The final word, however, will likely come from the Supreme Court, which is considering two partisan gerrymandering cases.

When Republicans took over the North Carolina General Assembly in 2011, for the first time since 1870, they had the opportunity to redraw districts following the 2010 Census, and quickly set to drawing maps that would aid GOP candidates. In doing so, they relied in part on racial data—a practice that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled permissible when creating majority-minority districts. In North Carolina, as in many southern states, there is a strong correlation between African Americans and Democratic voters, and this effectively helped Republicans crowd Democratic voters into fewer districts.

The plan worked extremely well. In 2012, Republicans won just 49 percent of the statewide vote but snagged nine of 13 House seats. Two years later, with 54 percent of the vote, they won 10 of 13 seats. But a lawsuit against that plan argued that the Republican maps had actually been intended to dilute black votes, and a federal court struck the plan down in 2016. (The Supreme Court affirmed that decision last spring.)

Sent back to the drawing board—or, more precisely in this high-tech era, the drawing software—Republicans did not take a conciliatory stance. Instead, forbidden from using race, the GOP proudly used partisanship as their primary criterion in drawing new maps.

“I acknowledge freely that this would be a political gerrymander, which is not against the law,” said Representative David Lewis, the chair of the state house redistricting committee. He also said, “I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.” And he suggested the committee draw maps that would produce 10 Republican and three Democratic U.S. House districts, on the basis that he didn’t think it would be possible to come up with an 11-2 map.

The court decision on Tuesday noted:

Legislative Defendants do not dispute that the General Assembly intended for the 2016 Plan to favor supporters of Republican candidates and disfavor supporters of non-Republican candidates. Nor could they … Legislative Defendants also do not argue—and have never argued—that the 2016 Plan’s intentional disfavoring of supporters of non-Republican candidates advances any democratic, constitutional, or public interest. Nor could they.

The decision to openly boast about a partisan plan was perhaps unwise, but it was not unfounded. No federal court had ever struck down a redistricting plan as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

Nonetheless, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters both challenged the law, and their two suits were consolidated into one. The plaintiffs argued that the plan violated the Equal Protection Clause, because it discriminated against non-Republican voters; the First Amendment, because it discriminated against voters based on previous political expression; and Article I, because it interfered with the right of the people to elect their representatives.

They brought novel statistical models to demonstrate how slanted the plan was. In particular, the plaintiffs focused on the “efficiency gap,” which measures how many votes for a candidate are wasted—either the number of votes in excess of what the candidate needs to win, common when voters backing a candidate are packed into a district, or the number of votes cast for the loser, when that candidate’s supporters are dispersed. Additionally, in a simulation of all possible North Carolina congressional maps, a Duke mathematician found that an 11-3 GOP split occurred just 0.7 percent of the time.

The legislature argued against the suit, protesting that the statistical models were dubious and not constitutionally sanctioned, and protesting that they being required to answer a koan-like question:  “How much politics is too much politics in redistricting?”

The judges were having none of it.

“A partisan gerrymander that is intended to and likely has the effect of entrenching a political party in power undermines the ability of voters to effect change when they see legislative action as infringing on their rights,” Judge James Wynn, an Obama appointee, wrote for the court. “We agree with Plaintiffs that a wealth of evidence proves the General Assembly’s intent to ‘subordinate’ the interests of non-Republican voters and ‘entrench’ Republican domination of the state’s congressional delegation.”

Wynn was joined in full by Judge William Britt, a Carter appointee, and in part by Judge William Osteen Jr., a George W. Bush appointee who accepted the Equal Protection and Article I arguments but rejected the plaintiffs’ First Amendment claim.

Wynn slapped aside the General Assembly’s arguments against the statistical models, saying that the absence of a constitutional reference to such models did not mean the court could not consider them as evidence:

Legislative Defendants’ judicial manageability argument appears to rest on a more cynical objection: that we should dismiss Plaintiffs’ actions as nonjusticiable simply because much of the evidence upon which Plaintiffs’ rely has its genesis in academic research and is the product of an effort by scholars to apply novel, and sometimes complex, methodological approaches to address a previously intractable problem. To the extent Legislative Defendants are in fact making such an argument, it fails as a matter of both fact and law.

Courts have long been wary of striking down partisan gerrymanders both because of the difficulty of deciding what is permitted partisan gamesmanship and what goes too far, and out of fear of taking the side of one party or the other. The statistical models employed in this case are part of a new push by voting-rights advocates to quantify partisan gerrymandering, and they inspired spirited debate among the justices when the Supreme Court heard arguments about redistricting in October. Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College, argued the North Carolina decision was written specifically to appeal to Justice Anthony Kennedy, the likely swing vote on the high court’s partisan-gerrymandering cases.

Democrats rushed to applaud the decision. Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is leading a national Democratic redistricting initiative, said, “Today’s ruling was just the latest example of the courts telling state legislators in North Carolina that citizens should be able to pick their representatives, instead of politicians picking their voters.” North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Wayne Goodwin said, “It's time the General Assembly put partisanship aside and draw fair, non-partisan maps that give North Carolina voters a voice.” But the North Carolina GOP’s executive director, Dallas Woodhouse, responded angrily. “It is incredibly disappointing that activist Federal Judge Jim Wynn is waging a personal, partisan war on North Carolina Republican voters,” Woodhouse said. “This is a hostile takeover of the #NCGA and legislative bodies across the U.S.”

Just how much the ruling helps Democrats—who are already hopeful that 2018 will be a wave election that hands them control of the U.S. House—remains to be seen. The election-law expert Rick Hasen noted that the Supreme Court will likely stay the decision. Even if it did not, the ultimate maps are not yet drawn. The judges granted the General Assembly another chance to draw maps, but gave them only until January 29 to propose a plan to the court—there’s urgency to get a map in place ahead of the midterm election. However, the court also announced it would appoint a special master, an outside expert, to draw a plan in the event the legislature’s plan doesn’t pass muster.

Since Republicans took control of the General Assembly, they have pursued a sweeping program of conservative policies, which has often brought them into conflict with federal courts. The legislature passed a set of voting laws, including reductions in early voting and a requirement to show photo ID to vote, but that law was largely struck down by a federal court in 2016. In June 2017, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower-court ruling striking down state-legislative districts as gerrymandered. After judges rejected a remedy, they appointed a special master who recently proposed new lines. Over the years, the Old North State has been home to several notable federal-court decisions on redistricting, and on Tuesday, Common Cause v. Rucho joined that select company.

In its latest move to advance the New Cruelty, the Trump administration announced yesterday it would end a program that had allowed some 200,000 people from El Salvador to live in the US without fear of deportation since 2001, because it’s suddenly vitally important to turn as many people as possible from legal to illegal immigrants. The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was put in place in 2001, following two earthquakes in El Salvador, and other administrations had routinely extended it. But hey, say the Trumpers, the earthquake damage is all cleaned up so it’s time for you loafers who’ve gotten jobs, put down roots, and had American-citizen children to GTFO. Salvadorans’ provisional residency permits will no longer be renewed, but they’ll have until September 9, 2019, to either leave the country or find some other legal way to stay. After that, it’s a visit from the Goon Squad.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen insisted the move was completely unrelated to any larger goal of purging America of as many foreigns as possible, heavens, where would you get such an idea? In a statement, DHS announced that

the Secretary determined that the original conditions caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist. Thus, under the applicable statute, the current TPS designation must be terminated.

After all, the statement noted, the US has deported more than 39,000 Salvadorans in the last two years, and none of them got conked on the head by earthquake debris, so there you go — the “temporary inability of El Salvador to adequately return their nationals after the earthquake has been addressed.”

Sure, El Salvador may be in the middle of a wave of gang violence, and has one of the highest murder rates in the world, but that didn’t enter into the decision to terminate TPS — that was about the earthquakes, and only the earthquakes, so there’s no reason to consider the possibility that people will be murdered. Why would it? The goal here is to read these things as narrowly as possible, and to get people deported as quickly as possible, even if they’ve been here legally. Come September 2019, that excuse will be gone and anyone who hasn’t left will automatically become a dangerous criminal alien, and we certainly can’t allow those to stay. Not even if they have a cover sheet on their TPS report.

The decision also didn’t take into account the potential economic impact of uprooting all those people, according to administration officials, even though mayors of cities with large Salvadoran populations, like Houston and Los Angeles, had urged Nielsen to consider the jobs and businesses that will be impacted — about a third of Salvadoran TPS holders are actually homeowners.

The economic and social disruption of hundreds of thousands of people coming back to El Salvador was also not considered, outside the narrow standard of whether the 2001 earthquake was still affecting the country’s ability to accept returnees. NPR reports that on average, Salvadorans working here send $4,000 a year each to relatives in El Salvador, for a total of $600 million annually. That’s more than the total of US economic aid to the country. But just think, now El Salvador will be flooded with people to create jobs for! Maybe its government could cut taxes for the rich — that ought to do the trick.

In addition to the 200,000 Salvadoran adults allowed to stay in the US by TPS, the decision would also affect the roughly 190,000 US-born children of those immigrants, whose US citizenship will be of no help in keeping their parents here because we hate “anchor babies” too. Parents will have to decide whether to take the kids with them to El Salvador, break up their families, or take a chance on staying and getting deported. The party of Family Values and Individual Responsibility will no doubt smile and explain those Salvadorans knew their status was temporary, so it’s their problem if they went and had children, now isn’t it. A DHS official who spoke on the record but was not allowed to be quoted by name told the Washington Post, “We are not going to get involved in an individual family’s decision,” which is awfully nice and non-intrusive of them.

In addition to yesterday’s decision to end TPS for Salvadorans, the administration has previously ended TPS for 60,000 Haitians who came here after the 2010 earthquake and for 2,500 Nicaraguans allowed to stay after a hurricane in 1998. Another 57,000 Hondurans were granted a six-month extension of TPS earlier this year by acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke, a move that angered Trump’s anti-immigration crowd, because the goal here is to shovel as many brown people out of America as possible. Anticipation of losing protected status has been one of the factors driving thousands of migrants to flee the US for Canada, because now America is a place that refugees are running from, god help us.

The DREAM Act of a few years back, it’s worth noting, would have provided a pathway to citizenship not only for the approximately 700,000 undocumented young people whose parents brought them to the US when they were children, but also would allow recipients of TPS permits to remain in the country and apply for citizenship, which seems reasonable enough since they are already here legally. Since most of the TPS terminations won’t go into effect immediately, that’s a hell of an incentive for people who aren’t bigots to elect a Democratic House and Senate this year, huh?

Yr Wonkette is supported by reader donations. Please click here to help us keep this little mommyblog running.

[WaPo / Mother Jones / NPR]

The move would represent major win for Chicago’s emerging tech sector

Though not on the scale of Amazon’s coveted HQ2 deal, Chicago is reportedly in the running to score an expanded presence from technology giant Google. Based on a recent report by Greg Hinz of Crain’s, the company’s search for a new, non-West Coast operations center could be worth up to 5,000 jobs.

Officials from Google and City Hall declined to comment in the report, but sources tell Hinz that the company could be drawn to Chicago’s relatively low cost of living and a highly-educated talent pool that hasn’t been depleted by tech competitors. Other cities such as Boston, Dallas, and Atlanta are also reportedly under consideration.

It’s too early to say where exactly Google would expand should the Windy City land the deal. With the tech company already employing more than 800 workers out of its offices at 1K Fulton, a location in or around Chicago’s rapidly-changing Fulton Market District is certainly a possibility.

Google will have no shortage of options in the immediate area thanks to a number of big office projects in the works from developers such as Sterling Bay, Shapack Partners, and a joint venture from IBT Group and LAMB Properties.

• Google eyes adding thousands of jobs in new Chicago office [Crain’s]

Women are being left at risk of repeat heart attacks and early death because doctors see heart disease as a male problem, a new study has shown. Researchers from The University of Leeds and the British Heart Foundation claim women are dying because many are not offered stents to unblock arteries, or prescribed statins, after their first heart attack. Around 42,000 men and 28,000 women die from coronary heart disease in Britain each year, with most deaths related to an original heart attack. But the new study, which looked at data from more than 180,000 people over 10 years, found three times the expected number of women died in the first year of a heart attack, compared to men. A large percentage of women were not prescribed statins Credit: Kumar Sriskandan / Alamy  Experts claim women are being denied life saving treatment because they are not considered at high risk. “We need to work harder to shift the perception that heart attacks only affect a certain type of person,” said Professor Chris Gale, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the University of Leeds who co-authored the study. “Typically, when we think of a heart attack patient, we see a middle-aged man who is overweight, has diabetes and smokes. This is not always the case. Heart attacks affect the wider spectrum of the population – including women. “The findings from this study suggest that there are clear and simple ways to improve the outcomes of women who have a heart attack ­­– we must ensure equal provision of evidence-based treatments for women.” Heart attack: Symptoms and treatment The research found that women were less likely than men to receive the recommended treatments after a heart attack. Women who had a the type of attack where the coronary artery is completely blocked by a blood clot, were 34 per cent less likely than men to receive procedures which clear blocked arteries and restore blood flow to the heart, such as bypass surgery or a stent. They were also 24 per cent less likely to be prescribed statins, which help to prevent a second heart attack, and 16 per cent less likely to recommended aspirin, which helps to prevent blood clots. Critically, when women did receive all of the treatments recommended for patients who have suffered a heart attack, the number of women dying decreased dramatically. Previous BHF research has also shown that women are 50 per cent more likely than men to receive the wrong initial diagnosis and are less likely to get a pre-hospital ECG, which is essential for swift diagnosis and treatment. Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “Heart attacks are often seen as a male health issue, but more women die from coronary heart disease than breast cancer in the UK. “The findings from this research are concerning – women are dying because they are not receiving proven treatments to save lives after a heart attack. “We urgently need to raise awareness of this issue as it’s something that can be easily changed. By simply ensuring more women receive the recommended treatments, we’ll be able to help more families avoid the heartbreak of losing a loved one to heart disease.” Women were less likely than men to receive artery opening surgery or a heart bypass  Researchers worked with the Karolinksa Institutet in Sweden, and the findings are based on Swedish health records between 2003 and 2013.  But Sweden has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, so the experts believe the situation could be even worse in Britain. “Sweden is a leader in healthcare, with one of the lowest mortality rates from heart attacks, yet we still see this disparity in treatment and outcomes between men and women,” added Prof Gale. “In all likelihood, the situation for women in the UK may be worse.” The research was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Phillips’ insanely popular Wake-Up Light is here to change your life. Philips recently added a new high end model to the lineup, which means we’re starting to see some massive deals on the old top dog, the HF3520. Grab it right now on Amazon for $73 after clipping the $25 coupon, the best price we’ve ever seen by…

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One grim inevitability of our fame-obsessed culture is that one day all of our idols will die. And as their bodies pile up, the world will become one big celebrity boneyard.

And not just the humans. Toto is buried in LA's Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Keiko from Free Willy is decomposing off the coast of Norway. Harambe was donated to science. Air Bud is... huh. Where’s Air Bud’s grave?

A search on findagrave.com offers few details. The site—essentially a big database of gravesite locations—has an active community, with users regularly uploading photos of graves to the service, like a goth Instagram.

Air Bud’s page on the site features his black and white headshot. Users have posted over a thousand tribute comments, mostly small GIFs featuring images of puppies and rainbows. One user, named Pieter, has logged six comments in the last year. Under “burial location,” the page says, “Cremated, ashes given to family or friend, specifically: Ashes are buried in an undisclosed area by his owner.”

The location of Air Bud’s grave is important. After all, you can tell a lot about a society by how it honors its fallen heroes. Did he get only a crummy cement plaque? An elaborate tomb filled with valuable trinkets and comical booby-traps? Was he covertly rolled off a military ship into the Arabian Sea?

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For those unfamiliar, Air Bud is a 1997 kids' movie about a golden retriever who can play basketball. It was made as a platform to showcase the skills of a dog called Buddy, who could actually sink baskets.

It isn’t the first movie to portray an animal playing a sport. There’s a whole genre of such films. Others include Bonzo Goes To College (1952), in which a chimp plays golf and football; Gus (1976) in which a mule from Yugoslavia plays football, Matilda (1978) in which a Kangaroo boxes, and Ed (1996) in which a monkey plays baseball.

Air Bud is by far the most successful film in the genre, making $27 million box office against a $3 million budget. And it remains relevant in pop culture; in recent years, a line from the film—“ain’t nothin’ in the rulebook that says a dog can’t play basketball”—became a meme, getting an XKCD reference and its own TV Tropes page.

(I reached out to numerous NBA refs to attempt to fact check whether there is anything in the rulebook that says a dog can't play basketball, but none of them answered. So I looked at the official NBA rules, and there is indeed nothing in the rulebook about dogs. So, as long as Buddy followed all the other regulations, it’s conceivable he could ball.)

The movie kicked off a fourteen-film franchise, including four “official” Air Bud films, focusing on the dog’s role in various other sports (football, soccer, baseball, and volleyball), and additional “Air Buddies” spin-off films in which Air Bud’s children (Buddy fucks) get into all sorts of crazy hijinks, eventually rocketing off into space.

It could be argued that none of the subsequent films in the franchise are canon. For one, they use digital effects to show the dogs playing sports, and they don’t star the original Buddy; all of the sequels were released after Buddy's 1998 death.

---

I started my search for Buddy's grave on Google Street View. My initial guess was that the ashes were buried on the property of Kevin DiCicco, the man who rescued and trained Buddy.

I found what I believed to be DiCicco’s address via an old real estate listing for a plot of land outside of San Diego.

I zoomed around in 3D view. The property has a football field and a basketball court. This seemed promising, the ideal location for training a new line of Air Buds. But stoned internet sleuthing can only take one so far. I couldn’t spot any obvious dog graves.

---

The appearance of Air Bud is nearly as mysterious as the location of his remains. DiCicco was hiking in northern California when Buddy suddenly walked out of the woods, hungry and disheveled. After taking him home to San Diego, DiCicco decided to do what anyone else would: teach him basketball.

On August 21, 1990, after months of training, Air Bud sank his first shot. It should be noted that he only played basketball in a technical sense. That is to say, his central skill was shooting—though it’s kind of a stretch to call it that. The move went something like this: (1) A ball was passed to Buddy at the appropriate speed/trajectory (2) he “bumped” it with his nose and (3) the ball bounced off the backboard into the hoop. He was not able to dribble or aim or pass or play defense, and doesn’t appear to have understood the overall objective of the game.

Which isn't to say the trick was unimpressive. It definitely isn't easy to perform. You try standing on your knees below a regulation-sized rim, and clunking a basketball into it using only your big dumb head with any kind of proficiency. Besides, how many other basketball-playing dogs have you witnessed in your lifetime?

DiCicco rented a video camera, filmed Buddy completing his trick, and mailed two copies of the footage to the Late Show with David Letterman and America’s Funniest Home Videos. Both shows booked him.

The trick was a hit. DiCicco started getting offers to have Buddy to appear at NBA halftime shows, in marketing stunts for Pedigree dog food and Big Dogs clothing, and on Full House. DiCicco was eventually able to leverage this fame into a film deal with Disney, resulting in Air Bud.

Unfortunately, Buddy didn’t have much time to enjoy his success. According to a book about himthat DiCicco wrote, in late 1997, he developed a limp in his right hind leg, and a vet diagnosed him with synovial cell sarcoma. He had his leg amputated, and began undergoing chemotherapy treatments. After that, his decline was swift. In 1998, while taping a segment for Access Hollywood with his Air Bud co-star, Kevin Zegers, Buddy had a seizure, defecating and urinating on himself. It’s not clear if Access Hollywood caught it on film, but it’s possible that, like Brandon Lee’s death footage or the rumored racist Trump Apprentice tapes, it's still locked in a studio vault somewhere.

The cancer had spread to Buddy’s brain, and he was left blind in one eye. According to DiCicco's book, a skittish Disney was no longer interested in having Buddy help promote their hit film, as they feared the dog’s brush with mortality might traumatize children. DiCicco began planning his own sequel film, which he described to Entertainment Weekly as a “cross between Ferris Bueller and Home Alone” and would potentially star Pamela Anderson. It was never made.

Over the next few months, Buddy’s symptoms worsened as the cancer spread to his lungs. While picking up some new puppies in Cleveland, DiCicco got a late night phone call from his dogsitter back west: Air Bud had died.

---

After fruitlessly searching far and wide for contact details, I was eventually put in touch with DiCicco by a friend of mine who'd heard from him after writing a piece about Air Bud last year. I was nervous. It’s uncomfortable to call up a stranger and ask them where they buried their dead dog.

But that's what I did. DiCicco told me that, after Buddy died, he had a falling out with Disney. He didn’t want to go into detail about the litigation—which concerned who created the Air Bud character—but ultimately he had nothing to do with the sequels. This includes the direct-to-DVD sequel Snow Buddies, during the film of which five puppies died.

---

Watch:

DiCicco sounded tired when talking about the Air Bud experience, and said he wanted to move on. “We’ve already done everything we can with it,” he said. “There’s nothing left.” He’s working on a program outside of the Air Bud brand, that teaches shelter dogs various sports, the idea being that learning a skill like basketball might make the otherwise unwanted dogs more appealing, and help get them adopted. He’s been pitching the concept as a reality show or a potential brand tie-in with a pet store.

DiCicco also froze eleven vials of Buddy’s semen. There are still a couple vials of Air Bud cum left, stored in a freezer at the International Canine Semen Bank (Dicicco said Buddy has posthumously fathered three litters of puppies).

After Buddy passed, DiCicco planned on taking his remains to Northern California. “I was going to bury him at my cabin, where he came from.” Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work out. It was in the middle of winter, and there was too much snow on the ground. “I mentally wasn’t prepared for that.”

DiCicco no longer owns the land I'd been trying to find on Street View—which he calls "Buddy Farm." I asked if that was where they spread his ashes. “No, we did not do that there,” he said, “that was more of a beach thing, but that’s something I don’t really make public.”

I tried to ask him the location several times, but he’d only give me vague answers, then change the subject. He talked about his dream of one day buying Buddy Farm back (if he can get his shelter dog training concept off the ground), about maybe one day opening an Air Bud museum (“we have all this memorabilia…”), and about the complications of getting Buddy a star on the Walk of Fame (though he definitely deserves one).

Eventually, he told me he'd spread the ashes on Pacific Beach in San Diego, but wouldn't be more specific. It wasn’t an exact location, but it was good enough. I started to feel cruel for asking. He was obviously still affected by the death of Buddy. Who isn’t?

We might never know the exact location of Air Bud’s tomb. Maybe that’s okay. Heroes are more than their corporeal forms. Their myths live on long after their withered bodies are covered in topsoil. Still, I like to think that after his ashes were spread on that beach—wherever it was—they made their way into the air and sea, and now Air Bud is a part of us all.

Follow Joe Veix on Twitter.

In the entire U.S. legal system, the biggest power move you can make—other than bringing in bags and bags of letters to Santa—is to fire your legal counsel and go rogue. It sends a very clear message that you’re someone who knows exactly what to do, has no interest in messing around, and will only be held back by…

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For months, ABC viewers have been enthralled by one of the greatest mysteries of modern TV: Who is Tommy Maitland, the British host of the network’s Gong Show reboot? There had always been something vaguely familiar about his eyes and his voice, but how did a man who seemingly had no past get a sweet gig like hosting …

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Where in the hell did this movie come from? And that Russian (??) accent?

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The women of the 2018 Golden Globes collectively (almost) wore black. On the red carpet, many of them brought as their dates not husbands and partners, but activists for gender and racial equality. They talked about endemic sexual harassment in America and a sea change sparked by industry-shattering stories from The New York Times and The New Yorker about the abuse perpetrated for decades by Harvey Weinstein.

The men of the Golden Globes wore (some of them) Time’s Up pins. On the red carpet, they were asked less about Weinstein and #MeToo than about their work. They shifted uncomfortably when the actress Natalie Portman emphasized the “all-male” directing nominees in film. Accepting their awards, they thanked their mothers, their wives (in one case their wives and their girlfriends), their agents, the nation of Italy for its great food. The composer Alexandre Desplat observed that this award was a different color to the previous one he’d claimed. But, facing a sea of women wearing black, not one of the dozen-plus men who received an award seemed particularly compelled to note that anything about the night was different. For the men of the Golden Globes—with the exception of the host, Seth Meyers, who delivered a series of jokes skewering Weinstein—it was business as usual.

It was a notable disparity on an evening in which women had, for the first time in awards-show history, coordinated their color schemes to draw attention to similar imbalances in the entertainment industry and beyond. But the women of the Golden Globes didn’t just wear black—they also used, for the most part, their minutes on the public stage to talk thoughtfully and inclusively about sexual harassment and assault in America and around the world. Accepting the evening’s first trophy for her role playing a domestic-assault survivor in the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies, Nicole Kidman praised “the power of women” and talked about the scourge of abuse. “I do believe, and I hope, we can elicit change through the stories we tell and the way we tell them,” she said. It was a moment that set a tone for the evening: Subsequent winners from Laura Dern to Rachel Brosnahan to Elisabeth Moss to Oprah used their platforms to speak about the need for women’s voices to be heard. Many mentioned the Time’s Up campaign specifically, in a coordinated effort. But the subtext men seemed to hear was that women’s voices are the only ones that matter when it comes to advocating for change.

Alexander Skarsgård, who played the abuser of Kidman’s character in Big Little Lies, praised the “extraordinarily talented” group of women he had the privilege of working with on the show. He wore a Time’s Up pin on his lapel. But he said nothing about the themes of the evening, or even the themes of the show he’d just won an award for. Martin McDonagh, whose film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is about a grieving mother seeking public justice for the rape and murder of her daughter, also said nothing about how uncannily the topic of his award-winning work intersected with the state of Hollywood in its post-Weinstein moment. Bruce Miller, the executive producer of the Golden Globe–winning drama The Handmaid’s Tale, was the only male award-winner of the night who even alluded to #MeToo, stating, “To all the people in this room and this country and this world who do everything they can to stop The Handmaid’s Tale from becoming real, keep doing that.”

What this meant was that the 2018 Golden Globes split neatly into two very different ceremonies. In one, Laura Dern urged everyone in the room to support “restorative justice,” and to teach their children that “speaking out without the fear of retribution is our culture’s new North Star.” Frances McDormand spoke of “a tectonic shift” in the entertainment industry post-Weinstein. “Trust me, the women in this room tonight are not here for the food,” she said. “We are here for the work.” Barbra Streisand talked about being (still) the only woman to win a Golden Globe for directing. Salma Hayek, who wrote an extraordinarily powerful essay about her experiences with Harvey Weinstein, appeared onstage having brought Ashley Judd, another Weinstein accuser, to the ceremony as her date. Oprah Winfrey delivered one of the most rousing speeches in awards-show history, praising the women “fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘me too’ again.”

In the other ceremony, awards were claimed and key figures were thanked without much sense at all that anything in Hollywood had changed. The actor James Franco, grinning, brought Tommy Wiseau to the stage while accepting an award for The Disaster Artist. The director Guillermo del Toro scolded the orchestra for trying to play him offstage. Gary Oldman quoted Churchill. McDonagh wished his mother a happy birthday. It was almost as if Harvey Weinstein, #MeToo, and the subsequent tsunami of accusations against powerful men in Hollywood and beyond had never happened. Women were largely left with the labor of explaining why wage parity matters, and why telling diverse stories matters, and why having more women and people of color occupying positions of power in all industries in America matters. (The actor Sterling K. Brown didn’t mention #MeToo, but he powerfully praised This Is Us’s creator, Dan Fogelman, for writing a role specifically “for a black man.”) The women were left to try and transform a pivotal moment for Hollywood from a painful scandal into a necessary reckoning. And as their male co-stars and directors and producers mostly made clear, they were—and they will be—doing all this by themselves.

Meet Craig Brittain! He is hoping to replace Jeff Flake and be the next senator from Arizona. He is also, if not the actual worst human being on the planet, a strong competitor for the title.

From 2011 until 2013, Brittain operated the revenge porn website “Is Anybody Down?” — a blatant copy of fellow revenge porn douchebro Hunter Moore’s site “Is Anyone Up?” — where men could post nude pictures of their ex-girlfriends, along with their names, addresses and phone numbers. It was shut down by the FTC, but not because of the revenge porn — rather because Brittain also put up fake lawyer ads on the site from a guy named “David Blade III, The Takedown Lawyer” who claimed he would be able to help women get their pictures taken down for $250 a pop.

In emails to attorney Marc Randazza, “David Blade III” claimed to be a college friend of Brittain and a New York-based public defender (although in an interview with CBS, Brittain claimed to not actually know who the mystery lawyer even was).

He also claimed that his revenge porn site was actually doing all these women and society a mitzvah:

“We actually think the fact they’re taking these pictures is a good thing, and an acceptable thing. We’re not trying to shame them or scrutinize them. We’re trying to entertain the world. And also to take away a lot of the stigma that’s associated with this, because we don’t believe these people should be shamed. It may be tough for some of the first people that have been posted. But as time goes on and this gets bigger, this will become more and more of an acceptable thing in society.”

Surprise, all of the emails sent by “David Blade III” were sent from the same IP address as Brittain’s Colorado Springs home. Whoops! So yes, it was a big extortion scheme, and not a plan to make the world a better and less shameful place by posting nude pictures of women without their consent.

In 2015, in hopes of repairing his image, Brittain sent a notice to Google demanding that they scrub the internet of all information related to him and his revenge porn site and the FTC’s actions against him. That did not work out so well!

You may not think it is possible for Craig Brittain to be worse than that, but you would be mistaken! In March of 2017, Mic reported that Craig had flown into a racist rage against a New York-based venture capitalist who had reached out to him in order to ask why Craig had been sending so many requests to his female friends on Facebook.

“Anyone who’s butthurt by a friend request is a loser anyway,” Brittain responded. He said they should “find a safe space,” and that “they should be honored to even be in my presence. … I’m a fucking genius and a legend.”

He also said:

If [these women] have problems, they can message their problems to me and I’ll tell them where they can shove their problems. :)

Otherwise, talking in circles, it’s really cowardly and unprofessional, so fuck their opinions.

Women in general should be grateful that men are now allowing them to have opinions.

Yay for progress and diversity, allowing less qualified women to participate in what is traditionally a qualified men’s world.

And:

“You’ll have to deal with guys like me soon. Middle America will take over California. And we don’t do the PC bullshit. You’ll have to fucking include us one way or another. So you better get over your fucking feelings. We’re fine with your progressive bullshit in our space, but you’re not going to cast out our views. Free speech is our right.”

Oh my, what a pleasant human being!

As reported by Dean Sterling Jones at Shooting The Messenger, following Brittain’s announcement that he would be running for Jeff Flake’s Arizona seat, social media expert Michael Palladino shared threatening messages that Brittain had sent a year ago to a woman he had seen on Tinder.

In response, Brittain claimed that the messages from “Craig R. Brittain” were not really from him and that someone was pretending to be him in order to ruin his sterling reputation.

He then reported the profile to Facebook.

This would all be very believable, of course, if the alleged impostor had not been the Facebook admin for Brittain’s failed ridesharing service, Dryvver.

Whoops, AGAIN.

But hey. Let’s give Craig the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Maybe, despite being a terrible person otherwise, he has really awesome political views and ideas that would make him a great senator.

Ha! Just kidding, he does not. Keeping with his theme of “everything that sucks about the internet,” Craig Brittain is an anarcho-capitalist running on a platform of “taxation is theft.”

For those of you unfamiliar with this particular brand of stupid, let me break it down for you. Over the past several years, sociopathic internet assholes have fallen madly in love with the economic and social policies of political theorist Murray Rothbard. What they want is for literally everything in society to be privatized — and yes, this includes fire departments and the police. They want all social safety nets abolished, and they want to not ever have to pay taxes for anything, because “taxation is THEFT.”

Here is a thing Rothbard wrote about how parents should be allowed to starve their children to death, and also sell their children in a “free baby market.” What could possibly go wrong!

Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)? The answer is of course yes, following a fortiori from the larger right to allow any baby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such “neglect” down to a minimum.)

He was also an advocate of historical revisionism who palled around with Holocaust deniers. Internet trolls LOVE him.

Here is the part where Craig gets rid of taxation, and yet somehow still has a budget to balance:

Ending Taxation and the Federal Reserve. Protecting Speech.
Craig will work to repeal the 16th Amendment and the Federal Reserve Act. He will also push for a revolutionary but economically sound balanced budget via a Debt Brake.

The Federal Government, like the citizens it governs, cannot be allowed to spend money that it does not have and “pass the buck” to the working and middle class who are already stretched thin.

Craig believes the First Amendment protects all speech without limits. He will repeal many unconstitutional regulations on speech.

And here is the part where he replaces the VA by “allowing” veterans “immediate access to private healthcare,” and also build the wall, with no tax money:

Immediate Care for Veterans. Peace and Security for Citizens.
No more waiting for the VA for care. Craig’s platform includes a bill that will give veterans immediate access to private healthcare.

Craig will work directly with President Trump, Vice President Pence and others to make sure No Veteran is Left Behind.

Craig also strongly believes in the US military as a defensive force and not the world’s police. We will bring the troops home and stop fighting Endless Wars.

He will also author a bill allowing citizens to defend their borders according to Trump’s “Build The Wall” plan.

Or maybe there will be tax money to pay for these things, but only for things people choose to pay taxes for.

Craig will author a Constitutional Amendment which allows individuals to opt out of any government program that they do not wish to participate in or give money to, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and guarantee full immediate refunds to citizens who paid into government programs.

What if people don’t want to pay for the wall though? What if they don’t want to pay for private healthcare for veterans? Or are the veterans supposed to pay for the private healthcare themselves? I mean, if we’re going with a totally free market here, where no one has to pay taxes, that’s what should happen, right? Also, if all taxation is voluntary, what if no one wants to pay for Craig Brittain to be a senator?

They never really figure out the details of this stuff on 4chan and Reddit for some reason! Mostly just the parts where they don’t have to pay taxes and get to smugly watch poor people die from lack of “personal responsibility.” But still, they want it desperately — and I’m convinced there are enough of them that they are going to be a problem in the future.

Craig Brittain is an astoundingly bad human being, in nearly every way it is possible to be a bad human being. Before Donald Trump was elected, I’d say he had no shot at becoming a senator; these days I’m not so sure. There are more of him than anyone realizes, their numbers are increasing, and sometimes I worry that the only thing that’s going to stop them from wanting horrible things is when they finally get them. And that’s not going to be a very good time for the rest of us, either.

[Brittain For Senate]

Please tip the lady to pay for our communal delousing.

Honestly, who even cares what she's wearing?

The 37-year old woman behind the HauntedDollys [sic] eBay storefront is at her best when she's drafting up her item descriptions. "CLEANSE YOUR HOME, THIS STATUE IS A HOUSE BLESSING!" she bangs out in 18-point capital Arial letters. "MAYBE THERE IS SOMETHING EVIL LURKING IN THE SHADOWS. MAYBE YOU ARE CURSED. IT COULD BE NUMEROUS REASONS WHY YOU ARE HAVING A SPAT OF BAD LUCK. THAT IS WHY YOU NEED TO HAVE PROTECTION, AND PROTECTION THAT WORKS AND IS SURE TO GET THE JOB DONE."

The appurtenance itself, a two-foot marble seraph gently considering the thistled bird's nest in her palms, is priced at $199. HauntedDollys, in her usual witchy jargon, dubs the listing a "Haunted POWERFUL Angel statue." It peacefully takes its place alongside the rest of her inventory, all bearing a similar brand: "Haunted ALIEN ENTITY CRYSTAL BALL" (a glass orb with a few stray plastic planets inside), "Haunted MAGICAL WISH GRANTING FROG" (a stone toad on a small pedestal), "Haunted MAGICAL HEALING TATTOOS" (a wax-paper sheet bearing 16 press-on Hennas). She's been managing this eBay account since June, and has racked up a 319 positive reviews and a 99.1 percent approval rating. There is only one instance of sour grapes, from an anonymous customer who was apparently disappointed with his "Haunted WISH GRANTING STAR FAE FAIRY NOTEBOOK." "I should've known this was a hoax," the comment reads. "Enjoy your cash you con."

This is the world of Haunted eBay: a loose confederation of paranormal sales-people passing on their home-cooked mysticism to souls in need. HauntedDollys's business model is quite simple. As she explains over email, her supply comes from either collectors of haunted items who are downsizing, or by taking "ordinary objects" and binding "a spirit to the vessel." ("This is either done by myself or a friend of mine who's a sorcerer," she says.) If you browse her wares, you'll find a lot of items that seem to be reclaimed from your local thrift shop—passed-off ornaments of kitsch, with a vague phantasmagoric glimmer. The real work to being a successful capitalist witch is all in the presentation; creating the perfect pitch to convince the skeptics and lifers that your inventory is more supernatural than the rest.

There's no rhyme or reason to what's deemed to be haunted, though the most popular subdivision of the paranormal eBay trade by far are children's dolls. A search for "haunted dolls" yields hundreds of results. The toys themselves are fashionably Victorian—porcelain faces, frilly dresses, rosy cheeks—and each come with their own autobiographical ghost story. Like Lillian, for instance. For sale by a merchant named Fayetality, Lillian contains the spirit of a dead ten-year old girl who cracked her head open after slipping on icy steps, according to the listing. She can communicate with a potential buyer through "spirit board, pendulum, EVP, spirit dice, and in dreams."

"Please be prepared for paranormal activity if you decide to adopt sweet Lillian," writes Fayetallity. "Be assured—she is an innocent, pure child of white light. Nothing negative will ever arise from Lillian. She is beyond kind. When you feel Lillian's presence, you feel how pure her intentions are. Lillian reduces anxiety, and keeps negative feelings as well as entities at bay. She is truly a spiritual presence that will make a believer."

The auction for Lillian's vessel is now over. The asking price: $50. That means, if you’re willing to buy into the occult window dressing, a dead child's intrinsic, immortal essence is worth about the same as the new Madden. Which... seems kinda wrong? How, exactly, do sellers of these metaphysical materials decide on price points?

Laci is a registered nurse in a neonatal care unit who moonlights as an eBay seller MysticMagicks. She's been selling haunted materials (and specifically possessed dolls) for 15 years, and tells me she appraises her goods on a variety of different ghostly barometers.

"Items are priced based off of the amount of activity a spirit exhibits and the type of spirit," she explains via eBay's messaging client. "For example, if a spirit is highly sought after then the price is increased. People tend to like spirits that are active but do not cause harm. They also like spirits with special gifts—spirits that aid with spell castings, cause visions, and vivid dreams are examples."

Another (perhaps unsurprising) thing that may increase the value of a spirit in the afterlife, is how beautiful the object they possess tends to be. This is abundantly clear on Laci's page, which ranges from a boring $25 felt jewelry box, to the $80 robe-and-bonnet donned Genevieve. As for why spirits seem to possess dolls at a higher rate than any other object, Laci tells me that they're drawn to human-shaped figures.

Both Laci and HauntedDollys stand by the integrity of their products. Laci claims those who purchase from her consistently experience "paranormal encounters," and swears she would never peddle any item that didn’t host a spirit. HauntedDollys has built herself a small, tight-knit community—holding monthly raffles, and dedicating one-on-one time with customers to "find the perfect product that's right for them." Her most popular items are her spell bags and wish-granting notebooks, the latter of which comes with a testimonial from a patron who claims its power helped restore electricity to her Florida home during Hurricane Irma.

If you’re wondering how these merchants get away with marketing the tangible qualities of items of questionable paranormal veracity, the truth is they technically can't. After all, Lillian and Genevive will likely not give you an authentic metaphysical experience, and no notebook will protect you from a Category 5 hurricane. Hell, this person is literally selling a "haunted weight loss bag" that will help "burn calories faster," by ostensibly summoning the Angel of Fitness or something.

Back in the day eBay was full of amateur witches and wizards advertising spells, hexes, and prayer circles—which were all subsequently prohibited in 2012 by a policy change on the site. That injunction forced people who sell corporeal paranormal goods to add a disclaimer to their inventory, essentially explaining that they're not guaranteeing anything spooky to happen. Fayetality spells it out right at the top of Lillian's introduction: "I am required as per eBay's policy on the paranormal to indicate that eBay forbids the sale of intangible items and this listing is for ONLY A TANGIBLE DOLL with NO promise of spirit attached. eBay requires me to say that this is all for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY."

This obviously creates a weird dynamic, where vendors of the paranormal have to give a wink and a nod to potential customers, but eBay brass hasn't stomped out their weirder side completely. What's the point of online commerce if not to allow us to be a little foolish with our money if we so choose? What is economic freedom if you can’t buy a magical and haunted wish-granting frog that comes from the astral realm, anyhow?

"I do understand why some people are skeptical about the paranormal world, but this is something you either believe in or you don't," says Laci. "For me, it's no different than any other organized religion. You must believe in the magic for the magic to work."

Follow Luke Winkie on Twitter.

Everybody on the internet is reading Michael Wolff’s new book I’ve Been Holding Steve Bannon’s Legs Back So He Can Suck His Own Cock For 350 Pages And Boy Are My Arms Tired! It is exciting and it is WHOA IF TRUE! Also, Trump is MAD ABOUT IT, so that’s fun. Get a load of this hilarious statement, which the president certainly wrote all by hisself, with his very good brain:

Oh boy!

Honestly, we do not know what Steve Bannon is up to here, sounding like a common Wonkette about how Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner are full of treason. There is something very chaotic going on with the news this week, what with Trump tickling his giggle button in front of Kim Jong-un and Fusion GPS throwing the fuck down against Trump and the GOP. Meanwhile, Robert Mueller is over there in the corner like SHHHH BE VEWY QUIET I AM HUNTING WABBITS, so …. yeah. Shit is weird.

But anyway, this book! Despite what you might have heard, the whole book was not actually a pop-up book porno of Steve Bannon bumping uglies with his reflection in the mirror. Wolff — and do, by all means, remember to sprinkle your grains of salt on everything, as Wolff isn’t partic known for strenuous “reporting” — got many scoops about the inner workings of the campaign and the first 200 days of the Trump White House, so we will give you some of best quotes that WEREN’T said by Steve Bannon with a mouth full of Steve Bannon.

Some of these come from an excerpt printed in New York Magazine about how, for real, Donald Trump did NOT want to be president of all those yokels who voted for him, how his campaign was all a big business scam in the first place, and then when he was inexplicably elected (“elected”), everybody in his orbit lost their damn minds. The others are tweets from NBC’s Peter Alexander, who has also been reading along.

Let’s roll!

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night, when the unexpected trend—Trump might actually win—seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears—and not of joy.

Early in the campaign, Sam Nunberg was sent to explain the Constitution to the candidate. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment,” Nunberg recalled, “before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”

“You need a son of a bitch as your chief of staff,” [Roger Ailes] told Trump. “And you need a son of a bitch who knows Washington. You’ll want to be your own son of a bitch, but you don’t know Washington.” Ailes had a suggestion: John Boehner, who had stepped down as Speaker of the House only a year earlier.

“Who’s that?” asked Trump.

Trump, in fact, found the White House to be vexing and even a little scary. He retreated to his own bedroom—the first time since the Kennedy White House that a presidential couple had maintained separate rooms. In the first days, he ordered two television screens in addition to the one already there, and a lock on the door, precipitating a brief standoff with the Secret Service, who insisted they have access to the room. He ­reprimanded the housekeeping staff for picking up his shirt from the floor: “If my shirt is on the floor, it’s because I want it on the floor.” Then he imposed a set of new rules: Nobody touch anything, especially not his toothbrush. (He had a longtime fear of being poisoned, one reason why he liked to eat at McDonald’s—nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely premade.)

AY YI YIIIIIII HOLY FUCK THAT IS ENOUGH.

Anyway, Wonkette wishes White House staffers a very safe and happy wintry day! Sorry about how your boss sucks each and every day, but especially today. LOL just kidding, we are not sorry, your dumb complicit asses signed up for this.

Post over!

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[NYMag]

Are you a server’s worst nightmare without even knowing it? We’re here to help. The Salty Waitress is The Takeout’s advice column from a real-life waitress that will teach you how not to behave like a garbage person while dining out—and maybe in real life.

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I love a raw carrot. Crunchy and sweet, you can dip it in hummus or ranch dressing. Raw apples have a similar charm, and raw red onions give salads a happy kick. I’m also a fan of raw honey’s gritty sugar crystals. You know what all these things have in common? They are perfectly healthy to eat raw. Unlike the latest…

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In “an open memo, to all marginally-smart people/consumers of internet ‘content’”, Foster Kamer has a small suggestion to those who care about the health and diversity of online media: stop reading what Facebook tells you to read and use your browser bar (or bookmarks) instead.

Literally, all you need to do: Type in web addresses. Use autofill! Or even: Google the website you want to go to, and go to it. Then bookmark it. Then go back every now and again.

Instead of reading stories that get to you because they’re popular, or just happen to be in your feed at that moment, you’ll read stories that get to you because you chose to go to them. Sounds simple, and insignificant, and almost too easy, right?

It’s only easy, and simple to do. As for why you should do it: It’s definitely not simple, nor insignificant. By choosing to be a reader of websites whose voices and ideas you’re fundamentally interested in and care about, you’re taking control.

And by doing that, you’ll chip away at the incentive publishers have to create headlines and stories weaponized for the purpose of sharing on social media. You’ll be stripping away at the motivation for websites everywhere (including this one) to make dumb hollow mindgarbage. At the same time, you’ll increase the incentive for these websites to be (if nothing else) more consistent and less desperate for your attention.

*head nodding vigorously* I mean, it’s a complicated situation. Facebook and Twitter are easily the best news/blog reading platforms ever invented, better than any RSS reader for most people. By putting most of the web’s information all in one place, they offer incredible speed and convenience, which is hard for people to ignore. I made this point in a footnote this morning: using Facebook instead of just bookmarks is compelling in the same way that shopping at Walmart instead of small-town shops was in the 80s. We blame Walmart for decimating small businesses, but ultimately, small town shoppers chose convenience and lower prices over the more local and diverse offerings from their neighbors. And for the past several years, readers have been doing the same thing in favoring Facebook. What Kamer is arguing is that readers who value good journalism, good writing, and diverse viewpoints need to push back against the likes of the increasingly powerful and monolithic Facebook…and visiting individual websites is one way to do that.

Tags: Facebook   Foster Kamer   WWW

Authorities say Lindy Lou Layman, 29, tore down several paintings and poured red wine on some of them while yelling obscenities during a date last week.

Here is all you need to know about Popeye’s Ghost Pepper Wings, which has returned to its menu for a limited time: I previously thought KFC was best-in-class in the hot wings category. Not anymore. Popeye’s is our new leader.

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