IKEA Monkey

Kimi Cook was 15 years old when she arrived at Lester Roloff’s Rebekah Home for Girls in Corpus Christi, Texas. Eager to end the teenager’s relationship with an older boyfriend, her parents pitched the place as an accelerated boarding school. Cook—who had previously done well on tests despite cutting classes at her San Antonio public school—eventually agreed to a month-long trial period.

Within hours of arriving, Cook learned she was no longer allowed to wear jeans, listen to rock music, or use tampons. She would also be required to attend church daily, memorize and chant from the Bible, and scrub her room early each morning. Disobedience was met with strict punishment ranging from revoked snack privileges to receiving “licks” with a wooden paddle, being put in an isolated closet, or being forced to kneel on linoleum for hours on end.

When she was allowed phone calls, Cook pleaded with her family to save her from what she remembered describing as a “jail” and “prison camp.” But three months in, she learned that no help was coming. As Cook recalled, a relative “explained to me that by signing the admittance paper, I had signed myself over into the care of the Roloff homes.”

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By the time Cook started there, in 1983, the Southern Baptist Rebekah Home for Girls had already been the subject of state investigations spanning the previous decade, instigated in part by parents who witnessed a girl being whipped at the facility. In fact, Roloff had already temporarily closed the school—and the other homes he operated in Texas—after being prosecuted by the state on behalf of 16 former Rebekah Home for Girls residents. (Roloff grew even more notorious for exclaiming in court, “Better a pink bottom than a black soul.”)

After losing his last Supreme Court appeal in 1978, the Rebekah Home for Girls became the site of the “Christian Alamo,” where religious leaders formed a human chain around the place to defend against attempts to remove girls from Roloff’s care. The issue was eventually “resolved” by Governor Bill Clements, who Roloff himself had campaigned for. With an ally in office—Clements once said the closures amounted to “nitpicking” by his predecessor—Roloff transferred ownership of the homes from Roloff Enterprises to Roloff’s People’s Baptist Church; under this religious auspice, a state court ruled Roloff’s homes could operate without a license.

Roloff himself died in 1982, but by then he had established a strong tradition of exploiting the religious freedom loophole to shield suspect youth residential facilities from outside scrutiny. Somehow, that same loophole still exists across much of America today.

Cook escaped the school she hated when her older brother was killed in a car accident 11 months into her stay. The home was closed again in 1985 following pressure from the state, but reopened yet again in 1999, after Governor George W. Bush introduced religious exemptions for youth residential home regulations. The school operated until 2001, when a supervisor at Rebekah was convicted of unlawful restraint; finally, Texas laws were changed to require licensure for all youth homes—including religious ones.

Rebekah closed permanently in 2001, but at least some of its ex-employees helped found the New Beginnings Girls Academy in Missouri. This residence remains in operation despite state investigations into allegations of abuse. (VICE was unable to reach New Beginnings officials in connection with this story.)

Though Texas laws were changed amid the Roloff saga, many other state governments around the country lack the legal power to oversee religiously affiliated residential schools. Unlike personal religious exemptions, where an individual might argue that a law requiring, say, medical intervention, vaccination, or anti-discrimination violates his or her religious freedom, these facilities don't need to apply for special treatment. In many states, such exemptions are written directly into the laws meant to regulate residential youth facilities—that is, religious schools are never subject to the rules in the first place.

“The state passes the law for the regulation of residential facilities, and then they put, within that statute, a religious exemption,” Liz Sepper, a religious liberty expert and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told me. “You don’t need to apply, go into court for the exemption. The law never applied." Thus, many states allow religiously affiliated boarding schools to operate without registration, educational standards, background checks, or instructional certifications—even when institutions have long histories of abuse reports alleging Roloff-esque whippings, isolation rooms, and Bible memorization.

In 2010, Clayton “Buddy” Maynard’s Heritage Boys Academy in Panama City, Florida, closed following allegations of racial discrimination and severe corporal punishment. When the prosecution lost witnesses in 2011, a criminal case against Maynard was dropped; in 2012, the Tampa Bay Times reported that Maynard was once again housing children at Truth Baptist Church in Panama City. This past May, a GoFoundMe page raised $500 in support of Maynard and the “Maynard Family Children's Home.” Currently, he appears to operate the Truth Baptist Church in Panama City and, according to his Facebook profile, a “Truth for Troubled Youth Ministries.” (VICE was unable to reach Maynard for comment for this story.)

The same whack-a-mole pattern of scattershot oversight can be found across much of the country. Bobby Wills’s Bethesda Home for Girls in Mississippi closed in the 1980s following allegations of beatings with wooden boards, with operators moving on to the now closed Mountain Park Baptist Boarding Academy in Missouri. Alabama’s Reclamation Ranch was raided a decade ago following allegations of torture, yet founder Jack Patterson—who, according to his Facebook page, is a proud disciple of Roloff—continues to run an addiction-focused rehabilitation facility under the same name, now associated with Lighthouse Baptist Church. (Patterson has denied allegations of abuse at his facilities.) Yet another Baptist pastor, Michael Palmer, battled legal oversight over multiple decades and across multiple state and country-wide jurisdictions: In 1991, Palmer closed Victory Christian Academy after the state of California pushed for licensure.

One former student who attended Victory Christian described extended abuse at the school, including something called the “Get Right Room,” a small space where girls were punished with a version of solitary confinement. “You were brain-washed into thinking the abuse was good because the staff and the Lord loved your soul,” recalled Cherie Rife, now a holistic health practitioner in Irvine, California. Alleging that she was singled out for being a lesbian, Rife pointed to the religious justification that loomed above it all: “[Their] Baptist interpretation was used for fear and control and shaming.”

Palmer later helped found Genesis by the Sea, a facility located in Baja California that was closed in 2004 by the Mexican government; though the ensuing investigation asserted that claims of abuse were unsubstantiated, the school never reopened. Instead, Palmer redirected his attention to the Florida Panhandle and yet another residential reform home for girls: Lighthouse of Northwest Florida, which he closed in 2013 following an investigation into allegations of rape at the facility.

As Newsweek reported, Restoration Youth Academy in Prichard, Alabama, was yet another home operating under a modern incarnation of the Lester Roloff approach until 2012. The facility remained free from oversight until Charles Kennedy, the now retired captain of the Prichard Police Department, received a phone call from the mother of a boy who said he’d been abused at the facility. When I spoke with Kennedy, he recalled what he found at the home: a naked boy locked in a closet, widespread allegations of physical abuse, severe exercise, and sadistic mind games. Staff had even encouraged a suicidal student to shoot himself with a gun he didn’t know wasn’t loaded, Kennedy said.

Once the cop uncovered the dark history behind Restoration Youth Academy’s instructor William Knott—that his Bethel Boys Academy in Mississippi had been closed after a federal lawsuit alleging abuse—and obtained written statements from the boys, it took four years and reports to multiple local and statewide agencies for anything to be done. By then, Knott and Pastor David Young had closed Restoration Youth Academy and opened another facility in nearby Mobile County, Solid Rock Ministries. It’s a common move by religious leaders who know law enforcement have no way of monitoring the facilities, tracking their leaders, and compiling abuse allegations across jurisdictions, according to Marc Stern, general counsel at the American Jewish Committee and a leading expert on religious legal advocacy. “There’s a strong political tradition in the United States, for better or for worse, that education is a local matter controlled by local officials, and only extraordinary circumstances justify federal control.”

After Solid Rock Ministries was subject to its own allegation of abuse, a 2015 police raid found isolation rooms, deplorable conditions, and signs of corporal punishment at the Mobile, Alabama, facility. Earlier this year, Knott, Young, and counselor Aleshia Moffet were convicted and sentenced to 20 years each on aggravated child abuse charges. It was the only instance I could find where operators of religiously affiliated residential schools wrapped up in abuse allegations actually went to prison.

Kennedy has since dedicated his career to using that case as a precedent for nationwide reform; in the years following the prosecution of Knott and his accomplices, Kennedy partnered with Alabama state representative Steve McMillan on HB-440. The bill passed this past May and was signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey, a Republican, on July 29. It’s a rare example of increased government regulation of religion in the Trump era—the new law imposes regulations on residential facilities and does not exclude religious institutions.

As Kennedy described it, the war he’s waging here is not against religious freedom, but for basic standards of human rights. “[The facilities] can operate here, and we’re not going to charge [them] a nickel,” he said. The new law requires facilities to alert the county Department of Human Resources upon admittance of new students, conduct background checks on employees, accurately describe programming to parents, avoid restraints or abusive punishments, provide medical care, feed the children sanitary and nutritious meals three times daily, allow residents to practice their own religious beliefs, and more. “We’re just saying that if you take children into your care and custody for more than 24 hours, we should know that they are in a safe place,” Kennedy told me.

Kennedy, who views this saga as a “national disgrace,” has set his sights on changing laws in Missouri next, and plans to battle for regulation across the country. Though he faces opposition from those eager to exploit the religious freedom loophole, the pattern of abuse begs the question: How does hiding behind the law to abuse children represent Christian ideals?

Actually, plenty of Christian leaders say it doesn’t.

“Carefully considered partnerships between government institutions and religious institutions can assist the government in meeting one of its highest duties: protecting children,” Jennifer Hawks, associate general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, told me. “Religious freedom does not require—and should not claim to support—exemptions that harm the state’s duty of protecting children.”

Kimi Cook has returned to the site of the Rebekah Home for Girls two times since she lived there more than 30 years ago; most recently, she visited with two of her three children this past September on the tail end of Hurricane Harvey. Along the way, she found a clue into her past: a copy of the 1983–1984 yearbook, covering the period during which Cook lived at Rebekah. Upon locating her photo, she was overcome with emotion: “It was not revulsion, it was not upset, or sad, or angry. It was almost like finding a lost piece of myself,” she said. Today, Cook continues to struggle with the trauma inflicted upon her at Rebekah—but hope comes in the form of support from her family, and, now, a chance at finding long-lost friends listed in that yearbook.

She’s one of a growing number of survivors of abusive religious reform schools left to their own devices over the course of a long tradition of official neglect. Organizations like HEAL and Fornits offer online record-keeping of abuse allegations against religious youth homes, resources for parents who might be considering these institutions.

Perhaps most important, they serve as confirmation for people like Cook that they are not alone.

Follow Nile Cappello on Twitter.

For too long we have depicted our youth, especially our black youth, as lost causes. But they can change.

In June 2007, in a small room that leads into the operating theater, a middle-aged woman lies on a metal trolley. She is here for a hysterectomy, though no one mentions this. She has a cannula taped to the back of her left hand through which her anesthesiologist—a craggy, compact man, handsome, with dark hair graying at the temples and deep-set eyes—will shortly administer a milky drug called propofol.

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This article is adapted from Cole-Admas’s new book.

The anesthesiologist is Ian Russell. The woman, whom I will call Jenny, answers Russell’s questions in bright monosyllables and rolls onto her side and bends her knees obligingly to her stomach, as instructed, for the trainee anesthesiologist to insert first the injection of local anesthetic to the skin and then the epidural cannula through which the nerve-blocking drug will be pumped to switch off sensation in her lower torso. The doctors give directions and make small, cheerful jokes. “[This will be a] little bit ticklish,” says Russell, as the needle is about to enter, and then when Jenny appears not to notice, “Not ticklish. You’re no fun!”

Jenny laughs thinly.

As he works, Russell issues instructions and explanations to the trainee anesthesiologist who is still trying to insert between two vertebrae the implausibly large epidural needle. Then we move through the double doors into an operating theater the size of a small classroom.

Machines bleat and instruments clatter as Russell and his trainee attach monitors. Russell puts a long perpendicular strip of Perspex under Jenny’s body at shoulder height; on top of it is a black mold with a concave channel running its length. This supports Jenny’s extended right arm. Then he attaches a black cuff around her forearm. At her elbow he attaches two more leads that will allow him to send small electric shocks to the nerves which run down her forearm into her hand, to make sure that her nerves and hand muscles are still working when the cuff is inflated.

Russell gives the instruction to start the infusion pumps, which will push the anesthetic into her bloodstream, and then puts a gas mask over her mouth and nose. “Take a big deep breath.” Within seconds she is gone.

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In 1993, as a little-known anesthesiologist from the recursive Hull, England, Russell published a startling study. Using a technique almost primitive in its simplicity, he monitored 32 women undergoing major gynecological surgery at the Hull Royal Infirmary to assess their levels of consciousness. The results convinced him to stop the trial halfway through.

The women were put to sleep with a low-dose anesthetic cocktail that had been recently lauded as providing protection against awareness. The main ingredients were the (then) relatively new drug midazolam, along with a painkiller and muscle relaxant to effectively paralyze her throughout the surgery. Before the women were anesthetized, however, Russell attached what was essentially a blood-pressure cuff around each woman’s forearm. The cuff was then tightened to act as a tourniquet that prevented the flow of blood, and therefore muscle relaxant, to the right hand. Russell hoped to leave open a simple but ingenious channel of communication—like a priority phone line—on the off chance that anyone was there to answer him.

Once the women were unconscious Russell put headphones over their ears through which, throughout all but the final minutes of the operation, he played a prerecorded one-minute continuous-loop cassette. Each message would begin with Russell’s voice repeating the patient’s name twice. Then each woman would hear an identical message. “This is Dr. Russell speaking. If you can hear me, I would like you to open and close the fingers of your right hand, open and close the fingers of your right hand.”

Under the study design, if a patient appeared to move her hand in response to the taped command, Russell was to hold her hand, raise one of the earpieces and say her name, then deliver this instruction: “If you can hear me, squeeze my fingers.” If the woman responded, Russell would ask her to let him know, by squeezing again, if she was feeling any pain. In either of these scenarios, he would then administer a hypnotic drug to put her back to sleep.

By the time he had tested 32 women, 23 had squeezed his hand when asked if they could hear. Twenty of them indicated they were in pain. At this point he stopped the study.

When interviewed in the recovery room, none of the women claimed to remember anything, though three days later several showed some signs of recall. Two agreed after prompting that they had been asked to do something with their right hand. Neither of them could remember what it was, but while they were thinking about it, said Russell, both involuntarily opened and closed that hand. Fourteen of the patients who responded to Russell’s question also showed some other signs of light anesthesia (increased heart rate, blood-pressure changes, sweating, tears) during surgery, but 10 did not. Overall, said Russell, such physical signs “seemed of little value” in predicting intraoperative consciousness.

He concluded thus:

If the aim of general anesthesia is to ensure that a patient has no recognizable conscious recall of surgery, and views the perioperative period [during the surgery] as a “positive” experience, then ... [this regimen] may fulfill that requirement. However, the definition of general anesthesia would normally include unconsciousness and freedom from pain during surgery—factors not guaranteed by this technique.

For most of the women in his study, he continued, the state of mind produced by the anesthetic could not be viewed as general anesthesia. Rather, he said, “it should be regarded as general amnesia.”

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The amnesic effects of hypnotic drugs are nothing new. In fact, anesthesiologists—and patients—have long relied upon the fact that, along with erasing consciousness, many hypnotic drugs prevent or disrupt memory. Amnesia—forgetting—is a useful and, many would argue, desirable side effect.

In recent years, however, there has been an increasing reliance on new short-acting intravenous anesthetic drugs with powerful amnesic side effects. Sometimes they are used alone, sometimes in combination. One of the best-known today is the sedative hypnotic midazolam—the drug that Russell was using on the women in the abandoned 1993 study. Another is propofol—the drug that he has just given Jenny to put her to sleep, and which today is probably the most popular intravenous anesthetic in the world.

These drugs have many benefits in today’s hospitals. They allow for a smoother slide into unconsciousness and, because they pass through the body relatively quickly, they allow doctors and nurse anesthetists to give patients less anesthetic—putting them at lower risk of drug-related harm and allowing them to wake up quicker, and with less nausea. Anesthesiologists love them. And so do patients, on the whole.

What we as patients may not have considered, though, is that we are likely to start losing our memory for events well before we lose our consciousness of what is happening to us.

The U.S. anesthesiologist Peter Sebel has described a disconcerting plane flight during which he took a low dose of a drug known as a benzodiazepine (the best known are probably Xanax and Valium, but midazolam is another). He then ate a meal and made apparently coherent conversation with a fellow passenger, after which he went to sleep and woke up remembering nothing at all of the trip.

Sebel had spent a chunk of his evening in a curious fugue state—fully conscious in the moment but unable to hold onto it in memory, or to know, except through the testimony of others, what had happened to him during that gap in time. It is a gap vaguely recognizable by anyone who has woken from an alcoholic stupor to find indefinite sections of the previous night missing. It is a gap also exploited by (mainly) men who covertly spike the drinks of (mainly) young women with a powerful drug called Rohypnol, once used as a premed in anesthesia but now best known as the “date rape” drug.

More benignly, this gap is increasingly used by doctors for a growing subset of awkward medical procedures—ones that would once have been performed under general anesthetic but can now take place in a state that anesthetists sometimes call twilight sleep or, less poetically, conscious or procedural sedation.

The advantages for both doctors and patients are clear. Sedated patients may be able to cooperate with staff, move when directed, cough on command, and answer questions about their experiences. Smaller doses of drugs mean procedures that would once have required a night in hospital now take only hours. People “wake” feeling sprightly, without the undertow of grogginess and nausea that might once have taken days to clear, or the risks of overdose. And, perhaps crucially, they are spared from remembering the indignity or discomfort of having a probe sent up their anus or down their gullet while in communion with a group of fully dressed doctors, nurses and other staff. It seems a convenient arrangement all around.

It is unsettling, though, to consider that at the heart of this altered state is an absence not necessarily of self but of memory—an oblivion at once retrospective and subjective. For the assembled doctors, nurses and anesthesiologists, the working day is ticking by as predictably and incrementally as ever, as they delve into and perhaps chat with their seemingly cognizant charge. For the patient, time is being swallowed, or perhaps they are being swallowed by time, only to be spat out again later as if from a dreamless, unyielding sleep.

* * *

Twenty years after that discontinued study, Russell staged similar experiments using the isolated-forearm technique alongside a bispectral-index monitor (BIS), which tracks depth of anesthesia. While the number of women who responded dropped to one-third when staff used an inhalation anesthetic, another study using the intravenous drug propofol showed that during BIS-guided surgery, nearly three-quarters of patients still responded to command—half those responses within the manufacturer’s recommended surgical range.

Russell is an admirer of the BIS, which he considers a useful tool, but his concern about brain monitors more generally is that the complex algorithms on which they are based tell the anesthesiologist only the probability that a particular patient is asleep at any single point, and cannot account for the natural variability between patients.

Today, debate still ticks back and forth over the benefits and limitations of both the isolated forearm technique and the BIS monitor. Russell’s results have been disputed. But Russell loves propofol. It is fast and effective. His patients wake up happy and refreshed. He remembers one woman complaining when he woke her, saying he had interrupted a nice dream. Propofol is like a little holiday. By titrating the drug with the help of the isolated-forearm technique, Russell is confident he can find that sweet spot between too little anesthetic (and the possibility of patients waking) and too much, which carries its own health risks.

Propofol is now coursing through Jenny’s bloodstream as the surgeon plucks and snips at her abdomen. Unlike many anesthesiologists, Russell does not even combine it with a gas anesthetic to give him more certainty. He says he already has certainty. The problem as he sees it is not with propofol, but with the doctors who use it, many of whom, he claims, unwittingly do so too sparingly. This is particularly relevant when patients are paralyzed. “Basically what is happening is you’re tying the patients onto the operating table with your muscle relaxants, and they may be awake.” He says his technique allows him to keep paralyzed patients as lightly anesthetized as possible while ensuring they are actually unconscious.

The operation is nearly over. The doctors are stitching Jenny’s abdomen. Russell starts to lighten the anesthetic.

“Here we go,” he says, with interest, and moves across to take her hand.

“Jenny, squeeze my fingers with your right hand.”

And this is the moment.

From where I stand against the wall, level with her arm, I watch her hand close firmly and unambiguously over his.

“That’s excellent. Wonderful. Now I want to know if you’re comfortable, Jenny. If you’re comfortable, squeeze my hand twice.”

Her hand closes once more, clearly, purposefully. And again.

Like a message from a miner trapped far underground.

“That’s fantastic,” Russell tells her, “Okay. Operation’s nearly finished. Everything’s going well.”

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This post is adapted from Cole-Adams’s new book, Anesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness .

Another day, another way economic life could get way shittier for workers. Today the Department of Labor made public a proposed rule change to its tip regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The proposed change would “rescind portions of tip regulations” on restaurants, which would have two major consequences.

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Roy Moore now has Donald Trump’s full endorsement, as the president has walked himself back from initial statements about how a child molester shouldn’t run for Senate. Of course he should! Because it keeps Doug Jones, a Democrat, out of office! This is one of the main talking points for Moore’s campaign spokesperson,…

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Located in Montecito, Santa Barbara

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: Santa Barbara, California

Price: $3,495,000

This 1957-built rancher in the Montecito neighborhood of Santa Barbara has been sympathetically updated for contemporary living. Occupying a private acre, the main house measures 2,984 square feet and comes with two studios for a total of 4,146 square feet of livable space.

The single-story midcentury home features a sweeping open-plan layout with vaulted tongue-and-groove ceilings, sliding glass doors and large windows, and a white brick fireplace in the living room, which transitions into the kitchen with a breakfast bar and eat-in area. Two steps down from there is a formal dining room and a den.

Four spacious bedrooms (one of which could be used as an office) and a couple of bathrooms are located off the skylit hallway. Each room boasts ample windows, all of which frame outdoor views of oaks, sycamores, gardens, and a seasonal creek.

Two studios with private entrances bring up the total bedroom count to five, with five full bathrooms and one half bath rounding out the property. Located at 1211 E. Valley Road, it’s offered at $3.495 million.

Courtesy of Truly Great Homes

Twitter’s been steadily tumbling downhill ever since Gamergate turned it into the de facto platform for online harassment, but it’s only gotten worse since the Trump presidency emboldened an entire generation of neo-Nazis to put swastikas in their avatars. As our president tweets out racially charged Faces Of Death outtakes

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Danny Masterson has left production of Netflix comedy "The Ranch."

"As a result of ongoing discussions, Netflix and the producers have written Danny Masterson out of 'The Ranch,'" a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. "Yesterday was his last day on the show, and production will resume...

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President Trump doubles down on his Big Mac and Filet-O-Fish order. CNN's Jeanne Moos has the story.

Austria's top court has ruled that same-sex couples can get married from 2019, declaring a previous law discriminatory.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was ghostwriting an op-ed while out on bail last month with a Russian who has ties to the Russian intelligence service, Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Muller's team said Monday.

Kicker Robbie Gould’s 11-year tenure with the Bears came to an unceremonious end when the team released him a week before the 2016 season started. GM Ryan Pace believed that Connor Barth was better and more affordable than Gould, though Barth was cut last month for Cairo Santos. On Sunday, Gould, the Bears’ all-time…

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Despite what the recent toppling of some entertainment industry giants might suggest, it remains difficult for women to speak out against misogyny, whether it’s an accusation of sexual assault or harassment, or just some venting in your social media feeds about shitty men.

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SUN PRAIRIE, WI—Folding the board to funnel a jumbled mess of cards and pieces into the game box, negligent oaf Patrick Flavell reportedly packed away a Monopoly set on Thursday without so much as a thought for future players. “Man, I can’t remember the last time I sat down and played this,” said the mindless slob as he gathered up the other players’ multicolored money and haphazardly tossed the piles into the box, ensuring that the next group of players would have to completely re-sort the bills. “With all the technology we have now, it’s easy to forget how much fun it can be to play an old-fashioned board game.” Reports indicate that hours later, the unthinking doofus—who had swept a trail of muffin crumbs into the box along with a number of unused hotels—discovered he had the top hat piece in his pocket.

Rob Gronkowski’s late, dirty hit on Bills rookie cornerback Tre’Davious White was the talk of the NFL on Sunday. Gronkowski was, somehow, not ejected for his diving elbow into the back of White’s head, which sent the rookie into concussion protocol.

After the game, Bill Belichick apologized at midfield to Bills head coach Sean McDermott for the “bullsh*t” play, while Gronkowski apologized to White for the hit in his post-game scrum, saying he’s not “in the business” of doing that. Apologies, sadly, won’t take away White’s head injury.

On Monday, the NFL announced Gronkowski’s punishment for his cheap shot would be a one game suspension, to be served in New England’s Week 14 game against the Dolphins on Monday Night Football.

The letter sent to Gronkowski noted the hit was “not accidental” and “placed the opposing player at risk of serious injury.” Gronkowski could appeal the suspension, but it’d be a surprise if he won said suspension and, with a critical game against the Steelers looming the week after the Dolphins game, one would expect the Patriots to want him to serve his suspension against Miami and not Pittsburgh.

The Patriots, at 10-2 and with a chance to knock off Pittsburgh the following week, should be able to stem the tide of being without their star tight end for a week. The biggest impact of Gronkowski’s suspension is on fantasy football players entering the playoffs, as Gronk was likely a key component for a number of fantasy players.

Diving is an impressive sport. Athletes train endlessly so they can nail near-perfect dives, over and over. Even at the high school level, it’s pretty cool.

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On Friday, former national security advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI, an important step in something that probably won’t happen so let’s not get our hopes up, and after that the world waited to see how Donald Trump—the guy…

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If there’s any one kind of racing that gets universal approval from the Jalopnik staff, it’s Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing. It’s the safety-third pastime of flinging yourself down a steep hill on a children’s ride-on, and the wipeouts are incredible. It’s truly racing for the people, and we love it so much.

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“Trump’s appetite seems to know no bounds when it comes to McDonald’s, with a dinner order consisting of two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted.”

This 2,400-calorie meal is among the details in a forthcoming book by Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and aid David Bossie, as described in a preview by The Washington Post.

A dinner of that size would offer caloric energy for a full day. The 3,400 milligrams of sodium more than doubles the American Heart Association’s recommendation of 1,500 milligrams per day. The meal provides almost no fiber—and also offers more white bread than anyone would do well to eat in a week. This is all ominous for the president’s cardiovascular system.

So is the lack of variety. The book’s authors, who traveled with Trump early in his presidency, write: “On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza, and Diet Coke.”

Keeping the Coke sugar-free is an interesting line to draw—especially as a man who once said, “I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.”

The food enters the President not only in abundance, but with haste. Ivanka Trump said in a 2015 interview with Barbara Walters, “I wish he would eat healthier and maybe slow down. Sometimes I tell him, like, ‘Oh, you have to, you know, slow down.’ But it’s the only speed he knows ...”

All of this could be taken as simple evidence of Trump’s cultural vacuousness. He should know other speeds; he has dined with other people. He should enjoy a wide array of foods; he has been afforded the opportunity to have anything he wants.

If there’s other insight to be had in gawking at these food habits—and I can’t promise that there is—it may be related to the fact that Trump is at the earliest end of the Baby Boomers. He came up in a time when packaged food was the height of civilization. Uniformity and predictability in a burger or a fish sandwich was a virtue, not an eerie flaw.

The Post describes the plane’s cupboards as being “stacked with Vienna Fingers, potato chips, pretzels, and many packages of Oreos” because the president is a “renowned germaphobe” who declines to eat from a previously opened package. This may also be the rationale for eating his steaks well-done.

There may be something to the fact of caring obsessively about contamination while caring not at all about nutrition. For a person whose primary concern is food being isolated from the world, hyper-processed sugar cookies are less of a threat to the self than would be a salad or an apple. Oreos are a paradigm of diabetes and obesity-inducing foods, and these conditions drive the country’s leading cause of death.

There is no question that this diet is dangerous and is very likely to shorten a person’s life. His dietary pattern adds to the picture of a 70-year-old man who has long been living against all health advice—who does not exercise, who barely sleeps, who has tumultuous relationships, who is frequently enraged. His lifestyle seems pulled from a question on a medical-school exam where the answer is “prepare the cath lab.”

Decisions to live this way would seem to offer insight into Trump’s ability to assess risk. In light of a nuclear standoff with North Korea, rapidly warming oceans, and a looming tax bill that would leave millions more Americans without health insurance, his approach to self-maintenance is not reassuring.

As if Prince Harry hadn’t done enough this week by flooding our timeliness with good news and elevating Meghan Markle from “who?” to real-life black princess (I know she’s gonna be a duchess, don’t @ me), he’s also brought us a trick for making extra-crispy bacon.

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President Donald Trump issued a fresh denial Sunday that he asked former FBI director James B. Comey to halt an investigation into the conduct of his dismissed national security adviser Michael Flynn.

"I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn," Trump said in a pre-dawn message on Twitter....

Holy Flynnghazi, Batman! Breaking news in the Flynngate Russia scandal! Looks like somebody’s getting LOCK HER UPPED in the Flynn-vestigation, AND IT IS LITERAL ACTUAL FOREIGN AGENT MICHAEL FLYNN!

Okay, enough with the shitty puns. As we type this morning, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is in a federal courthouse in DC pleading guilty to one count of lying to the FBI about all his secret sexxxxy Russian funtimes. All those pinky swears that he never, ever whispered sweet nothings into Russian Spy Ambassador Kislyak’s ear promising him that America would revoke sanctions against Russia when Big Daddy Trump got to the White House? LIES. DAMN LIES.

“Wait a goddamn minute,” you are saying right now! “Didn’t Wonkette promise us that Flynn was going down for doing all the crimes? What about that Turkish kidnapping plot? And when is that slimy Mike Flynn Jr. going to get what’s coming to him? That guy is the worst!”

To which we say, CALM YOUR TITS! Robert Mueller, hallowed be his name, is not just letting supercrimer Mike Flynn off with a slap on the wrist. The Special Counsel has been squeezing Mike Flynn’s nuts for weeks, and it looks like they finally cracked.

Last week Flynn’s legal team notified the president’s counselors that they could no longer share information and strategy about the Mueller investigation. This was widely interpreted as a sign that Flynn had flipped — that he had the goods on people higher up in Trumpland and was willing to talk in exchange for a lighter sentence. And here we are today, with Flynn pleading guilty on a charge that carries a maximum penalty of just five years in prison. The guy who has been shouting from the rooftops since March that he would do ANYTHING for immunity and that he had “a story to tell” is ready to sing. AND WE ARE READY FOR THE CONCERT.

If we had to speculate on Flynn’s motivations, we’d say he did a little back of the envelope math and realized that after $10 million in legal fees he was going be found guilty and lose his pension. Even if Trump pardoned him on the federal crimes, he and his idiot son would likely face state charges in New York and Virginia. Of course he talked! What the hell else could he do?

The only question is, how many people in Trumpland can Flynn incriminate? Did he and Trump discuss firing Comey to end the FBI investigation? Did they discuss pressuring Senators to end the Congressional inquiry? Was he there when Jared shook down the Russian bankers for money to bail out his family business in exchange for sanctions relief? Does he know about coordination with Russian hackers to blanket the midwest with fake news social media posts?

Was it AOT,K? (We are betting that it is!)

And, OH, LOOKIE HERE! This just came across the Tweeters as we typed.

<

Just now: @BrianRoss on @ABC News Special Report: Flynn promised full cooperation to the Mueller team and is prepared to testify that candidate Trump "directed him to make contact with the Russians.” https://t.co/E0tA37GOo0 pic.twitter.com/PmNEO7eekt

— Dan Linden (@DanLinden) December 1, 2017

WELL!

Meanwhile, back at the White House, Trump’s lawyer Ty “This Is Fine” Cobb has been assuring staff that the Mueller investigation will be wrapping up soon, and everyone will be exonerated. Just two weeks ago, he told CNN,

It is my hope and expectation that shortly after Thanksgiving, all the White House interviews will be concluded.

That aged well! Cobb has had no comment this morning. Probably busy in his office speed-dialing reporters and trying to persuade them on background that this indictment is that Thanksgiving wrap-up that he promised. Good luck with that, dude!

We’ll probably have more on this story later today, since everything in Washington leaks like a sieve. So, buckle up, Wonkers, ’cause shit’s about to get real! AND WE ARE SO READY FOR IT!

[WaPo / CNN / WaPo, again / USA v. Flynn]

I don’t like your faves. Let’s get that out of the way up front. I have met them, you see, and they are people just like us and most of them are assholes when the cameras are off, same as you would be! My politics, especially since mid-2016, can be summed up thusly: GET OVER YOURSELVES AND STOP THE FUCKING FASCISTS. I don’t care who should have won or who stole what from whom or whose praxis is more pure or whose candidate is more perfect.

If I hear another word about either Hillary or Bernie I might lose my shit entirely and just start voting for Vermin Supreme for every office because at least that fucker’s gonna give me a pony. Equally important to me in a candidate: I have never heard Vermin Supreme say that he loses because people have simply failed to comprehend his glory. He knows he loses because his name is Vermin Supreme and because he doesn’t campaign. I appreciate that kind of honesty.

That sounds like a joke but TBH as a non-Dem I’m so disgusted with the lot of you after the way you’ve all been behaving this past year that if voting for Vermin wouldn’t have risked the apocalypse I’d have done it just to register my disapproval on the theory that not voting looks like apathy, but drawing a dick on the ballot sends a message.

All of that is to give you the proper reference to the following statement: If you are asserting that this tax whatsit is the fault of the Dems then you have lost the plot and should have yourself checked out to see whether someone has damaged that part of your brain that is in charge of critical thinking. You have sunk so far into Deranged Twitter Personality that you should consider whether someone should check your food to be sure you’re not ingesting drain cleaner because I am worried that you are incapable of understanding that drain cleaner and apple juice are not the same thing.

That, or you’re actually just a shitty human being because at a moment this fucking critical, before the bill has been reconciled and signed – A MOMENT WE COULD STILL DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS – you have chosen to play How Is This The Fault Of The People Who Annoy Me Most and that, friend, is the moral equivalent of telling starving kids and dying patients “hold up a second, I’m going to help you but first I have to be sure that my enemies are aware that I still have this moral high ground. Do me a favor and try not to die while I’m gone, I will totally help once the IMPORTANT shit is done!”

The Dems are a moderately less bad option for people who only want a few lobbyists in any given bill. They vote less frequently in favor of ruin and disaster. They can be counted upon at least to say all the right things while they vote to fuck you up. None of this is good. Also? That’s political fucking reality with two parties, first-past-the-post voting and Citizens goddamned United.

There is time to talk philosophy and politics and what world we’d build if these fuckers would move and let us actually advocate for single payer, for instance. That time is in a goddamned bar when you’re like three drinks in and Nancy Pelosi comes on the TV to do whatever it is Nancy Pelosi does.

Today we are facing an existential threat from actual malicious evil. This is not a quarrel over guiding principles nor an internal battle over what voting system we should use in the primary. This is the GOP openly defying all custom and reasonable order. This is Paul Ryan enacting every twisted fever-dream he’s ever had, McConnell finally repaying all those favors to K street, these people are stealing our entire nation and consigning millions to penury and ruin and want and you are fucking telling me you blame the DEMOCRATS for this somehow and what’s more you’re going to actually spend your energy bitching about this? Are you stupid or did you take some acid and listen to The Fountainhead on audio last night?

Thing is that if you’re actually vulnerable – that is, if this bill’s impact on you will be more than fucking with your writeoffs or making things slightly more expensive – you won’t be one of the fucking idiots bitching about philosophy.

I’m writing this from New York City, sitting across a tequila-strewn table from a woman whose parents immigrated from Guyana and who organizes on behalf of people who can’t afford food every day. Neither she nor I were in the pantsuit nation. We both think the DSA is screwing up by not going hard enough for what they believe. We both think you’re fucking nuts trying to pin decades of GOP dreams coming true on the Dems.

Stop it. Be better. Think harder. Aim more carefully. But mostly? SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO FIGHT THE FASCISTS.

And now, your open thread!

We are not the GOP here and we don’t have all the monies so please tip us!

Mallory Ortberg, aka Dear Prudence, is online weekly to chat live with readers. An edited transcript of the chat is below. (Sign up below to get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week. Read Prudie’s Slate columns here. Send questions to Prudence at prudence@slate.com

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