IKEA Monkey

Law enforcement failed to adequately plan for or respond to a violent white nationalist rally this summer in Virginia, leading to "deep distrust of government" in the Charlottesville community, an independent review released Friday found.

Former U.S. Attorney Tim Heaphy's monthslong investigation...

A police officer taunted the Jacksonville man who shot him multiple times last year by taking out a tube of K-Y Jelly personal lubricant in court Wednesday and saying, “You are going to need a lot of this,” local reports said.

Lauer admits there is some truth to the allegations and apologizes "to the people I have hurt."

An Oak Lawn restaurant that has been plagued by violent incidents has apparently closed its doors, adhering to an agreement it had reached with village officials earlier this year.

Moving crews were at Chuck E. Cheese, 4031 W. 95th St., on Tuesday and exterior signs were being removed from the business,...

Hey, ladies of Alabama! Were you considering voting for noted (alleged?) child molester Roy Moore? Do you really like him, think he’s a swell guy, and want to see his vision for America boldly enacted in your state? Well then, you might want to reconsider that whole “voting” thing. Because if the textbook Moore co-authored, Law and Government: An Introductory Study Course, is any indication, he would prefer you do no such thing. In fact, rather than going and voting like some kind of women’s libber, you should probably just make Roy Moore a sandwich.

The course, which is available for purchase on Amazon, was part of a curriculum produced by Vision Forum, an extremely holy and godly organization that had to close down after its leader, Doug Phillips, admitted to having an “inappropriately romantic and affectionate” affair with a woman who was not his wife. That woman, Lourdes Torres-Manteufel, sued him and Vision Forum, accusing him of things neither romantic nor affectionate. Specifically, she accused him of sexually and psychologically abusing her from the age of 15 onwards.

Phillips was highly admired both by Roy Moore and the Duggars. What a strange and unexpected coincidence! I wonder what else they all have in common?

Now, this course was not going to get you any credit at any of America’s fine educational institutions. Rather, it was a men-only course all about how the Bible is the real law of the land.

One particularly charming lecture in the course is given by William O. Einwechter of the Immanuel Free Reformed Church, and is titled “What the Bible Says About Female Magistrates.” In case you were not sure, according to Einwechter, the answer is “nothing good.” Said lecture is introduced by an unnamed man who doesn’t seem too sure giving ladies the right to vote was all that good of an idea:

“By and large, the issue of the female magistrate ruling in authority in America would not have been anywhere near as controversial. The controversy was beginning to brew with the women’s suffrage movement.”

Einwechter then goes on to detail the many reasons why ladies should not hold public office, all of which sound a lot like “I don’t want no womenfolk telling me what to do.”

His first reason for this is that allowing women to do any magistrating is part of the heresy of feminism. Feminists, he explains, want everyone to simultaneously be gay and have a lot of abortions, and also are not into being told what to do by men. This, he feels, is bad.

“One of the most destructive ideologies of the last 50, hundred years have been the doctrines of feminism, which have transformed our culture and have paved the way for abortion on demand, the homosexual agenda, undermined our church, and subverted the doctrines of the biblical family,” Einwechter says.

He goes on to call feminism a “radical agenda” and says “nothing enrages feminists more than the Biblical doctrine of male headship.”

I, for one, can actually think of a number of things that enrage me more — for instance, Bible banging creeps who go around molesting teenage girls — but I fully confess that the “Biblical doctrine of male headship” does make me want to burst into fits of joyous laughter. There is something uniquely pathetic about adult men whining that their religion allows them to be the boss of us, and not understanding why we might not be into that.

Einwechter then goes on to explain that the job of the woman, according to the Bible, is to take care of her husband, home and children. “Glorious in her place and in her conduct and in her role,” which just so happens to involve being an uncompensated servant of some kind.

The Bible, Einwechter says, says absolutely nothing about ladies being qualified to hold political office, or even do any work outside the home; they are “the weaker vessel,” and therefore must not be allowed to “dominate” men.

The best way to bring about the kind of change Einwechter wants to see in the world, he asserts, is by not voting for women who run for office. Ever. For any reason.

“Sometimes we may have a hard time discerning the faith, the character, and the views of a particular candidate. But we can usually discern if the candidate is a man or a woman. And so there is no excuse on that one.”

It may interest you to know that Roy Moore himself has never endorsed a female candidate for any office. Given that he helped put this course together, it is highly likely that he shares Einwechter’s views on women in public office and women having jobs. It is also highly likely that there are Republican women in Alabama who have jobs they enjoy, and who still plan to vote for Moore in spite of the accusations against him.

In fact, Alabama currently has a female Republican Governor, Kay Ivey, who says she plans to vote for Moore despite the accusations. Perhaps she, and all those other women in Alabama, might want to consider what this country might look like if they were unable to rely on the rest of us to not vote for (alleged) child molesters who don’t think women should be allowed to hold office or have jobs.

[ThinkProgress]

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BROOKLYN, NY—In the wake of a sexual misconduct allegation that led to the firing of the longtime Today cohost, local woman Meredith Duncan on Wednesday was reportedly quietly satisfied to have concrete evidence backing up her years-long hatred of Matt Lauer. “I’ve despised that man for going on two decades, and now I finally know why,” said Duncan, 47, adding that there was always something off-putting about the man who had been a fixture on the NBC morning show since 1997, a vague loathing for him that had not fully made sense until this very moment. “I knew it couldn’t just be that he was a terrible journalist throwing softball questions at guests with that smirk on his face. There had to be a better, more disgusting reason, and it honestly feels pretty great to have my distaste for the man fully justified after all this time.” At press time, Duncan was smugly letting anyone who brought up the allegation against Lauer know that she wasn’t surprised in the slightest and that a few people suspected something was wrong with him all along.

If there was ever a behind-the-scenes story that begged to made into a movie of its own, then it’s the making of the mind-boggling cult classic The Room, a uniquely American accident of money, incompetence, and ego. The magnum opus of Tommy Wiseau, an eccentric and paranoid Polish immigrant with the looks of a B-movie…

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered a powerful condemnation Friday of both hate and those who "protect or accept hate speech" in any form -- a sharp contrast with comments made by President Donald Trump on the white supremacist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Three-time all-star second baseman Bret Boone, who last played baseball in 2005, appears to have a lot of time on his hands. He spent today flinging himself into a reporter’s Twitter DMs just to make light of the day’s latest allegations of sexual harassment.

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Checkers and Rally's are running a promotion where you can get an All-American Cheeseburger for 69 cents on November 30, 3017.

An All-American Cheeseburger features a seasoned and grilled beef patty, American cheese, pickles, ketchup, and mustard. It normally sells for $1 or so.

The deal is good all day on Thursday, November 30, 2017 at participating locations with a limit of 10 discounted burgers per customer.

Photo via Checkers and Rally's.

Red Alert, America, because your president is even fucking crazier than he was yesterday, and on top of that, he’s somehow managing to get dumber and more racist.

No, we’re not talking about how he just accused MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough of murder on Twitter, but that’s a thing!

No, we’re not talking about how Trump’s response to learning that NBC’s Matt Lauer is some sort of sex perv, JUST LIKE HE IS, is that news executives and anchors should be fired for reporting the actual news, but that’s also a thing!

No, we’re not talking about how Trump decided to serve America breakfast in bed Wednesday morning with a side of anti-Muslim murder porn, but oh boy, that was a thing too!

Maggie Haberman has a scoop in the New York Times that builds off the recent revelation that Donald Trump thinks Donald Trump was lying when Donald Trump admitted Donald Trump likes to grab women by the pussy. (Haberman has a new detail about that, by the way, and it is that the president doesn’t recognize the sound of his own voice. Ayup.) The new thing? Oh, it’s just that Trump is searching the White House couch cushions and the corridors and the nooks and the crannies, still looking for proof that Barack Obama (a real president) was born in Not America. What’s that thing in Melania’s armpit? It’s Donald Trump’s honker, sniffing around to see if Obama’s long-form birth certificate is hidden up in there!

In recent months, [advisers] say, Mr. Trump has used closed-door conversations to question the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. He has also repeatedly claimed that he lost the popular vote last year because of widespread voter fraud, according to advisers and lawmakers.

One senator who listened as the president revived his doubts about Mr. Obama’s birth certificate chuckled on Tuesday as he recalled the conversation. The president, he said, has had a hard time letting go of his claim that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States. The senator asked not to be named to discuss private conversations.

That’s right, anonymous Republican (we assume) senator, chuckle away! The president may be verifiably insane, as he clings to his racist, baseless belief that the black guy who actually earned the office in which his decaying ass now squats might not be a real American. Ha ha! What a knee-slapper! Whichever Republican (we assume) senator whispered that in Maggie Haberman’s ear is invited to go fuck himself.

The Washington Post serves up its own casserole of Trump batshit, reporting that Trump is adorably telling everybody he’s ever met he’s DEFINITELY FOR SURE CERTAIN Robert Mueller’s investigation will be over by the end of the year, and that he will be declared innocent of all charges. While it’s cute if he really believes that (his lawyer Ty Cobb has been insisting to him that it’s true), it’s also disturbing, because what happens when January 1 passes and Mueller doesn’t show up in the Oval to give Trump a lick-job and a framed plaque that says, “NO RUSSIA, NO RUSSIA, YOU ARE THE RUSSIA”?

One outside adviser to Trump warned that the president would “blow a gasket” if there was no statement of exoneration by year’s end.

Take your bets for what day in January Trump will do Saturday Night Massacre 2: More Bigly Stupider Than Nixon’s Weak And Failing Saturday Night Massacre.

We laugh at these things, because for Christ’s sake, otherwise, we’d spend all our time weeping for the state of America (and TERRIFIED, since we’re closer to war with North Korea than we’ve been in years, to the point that Hawaii is bringing back its Cold War air raid sirens). But laughing aside, Jonathan Chait points out at New York mag the thing we all know and suspect, which is that it’s highly possible Trump believes his lies, which would suggest the president’s Very Good Brain is irreparably broken:

If Trump actually has the ability to convince himself of his own lies, it would suggest a possibility far more dangerous than even his critics have previously assumed. He might be in the grip of a mental-health issue, or at least one more serious than mere sociopathy. And the mutterings that he might need to be removed from office through the 25th Amendment could grow more serious than many of us have expected.

Mike Pence, you know what to do. Just fucking do it, you white-haired bigoted Ken doll from hell!

Mother Pence will just love being First Lady.

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE.

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[New York Times / Washington Post / New Yorker]

Splinter Hey Idiots—You’re Gonna Lose All Your Money on Bitcoin, Idiots | Deadspin Giants Bench Eli Manning For Geno Smith | The Root Why Calling Elizabeth Warren ‘Pocahontas’ Is Racist, Explained | Jezebel Darren Aronofsky Would Not Shut Up About mother! On the Press Tour With Jennifer Lawrence | Earther Earth’s…

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In the fall of 2013, Charlotte Lindqvist got a call from a film company making an Animal Planet documentary about the yeti, the mythical apelike creature that roams the Himalayas. So, not the kind of thing scientists usually like to mess with. “Friends or colleagues were saying, ‘Oh, watch out. Don’t get into this whole area,’” she recalls with a laugh. But she said yes.

Lindqvist said yes because she is a geneticist who studies bears, and the rare Himalayan brown bear is one possible origin of the yeti legend. The team from Icon Films wanted to use science to investigate whether the yeti is real; Lindqvist wanted to investigate the enigmatic bears of the Himalayas.

Wild bear DNA is not easy to come by. Over the years, Lindqvist, a professor at the University at Buffalo, has built up a network of wildlife-biologist contacts in Alaska, who send her samples that have helped illuminate the evolution of polar bears. Scientists know much less about bears that live around the Himalayas. But if a film-production company was going to pay a crew to travel around the mountain range collecting possible samples of fur and bone, then she just might get a scientific project out of it, too.

The results of that unusual collaboration were published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Lindqvist and her colleagues used DNA to identify nine “yeti” samples.

These include: a thigh bone found by a spiritual healer in a cave that turned out to be from a Tibetan brown bear; hair from a mummified animal in a monastery that turned out to be from a Himalayan brown bear; a tooth from a stuffed animal collected by Nazis in the 1930s that turned out to be from a dog. The rest of the samples turned up five more Tibetan brown bears and an Asian black bear. For comparison with verified bear samples, Lindqvist also reached out to her network of research contacts in museums, zoos, and Pakistan’s Khunjerab National Park, who provided her with bear hair, bone, and scat to sequence.

Altogether, this search for the yeti yielded a surprising portrait of bears living around the Himalayas. The Tibetan brown bear and Himalayan brown bear, long considered to be subspecies, are quite distinct genetically. The latter diverged from all other brown bears about 650,000 years ago, when the formation of glaciers may have isolated a population that became the first Himalayan brown bears. Today, this ancient lineage of bears is critically endangered.

Lindqvist focused her analysis on DNA in the mitochondria—structures in the cell that have their own small pieces of DNA separate from the DNA in chromosomes. Mitochondria DNA is only passed down the maternal line, but when it comes to sequencing, it has the advantage of being more abundant in cells. This is especially important when working with degraded and decades-old samples. Her team eventually sequenced, for the first time, the entire mitochondrial genome of the rare Himalayan brown bear.

Other scientists have sequenced supposed yeti samples before—notably Bryan Sykes, a geneticist at Oxford who actually appeared in a previous yeti film by the same documentary team that aired on the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 in 2013. (Interest in the yeti never dies, apparently.) In it, Sykes says the hair matched no modern bears but an ancient 40,000-year-old polar bear, suggesting the yeti is actually an unknown, perhaps hybrid bear. Sykes later published the results in a scientific journal, but other scientists criticized him for extrapolating too far from a fragment of a single mitochondrial gene.

Lindqvist thinks she has resequenced one of the same samples, and based on the whole mitochondrial genome, the purposed yeti hair indeed came from a Himalayan brown bear. Ross Barnett, a paleogeneticist at the University of Copenhagen, praised the methods in the new study. It’s the first time, he says, that he knows of a study using whole mitochondrial genomes to place bears in their evolutionary and geographic context.

The Animal Planet film eventually aired in May 2016 as Yeti or Not? Near the end, Lindqvist appears to reveal the last of the DNA-sequencing results. The show has been building up to this moment, hinting at possibilities like a new hybrid bear or maybe even an undiscovered hominid. “When I had to reveal to them that okay, these are bears, I was excited about that because it was my initial motive to get into this,” says Lindqvist. “They obviously were a little disappointed.”

FCC chairman Ajit Pai has come under a lot of fire over the last few months, as he tirelessly works to repeal the net neutrality protections put in place during the Obama era, which heartlessly force internet service providers to treat all data from different traffic sources with the same set of rules. (Instead of,…

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Congressional seats in Chicago change hands about once a generation. And in a political tradition that spans generations, when a spot opens up, the powers that be quickly try to anoint someone.

And so it was Tuesday that veteran U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez said he’s done after this term and put his...

The families of Navajo Code Talkers, the World War II veterans whose code breaking skills helped the US win the war, are predictably pissed off that White House squatter Donald Trump used a racial slur targeting Native Americans, in a ceremony honoring Native Americans.

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It’s pretty clear that Donald Trump doesn’t exist in the same reality as the rest of us, or at least he thinks he doesn’t, which is why he can declare that proven facts are “fake news,” why he thinks it’s anything but horrifically tacky to coat everything he owns in gold, and why he just generally seems like such a…

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WE NEEDED THIS.

The Senate Republican tax plan would give substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation's poorest would be worse off, according to a report released Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans are aiming to have the full...

Actress Susan Sarandon is having a tough time since the 2016 election as the star is now being attacked by the left for refusing to support Hillary Clinton.

A retired freight train line became one of Chicago’s most extraordinary parks

A relic of Chicago’s industrial past, the 606 is the city’s beloved (and first!) elevated park. Build on old freight train tracks that date back more than a century, the park offers a bike path, rubberized jogging track, and outdoor art space with sweeping views of the city.

Although the 606 has only been open for a couple of years, the structure on which it is build dates back to 1873. Known as the Bloomingdale line, the tracks were constructed after the Great Chicago Fire in an effort to rebuild city infrastructure. The line served industrial areas, shuttling trains between factories to deliver and receive goods, such as bicycle parts from the famous 120-year-old Schwinn Bicycle Company.

As these factory-filled neighborhoods became more residential over time, train service on the Bloomingdale line came to an end in the mid 1990s. In 2003, a group of local Chicagoans formed the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail advisory council and began converting the tracks to parkland. Now, almost 15 years later, maintaining the 606 remains a community effort as locals and tourists alike come to make use of this beautiful and unique public space.

It's officially the 2017 holiday season, and while Black Friday pilgrims wasted the weekend wrestling for various screened devices, it turns out the only thing worth spending money on isn't part of any Cyber Monday sale. Starting Monday, NBC is auctioning off hundreds of props from the set of Parks and Recreation, so stop shopping for Alexa pucks or whatever and treat yo'self to some real, honest-to-God, Pawnee treasures.

The auction, which NBC is putting on in partnership with Screenbid, features everything from Leslie Knope campaign gear to Entertainment 720 swag, all from the actual set of the show.

The auction also includes bottles of Tom Haverford's Snake Juice, a Sweetums apron with an oversized "small" soda cup, "Don't Recall Knope" merch from that season six arc, and—for the Perd Hapley heads out there—a "Final Word with Perd" mug.

You can even buy yourself a copy of the special Mouse Rat tribute to Lil Sebastian, "5,000 Candles in the Wind," and a Lil Sebastian sweater, in honor of the late mini-horse.

There are around 280 different props and costumes up for sale, along with some duplicates. They're all great collectables for Parks and Rec fans, but one item stands above the rest: Duke Silver's own fedora and vest, the actual outfit Ron Swanson wore when he lived his double life as a mustachioed smooth jazz sax player, though you'll probably have to outbid a fleet of aging Eagleton divorcees if you want to take that one home.

Bidding starts Monday at 1PM EST and will go until December 1, with opening bids between $25 and $300—though it's unlikely that prices will stay that low for long. Some proceeds from the auction will be donated to LA Conservation Corps, an organization that works with at-risk youth.

Check out everything on the auction block right now over at the Screenbid website and buy the Councilman Jamm "Brace Yourself" windbreaker you've always wanted.

By now, Mike Hughes should have already proved that the Earth was flat.

That was according to his original plan, which had been to launch himself 1,800 feet high last Saturday in his homemade scrap-metal rocket over Amboy, California, an unincorporated community in the Mojave Desert along historic...

Original Prongles, a wart hog-emblazoned brand of chips in a very familiar cylindrical can was released this past week as something of a social media mystery. Who was behind such this fun, zesty, delicious-verging-on-copyright infringing snack? Internet sleuths eventually figured out the strange minds behind the game …

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Filmmaker Jan van Ijken’s documentary, The Art of Flying, captures the hypnotic movements of hundreds of thousands of starlings flying in massive flocks that appear to be completely random and chaotic, but miraculously, not a single mid-air collision ever occurs.

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Much to predict, much to discuss.

Fans can leave to use portable restrooms and then come back inside.

I have some bad news about Rutgers’ football stadium.

This is me, running into the room, out of breath, and shouting, “MORE LIKE BUTTGERS, AM I RIGHT?” The Scarlet Knights are at least working to rectify the problem.

Rutgers is obviously not the first school to have toilet problems on game day. The same fate befell renovated Kyle Field at Texas A&M earlier this fall.

To bring you up to speed, Kyle Field went through a $400 million-plus renovation a few years ago. It basically looks like an entirely new building. There were numerous infrastructure changes including adding “300 percent” more women’s bathrooms. If there are that many new ladies’ rooms, you can imagine the men have at least something on par with that amount.

At least Rutgers’ toilet misadventures aren’t coming on the heels of hundreds of millions of dollars of renovations, part of which were designed specifically to make fans’ bathroom experiences more pleasant. That would be terrible.

Trader Joe's Hasselback Potatoes feature russet potatoes that are sliced thinly almost all the way through and are seasoned simply with butter and sea salt.

I bought a 10.6-oz box for $3.79.

The recipe for Hasselback potatoes originate from Sweden but these were made from France which probably accounts somewhat for the relatively high price for what amounts to two baked potatoes.

You can cook these in the oven (for 30 minutes) or the microwave (for about 3 minutes), I opted to cook it for half the time in the microwave and then finish it in a toaster oven. I find doing so saves a good amount of time over using just the oven but you still get the crispy edges.

Compared to a regular baked potato, the Hasselback Potato came out with a fairly thick and crispy crust but was buttery and soft on the inside. The interior was almost like mashed potatoes with a soft melt-in-your-mouth texture. The outside was crispy but also a little chewy in some parts.

The simple seasoning did enough to highlight the potato's natural flavor but can also be gussied up however you like if you find the combination potato, butter, and salt too plain.

Overall, Trader Joe's Hasselback Potatoes were pretty nice but a bit expensive. Given how cheap russet potatoes are, the premium price seems to amount mostly to the time you save from not having to cut the potato and bake it. It doesn't feel like you save that much time and work for the money.

Nutritional Info - Trader Joe's Hasselback Potatoes
Serving Size - 1 potato (150g)
Calories - 210 (from Fat - 80)
Fat - 9g (Saturated Fat - 3g)
Sodium - 210mg
Carbs - 30g (Sugar - 2g)
Protein - 4g

YouTuber Gregory Chism, who ran the channel "Toy Freaks," had his account deactivated after complaints about pranks he played on his daughters.

President Donald Trump kicked off Thanksgiving Day by replying to a tweet that said his latest Twitter feud is part of a racist pattern of attacking prominent African-Americans.

Trump's response, tweeted at about 6:30 a.m.: "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

The tweet that prompted the response from the...