IKEA Monkey

If you’re traveling to France in the near future and have dreams of picking apart the delicate, flaky layers of authentic croissant, be warned that these beloved pastries may be in short supply when you get there. Why? Apparently because people are eating more butter.

Reuters reports that the increased consumer demand for butter — coupled with a shortage in milk production — in France has resulted in butter prices doubling in just the past year.

Butter is an essential ingredient in making a croissant, but some bakeries have decided to cut their butter orders rather than pay the higher price. As a result, there are fewer croissants and other pastries being made in France right now, and the ones that are available may be more expensive.

“Because the year-end holidays are approaching, with Christmas preparations and particularly the ‘Galette des Rois’ cake which needs a lot of butter, if there is not a significant decline, we will be forced to pass on the price rise,” one Paris baker told Reuters.

And in French supermarkets, signs are popping up in barren butter cases, explaining that there is a shortage for certain brands, Reuters notes.

The shortage is due to falling milk production as well as an increasing demand for butter around the world as consumers turn their noses up at spreads like margarine.

But despite the high demand for butter, dairy farmers in France claim they’re not seeing the benefits because they’re often paid based on cheaper raw milk and powder prices, Reuters notes, and prices haven’t been adjusted amid the butter shortfall.

To that end, although Agriculture Minister Stephane Travert reportedly downplayed the idea of dire shortages this week, he did tell parliament that retailers and suppliers should agree on price adjustments.

Adding just one more thing for Bill O’Reilly to be pissed at his old buddy God about, Deadline is reporting that O’Reilly’s agent, UTA, is dropping him from its ranks, shortly after The New York Times ran a piece this weekend revealing a $32 million settlement the former Fox News host paid out earlier this year. (To…

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U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday promised an all-out assault on the brutal MS-13 street gang “just like we took Al Capone off the streets.”

Between flying cars and three-wheeled cars, the period between World War I and World War II had some interesting ideas for the future of automobiles. But this one may have been the weirdest. Who needs wheels when you’ve got giantic rolling spheres?

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We are all about Amy Sedaris here at The A.V. Club, whether she’s cracking us up as Jerri Blank on Strangers With Candy or as Mimi Kanasis on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, or breaking our hearts as Princess Carolyn on BoJack Horseman this season. She’s also known for bestselling domestic-goddess books like I Like You:…

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People have already protested the Trump administration with marches, walkouts, and massive demonstrations. But on the anniversary of the election that made Donald Trump America's 45th president, thousands of Americans are trying out a new tack: banding together, craning their necks to the heavens, and screaming helplessly at the sky.

Folks in at least nine cities across the country—including Los Angeles, Miami, Austin, New York City, and Chicago—are organizing demonstrations on Facebook, all titled something along the lines of "Scream Helplessly at the Sky on the Anniversary of the Election." More than 3,000 people have indicated they'll be attending their local shout fest on November 8. In New York alone, at least 2,100 are slated to get together in Washington Square Park and scream their heads off from 7 to 8 PM.

"Join us cucks and snowflakes, safe spacers and libtards, as we enjoy a collective cathartic yell into the heavens about our current political establishment," the NYC event's description reads.

The nationwide phenomenon started in Boston, where local organizer Johanna Schulman first dreamed up the idea for a massive, communal howl. More than 4,000 planned to flock to Boston Common next month, but the Facebook event was shut down on Tuesday because of what Schulman called "circumstances beyond our control." Still, Schulman didn't make her pitch for naught; almost all of the events planned outside of Boston cite the original as an inspiration.

Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars bashed those planning to attend as "petulant children," and the Daily Wire wrote that the events would "accomplish absolutely nothing." And while shouting yourself hoarse might not change what the Chicago organizers call "the shit show that is American politics," it could be pretty cathartic. In a Medium post, New York organizer Nathan Wahl put the impetus behind the nationwide wail pretty well.

"Listen, there's a lot of shit I care about," he wrote. "But frankly, I can't keep up with it all. Every time I think of the laundry list of social injustices on top of my own shit like my actual laundry I get overwhelmed. Every news notification on my phone is a reminder of something over which I am powerless. And I think a lot of people feel that way. So fuck me for thinking it'd be nice to yell about it."

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

P.F. Chang's will be giving out a free Spicy Tuna Roll or California Roll per dine-in guest on Thursday, October 26, 2017 at participating locations.

The freebie does not require any purchase and will be good at over 200 participating restaurants nationwide.

Non-participating locations include those that just opened this month as well as those in airports, Atlantic City, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii.

P.F. Chang's California Roll features Krab mix, cucumber, and avocado rolled up in nori and rice. Their Spicy Tuna Roll consists of Ahi, cucumber, and spicy sriracha rolled up in nori and rice.

Photo via P.F. Chang's.

Bill O’Reilly says he’s made at God over the sexual harassment allegations that drove him off the air at Fox News earlier this year.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I wouldn't describe myself as "great at life." I'm doing OK, but given the whole "highly supportive parents" and "no life-changing injuries" stuff I've got working in my favor, I should really be doing so much better. Each chance I've had to make progress, I've fluffed. Like when I couldn't decide between two B-list London universities, so deferred, then deferred again the next year, then just didn't go to college at all.

Related: Instagram Stories' relatively new polling feature. While you might see these polls as a banal tool your friends uses to justify a blatant thirst trap, I see something else. I see the capability to change the world, to change lives. So let's start with mine. Why plow through life making shitty decisions for myself when I can leave those decisions to everyone else?

For an entire day, I'm going to let my Instagram followers vote on every single decision I have to make.

Waking Up

I open my eyes, feel that familiar trace of regret I feel every morning, and start mulling over my breakfast options: sad oatmeal or sad cereal? But then I realize: Today isn't like any other day. Today, I have 1,000 good-hearted people making my decisions for me. Let's break the news.

Well, I'm definitely not going to tell the tale I wanted: one of a man willed into a 24-hour coma by popular vote.

Onto the next decision. What shall I wear: a pun-based T-shirt riffing on Russian president, Vladimir Putin and the Quebecois dish poutine, paired with a brown leather jacket, and Georgio Peviani jeans, or a simple monochrome outfit that doesn't make me look like a Belarusian truck driver?

First one it is!

Out into the Unknown

I step outside and am faced with another decision: left or right? The Blue Brick vegan cafe or John the Unicorn? The natural habitat of former advertising execs who'll pay in excess of $20 for "proper" cheddar, or the place their art school offspring pretend to be from? Which town shall I venture to?

Dulwich or Peckham?

So we have a direction. Now, a decision I face every day:

To limp or not to limp? Make up my mind for me, good people of Instagram.

Who'd have thought an entire day of limping is what I'd needed all along to be excellent at life? Thanks for looking out for me, followers.

Now, breakfast: somewhere that looks kind of shabby or McDonald's?

OK, fair enough.

Next up, the megalomaniacs of Instagram—now voting literally in the hundreds—have the opportunity to choose my meal or delegate that decision to:

This random man, wearing a Gore-tex jacket and a hairline not unlike Kevin McCloud's.

Of course, the people of the internet vote 72 percent in favor of the stranger, and this stranger—who, it transpires, is a vegetarian—recommends the squash and runner bean salad, because he is a vegetarian.

Now I've got the food, recommended by the vegetarian stranger, do I do something I'd never usually do, because it would be considered by most "extremely rude," or do I seize the chance to do exactly what I'd normally not do, because that's what this entire exercise is really about?

Up until this point, more people have been lurking and observing than actually participating, but this choice has my inbox suddenly dripping with DMs. People are dying for me to hurt the guy's feelings.

I take a deep breath, sour my face, and clutch my spoon: I can do this.

Light-headed, barreling down the street, I'm beginning to think that maybe this isn't a great idea after all? Maybe people are going to use the opportunity to fuck with me, rather than help me?

At the gates of Peckham Rye Station, I stumble upon something capable of resolving my curiosity. Am I simply a conduit through which people can realize their most sadistic impulses, or was that cafe incident just a one-off? Surely the good people of Instagram aren't going to have me committing crimes?

The biggest voter turnout and winning margin of the day. Limping up the stairs, sweating through heavy leather, I fear for what lies ahead.

Followers, should I head to the Scientology center in town, the objectively creepy organization accused of various nefarious deeds by critics and former senior members? Or, worse, a literal ball pit for adults in Shoreditch on the east end of London?

Seems as if people are as bored and/or repulsed by Ballie Ballerson I am.

Putin and Poutine

Coming off the train at London Bridge, it's almost 3 PM. I still haven't eaten, and I'm starting to feel nauseous, pins and needles dancing around the crown of my head.

Call it Stockholm syndrome, but I'm beginning to really adore my thumb-stamping overlords. Swallowing a mouthful of unseasoned egg, I uncover something in my emails from a PR rep named Asher and put it to the people.

Within ten minutes, Asher has both offered some lovely advice and is on the way with some cans of Commotion Lotion "Buckfast-infused beer." Haunted by recent memories, I fear what the Instagramers may do to gentle Asher.

Soon, I'm faced with the hallowed doors of Scientology HQ, and give my followers two options:

Ready to go in and try to walk out again with a just an unnecessary number of pens, I feel a tap on my shoulder. Clutching a six pack of Buckfast, smiling, is Asher.

Asher is a lovely guy. The kind of guy who could convince you it's actually a good thing you've just knocked over a full pint of beer without having even one sip. I interrupt his enthusiastic pitch about a band named King Kong Company's free London Halloween show to explain my situation. As I do this, the sparkle disappears from his eyes. He looks pained. It's abundantly clear how uncomfortable he is about the idea of going in, so I throw him a bone.

We head in, and a guy—face like a Punch and Judy puppet—greets us.

Walking through the center, I'm eyeing up every pencil opportunity. Asher nervously shoots questions about the history of the building.

I ask to take the personality test to buy us some time. We begin going through it. I'm ticking boxes without really checking; Asher is asking a bunch of the questions. I can't deal with this.

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WATCH: 10 Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask: Someone with Face Tattoos

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Ten minutes later, the guy emerges, pointing at a graph, and it doesn't look good for either of us. We're both depressed, according to an organization that has a foolproof method for curing depression, available at a low, low price. But I've got something much more important to worry about for now: pens.

Eventually, after a fair amount of asking, I come away short-handed, with only eight. Asher leaves, troubled—another casualty of today, along with a high school kid who DMs me that he has "2 EXAMS tomorrow and I'm here [and] keep refreshing to keep up with your story [instead of studying]."

Half of the people messaging are like this guy: entertained. The other half, with their hyper-specific demands, I'm worried about:

I make my way through the Turbine Hall and eventually find the person who sent me the message. As the gallery shuts, she leads me into a tight room—"You're still limping!" she laughs —and points toward the roughly 7,000 stairs I now need to climb.

I reach the top of the stairs, and it soon becomes clear what this is: a preview of the new exhibition by Russian-born, America-based artists, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, followed by a fancy dinner. I'm instructed to wait in a side room, quietly, for half an hour.

I walk in, clutching a glass of champagne, and look around. I notice the director of the show chatting to a couple of Russian people in clothes that look incredibly expensive, and it dawns on me: I'm in the wrong place. This is the crème de la crème of the art world.

I notice a man, red-faced with lobster hue and a fantastic mustache, speaking in fluent Russian—in fact, everybody is speaking Russian—glaring at my "Vladimir Poutine: Kremlin's Finest Choice" shirt. Maybe he likes it?

We're about to find out.

The conversation plods along, awkwardly, until we're politely called upstairs to dinner. Yawning, listening to wealthy people making speeches half in languages I don't know, I decide it's time for my final move of the night. I look through my messages. I don't know if it's the four glasses of champagne and empty stomach, but something clicks.

I'd half posted this as a joke, drunk, expecting my followers to realize I'd already been through enough and so probably needed to just head to the safety of someone's nearby sofa and finish my day off with a pizza and some lovely, lovely cans of beer. That they would of course choose the Bake Off option, because it meant interacting with a stranger, like they'd chosen for me when it came to the vegetarian squash fan and the mystery guy at the art show.

But I now realize what I've done, and I think about my bank account, and the fact that my bank account is not nearly full enough to afford any method of transport that will get me out of the country. Luckily, kind of, there are two just about affordable options:

I toss my phone down with ten minutes before both tickets expire on the booking page. Surely, having essentially ruled over me for a day, these people have developed some sort of connection with me? A parental responsibility for the person whose life they have been steering for nearly 24 hours? A level of empathy that prevents them from wanting to see me crammed onto a Eurolines coach, overnight, for eight hours?

Ten minutes have passed. I look at my phone: The votes cast have totaled to 695, and there are nine in it.

I can't believe it. These people hate me more than I hate me. They're much worse than I could ever be. I put my life in their hands and, after limping for 8.4 miles (according to my iPhone) and dressing like a dad on vacation, all for them, and this is what I get. A packed, eight-hour bus ride to Brussels, leaving at 10 PM, for a six-hour stopover in a city where I know no one.

As Kent A roads disappear into the darkness, I blow through my cheeks and tug my hair, debilitated. I would have been in Dublin by now. At this point, I notice the guy next to me chuckle to himself, large headphones on.

If all I am to my followers is a character, why not go whole hog? I offer the choice between introducing myself as Oobah or Georgio Peviani, the imaginary fashion designer I'd lived a weekend as during Paris Fashion Week two weeks before.

Patrick. Georgio. Seeing as we're in dire straits, why not?

Between the way he kicks his legs like a child when he giggles, to the fact he insists I use his phone charger despite having less battery than me, as "this is your work," it's hard to sum up exactly what's so likable about Patrick, as everything is likable about Patrick, so I let him do it for me.

Later, after a night of nonstop beers and banter, Patrick steps off the bus in Ghent, Belgium, and we wave an emotional 5 AM farewell.

An hour or so later, pulling up, stepping out of the bus and breathing in the sharp Brussels air, something becomes clear: Instead of being angry, I need to thank all the Instagram followers who sent me here.

You've given me things I would never have had otherwise: a new friend, chronic butt pain brought on by all the fake limping, and a morning in a beautiful foreign country.

Thank you.

RIP Oobah's Public Instagram Page: 2017–17.

Follow Oobah Butler on Twitter.

There are few surer ways to impress dinner party guests than bringing out a pot of boeuf bourguignon or a tray of meringues. Read More

The race leaders all lost because of the error.

The Venice marathon was a glorious screw up that reached its crescendo when the entire leading pack was led off the route by a wayward escort motorcycle, causing them all to lose.

The accident happened 25 kilometers into the marathon, well beyond the point of no return. Runners took a right-hand turn after a motorcycle guided them the wrong way, which allowed for Venice native (and unknown runner) Eyob Faniel to make up the one-minute gap he was trailing by and streak past the pack, who had been led onto the on-ramp of a freeway.

The detour may have only been a few hundred meters, but by the time the pack joined the rest of the race they’d lost two minutes — too much to make up. Faniel’s win was the first time in 22 years an Italian runner has won the Venice Marathon, and it came under the most bizarre circumstances.

People all over the running world are slamming how the event was handled, but the president of the Venice Marathon Club is calling it a success.

“A memorable edition stained by a serious error in course management does not affect the success. President of VMClub”

Of course, it helps when Faniel, who won the marathon is a member of the Venice Marathon Club. I’d probably call it a success, too.

Forget Christmas. For dog lovers, the annual Tompkins Square Park Halloween Dog Parade in New York marks the most wonderful time of the year. Each October, thousands of very good pups, their people, and many, many spectators flood the East Village with costumed canine cuteness. The most elaborately decked-out doggos compete in a costume contest, hoping to take home a large cash prize and tickets to Hamilton. But most folks come out year after year for the adorable photo op.

VICE sent photographer Tayler Smith to Saturday's event to document the doggone cute Halloween bash, and her portraits of New Yorkers and their fluffy friends do not disappoint. Highlights include a Corgi masquerading as a real-life Chia Pet, a couple of French Bulldogs driving a double-decker tour bus, and a tiny, very grumpy Oscar the Grouch in a garbage pail. As always, there were plenty of costumes plucked from the headlines. One of our favorites was a Trump dog toting a roll of paper towels labeled "Hurricane Relief."

Check out more photos of costumed canines below:

Follow Tayler Smith on Instagram.

When Chris Lowe first saw the buck stoop to lick the small, silver-speckled fox, he thought his eyes might be playing tricks on him. He’d just gotten back from a run on Santa Catalina, a remote Southern Californian island where he studies sharks, and came upon the two animals in the scrub. Mule deer and island foxes, the rascally miniature descendants of gray foxes, are everyday sights on Catalina’s grassy hills. But to see them nuzzling was downright weird.

Was the buck simply nibbling on a plant behind the fox? Had the fox happened to hop in front of the buck’s face? Lowe dashed into his apartment to grab his camera, and made it to the window to catch the deer taking another lick. The fox, docile in the shade of its antlered friend, wasn’t just tolerating the apparent cleaning, Lowe realized. “It looked like it was actually enjoying this,” he says.

Lowe tweeted a picture of the curious scene a few hours later, and it quickly racked up several thousand likes and retweets. In the image, the buck has its pursed lips planted on the fox’s forehead. The fox, its eyes closed, resembles a dog getting a good behind-the-ears scratch. People responding to Lowe’s tweet were captivated by the strange pairing. It was adorable—in one person’s words, “a Disney moment!” And no one had ever seen anything quite like it.

Well, no one except Michael Cove. To match Lowe’s tweet, Cove offered picture of his own: a lean doe in a forest rubbing noses with a cat. “We get this all the time in the Keys ... interesting that it is happening on islands,” he wrote. Then he brought the party down: “Certainly a pathway for disease transmission.”

Cove, a mammologist at North Carolina State University who spends several months each year on the Florida Keys, has in fact spotted several peculiar meetings between the islands’ diminutive Key deer and other creatures. Motion-triggered cameras he’s set up around a wildlife refuge on one of the islands have photographed a deer dancing around a peacock, and a deer getting its face groomed by raccoon. There are a few more cases with cats, including a time off-camera that Cove passed a dumpster and saw two deer licking the same cat at once. (“The Florida Keys are an interesting place,” he says.)

Cove speculates that cut-off places like the Keys and Catalina, which is one of California’s eight Channel Islands, have two features that could encourage such interspecies intermingling. The most prominent is a lack of large predators. The islands’ deer have lived for generations on verdant floating worlds devoid of wolves, mountain lions, and other sharp-toothed threats. It’s possible their isolation has granted them a peace of mind that mainland deer can’t afford. Perhaps by now they don’t even know they could be afraid of other curious creatures.

The second is geography. Since an island’s inhabitants have limited land to roam, it’s easy for them to bump into each other. And as Cove points out in a new research paper in the journal Mammalian Biology, the scattered centers of human activity in the Keys attract animals that can find easy meals, pulling them into an even tighter orbit. The paper focuses on the Key deer and raccoons, but the same could likely be said of cats and island foxes, the latter of which are known to beg tourists for food and sneak off with your peanut butter even though you left it safely on your campsite’s picnic table, you swear.

These two factors account for a greater probability of animal-to-animal encounters on islands, but they don’t explain what would convince a deer to run its tongue over a cat or fox in the first place. Moreover, there’s evidence that this licking isn’t an island thing exclusively: Deer are occasionally spotted giving tongue baths to cats, at least, in mainland backyards. The exact motivation behind this behavior is much harder to pin down.

There’s a temptation to describe their interactions as mutually beneficial, in line with the natural world’s other astounding instances of species-to-species symbiosis. When Lowe first saw the buck and fox together, for example, he was reminded of underwater “safe zones,” where “predators and prey all line up to get cleaned” by small fish that munch on parasites.

Yet as Gary Roemer, an ecologist at New Mexico State University, points out, scientists reserve the concept of mutualism specifically for relationships in which both sides benefit in ways that help them survive. The dynamic is conceivable for Key deer and raccoons; in Cove’s camera-trap photos, a slinking raccoon takes a doe’s snout into its paws and nibbles around the patient animal’s eyes and ears, probably hungry for a snack of ticks. Neither Cove nor Roemer, who spent years studying island foxes earlier in his career, however, are convinced licking does much for the ecological fitness of deer, foxes, or cats.

Both researchers suggested what might be a more obvious benefit for the foxes and cats: Getting licked feels good. “Maybe deer are getting those hard to reach places,” Cove says. As for the deer, ocean breezes cover islands—foxes and cats included—in salt. Cove has a theory that deer on islands particularly might be lured into the cleanings by a little extra seasoning.

But Cove’s tweet about disease transmission also underscores the much more ominous way these pictures can be read. Even if it feels and tastes nice, contact between animals isn’t necessarily positive, because it can cripple populations by passing along rabies, roundworms, and plenty of other viruses and parasites. These dangers are especially threatening in locations where the entirety of a species resides. Key deer and island foxes, both endemic to their respective coastal islands, have each been pushed to the edge of extinction in the past. If their newly observed canoodling sessions hint at any larger changes in island ecosystems, they conceivably are causes of concern.

But Roemer cautions against the impulse to read anything more into a few documented instances of deer licking smaller and probably salty animals than what they perhaps most clearly seem to be: two wild creatures inquisitive enough to give each other a closer look. “This is probably a novel, random, curious interaction,” he says of the buck and the fox. “It probably doesn’t have much significance either from an evolutionary or an ecological standpoint.”

(Roemer doesn’t buy the salt theory, either: If plants and rocks are also coated by the breeze, he reasons, it wouldn’t make sense for a deer to go through the trouble of tracking down a moving, claw-possessing island resident for tastiness alone.)

Still, randomness leaves open two opposite conclusions about interspecies encounters like these. It’s possible—if not certain—that animals bump into each other in all kinds of undiscovered ways. “[Camera traps] are opening our eyes to just how fascinating the natural world is,” Cove says. “There are tons of species interactions that we might have never noticed just casually walking around the woods and stuff.” Key deer might not lick cats for a reason, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do it often.

Then again, it might be misguided to say what all deer on an island do in the first place. “More and more, we’re recognizing that, just like us, animals have different personalities,” Roemer says. “Sometimes they do bizarre things.” While working on one of the Channel Islands, he befriended an exuberant island fox named Josie, who made a game of goading a nature conservancy’s surly hunting dog into chasing her up trees.

So maybe it was an especially bold buck and a uniquely lonely fox that met under that fading afternoon sun on Santa Catalina Island. They neared each other in the brush of the only land they’ve ever known. And when they were close enough to touch, they were both filled with enough wonder to decide: why not?

As reported by Variety, character actor Brent Briscoe died on Wednesday after a a “serious fall” that gave him internal bleeding and heart complications. Briscoe was 56.

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Arby's Venison Sandwich features a thick-cut venison steak topped with crispy onion strings and juniper berry sauce on a toasted star-top bun.

I went and bought one for $7. It went on sale nationwide for only one day yesterday.

The meat portion of the venison (deer) steak turned out pretty tender with a medium-cooked center but there was the occasional strands of gristle that was super chewy. It had me wishing they had sliced the steak thin rather than serving it whole. I wouldn't say it's a problem particular to deer meat though as beef steak can have the same problem depending on how it was cut/trimmed. The most annoying part of the gristle is how you end up pulling out whole steak from the bread as you try to bite through it.

Flavor-wise, the venison tasted like beef to me. It wasn't gamey like deer meat can sometimes be. It was lightly seasoned with just a bit of salt, pepper, and garlic.

The sauce was tangy with a combination of berry and herbal notes. I thought it was interesting but it might come off as somewhat medicinal to some.

The onion strings were a little sparse but added a light crispiness and a nice flavor. The bun cradled the steak and was moist and soft.

When it comes down to it, Arby's Venison Sandwich turned out well in the flavor department with a tasty steak and novel sauce but I wasn't a fan of the  whole cut of the steak, which, due to the gristle, had me just pulling the steak out to better chew through it.

Nutritional Info - Arby's Venison Sandwich (245g)
Calories - 490 (from Fat - 100)
Fat - 11g (Saturated Fat - 2.5g)
Sodium - 680mg
Carbs - 45g (Sugar - 9g)
Protein - 50g

President Donald Trump shot down a possible approach for raising revenue to finance tax cuts in politically must-do legislation for the Republicans, promising Monday the popular 401(k) retirement program will be untouched.

Still, the head of the House's tax-writing committee indicated that changes...

blasted Steve Bannon in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” saying the former White House chief strategist backs losing Republican candidates who are dividing and hurting the party.

The controversy over President Donald Trump's treatment of fallen service members escalated Monday, its eighth straight day, when the grieving widow of one of four U.S. soldiers killed in Niger broke her silence and described how the president's blunders on his condolence call left her angry and...

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the proposal being considered would reduce the amount a worker could contribute tax-free to just $2,400 a year.

Paul Siwinski left the homeowners floodproofing expo and workshop Thursday with some new knowledge — and a decision.

"You can purchase flood insurance from the private market, and it will save you money," said Siwinski. And, he found out, you don't have to live in a high-risk area.

The Libertyville...

Although we are all, in deeply rooted ways we might not be fully conscious of yet, sitting in coach on our own personal nonstop flights to Hell, Finnair’s literal Flight AY666 from Copenhagen to Helsinki (HEL, in airport code), has cut through the air like a flaming poker into the oozing eye socket of a wretched soul…

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A few years ago, if you had asked the general public where they would be getting their passionate, fact-driven journalism from in 2017, it’s unlikely the top answer would be The Weather Channel. But time and time again the responsibility of keeping the American people informed about the most pressing issues has fallen…

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They're manipulative dogs, Bront.

Author’s note: We think just about anything dipped in this would be great—raw vegetables, toasted bread, even ham. We use Hook’s 4-year-aged white cheddar, which has a nice tang. That, plus the cayenne and black pepper—which we actually give a measure for instead of “to taste” so it’ll definitely be peppery—is…

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Mike Monteiro wrote an essay about Twitter that is good and very much worth reading.

Twitter was built at the tail end of that era. Their goal was giving everyone a voice. They were so obsessed with giving everyone a voice that they never stopped to wonder what would happen when everyone got one. And they never asked themselves what everyone meant. That’s Twitter’s original sin. Like Oppenheimer, Twitter was so obsessed with splitting the atom they never stopped to think what we’d do with it.

Twitter, which was conceived and built by a room of privileged white boys (some of them my friends!), never considered the possibility that they were building a bomb. To this day, Jack Dorsey doesn’t realize the size of the bomb he’s sitting on. Or if he does, he believes it’s metaphorical. It’s not. He is utterly unprepared for the burden he’s found himself responsible for.

Tags: Mike Monteiro   Twitter

Here we are again in the midst of another news cycle involving a powerful man being accused of sexual assault and harassment and women sharing their own traumas in the hope that something—anything—will change the way men treat women and our bodies.

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Historically, the dogs in the famous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race have been extremely good boys, but some bad dogs appeared to break that precedent this year. Race officials have said in a statement that several animals tested positive for the opioid pain reliever Tramadol, approximately six hours after they finished…

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Researchers say recent findings are particularly noteworthy because the sharp population decline isn't limited to a particular species.

Some Trump voters, after their towns were flooded by Hurricane Harvey, are beginning to reconsider their conviction that climate change has no scientific basis.

Today self-proclaimed Nazi Richard Spencer spoke at the University of Florida in front of what appeared to be a crowd primarily made up of people who were there to shout him down. As one might expect, Spencer’s speech was met with large protests. After getting owned inside the auditorium, the few Spencer fans who…

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