Taylor Berman · 06/24/13 07:30PM

Good news! The new strain of the bird flu is less deadly than the previous strain. It will only kill 36 percent of people sick enough to be hospitalized, which is pretty good compared to the previous strain's 70 percent fatality rate.

IRS Head Says Close Scrutiny Wasn't Restricted to Tea Party Groups

Cord Jefferson · 06/24/13 07:16PM

After six weeks of conservative handwringing about reports that the IRS was unfairly targeting Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status, the new head of the federal tax body is suggesting that it wasn't just right-wing groups being inappropriately scrutinized.

NYC Courier to Clients: We Don't Employ 'Dirty, Smelly' Immigrants

Neetzan Zimmerman · 06/24/13 05:16PM

The NYC-based bike courier service Dutch Express bills itself as the city's "most reliable same day courier service." Unfortunately, as Dutch Express surely knows, swiftness often comes at a price — like, say, not thinking twice before sending out a promotional mailer that might be seen as racist by your potential clientele.

Cord Jefferson · 06/24/13 04:00PM

The L.A. coroner's office has ruled the death of a woman found in a hotel cistern as an accidental drowning with "other significant conditions, being bipolar disorder." The Toronto Sun reports authorities didn't explain how Elisa Lam got into the tank, from which guests drew water for days before she was found.

Amanda Bynes Appeared to Me Under the Supermoon Late Saturday Night

Caity Weaver · 06/24/13 04:00PM

Once upon a time there lived a beautiful young woman, who flew east through the clouds following a series of vehicular crimes in order to develop a fashion line and a perfume line as well as many other exciting projects. Sadly, far away from the Pacific sun, her spirit hardened into something strange; a cold, bitter, angry thing, unrecognizable to the friends who had known only her light. A restless wraith, she glided through spas and shopping malls, over sidewalks and streets, eager to show herself but desperate not to be seen. People would catch flashes of her in mirrors, in pools of water, in out-of-the-way luxury hotels.

Wikileaks Is Back. Goddammit.

Adrian Chen · 06/24/13 02:55PM

Where's Edward Snowden? As I write this, only a handful of people know exactly the location of the world famous NSA whistleblower, after he apparently ditched his flight from Moscow to Cuba last night. One of those people is Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Snowden is "safe and healthy" and his "spirits are high," Assange told reporters begging for any scrap of information on a conference call this morning. It is this secret knowledge that has paradoxically thrust Assange's anti-secrecy outlet back into the media spotlight after a long period of decline. Now there's hints of another massive leak. Wikileaks is back, God help us all.

Ed Snowden's Great Escape: An Annotated Guide

Max Read · 06/24/13 02:32PM

On Sunday morning, Edward Snowden boarded an Aeroflot flight in Hong Kong, landing in Moscow more than 13 hours later. We think. The truth is, no one's quite sure where the NSA leaker is—Moscow? Havana? Quito? Reykjavik? (He's not on Aeroflot Flight 180, we know that much.) But we can reconstruct his movements—and speculate where he's headed.

Cord Jefferson · 06/24/13 02:01PM

A red panda missing from the National Zoo was found and captured in a bush in D.C.'s Adams Morgan neighborhood this afternoon. He was probably just after some Jumbo Slice.

What the Girls Call Murder

John Cook · 06/24/13 01:20PM

If you're anything like me, you don't need to be reminded that yet another record that shaped your musical upbringing is twenty fucking years old. But Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville was recorded in 1993, and it's a good thing because Jessica Hopper has pulled together an oral history for Spin that will make you forget all about whitechocolatespaceegg and send you careening back to the days when indie rock was a dude thing and girls didn't play guitar and a record by a young lady that mentioned sexy parts but also wasn't explicitly for dancing was novel enough to merit attention from NPR and ladies like Liz Phair were hanging out with Winona Ryder and Rosanna Arquette backstage at Beck shows (above).

What the Hell Happens Five Minutes Into This Richard Dawkins Speech?

Cord Jefferson · 06/24/13 12:27PM

World's most insufferable atheist Richard Dawkins opened Saatchi & Saatchi's New Directors Showcase at Cannes last week with a brief speech on "memes," a term and concept he introduced in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. While the first 5 minutes of Dawkins' lecture were pretty standard fare, the last 3 minutes and 47 seconds were some kind of seapunk/EDM/psychotropic mashup, complete with Dawkins coming out to do a quick ditty on an electronic woodwind instrument at the end.

Tom Scocca · 06/24/13 12:16PM

Slate cites a deeply implausible statistic in an item about masturbation habits: "A 2010 survey found that 75 percent of 16- and 17-year-old boys had masturbated in the past year." Seventy-five percent, you say. The other 25 percent didn't have their writing hands free to answer the survey.