Florida is Now Hiring Python Hunters

Robert Kessler · 12/07/12 02:38PM

Florida is looking for participants in the most dangerous game. No, not that most dangerous game: python hunting. Burmese pythons are actually a major problem for Florida, specifically in the southern part of the state, where they are decimating natural flora and fauna like bugs, probably, and narwhals and unicorns, maybe (I have no idea what lives in the Everglades).

'Kill Those Fucking Yankees Slowly and Painfully': the 'Anti-American' Past of 'Gangnam Style' Rapper Psy

Max Read · 12/07/12 01:20PM

Last night, most of us went to bed in a world where pudgy Korean rapper and viral sensation Psy was globally beloved for bringing us "Gangnam Style," the "Macarena" of 2012. But this morning we woke up to a different world — a colder, darker world — in which the internet was afire with the claim that Psy had performed at an anti-American concert in Seoul in 2004, where he rapped: "Kill those fucking Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives/Kill those fucking Yankees who ordered them to torture/Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers/Kill them all slowly and painfully."

Hamilton Nolan · 12/07/12 01:12PM

By 2014, cell phone owners will be able to text 911 for help. I-A-M-L-O-S-I-N-G-B-L-O-O-[message ends].

Heritage, Not Hate: The Jim DeMint Adventure

Mobutu Sese Seko · 12/07/12 12:40PM

If you're one of those Democrats who's been riding a huge schadenfreude high since November 6, you probably took news of South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint's retirement in the customary way. With the online equivalent of going "WHOOOOOOOO" out of a limousine's sunroof, after doing a shooter with one of those awesome names like "Sex Intercourse with Boobs Outside."

Online Paywalls and the Future of Media: A Few Hard Truths

Hamilton Nolan · 12/07/12 12:10PM

Yesterday, both The Daily Beast (or, more accurately, whatever Tina Brown can toss together after they've absorbed the corpse of Newsweek and laid a bunch of people off) and the Washington Post announced that they may be instituting online paywalls in the near future, making readers pay to read more than a handful of articles. In many ways, online paywalls are the future of online media. But that doesn't mean they're going to work for everyone. A few unavoidable facts that media executives should consider:

David Axelrod Shaves Off His 40-Year-Old Stache for Charity

Neetzan Zimmerman · 12/07/12 11:05AM

Though he won his bet with Morning Joe co-cost Joe Scarborough that President Obama would win Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania in the presidential election, campaign adviser David Axelrod lost his bet that Scarborough wouldn't be able to raise over $1 million toward epilepsy research.

'Kiss and Tell' UK PR Man Arrested Over 70s-Era Sex Crimes

Hamilton Nolan · 12/07/12 10:20AM

Ever since the Jimmy Savile sex scandal brought a bunch of BBC executives tumbling down, the UK has been, shall we say, more sensitive to the fact that famous people might have committed a bunch of sex crimes back in the Good Old Days, when sex crimes were not something that famous people much worried about. The latest famous person to be arrested and questioned about sex crimes? One of the UK's most prominent PR men, who specializes in selling tawdry sex tell-alls to the tabloids.

Jordan Sargent · 12/07/12 12:02AM

Large, bearded rapper Rick Ross canceled two concerts this weekend because of death threats from gangs.