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Which Athlete Has a Very Gay Valentine?

Brian Moylan · 02/14/11 10:50AM

This sports star dates women publicly, but he's already given his heart to another man. This on-screen couple is being blackmailed with naked pictures by a prostitute, and this banker thinks he is more important than he really is. They're all just playing the game.

More Demonstrations Across Middle East

Jeff Neumann · 02/14/11 08:21AM

Following the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, countries all across the Middle East and North Africa are seeing small but growing anti-government protests, proving that the status quo is no longer sustainable. Here's a quick look at what's happening today in the region:

Irina Werning's Photographic Re-Enactments

Max Read · 02/14/11 01:43AM

"I love old photos," photographer Irina Werning writes. "As soon as I step into someone else's house, I start sniffing for them." Last year, Werning asked friends and family to "re-enact" old photos of themselves for an ongoing project, which she christened "Back to the Future." This is Pancho, in 1983 and again in 2010, in Buenos Aires. (Werning's collection is reminiscent of fellow photographer Ze Frank's Young Me Now Me project—which, like Back to the Future, shot to the top of Reddit—but with even more exacting production values.)

Bieber Fans Attack Esperanza Spalding's Wikipedia Page

Max Read · 02/13/11 11:06PM

If you were just Googling "Esperanza Spalding"—tonight's surprise winner of the Grammy for Best New Artist—you may have been surprised to learn from her Wikipedia page that "SHE IS F****** REATARD," or that her middle name is either "Justin" or "Quesadilla," or, for that matter, that she beat out "Nominee and gay favorite Justina Bieber" for the award. Well! Far be it from us to cast aspersion on the accuracy of a user-edited font of knowledge like Wikipedia, but it certainly seems possible that fans of losing nominee Justin Bieber (or, perhaps, people who like to throw poop around the internet) may have been "vandalizing" her Wikipedia page, adding possibly-untrue facts like:

Andrew W.K. Apparently Crashed 4chan by Partying Too Hard

Max Read · 02/13/11 09:00PM

What's musician/party god Andrew W.K. doing for the Grammys? Crashing anarchic image-board 4chan by "partying too hard"—that is, hanging out and answering questions, apparently. W.K. popped by the site's music board /mu/ (bearing a site-standard identity-verifying photograph) and answered a few questions over two different threads, in the process slowing the whole site down and causing brief outages. The first one, which was locked is here; the second is here.

Lady Gaga Arrives at the Grammys In a Giant Egg

Adrian Chen · 02/13/11 06:08PM

Lady Gaga arrived at the Grammys tonight inside of a translucent cocoon, carried on a litter by a troupe of shirtless gogo dancers. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about this. In fact, bystanders were surprised that the usually flamboyant Lady Gaga chose to wear such a run-of-the-mill outfit on the red carpet.

Man Admits Trying to Hire Hit Man on Facebook

Adrian Chen · 02/13/11 05:15PM

19 year-old Corey Christian Adams raped a girl in West Chester, Pennyslvania while she was blackout drunk. When she called him up and confronted him about it afterwards, he post a Facebook status update asking for help dealing with his victim: "I got 500 on a girls head who wants that bread? Hit me up anyway possible." After police confronted him about the allegations, he wrote another post saying that he "needed this girl knocked off right now."

Google's Search Result Doping Scandal

Adrian Chen · 02/13/11 01:30PM

The Times today has a fascinating account of the lengths some companies go to game Google's search algorithm and get their websites listed higher on results. Times reporter David Segal looked into why J.C. Penney was ranked No. 1 in a suspiciously high number of searches. Turns out they, or someone working on their behalf, were paying to have thousands of links to J.C. Penney planted on spammy backwater websites. Google unwittingly took these links as legitimate and J.C. Penney was catapulted to the top of the search ranks, just in time for the 2010 Holiday shopping season.

Cam'ron on the Bowery

Jeff Neumann · 02/12/11 04:30PM

Just before 3 am on Friday at the Bowery Poetry Club, a private Fashion Week kick-off party was starting to wind down. Hundreds of drunk partygoers had left or were on their way out, while several took turns puking and sleeping on the sidewalk nearby. But the dedicated stayed put, waiting for the night's rumored special guest, Harlem rapper Cam'ron.

Anonymous Hackers Launch Wikileaks for Normal People

Adrian Chen · 02/12/11 01:39PM

Last week, the loose-knit hacking collective Anonymous stole over 50,000 emails from security researcher Aaron Barr. Now they're launching the Wikileaks-style Anonleaks.ru, to make it easy for anyone to browse Barr and his colleagues' private emails. Want to read the excruciating love letter a security company executive sent her husband?

Photo Opportunity

Keenen Thompson · 02/11/11 05:55PM

It is that time again to participate in a caption contest, for a chance to win some classy prizes. We're giving away two prints from photographer Frank Zurita.

What's Opening in Theaters Today

Richard Lawson · 02/11/11 05:48PM

Treat yourself to a movie this chilly February weekend, because of all the things to do to keep warm, sitting in a movie theater is one of the more wholesome. Opening in theaters today we have Jen Aniston pretending she's married, Justin Bieber pretending he cares about his fans, and Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell pretending they haven't noticed what's happening between them.

What's Next for Egypt?

Jim Newell · 02/11/11 04:25PM

Egypt has finally dumped its arrogant, paternalistic dictator of three decades in the largest country in the Arab world. That's quite an achievement for a suppressive police state after only two to three weeks of protests that weren't very organized to begin with. But what comes next? Will pure democracy just kind of "appear"? Or does an impossible process of constitutional negotiations between the people, the army, the Muslim Brotherhood, business leaders, and foreign powers need to take place over the next year before anything even approaching a stable and responsive political system emerges? Unfortunately it's that second scenario, the "impossible process of constitutional negotiation" one, that's realistic.