Anna Merlan's posts - Turkish uPOST
The Brutal, Incredibly Personal Gun Politics of the Florida Governor's Race
ORLANDO, FLORIDA — Orlando is dotted with lakes and splashy roadside attractions—Disney World, Gatorland, the intensely strange evangelical theme park Holy Land Experience—but on a recent weekday morning, the weirdest sideshow in town was just east of downtown, at an upscale biker bar. Upstairs, next to a huddle of…
Write-in Candidate for Chicago Congressional Seat Just Really Doesn't Want Anyone to Vote for a Nazi
In the upcoming midterm elections, voters in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District will have the choice of Dan Lipinski, the Democratic incumbent, or Republican candidate Art Jones, a white supremacist Holocaust denier who, by way of self-endorsement, claims he hasn’t been a card-carrying member of any Nazi groups…
Here They Come Again
It was inevitable, and then it happened: Louis CK made an unannounced appearance at the Comedy Cellar on Sunday night, his first performance since he admitted in November 2017 that he masturbated in front of non-consenting women. CK, who didn’t address his sexual misconduct in his brief set, is clearly testing whether…
A Murky Scandal Involving a Powerful Punk Rock Dharma Teacher Is Dividing a Major Buddhist Community
On July 16, in the middle of a dharma talk in Venice, California—the kind of talk he’s been giving for decades, first across the country and then the world—Buddhist teacher Noah Levine’s mind was on revenge.
The Satanic Temple Is Engulfed in a Civil War Over a Decision to Hire an Attorney With a Stable of Alt-Right Clients
In January, Lucien Greaves of the Satanic Temple announced that he was considering a lawsuit against Twitter on religious discrimination grounds. In the intervening months, the decision to sue Twitter has grown into part of a controversy that’s engulfed the organization and recently led one of the Temple’s major…
It's Important and Slightly Alarming That Elle Macpherson Is Dating Anti-Vaccine Ex-Doc Andrew Wakefield
On Monday, the Daily Mail blared in one of its signature oddly capitalized headlines that model-actress Elle Macpherson was spotted kissing a “mystery man” over some root vegetables at a Miami farmers market. By Tuesday, in news that caused some of us to make an undignified gibbering noise of shock, Mystery Man was…
Here Are Some Nuclear Takes from Bryan Goldberg, the Self-Satisfied Shitlord Who Now Owns Gawker.com
On Thursday morning, the world learned that Bryan Goldberg has won the bidding for Gawker.com, the now-defunct sister site of our sister sites, which was sold as part of the bankruptcy process around Gawker Media, their now-defunct parent company. (It’s been an eventful couple of years.) Goldberg, who won the bidding…
Farewell to Brendan O'Connor, Whom We Could Not Troll No Matter How Hard We Tried
Friends: it’s been a real shit week. Our house-on-fire of a parent company, Univision, tried to lay off a huge chunk of Gizmodo Media, part of their latest, totally coherent business strategy. Through months of negotiation, our union turned those attempted layoffs into generous buyout offers. Still, everything sucks,…
Columnist Rod Dreher Unpublishes Bonkers Column Linking Anthony Bourdain's Death to Asia Argento's 'Ties to the Occult'
Rod Dreher is a conservative Christian columnist and a hot take-writer in a unique and very strange class of his own. His latest attempt was a column about Anthony Bourdain’s death (oh no), which tried to tie sin, suicide, transgender identity and witchcraft together (oh nooo), all stuffed into a piece of writing so…
The Reporter Who Exposed New York Times Star Glenn Thrush's Sexual Misconduct Says She Was the Victim of a Smear Campaign
Last November, Vox published a story by politics editor Laura McGann about New York Times politics reporter Glenn Thrush and what she called his “history of bad judgment” around young women journalists. The story detailed four women’s assertions that Thrush came onto or harassed them, usually in situations involving…
Kat Von D Comes Out as Anti-Vaccine, Which Is Really a Fucking Bummer
In a real drag bit of news for fans of top-shelf eyeliner and science, tattoo artist and makeup genius Kat Von D revealed that she’s against vaccines in an Instagram post Thursday night. Von D, who recently announced her pregnancy with new husband Leafar Seyer of the band Prayers, wrote about feeling judged for the…
The Adult Goth's Guide to Doing Your Makeup While Camping
It’s finally spring on the East Coast, and Jesus Christ, have we earned it. After a horrifying winter in which everyone’s toenails fell off and all our facial skin was wind-battered into ruin, it’s finally time to be outdoors. I hope to spend every free second either at the beach with a book about medical oddities or…
The Hollywood Reporter Gives Jeffrey Tambor and His Sexual Harassment Allegations a Sympathetic, Soft-Focus Profile
It’s been three months since Jeffrey Tambor was officially fired from the set of Transparent, following accusations by two staffers that he sexually harassed them. In a curious yet increasingly familiar move for the publication, with men accused of #MeToo-style misconduct, the Hollywood Reporter has given Tambor a…
Earlier today, Jezebel published a look at the people behind Lil Tay, a 9-year-old girl and controversial Instagram personality, whose fame is the result of participating in some extremely adult beefs. Shortly after the story was published, Alex Goller Gelbard, who works with Tay in some kind of management capacity,…
I Drove Myself Nuts Trying to Unravel the Mystery of Seemingly Unparented 9-Year-Old Instagram Shit-Talker Lil Tay
Social media stardom is a brutal Darwinistic competition, a craven and utterly shameless battle for space on our screens and in our brains carried out by a phalanx of influencers, thinkfluencers, beauty vloggers, charlatans, health quacks, spiritual phonies, and unhinged vegans. Recently, Lil Tay entered into this…
The CIA Says Mike Pompeo Didn't Fight in the Gulf War
In the frenzied game of musical chairs that is the Trump administration, CIA Director Mike Pompeo is set to become the next Secretary of State. It’s an ideal time, then, to clarify details of his biography, including a rather major one: did Pompeo, as numerous profiles have stated, fight in the Gulf War? We asked the…
Finally, the Sympathetic Article No One Asked for About How Louis C.K. Can Make His Comeback
The Hollywood Reporter has tipped a tepid toe into the still-raging waters of the #MeToo moment and decided that right now would be a great time for a friendly, entirely sympathetic piece exploring the ways Louis C.K. can make his comeback. The piece comes five months after C.K. finally admitted, following years of…
Manifest Destiny-Lite With Souvenirs: Why Assholes in Turquoise Are Flooding the Southwest
For most people in the rest of the United States, New Mexico is a sort of blank spot—an overlooked, ragged square wedged next to Texas, its loud, swaggering cousin. It’s the fifth biggest state land-mass-wise, at a little under 122,000 square miles, and one of the emptiest, with 2 million people spread out over the…
Gun Fatalism Is Reasonable in a Terrifying Country
On Monday, January 22, 2018, 15-year-old Gabe Parker was, the best anyone could tell, doing fine. The following day, he overslept, had some cereal, and then asked his mother to drive him to Marshall County High School, in Benton, Kentucky, where he was a sophomore and a trombone player in the school band. He walked…
Sunday in Parkland
PARKLAND, FLORIDA — It should not come as a shock that the gun store is in a strip mall, next to a kids’ hair salon and a wellness spa. We buy guns from all kinds of places in this country: strip malls and big box stores and parking lots and Facebook. Nor should it be any particular surprise that the strip mall is in…