Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, JML9999 and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
From USA Today: David Letterman's Final Top 10 List
Here, in his final list, are the "Top 10 things I've always wanted to say to Dave:"
10. Alec Baldwin: "Of all the talk shows, yours is the most geographically convenient to my home."
9. Barbara Walters: "Did you know you wear the same cologne as Muammar Qaddafi?"
8. Steve Martin: Your extensive plastic surgery was a necessity....and a mistake."
7. Jerry Seinfeld: "I have no idea what I'll do when you go off the air. You know what, I just thought of something: I'll be fine."
6. Jim Carrey: "Honestly Dave, I've always found you to be a bit of an over-actor." (He gesticulated wildly).
5. Chris Rock: "I'm just glad your show is being given to another white guy." (Dave: "You know, I had nothing to do with that.")
4. Julia Louis-Dreyfus: "Thanks for letting me take part in another hugely disappointing series finale." (Seinfeld smirks). (Dave: "I had nothing to do with that either.")
3. Peyton Manning: "Dave, you are to comedy what I am to comedy."
2. Tina Fey: "Thanks for finally proving men can be funny."
1. Bill Murray: "Dave, I'll never have the money I owe you."
From
The Atlantic:
Why It Pays to Be a Jerk
Of all the issues that preoccupy the modern mind—Nature or nurture? Is there life in outer space? Why can’t America field a decent soccer team?—it’s hard to think of one that has attracted so much water-cooler philosophizing yet so little scientific inquiry. Does it pay to be nice? Or is there an advantage to being a jerk?
We have some well-worn aphorisms to steer us one way or the other, courtesy of Machiavelli (“It is far better to be feared than loved”), Dale Carnegie (“Begin with praise and honest appreciation”), and Leo Durocher (who may or may not have actually said “Nice guys finish last”). More recently, books like The Power of Nice and The Upside of Your Dark Side have continued in the same vein: long on certainty, short on proof.
So it was a breath of fresh air when, in 2013, there appeared a book that brought data into the debate. The author, Adam Grant, is a 33-year-old Wharton professor, and his best-selling book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, offers evidence that “givers”—people who share their time, contacts, or know-how without expectation of payback—dominate the top of their fields. “This pattern holds up across the board,” Grant wrote—from engineers in California to salespeople in North Carolina to medical students in Belgium. Salted with anecdotes of selfless acts that, following a Horatio Alger plot, just happen to have been repaid with personal advancement, the book appears to have swung the tide of business opinion toward the happier, nice-guys-finish-first scenario.
And yet suspicions to the contrary remain—fueled, in part, by another book: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. The average business reader, worried Tom McNichol in an online article for The Atlantic soon after the book’s publication, might come away thinking: “See! Steve Jobs was an asshole and he was one of the most successful businessmen on the planet. Maybe if I become an even bigger asshole I’ll be successful like Steve.”
From the
New York Times:
'Opt Out’ Becomes Anti-Test Rallying Cry in New York State
It started with a speech in the fall, to parents who had gathered in the auditorium to learn what to expect during the nascent school year.
“I spoke at the open house and said, ‘We hope you’ll opt out of the tests,’ ” said Heather Roberts, vice president of the Bennett Intermediate School parent teacher association. Last year, 92 percent of eligible students in the Catskill Mountains district that includes Boiceville took their standardized English tests. “Jaws dropped.”
Soon there were forums, T-shirts with snappy slogans and fliers translated into Spanish. During pickups and play dates, in classrooms and at lunch, parents and students would ask one another: “Are you opting out?”
By the first day of testing in April, two of every three students in the district who were expected to take the exams were refusing to lift their pencils.
From
The Seattle Times:
For some parents, search for better schools could lead to jail
Just over a year ago, Hamlet Garcia climbed up the steps of a stately courthouse in Norristown, Pa., wondering how much longer he would be free.
The Philadelphia resident and his wife, Olesia, an insurance agent, were about to go on trial for theft of services, an offense usually reserved for cable-service pilferers and restaurant-bill dodgers. Their alleged crime: stealing an education for their 8-year-old daughter, Fiorella.
He was staring at possibly seven years behind bars.
Garcia, who came to the United States from Cuba when he was 18, remembers thinking one thing as he headed into the courthouse: “This isn’t the kind of thing that happens in America.”
From
NPR:
Islamic State Takes Control Of Ancient City Of Palmyra
The self-declared Islamic State has taken control of Palmyra, an ancient city that's on UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites.
Palmyra and Tadmur, the modern town that adjoins it, have been the scene of recent fighting between Syrian government troops and fighters from the Islamic State. Multiple news reports say government troops left the city ahead of an advance by the rebels.
Last week, UNESCO appealed to Syria's warring factions to "make every effort to prevent" Palmyra's destruction. Today, the organization's head called for a cessation of hostilities.
"I am deeply concerned by the situation at the site of Palmyra," Director-General Irina Bokova said. "The fighting is putting at risk one of the most significant sites in the Middle East, and its civilian population."
From the
Los Angeles Times:
A public look at Al Qaeda leader's private library
Suffice it to say Osama bin Laden's bedside table held no beach reads or steamy novels.
But the Obama administration's release Wednesday of more than 400 documents, reports, books and other materials that were seized by U.S. Navy SEALs during the 2011 raid that killed the Al Qaeda chief in Pakistan provides new insight to the mind-set of the man who sponsored the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The trove, the largest of its kind, suggests Bin Laden closely followed U.S. counter-terrorism policy and debates, regularly downloading congressional hearing transcripts and reports, unclassified military papers from West Point and Justice Department indictments of some of his adherents.
He also downloaded applications for U.S. passports, visas and other immigration documents, presumably with an eye toward sending more skyjackers or other terrorists to America.
From
Reuters:
About 120 guns found at scene of deadly Texas gang fight
About 120 guns and 160 knives were recovered from the scene of a deadly Sunday battle between rival motorcycle gangs in the Texas city of Waco that left nine people dead, police said on Wednesday as they sharply dropped their tally of weapons found.
Gang members hid weapons in sacks of flour and bags of chips at the Twin Peaks restaurant, where they attacked each other in a fight that was likely set off by a smoldering turf battle, Waco Police said.
A spokesman earlier in the day said about 1,000 weapons had been recovered, but police in a later statement said that number was overestimated and the actual figure was about 320.
Those weapons included firearms, knives, clubs, brass knuckles and chains with padlocks attached to them, Waco Police said in a Facebook post.
From the
New York Times:
Five global banks to pay $5.7 billion in fines over rate rigging
On Wednesday, four large global banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland — pleaded guilty to a series of federal crimes over a scheme to manipulate the value of the world’s currencies. The Justice Department accused the banks of collusion in one of the largest and yet least regulated markets, noting that at one bank one trader remarked “the less competition the better.”
That lack of oversight, coupled with the pressure to squeeze profits from a relatively middling business, set the stage for this scandal, one that unfolded nearly every day for five years. The crimes described on Wednesday also painted the portrait of something more systemic: a Wall Street culture that enabled many big banks to break the law even after years of regulatory black marks after the crisis.
“If you aint cheating, you aint trying,” one trader at Barclays wrote in an online chat room where prosecutors say the price-fixing scheme was hatched.
From the
Chicago Tribune:
$211M settlement reached with Transocean in 2010 oil spill
A committee of lawyers representing businesses and individuals claiming damages from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill announced a $211 million settlement Wednesday with Transocean Ltd., owner of the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
In a separate development, oil giant BP — which leased the rig from Transocean — reached settlements resolving years of complicated spill-related litigation with Transocean, and with contractor Halliburton, which did cement work on the rig before it exploded in April 2010.
Court rulings have put the brunt of responsibility for the disaster on BP. But Transocean and Halliburton also were found to have some responsibility.
From
CNN:
Wildlife, pristine beaches focus of 'aggressive' oil spill cleanup
Oil pipeline company officials said Wednesday that as many as 105,000 gallons of crude oil may have spilled from a ruptured pipeline on the California coast.
The 24-inch pipeline ruptured along the Santa Barbara coast, leaking the oil near Refugio State Beach, a protected state park, just before Memorial Day weekend marks the start of the summer tourist season.
Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline based the estimate -- what it called a worst-case scenario -- on the typical flow rate of oil and the elevation of the pipeline, said Rick McMichael, the company's director of pipeline operations.
The pipeline is still underground, so it will take a few days to determine how much crude oil was actually spilled.
From
Ars Technica:
GamerGate critic posts death threat voicemail after inaction by prosecutor
Game developer and tech diversity advocate Brianna Wu has been complaining about the lack of action by a prosecuting attorney in response to a death threat voicemail she said she received. On Tuesday, she posted a copy of the voicemail.
Wu's op-ed article at feminist pop-culture site The Mary Sue raised new questions about whether local or national law enforcement agencies were adequately responding to a wave of anonymous threats she and other women in the game industry have recently faced. The article included a recording of a voicemail left on Wu's personal phone that called her a "little fucking whore" and threatened to "slit [her] throat."
Ars was sent a copy of the voicemail with its originating Columbus, Ohio phone number attached, along with call records indicating that the threat was left on Wu's voicemail on May 12. Wu said that she received more threatening calls from the same number on Wednesday. She has not called the offending number back as per advice from her legal counsel.
From
The Guardian:
Should Andrew Jackson be removed from the $20, as Hillary Clinton suggests?
Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem to be a fan of a former Democratic president. Yet unlike any potshots she might take at Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter – or her husband – her stance doesn’t seem to have any negative political consequences.
On Thursday, Clinton’s Twitter account voiced support for a growing effort to remove Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman, an abolitionist who led several dozen slaves on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to freedom in the 1850s. (The Clinton campaign did not respond to multiple requests to further elucidate her position.)
Yet, despite the fact that Jackson has long been considered an icon in his home state of Tennessee, lawmakers there do not seem particularly eager to fight for his place on American currency with the same gusto that the aggressive seventh president waged his battles.
From
Al Jazeera:
Obama casts climate change as urgent national security challenge
President Barack Obama on Wednesday pressed for concerted action to mitigate the effects of climate change, describing it as a national security issue with urgent and long-term consequences.
“I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country,” he said during the Coast Guard Academy’s graduation ceremony.
Speaking to cadets, who he said were already battling climate change, Obama said, “This is not just a problem for countries on the coast or for certain regions of the world. Climate change will impact every country on the planet. No nation is immune.”
From
BBC News:
Why slightly flabby middle-aged guys are suddenly sexy
Young women are getting into the "Dad Bod" - but some think it's a recipe for laziness - while others are calling for a celebration of the female equivalent.
When 19-year-old university student Mackenzie Pearson wrote an article extolling the virtues of the slightly out-of-shape man, the reaction was huge - tens of thousands have been chatting about it on Twitter and Facebook.
"In case you haven't noticed lately, girls are all about that dad bod," she wrote. "The dad bod says, 'I go to the gym occasionally, but I also drink heavily on the weekends and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time.'"
But amidst the raves for the less-chiselled physique, some are asking whether it's just an excuse for men to slack off and neglect their health - while others would like the "Mum Bod" to be considered sexy too.
From the
Associated Press:
Oregon to test pay-per-mile idea as replacement for gas tax
Oregon is about to embark on a first-in-the-nation program that aims to charge car owners not for the fuel they use, but for the miles they drive.
The program is meant to help the state raise more revenue to pay for road and bridge projects at a time when money generated from gasoline taxes are declining across the country, in part, because of greater fuel efficiency and the increasing popularity of fuel-efficient, hybrid and electric cars.
Starting July 1, up to 5,000 volunteers in Oregon can sign up to drive with devices that collect data on how much they have driven and where. The volunteers will agree to pay 1.5 cents for each mile traveled on public roads within Oregon, instead of the tax now added when filling up at the pump.
Some electric and hybrid car owners, however, say the new tax would be unfair to them and would discourage purchasing of green vehicles.
From
ESPN:
Roger Goodell says Kraft decision won't affect Tom Brady appeal
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft's decision to accept the league's punishment will not affect quarterback Tom Brady's appeal of a four-game suspension, adding that he's open to any new information Brady may provide.
"The decision that Robert made was his decision. I admire and respect Robert. We've had plenty of discussions over the last couple of weeks, and this was his initiative and something he wanted to do," Goodell said Wednesday at the conclusion of the league's spring meeting. "I certainly admire the step he took. We may disagree on things but that's not unusual. It happens."
Goodell sidestepped a question on whether he would remove himself as arbitrator of Brady's appeal, as the NFL Players Association has formally requested, but at the same time said he looked forward to hearing from Brady directly. Goodell said he was unaware of a date being scheduled for the appeal.
From
Vice News:
Elon Musk and Craig Venter Want to Print Life on Mars
Printing life is not something that's going to be done tomorrow, but, as we've covered before, it's not a line of thinking that's totally unprecedented or outside the realm of possibility. Some of NASA's very best scientists believe that in order to colonize other planets, we'll need to encode the human genome into bacteria, send those bacteria into space, and reassemble the genomic data they carry once they finally land on another planet.
This is a school of thought that Musk also subscribes to, which is notable, because Musk is, at the moment, the single human most likely to enable our colonization of other planets.
Musk doesn't want to print humans, per se. Instead, he wants to print bacteria and other organisms that will eventually help us terraform Mars using a “digital biological converter” developed by Venter that can take take raw DNA code, implant it into a “universal recipient cell,” and bring it to life.
From
The Telegraph:
Most European men descended from just three ancestors
Most European men descend from just three Bronze Age dominant forefathers who began a ‘population explosion’ several thousand years ago.
A research team from the University of Leicester looked at the DNA sequences of 334 men from 17 European and Middle Eastern populations. The study shows that almost two out of three modern European men (64 per cent) were descended from just three males.
Archaeologists have been puzzled about whether European populations started to surge in the stone age or later. But the new research appears to suggest that there was a rapid expansion of communities in the succeeding Bronze Age.
From
/Film:
Paramount Wants ‘Star Trek 3′ to Be Less ‘Star Trek-y’
For the upcoming Star Trek 3, titled Star Trek Beyond, co-writer and co-star Simon Pegg recently said the studio felt an early script for the movie was “a little bit too Star Trek-y.” That suggests the studio wants something that’s less “Star Trek-y.” What exactly does that mean? Pegg was talking to Radio Times Magazine (via Trek Movie) about Star Trek Beyond when he said the following:
They had a script for Star Trek that wasn’t really working for them. I think the studio was worried that it might have been a little bit too Star Trek-y.
That’s most likely the script Roberto Orci, who was originally going to direct the film, was doing. Orci is a hardcore Trek fan who was rumored to have gone very deep into the sci-fi bones of the franchise. Pegg himself doesn’t go into specifics about what he means but does add this:
Avengers Assemble, which is a pretty nerdy, comic-book, supposedly niche thing, made $1.5 billion dollars. Star Trek: Into Darkness made half a billion, which is still brilliant. But it means that, according to the studio, there’s still $1 billion worth of box office that don’t go and see Star Trek. And they want to know why.
From
The Hollywood Reporter:
'Mad Men' Creator Matthew Weiner Explains Series Finale, Character Surprises and What's Next
Matthew Weiner has officially spoken on the Mad Men season finale.
The showrunner followed through on his promised "decompression" of the final episode with a discussion with novelist A.M. Homes on Wednesday at the New York Public Library. The chat marked his first (and likely only) interview to touch on Sunday's series finale.
"I can't believe this happened, and I'm so grateful we got to do it and we were allowed to end it how and when we wanted to," he said. "I wanted it to feel that there was a vision and a point to the entire thing. ... I'm so pleased that people enjoyed it and seemed to enjoy it exactly as it was intended. You can't get a 100-percent approval rating, or you've done something dumb."
From
Defamer:
Marina Abramović Institute Issues Apology to Jay Z
In an interview published yesterday, Abramovic alleged that Jay Z had negotiated her appearance in his “Picasso Baby” video—which was inspired by Abramovic’s performance “The Artist is Present”—by promising a donation to her eponymous institute, but had failed to follow through. Abramvoic said she was “pissed” and felt “used.”
Today, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, the director of the “Picasso Baby” video, spoke to artnews.net about the very literal receipt provided to Jay Z upon his donation:
“Thank you for your donation,” says a receipt from the Hudson, New York institute, according to New York dealer and “Picasso Baby” video producer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn of Salon 94, who read parts of the document to artnet News over the phone Wednesday morning.
The receipt is marked with the number W984804 and acknowledges a substantial donation, Greenberg Rohatyn said.
In a statement, the Marina Abramovic Institute said that Abramovic herself had not been informed about the donation and that “appropriate actions” had been taken to reconcile the matter.
From
Rolling Stone:
The Grateful Dead's Long Goodbye
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead, the band's surviving "core four" members will reunite for five concerts in Chicago and Santa Clara, California, starting in late June. But as contributing editor David Browne reports in the magazine's eye-opening cover story (on newsstands this Friday), the road to these celebratory "Fare Thee Well" shows has been a strange and twisty one. Featuring interviews with the band's Bob Weir, Phish's Trey Anastasio (who will be filling in for the late Jerry Garcia at the shows), concert promoter Peter Shapiro and others, the story is the most comprehensive peek inside the world of the post-Garcia Dead and the preparation for what the group is calling its "last stand."
Even for well-read Deadheads, the article will be an surprising look into how the band members grappled with life and music without their charismatic anti-leader and how they managed to overcome frayed relationships and reunite one last time for the historic concerts this summer. The story explores the post-Garcia business issues that often came between the musicians – Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart – and the fraught reunion tours that led some to wonder if they would ever reunite again. As Hart told RS in previously unpublished comments from 2012, "Maybe time will heal a lot of the bad feelings we felt . . . As long as we're above ground, anything is possible."
From
People:
Facts vs. Fibs: Rebel Wilson's Real Age Is 35, Records Confirm
After much controversy, Rebel Wilson's age has been confirmed to be 35.
The Pitch Perfect 2 actress became the center of a media firestorm earlier this week after an Australian tabloid published a report that Wilson had taken liberties with her age – and more, including her name and where she grew up.
Business records filed with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission show that Wilson, who has previously said she was 29, was in fact born on March 2, 1980, making her 35 years old, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Wilson also fudged the truth about her name. The Australian Electoral Roll lists her real name as Melanie Elizabeth Bownds, though she later changed her last name to Wilson, as has been previously reported. Last year, however, she told The Australian Women's Weekly that her real name was in fact Rebel, and that Melanie and Elizabeth were middle names she went by at school to avoid being teased.
From
US Weekly:
Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe Slut-Shamed in Season 11 Supertease? Fans React on Social Media
Crazy things ahead. Part II of The Bachelorette's season 11 premiere ended with a dramatic, five-minute-long supertease focusing on Kaitlyn Bristowe's "big mistake" after sleeping with one of her suitors way too soon. On social media, numerous fans and critics called out producers for slut-shaming the newest Bachelorette for her choice.
"If the physical part of the relationship isn't there for me, that's the deal breaker," Bristowe, 29, said at one point, only for viewers to later discover that she's had sex with one of the suitors.
"I don't understand it just happened," she continued tearfully in the shocking preview. "I don't think I'm a bad person, and I'm not ashamed of myself... One of those relationships went too far, too fast. And I made a big mistake."
On social media, the reactions to the supertease ranged from resentment about how Bristowe was portrayed to disdain directly aimed at the Bachelorette herself.
From
Billboard:
Wiz Khalifa Tops Hot 100, Taylor Swift Re-Enters Following BBMAs Video Premiere
Wiz Khalifa's Furious 7 soundtrack smash "See You Again," featuring Charlie Puth, rules the Billboard Hot 100 for a sixth week.
Plus, Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" re-enters the Hot 100 at No. 53 after its star-heavy video premiered Sunday (May 17), kicking off the Billboard Music Awards, which aired on ABC.
"Again," released on Atlantic Records and promoted to radio by Roadrunner Promotions, spends a seventh week at No. 1 on the Digital Songs chart with 229,000 downloads sold (down 9 percent) in the week ending May 17, according to Nielsen Music. With Wiz Khalifa and Puth having performed the song on the BBMAs, the track, like Swift's "Blood," along with all songs performed on the telecast (which started at 8 p.m. ET, just before the end of the tracking week), should likely show gains on next week's charts, as they'll reflect a full week of activity following their TV exposure. In the meantime, "Again" adds a key sales honor: it passes 2 million in sales, now at nearly 2.2 million to-date.
From
Salon:
Your sex number is your business: The intimate secret your partner has no right to know
Sometimes I’ll start to tell my boyfriend of three years a story from my sexual past, and then pause with the first few words hanging in the air like a thought bubble. Should I keep going, or is this truly TMI? I ask myself, making a split-second decision. I’m obviously well aware he knows I wasn’t a virgin when we met, but even though he’s heard his fair share about who I bedded before him (directly from me, though he’s learned plenty from my writing as well)—and vice versa—I still pause when launching into a sex story with him in a way I don’t with my friends. Maybe it’s a story where I cheated on someone, or one where an ex disclosed an STI. I used to think that in the interest of honesty, because we are in it for the long haul, I should share with him every bit of my former life, from my saddest drunken hookups to my deepest relationships.
But the longer we’re together, the more I realize that it behooves both of us to be selective in our oversharing. When he tells me stories of his much wilder college days, I often stare at him, shocked that the very same person who comes home and cooks dinner every night, who’s fastidious about folding the blankets on our couch just so, has done things I’ve never even heard of.
For many people, the sexual history discussion centers around the number of sexual partners you’ve had, which Elizabeth Bernstein called “one of the most private pieces of personal information we have” in a recent Wall Street Journal article. It’s as if knowing this single data point will reveal the kind of person you really are. For me, though, I’ve never asked my partner or any previous partners their exact number. If it’s come up, that’s fine, but I’m not going to go diffing for it. Why? Because a number alone doesn’t actually tell you all that much. Maybe a high (that should really be in quotes, because of course “high” is subjective) number means they had lots of casual sex with different partners, or maybe it means they frequented sex parties where multiple hookups happened in a short span of time. Maybe they were single for a decade and dated here and there, or they were single for a very busy month. And if their number is lower than expected, that can raise questions as well.
From
Slate:
Help! My Future Mother-in-Law Wants to Wear Her Wedding Dress to My Wedding.
Q. Wedding Dress? Me Too!: My future mother-in-law would like to wear her wedding dress to our wedding. I’m less concerned about the dress and more concerned about what this says about our future relationship. She is a very kind, considerate person, and I am certain that she knows this is not a very nice thing to do. What could her possible motivations be and what should I do about it? I’m inclined to let her wear whatever she wants, as it doesn’t bother me as much as maybe something else would. Should I pick my battles, as they say? Or will not saying something make me seem like a pushover?
A: It’s not that this is a not-nice thing to do. It’s that it’s a deranged thing to do. No one—no one—is going to be confused about who the bride will be. But the more literary-minded of your guests will wonder how Miss Havisham got an invitation to your wedding. I often advise that in the matter of in-law problems, the blood relation has first go at addressing this issue. Your fiancé should tell his mother he’s heard about her plan. He can say that she’s a grown woman and of course can wear whatever she likes, but that he’s worried she will embarrass herself by showing up to his wedding in her old wedding gown. Then if she decides to wear some puff-sleeved, high-necked horror from another era, just smile and tell her how happy you are to see her.