David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow look at a new report on juvenile prison rape. I’m not going to include any of the anecdotes or hard numbers, but be assured, everything about it is absolutely horrific.

Listen up, all you broads who are worried about your figure: Some study says that living with a man will make you catch fat. You’ll gain even more weight if you have his babies, but just by virtue of sharing space with him you’re going to pack on the pounds. Still, with research showing that even spinsters who no man could love manage to put on a ten-spot weightwise, is it really fair to blame men for the inevitable enlargening of the fairer sex? Yeah, why not? They pretty much ruin everything else, might as well put this one on their tab too.

I am actually very excited that Tucker Carlson’s website, the Daily Caller, is finally launching on Monday! (I will be calling it The Gaily Dollar, of course, but also I will be a devoted reader.) Also, the more independent web operations there are on the Internet, the better. I also think it is very brave to spend $3 million on the first year alone. If I’d spent $3 million on our first year, most of it would have been on like Kiton suits and PIZZA PARTIES FOR EVERYONE. Also to admire, this belief: “When was the last time you saw, on television, a straight explanation of what’s in the competing House and Senate health care bills? What’s in them? People want to know that!” I would like to think that as well! And of course our favorite quote from Tucker: “I keep reading all of these Nick Denton memos for Gawker, these ferocious memos to writers where it’s like ‘get a million pageviews this week or you’re fired!’ Maybe we’ll have to do that! But it’s not my personality at all.” (via)

Absolutely entertaining interview with Alan Thicke, of all people. Really, you’ll enjoy it.

You will probably have seen this “Styles” piece on the difficulties of breaking up in the digital era already. It is pretty much what you would expect: There’s plenty to mock, plenty to feel smug about, just enough to evoke a small bit of pity, etc.; you’ll all have your own favorite parts. Here’s what surprised me.

Sharing passwords to e-mail accounts, bank accounts and photo-sharing sites is the new currency of intimacy….According to the Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center, one in five teenagers polled shares online passwords as a way to build trust and foster romance. Grown-ups, explained Lee Rainie, the project’s director, are exhibiting similar behavior.

Is that real? Are grown-ups really doing that? I mean, kids I get. Kids are idiots. That’s why sexting is such a fun story for everyone. But do modern-day adults really share their e-mail passwords with each other in a bid to boost trust? Man, I do not understand anything about how this new world works.

“There are other, perhaps better, Republican candidates in the race, but I am rooting for McMahon for entertainment value. She used to be a central character in cable wrestling shows whose scripts had family members shrieking, betraying and, occasionally, slugging one another. One episode featured a villain who broke into the ‘palatial McMahon headquarters’ while Linda was recovering from a neck injury that she had received when an aggrieved wrestler flipped her upside down and slammed her head onto the floor. ‘You are a rather aggressive beauty, aren’t you?’ he breathed, before forcing a kiss upon her resistant lips and promising to break both her son’s legs.”
-Gail Collins assessess the candidacy of Linda McMahon, wife of World Wrestling Federation founder Vince. McMahon is seeking the Republican nomination for the seat Chris Dodd announced yesterday that he will give up. It would be cool if Jesse Ventura came and interrupted a stump speech by bashing her with a prop metal folding chair.

Could the radiation beamed at your head through your cell phone actually save you from Alzheimer’s disease? That’s what some scientists from Florida are suggesting, after conducting experiments on mice in which the rodents were exposed to the electro-magnetic fields associated with portable phones for a period of nine months. Turns out that “the Alzheimer’s mice performed as well on tests measuring memory and thinking skills as aged mice without dementia. If older Alzheimer’s mice already showing memory problems were exposed to the electro-magnetic waves, their memory impairment disappeared.” Scientists caution that further research needs to be conducted, and also note that once you teach mice how to use cell phones it’s impossible to get them off and they start having loud and lengthy conversations without regard for anyone else in the surrounding area. Still, some hope!

David: “On whether Snooki would film a sex tape: ‘I don’t want people to watch me doing that. It’s a private thing.’ (Snooks did share that she’s taped some past encounters with guys, but long before Jersey Shore!)”
David: “On whether Ronnie’s taped any past hookups: ‘I’m pretty sure I already deleted any sex tapes from my phone.’”
Choire: I love that we use the phrase “sex tapes” still. David, what do the kids really call “sex tapes” now?
Choire: Since they have never seen a tape!
David: Kids seem to be into sexting!
David: I’ve heard?
David: idk
David: :[
David: (idk = I don’t know)
Choire: Yes, thanks.
David: ^__^
Meeting ends suddenly.

I had no idea. You know when in your mind you have a maybe-fond or at least neutral-plus impression of someone and then you meet them or see them talk and you suddenly have an overwhelmingly powerful aversion to them? (You know, like with Philip Johnson, or Jean-Paul Sartre, or Adam Gopnik?) Well, this did it for me.

Porntip Rojanasunan-Thailand’s top forensic scientist-sounds pretty damn cool.