The story of Pop.com and its flameout two decades ago reveals how Hollywood has always wanted what the internet has.

The Vermont senator is interested in joining Joe Biden's Cabinet, should his former primary rival defeat President Donald Trump.

Uber drivers say the company unlawfully pressured them to support a ballot initiative that would make gig workers independent contractors, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court by a proposed class of California drivers. The suit alleges Uber used a coercive campaign of misinformation to exert pressure on drivers to advocate and vote for the passage of Proposition 22, which would overturn a California law that makes it difficult for the gig companies to be classified as contractors. If the workers were classified as employees, they would be entitled to overtime, minimum wage and other benefits. According to the complaint Uber, Lyft and other gig economy giants invested nearly $200 million into the campaign “Yes on 22.” The drivers in the lawsuit say they were faced with a “barrage of misinformation” about the ballot initiative through pop-ups on the Uber app, which made misleading representations about driver benefits under Proposition 22 including regarding accident insurance, earnings guarantees, scheduling, and anti-discrimination protections. One such pop-up only provides the opportunity for drivers to select “Yes on Prop. 22" or “OK,” to exit, which pressures drivers to accept Uber’s political stance, the complaint alleges. “What Uber is doing here that really crosses the line is the way they are soliciting drivers to support Prop 22,” said David Lowe, attorney with Rudy, Exelrod, Zieff & Lowe in San Francisco. “They are using the app they control to ask drivers to weigh in, and at the same time telling drivers you’ll have to reapply for your job. They’ll know who toed the line and who didn’t.” He said his firm also filed charges with the state labor agency against Lyft, Instacart and other gig companies involved in the Prop 22 campaign.

A new attack website put up by the Madison Cawthorn campaign includes an explicitly racist broadside against his opponent, Moe Davis (D-NC), for associating himself with people who want to “ruin white males.” For real. The website, MoeTaxes.com takes…

You know something is incontrovertibly true when even The New York Times—the journalistic paragon of staid, down-the-middle, gotta-hear-both-sides coverage—can’t even bring itself to hedge. It is through applying this principle today that we can say, without any hesitation, that Yi qi, a new type of dinosaur recently discovered in China, was a total fuckin’ piece of crap. Let’s dive into the specs on this bad boy. According to the Times, Yi qi was first discovered by a farmer in 2015, and was found to have been in possession of a bizarre anatomy. Not only did the little dino have bat-like wings, it also possessed an “extraordinary long bone jutting out from its wrist,” which one of the scientists quoted in the Times described as “like Edward Scissorhands.” Naturally, paleontologists went about trying to figure how this beastie would have even gone about flying. Through the use of some fancy lasers and soft-tissue analysis, they were able to determine what Yi qi’s wings might have actually looked like, and then ran simulations to see how effective they were. What they discovered is that this winged turd, which didn’t even stick around long enough to become an ancestor of birds, was an offense to both God and nature

A man was arrested in Kannapolis with a van full of guns and explosives with plans to carry out an act of terrorism, including trying to assassinate Joe Biden.

Q: As someone who has also listened to hours and hours of Trump, your impression is one of the best I’ve heard. What are you doing vocally that makes things kind click into place? A: He has a lot of shit in his throat. So it was about boosting sort of the distortion in my throat and cranking up the, um, ambient kind of gross throat noise. There’s like a hissy breathy croak in his throat. Also he has just totally blown out the top half of his head, like kind of his entire upper respiratory system with cocaine and crushed up the British Sudafed and everything all the time and, uh, screaming at 21-year-olds to take off their clothes and everything he does all day. So he’s sort of trashed his nose and his throat. So I try to close off certain nasal passages.

The woman was hired in 2015, just out of college, to work as an assistant for Guilfoyle and another former Fox host, Eric Bolling. According to a dozen well-informed sources familiar with her complaints, the assistant alleged that Guilfoyle, her direct supervisor, subjected her frequently to degrading, abusive, and sexually inappropriate behavior; among other things, she said that she was frequently required to work at Guilfoyle’s New York apartment while the Fox host displayed herself naked, and was shown photographs of the genitalia of men with whom Guilfoyle had had sexual relations. The draft complaint also alleged that Guilfoyle spoke incessantly and luridly about her sex life, and on one occasion demanded a massage of her bare thighs; other times, she said, Guilfoyle told her to submit to a Fox employee’s demands for sexual favors, encouraged her to sleep with wealthy and powerful men, asked her to critique her naked body, demanded that she share a room with her on business trips, required her to sleep over at her apartment, and exposed herself to her, making her feel deeply uncomfortable.

The United States joined Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Uganda on Thursday to co-sponsor a nonbinding international antiabortion declaration, in a rebuke of the U.N. Human Rights Council., which has enshrined abortion access as a universal right. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar participated in the virtual signing ceremony. The Geneva Consensus Declaration aims to promote women’s health, “defends the unborn and reiterates the vital importance of the family,” Pompeo said at the ceremony. Access to abortion is widely restricted in the other countries to co-sponsor the declaration. “There is no international right to abortion,” Pompeo said. Though the document does not directly address same-sex marriage, the only co-sponsors to have legalized it are Brazil and the United States, while the text’s language affirming the family as "the natural and fundamental group unit of society” has clear meaning for countries that restrict LGBT rights. Among the co-sponsors, the Egyptian government targets LGBT people in a “systemic fashion,” according to a recent Human Rights Watch report, and in Uganda, gay sex is punishable by death.

Here’s what it says about Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew. Plus: Help us decode more names.

The misdemeanor allegations were returned Wednesday against Scott Groshong, who retired in August after a 27-year career with the Police Bureau.

At a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, last week, President Trump waxed philosophical on a subject close to the hearts of everyone in the audience: former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. “Do you hear the news?” Trump said, “Bruce Ohr is finally out of the Department of Justice.” If you do not recognize the name “Bruce Ohr,” that’s not because you are inadequately informed — he does not really have a claim to fame. Bruce Ohr, who was a former associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, is best known for meeting with former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, author of the “Steele dossier.” (That’s the document that alleged Trump was under the influence of Russian intelligence services, which had supposedly also compiled blackmail material on him.) Ohr’s wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that employed Steele to write the infamous dossier. Ohr’s name has come up in conservative media countless times as proof that the investigation into Trump’s ties with Russian assets was tainted from the beginning.

In a world’s first, a team of scientists at Purdue University built a tiny microrobot that can be operated inside a colon of a living animal. The goal is to one day allow such Lilliputian machines to deliver drug payloads to different parts of a patient’s body, greatly enhancing their effects and applications.

It's immediately clear that a lot of care has been put into Disco Elysium: Game Boy Edition. It's a demake that transforms our Game of the Year 2019 (and #1 in our Top 100) into a spunky, lo-fi handheld romp, and it's oddly perfect. The art evokes Pokémon and any number of '90s Game Boy RPGs, but it also suggests sights and characters of Revachol, breaking these scenes down to their essentials. I recognise these places. Sure, I have to squint a little, but the essence is all there.

Stephen King and Margaret Atwood are among the signatories to an open letter offering support to the trans and non-binary communities of the US and Canada, as a bitter divide over trans rights continues to split the literary world. The message from writers and members of the US literary community follows a similar letter from authors in the UK and Ireland. Both letters come in the wake of a fierce row over JK Rowling’s comments on trans rights, including her comment that “if sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased”. On 30 September, more than 200 British and Irish writers including Jeanette Winterson and Malorie Blackman sent “a message of love and solidarity for the trans and non-binary community”. A day later, more than 1,500 names in the publishing world joined them in asserting that “non-binary lives are valid, trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights”. The US letter, has been signed by more than 1,200 members of the literary community, including Roxane Gay, Neil Gaiman, John Green, NK Jemisin and Angie Thomas.

We should have known this was coming. It was portended by a series of inauspicious omens throughout the year. The wildfires in Australia. The skies in California turning a dreadful shade of orange in September. The harrowing ordeal Christopher Nolan endured trying to make sure people saw Tenet on the big screen. Perhaps Tom Brady’s move to Tampa Bay should have given us the hint that whatever unholy development loomed would originate in New England, much like the official coffee of Ben Affleck’s highly scrutinized walks with Ana de Armas. Last week, Dunkin’ (née Dunkin’ Donuts), added a spicy donut to its menu. Ostensibly, the Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut is part of the chain’s slate of Halloween promotional items, along with a decorate your own donut kit, a (pretty tasty) pumpkin donut, and their Spider Donut (the “spider” being a decorative design, not an ingredient). But we all know why the Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut really exists: because the world is in a state of chaos where few norms remain intact and fewer boundaries sacrosanct. The Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut was, in retrospect, all but inevitable.

An ethical hacker accessed the Twitter account for President Donald Trump by guessing a 'maga2020!' password, according to a new report.

Nocash ‘till you die.

Support for same-sex marriage has reached its highest percentage ever recorded, with nearly 70 percent of Americans stating that they are in favor of allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally, according to the 11th annual American Values Survey. The poll, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in partnership with the Brookings Institution, also showed that only 28 percent of Americans surveyed oppose same-sex marriage. Support has increased as well across political parties, with 80 percent of Democrats, 76 percent of independents and 50 percent of Republicans polling in favor of same-sex marriage, according to the survey.

President Trump on Wednesday tweeted photos of 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl holding a large book ostensibly documenting his healthcare accomplishments – but one photo showed Stahl opening the book to a blank page, underscoring Democratic attacks against Trump’s health care record.