On the Plugged-In Podcast, we discuss the changes coming—or not—to the EV field under President Trump. Plus, are things looking up at Polestar? LINK

The sponge-towel hybrids cut needless waste and can clean almost every corner of your home LINK

After various setbacks amid frustrating legislation, American kei truck owners are finally making headway. LINK

Water is already a sparse resource in the Vegas desert, and the 2023 LVGP bringing more than 300,000 spectators (not including actual race personnel), threatened to deplete it. But the series had plans — implementing a way to offset that water-seeking footprint. LINK

Are you sitting down? I’ve got something to tell you—something that may shock you. Between the events of the various Donkey Kong games, the Kong family was involved in a bitter and vicious war. Among its many casualties, this war may have claimed the life of a classic Kong character, explaining his disappearance from all future games in the series. LINK

Parts arriving broken or weeks late. Horrible customer service. An office where employees were spied on with cameras. These are just a few complaints from former employees and from hundreds of car enthusiasts who have done business with major Euro auto parts supplier ECS Tuning. With the company having recently bought another giant in the industry, Pelican Parts, an entire car community now worries that it’ll be forced to contend with a dysfunctional retailer just to keep vehicles on the road. LINK

You’ve likely heard the “I ate too much of a tasty, chocolatey edible and freaked the eff out” stories, whether from friends, family members, or from New York Times opinion columnist Maureen Dowd’s much-discussed coverage of her Colorado weed-tourist trip.   LINK

When you shave, do you start with the upper lip or the sideburn? I know with a new blade you are supposed to start with the upper lip, but I still start with at least a few strokes on the sideburn to get the blade warmed up. It terrifies me to start upper lip. LINK

What year would you set as the over/under on outer space having its first homeless human?

Never. It’ll never happen. Maybe this take will age about as well as some olde tymey rant about the Internet (“People don’t want computers in their homes!”), but I don’t think mankind will ever establish settlements away from Earth. I know Elon Musk talks a big game about living on Mars and Newt Gingrich once promised a moon colony, but none of that will ever happen.  LINK

Dear Leigh,
I have sucked snot out of my kids’ noses with my mouth when they were too little to blow it. I spit it out, for the record. Am I gross?

Sincerely,

Mucus Mama LINK

Fingering is one of the best ways to pleasure a female-bodied person. It allows you to give her really targeted, focused stimulation, and can be one of the best ways to help her have an orgasm. Compared to oral sex or intercourse, it’s also relatively non-taxing for the giver. Here’s what you need to know to finger a woman.  LINK

Zits are unfair. We didn’t ask for them, we certainly don’t deserve to have them into adulthood, and it’s especially insulting when you finally get a giant pimple to go away and then it comes right back a few days later. LINK

Despite a grueling first half to the NFL season that was littered with shredded ligaments and bullshit penalty flags, this may very well be the most genuinely compelling week of the season this far. I swear that’s not me putting on my Ron Jaworski hat and trying to sell you a load of slop.  LINK

Last week, Vince McMahon announced the return of the XFL. Considering the quality of the original XFL and the track record of Vince McMahon’s non-wrestling ventures, there’s reason to wonder if this thing will ever happen.  LINK

Do animals have accents? Like does a dog in Ireland bark in an Irish accent? How does a parrot in Italy pronounce mozzarella?

They do, but not necessarily the way you think. Like, a Scottish dog isn’t influenced by human Scottish accents. It’s not like ACH! WEWF WEWF YA WEE TIT! But animals can make different noises based on regionality and social groups.  LINK

According to Mychal “Trihex” Jefferson, there really isn’t much of a difference between speedrunning video games and lifting weights. “You have to be goal-oriented,” he recently said as he beamed live and uncut from a private Discord call. “It’s very easy to get into a speed game and feel intimidated, insecure and inadequate about how bad your times are, and you can get overwhelmed and salty. LINK

This piece originally appeared in the April 1995 issue of GQ. It is reprinted here with permission.

I met the first boy I ever had sex with at the roller rink. He was a speed skater and could rubber leg, which at the time made him more attractive than the nerdy science-fair boys who had to rent their skates and couldn’t even do the hokeypokey. LINK

A few weeks ago, while catching up on some Big Apple sports news, I came upon this incredible sentence:

Even at age 32, [Joakim] Noah probably is their most effective defensive center, but he will miss the first 12 regular-season games because of a performance-enhancing drugs suspension. LINK

Most people think of sex as a nighttime activity—but it can be even more enjoyable first thing in the morning. You were going to hit the snooze button a few times anyway, so why not do something fun instead? Here’s how to have fantastic morning sex. LINK

On Monday night, vertically incommensurable former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci held a launch party for his new fake media venture, the Scaramucci Post. That is the news that was reported by several outlets.  LINK

There was a time not so long ago when, for fun, or just for something to do, millions of Americans would tune in to watch non-actors eat worms for cash. It felt good, watching strangers wreck their intestines. Things might not have been going your way, but at least you weren’t competitively chewing cockroaches on primetime television. LINK

Facebook is a vast and bewildering operation, working with visible and invisible data streams via opaque algorithms on a scale larger than humans can readily comprehend. Many of us have been baffled, for example, by the social network’s ability to figure out who we know in real life, as reflected by the suggestions that pop up in its “People You May Know” box. LINK

Did ESPN force the current political climate when they “embraced debate?” It feels like society followed the change to constant screaming and refusal to agree on even the most insignificant thing.

I think that’s giving wayyyyyyy too much credit to Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless for the coarsening of American society. LINK

The Cleveland Browns are currently winless. This, of course, is hardly a surprising development to you or me or anyone else familiar with NFL football. The Browns were reborn in a winless void, and they will die that way. They are now on their 28th starting QB since returning to Cleveland in 1999, and even with poor DeShone Kizer there to get dragged in and out of the lineup, there’s little indication that the team’s sprawling parade of hapless quarterbacking nobodies will end anytime soon. The Browns are a fucking joke.

LINK

Video games will always manipulate us. Each challenge and scenario in a game has been carefully engineered to make us react a certain way. Most of the time, that’s what we sign up for. But the moment real money enters the equation, something changes. LINK

In the past few years, legal weed—or excuse me, cannabis—has become a $9.7 billion dollar industry, and is expected to reach nearly $25 billion by 2021. Marijuana is now legal in eight states plus the District of Columbia for recreational use, and 29 states plus DC for medicinal use. The Cannabis Stock Index (yes, that exists) rose 88.8 percent in 2016 and 91.8 percent in 2017. LINK

In Rancho Palos Verdes, an affluent suburb of Los Angeles, there’s a 7,800 square foot mansion that sits atop a picturesque bluff, offering sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean. Across two stories, the home contains six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a three-car garage, and privacy.  LINK

The current crop of athletes protesting during the national anthem has roots at the 1968 Olympics, with the Black Power salute of Tommie Smith and John Carlos after they finished first and third, respectively, in the 200 meters. John Dominis’s famous photograph of the two U.S. sprinters on the medal podium.... LINK

Faking orgasms doesn’t do anyone any favors. It doesn’t feel satisfying for you; if anything, it detracts from your experience because you’re more focused on faking convincingly than on enjoying yourself.   LINK

16th Minute is our series where we check in with ordinary people who momentarily went viral.

I was hired by Wendy’s as a social media specialist in October 2012 at the age of 23, when Being Online was a little different. Snapchat existed, but you could only send still images on it. Instagram had no online profiles, no ads, and no algorithms...  LINK

As a disciplinary strategy, spanking is definitely out: It not only doesn’t work, but it’s associated with the same negative outcomes, to a lesser degree, as those that result from child abuse. LINK

Tiki drinks are a super fun way to get hammered, and are, coincidentally, the only type of drink that has caused me to set my pants on fire in public. (Thanks a lot, Smuggler’s Cove.) They are also, generally speaking, harder to make at home than most other cocktails; but hey, it’s Vintage Week, and if you’re to believe the vintage people of the world, everybody was literally better at everything back then. LINK

Now! Your letters:

Jeremy:

I hate the fucking Pats, and I hate the fucking Eagles, man. (I’m a Giants fan, but there are plenty of good reasons to hate these teams.) I can’t really imagine having fun watching this Super Bowl, so I’m thinking I might take my girlfriend to see I, Tonya during the game, or something. The NFL just doesn’t have enough good will with me anymore for me to watch a game that will inevitably piss me off. 1. Am I being a lame snob? 2. What is the best alternative activity during the SB?

LINK

Originally published in the February 1981 issue of Inside Sports, this piece appears here with the author’s permission.

In Atlantic City, Willie Mays played an elderly game, serving as designated greeter at Bally’s Park Place Hotel. After the fracas of his hiring, when Bowie Kuhn barred him from baseball, he settled into a gentle routine of shaking hands, posing for photographs, smiling on request. At $100,000 a year, 10 days a month, he labored without protest. “I survive,” he said. LINK

Originally published in the New York Times Magazine on November 16, 1986—and featured in Oney’s recent anthology, A Man’s World—this story appears here with the author’s permission.

On a warm afternoon earlier this fall, Harry Dean Stanton, wearing an old denim work shirt, Levis, and deck shoes, sat on the sofa of his Mullholland Drive....LINK

Last month, I was driving down the interstate, somewhere near the southern corner of Virginia, when a thunderstorm opened up above me. Suddenly, a wall of water appeared a hundred yards ahead. In a split second, I had zero visibility, a slick road, and a shitload of anxiety. LINK

It’s the official debut of Megatron’s Butthole on Sunday Night Football and I dunno about you but I am already STOKED for Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth to fawn over the joint like they just entered the penthouse suite at the Bellagio.  LINK

As a young child, every morning at sunrise I would wake up to tap dance on the patio outside my mom’s bedroom door, much to my poor mom’s chagrin. These sunrise salutations became an enduring family story, as did my habit of getting up with the sun. Imagine my surprise, then, when a DNA test recently suggested that I am, in fact, a night owl. LINK

Last year, two data scientists from security firm ZeroFOX conducted an experiment to see who was better at getting Twitter users to click on malicious links, humans or an artificial intelligence. The researchers taught an AI to study the behavior of social network users, and then design and implement its own phishing bait. LINK

I’ve got one of those weird ass food things I’ve rarely seen anyone else do.

I’ll happy open up a can of Pizza Sauce and eat the whole damn thing with a spoon. It’s always been the only part of a pizza I really cared about and one day I basically just said “the hell with it, I’m eating the damn thing.” LINK

Okay, so let’s all come to a détente and agree that NFL games are, at the moment, lackluster. The QBs are shit. The lines are shit. Everyone is hurt. And there are endless, endless penalty flags (stares daggers at Pete Morelli). Even though the NFL has successfully sped these games up, at least half the league’s teams remain downright unwatchable. LINK

Time for your weekly edition of the Deadspin Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. Today, we’re talking enchiladas, poison ivy, optimal book length, and more.

Your letters:

Jon:

Is there a worse take than Maris being the true home run champ? I hate that people act like it wasn’t fucking awesome to watch Barry Bonds crush the ball.  LINK

I had a hard time choosing my favorite stories Jalopnik published in 2017. That’s because between prison snitches, BMW addicts, doomed startups, car hoarders, secret Porsches and hurricanes, there was almost too much good to choose from. LINK

One day last December, Tanisha Coley visited a Kia dealership in Stamford, Connecticut and filled out a computer-based credit application to figure out what kind of car she could afford. Soon after, she left without buying a vehicle, but ended up more than $17,000 in debt anyway. LINK

2017 has been, how do I put this succinctly, a fucking shit year.

From the plagues of biblical proportions that this administration keeps trying to drop on us to the fact that Mother Nature is sick of the bullshit and has been trying to finally kill us all via hurricane, 2017 has not been skimpy on Ls at all.   LINK

Billy Paul got NFL Sunday Ticket this year. It was the only way to watch his Patriots every week. Paul lives in Massachusetts. See a problem? LINK

It is, as it goes, a day like any other. A family of five rustles around the breakfast table, in a hurry, shoveling food while rushing to get to school, to the office, to the carpool lane. They live in the city of Hamelin, a fictional suburb roughly 90 miles from San Francisco, where the father in the family works. He kisses the kids, flirts and bickers with his wife and sprints out the door with a smiling wave. LINK

On a crisp November morning in Moscow, Steven Seagal found himself within the walls of the Grand Kremlin Palace, seated across from Vladimir Putin, the most powerful man in the Russian Federation. Dressed in a blood-red kimono and black trousers—a throwback to his days as a martial artist—Seagal observed the Russian president from behind his trademark amber-tinted glasses. The two men sat around a small marble table with a little red passport in its center. LINK

People who know him call him Dave. You probably know him by the eponymously-named company, J.D. Power and Associates, which I used to think was fake. It is not. It is extremely real and, I have learned, one of the most hilarious threads running through the multi-trillion-dollar auto industry. LINK

Some call them “dunks.” Others speak of the humble “own.” They are also known to many as righteous “trolls” (although this word is fraught with internet revisionism). However you say it, 2017—a truly awful year, certain only to be bested by every year to come—was a great year for bad people being told just how terrible they are online. LINK

Apple keeps giving us reasons to say goodbye. iOS 11 is buggy as hell, with the most recent error making iPhones almost unusable, and the latest version of macOS briefly exposed Mac owners to a major vulnerability. As for the iPhone X, it may be pretty sleek for an iPhone, but Apple’s still playing catch-up to its Android competition. LINK

This is the year. As much as we’ve postured about 4K TVs getting almost cheap enough and 4K content getting almost easy enough to access, this is the year that it’s finally happened. You can buy an excellent 4K TV with HDR support for less than $700, and find stuff to watch on any streaming service. In fact, you have several options to achieve this entertainment bliss. LINK

A few weeks ago, a Twitch stream moderator and health professional who goes by “Badxan” posted on the Twitch subreddit about an experience she’d had with a viewer threatening suicide in a chat. “How does Twitch deal with suicide and self-harm?” she wrote. “Shamefully.” LINK

Becoming a parent of any kind requires planning, preparation and a whole lot of flexibility along the way. But when that child comes to you with a past you have few details about, trauma you didn’t inflict, and zero socks or underwear, it turns your world on its side. LINK

Following three years of more or less accidental celibacy, I made a vow to go on two dates a week, every week. I’m not a psychologist, but at this point, I am pretty much an expert on first dates. And (not to brag) but I usually get asked out again.   LINK

Are you one of the beautiful people heading to the frosty North for Super Bowl LII? Well then, you can toss all your other Super Bowl party invites in the urinal, because Deadspin is having a Very Large Adult Game party of its own. And it’s gonna be SO exclusive (open to the public) and SO fancy (a $10 ticket gets you three drinks) and SO goddamn sexy (we’re gonna do a live podcast for part of it) that it’ll make your nuts ache.  LINK

Why do basic instructions have to be funny and/or witty these days? My Cup O’ Noodles paper lid explained the 3 steps to make shitty ramen this way. See picture. Same with ATM’s making you press a button that says “No Thanks” instead of “No” or “Exit”. I’m an old crotchety 39-year-old but Jesus, it’s annoying. Is this a sad attempt to appeal to millennials? LINK

The opening title credits for “Rodney Mullen Vs. Daewon Song” fly onto the screen like text in a remedial PowerPoint presentation. The picture is grainy, as almost all VHS tapes were, and cuts bounce into each other instead of sliding with contemporary digital smoothness. The black background and white lettering is clean and simple; everything is raw, seemingly as much by necessity as by choice. No one involved was trying to win an Oscar.  LINK

Dear Leigh, I’ve tasted the skin that I’ve peeled from my feet after using Baby Foot. I know it’s so gross but the whole experience is cathartic. But like, how gross is it? LINK

Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business is a children’s classic that was published in 1940. Written and illustrated by Esphyr Slobodkina, it’s an adaptation of a folk tale about monkeys stealing hats, because humanity’s entertainment situation was DIRE before streaming video. LINK

Sometimes sexism operates in such subtle ways that the experience leaves me wondering whether sexism even occurred at all. When a stranger grabs my ass, sure, I know what’s wrong with that situation. But my experience on my co-ed soccer team never felt like an obvious assault on my personhood. Instead, I gradually became aware of a slow, systemic wearing-away. LINK

On July 24, NBA scoopmaster Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted that Kevin Love had signed an extension with the Cleveland Cavaliers. As is often the case, Wojnarowski was the first person on Twitter to report the news. But in the wider realm of the NBA internet, Wojnarowski’s tweet was stale. The week before, someone on Reddit had tipped off the /r/clevelandcavs subredditabout Love’s forthcoming extension. The same Redditor followed that up by posting the specific details of Love’s extension to /r/nba and /r/clevelandcavs a day before Wojnarowski’s tweet. The king of scoops himself had been bested by an anonymous civilian. LINK

The protection of the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked at sea is a fundamental purpose of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), the laws of armed conflict. Once a person in an armed conflict is in need of medical care and refrains from any act of hostility, the rules of IHL provide that they must be protected and respected, permitted to be evacuated from danger, and given necessary medical treatment. LINK

Shake Shack. I haven’t been to every cult fast food restaurant in America, but I’ve been to Shake Shack enough times to tell you that it’s not worth braving a line with 6,000 yuppies pushing strollers just to get a burger there. I’m convinced that Shake Shack’s success is strictly the result of savvy marketing and the fact that little kids go apeshit for crinkle fries. The best part of the Shake Shack burger is the bun, which is a Martin’s Potato Roll you can get at pretty much any grocery store. The fries are underwhelming to anyone above the age of eight. The special sauce is just undercover mayo. And the shakes are made of frozen custard that’s so dry it’s like sucking on a pile of dust. I’m not even sure how it comes out of the machine. LINK

Make good choices. LINK

I’m sitting in my therapist’s office in New York City on a cloudy afternoon in November 2014, just a few months removed from actively planning to kill myself. I’m already pensive about therapy in the first place when she tells me I need to start taking medication. LINK

Marijuana is becoming legal in more and more places, which means that more and more people are bringing home weed. No matter if you prefer low-key vape cartridges, sticky nugs, tasty edible treats, or the myriad varieties of concentrates, one thing remains the same: You have to keep that stuff away from your kids. LINK

There are few things more fashionable these days than being “green”, but separating a truly eco-friendly bottle of sunscreen from a bottle of emerald-tinted snake-oil can be tough even for the shrewdest of consumers. LINK

It’s hard to get a good night’s rest when it’s too hot to sleep—and since we’ve already started seeing “record high temperature” headlines in the news, it’s time to figure out our nighttime cool-down strategies. LINK