$300 Per Barrel Oil

By Conor Humphries;

Western countries could face oil prices of over $300 per barrel and the possible closure of the main Russia-Germany gas pipeline if governments follow through on threats to cut energy supplies from Russia, a senior minister said on Monday.

Oil prices spiked to their highest levels since 2008 on Monday after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington and European allies were considering banning Russian oil imports.

"It is absolutely clear that a rejection of Russian oil would lead to catastrophic consequences for the global market," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in a statement on state television.

"The surge in prices would be unpredictable. It would be $300 per barrel if not more."

Novak said it would take Europe more than a year to replace the volume of oil it receives from Russia and it would have to pay significantly higher prices.

"European politicians need to honestly warn their citizens and consumers what to expect," Novak said.

"If you want to reject energy supplies from Russia, go ahead. We are ready for it. We know where we could redirect the volumes to."

Novak said Russia, which supplies 40% of Europe's gas, was fulfilling its obligations in full but that it would be entirely within its rights to retaliate against the European Union after Germany last month froze the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

"In connection with ... the imposition of a ban on Nord Stream 2, we have every right to take a matching decision and impose an embargo on gas pumping through the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline," Novak said.

"So far we are not taking such a decision," he said. "But European politicians with their statements and accusations against Russia push us towards that." -Reuters

Poland Burn Harry Potter Books to Eradicate Evil

By Hemant Mehta

A group of Polish Catholics from the group “SMS from Heaven” was fed up with how Catholics weren’t being faithful to the Bible, so yesterday they finally did something about it. They staged a protest until every priest accused of abuse was kicked out of the Church.

I’m just kidding. They burned a bunch of Harry Potter books because that’s what’s truly evil.

The Facebook post justifies the bonfire with Bible quotes condemning magic…

…

A passage from Acts, quoted in the group’s post, says “many of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in front of everyone. So they calculated their value and found it to be fifty thousand pieces of silver”.

Another passage, from Deuteronomy, says: “Burn the images of their gods. Don’t desire the silver or the gold that is on them and take it for yourself, or you will be trapped by it. That is detestable to the Lord your God.”

What the fire will accomplish is anyone’s guess. It’s not like copies of the book aren’t readily available everywhere else… and plenty of critics made clear that people don’t “worship” the characters in J.K. Rowling’s series.

One critic says: “I have not met anyone yet who would rape, murder and steal in the name of Harry Potter. In the name of the Bible, yes. Bad news, gentlemen!”

It’s such a great self-own. Whatever these priests thought they were doing, the story everyone’s hearing is that a bunch of insane religious leaders thought burning books would solve their problems… even as they completely downplay the serial sexual abuse in their own religious community.

Just two weeks ago, the Polish Bishops’ Conference revealed that, since 1990, 382 priests were found to have abused 624 victims, “including 198 under the age of 15.”

But sure: Burn references to Hermione for always asking critical questions. I’m sure that’ll fix everything. –Patheos

Robertson Said He Had Vision of Trump Seated ‘At the Right Hand of the Lord’

by Michael Hoult

Some Evangelical Christians are beginning to hold presumed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in high esteem. Several Evangelicals, including walking gaffe former Rep. Michelle Bachmann, already believe Trump, the thrice married, casino magnate, who appeared on the cover of Playboy, has been ordained by God.

But televangelist Pat Robertson has taken it one step further. He believes Trump is on par with Jesus Christ.

“God came to me in a dream last night and showed me the future,” said Robertson. “He took me to heaven and I saw Donald Trump seated at the right hand of our Lord.”

According to Raw Story, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, a 12,000-member megachurch, said Trump would make a better candidate than Jesus.

“You know, I was debating an evangelical professor on NPR, and this professor said, ‘Pastor, don’t you want a candidate who embodies the teaching of Jesus and would govern this country according to the principles found in the Sermon on the Mount?’” said Jeffress. “I said, ‘Heck no.’ I would run from that candidate as far as possible, because the Sermon on the Mount was not given as a governing principle for this nation.”

“When I’m looking for somebody who’s going to deal with ISIS and exterminate ISIS, I don’t care about that candidate’s tone or vocabulary, I want the meanest, toughest, son of a you-know-what I can find — and I believe that’s biblical,” said Jeffress. –BS

Human DNA Found In Hot Dogs, Study Says

By Philip DeVoe

Clear Food, a subsidiary of food analyzation startup Clear Labs, found that human DNA is present in 2 percent of hot dog and sausage brands, according to a recent study.

The study also found that two thirds of the samples containing human DNA were advertised as vegetarian and almost 15 percent of products examined contained ingredients that differed from those included on the label.

“The food industry has been a black box for too long. Food consumers have to trust that food labels are accurate, but that isn’t always the case,” said Sasan Amini, Clear Labs CEO and co-founder, in a press release. “We’ve found a 10-15 percent rate of discrepancy between labeled ingredients and actual ingredients across our internal tests to date.”

The Clear Food study collected 345 samples of hot dogs and sausages — veggie dogs, sausages, and old-fashioned, all-beef hot dogs — from 75 different brands at 10 different retailers, according to their statement. They found that 14.4 percent of the samples were problematic in some way, due to ingredient substitution, addition, or hygienic issues. –Daily Caller

Have Sex With Your iPad Thanks To The New Sex Toy No-one Asked For

Attachment aims to heighten 'point-of-view' experience of video chat

By Christopher Hooton

Many of us have become inseparable from our smartphones and tablets, but if you're looking to take the relationship to the next step and actually 'f*ck your iPad', sex toy brand Fleshlight has now made this possible for some reason.

The company this week launches Fleshlight Launchpad, which allows users of their flashlight-shaped, vagina-like toy to plug it into the back of an iPad in order to 'fully immerse themselves' in whatever they're watching.

The gadget "enables the user to enjoy the full Fleshlight experience while enjoying content or communicating live with a friend via applications like Facetime or Skype," makers Interactive Life Forms claim, with its trailer showing a man making use of one while video-chatting with his girlfriend.

Any partner's first reaction to this would surely be 'why the hell are you f*cking your iPad?' though, so the attachment is presumably aimed at men without a significant other.

Though the whole thing may seem like a parody, the Launchpad is genuinely available now for £20.

Update: As commenter Monkeybot 5000 notes below, Grand Theft Auto V actually managed to parody this before it even existed ...

Six-Day Jail Erection Gets This Ex-Con $750K

Now that’s a stiff penalty.

A former inmate who sued the city for making him suffer through a painful six-day erection was handed a $750,000 settlement on Monday.

The hefty payout amounts to $125,000 for each day of hard time served by Rodney Cotton, 51, who said he was treated “worse than a dog” at the Manhattan Detention Complex while enduring the uncomfortable side effect of an anti-depressant medication.

Cotton said the lack of medical attention rendered him impotent.

“It just started hurting,” Cotton told The Post Monday of his ordeal, which began on July 4, 2011, near the start of a 2½-year sentence for a parole violation. “And I’m like, what the hell is going on? It wasn’t going down.”

Cotton had asked to be taken to a jail clinic, but a guard at the facility, known as The Tombs, told him he’d have to wait until after the holiday weekend.

Desperate, Cotton faked chest pains to get a doctor to see him, only to be given ice packs and Tylenol.

Days later, he was finally taken to Bellevue, and underwent surgery to relieve the swelling. The doctors said the stitches would dissolve on their own. They didn’t, he claims.

The stitches had become embedded in the skin, and no anesthetic was used when they were being removed, Cotton said in his Manhattan Supreme Court suit.

Cotton said he still gets it on with the ladies, but he has to be more creative, and appeal to their sensitive side.

“I put up a facade,” he said. “There’s a young lady in the building who likes me. I’m scared to try anything with her. I take her out. I take her to Red Lobster. I take her to Outback. I do things for her son. But I don’t think I’m going to try having sex with her. It would be too embarrassing.”

Doctors said a lasting erection is a side effect of Risperdal, and a warning about it is listed on the website of the manufacture, Janssen.

Cotton said he started taking Risperdal in 2003, the year after he finished a 12-year prison stint for manslaughter for killing a man during a 1989 fight over a sheepskin coat.

Now he’s going to take his money and move to Atlanta to be closer to his daughter.

“I can’t fix my situation, but I can soothe it,” he said.

A spokesman for the city’s Law Department, Nicholas Paolucci, said, “Settling this case was in the best interest of the city.”

In the meantime, the city has ended its contract with Corizon, the for-profit health care company that has drawn fire for the way it treated inmates such as Cotton. –NY Post

Woman Claiming To Represent God Files Federal Lawsuit

Sylvia Driskell, a 66-year-old woman in Nebraska, has filed a lawsuit against all people who identify as LGBT, the Omaha World-Herald Reports. In a case filed on May 1 with the district court in Omaha, called, “Driskell v. Homosexuals,” Driskell identifed herself as an ambassador for “God, And His, Son, Jesus Christ” as the plaintiff. The defendants? “Homosexuals; Their Given Name Homosexuals; Their, [alias] Gay.”

Driskell is representing herself in the case she wrote out by hand on lined notebook paper. Her challenge: “Petition Your Honor and Court of the United States District Court of Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska. To be heard in the matter of homosexuality. Is Homosexuality a sin, or not a sin.”

A few standout quotes from Driskell’s curiously punctuated, grammatically unconventional, Bible verse-intensive lawsuit against gay people:

    “The Homosexual’s say that its not a sin to be a homosexual; An they have the right to marry; to be parents, And God doesn’t care that their homosexuals; because He loves them.”

    “Your Honor; I’ve hear the boasting of the Defendant: the Homosexuals on the world news; from the Young, to the Old; to the rich An famous; and to the not so rich An famous; How they were tired of hiding in the closet, and how glad they are coming out of the closet.”

    “Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell; Contented that homosexuality is a sin, And that they the homosexuals know it is a sin to live a life of homosexuality. Why else would they have been hiding in a closet.”

    “Ambassador: I Sylvia Ann Driskell write, As well, we also know that if a child is raised in the home of liers (sic.), An deceivers, And thieves that it is reasonable to believe that child will grow up to be one of the three, are all three.”

    “Never before has Our great Nation the United States of America And our great State of Nebraska; been besiege by sin; The way to destroy any Nation, or State is to destroy its morals; Look what happen to Sodom and Gomorrah two city because of the same immoral behavior thats present in Our Nation, in Our States, and our Cities; God destroy them.”

    “If God could have found ten righteous people Among them he would have spared them.”

    “I’m sixty-six years old, An I never thought, that I would see the day in which our Great Nation or our Great State of Nebraska would become so compliant to the complicity of some peoples lewd behavior.”

    “Why are judges passing laws, so sinners can break religious, and moral laws. Will all the judges of this Nation, judge God to be a lier (sic.). For God has said, that all unrighteousness is sin, And that homosexuality is abomination.”

    “I, Sylvia Ann Driskell: I have written this Petition to the United State District Court of Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, and to You, Your Honor. Because I feel its is imperative to do so. Life as a Nation, as States, and as cities need to start standing up for the moral principles on which our, Great Nation, our, Great States, and our, Great Cities were founded on.” -Source: Raw Story

Some Men’s Beards Are Covered In The Same Bacteria That’s Found In Poop

They make the world go ‘round.

Yes. Fantastic.

But lo, there is a problem with beards, POOP.

Albuquerque’s ABC affiliate swabbed and tested several men’s beards and found that while some beards contained normal bacteria, others’ beards contained bacteria similar to those found in fecal matter.

John Golobic, a microbiologist at Quest Diagnostics, tested material swabbed from the beards and found that they were basically as “dirty as toilets.”

Not all the beards Golobic tested contained fecal matter–like bacteria. But the ones that did, he said, were “somewhat disturbing.”

The solution? BEARD SCRUBBING, guys. And keeping your dirty hands away from your facial hair.

Have you broken out the hand sanitizer yet?

-Source: Buzz Feed

The Wasp Whose Spit Gets It Laid

I’ve never been to a club, but then again I’ve never heard great things about them. From my understanding it’s a bunch of dudes drinking vodka Red Bulls and trying to “grind” on women, or whatever it is youth are doing these days. That seems strange to me. We’re not chimps punching the crap out of each other over the ladies, or rams headbutting each other stupid. We’re civilized human beings, for Pete’s sake.

That said, we’re certainly not the brutal parasitic wasp Pimpla disparis, whose females inject their eggs into living moth pupae. After the eggs hatch, they devour their hosts from the inside out before emerging triumphantly from the cocoons. And woe to the female disparis, who will find several males waiting for her birth, all trying to muscle each other out and hump the damn cocoon before she’s even out of the thing. This is just birth, sex, have babies. 

And it’s all about swapping some very special spit. (Technically speaking, insects don’t have “spit” or “saliva” as much as they have “mandibular secretions.” But I’m not going to call it that for fear of sounding like a chucklehead—well, more of a chucklehead than usual.)

I appreciate people like entomologist Mike Hrabar, because people like Mike get very expensive video cameras and point them at parasitic wasps injecting other creatures with their eggs. That’s the fruits of his labor above. Well, more accurately it’s the fruits of the wasp’s labor. That needle-like structure is her ovipositor (literally “egg placer”), and she’s not just using it to inject her young into the hapless moth pupa. She’ll also swirl it around a bit to get the insect version of blood, known as hemolymph, flowing out of the pupa, which she then drinks up. Developing those eggs, after all, takes a lot of energy, and she could use the bonus protein. The pupa certainly won’t be needing it, considering what’s about to happen next.

The wasp is specifically looking to inject its young into moths in the process of pupating, or the cocoon phase. “And then the primary larvae of the disparis basically swims inside the hemolymph of the developing moth, and it just eats it, munch munch munch, until the whole moth is eaten out from the inside,” says Hrabar. To the outside observer, the cocoon looks normal throughout this process. But instead of splitting open to reveal a moth, out comes an adult wasp—not quite as normal-looking.

Waiting for her is a nice little welcoming party of extremely randy males. As you can see below, they’re all quite keen to mate with her, forming what’s beautifully known as a scramble competition. The cocoon she’s called home can be positively covered with dudes, and enterprising fellas will even jam themselves into the cocoon with the female before she even has the chance to emerge. The stakes are quite high: She’ll only choose one male to mate with, then close off her reproductive gear.

There may be plenty of other cocoons about, so how does the male know to pick the right one? Well, in addition to giving off a bit of a smell, the developing larvae seem to be quite flirty. “The parasitoid might actually be communicating with the adult males by sonic vibration,” says Hrabar. “It actually spins within the puparium periodically, and makes these little vibrating sounds.” It even seems like the female may react to males, spinning as they fly by.

Males will follow a circuit between individual cocooned females, visiting each periodically to check on their development for up to three weeks. In a way, they’re forming their own harems, which is pretty amazing behavior for an insect. “It’s planning for a future resource,” says Hrabar. “And that is a big deal because insects aren’t thought to plan. They’re thought to have very simple brainstem type functions. So it’s all stimulus response: They need sugar, so their sugar circuits go off, and they go get sugar.” But not these wasps, apparently. They’ve got a game plan.

It’s this kind of scheming that makes wasps so scary-sophisticated. The jewel wasp, for instance, stabs into a cockroach’s brain and injects chemicals that remove its free will, allowing the wasp to drag it into a burrow, lay an egg on it, and seal the tomb up. When the egg hatches, it burrows into the cockroach and eats it from the inside out. And there are all kinds of wasps out there up to similar seriously bad behavior: The parasitic ichneumonidae family, which disparis belongs to, tallies tens of thousands of species worldwide.

For all of their plotting, though, the male disparis can end up hitting on another male, because while the male can tell if there’s a developing larva in a cocoon, he has a hard time telling the gender. “So they’re scrambling around and it just turns into this big tussle of wasps,” says Hrabar. “And then they realize, Oh, no this is male here, and they all disperse. But if it is a female, then she gets mated quickly and generally never mates again.”

Females do try to make it easier for the males to find them—with their spit. Males are attracted to saliva, which the emerging wasp is using to chemically break down the cocoon as it chews outward. So males literally get wind of it and fly in from all around. “If you put just a dot of that salivary fluid of an emerging female on your finger, and then stick your finger into a cage full of males, they’ll start trying to mate with your finger, which is kind of cool,” says Hrabar. He gets paid for this, by the way.

Problem is, males also utilize their spit when chewing out of a cocoon, so you end up with the occasional aforementioned male-on-male sexiness. But a female’s saliva has just a little bit more of the chemicals responsible for  the scent than a male’s, and indeed Hrabar finds that statistically, males are slightly more likely to home in on a female than another dude.

Accordingly, Hrabar is of the opinion that the wasp is in the midst of evolving to better exploit this spit. Evolution is all about sex, after all, and a trait that gets you more sex gets you more offspring, which in turn have a chance of passing that trait down the generations. So these wasps would do well to tweak their system. “Females that have more of a female signature in their salivary secretion and males that are better able to identify it are more likely to mate. It’s that simple. The male that can’t tell the difference, he’ll settle onto a male and be waiting there for this thing to emerge.”

So sad. Also, can you imagine a club for disparis wasps? Keep them away from the vodka Red Bulls, is all I’m saying. –Source: Wired

Dicks By Mail

Remember that look of joy you got on your face on Christmas morning when you went downstairs and unwrapped a big bag of socks?

Us neither.

Dicks by Mail is the easy way to send that feeling to anyone in your life that deserves that feeling of
sadness, disappointment and betrayal.

In only a few minutes you can send a literal Bag of Dicks to that special asshole in your life.

You know the one.

The annoying guy at the office. Your Ex who decided to see other people before telling you.

The Teacher that doesn't care about your dead grandma. The person that murdered your grandma.

You came to this site for one of three reasons;

1) You know someone that is a dick, but they don't know it yet.

2) You received a package from us and are wondering why. The reason why is simple; someone thinks you're a dick.

3) you are on the wrong website.

We have a long history of sending dicks to people. Starting in middle school with those folded notes, that unfold to a big veiny cock. Moving to texting '8===D' to random people in high school all the way to snapchatting below the belt pics to ladies from the bar/church. But now it's on to bigger and better things; now it's on to Dicks by Mail. –Source: Dicks By Mail

Sarah Palin’s New Years Greetings Reveals Poor Parenting Skills

It’s long been said that Sarah Palin is all about Sarah Palin, and time and time again, she has proven that her narcissism knows no bounds. Those with narcissistic personality disorders are known for exploiting others for their own personal gain, and generally lack empathy for others.

So maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising that Palin posted pictures of her 6-year-old son Trig using the family dog as a stepping stone on her Facebook page and making a metaphor out it, apparently oblivious that there might come across as a little distasteful. The post is what passes for her Happy New Year greeting to her admiring but brainwashed fans. The message in her post reads:

Happy New Year!

May 2015 see every stumbling block turned into a stepping stone on the path forward. Trig just reminded me. He, determined to help wash dishes with an oblivious mama not acknowledging his signs for “up!”, found me and a lazy dog blocking his way. He made his stepping stone.

Sarah Palin

The message here is that it’s okay to exploit and step on anything, including animals, to achieve one’s goals. What a horrible message to send to her fans, who should realize that the message also applies to them. They are in effect the family dog, while Sarah is Trig, exploiting them for ego gratification and monetary gain.

Trig probably weighs 50 pounds, and the dog likely weighs not much more than that. Dogs are hardy souls, and the fact that this particular one allowed a 50 pound kid to stand on it is a testament to patience. But this HAD to have made the dog uncomfortable. What happens as Trig gets older and heavier? Will he continue to use the poor dog as a stepping stone? What if the dog had gotten up suddenly and caused Trig, who is a special needs child with Down’s Syndrome, to fall and hurt himself? What does that say for Palin’s parenting skills?

She has received plenty of criticism in the comments to her Facebook post about her controversial choice of images, including from those who like her. But of course some of her fawning groupies have been out in full force defending her. Can you imagine those same people reacting the same way if they saw images of the Obama children standing on their family dog? I can’t either.

Below is a sampling of the comments Palin is receiving on Facebook…

If Palin really wanted to send a positive message to her admirers, she could have picked Trig up and held him up to the kitchen sink. The message being conveyed in that case would have been one of helping others achieve their goals.

But that would have portrayed a less accurate metaphor for who Sarah Palin really is. In fact, the only way the pictures could have been more accurately metaphorical is if she herself had been the one standing on the dog.

In another unforgettable testament to Palin’s insensitivity to animals, who can forget the time she was interviewed in front of a turkey farm as turkeys are slaughtered directly behind her? -Souirce: Reverb Press

Study Links Homosexuality To Eating Grits

Scientists at Stanford University released a study today showing that men who regularly eat grits are 70 percent more likely to have gay children.

The prospective cohort study, published in Nature Medicine, followed 15,000 volunteers for 30 years to determine the influence of parental diet on the development of childhood illnesses.

Although the study did find some connection between the maternal intake of sugar during pregnancy and childhood obesity, the most surprising finding was that fathers who ate grits had a much greater chance of having a gay child.

“We were shocked when we ran the data,” says Edmund Bergler, the lead researcher on the project. "But we controlled for every variable. We triple-checked every calculation. And it turned out that eating grits makes your kids gay.”

After investigating further, the scientists discovered that chemical processing of grits creates a substance called homotonin, which acts as a free radical inside a man’s testes and damages his sperm’s DNA.

That DNA damage is passed onto the child and researchers believe it is responsible for the later development of homosexuality.

“Gay people like to say that they are born that way, and they are right,” he explains. "The DNA damage that causes homosexuality happens much earlier, even before conception.

"Homosexuality is a choice. But it's the father's choice. What he eats  for breakfast determines the orientation of his child."

Another scientist on the study says if parents want to minimize their risk of having a gay child they need to avoid certain foods.

“Grits have the highest homotonin levels. Its off the charts," he explains. "However foods like sweet tea, biscuits, chicken-fried steak, and cornbread also have very significant amounts.”

A spokesperson for Quaker Oats, a leading maker of instant grits said they had no comment on the study.

A representative of Cracker Barrel, a Southern restaurant chain, says that orders for grits have dropped almost 40 percent since the study was released. –Daily Currant