After a devastating hurricane season and vague threats of nuclear war, a number of men piled heaps of refuse onto the dumpster fire that has been 2017 as the public learned about an epidemic of sexual misconduct.

The stories have spanned coastlines. Former super-producer Harvey Weinstein is said to have raped, assaulted and harassed dozens of women in the entertainment industry. Some 300 women say director James Toback has done things like masturbate in front of them without consent. Former Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) reportedly encouraged a woman to touch his groin. The accused stand in depressingly good company: Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, Glenn Thrush, Mark Halperin, Charlie Rose, Ed Westwick, Danny Masterson, Mario Batali and more.

Shortly after “King of Comedy” Louie C.K. joined their ranks for masturbating in front of women without their consent, writer Ashley Simon hatched an idea that would become the common-decency instruction manual Where Does Your Penis Belong?, a primer for men that was released this week.

“Do we need to go back to 101 behavior here?” Simon jokingly wondered over dinner with friends, who later encouraged the project. She was also spurred on by victim-blaming responses to the women who shared their experiences.

“I was grossed out by the insinuation that women should know not to go into these hotel rooms, as if it’s on you to know that someone’s going to expose themselves without your consent and in a professional situation,” Simon told HuffPost. 

In the book, priced at $24.99, a series of prompts allows readers to absorb a message through repetition: Whether it be in the office or on the train, one’s penis should stay in one’s pants. 

Profits will be donated to RAINN, the sexual violence prevention organization.

Billed as “A Children’s Book for Grown-Ass Men,” the collaborative project from Simon, illustrator Allison Gore and web designer Isla Murrayis available through Blurb, the self-publishing platform. Response has been enthusiastic, Simon said, with about 100 copies sold in the first few hours of the book’s release and a stream of supportive tweets.

A website for Where Does Your Penis Belong? explains that the book had been “a therapeutic exercise” for the three women, who felt “a desperate need for some comedic relief in the wake of so much trauma and outrage.”

At the bottom of the site, visitors can even input Twitter handles of men they believe might benefit from the educational message contained in Where Does Your Penis Belong? A tweet including a link to the book is then sent to the men anonymously.

While the book may not be a complete antidote to widespread sexual misconduct, its authors “hope it’s a therapeutic read for many others,” they state, concluding, “Long live pants.”

Paris’ hottest new restaurant is attracting lots of attention from patrons who like to have a little skin in the game.

It’s called O’Naturel, and it caters to nudists who care more about fine food than fine clothing. 

Age really is just a number for Emma Wren Gibson.

She was born on Nov. 25, but from an embryo that was frozen on Oct. 14, 1992.

Carol Sommerfelt, embryology lab director at the National Embryo Donation Center, thawed out the “Emma-bryo” on March 13. 

New mother Tina Gibson admits being shocked when she discovered she’d be carrying an egg about as old as she is.

“Do you realize I’m only 25? This embryo and I could have been best friends,” Gibson told CNN when Emma was born.

Little Emma is believed to be the oldest known frozen embryo that came to successful birth, beating the previous record holder, who was 20 years old at the time of birth.

But Tina Gibson, who has turned 26 since the birth, has other priorities than world records.

“I just wanted a baby. I don’t care if it’s a world record or not,” she told CNN.

Tina and husband Benjamin live in eastern Tennessee and got their fully fertilized embryo from the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville.

It’s a faith-based organization that helps wannabe parents by supplying frozen embryos that won’t be used by their genetic parents, according to WBIR-TV.

So far, the NEDC has enabled nearly 700 pregnancies, including Tina Gibson’s.

“Emma is such a sweet miracle,” Benjamin Gibson told the station. “I think she looks pretty perfect to have been frozen all those years ago.”

Dr. Jeffrey Keenan, who performed the embryo transfer, hopes the story inspires parents who might be saving embryos to donate to the cause.

“We hope this story is a clarion call to all couples who have embryos in long-term storage to consider this life-affirming option for their embryos,” he said in a news release.

There are two types of people in this world: Those who eat to live, and those who live to eat.

With the exception of my grandmother (more on that later), I prefer to keep the company of those who, like me, fall in the latter camp. Do not ask me to travel with you if your plans are not centered on meals. Do not invite me to a party where there will not be a cheese plate, because I will not come to a party where there are no cheese plates.

And yet my relationship with food has been, in large part, consistently dysfunctional. Call it a product of having a mother who was restricted by her mother and who in turn felt the need to never restrict me. Call it a product of growing up surrounded only by women. Call it genetics. Whatever its origin, I, like many people, specifically women, have a really distorted view when it comes to food and my body. 

I was overweight throughout my entire childhood and continue to struggle with my weight in adulthood. Despite the fact that I’ve grown into a person who actually enjoys staying in shape ― I ran my first half marathon in October ― and despite the fact that my job over the past four years has kept me focused on the importance of self-acceptance, body diversity and loving the skin you’re in, I am constantly struggling with a longing need to be thinner.

Most days, I feel like a complete hypocrite. 

For me, negative connotations with food ― when compounded by feeling bad about having negative connotations with food ― make eating way less enjoyable. In an effort to take back my meal times, I recently decided to perform an experiment: I’d go about my week like I normally do but keep track of every time I felt guilty about the things I was eating. 

At least I tried to. Until I realized very early on in the week that when it comes to what I do ― or do not ― put in my body, there is always some level of guilt or frustration. And that guilt usually has very little to do with food and much more with my relationship with myself and my body.

My company provides free lunch and snacks to its employees (I know, I know). And I have, without realizing it, been stopping myself from destroying the peanut M&Ms, a food I would consider to be “bad,” at my disposal. I have literally not allowed myself the sheer joy of company-provided peanut M&Ms, mostly sticking to the “good” fruits and same salad for lunch every day out of an irrational fear that at the mere taste of one morsel I’ll throw all caution to the wind, stop exercising forever and eat myself to death.

That feeling can be a bit isolating, but all I have to do is poll a group of female friends to know that I am so not alone. Weight loss is a $60 billion industry that spans diet programs, books and food (to name a few). Add to that the imagery of thinness equating beauty we see reflected back at us in media and it’s no wonder so many women ― three out of four of American women, according to a 2008 survey ― engage in some form of disordered eating. 

I shared those fears in not quite so many extreme terms with Dr. Ashley Solomon, executive clinical director of the Eating Recovery Center in Ohio, who challenged me to think back on all the times I’d felt like I did something “wrong” or “bad” when it came to eating and/or working out. 

“If you think about your relationship with your body as being similar to any other relationship that you have, the way you build a relationship is you’re able to show each other over time that you can be relied on,” Solomon said. “With a friend, I might have forgotten to call you one night, but you know I’ll talk to you next week or whenever ― it’s not like I’m suddenly never going to call you again.”

How does that relate to having more faith in your body? “If you think about it that way, of having that trust in your body, the best thing you can do is build on that experience,” she said. “OK, you didn’t work out yesterday, but you will today. Then next week, when you’re thinking back on it, you can look back and build on that experience. But if we are anxious every time and get ourselves really concerned, then it undermines that trust.” 

I could have used those words of wisdom at the movies with my grandmother, a woman so consumed with her own weight (and mine) that she prefers to ingest cigarettes than sit-down dinners. I wanted popcorn and a soda, and despite thinking naively that I had no qualms about that, neither of us could shut up about who had eaten more of the popcorn or about how we “shouldn’t have eaten it.”

Can you smell the deep-rooted family issues masked with artificial butter from there?

I’ve long preached to friends and family how problematic it is to call food or our behavior surrounding food “good” and “bad.” And, yet again, I have trouble practicing what I preach. Solomon said perhaps that might not be the best approach.

“What our research tells us is that we can’t necessarily eliminate thoughts,” she said. “It’s like if you say, ‘Don’t think of a purple elephant,’ that’s the first thing you’re going to think of. It’s useless to say don’t think of food as bad or good, but it’s more about noticing it, starting to become aware of what it sounds like and giving it attention. If we start to much more subtly bring kindness and awareness to some of those processes and just sort of being gentle with our experiences, we can bring to our attention how our mind is working so it’s not automatic and compulsive.”

So, then, it seemed like my little experiment was actually a good idea. Acknowledging that there is guilt is OK, but giving yourself a break and coming from a positive place can help shift the behavior and hopefully, eventually, the attitude toward food in general. 

I ate a cheeseburger last night and felt “better” about it after I worked out this morning ― another behavior that comes naturally to me. Solomon says that we have to “undo” feeling that we can’t just have enjoyment ― in the form of cheeseburgers or otherwise ― without earning it. And I still feel like I’ve accomplished something every time I walk by those M&Ms without taking a handful. It’s not a perfect fix, but in noticing the patterns, perhaps there is a chance for change. 

And, just for the record, if you’re feeling any kind of way about food, remember you’re not alone. “It’s a rare person who can say they have a totally healthy relationship with food,” Solomon said. “It’s an evolution and a process.” 

For additional information about Eating Recovery Center, call 877-789-5758, email info@eatingrecoverycenter.com or visit eatingrecoverycenter.com to speak with a masters-level clinician.

Three women who have accused Dustin Hoffman of sexual misconduct are amplifying their voices.

Cori Thomas, Anna Graham Hunter and actress Kathryn Rossetter appeared in a joint interview on NBC Nightly News on Monday in which they shared their stories of Hoffman’s alleged predatory behavior and abuse of power.

“As hard as it is, I think that I wanted to choose truth over shame,” said Thomas, who claims that Hoffman exposed himself to her when she was 16.

According to Thomas, in 1980 she spent one of “the greatest days of [her] life” with the actor and one of his daughters, who was her friend. Things took a stark turn when Thomas was left alone with Hoffman later that day while waiting for her parents to pick her up. She said the actor came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and then dropped it.

“I had never seen a man naked in my life at this point,” she told NBC.

Hoffman then allegedly asked her for a foot massage and kept telling her, “You know I’m naked.”

Hunter, who came forward with accusations against Hoffman in November, said the actor sexually harassed her on the set of his 1985 TV adaptation of “Death of a Salesman” when she was a 17-year-old intern.

She said that Hoffman groped and humiliated her. According to Hunter, one morning Hoffman gave her an offensive and vulgar breakfast order in front of others.

“And he just stared at me and everyone burst out laughing,” she said.

She then went to the bathroom and cried.

Rossetter acted alongside Hoffman in “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway in 1984. She said he continually harassed and assaulted her throughout the production’s run. In one disturbing instance, Rossetter said that Hoffman tried to penetrate her with his fingers backstage.

“I was told to suck it up,” Rossetter told NBC. “He was the most famous actor in the world — it was the top of his career. I was a nobody. No one was going to believe me.”

She added:

People go, “How is it to work with Dustin?” And I tell the half-truth, which is, as an actor working with him, I owe him everything. I learned so much. And then I would stop and there would always be a knot in my stomach about what the real truth was, which is he was abusive and he was a bully.

According to NBC, Hoffman declined to comment on the joint interview. In November, he apologized to Hunter, telling the Hollywood Reporter, “I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”

Hoffman’s attorney has denied Thomas’ claim. He also denied assault allegations made by Melissa Kester and an anonymous woman, other accusers who did not appear on NBC. The attorney called their stories “defamatory falsehoods.”

Some folks online have long believed that actors Keanu Reeves and Adam Driver could be one and the same. But comic book creator Mark Millar took the lighthearted theory to the next level when he shared what he claimed was a face swap of the two stars on Twitter Monday.

Millar’s purported shot of “John Wick” star Reeves on Driver’s body (which actually emerged online earlier in the year), leaves you “confused and slightly lost,” he said.

(One might note that there is only the one photo of Driver’s body, and no corresponding body for Driver to “swap” to). But it was certainly confusing to us and some Twitter users:

For comparison, here are actual photographs of the pair:

Clarification: This article has been updated throughout to be less credulous of the claim that Reeves is featured in either image of this supposed “face swap.”

New Zealand has once again held a nationwide Secret Santa exchange via Twitter, as if you needed any more reason to move to the idyllic isle.

More than 3600 people took part in the NZ Twitter Secret Santa, signing up to give and receive gifts with total strangers from the internet. After beginning in 2010, the scheme has become a Kiwi Christmas tradition, with even Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern playing along.

Twitter users sign up to play through New Zealand’s postal system and are then sent the Twitter handle of the person to buy a gift for. The NZ Secret Santa website tells participants to “get your Twitter-Sleuth on” to try to work out what sort of gift to give, with the rules saying that they need to “find/make/buy them an awesome gift for about $10.” 

With just days until Christmas, the gifts have started arriving in excited New Zealanders’ mailboxes, and everyone seems too stoked to wait until Dec. 25 to open them. People are already sharing pictures of their gifts ― sweet treats, notebooks, mugs, jewelery, socks and other trinkets ― to the #NZSecretSanta hashtag.

Judging by the reactions from gift recipients, the Secret Santas actually took time and effort to research the person they were buying for and think of meaningful gifts, as well as writing personalized Christmas cards. 

Ardern, who was elected prime minister in October and is recognized as the world’s youngest female head of government, was unveiled as one woman’s Secret Santa after sending some lotions and soap as a gift.

Ardern herself received a handmade Christmas tree decoration from a Kiwi citizen.

If you need a bit of Christmas cheer, check out all the rest of the gifts shared on the NZ Secret Santa Twitter account.

President Donald Trump may be vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago estate, but he has dedicated part of his holiday weekend to berating top FBI officials.

Trump on Saturday took aim at FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, the second highest ranking official at the bureau who has received many political jabs from the Republican Party in recent years.

McCabe faced more than 16 hours of questioning this week from several House committees about his role in the FBI’s investigations into Russia’s election meddling and Hillary Clinton’s private email server, according to CNN.

“How can [McCabe], the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation,” the president tweeted Saturday.

Trump also pointed out that McCabe may be retiring soon, as The Washington Post reported Saturday.

Early Sunday morning, he referenced a Fox News segment that reported that McCabe allegedly used “his FBI Official Email Account to promote [Hillary Clinton’s] campaign.” 

Trump’s tweets were an apparent attempt to undermine McCabe’s credibility in the wake of reports that FBI agent Peter Strzok had sent texts considered politically biased against Trump.

Strzok had mentioned “Andy,” which could be a reference to McCabe, in an August 2016 text message to FBI attorney Lisa Page. Some Republicans believe the text messages show a conspiracy to take down Trump, possibly involving McCabe, according to the Post.

Trump’s tweets also rehashed an alleged controversy surrounding 2016 campaign donations made by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an ally of Hillary and Bill Clinton, to McCabe’s wife, who was running for (and eventually lost) a seat in Virginia’s Senate. Many Republicans found the donations suspicious and used it to draw ties between the Clintons and McCabe, who oversaw the FBI’s Clinton email probe. They then called for McCabe’s firing.

McCabe had alerted a department ethics official when the donations were made, according to the Washington Post.

Later Saturday, Trump shifted his attention to reports that FBI general counsel James Baker was being reassigned.

According to the Post, which first reported the news, Baker’s reassignment was FBI director Christopher A. Wray’s attempt to assemble a new team of senior advisers while fending off GOP claims of political bias within the FBI.

The president’s tweets echo the chorus of Republicans on Capitol Hill who have ramped up their criticism of the Department of Justice’s investigation into ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Democrats have denounced the Republican attacks on the FBI and Justice Department, claiming they are attempts from the right to interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

This story has been update with Trump’s Sunday morning tweet.

Gather round, friends, and savor a holiday fable for our bitter age. As in the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, the villain of this story is money. It features its own Ebenezer Scrooge and ghosts of moral compunction. But the ending of our tale has been adjusted: Money prevails and Scrooge dies miserable and rich, but not before buying off his ghosts and fashioning them into a museum exhibit.

That’s where I’m standing, in the annual Yuletide display of John Pierpont Morgan’s collection of Dickensia at the Morgan Library, the Madison Avenue monument to the excesses and undeniable good taste of the man who invented American banking as we know it. Specifically, I am standing in front of the original handwritten manuscript of A Christmas Carol, purchased by Morgan sometime in the 1890s, as his economic and political power approached its zenith. It is the crown jewel of the production, bound in handsome red Morocco leather, presented alongside personal correspondence, illustrations and other minor treasures from Dickens’ improbable life.

In prior years, the irony would have been outrageous, but in this moment, the Dickens exhibit is merely appropriate. As Congress approves a tax bill of blatant financial despotism ― showering fresh riches on billionaires, senators and the president himself ― one of the most beloved expressions of Christian egalitarianism rests under soft illumination, the hunting trophy of a dead financier.   

When Dickens sat down to write A Christmas Carol in October 1843, he was frightened and broke. This would have surprised most Victorians, who knew him as the most popular English writer since Shakespeare and one of the few living men recognizable on multiple continents. But the weak sales of his most recent novels had put severe strain on his resources and amplified some of his deepest anxieties.

When he was 12, Dickens’ respectable middle-class family had been overwhelmed by debt. His father was sentenced to debtors’ prison, and young Charles was dispatched to work at a shoe polish factory to help the family buy back their freedom. The “rotten floors and staircase” he described to his first biographer, John Forster, “and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars” stayed with him. They eventually made an appearance in his hit second novel, Oliver Twist, and stamped on its author a profound sense of social fragility. For Dickens, financial success and the public esteem that accompanied it were not anchored to character or ability. They were insecure blessings, easily erased.

Oliver Twist was now four years in the past. In the meantime, like his father before him, Dickens had been siring more children than he could afford. He and his wife, Catherine, moved into a bigger house to accommodate their growing family even as sales of his novels, serialized in popular magazines, had collapsed to one-fifth of their 1841 peak.

A Christmas Carol was a wild attempt to reverse these sagging fortunes. Instead of turning the work over to the magazines, Dickens would publish it himself as a hardbound book released a week before Christmas to capitalize on the holiday market. Though a sensible sales gimmick today, this was an act of lunatic delusion in 1843, when the market for bound books was small, and the market for Christmas did not exist.

Christmas, in Dickens’ time, was going through an identity crisis. Considered a minor theological event for most of Christian history, Dec. 25 had always been entangled with various non-Christian celebrations of the winter solstice ― holly, mistletoe and ivy are all holdovers from different European tribal festivities, along with Yule logs and Christmas trees. This was particularly troubling to the severe theologies popular among the British. In the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan government put an end to all dangerous compromises with paganism by banning the holiday outright. Caroling became a crime.

The Puritans eventually lost their war on Christmas, but upstanding English families were still negotiating the appropriate limits of joviality under Queen Victoria. She was understood to be Christmas-curious ― her German husband, Albert, was adamant about his tannenbaum ― but most households settled for the rough equivalent of a bank holiday in December, with an evening of ghost stories around the fire thrown in for family entertainment.

Still, Dickens had to do something about his depleted bank account. After blitzing through the manuscript in just six weeks, he was overdrawn, and he wrote to his lawyer Thomas Mitton to beg for a £200 loan ― enough to get him through until the book sales paid out.

All of this spiritual and financial turmoil found an outlet in A Christmas Carol. Combining pagan supernaturalia with Christian themes as subtle as a sledgehammer, Dickens presented a parable of what would soon be known as the social gospel ― a celebration of the working family, of the triumph of love over greed and the promise that everyone, even the most miserable miser, can be redeemed by helping the poor.

People loved it. A Christmas Carol quickly sold out of its initial run of 6,000 copies. A pirated edition appeared ― a sure sign of a hit ― as additional printings were ordered up. It was soon adapted for the stage, and has continued to serve as source material for television, film, ballet and opera ever since. But its cultural influence proved more than literary. Dickens did not, as the latest film adaptation of his slim book (based on an amiable biography by Les Standiford) claims, invent Christmas. He was, however, instrumental in establishing the holiday as a festiveseason, according to another Dickens biographer, Peter Ackroyd. So long as everyone maintained a Christian spirit ― love of family, care for the poor and a healthy skepticism of financial capital ― pagan frivolities were fair game. All of the childhood wonder that has emerged since ― Frosty, Rudolph, the Grinch, even Santa’s red and white suit ― owe a small debt to Dickens.

The great criminal of A Christmas Carol is not Ebenezer Scrooge, who opens the story as an abusive boss, denouncing the moral fiber of the poor as he shuns his own family. Scrooge eventually corrects his moral errors. The real poison is money itself, which corrupts his innocent soul and tricks him into purging joy from his life in a hopeless quest to insulate himself from sorrow. Dickens offered a retelling of the legend of King Midas, the tragic mythological figure whose life was ruined when everything he touched began turning to gold.

It would eventually fall into the hands of a Gilded Age colossus.

Nobody who knew Pierpont Morgan doubted his religious zeal. He collected medieval holy books, made an emotional pilgrimage to Jerusalem and claimed to have seen the exact spot along the Nile River where the infant Moses had been rescued from the reeds. So as his fortune swelled during the second half of the 19th century, the greatest of American financiers devoted some of his wealth to a higher purpose. He bought a church.

At Saint George’s in Manhattan, Morgan paid for social services, financed the construction of new buildings and even picked the rector, Rev. William Rainsford. But ownership and management soon came into conflict when Rainsford sought to “democratize” the vestry ― the governing body of the burgeoning institution ― which the new preacher believed to be an unacceptably narrow, wealthy slice of the parish. Morgan was appalled: “I do not want the vestry democratized. I want it to remain a body of gentlemen whom I can ask to meet me in my study.”

It was not that Morgan despised the working and middle classes ― though he did loathe the nouveau riche who had dared to migrate from among them into his own lofty station. “He was never a champion of social justice or equality,” as biographer Ron Chernow wrote in his titanic history The House of Morgan. But the money magnate still paid for his rector’s various endeavors to feed and educate the poor.

Morgan instead enjoyed a sense of superiority over the masses. He had an unshakeable belief that he and his fellow princes of capital knew what was best not only for the ordering of corporations, but for the way his fellow citizens should live their lives. He provided financial support to Anthony Comstock’s censorship campaigns, which burned books and championed the covering of nude statues. When the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of the Richard Strauss libretto ”Salome” offended his puritanical sensibilities, Morgan personally intervened to cancel the production. He was an active member of the Young Men’s Christian Association, which sought to temper political radicalism among industrial workers by instilling in them Victorian virtues, discouraging gambling, in particular.

Not that Morgan allowed his own conduct to be hindered by such inconveniences. Unhappy with his marriage, he carried on affair after affair with actresses “aboard his yachts, in private railroad cars, and at European spas,” as Chernow details. Once, at a Cairo hotel, he threw a small fortune in gold jewelry onto a table and instructed a throng of young women, “Help yourselves!” before other entertainments ensued.

But for the most part, he lived a life of great power and little pleasure. With his children, Morgan was, in Chernow’s words, “terrifying” and “distant.” A dour, ferocious businessman, he could be as brutal with his colleagues as he was ruthless with his competitors, which he steadily eliminated, forming great monopolies in the steel, coal, telegraph, shipping and railroad industries. When a financial crisis shook the foundations of the American banking system in 1907, Morgan worked out the rescue plan in his study and all but ordered President Theodore Roosevelt to accept the terms, which happened to give Morgan control over the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. The Rough Rider assented without complaint.

In short, over the course of his 75 years, Morgan was a living embodiment of everything Charles Dickens assailed in his fiction. When his son, Jack, came across the Dickens novel Dombey and Son at the age of 13, he was moved to tears by the story, which opens with an overbearing shipping magnate attempting to groom his sensitive son for the family business through various acts of bullying and intimidation. The child dies.

Jack proved sturdier. He succeeded his father at the helm of the family empire and opened the Morgan home as a museum in 1924. Though most of the building has since been transformed into an airy, modern public space, curators have preserved the original patriarch’s library and study. It is both opulent and ominous, filled with dark mahogany shelves, walls covered in crimson silk, Italian Renaissance paintings and one massive portrait each of a glowering Pierpont and a more contemplative Jack. The library has its own rotunda adorned with brilliant mosaics supported by intricately carved marble columns. An adjacent showroom houses illuminated manuscripts, Egyptian statuary and an Assyrian cuneiform tablet. Pierpont’s greatest passion was not for actresses, but for plunder.

Yet money was never far from his mind. Hanging over a massive stone fireplace in the library is an epic 16th-century tapestry depicting the deadly sin of avarice, characterized by King Midas himself. It is a difficult item to interpret. A symbol of Morgan’s internal torment? A demonstration of his power over the moral trifles of lesser men? A simple lack of self-awareness?

Though the Dickens exhibit is more cheerful, it is impossible to put aside similar questions. Why would a fabulously rich banker purchase the letter Dickens wrote over Christmas of 1843 pleading for a loan?

The wealth of material provides a charming narrative of Dickens’ career. Though A Christmas Carol revived his confidence, the project was a financial bust. He insisted on a jubilant presentation for the book, paying for full-color illustrations, leather covers and gilt-edged pages. These elevated production costs left him with a total profit of just £137 from the first printing. Even this was soon wiped out. Dickens successfully sued the rogue publishers who had released a pirated edition, but when they declared bankruptcy, he was left with £700 in legal fees to cover out of his own pocket.

Undeterred, Dickens followed up with four other Christmas books in the 1840s, all of which racked up impressive sales numbers. This year’s Morgan Library exhibit features for the first time the original manuscripts of these later works ― The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man ― though they all made their way into the museum long after Pierpont’s death. None have the same power of A Christmas Carol, but they tackle the same themes, celebrating the working class as they excoriate the elite ― bankers, politicians and churchmen ― as either moralizing hypocrites or sterile, joyless sadists.

The Chimes is even more radical than its better-known predecessor, the story of a poor family steadily beaten down into death and despair by a politician who styles himself an enlightened “friend and father to the poor.” Instead of education or financial aid, the vulnerable protagonists receive stern lectures about their character failings, as additional hardships are piled on to test their fitness for relief. Dickens explained his motive for writing the piece in a letter to the actor William Macready: “I have endeavored to plant an indignant right-hander on the eye of certain Wicked Cant that makes my blood boil, which I hope will not only cloud that eye with black and blue, but many a gentler one with chrystal of the purest sort.”

Morgan’s eye was not blackened. He purchased the letter sometime before 1913. And Dickens himself would struggle to live up to some of these values in later life. His international celebrity put a terrible strain on his marriage to Catherine. In 1858, he humiliated her with a very public separation, leaving the mother of his children for the teenage Ellen Ternan. He worked at a furious pace all his life, taking on a second career as a public speaker, reading his books before audiences of thousands. He never abandoned his crusade for the poor ― his speaking tours for A Christmas Carol raised money for charity ― but family joys and responsibilities became an encumbrance to a man consumed by his own greatness.

None of these failings have diminished the cultural power of his prose, which will resonate so long as economic inequality remains a dominant social problem. For Dickens, Christmas was synonymous with a natural, divine abundance. Scarcity was a human invention. There is never any question in his holiday fables whether there are enough geese in England to satisfy every table at Christmas ― only the question of why some tables are denied their dinner.

Men like Morgan knew the answer. It was stashed away in their bank vaults and hoarded among their cuneiform ruins. And for all the talk of innovation, efficiency and progress we have heard from Wall Street and Silicon Valley in the century or so since Morgan’s death, that is where it remains. The American economy generates over $19 trillion in wealth every year, yet 40 million Americans live in poverty, 41 million live in "food insecure" households and roughly half do not have the funds to meet an unexpected $500 expense. Congress, meanwhile, has decided to raise taxes on the poor and middle class to shower trillions of dollars on some of the richest families the world has ever known, including their own. We are experiencing the spiritual arc of A Christmas Carol in reverse, watching our public commitments and ideas curdle into moral rot.

A New York Times report published Saturday details a toxic workplace culture at Vice Media, which the paper characterizes as being ruled by “a top-down ethos of male entitlement.”

The comprehensive investigation unearthed four settlements of sexual harassment or defamation against employees at Vice. One of those involved the company’s president, Andrew Creighton. He paid $135,00 in 2016 to a former employee who alleged she was fired after refusing “an intimate relationship” with him.

Two other men accused in harassment settlements, former Vice News head Jason Mojica and Vice producer Rhys James, were both fired in November.

According to the Times report, Vice settled for an undisclosed amount to an employee earlier this year who said that as her supervisor, Mojica retaliated against her at the end of a sexual relationship. The company settled for $24,000 in January to an employee of mixed race who said James made racist and sexist comments, including asking her about the color of her nipples.

The fourth settlement involved a writer who said the company defamed her by falsely publishing that she agreed to have sex with a rapper she interviewed.

Additionally, more than 24 women told the Times they had seen or personally experienced sexual misconduct at Vice like unwanted kisses, propositions for sex and inappropriate comments.

Vice co-founders Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi appeared to agree with the sentiments of Vice employees. In a statement sent to the Times, they apologized that those running the company had failed to foster a “safe and inclusive workplace”:

Listening to our employees over the past year, the truth is inescapable: from the top down, we have failed as a company to create a safe and inclusive workplace where everyone, especially women, can feel respected and thrive. Cultural elements from our past, dysfunction, and mismanagement were allowed to flourish unchecked. That includes a detrimental ‘boy’s club’ culture that fostered inappropriate behavior that permeated throughout the company.

It happened on our watch, and ultimately we let far too many people down. We are truly sorry for this.

In a longer version of the statement sent to employees, Vice also outlined the steps the company has taken to improve the situation. Some of those steps were creation of a Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board with Gloria Steinem as a member, a strengthened process for reporting harassment and the removal of a bizarre “non-traditional workplace agreement” that essentially required new hires to agree to not be offended by whatever went on at the office.

The Times report echoes earlier accounts that Vice employees, particularly women, have shared in recent weeks. Last month, The Daily Beast interviewed more than a dozen former and current staffers who described routine harassment and indifference on the part of the company. Employees also described having to sign the “non-traditional workplace agreement” mentioned in Vice’s statement. Those agreements mandated, among other stipulations, that they agree to not find “the workplace environment at VICE” to be “offensive, indecent, violent or disturbing.”

Shortly after The Daily Beast story broke, HuffPost’s Ashley Feinberg spoke with multiple Vice staffers who were furious about the company’s failure to address sexual harassment allegations and frustrated with a general lack of transparency. They also spoke of anxiety over the impending Times story, which they knew was in the works.

“That story is a shadow over all of us,” one employee told HuffPost. “Every day you think, is this the day that it’s going to break?”

Apple is facing several lawsuits after the tech giant admitted this week that it was deliberately slowing down the performance of its older iPhones.

In a statement on Wednesday, the company said slowing down the phones via a recent software update was necessary because the aging batteries in older phones were causing devices to unexpectedly shut down. 

Understandably, iPhone users were pissed.

Many iPhone users didn’t buy Apple’s excuse.

Some insisted the company was purposely slowing down older phone models as a way of forcing consumers to purchase the newer iPhone models.

Two different class-action lawsuits were filed in California and Illinois on Thursday alleging just that. In a federal suit filed in Chicago, five customers claim Apple is engaging in “deceptive, immoral and unethical” practices in violation of consumer protection laws, the Chicago Sun Times reported.

“Corporations have to realize that people are sophisticated and that when people spend their hard-earned dollars on a product they expect it to perform as expected,” James Vlahakis, the attorney representing the plaintiffs in the Chicago suit, told the Sun Times.

“Instead, Apple appears to have obscured and concealed why older phones were slowing down.”

In the California lawsuit, two law school students at the University of Southern California argue Apple installed the performance-stifling update without the device owner’s permission, the Mercury News reported. 

The students, Stefan Bogdanovich and Dakota Speas, also claim Apple “intentionally interfered” with consumers’ iPhones, forcing users to “have to replace iPhones, buy new batteries,” or lose “usage of their phone,” according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by CBS News.

Apple “breached the implied contracts it made with Plaintiffs and Class Members by purposefully slowing down older iPhone models when new models come out and by failing to properly disclose that at the time of that the parties entered into an agreement,” the suit reads.

Apple has not publicly responded to the lawsuits.

While some people have pointed out the company does offer its users a hard-to-find notice that alerts them when their iPhone’s battery needs servicing, many claim the company could have been more transparent about its strategies.

The New York Times’ Niraj Chokshi writes:

[Apple] could have avoided controversy by being more transparent to begin with. It could have notified people that a power management mode was kicking in to keep their iPhones running for longer because their batteries are running out of juice. That would also inform people that they should be getting their batteries replaced. Because Apple was not transparent, it’s natural for people to suspect it of deliberately crippling their devices to get them to buy new ones.

From ricotta cheesecake to chocolate cream pie, there’s something for every sweet tooth on this list.

1. Ricotta Cheesecake with Fresh Raspberries

Inspired by the “Obsessive Ricotta Cheesecake” in Gina DePalma’s Dolce Italiano, Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen, this cheesecake is a hybrid between an American-style cheesecake and an Italian-style cheesecake. The raspberry topping is the perfect foil for the cake, which isn’t overly sweet. GET THE RECIPE

2. Pumpkin Pecan Streusel Torte

This crowd-pleasing pumpkin dessert looks like it comes from a fancy bakery but only takes 30 minutes to put together. GET THE RECIPE

3. New York-Style Cheesecake

Cheesecakes are notoriously tricky to make, but with the right recipe and a few pointers, a tall and creamy NY-style Cheesecake is totally doable, even for beginners. GET THE RECIPE

4. Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

Just mention a chocolate and peanut butter dessert and people get giddy. This pie — with a chocolate crust, creamy peanut butter filling and chocolate ganache topping — lives up to the hype. GET THE RECIPE

5. Cheesecake Bars

Don’t have time to bake a cheesecake? No problem. These dense and creamy cheesecake bars with a brown sugar-graham cracker crust are not only a cinch to make, they rival the very best NY cheesecake out there. GET THE RECIPE

6. Flourless Chocolate Cake with Meringue Topping

A rich, fudgy slab of flourless chocolate cake topped with a light, marshmallowy meringue — this cake is as impressive as it is delicious. GET THE RECIPE

7. Luscious Lemon Squares

With a crisp and buttery shortbread crust, luscious lemon filling, and dusting of powdered sugar, these lemon squares are as pretty as they are delicious. They also freeze beautifully, so you can make them ahead of time and defrost as needed. GET THE RECIPE

8. Coconut Dream Pie

With a coconut-scented cookie crust and creamy coconut custard, all covered in a pillow of whipped cream and heaps of toasted coconut, this pie is truly dream-worthy. GET THE RECIPE

9. Double Chocolate Pavlova with Mascarpone Cream and Raspberries

A pavlova is a cake-shaped meringue with a soft and marshmallowy center and crisp outer shell, usually topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. In this gorgeous chocolate version, cocoa powder and bittersweet chocolate are folded into the meringue and mascarpone cheese is added to the whipped topping. (Bonus: it’s gluten-free!) GET THE RECIPE

10. Bourbon-Brown Butter Pecan Pie

Made with dark brown sugar, golden syrup, brown butter, and a shot of bourbon, the pie is richer with a more complex praline flavor — and also less cloyingly sweet — than your typical pecan pie. GET THE RECIPE

11. Tres Leches Cake with Dulce de Leche Glaze

This light and fluffy cake, popular in Latin America, is soaked with a mixture of three milks: sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and heavy cream. In this version, rum is added to the soaking liquid and a simple rum-spiked dulce de leche glaze covers the cake. GET THE RECIPE

12. Irish Cream Tiramisu

This fun twist on tiramisu from one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson, is a dinner party regular at my house. With layers of boozy, espresso-soaked lady fingers and light mascarpone cream, it’s surprisingly easy to make. GET THE RECIPE

13. Dark Chocolate Bread Pudding with Vanilla Ice Cream

Spiked with bourbon and studded with chunks of dark chocolate, this bread pudding is the ultimate comfort food. Top it with vanilla ice cream and it’s like a grown-up brownie sundae. GET THE RECIPE

14. Latin Flan

In Latin America, flan is made with sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk, giving it an ultra-creamy, luxurious texture — like a cross between pudding and cheesecake. Since it’s prepared in a loaf pan rather than individual ramekins, and can be made up to four days ahead, it’s the perfect dinner party dessert. GET THE RECIPE

15. Molten Chocolate Cakes

Also known as chocolate lava cakes, these individual-sized treats have oozing molten centers. Since they can be prepared mostly ahead of time, they are wonderful for entertaining. GET THE RECIPE

16. Pumpkin Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust and Caramel Sauce

After testing six different versions of pumpkin cheesecake, I came up with this surefire recipe. It’s a family favorite, and a welcome change from that tired ol’ pumpkin pie. GET THE RECIPE

17. Chocolate Cream Pie

With a dark chocolate cookie crust, silky chocolate pudding center and generous whipped cream topping, this pie is truly a chocolate lover’s dream. GET THE RECIPE

Santa Claus will soon be making his unbelievably fast trip around the world, delivering gifts to all of those children good enough to make his “nice” list.

In the meantime, people around globe have been celebrating their ideas of the man in red. From Finland’s Joulupukki to a sky-scraper bounding Santa in Berlin, it looks like the real Santa got a lot of great help this year. 

See the photos from around the world below.

Mariah Carey, undeterred by last year’s performance, will take to the stage once again in Times Square to ring in the new year on live TV. 

The star, along with Dick Clark Productions, issued a joint statement on Friday announcing Carey as the headliner for “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” broadcast. 

“We can all agree that last year didn’t go exactly as planned and we are thrilled to move forward together to provide America with an incredible night of music and celebration,” read the joint statement, obtained by Entertainment Weekly.

Last year, Carey’s performance was ridiculed as the star failed to sing for the majority of her set, instead pacing the stage and insisting to the audience that she couldn’t hear through her earpiece.

Carey’s manager blamed the production and technical difficulties that producers knowingly failed to fix. Dick Clark Productions called the accusations “outrageous and frankly absurd.” Carey eventually broke her silence on the troubled performance, saying she was “mortified” and that she intended to take a break from social media.

Now it seems as though everyone is ready to put the messy past behind them. Carey will join the likes of Britney Spears, Nick Jonas, Kelly Clarkson and Shawn Mendes as the world rings in 2018.

Carey’s forthcoming New Year’s Eve performance will top an already merry holiday season for the star. In addition to performing her annual Christmas tour, Carey’s famous single “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has been played more than 100 million times this month alone, according to Forbes.

“Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” will air on ABC at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 31.