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“I of course realize that many people around the country are concerned that an intervention in Syria would devolve into another Siege of Belgrade, but I can assure you that this operation will be swift, decisive, and will in no way resemble the Ottoman Empire’s ill-advised invasion of Nándorfehérvár,” Obama told the assembled White House Press Corps.

“When I heard we were getting involved in Syria, right away I thought, ‘Well, here we go, it’s 1456 Belgrade all over again,’” said Seattle resident Matt Haggerty, 42, who, like millions of Americans, says he “in no way supports the idea” of getting entangled in any military campaign even remotely similar to the Ottoman invasion of the Catholic Balkans.

The Daily Currant is a fake-news site of a different stripe: one entirely devoid of jokes. Whether this humorlessness is intentional or not—the site's founder contends his critics don't have a sense of subtlety—the site's business model as an ad-driven clickbait-generator relies on it. When Currant stories go viral, it's not because their satire contains essential truths, but rather because their satire is taken as truth—and usually that "truth" is engineered to outrage a particular frequency of the political spectrum. As Slate's Josh Voorhees wrote after Drudge fell for the Bloomberg story, "It's a classic Currant con, one that relies on its mark wanting to believe a particular story is true." 

The Daily Currant's headlines don’t engage in subtlety so much as fail entirely to signal humorous intention. That would be acceptable, perhaps even clever, if the stories themselves skillfully exploited the reader's initial credulity, the copy growing increasingly ludicrous until the reader realizes the joke. Instead, jokes sometimes materialize in the final lines, but they’re half-baked at best. The VA story ends with Obama dismissing calls for officials to resign. "Why," Obama asks, "would holding people accountable for their actions be necessary?” That neither funny nor satirical. But it rings true to partisans who genuinely believe that Obama thinks that way—the same people who, in a flash of outrage, are most likely to share the story on social media.

“These are heartless sadists who have put in countless hours of backstabbing and forsaken all ethical constraints in order to bolster their own power, and yet time and time again they are denied a place at the top of the corporate ladder simply because of the color of their skin,” she continued.According to the report, even when companies were presented with numerous highly qualified minority candidates with no moral compass and a history of increasing earnings by knowingly rushing an unsafe product to market or outsourcing thousands of manufacturing jobs to overseas sweatshops, the top-tier positions still tended to be awarded almost exclusively to deceitful, empathy-devoid whites.

Over the last week, two of the world’s biggest internet companies have faced mounting criticism over how fake news on their sites may have influenced the presidential election’s outcome.

Hours later, Facebook, the social network, updated the language in its Facebook Audience Network policy, which already says it will not display ads in sites that show misleading or illegal content, to include fake news sites.

Google did not escape the glare, with critics saying the company gave too much prominence to false news stories.

Superstitions don't rule the US Women's National Team — but they definitely have some

Whether you call it paranoid or just a ritual, some players just need their routines. Here are some of the United States Women's National Team members' rituals (or superstitions) that get them prepped for game day:

Carli Lloyd says she plays her best game when she knows the pressure of the eyes of her family and friends aren't there to throw her off.