Littlemonsters.com is Lady Gaga’s first foray in launching a social network. Though still in beta, Littlemonsters uncannily resembles the much buzzed about social networking site Pinterest. Some are even calling the design a “blatant rip off” of Pinterest’s visual pinboard style. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, as Gaga has made a career out of ripping off the style of others.

The premise of Littlemonsters is to create a community for fans to interact and share Gaga-related content. Like Pinterest, users can add their own Gaga-related content to the site, while having the option to vote up other content and interact with other members of the community.

Littlemonsters is the first product from the Palo Alto based startup Backplane . CEO Matt Michelsen told Mashable that this site and future Blackplane projects have one core mission: “Unite people around interests, affinities and movements.” A social network entirely dedicated to Lady Gaga seems a bit limiting in terms of scope and even growth, though Backplane plans to launch similar sites and then a main dashboard connecting all of the communities.

At the moment, Littlemonsters has doled out a little over 10,000 codes that come with an invite only. Backplane plans to launch the site out of beta some time in 2012.

Mashable sums it up writing, “with a look like Pinterest and a popularity-vote feel like Reddit, the Little Monsters website appears to be latching on to what’s hot on the web right now: sharing visuals and rating content.”

How does one best articulate the moral hypocrisy of the sexually-repressed conservative? It’s a great question in the aftermath of Rick Santorum’s electoral hat trick yesterday, in which a homophobic, sex-hating public figure without an ounce of political vision convinced citizens of Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado that he was even better than a stable of like-minded candidates. It seems logical to suppose that voters admired Santorum’s energetic homophobia and, indeed, disgust of the human body. After all, sex is to make babies and not for enjoyment, folks.

One should always delight in a morally and religiously conservative person being caught indulging in the illicit pleasures of pornography. No, Santorum has not been caught in such a pickle, but some conservative politicians halfway around the globe have.

According to Reuters, news cameras caught and broadcast footage of Karnataka state Minister for Cooperation Laxman Savadi sharing a porn clip with his colleague C.C. Patil, Minister for women and child development, on a phone owned by Krishna Palemar, state Minister for Ports, Science and Technology.

The response to this footage has found conservatives, naturally, in vocal opposition to the commodification and control of female flesh; seeking instead to control females through the machinery of India’s patriarchal Hindu system. This is not to say that pornography is a path to personal, cultural and political liberty. Though it is likely, just as in the U.S., that it probably proves to be a productive and empowering career for some who seek it out.

What, however, is revealed about conservatives who are caught watching porn? Well, like anyone, it’s fairly clear that they quite enjoy watching a good romp. Their carnal desires are inflamed, and a voyeuristic impulse revealed. And we can be sure that what happens in India surely happens here in America.

Secretly, everyone loves sex—some just pretend not to in order to avoid being perceived as depraved. Truthfully, these conservatives want out of religious and cultural control as much as the next man or woman, and the smartphones, the computer screens, the televisions housing liquid crystals arranged in the shape of sexual intercourse, well… they’re just the windows of freedom.

Mark Zuckerberg accidentally endorsed Mitt Romney on Facebook. Oops.

Watch the Secret Service stop a would-be Mitt Romney glitter bomb. Your tax dollars put to good use, folks.

Could Vladimir Putin, the man who bends frying pans with his bare hands, be facing a Russian Spring?

The Arizona Supreme Court upheld a decision to remove a member of city council because she’s not fluent enough in English.

Yep, the economy still sucks. But it turns out the explosion of apps has created 466,000 jobs since 2007.

Today’s big question: Will the Supreme Court hear the Prop 8 case?

The Hairpin presents a few cocktails to potentially get you laid.

Mark Zuckerberg could pay billions in taxes. But don’t cry too hard for him.

Check out the 13 best tweets from the totally hilarious comic Kumail Nanjiani, via BuzzFeed.

I drink coffee every day because I like how it makes me feel, but I’m aware that it’s not an attractive habit. The bitter breath, the dull yellow teeth, the weird stomach pains—if you take cancer and gross-smelling sweaters out of the equation, drinking a ton of coffee is only slightly less nasty than smoking.

Because of the drawbacks, I’ve occasionally wondered if there’s a better way, and clearly so have many coffee-lovers. So far the brilliant minds behind caffeinated products have come up with a vast assortment of drinkables and edibles—Full Trottle, Monster Hitman Energy Shooter, 5-hour Energy, caffeinated gum, caffeinated Butter Fingers, caffeinated beef jerky. Until now, to the best of my knowledge, these inventors have steered clear from the stigmatized option of inhalable energy boosters.

Apparently, though, someone decided to make the plunge. Enter Aeroshot, a lipstick-sized device that supposedly administers caffeine in inhaler-like puffs. “There’s not liquid to slow you down or fill you up” says the site. “It delivers a unique blend of caffeine and B-vitamins in a fine powder that dissolves in your mouth.”

Each Aeroshot costs $2.99 and contains 100 milligrams of the caffeine powder, about six puffs, which taken together contain about the same amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee. If you’re sick of the coffee drawbacks and can get past the distinctly crack-like quality of Aeroshots, it just might be worth a shot.

After the successful campaigns which at least temporarily derailed SOPA and PIPA, an international critical mass is building against The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a controversial trade agreement that was signed by President Barack Obama.

ACTA has been part of multi-lateral talks since 2006, but it was only in 2008 that its details came to light thanks to a leaked discussion paper obtained by WikiLeaks. Under ACTA, copyright holders (known in ACTA’s legal language as “a Party”) will be able to force ISPs into cooperation (similar to SOPA/PIPA) by demanding user data without court proceedings, forcing compliance by threat of civil proceedings or criminal sanctions for “aiding and abetting” infringement.

It’s also worth noting that ACTA can be viewed as an example of “policy laundering.” That is, if ACTA’s provisions were good enough for the international community, then countries should, naturally, pass their respective domestic legislation such as SOPA. DeSopa developer Tamer Rizk discussed this tactic in a recent op-ed piece for Death and Taxes.

ACTA has evolved since 2008 as a response to criticism from privacy advocates, internet activists and even the EU Parliament adopted a resolution against ACTA, stating that negotiations should be more visible and the content adjusted “in order to respect fundamental rights, such as the right to freedom of expression and the right to privacy.”

And since ACTA is an executive trade agreement and not a treaty, President Obama is able to circumvent the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate, assuming that would even be opposed to the agreement in the first place.

Access, a website which advocates for global digital freedom, has been promoting an ACTA protest set for February 11th. According to the Access website:

On February 11th, the world will be out in an unprecedented showing of solidarity against ACTA. Protests are being organized all over the globe to show the European Parliament that they must reject ACTA. Though many countries have signed the treaty already, if the EP rejects ACTA, it will be sent into the dustbin on history!

The organizers provide a list of protest locations (it’s quite extensive), as well as the means to create one’s own ACTA protest.

Access also provides a link to a “Just Say ‘No’ to ACTA” petition.

Remember when Apple’s voice recognition app Siri refused to give directions to abortion clinics? Well, Verizon’s Android application Iris has the same socially conservative politics.

As Right Wing Watch and ThinkProgress report, little Iris also refuses to guide users toward abortion providers. But Iris goes one step further. While Siri simply refuses to give the information, Iris quotes the Bible to make her point.

“Abortion is wrong. The Lord has said ‘You shall not murder,’ (Exodus 20:13). The life that is growing within the mother is a child, a baby. The Bible looks at the life in the womb as a child,” Iris replies when asked whether abortion is wrong, and then ends with a cheery “Thanks!”

Asked “What makes abortion wrong,” Iris replies: “It takes away the right to live, to be happy, to be healthy…” The list goes on.

Right wingers like Family Research Council are celebrating Iris’ abortion opposition, but the rest of us — you know, the less draconian people who believe in a woman’s right to choose — are left to wonder why 21st century technology is so stuck in the 18th century.

At the risk of sounding new-agey and cliché, I believe that attending a yoga class four times a week can change a person’s life. Even if you’re like me and you find reaching a meditative state all but impossible, regular simple yoga exercises will make you physically healthier—more flexible, more toned, more energetic—than doing nothing, or say, treading on the elliptical machine at the gym.

But as with all exercise, it’s easy to find reasons to avoid yoga. Willpower is a limited resource, as is time, and, most persuasively, money. Yoga classes cost upwards of $20 each. If you want to practice over four times a week, it can cost over $4 thousand a year—a prohibitive sum for most middle-to-lower income folks. That’s why if a trained instructor wants to offer free classes on a beach it should be viewed as a benevolent community service, not a nuisance to be regulated.

But that’s what’s happening on Venice City Beach in Sarasota County, Florida where yoga instructor Elin Larsen leads free yoga every day of the week at 8am. “I just show up and people do yoga with me,” she told WWSB the local ABC affiliate as though offering professional services for free for the betterment of a community were as common a beach activity as reading a trashy novel.

Larsen has been teaching on the beach for four years now, charging nothing, though accepting tips from those who can. Nobody signs up, nobody counts how many arrive—the residents simply come and exercise in unison. Through consistency and word of mouth she’s attracted hundreds of locals who now show up regularly.

Sadly, yet somewhat unsurprisingly, Sarasota County officials have taken notice and are trying to demand that Larsen pay the city for the space, despite not charging her students. Some of these students are understandably displeased. “They leave and there is not an ounce of anything left on the beach. This is America. We should be allowed to do that,” regular Larry Chiricosta told ABC 9.

This isn’t the tragedy of the year. No one’s dusting the yogis with pepper spray. But it is a little sad that people can use a public beach for nonsense—tanning, eating hot dogs, beach combing with metal detectors—but not to lead their neighbors in free exercise. What’s the point of public property if not the good of the community?

Unless these gatherings spontaneously morph into naked yoga, which nobody needs to see at 8am, the county of Sarasota should just leave Larsen and her fit friends alone.

It’s perfectly understandable that the tanning salon industry would get bent out of shape about it—the tax was indeed intended to discourage people from using tanning beds, just as taxes on cigarettes and alcohol are levied partly to discourage people from smoking and drinking too much. In 2010 Think Progress noted, A recent study from the American Association for Cancer Research found that people “who tanned indoors had a 74% greater risk of developing melanoma than those who never used the machines,” and that melanoma is one of the deadliest cancers, killing 10% of those diagnosed. The “tax will significantly reduce the future costs of treating skin cancers,” said the president of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Though only a small fraction of Americans use tanning beds, John Boehner appears to be one of them, and the industry found a vocal ally in the fight against what it called an unfair and anti-business tax disadvantage. Boehner drummed up awareness of the grave danger facing the tanning industry, issuing a press release that insisted “ObamaCare’s tanning tax is causing all kinds of problems for business owners who provide tanning services” and warned: “Some 30 million Americans visit a tanning salon at least once a year and 75 percent of the employees and customers are women,” as if trying to paint Obama as somehow anti-woman.

Now the industry is paying Boehner back. Think Progress reports that the tanning industry’s PAC has donated $5,000 to Boehner’s re-election campaign “and another $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Campaign’s Boehner for Speaker Committee.”

Republican presidential candidates have vowed to repeal “Obamacare” if elected, which would reverse some of the components that went into effect in 2010, including the 10% tax on tanning beds. Repealing Obamacare may prove most difficult for Mitt Romney, however, since the whole platform was basically his idea. And since he’s still the Republicans’ best shot at the White House, the tanning industry is probably smart to curry as much favor of the Congressional side with Boehner as it can muster.

But ten grand isn’t exactly the kind of money that puts a politician in an industry’s back pocket. If anything, this requited love between Boehner and the tanning industry seems to be a natural occurrence of shared passion. Given the Speaker’s proclivities, here are a couple other industries that might want to consider backing Boehner for the sake of mutual interest:

The tissue industry:

The tobacco industry:

Anonymous hacked Syrian president Bashar Assad’s email. His password was “12345”

You might have missed Will Ferrel’s Super Bowl ad for Old Milwaukee—because it only ran in some random part of Nebraska.

Think it looks cold in Europe? 40 years ago Iran got smacked with the most deadly blizzard ever.

Still, it’s pretty damn cold in Europe. Check out this picture.

A cop literally chased himself around for 20 minutes, in hot pursuit of himself.

Remember the Tea Party? So 2009. The Week has 4 theories on why they burnt out.

Best picture of the day, no contest.

Occupy Wall Street announced today that it’s going to occupy CPAC, the conservative convention.

The 9th Circuit Court is one of Newt Gingrich’s favorite targets. Indeed, he has called for the court to be abolished, simply because his religious politics don’t align with the court’s attempts to make all citizens fair and equal under the Constitution.

When not arrogantly pontificating about how to best organize America with his myopic view of history (obtained by way of a PhD), the Newt likes to elaborate on his crusade against the 9th Circuit, stating:

“I’ve been working on this project since 2002 when the Ninth Circuit court said that ‘one nation under God’ is unconstitutional in the Pledge of Allegiance. And I decided that if you had judges that were so radically anti-American that they thought ‘one nation under God’ was wrong, they shouldn’t be on the court.”

Newt then likes to point to history (so as to awe listeners and short-circuit their reasoning with his allegedly profound intellect), noting this precedent was established when President Thomas Jefferson abolished 18 out of 35 federal judges in 1802. What Newt won’t tell his faithful flock, or anyone who happens to be listening to his bloviations, is that Jefferson reorganized the federal judiciary for political reasons—he was opposed to the Federalists and to the shape the courts had taken under George Washington and John Adams. But of course there’s more to the story.

These Federalist judges—who dominated the Supreme and circuit courts—had been the ones aggressively enforcing The Alien and Sedition Acts, a response to Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans’ support of France after that country’s revolution.

The fourth law was The Sedition Act, a lovely piece of legislation which stated that anyone publishing “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the government or certain officials could be charged with a crime. The Sedition Act was used by the Federalists to ensure their primacy over Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party.

So, you see, Newt Gingrich is full of shit, okay?

Let’s not dwell on Newt’s distorted sense of history, though, but return to his crusade against the 9th Circuit. Today, the Newt tweeted, “Court of Appeals overturning CA’s Prop 8 another example of an out of control judiciary. Let’s end judicial supremacy.”

The 9th Circuit three-judge panel was simply attempting to ensure that all individuals are treated fair and equal under the U.S. Constitution. It is not a political ruling, but a purely constitutional one.

But, let’s engage in a little of Newt Gingrich’s brand of false analogy for a moment. Perhaps Gingrich, in feeling that California was right in trampling on the rights of homosexuals, is not unlike the Federalists who, if they had had their way, would have imprisoned and fined anyone who spoke or wrote ill of a public figure.

In fact, I will now take the opportunity afforded me by Jefferson’s efforts against the Sedition Act to say to Newt Gingrich, “Fuck you, dickwad, and may many misfortunes befall you on the campaign trail.”