The ongoing criminal investigation into the death of Tamir Rice has focused mostly on Timothy Loehmann, the Cleveland police officer who shot and killed the 12-year-old in a park last November. Last month, a county official familiar with the case told Mother Jones that Frank Garmback, the officer who drove the police car to within a few feet of Rice moments before Loehmann stepped out and opened fire, was not under criminal investigation by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department, which turned over its investigation to county prosecutor on Wednesday.

As Mother Jones and others have reported, prior records showed that Loehmann "could not follow simple directions" and that "his handgun performance was dismal." Garmback's past record has received far less attention, even though he was involved in a use-of-force lawsuit that was settled not long before Rice's death.

In 2012, Garmback was named in a civil rights lawsuit for allegedly using excessive force against a black woman named Tamela Eaton. Eaton, who was 39 at the time, had called Cleveland police in August 2010 to ask for help towing a car that was parked in front of her driveway. Garmback and another officer, Tim Guerra, were searching for a murder suspect nearby. When they tried to arrest a man walking down the street, Eaton heard the commotion and came out of her home, believing the officers were responding to her call. Eaton's lawsuit asserted that Garmback initially argued with her, then rushed toward her "and placed her in a chokehold, tackled her to the ground, twisted her wrist and began hitting her body. Officer Guerra rushed over and proceeded to punch Tamela Eaton in the face multiple times."

Housed in the former home of the 10-story International Shoe Company, the sprawling 600,000 square-foot City Museum in St. Louis is quite possibly the ultimate urban playground ever constructed. The museum is the brainchild of artist and sculptor Bob Cassilly who opened the space in 1997 after years of renovation and construction. Although Cassilly passed away in 2011, the museum is perpetually under construction as new features are added or improved thanks to a ragtag group of 20 artists known affectionately as the Cassilly Crew.

So what can you find at the City Museum? How about a sky-high jungle gym making use of two repurposed airplanes, two towering 10-story slides and numerous multi-floor slides, a rooftop Ferris wheel and a cantilevered school bus that juts out from the roof, subterranean caves, a pipe organ, hundreds of feet of tunnels that traverse from floor to floor, an aquarium, ball pits, a shoe lace factory, a circus arts facility, restaurants, and even a bar… because why not? All the materials used to build the museum including salvaged bridges, old chimneys, construction cranes, and miles of tile are sourced locally, making the entire endeavor a massive recycling project.

If you have kids (or are a kid at heart) and live in the midwestern United States or have any other means to get to St. Louis, if you aren’t immediately planning a trip to City Museum, you’re missing out on life. On my first visit last year our family hardly left the museum for two days. It is the complete antithesis to commercialized theme parks like Disneyland. You can see more photos at Gallery Hip.

The organizer of an anti-Muslim hate rally in Phoenix, Arizona now says he needs patriots to donate $10 million to him so that his family can be safe from Muslims – even though none threatened him.

We all saw it coming, but 10 million?!

According to Jon Ritzheimer, he doesn’t fear for his own safety (because he’s a tough guy) but his family has been put in harm’s way by his actions, and therefore he humbly asks that Fox News watchin’, Muslim-hatin’ America lovers please give him $10 million so he can fortify his house. Given the price tag, this involves coating the entire thing with diamond-embedded gold – you know, to keep out the moslems.

But don’t worry, skeptics and cynics, he swears he needs it!

I know this seems like an absurd amount of money and I’d like to explain that. The money will go towards fortifying my house and getting what ever is necessary to make them feel safe again. I refuse to profit from this and any additional funds will go to Children’s Hospital. You have my word on that! And should I decide to run for John McCain’s seat in the Senate that is up for grabs this election, money will go towards starting my campaign as well. I would be running as an Independent Free Man who refuses to be labeled left or right.

Sue found herself at a high-kill shelter, sick and alone. Thanks to the care and dedication of people who volunteer their time, she had an army of angels looking out for her well-being.



Coastal German Shepherd Rescue was asked to help and, shepherd or not, we knew this girl didn't have much time and quickly said "yes." Sue was rescued and immediately taken to the vet.

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L’Oreal makes cosmetics and hair color. It also makes skin. Human skin, created in a lab, so it can test its products without using people or animals. Now it’s talking about printing the stuff, using 3-D bioprinters that will spit out dollops of skin into nickel-sized petri dishes.

The idea is to produce skin more quickly and easily using what is essentially an assembly line developed with Organovo, a San Diego bioprinting company. Such a technique would allow the French cosmetics company to do more accurate testing, but it also has medical applications—particularly in burn care.

Treating severe burns typically involves grafting a healthy patch of skin taken from elsewhere on the body. But large burns present a problem. That has researchers at Wake Forest experimenting with a treatment method that involves applying a small number of healthy skin cells onto the injury and letting them grow organically over the wound. 3-D-bioprinted skin potentially could be produced faster, provided Organovo can successfully replicate the cell structure of human epidermis.

L’Oreal already has a massive lab in Lyon, France, to produce its patented skin, called Episkin, from incubated skin cells donated by surgery patients. The cells grow in a collagen culture before being exposed to air and UV light to mimic the effects of aging. Organovo pioneered the process of bioprinting human tissues, most notably creating a 3-D-printed liver system. Both parties benefit from the partnership: L’Oreal gets Organovo’s speed and expertise, and Organovo gets funding and access to L’Oreal’s comprehensive knowledge of skin, acquired through many years and over $1 billion in research and development.

A California teen managed to make a statement on three political issues in one witty high school yearbook quote.

Caitlyn Cannon, who recently graduated from Oak Hills High School, became a social media star after reshaping a quote she found on Tumblr to advocate for LGBT, gender, and wage equality.

“I need feminism because I intend on marrying rich and I can’t do that if my wife and I are making .75 cent for every dollar a man makes,” Cannon said in her senior quote.

A good friend shared a photo of Caitlyn and her quote on Twitter, and the image was shared nearly 6,000 times.