Today the Boy Scouts of America officially lifted its ban on openly gay youths. According to the BSA, "while people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting." But don't get too excited: the ban on openly gay leaders will remain.

According to a report from TMZ, James Avery, the man who played adored father, uncle, and judge Phillip Banks on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air died at a Los Angeles hospital Tuesday evening.

On Fox News' live New Years Eve 2013 spectacular "All American New Year," it was definitely an all-American celebration. Lecherous host Phil Keating, after approaching a drunk woman and calling her a "tall drink of water," got what he deserved: the two women he interviewed were so excited for 2014, they kissed, flipped off the camera, flashed tongue, and screamed, "We're gonna fuck shit up!"

[The ground of New York City's Times Square early New Year's Day was littered with confetti, garbage, and Lord knows what else. In the distance, you can see Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, an exclusive restaurant that sold New Year's Eve party tickets for $679. Photo by Tine Fineberg via AP]

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor late Tuesday temporarily blocked the Obama administration's enforcement of the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage requirements for a small group of Catholic nuns. The government has until Friday to file a response in the case.

Welcome to The 12 Days of Thatz Not Okay, a special holiday edition of a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Check back tomorrow for our next seasonal installment. As always, please send your questions (max: 200 words) to caity.weaver@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

In need of a hangover cure? Try greasy breakfast food, wheatgrass, Pedialyte, exercise, Alka-Seltzer, Netflix, sleeping all day, crying in the shower, or Sprite. And next year, try a little self control.

Those of us who write words for Gawker, Jezebel and Deadspin have an unbelievable safety net: The work of art director Jim Cooke and staff artist Sam Woolley, whose disturbingly good and quickly assembled images turn bad ideas and half-baked concepts into classic posts. Here are some of our favorites from 2013.

On this New Year's Day in America, 2014, the nation's typists ("thought leaders") are required to use their long-dormant psychic abilities to designate the next 12 months as the Year of Something or Other, whether that be "accidental mass suicide" or "wearable automobiles" or "raccoon-sized talking spiders." Such predictions will generally be wrong, yet there is also the remote possibility that the simple act of making a prediction will cause it to happen, no matter how ridiculous or vile.

Happy new year! Now that 2013 is out of the way, it's time to get cracking on deciding the what next year is. The Year of the Winter Olympics? The Year of World Peace? Or maybe one of these 56 other options, predicted by writers all over?

As another year comes to a close, we must determine how it will be remembered by all of the generations who will come after us. Will 2013 be commemorated, as we predicted last year, as the Year of Meh? Far from it. We found at least 61 better options.

New York Times Magazine has the most important year-end round-up of all: a tribute to 2013's fallen cats.

We know the villains of 2013. But who were the heroes? To accompany Ken Layne's essay on Francis the Friendly Pope, each Gawker staffer wrote a short post about his or her hero of 2013. Click through the links below to read them.

Language is wonderful and language is alive, but language is also a form of psychological assault—especially when everybody suddenly starts using awful new terms and phrases just because everyone else is doing it, on Twitter. We are not so naive as to think we can "ban" this or that word, because "ban" is one of the words we would ban, if words could be banned. They cannot. Thanks to 2013, we're stuck with this bunch of linguistic garbage.

An Indiana woman was arrested last Saturday after she allegedly held her daughter's boyfriend against his will and sliced his genitals with a box cutter over a drug-influenced belief that he had molested her two-year-old son.

What time is New Year's? New Year's time, New Year time. When is New Year? Time of next year start. What time is 2014?

Coffee, "The Bean of Kings," has a worth that might be considered infinite. But right this moment, it's worth is more accurately described as "Cheap as hell."

Welcome to The 12 Days of Thatz Not Okay, a special holiday edition of a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Check back tomorrow for our next seasonal installment. As always, please send your questions (max: 200 words) to caity.weaver@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

Liberal cable network MSNBC has a way of offending conservatives in the least productive manner possible. Case in point: On Sunday Melissa Harris-Perry invited a roundtable of comedians to dissect a family photograph of failed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who in the photo is holding on his right lap his newest baby grandson, Kieran Romney. Kieran, who is adopted, happens to be black. Which was enough for Harris-Perry’s guests to make fun of how the Romney family, much like the Republican Party, is mostly white. It’s not the dumbest thing MSNBC has ever aired (that would be Morning Joe), but still: It’s a baby.

On Monday, the United States transferred the three remaining Uighur detainees at Guantanamo Bay to Slovakia. The transfer comes five years after a judge ordered that the three men be released and 10 years after the military determined the Uighurs were "not affiliated with Al Qaeda or a Taliban leader."