The most interesting thing to me about the film 12 Years a Slave is that both its director, Steve McQueen, and its lead, Chiwetel Ejiofor, are British sons of immigrant parents. I wonder how both men, being black but not having roots in America, think of and relate to the story of Solomon Northup, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American South years after Britain had passed its Slavery Abolition Act.

A train carrying combustable materials derailed this afternoon near Casselton, North Dakota, sending flames as high as 100 feet according to some reports. Emergency crews have issued a code red alert to residents within a two mile radius of the crash, warning them to stay inside.

Police in South Carolina say a Richland County man ended up in the hospital last week after being stabbed by his fiancée for disagreeing with her choice of wedding colors.

"Fenriz, the drummer of Norway's Darkthrone, a group known for sounding like they are recording in a garage with one microphone, says bands that overuse computers are 'losers.'" The Wall Street Journal takes a look at metal's BPM arms race.

The best-performing stocks of 2013: Tesla, Netflix, Best Buy, and Twitter. Hurry up and invest in these high fliers as they fly higher and higher and higher, and never lower!

Barack Obama's half-brother, China-based Mark Obama Ndesandjo, plans a self-published tell-all about how their father was abusive and how Barack got lots wrong in his own autobiography. "Barack thought I was too white and I thought he was too black," Ndesandjo says. Also, Benghazi.

At a press conference Monday morning, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson revealed new details about the shooting at Arapahoe High School earlier this month, including one that indirectly ties the shooter to the school shooting at Columbine: Just before he shot and killed 17-year-old Claire Davis and committed suicide in his school's library, Karl Pierson went bowling.

When Starbucks sent a cease and desist to a small Missouri brewpub demanding they change the name of a little imbibed beer called "Frappicino" lest the coffeehouse chain's customers mistake it for their own "Frappuccino," the owner had no choice but to comply.

American conservatives love, love, love Israel. They also hate, hate, hate abortion and socialized medicine. American conservatives face one hell of a moral conundrum in the new year.

A headline on a recent PolicyMic story reads: "This is America's Most Apocalyptic, Violent City — And You've Probably Never Heard Of It." That city would be Flint, Michigan. The story's author: Jamie Dimon's daughter.

When Wolf Blitzer asked Moore tornado survivor Rebecca Vitsmun if she thanked the lord, many expected her to answer "yes." Instead she replied "I'm actually an atheist."

A few years ago, I judged a child beauty pageant in Texas. For each of the fifty-plus kids I saw that day, I had to fill out scorecard assigning a numerical value to several of their attributes. The first criterion was "facial beauty."

Lots of music was recorded and released in 2013. More music than anyone—even you, cool internet guy, who loudly commandeers the iPod at parties and impatiently explains to strangers why they music they like is garbage—could possibly listen to. Here's the stuff you missed.

Incoming New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has already horrified everyone with his bizarre hatred of walkable pedestrian plazas, but his war on anything that's not a car is just beginning. According to the Daily News, de Blasio announced today that he will "get rid of the horse carriages. Period."

DEA agents helped shoot up a boatload of innocent civilians last year along the the Honduran Mosquito Coast, killing three, the New Yorker's Mattathias Schwartz reports. Aside from stonewalling any investigation, the U.S. response was this: "These are not innocent communities."

The Duke of Cambridge may be even more boring than we thought. To his credit, he has enrolled at Cambridge University, one of the top schools on the planet. But it's just a ten-week program. In agricultural management.

It was always the good war. Not like that weird Iraq distraction. "The right war was Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan," John Kerry said in 2004. "We cannot lose Afghanistan," Barack Obama said in 2008. Well, we lost it, America. Because we suck much more than we're willing to admit to ourselves.

Good Idea Alert: Why not have a football bowl game that begins at midnight on New Year's day, just after the ball drops? That way you can turn the game on at your New Year's party.

Sarah Massey would be just another 33-year-old mother-of-two from Chicago — if it weren't for the fact that she also happens to have the world's biggest butt.

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."