From the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast, America is struggling with ice storms and blizzards and general misery. The winter weather has been especially tough on Californians. Many of us don't own gloves, or forgot where we put them several years ago after we got home from Mammoth or Tahoe. Few of us have those scrapey things to get frost off the windshield—frost!—but I have witnessed our brave people making do with their credit cards or even the edges of their phones, which is probably not recommended by the manufacturer. But what do we know of frozen water outside? Frozen water goes in margaritas! Yet we are surviving this unusually chilly weather, together and mostly apart, like usual.

Slate business and economics correspondent Matthew Yglesias reports today that he successfully entered and explored a Washington, DC Wal-Mart store. He didn't buy anything, though.

Book snark lives, after all.

A Florida man suspected of organizing several so-called "dinner time" burglaries in the Boynton Beach area was arrested after posting a series of incriminating photos on Instagram.

Merry Christmas. Or not. Whatever winter holiday you celebrate, you probably do it by substituting love and kindness with cheap plastic garbage wrapped in pretty paper. And if you're like us, you find it distracting to put too much thought into what to buy your loved ones. Each year we try to solve that problem by HARNESSING THE AWESOME POWER OF GAWKER MEDIA'S PROPRIETARY PUBLISHING PLATFORM, KINJA, to gather the best gift suggestions the internet has to offer. This year, we've divided the universe of potential gift recipients into readers of our Gawker Media brother and sister sites—I mean, we're all surrounded by Jezebel and Deadspin and Lifehacker types, right? We begin with Kotaku: What should you buy for the nerd gaming person in your life?

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry really wanted us all to wear Spandex in the future. Smelly, smelly Spandex.

A copyright-trolling attorney whose firm is in hot legal water for aggressively suing porn downloaders says he totally wants to respond to a reporter's tough questions, but he's too broken up right now by the death of South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela:

Quiznos—the sandwich place, you know, with the "toasty" kinda subs? That one. Real popular place, not too long ago. What happened?

Welcome to Thatz Not Okay, a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Please send your questions (max: 200 words) to caity@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

The threat of an impending hurricane wasn't enough to scare the pants off these two buff German dudes, but they were more than happy to remove their shirts and do a sexy dance for news cameras during a live storm update.

You probably don't have a job. But if you do, there's a good likelihood you'll be dragooned into attending an office Christmas party in the coming weeks, and there's a good chance that said party will be scheduled on a weeknight. Which means that—if you adopt the normal human reaction to being placed in a room full of co-workers with nothing to talk about and an open bar and get blotto—you will be hungover for work the next morning. Here's how to avoid that.

During an interview last night with Bill O'Reilly, former Senator and failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum compared Nelson Mandela's battle against apartheid, for which he was imprisoned for 27 years, to the Republican party's struggle to derail Obamacare.

In a surprising twist to a familiar inquiry, one Virginia man says his wife does indeed come with the bike.

The cool new pope, "Francis" (not his real name), released his first apostolic exhortation this week, and much of it focused on the grotesque excesses of capitalism. Republicans love this pope. As long as they don't have to take what he says seriously.

A BASE jumper attempting a cliff dive off the side of "Wall Street" near Moab, Utah, suffered a brutal fall after a poor parachute opening — and the entire thing was captured on his headcam.

Fired Fox News executive Brian Lewis might have been paid, by his former employer, not to reveal the network’s secrets. What could those be?

In a special Christmas-themed "Naughty or Nice" edition of his ongoing "Lie Detective" bit, Jimmy Kimmel tries to persuade cute kid brothers Fletcher and Sammy to resolve their naughty disputes and play nice, with a little help from a fake lie detector.

With Christmas just around the corner, McDonald's is making sure its underpaid employees don't forget to generously tip their stable of domestic servants.

In the wake of Nelson Mandela's passing, a great many people will come forward to offer their reflections on a man who suffered for decades in order to help black South Africans defeat Apartheid. Let's not forget, then, there once was a time when mainstream political notables had no qualms slurring Mandela and the African National Congress—and whitewashing the crimes of Apartheid South Africa. Here are some of those instances.