BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski noted on Tuesday that The Daily Download, the obscure media-news website founded by Fox News anchor Howard Kurtz and his business partner Lauren Ashburn, has disappeared. Yet only a few months ago Ashburn was hyping the site’s traffic to contributors. “Lauren told me that at one point it had a half million views per day,” Lorraine Murphy, a Vancouver web consultant who wrote for the site between May and August of this year, told Gawker. So what happened?

"Fewer people are applying to join the LAPD and, of those who do, a significantly higher number of them are being disqualified from consideration." Let's just agree to interpret this as a positive development.

Pope Francis is a different kind of pontiff, a friendly and humble Jesuit who loves to hang out on the corner with his people. But what's that bowl-pipe thing he carries around and frequently takes a hit off? It's a mate cup with a silver straw. And it's how you drink the caffeine-loaded "national infusion" of Francis' homeland, Argentina.

An Ohio family is living in fear after a man broke into their home while they were away, changed the locks, got rid of their stuff, and now claims he legally owns the house.

This afternoon, officials in Newtown, Connecticut released the 911 calls from last December's shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. The calls, while harrowing and difficult to listen to, show a calm response from town dispatchers as they advised the janitor, teacher, and seven others who called to report the tragedy.

Bush-era U.S. diplomat, U.N. hater and Iraq war-lover John Bolton had a terrible trip to "Manila Philippines" last weekend, but if you can front him "($2,550.00 USD )," he'll totally get out of this fix.

The Max Headroom signal intrusion hack is one of those hacker legends that seems too good to be true: In 1987, an unknown group hacked into the signal of local Chicago TV channel WGN-TV. 25 years later, Vice's Motherboard blog has published a fascinating investigation into who pulled off the still unsolved crime.

The very rich have their politicians, and the very poor have their advocates. Will someone speak for the lower middle class? How retro!

An off-duty Texas police officer reportedly shot a man several times after their plan to swap sexual partners went horribly awry.

Harvard: where the men play croquet, the women wear pearls, and everyone has an A average. Or A-, if we're being specific.

For the crime of allegedly snapping a selfie in front of the Brooklyn Bridge around the same time that a suicidal man was threatening to jump off it, one anonymous woman landed both herself and her selfie on the cover — the cover — of today's New York Post.

[A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket, carrying its first commercial payload, a communications satellite, lifts off from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Photo by John Raoux via AP]

Kanye West reportedly filled fewer than 4,500 seats in Kansas City's 18,500-capacity Sprint Center last night. This Yeezy season's a particularly cold one.

An elderly Kentucky woman has had her home auctioned off without her knowledge after she failed to pay her homeowner's association annual membership fees.

A new poll shows that college-age Americans are wildly, overwhelmingly worried about student loan debt. As well they should be. And they blame colleges. As well they should.

A state plan to honor Union soldiers at Florida's largest Civil War battlefield fell apart this week after "furious" pro-Confederate locals commandeered a town hall meeting, including an African-American activist who called Northern troops rapists and led the crowd in a round of Dixie.

"Is a Peanut Butter Pop Tart an Innovation?" Ummm, fuck yes.

It was while whipping up one of his signature taco salads that Todd Mills had the greatest highdea of all time: Taco shells made from Doritos.

Per a recommendation from the NYPD's Intelligence Division, departing New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly will receive a 10-officer, 24-hour security detail when he retires early next year, costing New York City tax payers an estimated $1.5 million per year. The 10-cop team is actually an four-person increase from Kelly's initial request, which he made last month.

It takes an extraordinarily brave and clear-eyed writer to compose his own epitaph. Four years ago—four years before his death at age 59—Peter W. Kaplan did. He was speaking to the media reporter for the New York Observer, his media reporter, after he had just told his staff there that he would not be their editor anymore. "I had a little newspaper in New York City!" Peter Kaplan said. "You can't beat that."