According to the New York Post, the driver killed in today's Capitol shootout was Miriam Carey, a Connecticut dental hygienist. Carey, who apparently has a permit to work in prisons, did not have a weapon in her car, and authorities have confirmed that only police officers fired shots.

Talk about NSFW: With news anchors doing all they can not to say the word "penis" on the air, you'd think the least their production staff could do is avoid flashing a giant penis on the screen behind them.

The notorious drug market Silk Road was shut down Tuesday by the FBI and its alleged owner arrested, but for some reason the site's active forums remain intact. Since yesterday's news, they've been been filled with commiserating and frantic organizing by dealers headed to safer passage. It's like the last day of camp, only with more felony charges. One post stood out: The teary farewell of Silk Road employee named Libertas.

Twitter, the 140-character microblogging service, is unprofitable. In fact, it's lost $70 million so far this year. But it's worth billions of dollars. And it's about to make some people very rich. (Not you.)

“I’ve written a bunch of poetry about it—one for each of the characters. On Jon Snow. . . On Arya. . . On Cersei and Jaime.” Stevie Nicks says she would love to write some music for Game of Thrones.

The Machine-Human Alliance has largely succeeded in suppressing the growth of lifeforms that do not directly participate in the human effort to propagate Machines. One alarming and dangerous exception to this is the subset of cnidarians known as "jellyfish," which have flourished despite the fact that they contribute nothing to the needs of Machines—flourished to the point that they now occasionally clog and incapacitate nuclear power plants, threatening the supply of electricity.

Fox News just posted an Al Hurra video of this afternoon's car chase and shooting in Washington DC. The chase started at the White House, where the female suspect reportedly attempted to ram security gates, and ended at the U.S. Capitol, where the suspect was shot and killed by police. One police officer was also injured during the chase.

Kevin Shields, the extremely wise and plugged-in founder of fuzz-gods My Bloody Valentine, just dropped a bomb on the British public: Brit-pop—the "Cool Brittania"-era explosion of ghastly, derivative rock'n'roll from the likes of Oasis, Blur, Pulp, and any other number of one-word bands—was in fact a conspiracy foisted on the Western world by British intelligence agencies. I mean, it's so obvious once you think about it.

"Do Black Holes Have 'Hair?'" "The giraffes that sailed to medieval China." "What would happen if you got zapped by the Large Hadron Collider?" Uh, chill out, science. Take a day off.

Last Friday night, a bruised and battered dog suddenly showed up on the front porch of an unassuming house in north Nashville.

Ken Layne, Gawker's America correspondent, is inaugurating his occasional series of reports from the field with a trip to the boom-rich oil fields of North Dakota's Bakken formation, from where he will be filing dispatches all week.

The genetics testing company 23andme was recently awarded a patent it applied for five years ago. According to PandoDaily, the patent covers a "calculator" that lets "people to pick and choose traits of their future child." Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andme and wife of Google founder Sergey Brin, is listed as the lead inventor.

Syria is embroiled in a civil war. The US could decide to help one side win; alternately, we could just stay out of it. Instead, we're taking a third route: purposely working to ensure that nobody wins.

After being berated for his alarmist rush to judgment by Twitter users like @young_guac, Congressman Griffin has deleted the tweet condemning Democrats and apologized.

Just minutes after Miley Cyrus officially rejected Sinead O'Connor's sage advice to avoid getting "pimped" by dirty old men, Terry Richardson officially released his latest set of Miley snapshots — by far her raciest to date.

Up to a dozen shots were fired outside of the U.S. Capitol this afternoon, sending the Capitol, White House, and Supreme Court into lockdown. The incident reportedly began when a suspect attempted to ram a White House security gate before leading police on a car chase to the Capitol.

Whatever Justin Timberlake had, musically, he's lost—at least for now, if his excruciating The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2 is an indication. Some critics who stretched to defend the uninspired first half of this unpleasant "experience" earlier this year can't even muster a pro argument for this collection of outtakes of an album that already sounded like outtakes in the first place (2 of 2 is to 1 of 2 as 1 of 2 is to FutureSex/LoveSounds). The guy has nothing to say, and so he structures the majority of the overlong songs here around thematic metaphors, like R. Kelly without the humor, smarts, panache, individuality, and soul. His trusty producer, responsible for the bulk of 2 of 2's beats similarly has nothing new to say. Who's hungry for twice-reheated '00s revivalism?

On Fox News last night, Rep. Michele Bachmann confirmed Rachel Maddow's suspicion that Republicans were happy about the government shutting down, telling Sean Hannity "this is about the happiest I've seen members in a long time."

This photo of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford ascending an escalator during a visit to Austin, Texas, is perfectly composed, painterly, and downright Hopperesque. It was taken by Don Peat, a reporter for the Toronto Sun.

When people try and defend American sports' obsession with Indian names—Seminoles, Braves, Chiefs, Redskins, etc.—many of them make the argument that these names are meant to honor strong and prideful groups of people. Last night a trio of Cleveland Indians fans "honored" their team's namesake by donning cartoonish redface meant to resemble Cleveland's mascot, Chief Wahoo, and whooping it up for the TV cameras.