Political reporter and columnist Jack Germond—variously known as a Boy on the Bus, Fat Man in a Middle Seat, and the round half of the Baltimore Sun's long-running and nationally ubiquitous Germond and Witcover tandem—died today at the age of 85. The Washington Post quotes him: "I have always argued that newspapers should not have any civic purpose beyond telling readers what is happening."

You could probably re-assemble a large part of the entire run of The Wire just from the gifs obsessive fans have posted to Tumblr. A new robot spoofs fandom by automatically and arbitrarily creating gifs from The Wire and uploading them to Tumblr.

Jesse Jackson Jr. was sentenced to 30 months in prison today for misusing nearly $750,000 in campaign funds. Jackson's wife was also given a year in jail for filing false tax returns. The presiding judge agreed to let the Jacksons stagger their sentences so their children could have at least one parent in the home.

Concerned that his 4-year-old son or dog might get bitten by the venomous copperhead snake living in a woodpile outside his Huntsville home, Sam Billiter grabbed his machete and headed out back to kill it.

This innocent, minute-long video of a young boy saying a few kind words about President Barack Obama while closing his eyes and clasping his hands would have gone wholly unnoticed — if not for the heaving mass of True Believers who see it as an absolute sign of an impending Apocalypse.

The Politico gets more than a half-dozen people to talk about how much the press is talking about Donald Trump’s phony 2016 presidential ambitions. Meanwhile there is still no federal budget agreement.

Have you ever woken up from a crazy night of drinking inside a sealed shipping container that was just about to embark on a two-week voyage to a foreign land?

Welcome to Next Question With Michael Musto, a regular feature in which Musto uses his time-honed skills to interrogate big celebrities, former celebrities, and wannabe celebrities. Musto is a pop culture icon, regular TV presence, and the author of four books.

Prepare to high-five a million Tina Fey angels: she's developing a new show for NBC, that should be like "Cheers... on Fire Island." What? Whatever, I mean obviously we'll take it.

The literary summer of Gawker contributing editor Kiese Laymon continues with the publication of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays, released yesterday. Buy it with his debut novel, Long Division, which came out in June. And read the original essay here.

New York Times employee Daniel Slotnik is now chiming in on Twitter to say that the Times' website failure is due to a simple system malfunction, which contradicts a Fox Business report that the site is suffering a "cyber attack."

Kevin Cordasco, the Breaking Bad superfan to whom the latest episode of the show was dedicated, passed away this past March of cancer at the age of 16.

Dartmouth College, the lily-white investment banking camp of the Ivy League, prides itself on its purposely insular and routinely violent fraternities. These two features magically combined last month when Animal House inspiration Alpha Delta decided to throw an enormous “Bloods and Crips”-themed party. Now they’re very, very, very sorry.

Following a recent ruling by a Federal judge who declared the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program unconstitutional, Mayor Bloomberg said he planned to appeal the decision claiming the discriminatory practice of detaining the city's residents based on their skin color didn't get "a fair trial."

Mark Brown has made a name for himself and his pet raccoon Rebekah by uploading YouTube videos of the two sharing showers, dancing to "Chain of Fools," and generally enjoying each other's company.

It's been almost exactly one year since octogenarian Spanish widow Cecilia Giménez took it upon herself to destroy an 80-year-old Jesus fresco painted on the wall of her local church — and what a year it's been.

A large UPS cargo plane crashed early this morning in a field close to Birmingham, killing its pilot and co-pilot. The Airbus A300 was en route to the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport from Louisville, Kentucky, when it crashed around 6 a.m, just half a mile from the runway. The impact reportedly caused two explosions, with debris scattered in a wide range around the site. Local police report that no homes were affected by the crash.

Doctors Without Borders has decided to close all its medical programs in Somalia, citing "imbalance [between] risks & compromises that staff must make, and our ability to provide impartial care." In the 22 years the organization has worked in Somalia, 16 staff members have been killed.