When Justin Bieber stepped out in London yesterday wearing an ensemble as inexplicable as the entire six-year run of Lost, it was only a matter of time before Damon Lindelof chimed in with his two backgammon pieces.

Black is the new black—in food and beverage packaging, that is! [MUST credit Gawker.com]. Beer is in black cans. Shampoo is in black bottles. Gelato is in black containers. Tell us, Wall Street Journal, what is the deal with all this black?

The United States has promised to send "non-lethal aid" directly to Syrian rebels, and is offering to train rebels at a base in the region. This marks the strongest American involvement to date in the Syrian conflict, and a policy shift toward direct help for those opposing President Bashar al-Assad. Secretary of State John Kerry made the announcement earlier today in Rome, saying that Syrian President Assad is "out of time and must be out of power."

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward received a "veiled threat" from the White House last week, The Politico reported on Thursday. What as the "threat"? "I think you will regret staking out that claim." Chilling! The threatener, Ben Smith later reported, was White House Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, who'd emailed Woodward over the origins of tomorrow's government sequestration: Woodward claims it was the Obama administration's idea; Sperling disagrees. (Other sentences from the email: "I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today," "But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.") Surely, you can see the Nixon parallels? The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin could: "Obama will never be Reagan,"she tweeted last night, "but he could be the Dems Nixon." Probably not, and if he is, Woodward—whose journalistic practice, once so fun and unethical, is now mostly just writing down what important people tell him in his kitchen—certainly won't uncover it. "There is nothing less important about 'the sequester' than the question of whose idea it originally was," Salon's Alex Pareene wrote yesterday. "So, naturally, that is the question that much of the political press is obsessed with, to the exclusion of almost everything else." Not everything else: also the question of the proper tone in which one is allowed to speak to Bob Woodward. You'll be able to catch him declaiming on the topic tonight on the Sean Hannity program on Fox News. [Politico | CNN | BuzzFeeᴅ | Salon]

After buying his neighbor's property for $700,000 in cash, Matt Drudge now has a two-home, 10-acre compound in Florida.

Looking for a way to live a longer, happier life? A new study says you should try being more pessimistic.

Last night, at around midnight, Dave Chappelle made a surprise appearance at the Comedy Cellar, the legendary nightclub featured during the credits to Louie. Considering Chappelle's relatively reclusive history, this would've been exciting for comedy nerds, if not exactly newsworthy. However, after Chappelle performed solo for 45 minutes or so, and was preparing to leave, Chris Rock jumped on stage.

It seems Vitaly Zelkovsky, the stoic Belarusian tourist, has finally met his match.

Harvard doctors are spoiling everyone's fun and challenging a recent study linking being overweight to lower mortality.

Our sister site Kotaku already explained the phenomenon of "Potato Parties" at length, but here's a tl;dr:

A note from Perez Hilton: "I was blessed with the birth of my first child...a boy." Many thanks to doula Erykah Badu.

In an article on The New Republic today, journalist Marin Cogan details some of the sexual advances female reporters in Washington, D.C., must field from even the most rainmaking of our elected officials. Nodding toward a House of Cards episode that broached the subject of fraught journalist-source flirtations, Cogan writes that colleagues of hers have been hit on by fundraisers, lobbyists, think-tank brains, and beyond, some of whom were wearing wedding rings whilst trying to get laid.

A couple of times a week I walk by the Yale Drama School. It's a strange experience because my dream through college was to go there and become a playwright, a cross between Clifford Odets and George S. Kaufman. When the socialist revolution came I wanted to be the one writing snappy one-liners to support it. Then I gave up that dream and decided to become Herbert Croly, the early New Republic editor, or John Reed, the radical who went to Harvard and then had a love affair with Diane Keaton (at least in "Reds").

Performance artist, visionary, and grandmother of performance art Marina Abramovic has decided to make a film about performance artist, visionary, and grandfather of blogs James Franco.

It took police in New London, Connecticut, all of six minutes to apprehend 35-year-old Jerry Thompson after he allegedly robbed a Citizens Bank located one block away from police headquarters.

The time has come for "Hey, Science," our relentlessly scientific weekly feature in which we have your most provocative and/ or dumb scientific questions answered by real live scientists (or related experts). No question is too smart for us to tackle, quite unfortunately. This week, scientists ponder the question: Are there atoms of Abe Lincoln in my body right now??

The average British person is too drunk to know how drunk he is.

Police in Florida say they have no plans to arrest a dog who shot his owner in the leg, having determined that the shooting was accidental.

Well it started romantically: Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen not only met in the city of love, but they met on the set of a movie about love taking place in the city of love. Sigh, l'amour.

A crude but powerful homemade cannon consisting of a plastic pipe, a metal tank, and an old car engine, was confiscated by authorities in the Mexican border city of Mexicali last week.