It's about to be the worst Christmas ever for more than 11,000 Citigroup employees, who will soon be unceremoniously dumped by their Grinchly employer during the happiest time of the year.

Gawker's Better State of Living Conversation series is brought to you with the support of State Farm^TM. Today, social life expert Chiara Atik is live in the comments to answer your questions about networking in the New Year.

An argument over the likelihood of a zombie apocalypse becoming a reality ended with a woman getting shot in the back by her boyfriend.

The wages of criticism on the internet is an uphill battle against endless counter-arguments made in bad faith. Bob Costas learned that on Sunday night. He responded to a gun-related murder-suicide with an appeal for gun control. Conservatives howled. You know who else liked gun control? Hitler. Gun control is bad, because anything Hitler favored is bad. Like freeways or crushing communism.

Spartan High School in New Holland, Pennsylvania, was just another average, everyday, small-town educational institution with ordinary students and an unremarkable faculty.

Enlightened men know that the old system in which the top professional fields were almost completely dominated by"good old boys" simply was not tenable. I mean, the whining alone, year after year... I don't have to paint you a picture. It was just common sense to allow a few more women into the legal and medical professions. Modernization, and all that. Posing for the company "Diversity" brochure. Tending to the legal and medical problems of poopy children. Things of that nature. But, my fellow men, I'm afraid that we have grown lax. Our patronizing offer of PR-inspired pseudo-equality has been getting out of hand.

R. Umar Abbasi, the freelance photographer who took the controversial photo of pushed subway patron Ki Suk Han prior to his demise, spoke out today against "armchair critics" who believe he should have done more to help the victim.

Though it might not look it, Fox News has learned a lesson or two from last month's presidential election.

One thousand five hundred new Starbucks locations will open in America in the next five years. How?

While the entire world patiently awaited official word on the status of Kate Middleton and her royal fetus, two Australian radio DJs were busy getting first-hand intel straight from the nurse's mouth.

As long as there is Christmas, there will be attempts to spruce up and breathe new life into Mariah Carey's most enduring contribution to pop music, her 1994 holiday classic "All I Want for Christmas Is You." Mimi has sanctioned a a bass version, a house version, an Extra Festive version, a SuperFestive! version with Justin Bieber. But the rendition she performed on last night's Fallon, alongside Jimmy Fallon, the Roots, and a chorus of actual children, is by far the best spin put on this thing since the Phil Spector-inspired original. Few people could pull off the classroom-instrument arrangement with the grace of the "eternally 12" Mariah, and if there's any perfect time to act like a child, surely it is Christmas.

Earlier this week, an Egypt Air flight from Cairo to Kuwait was forced to make an emergency landing after a cobra bit a passenger. The snakebit man was reportedly a Jordanian reptile dealer who'd smuggled the poisonous snake aboard.

Bath salts, as it turns out, are no match for near-octogenarians who spent decades professionally riding bulls, a lesson Charles Smith found out the hard way. When Smith wrecked his truck in League City, Texas, he did what any reasonable person stoned to shit on bath salts would do: He grabbed his rifle and tried to break into a nearby house. Unfortunately, he picked the wrong house.

If you've been trying and failing to get pregnant by a French man (looking at you, Halle), don't worry – it's not you, it's him. According to a study in the appropriately named journal, Human Reproduction, the average sperm count of French men has dropped 32.3% since 1989, or 1.9% a year.

The NY Post reports 30-year-old Nieem Davis confessed this afternoon to pushing Ki Suk Han to his death in the subway.

Around Halloween, the Chi Omega Nu Gamma sorority at Penn State held a "social" with an easy costume-theme. Fun and normal enough, right? Eh, not so much. Instead of, say, a toga party, or whatever it is kids in Greek life like, the sorority went with the old Mexican fiesta theme. All the members decided to wear ponchos, sombreros and mustaches, and two women held signs, one of which read "Will Mow Lawn for Weed + Beer" and the other "I Don't Cut Grass, I Smoke It." And now the fun costume party is officially a racist costume party.

Yesterday, 58-year-old New Yorker Ki Suk Han was pushed onto the subway tracks and killed by an oncoming train. Thousands of people who happened to see the New York Post's Tuesday-morning cover were forced to confront Ki Suk Han's plight first-hand — all of us wondering, what should I do if that ever happens to me? There are a lot of schools of thought here, but the one that seems to make the most sense is: run away from the train.

Today (which happens to be Hova's 43rd birthday), a 24-minute documentary on Jay-Z's 8-show stint that opened Brooklyn's Barclays Center in September was released via YouTube. One highlight of Where I'm From occurs when Jay takes the subway en route to his last show and sits next to a kind-faced older woman named Ellen who has no idea who the fuck she's talking to. The ensuing conversation is infinitely sweeter and more humble than if she had.

Yesterday, a freelance photographer working for the New York Post, R. Umar Abbasi, inadvertently stumbled onto the killing of Ki Suk Han, a man who was run over by a New York subway train after being shoved onto the tracks by an unidentified assailant.

Cory Booker, celebrity Newark Mayor and man of "no known vices or addictions," has begun his foray into the foodie world of poor people. It all started when Booker accepted a challenge via Twitter to live off of food stamps for one week. That week starts today and continues through December 11.