Jeremy Rose was once the production partner of the Weeknd and, to hear him tell it, was unceremoniously dumped from that gig. That sucks because people actually care about the Weeknd, but per his new release under the Zodiac moniker, he's better off without Abel Tesfaye's warbling. I'd rather listen to this collaboration with the Brooklyn-based Jesse Boykins III than put up with the Weeknd's whining. I feel like it's all going to work out for Rose.

When I was a young boy my father's best friend, Art, lived in Alabama, and every now and again my family and I would travel from Arizona to spend a week visiting him at his lake house. On one of those trips, on the way back from an errand to buy ice, my dad and I pulled over for a quick bite at a roadside shack advertising catfish fritters. At that point, most of my life had been spent in Saudi Arabia and Arizona, where I could count the number of black children in my elementary school on one hand, and without using my thumb. Alabama was different. Black people were everywhere, though not in Art's neighborhood, and on that day, on the back patio of that fish shack, I recognized code-switching for the very first time.

On Nightline this week, Cynthia McFadden confronted Taylor Swift on her tendency to turn into a slack-jawed yokel when her name is inevitably called at whatever awards show she happens to find herself the belle of. This quirk has been mocked widely (full disclosure: my mocking supercut of her fly-catching turned into a bigger story and ended up being the highlight of my 2010), partially because it seems like put-on false modesty but mostly because whenever it happens, it freakishly appears that her jaw is going to fall right off her head.

7-Eleven, the convenience store mega-chain that's big in Japan, is currently holding its quadrennial "7-Election" coffee cup promotion to determine the likely winner of next month's presidential election.

A German liquor company has come up with a fairly tasteless stunt intended to titillate its potential clientele: A line of spirits "filtered" through the naked bodies of playmates and glamour models.

The annual Ars Electronica Festival for Art, Technology, and Society just happened, where some of the world's most incredible cutting-edge artists, technologists, designers, scientists, thinkers, and more came together to celebrate their creations, like NOTCOT editors Shawn Sims and Golan Levin's Free Universal Construction Kit. It generates open source 3D printable toy adapter pieces to connect your Legos to your Lincoln Logs.

On November 28, 2013, newly discovered comet C/2012 S1 should be brighter than the full moon. Suck it, Hale-Bopp.

Put the hashtags away. Kara Alongi, the 16-year-old Jersey girl whose fake tweet about being kidnapped turned a routine case of a teen runaway into a global sensation, has returned home safely to her family in Clark, NJ. She was picked up by state troopers yesterday evening, walking along the New Jersey Turnpike near Carney's Point, NJ, according to the New York Post. Police won't comment on what she's been up to since she urged her twitter followers to call 911 because someone was in her house, then took a taxi to the train station and bought a ticket to New York City.

20-year-old Marty Arps was just a run-of-the-mill branch manager at a Denver-area Chipotle until a close encounter with Mitt Romney propelled him to Internet superstardom.

To briefly recap: America is currently in a student loan bubble, holding an unimaginably huge amount of student debt, as delinquency of loan payments swells, and even the well-off question whether they can afford college. It would seem, then, rather obvious that student loan debt is too big. Surprise: the people who control the higher education spigot—college admissions directors—disagree!

Law & Order: SVU star Richard Belzer probably won't be invited back on Fox 5's Good Day New York anytime soon, considering he used his most recent airtime to make an off-color rape joke and followed it up with a Nazi salute directed at Fox News.

TLC's reality series about the conjoined Hensel twins, Abby & Brittany, ended its first-season run last night. Over the course of its slow, uneventful yet riveting eight episodes, Abby & Brittany gently shaded in the characters the best-known living conjoined twins. My favorite of their quirks is their tendency to say things in unison for an in-stereo experience. Here is a collection of those moments.

Today's date is October 3rd. If you forget the date at any time today, please revisit this video to jog your memory.

Jason Russell, co-founder of the dubious nonprofit Invisible Children, Inc. and creator of the questionable-at-best ultra-viral online awareness campaign Kony 2012, sat down recently with Oprah Winfrey for his first interview since his very public "masturbation meltdown" brought his controversial plans for world embetterment to a psychotic halt.

For three long, cold years, the hardworking men and women in the beer industry have had to hang their heads, in the knowledge that we Americans have been buying less, and less, and less beer, ever since 2008. Soda? Sure, we can't get enough of that sweet stuff. But beer? Good old-fashioned mass-produced alcoholic gut-swelling, cirrhosis-inducing beer? We just haven't been interested. Until now.

Standing in the security line at Washington Dulles International Airport yesterday morning, Facebook DC manager Adam Conner spotted a fellow passenger drinking an alcoholic beverage straight out of the bottle and "offering swigs to other passengers."

After years of delays and setbacks, the big-budget, big-screen adaptation of iconic Western serial The Lone Ranger is finally being released, and it has the teaser trailer to prove it.

SPIN's 50 Biggest White Girl Rap Moments is awesome. Never forget The Wedding Singer's Rapping Granny.

As expected, Fox News aired the 5-year-old video of Obama's speech at Hampton University that conservative bloggers—namely Tucker Carlson—tried (and failed) to make an issue of in 2008. Though there may have been a few previously unreleased segments in tonight's footage, the right-wing discussion was the same old thing: "He sure does talk funny," "But what about white people?," and "Why is he so angry?"

It turns out that Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comment might not be the most inaccurate and stupid statement of the Missouri Representative's career. In a 2008 speech on the House floor, Rep. Akin said (emphasis mine):