At this point, if you've ever even thought about going to Yosemite, you should go to the doctor ASAP.

In a surprise appearance, former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords led the Democratic National Convention in the Pledge of Allegiance. It's amazing how far she's come since her shooting in January of last year.

Texas is such an amazing, important place that its residents are now allowed to drive faster than anyone else in the country, or at least they are on one fancy new road. A new, 41-mile stretch of highway running from Austin to Seguin will have a speed limit of 85 MPH when it opens in November, besting the previous fastest roads by 5 MPH. As the Los Angeles Times notes, that's the same speed as a Category 1 hurricane.

Greetings, fellow Americans. My colleague John Cook and I are broadcasting LIVE from about 20 yards southwest of the podium at the Democratic National Convention. We're bloggers, but we're most proud of our job as a mom to our precious children, [NAME] and [NAME].

Amy Poehler and Will Arnett, the couple you just know you could be best friends with if only they'd stop for dinner in your town one night, have announced they are separating after nine years of marriage.

A series of poorly thought-out tweets landed a North Carolina man behind bars after he was picked up by the Secret Service for threatening to assassinate the president.

The good folks at the Democratic National Convention, ever mindful of the fundamental importance of equity and fairness in all endeavors—just kidding this place is a buzzing hive of status anxiety and barriers to entry based on a byzantine credentialing system!—generously allow the hoi polloi to wander the sacred floor of the convention space and rub shoulders with the delegates, but only for an hour at a time. Here's what it looks like AT THE CENTER OF HISTORY.

This brutal, heartbreaking love letter was found in 1998, lying on the mummified body of Eung-Tae Lee, a 30-year-old Korean man who'd died in 1586, some four hundred years before. Lee was tall and bearded — "The dark mustache made me feel that he must have had a charming appearance," says the former director of the Andong National University Museum — and left behind him a pregnant wife, the letter's author. Here it is, via Letters of Note:

Every orgy has that one lazy guy who wants to enjoy all the boobs in his mouth, all the d's in his a, all the mmhmm's on his whatnow?'s but then, when it comes time to reciprocate, suddenly has to go get a glass of water or call his daughter or whatever.

Late one night, Nick went into the kitchen for some tea, when who should come waltzing in but his sleepwalking mom.

Lawyers for candymaker Mars Inc. shot off an urgent letter to a Scottish bar attempting to secure Protected Food status for its deep-fried rendition of the company's namesake candy bar, saying the decision to deep fry Mars renders the candy's health benefits null and void.

Alec Baldwin's 17-year-old daughter Ireland has forgiven her father for leaving a now-infamous voicemail on her phone when she was 11 years old. The transcript of reads in part:

Whether you pronounce it gif or *shudder* jif, there is no getting around the obvious: Animated GIFs are great.

The FINAL NIGHT of the Democratic National Convention is set to begin, and there is a SUPER BOWL ATMOSPHERE in the air, at least here in Charlotte, in the immediate vicinity of the Time Warner Cable Sucks™ Arena, where U.S. president BARACK OBAMA will be speaking in less than six hours. No idea how it is in the rest of America. But here, people are FIRED UP, as well as READY TO GO.

The trial of Drew Peterson finally reached its conclusion today three years after the former suburban Chicago police officer was first charged with the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.

Like a lot of teenagers and 20-somethings, "Eric Draven" used to keep a Tumblr. The microblogging platform has a strong community aspect, and it's easy to find people who like the same things — or are undergoing the same struggles — as you. There aren't many people undergoing the exact same struggles as Draven (a pseudonym taken from goth classic The Crow), though: unlike most teenagers and 20-somethings, Draven isn't, he claims, human. He might present as human, yes, but really he's a "fictive and otherkin who, in previous lives, has been a Deku Scrub and a dark elf." He's also "transethnic(Japanese) and andrognous [sic]."

Federal student loans are unconstitutional and put the country on a path toward a WWII-style Holocaust, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) told his constituents yesterday.

We are told we live in the era of citizen journalism. Reddit is the new CNN, Twitter is our real-time newswire, and that stoned-looking guy with a mustard stain on his Mets t-shirt might just capture some video on his cellphone that changes the course of history. Well peak citizen journalism was reached yesterday, with some random dude wandering an empty office building in Tennessee.

A nonagenarian farmer from Kentucky needed only a single shot to take down a man who tried to break into his Verona home.

For as long as Man has possessed the infinite gift of language, he has used his tool to wonder aloud: Are Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian friends?