This year (because of a law, obviously, not out of any sense of kindness), chickens will get bigger houses. That means the price of eggs is going up. Okay, good.

This was a garbage year. It was twelve months of bumper-to-bumper injustice, war, and tragedy. But despite all the awful shit, there were a few people who managed to make 2014 occasionally tolerable and, in some cases, even convince us that 2015 might be worth sticking around to see: honest journalists and courageous protesters, resurgent divas and poetic movie stars, a five-year-old born to be on TV, a man whose audacity spiralled into the biggest party west Michigan has ever seen, and others. These are our Gawker Heroes of 2014.

Eos lip balm spokesperson Christina Aguilera celebrated her birthday with friends at Disneyland two weeks ago. At the time, she posted on Instagram that it was a fun party at the "happiest place on earth." Courtesy of a new report from TMZ, we've learned that wasn't the case for Mickey Mouse.

Five people are dead and dozens remain stranded on a ferry adrift off the Albanian coast more than a day after a fire broke out on the ship's car deck. Strong winds, rain, and hail has impeded a coordinated rescue mission by Italy, Greece, and Albania.

It's a fact that there was no good news in 2014. But some funny things did happen on the news. This video, described by Gawker editor-in-chief Max Read as "p good," compiles this year's best news bloopers—including a local news team's terrified reaction to an earthquake and a reporter getting beaned in the head by a flying skateboard—into a single 15-minute clip. What a world.

As the search for missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 resumed Monday morning, the head of Indonesia's national search and rescue agency said at a press conference that the plane is "likely at the bottom of the sea."

Facebook now admits that forcing people to revisit their most Liked and commented upon photos and statuses from the past year might not have been the best idea. This week, the product manager for the social media company's "Year in Review" app apologized to Eric Meyer, whose six-year-old daughter died of brain cancer earlier this year.

Despite the disastrous mishandling of its release, The Interview has managed to gross more than $15 million in online sales in four days, plus nearly $3 million more in theaters. Sony claims the film was "rented or purchased online more than 2 million times" between Wednesday and Saturday, making it one of the most successful straight-to-VOD releases of all time.

On Friday, The New York Times profiled some of the Chinese companies that have taken nonsensical branding to its postmodern conclusion, selling products under Western-inspired names like "Biemlfdlkk" and "Marisfrolg."

A South Los Angeles family stopped a man from making off with their dead relative's body, which was still in the back of the hearse he had stolen from outside the church where services were to take place yesterday morning, the Los Angeles Times reports.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asked his readers to send him poems about race in America. They did. And then he published some of them! One is addressed to looters.

Mary Schiavo, a CNN Aviation Analyst reporting on missing AirAsia Flight 8501, believes that terrorists are not to blame, because terrorists prefer nice weather, and the weather was bad when Flight 8501 disappeared.

Initially hampered by bad weather and strong winds, rescuers finally began airlifting passengers from an Italian ferry that caught fire off the coast of Albania on Sunday.

When a pro-cop citizen wrote the Nashville Police to express his "frustration and outrage" at the city's peaceful handling of recent Ferguson protests, Chief Steve Anderson reminded the letter-writer of a simple fact: "The police are merely a representative of a government formed by the people for the people—for all people."

A full-floor penthouse on the 23rd floor of the Walker Tower, a converted Art Deco skyscraper in Chelsea, sold for $40,730,000, the New York Times reports. The buyers are from California and will use the apartment as a pied-à-terre. They paid all-cash.

According to the New York Post, Bill Cosby has hired multiple private investigators to "dig up dirt" on his accusers, paying "six-figure fees" for information that might undermine their allegations.

The United States and NATO have formally ended the war in Afghanistan, the Associated Press reports, with a flag-folding ceremony. The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force will transition to a supporting role in January.

A Ferguson police officer has been placed on unpaid leave after calling a longstanding memorial to slain teen Michael Brown "a pile of trash in the middle of the street," CBS reports.

The flight carrier AirAsia has confirmed that a passenger jet carrying 155 passengers and 7 crew members went missing on Sunday morning amidst heavy storms over the Java Sea. Originating in Surabaya, Indonesia, flight number QZ8501 was en route to Singapore when it ceased communication with air traffic controllers around 7:24 a.m. Western Indonesian Time.

More than 1,000 cats stolen by cat traffickers in northeast China were rescued after their owners found each other on the Internet and collaborated with local law enforcement, Sky News reports.