A seven-month-old girl was apparently abandoned Monday on a subway platform at Columbus Circle. Witnesses claim seeing a woman walk the child in its stroller off a northbound 1 train, leave the stroller and the child on the platform, and then turn around and get back on the train.

Kansas City's Schlitterbahn water park has been testing a massive 17-story water slide with heavy sandbag for months, and now the 168-foot Verrückt is finally ready for human test subjects. And of course, they took the plunge with cameras on, so you can pee yourself vicariously from the comfort of your home.

The New Yorker website, not to be confused with the New Yorker print magazine, is thinking about status today. In an item on its "Currency" vertical, the online New Yorker introduces us to researchers who have gained fascinating insights into how people police the abstract status identities they've constructed around their preferred "brands"—or else (maybe?) how people who have attained the factual condition of attending Harvard or of running long-distance obstacle courses disdain people who claim to have done those things without having done those things:

Richard Mellon Scaife is dead, and conservatives are sad. Long before the Kochs became infamous, Scaife pumped millions into a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to nail the Clintons for... whatever. But Scaife's admirers forgot his love of Planned Parenthood and change of heart toward Hillary and Bill.

Last month, crowdfunding site Kickstarter loosened its strict(ish) guidelines for projects, allowing users to ask the internet to pay for basically anything that's not illegal. So Zack Danger Brown was well within the rules when he asked for $10 to make potato salad, and his 1,700 backers didn't violate the site's terms by giving him $23,000 and counting.

In the past 20 years, the caloric intakes of Americans and the composition of their diets have not significantly changed. But obesity rates have steadily risen. Why? Probably because motherfuckers are not working out.

The Ugandan government is starting to worry about donors who have stopped or redirected aid to the country in light of the anti-gay bill passed in February. The government said today that the law has been "misinterpreted."

A 34-year-old California man has been arrested for dressing up as a county fair employee and trying to recruit teenage girls for his porn business, "Big Pimpin' Inc."

Andrew Lloyd Webber is the old white man who wrote Cats, the zany musical that took Broadway by storm in the early '80s. T.S. Eliot is the dead old white man who wrote The Waste Land and at least one poem that uses the n-word without apparent irony. According to Webber, Eliot invented rap music.

The U.S. stock market is too expensive right now by virtually every measure. It is not the greatest time to buy, but then again, you should not sell, either. Just chill.

The Wall Street Journal will celebrate its 125th anniversary tomorrow by publishing a special "The Future of Everything" edition with essay contributions "from Morgan Stanley C.E.O. James P. Gorman [and] pop star Taylor Swift." It will be wrapped in a copy of the paper's 1889 inaugural issue.

The Wrap reports that Joan Rivers "insisted her quick exit was not a PR stunt," regarding her storming off during a satellite CNN interview this weekend. But of course it was—she may not have caused a scene for the sole purpose of selling more copies of her 12th book, Diary of a Mad Diva, she may have been authentically pissed in the moment (or as authentically anything as anyone can be with a camera pointed at her) but...did you know that Rivers had a book out before the clip of her admonishing Fredericka Whitfield went viral?

The stars were out for Sunday's Wimbledon final between Djokovic and Federer. The match was attended by various celebrities who acted totally normal, including Hugh Jackman, Bradley Cooper, and Chris Hemsworth. Cut to: Samuel L. Jackson and Victoria Beckham, seated awkwardly next to one another.

A New York City man convicted of raping his former stepdaughter was sentenced to 18 years in prison in a Brooklyn court on Monday. He was charged after the victim wrote about her ordeal in her college admissions essay.

A Florida man celebrating the Fourth of July with his friends and family on New Smyrna Beach noticed two middle-aged women trying to make off with his tent canopy, beach chairs, boogie boards, and kids' toys. So he confronted them, with a cameraphone, and got an unexpected fireworks show.

At least 68 people were wounded and 14 were killed during dozens of shootings in Chicago over the holiday weekend. The victims' ages ranged from a 14-year-old boy who was killed by police to a 66-year-old woman whose head was grazed by a bullet as she walked onto her porch.

Hookah, a type of waterpipe that's been used to smoke tobacco for centuries, has recently gotten some traction among the American teenage set. According to a new NYU study, almost 20 percent of high school seniors admit to using a hookah.

Reality television can seem exciting and glamorous. Working on reality television, much less so. As the following stories from "professionally abused" insiders show, reality TV workers will continue to be beaten down as long as they have no union to defend them.

Hey, America! Are you bummed that your fancy electric car didn't deliver on its promises? Should've gone for the Pinto when you had the chance. Vote GOP in November. Also, give us money!

Richard George Kopf is a federal judge in Nebraska's U.S. District Court. He was appointed by George H.W. Bush in 1992, and he's been running a personal blog called Hercules and the Umpire for about a year. In one recent post, he told the Supreme Court to shut the fuck up.