The NFL is trying to get M.I.A. to pay $16.6 million because she flipped the bird during her 2012 Super Bowl performance with Madonna. M.I.A. has some choice words in response, but the funniest is, "@madonna ummm ..... can i borrow 16 million ?"

More goodness from this weekend's True Life mini-marathon: "I Want To Be an Obscure Pageant Queen" profiled 27-year-old Adrienne, who competed in the Miss Star Trek Universe beauty pageant. Adrienne dressed as an Andorian, sassily answered a question in which she was compared to a Smurf, and sang a song that she wrote. It did not go well for her. Her blue painted face was left streaked with tears.

Newsweek has posted a reply to Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto's denial of its story that Nakamoto was, as Newsweek's headline put it, "The Face Behind Bitcoin." It reads:

A conservative Alabama state senator who may attempt a jump up to Congress used a newspaper interview this weekend to hail McCarthyism and assail a bevy of popular books and authors that he thinks are too subversive to teach to children.

Seems legit.

Around New York City, one often hears petulant calls for the city to return to the days when it was "real," meaning infested with crime, rather than with Pret A Manger locations. Such pleas are immature. Crime should only be returned to the Times Square area.

A 9-year-old My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan won't be allowed to bring his favorite lunch sack to school anymore because administrators say it's a bully magnet that leads to class disruptions.

Two men who claim they were arrested after refusing to give cops their White Castle sliders are now suing the NYPD.

[Kermit the Frog rings the the New York Stock Exchange opening bell on Monday. Stocks are now sharply higher in early trading. Image via Richard Drew/AP.]

A dog owner left his pit bull alone and left a camera rolling in the bedroom. Also rolling in the bedroom: The dog. Cue "Yakety Sax."

Scarlett Johansson has a bunch of movies coming out (Captain America: The Winter Soldier and sci-fi flick Under the Skin), and so a bunch of publications are profiling her—namely The Guardian and The New Yorker. And so people are asking her about things and she is talking about things. Things like working with Woody Allen and her SodaStream/Oxfam debacle.

Radio astronomers operating telescopes at the South Pole said Monday that they've discovered evidence that the universe ballooned out of the Big Bang due to a massive gravitational force generated by space itself. The discovery is being called the "smoking gun" for the Big Bang theory, and it could have huge implications for our understanding of our universes (and possible others).

L'Wren Scott, a fashion designer and model dating Mick Jagger, was found hanged to death Monday morning.

Faithful readers (like us) of 20-something compost heap Thought Catalog may know the feeling of wondering, upon a reading a Thought Catalog essay, "Is this shit real?" Funny you should ask.

When you head out to Minneapolis' premier German restaurant, Gasthof zur Gemütlichkeit, you expect brats and bier and kraut. You might not expect the Third Reich. But then, Christmas is a time for special celebrations.

A fugitive turned himself in after Googling himself last week and finding out he was one of California's most wanted.

[Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, presents Domhnall the Irish Wolfhound with a shamrock during a visit to the 1st Battalion Irish Guards at the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Aldershot, England, on Monday. Image via Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP.]

As memories of the harsh recession years are washed away by a wave of stories about the soaring stock market and hot tech IPOs, it is worth noting that the death of America's mythical "middle class" continues apace.

Americans need jobs! Are any Americans willing to relocate to strangle criminals until they stop breathing? If so, contact these guys:

Last week brought us an attractive/obnoxious young couple lipsyncing "Love Is An Open Door" from Disney's Frozen in their car—while their daughter watched and completely didn't care. Now, two twin brothers are upping the not-actually-singing ante, because that's how the Internet works.