Last Friday, an injured dolphin swam into Brooklyn's filthy Gowanus Canal, where it became stuck and later died; the ordeal was equal parts captivating and disturbing, and inspired at least one moving tribute. Now comes word that the dolphin probably wasn't killed by anything man-made, news that will hopefully let us all rest a bit better. According to the Riverhead Foundation's Kimberly Durham, who performed a necropsy on the animal, the dolphin likely died from natural causes and not one of the thousands of pollutants in the canal:

A fish shape appeared on Paumanok on Friday morning, carried in on high tide. A dolphin: It had started from the sea and made its way into Brooklyn from without, working along the wood and concrete embankments toward the river head, and by mid-morning it was paused by one of Gowanus's empty lots, surfacing and plunging out of and in to the mucoid black. A gathering crowd of locals and police watched it from the shore; it was hyperventilating and bleeding from its fin. Biologists from the Riverhead Foundation arrived. The next high tide wouldn't be until 7 p.m.

A likely terrified, apparently bleeding dolphin is stranded in the Gowanus Canal — the polluted Superfund site/former Mafia dumping ground running through central Brooklyn. Authorities and dolphin experts are on-scene, but no rescue operation can be attempted until for high tide — at 7 p.m.

Brooklyn, a young, up-and-coming borough of New York City, truly has it all now: Last night, Mallory Hytes Hagan, a 23-year-old who lives in Park Slope, was crowned Miss America. Hagan, formerly Miss New York, beat out 52 other contestants (including one named Mariah Cary, aka Miss Iowa, who placed fifth) to win a $50,000 scholarship, which would afford her approximately 5/6ths of one year at NYU. Congratulations Mallory!

Towards the end of last year, two people were shoved onto subway tracks and killed in separate incidents. Tonight, two plainclothes NYPD cops were shot, a bystander was grazed by a bullet and a suspect was killed after opening fire at the Fort Hamilton Parkway subway stop in Brooklyn.

By 11:30 this morning, several dozen people wrapped in winter coats and wielding hand-drawn posters had assembled on the corner in front of the Wendy's on the Fulton Mall in downtown Brooklyn, across from the Modell's and the Bank of America, with the purpose of addressing that most fascinating question in labor relations: Can fast food workers ever be unionized? Here, in New York, today, a lot of fast food workers decided to skip the theory and proceed directly to the "Fuck you, pay me" phase of the process.

Rahmatolla Vahidipour, the owner of a boutique in Flatbush, was shot three times and killed on Friday night, and his death is being linked to two other Brooklyn murders. Vahidipour and the two other victims — Mohamed Gebeli, killed in July, and Isaac Kadare, killed in August — shared a few qualities: all three were killed in the small Brooklyn stores that they owned, were at least 59 years old and were shot by the same .22 caliber pistol. All three were also of Middle Eastern descent, and were killed around each store's closing time.

On Monday, the New York Times struggled again to strike the balance between Hurricane Sandy stories that are utterly depressing and Hurricane Sandy stories that are the fluffiest little fluffmonsters that have fallen asleep atop a cotton ball wearing bunny slippers (everyone ate candy during the hurricane; they're so bad).

There was a time, Ad Age tells us, when canned soup or cereal were considered "easy" foods to prepare and consume. Can you imagine? The package-opening, the pouring-out, the adding of milk or water—if that was "easy," people in the olden days must have had it rough! Kids these days know better. For America's Greatest Generation—the Millennials—the future of food is a simple process of raising the Tater Stuffer™ from the rotating 7-11 heating case into one's mouth in one smooth, painless motion.

Brooklyn—the expensive parts of Brooklyn, the parts of Brooklyn you read about in higher-end trend stories—prides itself on being a great bastion of liberalism and diversity, a place where the intelligentsia can be proud to live. In fact, many of the proud liberals in these parts of Brooklyn are full of shit.

Peggy Noonan. White. A white woman, yes, a Manhattanite, but a vital white woman, a woman of opinions, of breathing, of warbling on Sunday talk shows, about America—this America. This country. This great city, New York, where Peggy Noonan sips a gin fizz, contemplates that good American, Ronald Reagan (yes, a good man), and ventures forth—outwards, into the great bustling metropolis—to see what she can see. Lo! Peggy Noonan is surrounded by nonwhites. And what is that awful noise?

The new Brooklyn Nets' Brooklynettes cheerleader uniforms were revealed this week, and they are bad. They are bad in ways you would expect, like a cropped warm up jacket. They are bad in surprising new ways, like "painted sequin leggings." Because they are complicated, multi-piece ensembles, they are bad in many ways. Because they mostly consist of pieces of fabric bearing the word BROOKLYN in capital letters, they are bad in ways that seem Brooklyn-specific, but are, in fact, universal.

Flash flood warnings have been issued until 5:30pm today for Brooklyn and Queens amid severe thunderstorms. And they weren't kidding! Multiple reports from Twitter show that some pretty impressive flooding has hit Brooklyn. The photo above was posted to Twitter by Jezerfic and was taken on Woodbine street in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I've also seen pictures from Williamsburg Gowanus and Park Slope. More pics as we get them.

Robert Anasi moved to Williamsburg in 1994 and spent more than a decade watching the neighborhood transform from an isolated and novel bohemia into the fully gentrified cultural monster that it is today. His new book, The Last Bohemia: Scenes from the Life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a first person chronicle of the neighborhood's character (and characters), and of its changes.

A woman in Pennsylvania stabbed her fiance to death during an argument on their wedding day.

If you planned to open a bordello in or around an IKEA, where might you do it?

Generally speaking, no mischief perpetrated by teenagers is "news." Teenagers not perpetrating mischief is news. This is because—no matter what race, creed, nationality, or socioeconomic stratum they come from—teenagers are punks. Do not, however, tell this to the New York Times. They have a very incisive sociological story to write.

43-year-old William Abreu, the assistant principal over at Progress HS for Professional Careers in Bushwick, has some career advice for female students seeking summer employment: Suck. My Balls.

On the mean streets of the gritty city, nothing is as it seems. The welcoming avenues of beautiful Brooklyn host a barely-concealed ecosystem of predators, ready to attack any sign of weakness. The Brooklyn Paper's police blotter offers us the grimmest of lessons, that we may not need to learn the hard way.

By most accounts, last weekend's inaugural Great GoogaMooga Festival sucked the great googamooga.