Adults interrogating children about Big Person Issues on camera is a completely original concept that was definitely invented by the Internet. But since it's been a gnarly Friday afternoon, let's cleanse our eyeballs with this short clip of kids talking about the 2012 presidential election at a Brooklyn block party. You will learn that the White House is located . . . at the beach! You vote by . . . getting some cardboard! The one character all the children of the world would unanimously vote for . . . is Spongebob!

This Lena Dunham lady is going places. The Girls auteuress is not only the toast of the film/TV world—she's now broken the New Yorker barrier with a delightfully enraging memoir of her gay ex-boyfriend.

Guilt: are you carrying enough of it? Likely not. Do you even care about your children? You don't, do you? Don't lie—that's another thing to feel guilty about A new report has finally pinpointed exactly how much abuse you—whether through negligence, malice, or just some other vague action you didn't even think twice about—have inflicted on your poor, innocent children: a lot, probably.

Even though children are filthy, virus-carrying monsters, parents are significantly less likely to get the common cold than those without kids.

The Associated Press profile of future President of the Milky Way Galaxy Lori Anne Madison who, at 6 years old, is the youngest person ever to gain entrance into the Scripps National Spelling Bee, is charming in that it finds her bounding around a nature preserve in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. searching for snails, slugs, tadpoles, and the like.

Today is the 33rd anniversary of the disappearance of Etan Patz, the six-year-old New Yorker whose abduction in 1979 helped usher in a new age of terror and suspicion for American parents. Though Etan was declared legally dead in 2001, his case has never been solved. Yesterday, after three decades of false leads and a menagerie of suspects, the NYPD announced that a New Jersey man named Pedro Hernandez had confessed to strangling Patz and dumping his body somewhere in Manhattan. It's unclear at this point whether Hernandez's confession will hold water, if he acted alone, or if he is just a confused publicity seeker. Here's a look back at the case.

Looks like The Wiggles have finally given up on your children. The BBC reports that three of the four founding members announced their retirement Thursday.

Kindergartners in Georgia are being groomed to become tyrannical little King Joffreys, wielding unprecedented power over their teachers' lives, according to The Hechinger Report. As part of a new pilot program, feedback from five-year-olds' surveys about their instructors will be used to determine whether teachers retain their jobs or receive raises.

The Social Security Administration's latest list of top baby names has been released, and it offers a fresh look at which names to avoid if you care at all about your kid's individuality.

A nanny in Northbrook, an affluent Chicago suburb, was arrested last week after she stole $600 from the wallets of the kids she was watching. According to a police report, the children's father confronted Alexandra Donohue, 22, after noticing the money was missing. She initially denied taking the money, but later admitted to police that she had — the one flaw in an otherwise flawless defense.

Today's nightmare realized comes to us in the form of a 7-year-old boy from Juneau, Alaska, who was discovered to have started at least five fires—in an elementary school, a government building, a random patch of grass—over the last four to five months.

Are you a naked person, or a clothed person? I am a clothed person. Aviva Rubin of Times parenting blog Motherlode is a naked person. Her kids? They're still figuring it all out. Take her, uh, 12-year-old:

One of the most delightful products of our industrial farming system is "pink slime," aka "lean, finely textured beef," a slurry of ammonia-treated cow byproducts mixed into ground beef as a filler. It's widely used in school lunches because growing children should get three servings of slime-based food per day. But now schools are ridding their cafeterias of pink slime.

Anthropologists at the University of California Los Angeles are one step closer to unlocking the not-so-secrets of one of America's least invisible groups, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Have you ever looked in on your beautiful child slumbering and heard him or her "snoring?" Sorry to tell you this, but. Your kid will be all fucked up (psychologically).

Last week, I shared with you this demented drawing my little brother made when he was six years old, and asked for submissions of your most terrifying and otherwise surreal childhood drawings. You did not disappoint.

When my little brother Joey was about six years old, he was sent to "timeout" to think about something he'd done wrong. The thing he'd done wrong that day is now lost to family history, but my father recently unearthed the drawing it produced, and I wanted to share it with you, because it is Friday and because it is hilarious—if also very, very demented.

Ooh boy. Here's a quote that speaks volumes, from Reuters' article about Iran's morality police "cracking down" on the sale of Barbie dolls, which is forbidden. Stores have been instructed to sell Iran's specially-designed, ultra-demure Sara and Dara dolls instead, to the disgust of the superficial girl tykes of Tehran:

Today we learned about a fascinating new invention that uses facial recognition technology to bestow sexxxy, adults-only pudding upon the masses. Technology is truly a wonder. And while we do not often reward the immensely prestigious and sought after COTD title on the image-makers among you, today's commenter really arrested us. Please see the image above and to the right for some expert Photoshopping.

You know, if there's one thing America could use fewer of right now, it's human beings performing services in exchange for money. What are those called again? Oh right, jobs. Too many jobs! Let's eliminate positions! Like pudding sample dispensation technician, for example. How long have we been pressed under the thumb of those lazy, unionized, pudding-covered thugs? Too long. Luckily, Jell-O has finally done something about it. They have funneled thousands of man hours and countless millions in research dollars into the world's first Jell-O Temptations Sampling Machine, a marvel of technical innovation that squirts out a blob of pudding every time you approach it. But what if a child approaches it? What then? Might the Sampling Machine offer the child some delicious pudding? No! Of course not! That would be completely counterintuitive to the needs of Jell-O's dessert-squirting Frankenstein. From Gothamist: