Since 1968, at least 1.4 million Americans have been killed by guns—more than all the U.S.'s accumulated war dead in that same period. Any way you look at it, 2013 was another killer year for arms manufacturers and armed bullies.

There is much debate over how to define a "mass shooting." The FBI classifies a mass murder as four fatalities, not including the killer. Mother Jones uses that, plus several situational criteria, for a mass shooting. The Redditors at "Guns Are Cool" considers any time four people are shot (not killed) a mass shooting, and with good reason: "The most obscene incidents of gun violence usually do not make the mainstream news at all."

Even by the stringent federal criteria—which we use below, representing but a fraction of all U.S. victims of gun violence—this has been a bloody year.

January

7 - Tulsa, Oklahoma: Four women ranging in ages from 23 to 55 were found in their apartment shot dead with their hands tied behind their backs. A pair of brothers was arrested for allegedly robbing and killing them.

19 - Albuquerque, New Mexico: 15-year-old Nehemiah Gringo allegedly used an AR-15 to kill his entire family—his gang-member-turned-preacher father, his mother, a 9-year-old brother, and two sisters, ages 5 and 2. He also reportedly had plans to shoot up a Walmart.

March

13 - Herkimer, New York: A 64-year-old "loner" died in a gun-battle with police after he killed four at a barbershop and oil-lube shop. He also killed a 2-year-old police dog, Ape, before succumbing.

April

18 - Akron, Ohio: Two men and two women ranging in ages from 19 to 23 were lined up in their basement and shot in the head point-blank. Two men have been arrested in connection with the murders.

22 - Federal Way, Washington: A man with a carry license killed his girlfriend, then shot three other neighbors in her apartment complex to death before himself being killed by shots from eight police officers.

24 - Manchester, Illinois: A man angered over a custody dispute killed five of his daughter's mother's family members in their home, then led police on a high-speed chase. He later died in officers' custody.

28 - Ottawa, Kansas: A man allegedly murdered his best friend and a roommate before raping the best friend's girlfriend, then shooting her and her 18-month-old daughter to death. The shooter, who awaits trial, says he "ain't never hurt no man that didn't have it coming."

May

11 - Waynesville, Indiana: Four people were shot in their rural home. After a search of the home turned up meth, police concluded the killings were drug-related. The following month, a suspect who was already in jail was arrested for the murders.

13 - Fernley, Nevada: A man killed two couples in their homes over Mother's Day weekend, burning their houses. He also slew a newspaper deliveryman and stole his truck.

June

7 - Santa Monica, California: An emotionally troubled 23-year-old with 1,300 rounds of ammunition killed his father and brother before going on a rampage that killed three more at Santa Monica College. The gunman was killed on campus by police.

July

26 - Hialeah, Florida: A workout enthusiast under scrutiny for sending abusive emails to an ex-employer killed the husband-and-wife managers of his apartment, then murdered four more neighbors before taking hostages. He was killed by police; the hostages were unharmed.

26 - Clarksburg, West Virginia: A gunman killed two in a suspected drug house, then while fleeing shot and killed a 70-year-old man and his 47-year-old son who were in the neighborhood to deliver the local paper.

August

7 - Dallas, Texas: A former teacher and football coach killed his girlfriend, estranged wife, and two of their children before police arrested him.

14 - Oklahoma City: A "weird" 40-year-old man killed his mother, sister, niece, and a 7-month-old nephew with a .380 pistol. He currently awaits trial.

September

11 - Crab Orchard, Tennessee: A man and a woman were arrested for killing four people, ages 16 to 22, in their car during a robbery that followed a botched marijuana deal.

16 - Washington, D.C.: A military contractor who claimed to hear voices murdered 12 ex-coworkers with a sawed-off shotgun at the federal Navy Yard before he was killed by police.

20 - Rice, Texas: A woman killed her husband, their three sons, and herself in their apartment. The husband had been arrested for a domestic violence charge two weeks before.

October

9 - Paris, Texas: Four people were found dead in a home; it's not yet clear what transpired or who killed them.

26 - Phoenix, Arizona: A man who was allegedly thrown into a rage over the neighbors' two barking dogs killed the animals, then his four neighbors, then himself with a pump-action shotgun.

28 - Terrell, Texas: A man who "appeared to be intoxicated" killed five people, including a convenience store clerk, at four locations before police caught him.

29 - Callison, South Carolina: A man killed his ex-girlfriend, her parents, and two of her children before taking his own life.

November

7 - Jacksonville, Florida: Two men and their girlfriends were killed in what appeared to be a planned drive-by shooting. The suspects are at large.

23 - Tulsa, Oklahoma: Four people were killed in a suspected meth house. No suspects have been arrested.

December

1 - Topeka, Kansas: Four people were killed at a house in the town's southwest section. No suspects have been named.

3 - Alma, Arkansas: After arriving home with them, a man killed his daughter's boyfriend in the car, then killed his 4-month-old grandson while he lay in his car seat. He pursued his daughter and four-year-old granddaughter into the backyard, killing the granddaughter before turning the gun on himself.

3 - Erwin, Tennessee: A man with a record of domestic unrest killed his wife, son, and daughter before committing suicide.

8 - Manchester, Connecticut: A man killed his ex-girlfriend and two friends, then fled with the couple's 13-month-old child. When confronted outside by police, he set the child down on the ground and fatally shot himself.

Sources: Reddit; USA Today; Huffington Post

Paul Ciancia, the 23-year-old accused of killing a TSA agent and wounding three others in a rampage at LAX last month, pleaded not guilty to murder and other felony charges today. Ciancia faces the death penalty if convicted.

"We effed up," lyrics annotation supersite Rap Genius admitted this week after its SEO cheating was revealed. They sure did. And there's good reason to believe this isn't just a gaffe for the cartoonish startup posse: a Google eff up could haunt them forever—but no one search should have all that power.

For as long as it's been a cultural blip, Rap Genius has owed most of its spotlight to almighty Google. Early this month, an overlooked article in Billboard stated, definitively: "How Rap Genius Won The SEO Game." Won. The game was over:

Search experts point to other things that Rap Genius appears to be doing well. "Google is always paying attention to 'perfect' when ranking results," says Ian Lurie, chief executive of Portent, an Internet marketing agency that specializes in content development. "Their site is very fast. It's very well-built. And it has very high-quality in-bound links, which means high-quality sites are linking to it. They've given it every advantage."

In addition, Rap Genius' community, with its verified artists acting as an anchor, serves to generate social media attention. "Google has refocused a lot of its ranking power to social media, especially Google+, and that's given Rap Genius a leg up on AZLyrics," says Nick Sayers, a spokesman for Moz, a provider of search analytics. "Google also loves brands, because users love brands, too. Look at AZ's branding versus Rap Genius'. AZ doesn't even feel like a real company or have any type of consistent logo."

Rap Genius designed itself to be eminently Google-able. The whole thing is a gaudy, whirring, hyperactive link-bazaar. Links to and from YouTube, links to images, articles, other Rap Genius pages—links upon links, links for the sake of links—a constant work in progress to make the entire internet one giant hyperlink to itself. For Google, this is web catnip, and it showed: a week ago, if you googled virtually any rap lyric or track name, Rap Genius would be the first result. Number one.

I doubt many people ever typed "r-a-p-g-e-n-i-u-s-.-c-o-m" into a browser and hit enter. But the number of people who wound up on Rap Genius by way of Google, just because they wanted to look up lyrics like millions of other music fans, is astronomical—and "winning" the search engine game was a self-perpetuating success. But it was contrived and ill-gotten: "If there is one thing Google hates, it is unnatural links," explains Nick Sayers, who works at Moz, a search analytics firm. "Really the only thing that can be said is they sure did mess up," and it shows as soon as you try to look up a song. Google won't let anyone "win," and really hates it if you gloat about victory over the giant.

So, the hot streak is over, snuffed out as artificially as it began. Take a look at the results for "i've got the rap patrol," as of today:

Don't bother looking for Rap Genius, because it's not here. It's been pushed back to the seventh page of Google's results. The middle of the seventh page, to be exact—a place no one ever even bothers looking. Even searching for a song title or lyric plus "rap genius" won't put the site on Google's top results—the entire operation has essentially been de-listed, deleted, and banished to the Phantom Zone. The seventh page of Google makes Path look like Snapchat, a no man's land between online landfills stuffed with digital Pogs.

For a company that's relied almost entirely on Google, to be shunned by Google is a death sentence. Traffic-tracking service Alexa says almost all Rap Genius traffic starts with a Google search. SimilarWeb puts the number at over 70 percent. What happens to a growing website that makes no money and trades only in zeitgeist when 70% of its audience is cut off? Nothing good.

John Marbach, who first broke the news of the Rap Genius search scam, put it plainly:

RG is highly reliant on Google for traffic. Lyrics are one of the highest search categories on the web, simply because people like music. Just like the most popular YouTube videos are songs.

Bing traffic isn't going to make it up. Marbuch notes that Rap Genius' exile should only be temporary, assuming good behavior and cooperation—a standard 30 to 60 day penalty. But if and when Google and RG come to an understanding, what's next for the text empire? It won't immediately be as prominent as it was before this scandal, because the way it "was before" is against the rules. If Rap Genius tries it again, they'll face an even longer penalty, or permanent de-listing. If they were only able to hit these heights by playing dirty, it's safe to assume they won't perform as well while staying clean. Anything but a monopoly is a step down. Maybe they'll be the top result for some lyrical searches, maybe they won't—there's a lot of established competition. All of this ignores the Rap Genius plan to be the top result for everything, from De La Soul to the Old Testament to the Pentagon Papers. Moz CEO Rand Fishkin predicts "they'll bounce back in the next few weeks or months, but not entirely." Suddenly, the company's bluster-brag that "in a year from now [we] will be the biggest site in the whole Internet" needs some rethinking.

Rap Genius will never be safe on the internet again, because as far as they're concerned, Google is the internet. The search engine functions like public infrastructure, a road that takes anyone who wants to look up lyrics to the internet lyrics store, but it thinks like any Walmart of Exxon. It has its own secret rules, its own private penalties, and its own willingness to harm any company that dares make it look stupid. The Rap Genius co-creators must have known what they were getting themselves into: an inordinately complex game of Mouse Trap with the devil that's finally snapped back. That's grand as long as Google is blasting you with traffic, but cross them, and they can flick a switch and blink you out of existence. As one Hacker News member notes, maybe this story isn't about "the correctness of Google's decision, but the fact that one search engine can make the entire difference between a company being successful and not." The entire existence of Rap Genius hinges upon Google, on how well they can bend the giant's rules without breaking them and suffering a face-smash.

So it's a bullet-train-collision of egos, here: on one side we have Rap Genius, willing to do business with a genie as long as it paid. On the other, this omnipotent Google, which makes up its own choreography, watches companies dutifully dance, but will flex and snarl to make you toe the line. Two entities who don't think they can be touched, and a very expensive game of chicken for Rap Genius, which uses this prideful gamesmanship in place of a marketing budget. What the fuck are they going to do, I'm sure someone there wondered, kick us off the internet? We're Rap Genius. I had dinner with Nas.

It is, I think, this kind of cavalier, Jay-Z poster on my wall, dad's Amex in my pocket thinking that fucked Rap Genius from the start, before they "effed up" by toying with Google. Let us never forget this is the product of three dudes who met at Yale, received the backing of some of the most powerful tech investors in history, and whose co-founder got away with telling Mark Zuckerberg to suck his dick, before blaming being a complete unhinged asshole on a brain tumor. The company's M.O. has been acting with impunity, all the time, and spinning the eye-rolls and douchebag-calls into more publicity. When SEO expert Tom Harari emailed Rap Genius co-founder Tom Lehman while working on this fantastic analysis of Google-gaming, this was his reply:

Our SEO game is tight.

It's all worked! The three Yalies are smart: they know how to play dirtier and dirtier, whether onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt or with their hands down Google's cargo shorts. If the Rap Genius corporate persona has been acting like stimulant-spiked 9th grade heroes in public, it's easy to see why getting busted for SEO cheating seemed laughable. Now they'll have to look over their shoulders, indefinitely.

Google won't laugh. Google is bigger than any startup—even one run by three Ivy Leaguers. Google is bigger than any investor. Google is bigger than rap. And when it drops the mic on your traffic, you see that you're a success only at Google's pleasure. The gatekeeper nerds in Mountain View aren't as easily distracted as the editors at Billboard, the audiences at conferences, or venture capitalists. Wear shuttershades indoors or whatever, fine—but trying to publicly give less of a fuck than Google will never work.

Photo: Getty

Happy holidays from Broward County: "Angered after being given the boot from a Davie bar, a man came back to the establishment with Molotov cocktails made out of gasoline-filled beer bottles, and tossed them at the bar owner, police said."

As in past years, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has created a searchable database of emergency room visits around the country. And as in past years, we have trolled the data for the finest examples of insertions showcasing extraordinarily bad luck and/or ingenuity.

Sorted by orifice, working south:

Ear:
SEED
PAINTBRUSH
"SOME BALLS"
SLAG
MAKEUP BRUSH
PATIENT TOLD PARENTS THAT THE CATS STUCK SOMETHING IN HER EAR
GASOLINE
BUTTERFLY
HERSHEY KISS
"CLASSMATE PUT A ROCK IN EAR, HAS PIECE OF PAPER IN OTHER EAR"

Nose:
EAR PLUG
CRAYON
PLASTIC EYEBALL
HEART-SHAPED GEM
DIME
PENNY
NICKEL
AA BATTERIES
SPONGE
SMALL DECORATIVE ROCK
2 ERASERS
MULCH
"PLACED A BEAD IN HER NOSTRIL, PATIENT HAS NO COMPLAINTS"

Throat:
DETERGENT PACK
WHISTLE
ENGAGEMENT RING
"SWALLOWED A QUARTER WHILE TAKING A SHOWER"
"DOING MAGIC TRICK AT SCHOOL & SWALLOWED A QUARTER"
SCHOOL LOGO MAGNET
CONFETTI
SCREW
A TACO
BALL OF STRING
A BEE

Penis:
PENIS PLUG
20-30 MAGNETIC BUCKY BALLS
DICE
FISHTANK AIRHOSE
ANTENNA
SEWING NEEDLE
BB PELLET
"WIDE WOODEN DOWEL"
NAIL
PLASTIC PIPE, DENTAL FLOSS WITH BEADS
WIRE
MARBLE
EMBEDDED DOMINO IN PENIS "TO PLEASE THE LADIES"

Vagina:
GLUE STICK
BARRETTE
SMALL FINGER VIBRATOR–"IT'S STILL ON"
TOILET PAPER
"LONG BLACK OBJECT"
PENIS RING
RIVET
"WORMS COMING OUT OF PEE-PEE"—PINWORMS
SPOON
PENCIL ERASER
PLASTIC BOTTLE OF CREAM (LID STILL ON)
NAPKINS IN VAGINA TO HAVE SEX DURING PERIOD

Rectum:
PENCIL
PENCILS
SHAMPOO BOTTLE
COLOGNE BOTTLE
LOTION JAR
SODA CAN
SODA BOTTLE
FLASHLIGHT
BATHTUB STOPPER
SHOT GLASS (BROKEN)
SOCK
ICE PACK
END OF CURTAIN ROD
"PATIENT STATES HE WAS EXPERIENCING AN ITCHY RECTUM AND INSERTED A REMOTE CONTROL TO SCRATCH"
VIBRATOR
VIBRATOR BATTERY
COVER OF VIBRATOR
TIP OF VIBRATOR
"BIG PURPLE DILDO"
"PATIENT STATES HE GOT DRUNK AND PASSED OUT AT GIRLFRIENDS HOUSE, AWOKE WITH SPOONS AND DILDOS IN RECTUM"
LIGHTER
TOY SUBMARINE
TOOTHBRUSH HOLDER
2 HALVES OF BAR OF SOAP
POOL BALL
LIT BOTTLE ROCKET; "IT DIDN'T GO WELL"

There are plenty of reasons to live in California (it's warm) and there are plenty reasons to not. For instance, you might get run over by a car and fined for it. Or you might feel as if you're constantly being assaulted by tear gas because you live next to a sriracha plant. Or, even worse, you might pay millions of dollars for a home only to inhale the fumes of sea lion shit.

The latter applies to the fine and wealthy citizens of La Jolla, Calif., a suburban pocket of San Diego that lies right on the Pacific coastline. Today, a lawsuit was filed against the city of San Diego and its interim mayor Todd Gloria by a group called Citizens For Odor Nuisance Abatement. The group is demanding that the city clean up the rocks in La Jolla Cove because sea lion shit has built up to the point that it's infecting the air.

The lawsuit alleges that the city illegally erected a fence in front of the rocks at La Jolla Cove thus allowing sea lions and birds to roam free and shit everywhere. The plaintiffs are asking a judge to force the city to remove the fence and clean up the shit, neither of which seems unreasonable at all.

Of course, worse fates can befall a resident of La Jolla. Say, you could be Mitt Romney's neighbor as he tears down and quadruples the size of his family's beachside mansion. Which of those two scenarios is the most, to put it in the lawsuit's language, "foul, noxious and sickening?"

Deadspin "Dad Gets College Football Tickets For Christmas" Video Has A Twist | Gizmodo UPS Botch Your Christmas Deliveries? Amazon Has $20 for You | io9 Why you're usually late (and sometimes early) | Lifehacker Communicate Better with Your Significant Other with These 10 Rules | Kinja Popular Posts

Glenn Greenwald, who famously worked with Edward Snowden this year to publicize the NSA's massive surveillance program, today rejected the idea that his role in the Snowden affair has gone from journalist to cheerleader, calling that criticism "ludicrous" and questioning his MSNBC interviewer's own partisanship.

In a chat with MSNBC's Kristen Welker, Greenwald used Welker's own network to scoff at the question, "What do you say to your critics who say that you've become more of a spokesman for Edward Snowden?"

We're on MSNBC now, where close to 24 hours a day, the agenda of President Obama and the Democratic Party are promoted, defended, glorified—the agenda of the Republican Party is undermined. That doesn't mean that the people who appear on MSNBC aren't journalists; they are. I think every journalist has a viewpoint. My viewpoint is very clear. I don't hide it. It's that I think what Edward Snowden did is very admirable and heroic. But at the same time, the ultimate test of a journalist is "Is what you publish accurate and reliable?" And I think, with regard to every story that we've published over the last six months, there hasn't been a single correction made to any of them. Very few have been called into question. And I think that's the ultimate question when it comes to "Is this journalism?"

"Well, I think the point is not so much about MSNBC and what happens here but more that sometimes when you talk about Edward Snowden you do defend him, and some people wonder if that crosses a line," Welker said.

"Sure, I do defend him, just like people on MSNBC defend President Obama and his officials and Democratic Party leaders 24 hours a day," Greenwald responded.

"Not everyone on MSNBC does that 24 hours a day," Welker said.

"No, not everybody, but a lot of people on MSNBC do," Greenwald said.

Snowden, who yesterday delivered Channel 4 UK's "Alternative Christmas Message," remains in asylum in Russia.

[Above is a stunning aerial shot of an eruption of the Japanese volcano Sakurajima taken this January from the International Space Station. Wired has more of NASA's best photos of 2013.]

While it's no surprise that Disney's Saving Mr. Banks would ultimately portray a rather rosy view of P.L. Travers (the cantankerous author of beloved children's book-turned-movie Mary Poppins), they seem to have omitted a most crucial fact: Travers was a terrifying psycho who split up her adopted children.

Per Vulture, who posted some juicy tidbits that Saving Mr. Banks graciously omitted from Travers' life story (and god bless, because those trailers alone sure don't paint her as a bucket of kittens), Travers adopted a son named Camillus when he was a mere six months old, from Joseph Hone, the first biographer of writer W.B. Yeats. Small fact she forgot to mention to Camillus: he had a twin brother, whom she did not adopt. Oh, and according to The Daily Mail, she chose Camillus over brother Anthony thanks to some dumb old tarot cards.

As fate and made-for-Lifetime movies would have it, Anthony bumped into Camillus after getting properly plastered at a pub across the street from Camillus' home when the boys were 17. According to journalist Lynne Kelleher, Travers had lied to Camillus not only about Anthony's existence, but also told him that his father had died in the tropics, when in fact, Hone was alive until just a short time before Camillus discovered he had a whole secret family his supposedly wonderful mommie dearest had hid from him for almost two decades.

And you thought your family was fucked up.

Say hello the NYPD's new high-tech squad car, featuring radiation detectors for maximum paranoia.

[American artist George Condo, known for collaborating with Kanye West on his "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" album art, also collaborated with West on this grotesque hand-painted Birkin bag for Kim Kardashian's Christmas present. I spy four breasts, one butt crack, and maybe some pubes. Image via Instagram]

I've never seen the rules of the so-called "Knockout Game" myself but I'd imagine this would be high on the list:

DON'T show your knockout video to an off-duty cop.

Ignoring this rule was a 27-year-old Houston man named Conrad Barrett, who will appear before a judge on Friday after being arrested last month. According to police, Barrett bragged to an off-duty cop he had just met at a local restaurant about knocking out a 79-year-old black man.

Barrett is said to have asked the cop and a woman he was with if they had heard of the game before taking out his phone and showing the two video of the alleged incident. The cop then found a uniformed officer who arrested Barrett.

In the video, which has not yet been released, Barrett allegedly approaches and greets the elderly man before punching him and yelling "knockout." Barrett is being charged with a hate crime because in further searching Barrett's phone, police found video of him using racial slurs as well as another in which he asks, "That plan is to see if I were to hit a black person, would this be nationally televised?"

The victim, who has yet to be identified publicly, required surgery to repair his jaw, which was broken in two places. Barrett's attorney maintains that his client suffers from bipolar disorder.

Of course, the uncomfortable subtext of this case is that the original fervor over the "Knockout Game" came from white media stoking public fear of young black men. That narrative was obviously bullshit from the start, but Conrad Barrett is anecdotal confirmation nonetheless.

Right as longterm unemployment benefits are set to stop, a new CNN poll shows America thinks this Congress is the worst ever. So, rest easy, last Congress.

A powerful bomb exploded in downtown Beirut early Friday morning, killing at least six people and injuring more than 70. The attack targeted and killed Mahommad B. Chatah, a one-time ambassador to the United States and a former Lebanese finance minister who was critical of the Assad government in neighboring Syria.

Chatah was a member of the Lebanon's Future coalition and a close aide to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, whose father, who was also prime minster, was killed in a similar explosion in Beirut in 2005.

The attack highlights the effect the civil war in Syria has had on the Lebanese government, which is deeply divided over the conflict, and has fueled concern that the country could be headed towards a civil war of its own.

The Future coalition, which is predominantly Sunni and allied with Saudi Arabia, supports the rebels in Syria attempting to overthrow the Assad government. Hezbollah, Lebanon's another major political party, supports the Syrian government and has close ties to Iran.

Just hours before the attack, Chatah published a tweet criticizing Hezbollah.

#Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security & foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 yrs.

— Mohamad B Chatah (@mohamad_chatah) December 27, 2013

The bombing comes five weeks after twin suicide bombings exploded near the Iranian embassy in one of Beirut's Shiite neighborhoods, killing 23 including an Iranian diplomat.

[Image via AP]

Our best work here at Gawker is not always our most popular. Sometimes those two indicia—popularity and quality—are negatively correlated, and sometimes they're aligned. It's a crapshoot. Below, you will find the a list of the best stuff we came up with over the past 12 months. It's a grab-bag of searing criticism, straight dirt, personal assaults, intense narrative journalism, dark essays, a dead dog, jokes we couldn't get out of our heads until we put them on the site, gag headlines, and screaming goats. We hate to disappoint the loyal readers who expect, as one wag recently put it, "the short newsy posts typical of Gawker." But this is the stuff the staff was really into.

"On Smarm," by Tom Scocca

The first full conversation I had with Gawker's features editor Tom Scocca included a 20-minute detour into something he called smarm. He sort of dropped the word in front of me and waited, with a tight grin on his face, to see what I'd do with it. I pretended that I understood what he was talking about. And then I waited nearly a year for this machine-tooled, righteous assault on false goodwill to show up on our web site. Now everyone knows exactly what he was talking about.

"The Worst of White Folks," by Kiese Laymon

Kiese Laymon is an English professor at Vassar College. He also commissions and edits the personal essays we publish each Saturday, many of which appear on this list. This one was brutal, enraging, and lovely.

"For Sale: A Video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Smoking Crack Cocaine," by John Cook

To avoid the impression that I am using this forum to promote my own work, I should point out that this one was a staff favorite. I flew to Toronto, had a lovely time, met a crack dealer, watched an iPhone video of the city's mayor high as fuck and smoking crack, and wrote about it. Then a bunch of stuff happened and some really great charities in Canada got about $200,000 of your money. Rob Ford is still mayor of Toronto, thank God.

"'Dennis, We've Been Crying Too Much': Dr. Hook and the Untold Story of the Best Rock Movie Ever Made," by Will Sheff

A long, long time ago, a washed-up rock band appeared on German television in the middle of the night. Three decades later, someone slipped Okkervil River's Will Sheff a DVD of the performance, and he recognized it for what it is: The best rock film ever made. This is his close reading. It is the longest work Gawker has ever published.

"My Life With the Thrill Clit Cult," by Nitasha Tiku

Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku deserved combat pay for this hilarious and deeply reported first-person account of One Taste, a cult-like group that promotes "orgasmic meditation," for which she got half-naked with hundreds of strangers. Repeatedly. (Also, the GIF from Jim Cooke is, as usual, spot-on.)

"A Hollywood Ending," by Maccabee Montandon

On a summer night in 1992, Maccabee Montandon's brother was murdered during a robbery attempt in Los Angeles. Two decades later, Montandon assessed the ongoing damage.

"The Princess and the Trolls: The Heartrending Legend of Adalia Rose, the Most Reviled Six-Year-Old Girl on the Internet," by Camille Dodero

Adalia Rose is six years old. She suffers from progeria, a condition that gives her an unusual appearance for a child. Trolls at 4Chan found her on Facebook and turned her into a loved and hated internet icon. Camille Dodero went to Texas to find her.

"The Most Deranged Sorority Girl Email You Will Ever Read," by Caity Weaver

It was, wasn't it?

"Hatetriot's Day: July 4th Is America's Crappiest Holiday," by Ken Layne

All year, Gawker's national correspondent Ken Layne has been writing posts for each major holiday under the rubric "Ken Layne's American Almanac." They have all been beautiful, but I can't fit them all here, so I chose his July 4th dispatch, an exquisitely wrought geyser of bile accompanied by a ghastly GIF from Jim Cooke.

"Is the New York Post Edited by a Bigoted Drunk Who Fucks Pigs?" by Tom Scocca

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the New York Post repeatedly shit the bed, claiming falsely that 12 people had died (it was 3), that feds had identified a Saudi "suspect" (false), and, most glaringly, publishing a Page One photo of two men allegedly being sought by the authorities under the blaring headline, "BAG MEN." The "bag men" were Salaheddin Barhoum, 16, and Yassine Zaimi, 24, and they were there to watch the marathon. (They are suing the Post for libel.) On the morning that cover appeared, Tom Scocca addressed widespread concerns that Post editor Col Allan is a bigot, a drunk, and a pigfucker.

"Michael Arrington's Allegations Includes an Assault Investigation," by Adrian Chen

The silence that greeted these on-the-record claims from a former co-worker of TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington that he abused an ex-girlfriend is all you really need to know about the Silicon Valley press.

"My Wife Looks Nervous: A Drunk Driver Killed My Family," by Jimmy Anderson

This began as a response to a job ad. It was Jimmy Anderson's cover letter. It told the story of the day he and his family were driving to a Mexican restaurant in Patterson, Calif., to celebrate his birthday when an impaired driver careened into their car, killing his mother, father, and brother and leaving him paralyzed.

"Requiem for a Dolphin," by Max Read

In January, a common dolphin made its way from New York harbor into the fetid waters of the Gowanus canal, where it died alone. Max Read traced the pitiful devolution of Long Island from Walt Whitman's "Fish-shape Paumanok" to the moment of that dolphin's final, acrid breath.

"26 Signs You Are Me," by Tom Scocca

Number 24! OMG Number 24. (That is indeed, by the way, a silhouette of Tom Scocca.)

"Fuck Boston," by Hamilton Nolan

We use a group chat system here at Gawker to communicate. On the morning after the Boston Red Sox won the 2013 World Series at home in Fenway Park, Hamilton Nolan wrote "great day for a fuck boston post." Seventeen minutes later, he filed it.

"'Can I Say Twerk?' A Miley Cyrus Glossary for Whites," by Caity Weaver

In the wake of Miley Cyrus' MTV Video Awards performance, I asked Caity Weaver for a usage guide for "twerking," "ratchet," and various other terms that had been moving, as much of our pop culture terminology does, from black vernacular to cable-news anchor vernacular. She didn't really want to.

"What Kind of Monster Wants to Shoot Up His School?," by Camille Dodero

Sammie Eaglebear Chavez, 19, was born poor, to a prostitute mother and a disappeared father, and shuffled from house to house as a kid. But his greatest misfortune was getting arrested for threatening to harm his fellow high school students four hours before, halfway across the country, Adam Lanza started shooting.

"The Zimmerman Jury Told Young Black Men What We Already Knew," by Cord Jefferson

As the trial in the murder of Trayvon Martin came to an end, Cord Jefferson told me he'd have something to say in anticipation of an acquittal. I thought there was no way George Zimmerman could actually get off, but I told him he might as well write it. Because we hadn't anticipated that the jury would deliberate over the weekend, he hurriedly drafted part of it on a ferry to Catalina Island off the coast of California. When he sent it in, I thought it was perfect, but I was sure the jury would do the right thing.

"Which Female Morning Show Host Is Afraid of Her Own Poop?," by Caity Weaver

After Jamie Dimon's daughter wrote a hard-hitting cultural analysis of female office pooping behavior for the Daily Beast, in which an unnamed morning-show anchor revealed her fear of the dreaded Office Poop, Caity Weaver started digging. (It was Hoda.)

"Finding Light at the Black Party," by Rich Juzwiak

The Black Party is an annual leather bacchanal in New York City, where gay men gather for a day and night of anonymous sex and drugs. Which is the perfect place to send a reporter. Not to mention photographer Victor Jefferey II, who came back with creepy and delirious images.

"Kate Upton and Ryan Gosling Explain the Sequester," by Max Read

In the midst of an epic, and epically boring, budget battle, Max Read cracked the code on how to address serious public policy issues in a way that can engage the Gawker audience on native terms. Some people were kind of upset.

Public Masturbation Declared Legal in Sweden After Landmark Trial

I laughed for days at the headline.

"Shepard Smith's Office Romance: A 26-Year-Old Fox Staffer," by J.K. Trotter

Shepard Smith, an anchor for Fox News, is dating a Fox News staffer more than 20 years his junior who was working directly under Smith's supervision when their romance began. This is a run-of-the-mill media gossip scoop about a personality of some interest. For some reason, some people didn't like it.

"The Remarkable Tale of Hunter, the Real-Life Rescue Dog," by Ken Layne

"You get used to death by having everyone around you die. With all of two living relatives remaining and a long list of friends gone, I am familiar enough with the process. It is absurd to grieve for a dog the way I never grieved for all of those people, but that's how it is." RIP Hunter.

Seven Mondays After the Marathon: On Leaving Boston

Harvard Law School graduate Josie Duffy's Dear John letter to a city she never quite learned to live in.

"'I Will Die for What's in My Heart': Kanye West in His Own Words," by Kanye West

It was a real thrill to see Kanye West's byline on Gawker this year.

"After 30 Years of Silence, the Original NSA Whistleblower Looks Back," by Adrian Chen

Before Edward Snowden was born, there was a National Security Agency insider who, at great personal risk, went public with astonishing stories about the breadth and depth of the agency's illegal surveillance. Now he runs an antique shop out on Long Island. Adrian Chen tracked him down.

"Two Minutes of Nothing But Goats Yelling Like Humans," by Neetzan Zimmerman

Pathos, humor, a glimpse of the absurd, sounds of terror, goats, and 1.4 million pageviews. "Two Minutes of Nothing But Goats Yelling Like Humans" is the perfect viral post.

"Master Bedroom, Extra Closet: The Truth About Gay Marriage," by Steven W. Thrasher

There's an uncomfortable truth behind the argument for gay marriage: For many gay men in relationships, fidelity isn't even an aspirational goal. Steven Thrasher explored the reality of gay married life.

"Video of Violent, Rioting Surfers Shows White Culture of Lawlessness," by Cord Jefferson

With a simple reversal of rhetorical polarity, Cord Jefferson managed to throw in sharp relief the ludicrous racialism of your average cable-news crime story. He extended the gag that night to MSNBC's "All in With Chris Hayes," with a discussion of how endemic violence is to white culture in America.

"Remembering 9/11: An Educational Pageant," by Tom Scocca

This is going to happen for real one day.

"Newspapering Is a Business: The Death of the Legendary Boston Phoenix," by Camille Dodero

Camille Dodero, a former staffer at the Boston Phoenix, wrote a moving remembrance on the occasion of the alt-weekly's death, and a belated obituary for one of its great editors, Clif Garboden.

"Feds Find Someone Weak and Poor Enough to Nail for Housing Meltdown," by John Cook

Point of personal privilege: In June, federal prosecutors went after one of the perpetrators of the galactic fraud on the American public that was the 2008 financial crisis. His name was James Wazlawik, of Prescott, Wisc. His crime: Misstating his income on his mortgage application and costing Citibank $146,829.

"Doge Is An Actually Good Internet Meme. Wow," by Adrian Chen

such pheonmenal. wow. much popular. very analsys. OMG. internet lovbleness. valedictry adrien doge

We've also put all the stories together on a "readlist," so you can send them directly to your Kindle or epub reader.

It must suck to be a wealth advisor in "North America's Siberia," home to two of the country's ten poorest counties. Unless you find a way to woo the 1 percent of the 1 percent away from Pacific Heights and the Upper East Side.

Enter Pierce H. McDowell III, president of South Dakota Trust Co. in Sioux Falls, and his "trust tsunami," a stay-rich-slowly scheme for the United States' tax-hating gazillionaires:

A branch of Chicago's Pritzker family rents space here, down the hall from the Minnesota clan that controls the Radisson hotel chain, and other rooms held by Miami and Hong Kong money.

Don't look for any heiresses in this former five-and-dime. Most days, the small offices that represent these families are shut. Even empty, they provide their owners with an important asset: a South Dakota address for their trust funds.

As Bloomberg's Zachary Mider reports, you don't even need to splurge on a stately prairie lodge to secure a legacy for your heirs—you just need a P.O. box in this largely unseen mole in the small of America's back. Most of America's huge financial families have done just that: Businesses in McDowell's building alone manage $89 billion worth of trusts, all told—for owners of TGI Friday's and Hyatt hotels, executives from Monster Beverage Co., and the Wrigley family, among others.

How'd this happen? You see, under the "ancient...Anglo-American" rules of primogeniture, dating back to an English court ruling in 1681, a wealthy noble could shelter some dough in a trust for his heirs, but only for the lifespan of his heirs, plus 21 years. Screw that socialist overregulation, said America's frontier jurists!

South Dakota repealed that rule in 1983, and unlike Idaho and Wisconsin — the other two states without the provision — it had no income tax. So, McDowell wrote, a trust set up here could shield a big fortune from taxes for centuries, escaping tax bills as it hands out cash to great-great-great-grandchildren and beyond.

The advantage of dynasty trusts is that they shield a family's wealth forever.

But the home of Mount Rushmore has plenty more to recommend itself to the monied—or, to their money, anyway:

The dynasty trust isn't South Dakota's only lure. Another attraction, for customers in places like New York and Massachusetts, is the chance to shelter their investments from income taxes in their home states…

Still others are drawn to South Dakota's iron-clad secrecy, and protections of trust assets from creditors and ex-wives.

What's a scheme like this do for society? As little as possible. It shelters billionaires' castles and investments from federal taxes in ways John Q. Public can't shelter his meager take-home paycheck. Even South Dakota doesn't see much tax revenue from all this financial activity. And the entire multi-billion-dollar system creates fewer jobs for South Dakotans than a single Walmart.

Don't worry, though: Walmart's founding family has a trust-based tax-avoidance scheme of its own. America: Showing British nobles how to really hang onto it since 1983!

[Photo credit: Holly Kuchera/Shutterstock]

But how does the USA, USSR, Communist Vietnam & Nazi Germany all feels about subject-verb agreement?

Looks like we published The Year in Mass Shootings too early: Last night, a Louisiana man went on a shooting rampage, killing his current wife, his ex-mother-in-law, his former boss, and injuring three others before committing suicide.

At about 6:40 p.m., Ben Freeman, 38, drove to the home of Louis Gouaux, his former father-in-law and a local Lafourche Parish councilman, and opened fired, killing Gouaux's wife, Pixie, and wounding Gouaux and his daughter, Andrea. Freeman's ex-wife Jeanne Gouaux was not home at the time.

Next, Freeman shot and killed Milton Bourgeois, Freeman's former boss at St. Anne General Hospital, at Bourgeois's home. Bourgeois's wife was also shot but is expected to survive.

Three other local hospitals where Freeman worked were placed on lockdown until police found Freeman alongside a highway, dead from a self-inflicted shotgun wound. Police later discovered Freeman's current wife, Denise Taylor Freeman, dead in the couple's home.

"Clearly, there has been a very difficult and complicated divorce/custody issue going on," Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said of the shooting, adding that Freeman had pleaded guilty to harassment charges and was allowed only supervised visits with his four children with Gouaux.

When the clock strikes its last midnight in 2013—or somewhere around there, anyway—dozens of movies will disappear from Netflix streaming. Fortunately, you've still got some time to churn through the ones you'll miss the most. Here's a list of the very best of the movies that'll be gone in 2014.

While Netflix has made it much harder to find out when movies expire, some Reddit sleuths have picked out an extensive crop of chopping-block titles. You can see the date the license is up yourself by adding them to your queue. Remember that just because they're going now doesn't mean they're never coming back. But with nearly a week of daylight between now and when they're gone, why take that chance?

• Brick
• Being John Malkovich
  
• Braveheart
  
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
  
• Do the Right Thing
  
• Capote
  
• Jarhead
  
• Half Baked
  
• The Bad News Bears (1976)
• Roman Holiday
  
• Requiem For a Dream
  
• Platoon
  
• Mystery Men
  
• Ronin
  
• Top Gun
  
• Serpico
  
• True Grit (1969)
  
• WarGames
  
• The Odd Couple
  
• The Great Train Robbery
  

You can head here for a fuller reckoning of what's on the way out; it's entirely possible you care more about losing Troll 2 than Top Gun. In the meantime, start hoping that these are about to be replaced by a fresh crop of content in 2014—and start your streaming marathon now.