The actual and true updates on this morning's school shooting are all bad enough. So bad I feel like I've spent the past hour or so just dazedly looking at updates on my computer screen. But here's something to think about media colleagues: Don't make this shit any worse than it needs to be.

Make sure, when you out someone as a mass murderer who committed suicide, it's the right Facebook profile you're hastily passing around. Because here's what one Ryan Lanza, allegedly dead inside Sandy Hook Elementary, thinks about all your reporting.

First of all... EVERYBODY'S OKAY. Secondly, that information will not make you feel even the slightest bit better as you watch this footage of a mother duck and her ducklings crossing a very busy highway—FILLED WITH CARS THAT NEED TO SLOW THE FUCK DOWN. Clear your throat first, because your heart will be leaping into it.

Huffington Post says:

Genetic "switches" determine much about our bodies, including hair color, blood type, and susceptibility to certain diseases. Now, researchers believe they have found a gene that regulates something far more eerie: the time of day a person is likely to die.

In an study published in the November 2012 issue of the Annals of Neurology scientists studying the body's biological clock (a.k.a. the circadian rhythm) report the discovery of gene variant that not only determines the likelihood of your being a morning person, but also predicts, with unsettling accuracy, your likely time of death.

The gene typically allows for three possible combinations of nucleotides (the four molecular building blocks of DNA): adenine-adenine (A-A), adenine-guanine (A-G), and guanine-guanine (G-G), according to a written statement released by Harvard Medical School...investigators realized as some of the 1,200 older subjects in the project died that these nucleotide sequences were accurate predictors of their time of death, within a range of only a few hours. Patients with the A-A and A-G genotypes typically died just before 11 a.m., while subjects with the G-G combination tended to die near 6 p.m.

This calls for a legally binding Blogtown poll!

Like many of us, I spent Thanksgiving with some of the cancer survivors in my family—which is why Cienna Madrid's excellent piece in The Stranger about "Munchausen Syndrome by internet," a disorder characterized by faking illnesses on the intenet, was particularly difficult to read this morning.

But while it's disturbing and angering to read about young women who faked cancer in order to infiltrate online support groups, it's also an incredibly interesting piece about how Munchausen Syndrome—which since 1951 has described people who fake illnesses to attract attention and sympathy—has evolved for the internet age. The internet mutes our "natural bullshit detectors," Madrid writes, since we "can't rely on facial expressions and other physical cues for sensing lies, and studies suggest that without those cues, we're prone to generously fill in the blanks." Which is how manipulative 19-year-old girls are able to trick otherwise intelligent adults into believing that they're suffering from terminal diseases.
Read the whole thing here.

I live in the Buckman neighborhood, and each year we get fewer trick or treaters on Halloween. Five years ago, traffic was steady—this year, I think the doorbell rang maybe six times total.

Parents, what's the deal? Because I'm kind of mad at all of your kids. We carve pumpkins and buy all this candy and sit at home dutifully watching scary movies and waiting for the damn doorbell to ring—and then no one shows! If I wanted to be disappointed by children, I WOULD HAVE THEM. Are all the neighborhood kids lured away by the posh nearby Laurelhurst neighborhood, where I can only assume the "good candy" is handed out? (We give out good candy.) Are the homeless tent compounds in inner Southeast really THAT offputting? Is everyone scared of my neighbors' mustache van? The dynamics of this are a complete mystery to me. All I know is, we have a fuck-load of candy at my house that now I have to eat, and all you moms and dads cutely posting on Facebook about stealing a "parent tax" from your kids' candy stash (DENIS C. THERIAULT) are welcome to come on over and help yourselves.

(Former Mercury news editor Amy Ruiz was similarly bummed about the lack of trick-or-treaters in her neighborhood, so she helped rally the neighbors in what was apparently a very successful drive to reinvigorate trick-or-treating in Woodlawn. I'm not going to do that. Nice idea, though!)

Creepy video of East 8th Street and Avenue C in Manhattan—which is underwater. Oh, and the blackout that follows. (In the future apocalypse, please tell me the Twitter machine is still working!!)

Way back in 1994, the Power Rangers thought they were pretty hot poop. They defeated Rita Repulsa. Lord Zedd, Scorpina and Master Vile—but it took a very special villain on a very special Power Rangers Halloween episode to humble these spandex-wearing teenage pricks. Introducing... the PUMPKIN RAPPER!!

HE'S A PUMPKIN!! THAT... THAT RAPS!! FEEEEAARR HIMMMMMM!!! (Or you know, whatever.)