The new Pope, Francis: great guy. He loves the poor. He's cool with atheists. He's even pretty chill about gay marriage and abortions. Yesterday's photos of him embracing a severely disfigured man were genuinely touching. Still, the best thing that this nice Pope could do would be to dismantle the Catholic Church.

No aspect of the U.S. government shutdown has garnered more public attention or drawn more outrage than the closing of national monuments. State governments and private donors have kicked in funds to keep monuments open. Here is a more nuanced perspective: fuck the fucking national monuments.

The "Pretty Girls, Ugly Faces" photo fad has been around for a minute.

Tomorrow is the big day when Apple announces its new "iPad 3." Or will it be called the "iPad HD?" Who gives a shit, really? Same gadget either way. Get a hobby.

So, Steve Jobs is dead. A tech genius has passed on. Sad. Certainly a devastating loss to Steve Jobs' close friends and family members, as well as to Apple executives and shareholders. The rest of you? Calm down.

A fence on Bergmannstrasse in Berlin looks innocuous head-on, but more than a little creepy from the right perspective. The other direction works as well. Click through to see the pictures individually. [Spreeblick; hat tip to Robyn]

The BP oil spill is spread across an estimated 2,500 square miles, and is dumping at least 200,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico every day. What would that look like in New York?

The Way We Live Now: Self-pityingly. College freshmen are the recession's littlest victims. China is a bully. Our house is cold. And trying to make it in New York is worse than the Holocaust.

Washington DC is worried that its losing sports teams will make the city the butt of jokes. Hey, don't forget about your poor schools, violent crime, young racist tools, and fat Republicans everywhere, either. It's a whole package. [WP]

At minus-400 degrees, lunar craters full of billion-year-old ice are the coldest place in our entire solar system—colder even than Pluto, or the employee-relations portion of Martha Stewart's soul. [NYT]

Crapola, wouldn't you know it, today on Wall Street the stock market is nearing its lowest level in the past decade. But look on the bright side:

The newspapers, full of speculation on the precise timing of Hillary Clinton's exit, missed the big story of the week. Our galaxy-in which the Clintons and all other human beings are such insignificant motes-has a gigantic bar at its center from which the arms spin off like sparks from a Catherine Wheel. And, rather…

This ad for Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo [via Adrants] is purportedly a riff on "The Head & Shoulders point of view." But it's plain as day for anyone to see that it's actually an excuse for the pervert ad agency to get a look at the Mona Lisa's boobs. Is nothing sacred? Click through for a close-up shot. We're…