Maybe 24-hour news channels are a bad idea. Whenever there is a big, breaking news story, they virtually race to the scene to provide a seemingly starved public with information that we usually don't need at that moment, and sometimes don't need at all. Live shots from the scene are interspersed with experts who explain that they don't have enough information to make an assessment at that moment, and then go on to provide three to four minutes of assessments; because the time needs to be filled until the next commercial break. And hey, I'm as implicated as anyone as an active recipient of this information. When news breaks, I flip on the TV and breathlessly refresh web pages and scan Twitter as if my knowledge of the details of a news event somehow elevates my role to something greater than random guy on a couch nowhere near incident. This race to provide the freshest information can lead to some highly questionable moments, like the one that played out on Friday morning: "On live national television, reporters sifted through the remains of the lives of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. They picked over children's toys. They held up photos, speculating about whether the woman depicted in one might be Malik. They displayed Social Security cards and driver's licenses with readily identifiable information--and not just for the deceased suspects." From The Atlantic: What the Hell Just Happened on MSNBC and CNN?

+ I wonder who will be first to say they got an exclusive.

The FBI is now investigating the San Bernardino shooting as an act of terrorism following the discovery that Tashfeen Malik "pledged allegiance to an Islamic State leader in a Facebook posting."

The role of the celebrity magazine employee has gone from getting stories and photos, to embedding the ones shared by celebrities themselves. And this is a theme that's emerging across different news categories. From John Herrman in The Awl: Access Denied.

+ "Future populations are going to look at landfills like they are goldmines, full of resources, and wonder what we were all thinking." The Atlantic's Debra Winter on the violent afterlife of a plastic bottle.

+ In more of a listening mood? There's a new episode of my podcast, What Hurts. Check it out on iTunes, our website, or on Overcast.

"If you take a look at the report, you can see that 29 percent of wireless-only adults are binge-drinkers whereas only 18 percent of adults living in landline households drink heavily." NPR on the risky behavior associated with living without a landline. (I still have a landline, but I seriously have no idea what the number is.)

"We have been running an experiment of a kind that no sane ethicist would allow: what happens when, in a country large enough to contain every imaginable kind of crazy, from the inward-turning, maniac sort to the outward-turning, politicized kind, you make sure that almost anyone can readily buy any kind of gun?" Adam Gopnik on our shared blame for the shooting in San Bernardino.

+ "To gun enthusiasts, mass shootings are not arguments against guns but for them. The rise in mass shootings is only convincing both sides that they're right, causing them to dig in further." From Vox: Why mass shootings don't convince gun owners to support gun control.

+ A gun industry trend: Mass shootings are good for business.

+ Chesterfield County Sheriff Jay Brooks on a recent discovery of a man's stash of more than 5,000 weapons: "This has completely changed our definition of an ass-load of guns."

+ "Get a gun. The gun was power. Get a gun. The gun was acceptance. Get a gun. The gun was his only chance." It turns out I'm here because of a gun: The Power of the Gun.

"What he did do was report the hell out of a story about reporting. Once he got inside the heads of the people on the Spotlight team and at the Globe, he had all the material he needed, and he understood it implicitly." Jada Yuan talks to David Simon about print journalism and the movie Spotlight. On a day when the media isn't looking that great, it's important to remember how remarkably important they are. (I saw Spotlight last night. Excellent.)

"I think she quite enjoyed the experiment." That's not the way most people feel about pain. But in this case, the woman was feeling it for the first time in her life. And her experience could be a step towards making the the rest of us feel it a little less acutely.

"The paper notes that marijuana plantations soak up at least 1% of the country's electricity." From Quartz: Marijuana growers in the US are using up $6 billion a year in electricity. If we have many more news weeks like this, it could be up to 2% in no time.

"If you want to eat chicken in the U.S., salmonella is a risk you have to live with. It's one that's getting more prominent, too." The fine folks over at Reveal with 10 things to know before you eat your next chicken dinner.

In Australia, a guy got backstage at a concert by altering a band's Wikipedia page and then convincing a security guard that we was related to a member of the band.

+ Dive-Bombing Squirrels Have Injured 8 People in the Bay Area. And so it begins...

+ Recently spotted in Portland: Hipster Santa.

+ It's been a long week. If you need a little break, I recommend taking 27 seconds to join GQ as they present: Pro wrestler defeats opponent with the power of his amazing penis.