The pandemic killed so many dialysis patients that their total number shrunk for the first time in nearly half a century. Few people took notice.

Kung fu fights on roller skates! An ex-C.I.A. Plutonium Killer who can peel off his own face! A battalion of kid ninjas! The promise of Dolemite himself, Rudy Ray Moore, as an insult-spewing police detective! In 1984, audiences had never seen anything like the low-budget epic “New York Ninja,” in which the Taiwanese kung fu performer John Liu directs himself as a high-kicking sound man who avenges his wife’s death. And despite lurid “Coming Soon” ads in the trade magazines (“WHEN YOU BACK A TIGER INTO A CORNER HE COMES OUT FIGHTING!”), audiences never got to see it in 1985. Or 1986. Or the ensuing three decades. “It was one of those things that was on my résumé for years, but I never thought it would see the light of day,” the special effects artist Carl Morano said of “New York Ninja,” which vanished after its distribution company, 21st Century, went bankrupt and sold off its assets. All that remained was a set of film reels with six to eight hours of footage. No audio. No credits or call sheets. No storyboards. Not even a script to explain who exactly the New York Ninja was fighting and why, let alone how the roller skates came into play. Those reels eventually ended up in the vaults of the film distribution company Vinegar Syndrome, known for such disreputable titles as “Christmas Evil” and “Don’t Answer the Phone!” It took a two-year resuscitation effort for Vinegar Syndrome to bring “New York Ninja” to life. The result came out on Blu-ray earlier this month after a few raucously received appearances at genre film festivals, and a theatrical release is slated for early 2022.

The agency said the change was motivated by evidence showing that COVID transmission “occurs early in the course of illness.”

Do I hate my husband? Oh for sure, yes, definitely.

President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser said requiring people to get the shot in order to fly could help push more people to get vaccinated.

A police report from the Christmas Eve incident alleges Jones’ wife struck him “over 20 times,” including with a soap bottle, and tried to hit him with a five-pound stone ball.

Fifteen people at the jail died in 2021. These are their lives — and how they came to an end.

U.S. health officials on Monday cut isolation restrictions for Americans who catch the coronavirus from 10 to five days, and similarly shortened the time that close contacts need to quarantine. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the coronavirus are most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop. The decision also was driven by a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, propelled by the omicron variant. Early research suggests omicron may cause milder illnesses than earlier versions of the coronavirus. But the sheer number of people becoming infected — and therefore having to isolate or quarantine — threatens to crush the ability of hospitals, airlines and other businesses to stay open, experts say. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the country is about to see a lot of omicron cases.

Andrea Churna was killed by Redmond police in 2020 after calling to report someone was in her apartment; the investigation into the killing was hampered by the refusal of involved officers to cooperate and interference from their union attorney.

Most progressive Democrat since FDR

Joan Didion‘s didn't play golf, but her prose was like Tiger Woods and Ben Hogan at their best: precise and efficient.

A six-year-old boy was left in ‘floods of tears’ at his first ever rugby match after being vomited on by a drunk fan during Wales’ dramatic win over Australia on Saturday.

Nobody told Yaneli Ortiz’s family that the factory they lived near emitted ethylene oxide. Not when the EPA found it causes cancer. Not when she was diagnosed with leukemia. And not when Texas moved to allow polluters to emit more of the chemical.

Oh, yes I did! An attempt to explain the bizarre tradition of the British Christmas pantomime.

Good lord, did we collectively survive another year, or have we transitioned on to another metaphysical plane that would appear to harbor the same ridiculous proclivities and neurosis (not capital "N" Neurosis...that would be awesome) as the previous? Is time a flat circle, a social construct we have all bought into and based our arithmetic systems upon, or simply a yawning void of infinite darkness upon which we happened to share this cosmic blip? Does it matter? How many records SHOULD be included on a "Best Of" list?

A federal lawsuit filed by a prominent civil rights attorney alleges that multiple police officers in Fairfax County protected a sex trafficking ring in northern Virginia in exchange for being allowed to rape the trafficked women

"I think the money, this is keeping a lot of us in the industry, which is also super concerning cause that's not sustainable," one travel nurse said.

"We did not have capacity to manufacture over-the-counter tests at that scale," a Biden official told Vanity Fair, citing FDA approval processes.

Not much to say about 2021 that wasn't said in 2020, and at this rate, will be said again in 2022. I am thankful that in the face of diminishing returns there are still those willing to put up instead of shutting up. I can only hope that if you find something on this list that gives you some of that magic feeling, that you will do the right thing and purchase the record. Buy a shirt. Find out when they are coming to your town and go see them (unless they are playing after 7pm...which is madness, and no one should be expected to stay up that late). The magic disappears when there is nobody left to perform the spells.

Many appear to be baffled by a list of words and tags banned on Tumblr for iOS users in 2021. The alleged list is making rounds on Twitter.