The headline explains all three items, as you'll see.

You might have heard about the Zombie Nativity. Not in Wadena, but . . . oh, I don't know, somewhere. It made the news. Because of Zombies. The Atlantic examines the matter:

The clickbaity title of the piece? "Your Christmas Nativity Scene is a Lie." You have to feel bad for the author, who's a senior columnist for Religious News Service. It's a serious look at nativity iconography, and the cultural factors that influenced its details. The headline conflates "untruth" with "lie," as if there was malicious intent involved in adding cattle to the scene.

ROTF My daughter used to be unnerved when I ended a text with a sentence, because it sounded stern and final. It sounded like I was withholding some information, and we would talk about this when she got home. Eventually she realized I was just using proper punctuation, and she got used to it. But I still feel the same way when my wife uses a period. The jury is out:

Less sincere? That I don't get. The article in the Daily Dot notes ways you can make your texts seem friendlier and more genuine with certain words, but really, an emoticon helps. A smiling face is a little dab of aloe if you're worried the plain words burned a bit. Do not use lots of exclamation points, though; eventually they'll lose their impact and you'll have to deploy more, just as it is no longer enough to say you're ROTFL. You have to be ROTLFLMAO and add a weepy-laughing emoticon.

It's an odd thing to say, really; no one ever Rolled on The Floor Laughing. No one. But BYHATWCBH, or Banging My Head Against the Wall Convulsed by Hilarity never caught on.

CURSES The Wall Street Journal on the decline of the Red Baron:

We're more aware of him today, thanks to pizza. The article notes that Red Baron pizza debuted in 1976. There is no reason for that. It's like naming a schnitzel after a British submariner.

The "Peanuts" movie may revive interest in the Red Baron, but I doubt it. The WWI dogfight sequence in the "Great Pumpkin" Peanuts special is one of those things that mystifies modern children. They've no context for it. Makes no sense. Not funny. When the show first aired, the end of WWI was 48 years in the past. Not an eternity.

It's been 49 years since "Great Pumpkin" debuted.