An ascot-wearing skeleton sits cross-legged in the desert, holding an umbrella, as cacti fall from the sky like men in an Magritte painting. Pancho Villa sings backward Bob Dylan lyrics as he faces the firing squad. A motorcycle speeds across a tightrope beneath a floating Mount Rushmore. This is the universe of Dope Rider, history's most beautiful comic about a deeply stoned undead cowboy.

The above video, taken from a police cruiser dash cam, shows a white SUV speeding along an Arizona highway as its occupants toss no less than 17 bricks of weed from the windows. After cops caught and arrested the two men inside, they went back to recover the pot, but a few bricks were conspicuously missing. Cha-ching!

A new study published in a subsidiary of the Nature journal, Scientific Reports, found that marijuana is safer for users than a range of other substances, moreso than researchers previously believed. The study suggests that "risk management" should be redirected to legal alcohol and tobacco rather than mostly illegal marijuana.

Tens of thousands of years ago, our early ancestors, awed by the beauty and power of nature, the possibilities of culture flickering dimly in their newly human brains, began painting rudimentary pictures of animals on walls. Across the ancient Mediterranean, sculptors paid powerful tribute to the human form; in Renaissance Europe, painters created works of art that surpassed even the beauty of nature; come the 20th century, artists pushed the boundaries of representation and grappled with existential threats to humanity. And now, in an age of wondrous science and technology, virtuosos drawing upon tens of thousands of years of culture and history and have reached the apex of art: pins featuring pictures of Mrs. Doubtfire and Rafiki from The Lion King getting stoned as hell on unspeakably potent weed.

Even in weed-legal utopias like Washington and Oregon, the finances of the pot business are dicey. Because the drug remains federally outlawed, banks won't touch weed money, leaving business-owners without a safe place to keep cash. Others in this situation might invest their profit in art, or vintage cars, or real estate, but these are potheads we're talking about, so they're spending it on ridiculously expensive bongs shaped like Beaker and Big Bird.

High Maintenance isn't just the best televised portrait of Brooklyn's ever-expanding gentrified northwest corner; it's among the smartest stories ever told about weed and the weirdos who smoke it in any genre or medium. Today, the self-produced web series returns with three new episodes available on Vimeo. Read a primer on the charms of High Maintenance and a watch few of its finest moments below.

The Foundation for a Drug-Free World, a program founded in 2006 by the Church of Scientology, gave lectures on drug abuse to students at 30 New York City public schools last year, DNAinfo reports today. That news alone should be alarming enough to anyone who's familiar with the church—but wait until you hear the batshit, made-up "street names" for drugs that the Scientologists are teaching your children.

Imagine that the main drag in your town had a furniture store that was full of love seats, side tables, and faux floral displays, but never, ever opened its doors. How many failed shopping trips would it take before you realized something was up, and how much weed would you guess it was hiding in back?

Last year, Gawker identified 17 big media companies that still drug-test their employees. Today we’re broadening our curiosity about corporate testing policies to other industries, too. So: Does your current employer or company drug-test employees? Is your employer larger than 50 people?* If so, please fill out the short and anonymous survey below.

Hey dudes, I have a question for you, but before I ask I just want to make sure you know that this is not because of anything I've observed firsthand, but because of something I heard. I think you're straight until you say otherwise, and feel very justified in this based on your baseball cap, default manspreading, chill vibe, and job as a construction worker, police officer, cowboy, soldier, leatherman, or Native American. In fact, I hope Tom Cruise is as straight as they come. I never thought he wasn't!

Nebraska and Oklahoma—Colorado's neighbors to the northeast and southeast, respectively—are not happy about the pot-smoking going on in the Centennial State. They're such buzzkills, in fact, that they're suing Colorado in the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to reverse legalization entirely.

If American Indian tribes decide they want to grow and smoke and sell weed on their land, the U.S. Department of Justice said yesterday, then so be it.

The people of Washington D.C., alongside their counterparts and Oregon and Alaska, voted overwhelmingly to legalize cannabis for recreational use last month. But unlike in those other states, D.C.'s decision came with a major potential roadblock: the United States Congress.

Yesterday, a no-good student of Broadneck High School in Arnold, Maryland, pulled an absolutely-not-funny-under-any-circumstances prank on one of his teachers.

Off the coast of newly weed-friendly Oregon this weekend, a Thanksgiving miracle burned brightly, 420 feet under the ocean.

Dorothea, the quietest, most charming weed-smoking grandma in the video that blew up the internet this week, apparently didn't have as much fun as her compatriots did getting stoned for the first time.

In Washington, anyone over the age of 21 can smoke weed to his or her heart's content without fear of arrest or persecution. Even your grandma. What a magical thing!

If there was one thing Bob Marley loved, it was sweet reggae music. If there was another, it might be his family, or his hometown of Kingston, about which he sang poignantly throughout his career, or it might be the ganja. And if there was a third thing, that third thing must have been branding opportunities. Just look at all the Bob Marley stuff you can buy!

Mike Beebe, the Democratic governor of Arkansas, announced this week he will grant 25 executive pardons for drug offenders in the state, including—how sweet is this—Kyle Beebe, his 34-year-old son, who was hit with felony weed charges in 2003. Awwwww, thanks dad!

Two serial portraits of the life and culture of post-gentrification Brooklyn premiered in 2012: Girls, a half-hour HBO show; and High Maintenance, an erratically updated, self-produced web series. Girls got the attention. High Maintenance got it right.