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Public transit systems were operating close to normal Monday morning, but the streets could be perilous, especially in Connecticut and on Long Island.

In afternoon trading, the S.&P. 500, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq all dipped slightly.

Maria Bamford’s new standup show "The Special Special Special" takes an uncomfortably funny approach to a tough topic.

The comedian Maria Bamford’s new standup performance lives up to its name: The Special Special Special. It is an hour-long set, released exclusively online for less than $5, and she performs the material in her modest Los Angeles apartment in front of an audience of two, her mom and dad. The set is funny, but as many critics have noted, it’s not the sort of thing you laugh out loud at. It’s deeper and darker than your average chucklefest.

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The Alaskan Brewery company is retrofitting its factory to run on leftover malt and barley, so that it’s generating power from its own waste.

The Alaskan Brewing Company just upped the ante for craft breweries who pride themselves on sustainability. It will now power its Juneau facilities with a resource that’s both free and abundant if you’re a brewery: old grain. Malt and barley leftover from the brewing process will now get a second life as fuel for the brewery’s new steam boiler, making the company the world’s first "beer-powered" craft brewery.

“We have the unique honor of brewing craft beer in this stunning and remote place,” co-founder Geoff Larson, explains in a statement. “But in order to grow as a small business here in Alaska and continue having a positive effect on our community, we have to take special efforts to look beyond the traditional to more innovative ways of brewing. Reducing our energy use makes good business sense, and good sense for this beautiful place where we live and play.”

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The Alaskan Brewery company is retrofitting its factory to run on leftover malt and barley, so that it’s generating power from its own waste.

The Alaskan Brewing Company just upped the ante for craft breweries who pride themselves on sustainability. It will now power its Juneau facilities with a resource that’s both free and abundant if you’re a brewery: old grain. Malt and barley leftover from the brewing process will now get a second life as fuel for the brewery’s new steam boiler, making the company the world’s first "beer-powered" craft brewery.

“We have the unique honor of brewing craft beer in this stunning and remote place,” co-founder Geoff Larson, explains in a statement. “But in order to grow as a small business here in Alaska and continue having a positive effect on our community, we have to take special efforts to look beyond the traditional to more innovative ways of brewing. Reducing our energy use makes good business sense, and good sense for this beautiful place where we live and play.”

Reducing our energy use makes good business sense. Editor’s Note

Correction: The headline of this post earlier indicated that the brewery was powered entirely by beer waste. Only 70% of the power will come from beer waste.

Most breweries send their spent grain to farms as cattle feed, but there aren’t that many of those in frosty Alaska (only 680 in the entire enormous state, according to the AP). For years, the ABC would ship its spent grain to the continental U.S., but that wasn’t very economically viable and used a lot of energy to dry the grain, moist from the brewing process.

The $1.8 million custom-built boiler will be up and running in a couple weeks and will save the company an estimated $450,000 a year in energy cost, while providing 70% of its power. Cheers to that.

Pope Benedict XVI made a surprise announcement Monday morning that he will resign at the end of February. For more on his legacy and what the succession of a new pope may bring, Renee Montagne talks with Father Thomas Reese, senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center.

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Some prominent institutional bond investors are shifting their focus from traditional benchmark indices, which weight countries’ debt issues by market capitalization, toward GDP-weighted indices. But there is a risk that some investors could lose sight of the purposes of a benchmark index.

Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world Monday morning by announcing that he will step down on Feb. 28, saying he could no longer serve "due to an advanced age." He is the first pontiff to resign since 1415.

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An amazing data visualization digs through the words of your Facebook updates to create a psychological profile, complete with fortune telling.

What you post on Facebook says a lot about you. Are you a sourpuss who constantly vents about your boss? Or are you a narcissist obsessed with the selfie? But other than other people’s judgement, there’s really no way to measure yourself, to quantify the image you project.

Well, there wasn’t. Astroverb is a new project by Sosolimited, commissioned by the Creators Project, that parses your Facebook status updates, passes the words through a psychological filter, then creates a psychological profile of the results.

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The runup to President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday was overshadowed Monday by news out of Rome: the announcement that Pope Benedict XVI is resigning. What does this mean for the Catholic Church in America?

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Defense giant Raytheon's new RIOT software data mines information from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and image EXIF metadata, and applies predictive analytics to determine users physical locations.

Paranoiacs everywhere who claim social media networks make surveillance easy have just won a point. The Guardian's Ryan Gallagher discovered on Sunday that defense giant Raytheon developed tracking software that triangulates a person's habits from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and image metadata and then applies predictive analytics to determine where they'll be at a given time. Raytheon says the software, called RIOT (Rapid Information Overlay Technology) is a proof-of-concept product not being sold to any clients. In a video demonstration, Raytheon claimed that their software combined users' webs of associations and relationships from Twitter, data from Facebook, and GPS information from Foursquare.

"Riot is a big data analytics system design we are working on with industry, national labs and commercial partners to help turn massive amounts of data into useable information to help meet our nation's rapidly changing security needs," Raytheon's Jared Adams told The Guardian by email. Omnipresent surveillance by private and public entities is one of the biggest consequences of the digital age; credit card companies reputedly data mine Facebook and Twitter contact lists to assess customers' credit risks, the FBI is discreetly data mining social media to collect publicly available info on U.S. citizens, police departments use publicly available info and predictive analytics to figure out where meth labs will open, the private sector can predict consumer behavior via online activity, and new startups are monetizing every movement of daily life. The future, apparently, is both impressive and creepy. As for Raytheon, Fast Company recently featured their computer-generated training worlds for law enforcement.

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US machinery group’s market share has been bleeding as Chinese companies – many deploying suspiciously similar technology – have grabbed sales

The move comes after accusations from Hewlett-Packard that Autonomy inflated its sales and carried out improper accounting practices before its acquisition by H.P.

Pope Benedict took office in 2005, as the Catholic Church was reeling from a sex abuse scandal. Has he been effective in restoring the Church's brand around the world?

The Swedish company Hakon Invest has agreed to buy the remaining stake in the Nordic retailer ICA that it does not already own for $3.1 billion.

Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday that he will resign on Feb. 28. For more on what his resignation means for the future of the Vatican leadership, Steve Inskeep talks with Mathew Schmalz, a professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

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As the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict has been the leader of a troubled brand, as the church was hit hard by the clergy-sex-abuse scandals.

During the Grammys, Bud Light Platinum debuted an ad featuring the brand’s new creative director, Justin Timberlake.

When Justin Timberlake was appointed as Bud Light Platinum’s Creative Director last week, many wondered what the vaguely titled position might entail. Anybody watching the Grammy Awards on February 10th got their first taste. During commercial breaks from the broadcast, viewers were treated to a minute-long black-and-white ad for the new-ish brew, featuring Timberlake’s recently debuted comeback single, "Suit and Tie," and the dapper gent himself. While a David Fincher-directed video for "Suit and Tie" is purportedly on the way, this will have to suffice for now.

Below, watch a tie-in ad with Target for the well-diversified performer’s upcoming album that also aired during the Grammys, as well as a new song Timberlake premiered on the same night.

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