1. Comment and win art by JAW Cooper.



2. Apparently, to combat theft of donated food:

aid agencies at least sometimes turn to distributing food that is, well, pretty disgusting. Not rotten, not bad for you--in fact, the stuff they distribute in North Korea is vitamin fortified and very nutritious. But it doesn't taste good; it's essentially gruel on steroids. No one would voluntarily eat it if they had any alternatives. So there's not much resale value.

3. Adam Hughes is auctioning off an art commission at eBay. The bid amount is already pretty breathtaking.

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1. This guy boasts that he hacked the communal Starbucks gift card to siphon off money. He's just begging to be hacked, right? Via.



2. Politicians:

The cash-strapped city of Carson has spent $1,200 for new signs so that the names of City Council members could be listed by seniority rather than in alphabetical order, the city confirmed Thursday.



The signs are placed on mostly vacant, city-owned lots.

3. Russian politicians:

Putin 'discovers Greek urns' on scuba dive.

*Buy propaganda posters at eBay.

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1. Great writing about living in China at the time of the Beijing Olympics. Sample paragraph:

Our son had asthma. There was no use pretending it was the squeaky-clean, sensitive, upper-middle-class kind of asthma. He had the asthma that ghetto children come down with, because they live in the dirt. He was wheezing because at last, today, on the morning of the Olympics, the filth of the city where he was born had gotten into his tender lungs. He was sick because we had let him live in Beijing.

2. How to market to old people. For example:

Marketing to the elderly is tricky. The direct approach—say, calling your product “the soap for the over-70s”—does not work. And traditional advertising fails. “You can’t use TV adverts: they forget them,” groans the 30-something executive. “We show it again and again and again—and they still can’t recall it,” he sighs. Word-of-mouth is the only way.

3. "The governor of a prison near Moscow has lost his job after photographs emerged of his inmates holding a toga party complete with caviar and a McDonald's fast food delivery."



*Buy Olympics posters at eBay.

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1. Here's a riddle:

“Why would a tiny woman with no criminal record, who worked 10 years on Wall Street, randomly hold up people at gunpoint at night dressed as a policewoman?”

Absolutely bizarre answer.

2. There's a new Humble Indie Bundle.

3. A claim that China is disassembling and burying the crashed bullet trains to hide evidence. Via.

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1. Grotesque corruption at Scotland Yard:

Members of Parliament said in interviews that they were troubled by a “revolving door” between the police and News International, which included a former top editor at The News of the World at the time of the hacking who went on to work as a media strategist for Scotland Yard.

On Friday, The New York Times learned that the former editor, Neil Wallis, was reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case.

2. The Michelin Guide (which I believe was originally created to encourage people to drive their cars around France) is just another old media property that's losing money and struggling to remain relevant in the internet age. Via.

3. "The small but energy-rich Gulf state of Qatar is the world’s biggest buyer in the art market—by value, at any rate—and is behind most of the major modern and contemporary art deals over the past six years."

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1. Really interesting article about how hit songs are manufactured and how much it costs to do so (the amount spent on promoting the song (bribery) is by far the largest amount). Via.

2. Tron Legacy 8 bit Extended Version.

3. Tattoo with a QR code that becomes animated when viewed through a smartphone. It'll be more impressive when the tattoo is invisible unless viewed through a smartphone.

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1. Some useful commentary about the current federal budget negotiations. (I tend to discount any commentary that presumes that Obama and his aides are stupid.)

2. It's going to be so hot in Qatar during the World Cup that they might play three 30 minute periods instead of two 45 minute halves. That's right, the games were awarded to a country where playing the game by the established rules will likely be impossible.

3. There's no self service gas stations in New Jersey? All gas has to be pumped by an attendant? In Los Angeles you almost never see full service advertised.

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1. Devastating review of Puzzle Agent 2:

But sadly there’s not a glimmer of interest or wit in the telling, so you’re in fact drumming your fingers as people slowly jabber about nothing, waiting until it ends. I chose to play good puzzle games on my iPhone during these times.

2. Grotesque corruption in medicine.

3. The sale items for July at Things from Another World have been posted.

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1. You didn't really buy that nonsense about how great the yakuza was for keeping order in Japan after the tsunami right? The nuclear power plants failed probably in no small part because they were dominated by the yakuza.

2. The latest incredibly raw personal story from Penelope Trunk - - the heart of the post is a really good message - - if you want a happy relationship, you have to be brave enough to tell you partner what's really bothering you.

3. The BBTS has new Marvel Universe preorders - -sets feature Tony Stark, Iceman, Absorbing Man, Astonishing Wolverine, Magneto, Ultron, Darkhawk, Sub-Mariner, X-23, Steve Rogers, and the Guardians of the Galaxy I posted earlier today.

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1. A claim that Adobe is paying for text links. Via.

2. "A third Los Angeles building inspector has been fired in a corruption probe."

3. The Bad Deal is devoted to pointing out dumb deals at Groupon and other daily deal sites. Via.

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1. Scan of a Conan story by Bruce Timm (NSFW).

2. Pink jellyfish. Via.

3. Watch it tree, you're being monitored.

4. The five richest pastors in Africa. Via.

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1. A recipe for hardtack. (If you don't know what that is, you really should run out and buy a couple Patrick O'Brian novels.)

2. (New, specific) Assertions that FIFA demands massive bribes from potential host countries.

3. "Frank McCourt's motives and methods for potentially putting the Dodgers into bankruptcy."

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