I just graded 99 papers about a baseball!  Now on to mortgages.

Free to good home if you take ‘em all: Jack of Fables 1-16, Anita Blake 1, The Stand: The Night Has Come/Hardcases/No Man’s Land.

Distressing analysis of the US's military situation in Afghanistan.

Jay Smooth: “You've never paid dues, you barely pay taxes.”

( modern slave labor, corporate espionage, Bayes' theorem )

Phoebe Tonkin in a Miles Fisher video: okay!

( Fair use, temporary lawyers, Hedy Lamarr the inventor, the Civil War of 1812, Henry Jenkins essays, population control, Jon Krakauer on a scam nonprofit )

I usually avoid non-LJ comment sections, but this one from John Scalzi’s blog was too good, even if the commenter was using a Dilbert icon: “Trying to compromise with the current GOP is like trying to pick a restaurant when you would like Italian and the other person wants a ’53 Chevy up on blocks.”

( Obesity/bariatric surgery/stereotypes )

( American property law, Kevin Mitnick, Moynihan report )

Good point: If women don’t “do” visual, please to be explaining to me girls who have their bedrooms plastered with posters of Justin Beiber. Because last I checked, pictures are a visual medium.

The Euro bailout explained. Ha ha ha sob.
( Secret lives and the open secret of American corruption )

Great quote from The Soap Opera Is Dead! Long Live the Soap Opera! by Rebecca Traister: "The daytime industry they built, like any feminized (and thereby marginalized) genre, was one in which borders went unpatrolled; that, along with a culture of mentorship, meant that other ambitious and talented women unable to find purchase in prime time or film became soap-opera producers and writers at roughly the same rate as men — a still-inconceivable parity."

( 4chan, evolutionary psychology, the fall of AIG, and copyright panics )

You know, if I ever catch up with article revisions etc., I might finish a story.

Today in crowdsourcing: (1) Test the AO3’s revisions, which we hope and expect will mean performance improvements! (2) And/or transcribe historic menus so they can be searched!

( Yoshinaga, Lord, Butcher, Kilborn & Crouch )

I like this story on decision fatigue, if for no other reason than that it makes me feel justified in eating the same thing day after day—I’m saving up willpower!—and as a bonus offers a reason to eat when I want to improve my decisionmaking.

( Restrictive covenants, Jenny Holzer, unconscious reactions )

Google’s antisocial behavior.  Also a post about Google’s Real Name Theater, like Security Theater, and then there’s danah boyd’s excellent explanation that no, Facebook isn’t a real name service either.  As I understand it, if a Google+ name violation determination works “right,” you can still use Reader to read but not to share/etc., which is not as bad as losing access to Reader entirely, but it doesn’t seem like the process is glitch-free even on its own terms. I have a bunch of old pictures on Picasa connected to my Blogger blog, which means that even though I downloaded them for backup a suspension could still screw me up. I certainly did not realize that signing up for Google+ put my other services at risk, and I think I have to leave before I’m kicked out. In a few short weeks Google has managed to burn through my rather substantial goodwill for it.

Covert Affairs: ( Non-plot related spoilers for last night )

Pretty Little Liars: ( Have only seen first 15 minutes; please don't spoil me! )

( Tanya Huff, Megan Whalen Turner )