• Finally, a bill to end patent trolling (Ars Technica)
• Inside the hidden world of thefts, scams and phantom purchases at the nation’s nonprofits (The Washington Post) Why replacing the public sector with private charities is a not the panacea that the right suggestions)
• Religious more likely to lie for financial gain (Salon)

Best NSA Joke so far.

• NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US official handed over contacts (The Guardian) So now, our allies’ oxen are gored. Pass the popcorn.
• Fox News PR Flacks Aggressively Sock-puppeted blog comments (Media Matters) Sock puppets are inherently untrustworthy. Full disclosure: I have sock-puppeted.
• Cassini images of Saturn (NASA)
• 6 Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes (Cracked.com)
• Gamers solve decade old HIV puzzle in ten days (ZME Science)
• Thomas Friedman Op/Ed Generator  Computer generated gibberish, which is indistinguishable from his actual writing.

H/t PP at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for passing along this cartoon.

• What Concessions Republicans Ought to Be Forced to Make (The Rude Pundit) Today’s must read.
• TRYING TO GET A FOUR-WHEELER’S RESPECT, ON A BIKE (Joe Berkeley)  Originally from the Boston Globe, it is an elegant solution to the problem of a biker of getting hassled by white guys in pickup trucks.
• Head of the European Central Bank Says that if we knew the truth, there would be a bank panic (Testosterone Pit)

Tom Hiddleston (Loki from the Avengers movie) does Loki (from the Avengers movie) as played by Owen Wilson.

• Air Gaps (Bruce Schneier) He gives instructions on how to make sure that your computer is not networked at all. (An air gap means no connection to the network)
• Vatican misspells Jesus on Pope Francis commemorative coins (The Independent) ROFLMAO

Mr. Fish: Thankfully – Mr. Fish mugs and t-shirts available.

• ScareMail plugin will flag all your email to the NSA (The Guardian) Basically, it fills your email with NSA bait in the same way that aluminum foil in chaff with false radar returns.
• Irish Doctors Strike to Protest Work Hours Amid Austerity (Portside.org) So much for the Irish being a Euro Zone success story.
• The Kochs Can’t Control the Monster They Created (The Atlantic) Schadenfreude time.
• T-Mobile stops trying to rape their customers (New York Times). It was such a good thing when the T-Mobile/AT&T merger was killed by regulators. When my contract ends, they will get a serious look.
• Fact: the NSA gets negligible intel from Americans’ metadata. So end collection. (The Guardian) Very good point.
• NSA director admits to misleading public on terror plots (Salon) So nu?

Hail his noodley goodness.

Man who claims his religion forces him to wear a sieve on his head given permission to wear one on his official identity card picture (Daily Mail) Pastafarians, yeah.

• The Republicans want another super-committee (Charlie Pierce), because that way, the voters cannot figure out just who did them like a drunk sorority girl.
• Read this, “The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to ‘The Office’. (Venkatesh G. Rao) An excellent dissection of how businesses are petri dishes for psychopaths.
• TPP pact requires regulated financing  (Bangkok  Post) important.  The rest of the world is beginning to see the horrors of a hyper-financialized economic regime.
• Fact: the NSA gets negligible intel from Americans’ metadata. So end collection (The Guardian) file under, “Well, duh”.

And here is the Who on the Smothers Brothers Show:

• This is the worst thing I’ve seen on the internet in a long time (Imgur)
  Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.
•  Worst Condom Ever (The Atlantic) 
• Your Internet petition of the day, Facebook, Google and Yelp: Leave ALEC Now (SumOfUs)
• Most of Syria’s toxins can be destroyed more easily than officials initially thought (Washington Post) Most of their chemical stockpiles is in precursor chemicals.

Well, at least it’s not saying, “So long and thanks for all the fish.”

H/t Ecop on the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

• The Average American Family Pays $6,000 a Year in Subsidies to Big Business (Alternet) So not a surprise, and it ain’t just sports teams.
• After Sales Plummet, Walmart Realizes It Can’t Run Stores On Temps Alone (Think Progress) I guess that there are limits to the banality of Evil.

H/t Balloon Juice for the cartoon.

• CrossFit’s Dirty Little Secret (Medium) Rhabdomyolysis, where excess exercise creates self destructing muscles and destroys kidneys.
• Migration and wage effects of taxing top earners (Vox) Study suggests that a race to the bottom on taxing the rich might work if you are the only one doing it.  I don’t care, it’s wrong.
• Deceptive Practices in Foreclosures (New York Times) The banksters signed a settlement, and agreed to stop.  They ignored it.  Where are the prosecutions?
• Me & Ted (Talking Points Memo) It appears that Senator Ted Cruz  has been a flaming asshole since his college days.
• Cat Paws Can Unlock the iPhone 5S Fingerprint Sensor (Mashable) Apparently nipples work too.
• Google may have most Wi-Fi passwords in the world – so does the NSA? (Americablog)  Feeling so secure, not.

If Time magazine is right, we are doomed as a society.

• The Banality of Systemic Evil (New York Times) Why people Like Snowden, Bradley, and Swartz are crucial to keeping our society from becoming totally sociopathic.
• Excerpts From The Mad Scientist’s Handbook: So You’re Ready to Vaporize a Human (Scientific American)
• Former NSA and CIA Michael Hayden is Batsh%$ Insane (Washington Post)  Seriously, “Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide?” What is he smoking?
• Obama’s NSA surveillance review panel did not discuss changes  at their first meeting (The Guardian) So not surprised.

We live in strange times. H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the pic.

• Katee Sackhoff Geekgasm (Geek Magazine)
• Ex-FBI lawyer linked to surveillance abuses poised for federal judge post (The Guardian)
• Let’s Please Stop Pretending That Obama is Reluctant to Take Military Action (Kevin Drum)
• Western Maryland Secessionists want 5 Western Counties to Go It Alone (Washington Post) The Crazy has reached the Free State.  I say we put fluoride in their water.  Maybe some lithium too.

2^nd City nails the Syrian war drums

• CountZeroInterupt (A new blog from Vonners)
• Is Crowdsourcing On Decline? (Resilient Communities) To Paraphrase Yves Smith, Running out of Rubes 
• Better fathers have smaller testicles (Nature) Headline of the day.
• The new iPhone (New York Times) News I really do not give a sh%$ about.

H/t Old Pinko, who emailed me this.

• Goldman Sachs Announces They’re Blowing Up A Nursing Home And There’s Nothing Anyone Can Do About It (America’s Finest News Source)
• County Board Votes To Secede From Northern California (TPM)
• If you use TOR, Update It, Older Versions are Not Secure (Errata Security)
• You know that OP/ED We Published?  The author is a paid lobbyist for the Syrian Rebels.  OOPS! (WSJ)

Link

• Joe Lieberman Syria – Just Shut Up (Esquire) Charlie Pierce to Joe “You useless walking, bloodstained pile of casual death” Lieberman
• Obama is closer to Nixon than to MLK (Al Jazeera English)
• Chabad Of Eastern Massachusetts Applies For Medical Marijuana Dispensary License (FailedMessiah.com)

This is a first, a cat with a sense of shame:

• Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law  (ProPublica) How HUD has consistently refused to enforce the Fair Housing Act.
• Brothels in Nevada Suffer as Web Disrupts Oldest Trade (Bloomberg) Had me doing a very in poor taste riff on the Buggles song Video Killed the Radio Star.   (Will share if you want)
• So, What’s It Going To Be? (The Onion – America’s Finest News Source) an OP/Ed from Bashir al-Assad

You know, this ain’t in our HR manual:

Link

• How to Keep the NSA Out of Your Computer A good primer on mesh networks (Mother Jones)
• BBC News – Fukushima leak is ‘much worse than we were led to believe (BBC)
• German Government Warns Key Entities Not To Use Windows 8 (Testosterone pit)

Press conference interrupted by flying penis.

• Goldman Sachs Makes Bad Trades, Wants Money Back (Firedog Lake) They make billions on front-running high frequency trading, and when they lose a few bucks, they turn into big crybabies.
• maybe linkage
• A Convicted Murderer’s Case for Gun Control (The Atlantic) Just read this.
• What makes the ouija board move (Mind Hacks) Also dowsing, and similar phenomena
• The birth of a star, captured in stunning detail [photos] (LA Times)
• It appears that Maine Governor Paul LePage is too liberal for his former teabagger associates (Charlie Pierce at Esquire) WTF?!?

• Seeing threats, feds target instructors of polygraph-beating methods (McClatchy) Live in obedient fear, citizen.
• The College-Loan Scandal: Matt Taibbi on the Ripping Off of Young America. (Rolling Stone)
• NSA revelations of privacy breaches ‘the tip of the iceberg’

(The Guardian) Senators Wyden and Udall say that there are more revelations to come.

H/t Jesse’s Café Américain for the video.