Headlines from August 2, 2013

Beijing scalpers dominate Apple Genius Bar appointments, then sell appointments online.
Austerity be damned, most Europeans refuse to work through their plentiful, sacred holidays.
MetaFilter collects Queen Elizabeth’s nuclear war speech and other undelivered speeches.
Because Breaking Bad is so probing about morality, the finale also raises the inevitable question…of what Walter White deserves. #tv
On Pakistani TV, a talk show scores big ratings by giving away abandoned babies live on air.
He made a bow toward the mountain…suddenly, he became aware of the presence of two other people inside his own head. #longreads
Psychotherapy over the internet is more efficient than on the couch—and potentially more effective.
This month “Depressed Cake Shops” will take over many UK bakeries to sell all-gray cakes.
[They’re] taught to fight in life, understanding that dreams are attainable. Why Latin America loves K-pop.
Japanese traders know that when an anime movie airs at the same time the U.S. jobs report is released, “bad things happen.”
The Harry Ransom Center unpacks the McSweeney’s archive, 15 years of materials now ready for preservation.
Jailed Pussy Riot member boycotts “an essentially mandatory beauty contest for female prisoners.”
Eventually, you just crap out the system of the body. For actors, becoming a superhero comes at a cost. #movies
For superheroes, the cost of living has jumped dramatically.
An abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas, is now the largest single-floor public library in the U.S.
Blueprints for the U.S. Space Team’s Up Goer Five, “explained using only the 10 hundred words people use the most often.”
Putin has used Snowden’s plight…to pose as a human rights defender and to cast the Obama administration as disingenuous.
A Soviet-era re-enactment bunker, the former home of Pablo Escobar, and other bizarre amusement parks.
Assad’s Instagram provides a whitewashed, propagandized look inside Syria’s brutal civil war.
New meta-analysis attributes large-scale group conflicts to changes in weather.
Greenland reaches its highest-measured temperature since records began in 1958.
As ecosystems diminish, each generation’s view of how things should be is a lesser vision than that of their predecessors’. #nature
Military stores halt the sale of 891 periodicals, from X-rated titles to SpongeBob comics to the New York Review of Books.
Saunders: “As we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish—how illogical, really.”
Shellfish versus cigarettes: Chemicals found in people’s systems can reveal their socioeconomic status.
Modern feminism is more than just “nipples, banknotes, and internet trolls.” #opinions
A leopard mink that “smells like R. Kelly’s sheets” now “smells like my baseball cleats.” #kidstoday
Boys will be ashamed of being boys. But they will be boys. Marc Tracy on the phenomenon of sad young literary men.
Nine years ago, a comedian joked about a hamburger with a bun made of doughnuts; today, it exists.
Crab Nebula, a supernova five times the mass of the Sun, expands at 3 million miles per hour. #video
The 38th Parallel Beach, between the barbed wires of North and South Korea, is becoming a top surf destination. #photos
That form of irreality comes with a distinct form of pleasure. A Freudian defense of sexting.