October 8, 2013: Afternoon
- Q&A with Assad.
- See also: Pictures from 2012-2013 by a photojournalist embedded with a Free Syrian Army militia in Aleppo.
- Banksy parodies Syrian rebel videos as part of his monthlong New York residency.
- Related: Banksy converts a New York delivery truck into a mobile garden—complete with fluttering butterflies and a real waterfall.
- Dispatch from a garden in Afghanistan.
- The government shutdown may have become a boon for one kind of online dating site—those that help users find sugar daddies.
- Milton Friedman's advice to young people: Consume more, save less.
- Cashiers vs. computers.
- Brewing company plants bright red beer-filled fridges all over Europe that are only accessible to Canadians.
- Discoverers of the Higgs boson—often called the "God particle"—win the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics.
- Related: A step-by-step explanation of the Hiss boson.
- See also: "In the Event That You Have Accidentally Swallowed the Higgs Boson."
- Australian scientists discover certain male marsupials' "long and laborious sex sessions" are detrimental to their survival.
- Thomas Edison invented talking dolls that had the voices of real girls; however, most were damaged in shipping and they ended up sounding like demons.
- Monks, he says, should return to meditation, and tougher penalties should be meted out for mischief.
- The Longform Guide to the Music Industry.