Daily Bafflements

• We talk a lot about the First Amendment and how the Obama administration is threatening press freedom in the United States, but it’s also worth noting that journalists can often be entitled assholes. Reporting the news is an important job, but doesn’t make reporters themselves more important than other people (via Evan Simko Bednarski).

• On the fees and warrants levied on Ferguson residents by authorities there, Alex Tabarrok writes at Marginal Revolution: “You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant ‘low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay.’” (Via Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.) Recommended related reading: Kathleen Geier on debtors’ prisons.

• How is Airbnb like a cult? Find out in this long-but-worth-it essay on the dark side of the sharing economy.

• There’s a dark side to all those cushy catered meals and free cafeterias for employees, too; tech companies in the Silicon Valley throw out at least fifteen tons of food a day. Luckily, Food Runners picks it up, with the help of its army of bike-riding volunteers, and makes sure all that food goes to people who need it.