Daily Bafflements

• People don’t like to buy weird-looking fruits and vegetables, so the ugly ones normally get thrown out (tons and tons and tons of them). That is, until a French supermarket came up with a way to make weird and ugly produce fun.

• A New York Times article earlier in the month showed just how hard it is for working mothers, especially single mothers, to juggle childcare and hourly work when their employers cut their hours and change their shift schedules on short notice. Starbucks, the employer of Jodi Kantor’s main subject, announced that it would change its policies the day the story came out; Nieman Storyboard has the back-story. So now Kantor just needs to find, shadow, and extensively write about an employee from every American company that uses hourly workers, and we’ll be fine.

• Local police departments across the country aren’t just stocking up on military-grade weapons and equipment; they’re also losing them at an alarming rate. Fusion has “uncovered a pattern of missing M14 and M16 assault rifles across the country, as well as instances of missing .45-caliber pistols, shotguns and 2 cases of missing Humvee vehicles.” (Via Alan Neuhauser.)

• Finally, from Mother Jones, apparently cops in Ferguson drove their cars over the flowers around Michael Brown’s memorial and let one of their police dogs pee on it, so that’s great.