Daily Bafflements

• New York’s attorney general is releasing a report today declaring that nearly three-quarters of all Airbnb listings in the city are illegal. “Commercial operators, not hard-luck residents, supply more than a third of the units and generate more than a third of the revenue,” reports the New York Times. “At least a handful of landlords are running what amount to illegal hostels.” This makes the ad campaign that the company has been pushing these days in New York seem especially ironic: “Airbnb helps the majority of NYC hosts stay in their homes.”

• Speaking of housing, here’s a thorough look at how racist housing policies, not just cultural racism, primed Ferguson for this summer’s confrontations, by Richard Rothstein in The American Prospect.

• “A Pennsylvania man says he assaulted his dentist with a tire iron because he couldn’t afford dental treatment and knew he’d get it in prison” reports the Erie Times-News. (Via June Thomas.)

• Catalog-parody SkyMaul is so good because it gets so close to the real thing. See: Condo Ponies, the Forever Diaper.