Daily Bafflements

• The nonpartisan group Crowdpac has compiled the most common first names of conservative and liberal political donors, with interesting results. As Katherine Miller of BuzzFeed puts it, “The liberal names generally sound like a group of women in their late 20s; the conservative names sound like the members of a large bluegrass band from the 1930s.” While the names on the liberal list are of the “Kate” and “Allison” variety, here is the complete list of the top twenty names in the conservative list: Doyle, Billy, Eldon, Buddy, Lamar, Vern, Homer, Royce, Rusty, Tommy, Rex, Virgil, Boyd, Jimmy, Dewey, Orville, Grady, Bud, Bobby, and Dudley.

• Laura Poitras talks to Wired about the encryption tools that made her new documentary of Edward Snowden, Citizenfour, possible. Also in encryption news, F.B.I. director James Comey said yesterday that new cellphone encryption technology being offered by Google and Apple will make us all less safe.

• Vitamin and natural supplement sellers have been caught trying to market cinnamon and Vitamin C as natural Ebola cures. (Via Mother Jones and Julia Lurie.)

• In other news, from the New York Times Style section, “The sneaker designer Ronnie Fieg, known for suavely tweaking details on classic big-brand sneakers, has now designed a shoe with Adidas Consortium in homage to the heroes of 9/11…. [T]he sneakers take their color scheme from police uniforms, with gold leather at the toe symbolizing a badge and a mix of navy nubuck and glove leather covering the rest of the shoe.”