Daily Bafflements

• Our fair city is in the running to host the Olympics in 2024, and not everyone is excited about it. “The average pricetag for hosting a Summer Olympics is $15 billion,” according to the No Boston Olympics group. “That’s more than what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts collects annually in income taxes. The International Olympic Committee requires a public official from each bidding city to ‘guarantee’ the Games, meaning Massachusetts taxpayers would be on the hook as costs go over the initial budget, as they have in every modern Olympic Games.”

• Some of the silliest-sounding headlines don’t even sound so silly anymore, and that makes us sad. Via Fortune: “Who will win the content recommendation war?”

• The Washington Times writes on a study that supposedly shows that a minimum wage hike in the past killed jobs and hurt low-wage workers. The evidence: “Jeffrey Clemens and Michael Wither of the University of California at San Diego looked at the job market effects of an increase in the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 between July 2007 and July 2009, concluding that ‘the estimated effects on employment, income and income growth are negative’ over both the short and medium term.” Yes, $5.15 an hour is definitely the better option here. We could all live on that, right?

• Meanwhile, from the Wall Street Journal: “At a banquet hosted by Diageo PLC in London earlier this year, guests entered a centuries-old dining hall through a ‘fog’ made from vaporized $250-a-bottle Johnnie Walker Blue Label Scotch Whisky.” (Via Mina Kimes.)