Daily Bafflements

• Today in Billionaires, from the Guardian: The UK’s National Union of Journalists has dubbed Richard Desmond “Britain’s Greediest Billionaire” after the media company he owns proposed to cut a third of all editorial staffers from the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday.

• Today in Billionaires Bonus, from Forbes: Singapore real estate magnate Zhong Sheng Jian gives us all a “tip for success,” and you may not be surprised to hear that we must #innovate or #die.

• Speaking of which, “Texas Gov. Rick Perry has distributed $205 million in taxpayer money to scores of technology startups using a pet program designed to bring high-paying jobs and innovation to the nation’s second most-populous state,” reports the Associated Press. “But a closer look at the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, one of Perry’s signature initiatives in his 14 years as governor, reveals that some of the businesses that received money are not all they seem. One actually operates in California. Some have stagnated trying to find more capital. Others have listed out-of-state employees and short-term hires as being among the jobs they created.”

• The Fifty Shades of Grey trailer has just come out, which is an excellent occasion to revisit Heather Havrilesky’s sendup of the book from our issue 22, “Fifty Shades of Late Capitalism.”