And Some Other Stuff

* Here’s an interactive widget (link fixed) that lets you slice 100 billion out of the discretionary federal budget. It’s not easy, because this money really isn’t being wasted—so let’s not.

* On gender bias in New Yorker bylines.

* Foreclosing on Wells Fargo. Now they’re interested in talking to him. Via MeFi.

* Slate remembers Choose Your Own Adventure, including this tidbit:

The no-gender policy proved difficult to maintain when Bantam hired artists to draw covers and illustrations for the series. “In the text I was always extremely rigorous never to have anyone refer to the reader as ‘he.’ ” Packard says. “But Bantam insisted it be a boy because they had market research that said girls would identify with boys but boys would never read a book where ‘you’ was a girl. That was a big problem because most of the covers were of boys and most of the illustrations were of boys.”

It was a move that Packard believes lost readers: “I think we lost a huge number of girls to The Babysitter’s Club.“

* And the headline reads, “Permafrost Meltdown May Herald Climate Catastrophe.” Enjoy your weekend.