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Daily Bafflements

• “There were some who took to Twitter to express their disappointment in the absence of a much-anticipated new gown on the final evening of the [royal] couple’s tour” is an actual sentence that appeared in the actual New York Times yesterday.

• If you missed it, “On Shutting the Fuck Up” by John Herrman on The Awl, an analysis of a ubiquitous, fallacious, knee-jerk-response-to-criticism among the VC-tech set, is quite good.

• Today in Commodification: salmon, water, and women.

• An update on the true American hero who fought the good fight over a $4 discrepancy on his Chinese food bill in Brookline: he has a defender. “[W]ho among us hasn’t had some sort of heated customer service argument at some time?” asks Joshua Gans, professor of strategic management and author of a book called Information Wins, in a column for Slate. “I want our Harvard professors to be more like Ben Edelman and take up causes that are controversial but that they are passionate about. The moment we let them be punished disproportionately for these traits, conformity wins.” LOL. Happy Friday!