“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Arms-trade treaty talks collapse, supporters rip Obama. “Obama will end up taking the blame for this “failure,” which might seem unfair — but Obama chose to participate in this folly in 2009 after the US had previously refused, so he only has himself to blame for the impossible position in which he now finds himself.” Well, I’m quite happy with the result. Thanks, Barack!

PROTESTERS INVADE Y-12 NUCLEAR PLANT. “Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration at Y-12, declined to discuss details of the early-morning events at the Oak Ridge, but he acknowledged that the unapproved entry into the plant’s inner sanctum — a high-security zone known simply as the Protected Area — was unprecedented. . . . If unarmed protesters dressed in dark clothing could reach the plant’s core during the cover of dark, it raised questions about the plant’s security against more menacing intruders.”

VIDEO: “It worked.”

NEVER MIND THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: “I suppose all those unemployed journalists from the legacy media can go to work teaching journalism at universities. Oh, wait. . .”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Obama’s New Federal Office for Black Students.

ELIZABETH WARREN begs for video views.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “It’s Been Nine Months, and I Still Haven’t Met His Kids.”

AT AMAZON, bestselling coffee.

Also, up to 50% off on school and office supplies.

CHICAGO VALUES: Chicago Is Deadliest Global City. “Chicago likes to compare itself to other world cities, so Ward Room thought it would find out how we rank in violence. It turns out no one can top us. Among what are considered Alpha world cities, Chicago has the highest murder rate — higher even than the Third World metropolises of Mexico City and Sao Paolo.”

How’s that super-strict gun-control workin’ out for ya, Rahm?

AN EGYPTIAN ISLAMIST’S indecent exposure.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student loan debt threatens graduates’ financial future.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: This Is How Leopard Slugs Have Sex. “Those blue things are their penises, which emerge from their heads. So they always do it upside down. Oh, and why do they both have penises, you ask? Because slugs are hermaphrodites.”

QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING: Can Avoiding Orgasms Improve Your Sex Life?

YA THINK? Housing recovery could be hampered by rising student-loan debt.

BAD NEWS FROM the Garbage Indicator?

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Barron writes:

That waste car load chart also hints there may have been some creative accounting regarding GDP numbers during “Recovery Summer”, after pretty decent correlation in previous years.

Perish the thought.

Related: The Channel-Stuffed GDP Report: “Just like last year, marginal economic growth overall seems to be backfilled with a tide of inventory.”

HIDDEN INFLATION: Paying The Same Amount For Smaller Products.

RESEARCH: U.S. Soldiers To Be Equipped With Blast Sensors.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Kitchen & Dining Outlet Sale.

BUT OF COURSE: Disgraced ex-Penn State Prez Has Federal Job.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK, an amusing commentary on the Chick-Fil-A brouhaha.

Also:

And:

WHY PEOPLE ARE FASCINATED by supervillains.

YOU KNOW IT’S BAD WHEN MIKE BLOOMBERG CALLS YOU HEAVY-HANDED: Michael Bloomberg fillets Tom Menino over Chick-Fil-A stance. “The billionaire businessman-turned-New York mayor said Menino, along with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee, are wrong ‘to look at somebody’s political views and decide whether or not they can live in the city, or operate a business in the city.'”

OBJECTIFYING WOMEN IS JUST HUMAN NATURE. “Women are more likely to be picked apart by the brain and seen as parts rather than a whole, according to research published online June 29 in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Men, on the other hand, are processed as a whole rather than the sum of their parts.” By both sexes. “‘It’s both men and women doing this to women,’ Gervais said. ‘So don’t blame the men here.'”

Nonsense. It’s always a good time to blame the men.

TOM MAGUIRE: Defending Joe Paterno.