THE HILL: Boehner open to raising debt limit. Of course he is.

Outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday wouldn’t rule out a vote to raise the nation’s borrowing limit before he quits Congress at the end of October.

Conservatives, who pressured Boehner to resign, would try to attach a legislative rider to any effort to hike the debt limit, possibly including a provision to block funding for Planned Parenthood.

“We’ll have to see. There’s a number of issues we’re gonna have to try to deal with over the coming month, but I’m not going to change my decision making process in any way,” Boehner told reporters when asked about the debt limit.

I love how we have to avoid default . . . by raising the borrowing limit. This will end well.

THE SIMON-EHRLICH WAGER 25 YEARS ON: “As the famous environmentalist bet showed, Malthusians are always wrong.”

But since fear is also an inexhaustible natural resource, Malthusians can often reach superstardom (particularly in Ehrlich’s case — Johnny Carson interviewed him at least 20 times) by causing endless amounts of panic along the way.

QED: “Forget ‘developing’ poor countries, it’s time to ‘de-develop’ rich countries,” screams the Guardian. Curiously though, they don’t seem in any hurry to play their own small part, by voluntarily de-developing their offices and server farm.

IT’S LIES AND CLICKBAIT ALL THE WAY DOWN: 1 in 4 Women: How the Latest Sexual Assault Statistics Were Turned into Click Bait by the ‘New York Times.’

UH OH: Teamsters’ wariness of Hillary could spell trouble for her and her party.

GENERATIONAL SWINDLE: How DC Is Screwing Over Millennials.

“Politicians sold a false bill,” Meyer tells Reason’s Nick Gillespie. “They said: ‘All these programs that you are paying for now, you’re going to get the money you paid in later.’ But they’ve made promises where they give benefits now and push the cost off to the future, which means current retirees are getting far more back then what they paid in.”

Indeed. The book is Disinherited: How Washington Is Betraying America’s Young.

I’M MORE WORRIED ABOUT THE RUBBER MASK:  After lizardoid beings have to pass somehow. Hillary Clinton’s secret face-lift.

NO, NO, I’M FAIRLY NOVEL MALWARE: is the trilogy that appears fully formed in my brain in the middle of a contracted novel.  But, seriously, folks, Novel malware dupes victims with fake blue screen of death.

I DO LOVE ME SOME GOOD SCIENCE: Hot Toddies Are Actually Good for Fighting Colds.  The science is settled.  This Whiskey hot toddy is totally medicinal.  Stop looking at me like that.  Would you like me to have a cold?

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS THE ALGORITHM: Meet the Library of Babel: Every Possible Combination of Letters That has Been (or could be) Written.  Well, you insomniacs were looking for something to pass the time, right?

HOW LONG BEFORE WE HAVE A MINISTRY OF MARRIAGE, SPYING IN YOUR ROOMS TO MAKE SURE NO ONE IS GETTING HURT OR SLIGHTED: Friended by Mandate.

OIKOPHOBIA IS A FORM OF DEMENTIA: It leads you defend all those who injure your home.  The City Council’s ‘heroes’ from hell.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Want to Create a Language Like Dothraki? Start Here.

SO THAT’S MALE PRIVILEGE: The MMA fighter held back by F-cup breasts.

PROVE THAT WASN’T THE INTENTION ALL ALONG: Obama has turned Putin into the world’s most powerful leader.  After all, he did say he wanted to be the anti-Reagan.

AGATHA CHRISTIE USED TO PLOT WHILE DOING DISHES: I often plot while ironing.  Wash the Dishes and Cleanse the Mind? And if that doesn’t work, hey, you still have clean dishes.

THEY SUCK AT OMELETS TOO 100 MILLION BROKEN EGGS, STILL NO OMELET: Why Socialism Can’t Make a Sandwich.

AT AMAZON, take an extra 30% off already-reduced jewelry.

Plus, deals on Men’s Sneakers.

WAR ON BOYS UPDATE: British feminist wants teen males banned from gyms.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Europe’s Migrant Crisis Is Simply Muslim History vs. Western Fantasy. “The world as understood by Islamic nations varies wildly from the Western nations’ understanding of the world. Whereas Muslims see the world through the lens of history, the West has jettisoned or rewritten history to suit its ideologies. This dichotomy of Muslim and Western thinking is evident everywhere. When the Islamic State declared that it will ‘conquer Rome’ and ‘break its crosses,’ few in the West realized that those are the verbatim words and goals of Islam’s founder and his companions as recorded in Muslim sources — words and goals that prompted over a thousand years of jihad on Europe.”

ADVICE FOR MEN, from Tucker Max and from Jim Geraghty. I haven’t read either book, but I imagine their perspectives diverge.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Enrollment Plummets At Northeast Ohio Law Schools: Akron (-16%), Case (-36%), Cleveland (-39%). The drop at Case Western is particularly striking, given that it’s a pretty high-level school.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Researchers Make Artificial Cells That Can Replicate Themselves.

CHINA’S SUFFERING CORN FARMERS:

Thousands of Chinese corn farmers aren’t getting paid this month after China’s largest corn refinery, Global Bio-Chem Technology, suspended operations, the Financial Times reports. The refiner’s fate is tied up with the country’s propped up corn prices, which Beijing keeps at a level higher than global prices, a policy that “destroy[s] margins for corn processors, feed companies and other private agricultural firms that are the mainstay of the rural economy.”

On the ground, this is what China’s economic mess looks like. Back in the glory days of yesteryear, stuff like this didn’t happen — the rising tide lifted all boats, even leaky ones. But it is very hard to run an economy that is partly state-controlled and partly market-driven; distortions like the corn bubble are sort of baked into the cake. Of course, it is very hard to turn a communist system into a capitalist one, and as China repeats its familiar pattern of promising Singapore-style reforms and then backing away from them, a saying popular in 1990s Poland comes to mind: It is much easier to turn an aquarium into fish soup than to turn fish soup into an aquarium.

Indeed.

MOSTLY, FEAR: Nothing but fear and capital stand in the way of a nuclear-powered future. “In just two decades Sweden went from burning oil for generating electricity to fissioning uranium. And if the world as a whole were to follow that example, all fossil fuel–fired power plants could be replaced with nuclear facilities in a little over 30 years.”

LIFE IN THE 21st CENTURY: Transgender Travelers Collide with TSA’s Security Theater:

Many travelers may not even realize it, but as they’re forced in to spread eagle for body scanners in security lines at the airport, a TSA agent is pressing a button telling the machine whether the person inside is a male or female. They don’t ask—they just look and decide. In Petosky’s case, the TSA employee saw a woman and pressed the appropriate button. And then the employee declared there was an “anomaly,” which Petosky bluntly explains to Reason, is her penis.

Petosky says she travels frequently and hadn’t had such a problem before. Obviously these body scanners must have picked up the truth about her body, but previous TSA agents must have understood her situation. Petosky says she’s ready to explain that she’s transgender to TSA personnel if necessary. In fact, when the machine in Orlando registered the “anomaly,” she says she immediately told the TSA employee that she was transgender. But rather than accepting the explanation, the TSA agent told her that he wanted her to go through the screening process again “as a man.” Apparently he wasn’t demanding that Petosky change her appearance. Rather, he wanted to switch the button he pressed to male instead of female. Then it became a big mess.

“He kept saying, ‘Are you a man or a woman?'” Petosky says. They said she needed to be pat down, which becomes its own issue for transgender traveler. Should the person patting her down be a man or a woman? She didn’t want to make a female TSA employee have to touch her genitals. The situation escalated; she was taken aside for further screening and ultimately missed her flight. Even worse, in order to reschedule her flight, she had to return to the gate area, meaning that she would have to go through the airport’s security yet again. In addition, Petosky says she was told her hands tested positive for “explosives” residue twice. It was never explained to her why this happened, and she wondered if this was some sort of retaliation or after-the-fact justification for advanced screening.

As USA Today noted earlier this year, “Shortly after TSA was created in late 2001, one of its early mottoes was ‘Dominate. Intimidate. Control.’ From the start, the TSA put more focus on browbeating hapless travelers than intelligently focusing on actual aviation hazards.”