Holy Crap File: From Russia with massive identity theft

For $40, you can buy discs full of data from Russian government databases including tax returns and lists of people suspected of espionage.

LATimes: Russian Secrets For Sale, No Questions Asked

This American Life + Johnny Depp = I need to lie down

The LA Times caught Ira Glass on the West Coast leg of what must be a campus tour. Luckily this anecdote didn't come up when I saw him speak last week at UNC because I might have passed out.

"The episode eschews what Glass calls "the typical crip story" by addressing Phillips, 27, as a full human, struggling to maintain a measure of independence and to carry on a romance with his able-bodied girlfriend.

Phillips fantasizes that Johnny Depp could fill in his computer-animated voice. In a happy pivot point in the story, we learn that "This American Life" has gotten the actor to do just that. He reads Phillips' words through much of the piece."

LATimes: Ira Glass, Storyteller

The kids are alright

If you think technology is just turning the youth into mindless sexting automatons, think again.

LATimes: High School YouTube Video Gets Famous By Going Backward

Can't we all just get along?

From Grace Kassab for the LA Times in Beirut.

Santa Muerte

The L.A. home of a Mexico-based sect that attracts people on the margins, such as drug traffickers and transgender prostitutes.  Unsurprisingly, according to a photographer who has documented worship at the shrine (not the one who shot the photos in the slideshow), 'Southern California's version of the practice may contain "a little shtick"'.


LATimes: Santa Muerte in LA: A Gentler Vision of "Holy Death"

A question that answers itself

LA Times: Wardrobe Why: What's so cool about pith helmets?

Sally the Camel is DINNER

Squeezed by higher costs and cash-poor butchers, middlemen at an Egyptian market wonder if they'll ever get over this hump.

...

"I've been doing this for 29 years," says Ammar, who wears a white-lace cap and an even snowier pinstriped vest, a risky choice amid blowing dust and rubbish fires. "You have to know your camels, setting price to age. The best come from Sudan. The ones from Somalia don't adapt so well. I can tell if a camel will bite me or just run away. It is essential to know such things."

The traders around him, some with blood splotches on their tunics, nod.

LATimes: Egypt camel trade runs into the sand (Not one but TWO puns before the lede. Nice.)

Be cool boy

Malaysia and Indonesia are engaged in a skirmish for regional cultural dominance that came to a head when some commercials incorrectly named Malaysia as the origin of a traditional dance. It's too bad the incident was settled with flag burning and rotten egg tossing, instead of a West Side Story dance fight.

LATimes: Indonesia vs. Malaysia: A Culture War