HodgePodge for July 26

​Here’s your weekly list of links to stories we found interesting. Guaranteed 100% free of royal babies and Carlos Danger.

Putting your MS Paint skills to shame

Sometimes people surprise you by using a piece of technology in a way it was never intended to be used. But 97-year-old Hal Lasko is using Microsoft Paint exactly how it was meant. He just does it a lot better than you or me.

Boys to Men

In What the Backstreet Boys Could Learn From K-Pop, the Atlantic’s Amy He shows how K-Pop “idol group” Shinhwa has managed to stay relevant for 15 years.

Kids these days

I’m generally dubious of the idea that today’s young workers are somehow worse than the rest of us were at that age, but there is some pretty good advice in this Forbes list of 20 things 20 year-olds don’t get.

Boo, Radley

Harper Lee’s legal battle over the rights to her only book gets the Vanity Fair treatment in To Steal a Mockingbird?. The article runs about 8,000 words, so you’ll want to set some time aside to read it.

Viral ideas

Atul Gawande has an interesting look at why some medical innovations spread faster than others and what we can do about it.

Coming soon to a theater near you

For four years a Secret Service agent sold fake IDs to identity thieves and cybercrooks in an epic sting operation. Someone get David Fincher on this, pronto.