Regina Spektor Runs; It's Urine-Soaked Egg Season in China

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We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today: Paul Ryan reveals he can read minds, Regina Spektor goes for a run, and China goes wild for urine-soaked hardboiled eggs.

The last Regina Spektor album, 2009's Far, was bad. Soaringly, achingly bad. Worst album of the decade bad. But we adore "All the Rowboats," the single from her new album What We Saw From the Cheap Seats. We also enjoyed the accompanying video, though it has a bit too much running for our taste. What does she think this is, the trailer for Shame? As for the album, it has to be better than Far. Has to. This is the person who performed "Samson," for Pete's sake. [ReginaSpektor]

From the news cycle that brought you January Jones downing her placenta in capsule form and Alicia Silverstone prechewing her child's food comes a Reuters piece investigating the appeal of urine-soaked hardboiled eggs in eastern China, where it's a spring tradition that dates back centuries, with egg vendors going from school to school to collect urine "from boys preferably under the age of ten." Oh, China. [Reuters]

This is comforting: up in space recently, there was a solar tornado five times the size of earth. We'll admit, we were unaware there were tornados in space. (Lay off, we took astronomy pass/fail.) Another thing we didn't realize is that these tornados can become five times the size of earth. Five! It makes us long for the innocent days before NASA beefed up its YouTube feed, back when we just assumed outer space was like a black box theater with stars, comets, and the occasional maximum security prison planet. Things were simpler then. [via Wired]

Ho, boy, here's Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, noted Republican budget whisperer, talking at a National Journal forum about how he doesn't think military leaders like Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey are giving their "true advice" when they say they back President Obama's new budget, which includes $487 billion in defense. It was a remarkable statement: at best, it suggests America's military leaders are like a 15-year-old boy on his first date who orders a greek salad, because he's afraid to get wings in front of a girl. At worst, Ryan seems to be calling Dempsey and the 70-odd retired military officers who sent a letter to Congress supporting Obama's a bunch of liars. [via Think Progress] 

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.