Daily Bafflements

• As the DNC kicks off in Philadelphia, Talia Lavin investigates the 2016 presidential race’s, uh, racier underbelly, the fan-fiction sites where you’re “likely to read about a romantic connection between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz—a pairing popular enough in political-erotica circles to have a Kimye-style nickname: Crubio.” Signs that the election was sinking into the cultural unconscious were detected by Corey Pein earlier this year.

• “In the US, we still have progressive taxation, at least until Ted Cruz gets his way and institutes a flat tax,” writes Baffler contributing editor Astra Taylor. “Now we need progressive punishment to match.”

• Last year telecom giant Verizon gobbled up AOL, and today it decided to have Yahoo for dessert. After reportedly smacking its spittle-flecked lips, it’s now taking a siesta in a patch of sun. Chris Lehmann wrote about the flailing Yahoo, a “labyrinth of high-octane managerial passive-aggression,” back in Baffler, no. 27.

• “The Viktator,” a.k.a. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, backed Donald Trump over the weekend. Well, it was only a matter of time. Susan Faludi wrote, in these pages, of the “kissing-cousin resemblance” between the two strongmen, and their parallel politics of self-pity.