Daily Bafflements

• This year, a slew of white, male, right-wing writers have been nominated for the World Science Fiction Society’s prestigious Hugo awards—and they’re complaining that in recent years the Hugos have become “an affirmative action award.” They call themselves “Sad Puppies,” an even further gone contingent is dubbed “Rabid Puppies,” and rabid and sad they certainly are. Take one puppy describing what he hates about women writing sci-fi: “Pink SF is the girls coming to play in the boys’ sandbox and then shitting in it like cats.” Charming! Gene Seymour wrote about grappling with sci-fi writers’ views on race in Baffler no. 24.

• On the occasion of the Ashley Madison free-for-all, let’s revisit Heather Havrilesky’s salvo in the current Baffler. “Information doesn’t want to be free, as it turns out,” Heather writes, “but these days, information wants to embarrass you, get you fired, cut you off from the power grid, bankrupt you, drive your children to suicide, kill you, and then take over the world—which is about to be too hot, flat, and crowded to inhabit anyway.”

• Jeff Bezos called his company “Amazon” not for the ancient, one-breasted archers, but because the previous name “Cadabra” sounded too much like “Cadaver.”

 • Today in “disruptive technology for beverages,” try this fat-infused water! Tastes like “liquid soap.”