Daily Bafflements

• Snapchat is under fire for a “Bob Marley” filter designed to allow users to style themselves after the reggae great, blackface and all. Even through the 4/20 haze (yes, that’s why the company decided to memorialize Marley in the first place), users were quick to call bullshit on the filter. According to a statement released by Snapchat, notorious for its non-apologies,

“The lens we launched today was created in partnership with the Bob Marley Estate, and gives people a new way to share their appreciation for Bob Marley and his music. Millions of Snapchatters have enjoyed Bob Marley’s music, and we respect his life and achievements.”

Hmmm.

• In New York magazine, Abigail Rasminsky offers the steamy tell-all “I Had a Baby in Europe; Here’s What It Did to Me.” Read it, new parents back home, and try not to weep: Rasminsky details the year of paid maternity leave, free pre- and post-natal care, affordable home visits from a professional midwife, legally protected jobs for mothers, and what she calls “one simple, life-saving amenity—subsidized day care.”

• A recent Fed survey asked how respondents would pay for a $400 emergency. “The answer,” as reported in The Atlantic: “47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all.” Other recent data showed that “only 38 percent of Americans would cover a $1,000 emergency-room visit or $500 car repair with money they’d saved.” After detailing at length the massive insecurity of the middle class in our “recovering” economy, our friends at The Atlantic point out a strange fact: “the more sophisticated a country’s credit and financial markets, the worse the problem of financial insecurity for its citizens.” You don’t say?