Daily Bafflements

• As British chancellor George Osborne indicates—yet again!—that he is making cuts to benefits for the disabled, we roll out contributing editor David Graeber’s salvo from issue 30. In “Despair Fatigue” David sees an end to the painful narrative of austerity that the British people have been spoon-fed since the banking crash, which makes no economic sense, noting that “the historical defeat and humiliation of the British working classes is now the island’s primary export product.”

• “I will live forever through robots, says Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov,” jumping in on the hot new trend for life extension, which Corey Pein scanned and found wanting in our latest issue. However long gerontologist Aubrey de Grey’s beard, the science behind cryonics “is an utter crock, has always been a crock, and will continue to be a crock for the foreseeable future.”

• Today in world domination: Amazon’s policy chief has the good grace to squirm when questioned about the expansion of the company’s brick-and-mortar operation—which he describes as “a natural growth,” and we might call “an act of sadism.”

• Angela Merkel received a beating in the press following the German poll results, with one anti-immigration party leader exaggerating forgetfully and calling her the “worst chancellor in history.”