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Daily Bafflements

• The police have brilliant new technology to disappear us with, literally. Their new X-ray vans can see right through buildings and trucks, and New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton won’t answer whether they will use them to see through people: “I will not talk about anything at all about this,” were his words. City Lab comments that

The overarching theme here is a law enforcement community that [chooses] to adopt new technology without permission—regardless of the privacy, health and safety, or moral questions that it raises—but to keep having done so a secret as long as possible, and to hide the true nature of the technology in question even after the public has been alerted to its existence.

Scared? 

• Crackers With Attitude (CWA), a teen duo of stoned hackers, claims to have hacked the email account Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan. They reportedly feel “pretty hype” about it.

• Since the eruption of the “Renoir Sucks At Painting” (RSAP) protests, the merits and treacliness of the artist have been hotly debated: “You know who else tries to ban things they don’t like?” asks one defender of the dead painter’s right to freedom of expression. “Nazis!” Hm. 

• Meanwhile, the bylaws of one community in Long Island, leftover from the early 20th Century, still prevent non-Germans from moving in.