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Daily Bafflements

• A new report from the Urban Institute brings us the shocking news that “high wealth and income in big commuting zones do not trickle down,” analyzing the ways that exclusionary zoning turns urban neighborhoods and even entire towns into “private country clubs.”

• In California, a new startup hopes to harness the power of the sharing economy to allow farmers to lease their extra water to one another. As Helaine Olen wrote for the Baffler blog, agribusiness accounts for 80 percent of the state’s water usage, and the company, SWIIM, will allow those farmers with senior water rights to capitalize on their leftovers.

The Atlantic’s Monday morning culture quarterbacks have gotten around to analyzing Louis C.K.’s May appearance on Saturday Night Live and decided that, well, American comedy looks a lot different than it did in the 1970s. Perhaps, as the folks over at The Atlantic worry, it’s got to do with our vague definitions of political correctness. Or maybe Ben Schwartz said it best in Baffler no. 27: comedy has stopped being a tool of political subversion and become instead “the new language of power, policy, and politics.”