Daily Bafflements

• The “Guignols de l’Info” is a subversive French TV puppet show that satirizes politicians and regularly presents president Hollande as a nebbishy coward. It has allegedly fallen foul of the industrialist that owns the channel—and guess who’s trying to save it? Though president Hollande hasn’t been funny enough to coopt the potentially subversive language of satire—as, Ben Schwartz pointed out, Obama and the CIA have—he would still rather be the butt of the joke than be left outside in the cold. Next step: politicians pulling the strings of the marionette that caricatures them for themselves.

• Those who “can handle the pain, like Lisbeth Salander,” and have no qualms about selling the actual skin off their backs for corporate profit, can no longer “donate” their bodies to Hachette Australia. (Sigh.) The publishers have apologized for taking a leaf out of Billy the Human Billboard’s book and asking fans to audition to have their backs tattooed, to advertise the fourth book in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo franchise. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Hachette had recklessly described the tattoo as “free.”

• “It has taken years for Google to achieve the appearance of impartial omniscience,” writes Rick Paulas in Pacific Standard. So it’s a problem that its search results actually only reflect what you already know and believe.

• Man bemoans shortage of “hard drinking oyster pirates,” in journalism in 2015.