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Daily Bafflements

• Missed our celebration of George Scialabba at the Brattle Theatre last month? No worries, the appreciations of George’s critical gifts keep rolling in. Here’s a lovely one from The Chronicle of Higher Education. If that whets your appetite, you’re in luck: you can read George’s Baffler essays any time.

• The news about Peeple earned a little of our spare ire last week, but the award for really horrifying us goes to new reporting on China’s “social credit system,” a plan to incorporate information about citizens’ work-lives, consumer habits, and internet usage into a sort of deluxe credit score. Don’t worry, the Chinese government assures that the plan

has an important significance for strengthening the sincerity consciousness of the members of society, forging a desirable credit environment, raising the overall competitiveness of the country and stimulating the development of society and the progress of civilization.

• Our friends over at Pacific Standard take on America’s long history of secret airstrikes in the wake of the U.S. strike that hit a Doctors Without Borders facility in Afghanistan. Here at The Baffler, we’ve got a graphic representation of a U.S. drone strike from artist Mark Dancey.