Daily Bafflements

• Baffler contributing editor Susan Faludi’s In the Darkroom has made the New York Times’ Top Ten Books of 2016, where it was described as a “rich, arresting and ultimately generous memoir, [in which] Faludi—long known for her feminist journalism— tries to reconcile Steven, the overbearing patriarch her father once was, with Stefánie, the old woman she became.”

• Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has joined Donald Trump’s economic advisory board. For our thoughts on Mr. Musk, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

• Bill Gates and some of the other “good” billionaires are lining up behind alternative energy. In the context of Trump’s dubious environmental positions, they’re looking pretty benign. But as Alex Cuadros pointed out in our latest issue, that’s just part of the American consensus “that net worth is a measure not just of assets minus liabilities but of merit, and of one’s contributions to society.” A billionaire like Gates or Warren Buffett is “the platonic ideal of the good billionaire, something like capitalism’s teddy bear.” And better billionaires will never save us.