The Baffler

• For a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Ahir Gopaldas evaluated the different categories of emotions that drive consumers to “ethical consumption,” like buying organic produce or free-trade stuff, even when it costs them more money. ...

David Graeber vs. Peter Thiel: Where Did the Future Go? Once upon a time, in the heyday of social prognostication, many Americans believed that gadget-related knowledge would surely yield immeasurable leaps forward in the progress of the human species. Yet as David Graeber ...

• “Millionaire Roger Ver has become a bitcoin bounty hunter. This will not end well.” – Vocativ‘s Eric Markowitz on an Internet vigilante known as “Bitcoin Jesus.” • The Los Angeles Unified School District police officials are debating ...

Welcome to the first-ever Good News Only edition of Daily Bafflements! Here we go: • Among the twenty-one MacArthur “genius award” recipients this year is Ai-jen Poo, a labor organizer fighting for the rights of domestic workers. • The Rolling Jubilee, a ...

• Today in Bespoke: Merrill Perlman in the Columbia Journalism Review pops the “bespoke” bubble: “Perhaps not surprisingly, The New York Times used it more than any other US publication in the past three months, according to a Nexis search, with ...

• In Chongqing city, China, cellphone texters get their own “lane” on the sidewalk (via Jennifer 8. Lee). • Brendan James at Talking Points Memo brings us the news that the discerning tastemakers at Urban Outfitters were briefly selling a “Vintage Kent ...

• How adorable: the Guardian reports that two U.S. senators, Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), will live together on a tropical island for six days, and all their adventures “as they spear fish and build shelter together” will be filmed for a Discovery ...

• Leah Finnegan has written a quite definitive list for Gawker, “The Worst 100 White Men, Ranked.” (Check out #44.) • In that same vein, thank you Tom Hawking of Flavorwire for sending news of Actually… magazine, “a new home for all those cultural ...