The Baffler

Founding editor Thomas Frank’s essay from Issue 23, “Academy Fight Song,” exposed the lie being sold to our young people—that if you go to a “good college,” all of your dreams will come true. Those colleges don’t necessarily always have you and your best interests ...

Get off my lawn! / Photo by The Pug Father • Billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is being sued in San Mateo County for blocking access to a public beach near land that he owns. As the Los Angeles Times reports, the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation objects to the ...

• Via David Grann and Laughing Squid, a map of record stores around the world. • According to this depressing infographic from Masters In Accounting, Wall Street firms gave out $26.7 billion in bonuses in 2013, up 15 percent from the previous year. • “To Break Even in ...

• What would it look like if we chose our political representatives not by elections but by lottery? Alexander Guerrero in Aeon describes a “lottocracy.” (See also: “Against Merit,” by Gabriel Zaid, online now.) • Billionaires: they’re just like us! ...

• Presenting graffiti, the new luxury décor of choice. • Drones of all shapes and sizes have been officially banned from Yosemite National Park. It’s news to us that they were ever allowed? A shame, though: #innovation #stifled • The new CEO of the Bill and Melinda ...

• The New Museum, commonly known as the Silliest Museum in the United States, has announced that “Google Glass will be the Lead Sponsor of the 2015 Triennial,” opening next February. “As part of this partnership, the New Museum will launch a visitor engagement app using ...

Guys and gals, ladies and Libor-boys, profs and Pikettys, Rahms and race-baiters, mountaineers and May Day marchers, let’s all take a look back at the past week on The Baffler online: • This week, on the occasion of the locked-and-loaded festival of fear that is the annual ...

The sack of the past. / Photo by jericl cat • Chicago just became the latest city to ban plastic bags. • From Adam Gopnik, an appreciation of The Little Prince as a war story. • According to a new study, speaking in a language that is foreign to you will alter the moral ...