The Baffler

• The cause-i-fi-cation and brand-i-fi-cation of the artist Ai Weiwei, from The L Magazine. • In related news, the making of the cottage industry of posthumously-discovered street photographer Vivian Maier, from Chicago Reader. • The Denver Post investigates why Colorado ...

• “Kodak did finally modify its film emulsion stocks in the 1970s and ’80s—but only after complaints from companies trying to advertise chocolate and wood furniture . . . . Kodak never encountered a groundswell of complaints from African-Americans about their products. ...

• Craft beer, artisan pizza, independent movie theaters, gourmet coffee, and displacement of the poorest residents: tales of gentrification in Johannesburg, South Africa. • “Because of the high cost, climbers usually range from the young, sponsored athlete to wealthy men ...

Justin Timberlake/Sean Parker photo illustration by Mike Cicchetti • “Starting a company was once an urge felt only by the blindly ambitious and slightly unsound, but in the Valley it’s been ostensibly transformed into a scheduled path one can simply elect and apply ...

Women and men, feminists and fashionistas, wealthy heirs and high-heel wearers, militant multi-taskers, Camus-carrying intellectuals, and rifle-wielding libertarians, let’s all take a look back at the past week on the Baffler blog: • “Feminism is going to make it possible ...

• The newsreel archive British Pathé has now uploaded its entire collection of 85,000 historic films, in high resolution, to YouTube, here. • Today is the first day of the National Rifle Association convention in Indianapolis. According to OpenSecrets.org, the NRA ...

Photo by The Baffler • Look what we found in a bagel shop in Brooklyn! • Relatedly: after yesterday’s news that Kim’s Video will be closing its last NYC location this summer, we heard that the late great and also-shuttered Bleecker Street Records is ...

• Ground sensors and satellites are being deployed to help predict and slow the crumbling of ancient Pompeii. As BLDGBLOG describes, “guards will receive electronic updates from the city itself while out on their daily rounds, including automated pings and alerts of ...