The Baffler

Papal bling. / Walters Art Museum • The “bling bishop” of Germany, who built a luxury mansion for himself with $43 million of church funds, has been removed from his post. (At least it included a $4 million chapel.) According to Al Jazeera, “Last year, [Pope] Francis ...

Pictured: an O.G. London billionaire / Vanity Fair • Photographers James and Karla Murray documented the changing faces of Manhattan in their book Store Front: The Disappearing Faces of New York. “Then and now” photograph pairings are nothing new, but ...

“A magazine that wishes to make its fortune should never waste its columns and weary readers by praising anything.” –Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now (quoted in The Baffler’s Issue 22, Modem & Taboo). Happy Friday, Bafflers. In case you missed them on the ...

Wait, what did you guys just say? / Credit: Jeffrey Pang • Let’s start this Friday off right. A Philadelphia craft brewery is releasing a new beer made with, among other ingredients, smoked goat brains. Okay! • Over at The Billfold, an interview with Melissa Gira Grant, ...

Behold, a fulfilling human connection being made in real time. /Phil Whitehouse • A study has found that it’s a bad idea to plan and shop for travel during business hours, because you’ll end up paying more for it. This seems particularly cruel, since that’s precisely ...

Photo credit & birdhouse credit: 4RB • How did we miss this important billionaire-news update? Forbes announced on Monday that it would be tracking and ranking “more than 1,600” billionaires, each and every trading day. “We will update the value of individuals’ ...

That’s one tall tower, bro. /Jennifer • Ukranian women are apparently Lysistrata-ing Russian men. • Over at Harper’s, Andrew Cockburn’s review of Bob Ivry’s new book, a “guide for tracking down the live villains and unburied bodies of the 2008 crash.” ...

A weem-a-way? /Appaloosa • At a New York Times-hosted conference on Friday about the state of the press in a post-Snowden era, Sen. Charles Schumer told the audience that a federal shield law would “very likely” pass the Senate this year. The version proposed last year ...