The Baffler

• Welcome to the United States, Pope Francis! Francis is the sort of social media celebrity who’s popular enough to bring pope kitsch to the secular world. To this end, Snapchat has introduced a special filter featuring Francis, the Popemobile, and a quote from ...

• From Fox News to Breitbart, you’ll be hard pressed to find a conservative outlet without breathless coverage of the “war on cops.” These days, it’s former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Black Lives Matter protesters who are blamed for ...

• O-ho! Turns out “Elite Americans are not just middle-class people with more money.” They “display distinctive attitudes on basic moral and political questions concerning economic justice.” Plus, they’re more efficient! “Yale Law ...

• “Hitler’s world may not be so far away,” writes Timothy Snyder! “Once standard of living is confused with living, a rich society can make war upon those who are poorer in the name of survival. Tens of millions of people died in ...

• Hey, writers, what comes up when we Google your name? “The new first-person economy” writes Laura Bennett, “incentivizes knee-jerk, ideally topical self-exposure.” The result? “On its face, the personal-essay economy prizes inclusivity and ...

• “The chances are no specific event or Svengali-like radicalisation inspired the Tsarnaev brothers to blow up the Boston Marathon,” writes Gary Indiana in the LRB, “The Tsarnaevs were a ‘tight-knit family’ in the most ruinous sense that ...

• Happy George Scialabba Day! Today we celebrate the man sometimes known as “the People’s Republic’s answer to Harvey Pekar,” whose boxes of papers, written “when not busy scheduling room usage or checking on the progress of air-conditioning ...

• Today in billionaires: “It’s like Nazi Germany,” says a resident of Boca Chica Village, the Texas town Elon Musk’s SpaceX has generously “put on the map.” From its drones to the new checkpoints that have sprung up, to the restrictions ...