The Baffler

• A new currency minted by Russian farmer Mikhail Shlyapnikov has been declared “a threat” to the rouble by the Russian Central Bank. Five “kolion” will buy you a bucket of potatoes in Shlyapnikov’s village of Kolionovo. Shlyapnikov pointed out that his notes ...

• The American Press Institute has recently released two reports on innovation in media and news organizations. PBS MediaShift takes a look at the measures being taken to get sometimes “fearful” newsroom staff on board for the all-important quest toward innovation. ...

• Pittsburgh has been ranked lowest in startup activity among the country’s major metro areas, frightening the city’s entrepreneurial set. Denizens of the startup ecosystem can’t be stopped from wringing their hands—despite the fact that the city’s ...

• Today in Billionaire Branding: the one-of-a-kind “Billionaire watch” that makes a luxury lifestyle “tangible.” Mind you, the B-watch is only about feeling like a billionaire—you don’t have to be reining in the runaway 0s like a husky sled musher to get a taste of ...

• Over at The New Republic, Esther Breger chronicles “Television’s Long History of Humiliating Poor People.” She traces this illustrious tradition back from today’s “The Briefcase” and “Britain’s Hardest Grafter,” to 1945’s “Queen for a Day,” in ...

• Happy first of National Homeownership Month! Celebrate with this new survey by the American Institute of CPAs, which finds that retirement has replaced home ownership as the touchstone of the American dream: “The US homeownership rate has now reached a 20-year low,” ...

• Continuing its Google Glass-style experiments in making users look silly in public, the tech giant has introduced the attractively low-fi Google Cardboard, a virtual reality “viewer” you can fit over your smartphone. Google says the low price (under $20) will ...

• A group of Army lab workers is receiving preventative post-exposure treatment after the Army accidentally shipped live anthrax samples via FedEx. Doing a better sterilization job than U.S. army scientists, FedEx spokesman Jim McCluskey commented: “FedEx is committed to ...