The Baffler

• Tom Hayes, who took the lead in rigging Libor rates (a.k.a. “the most important numbers in the world”) is facing trial in London. The press is celebrating with pirate jokes: Man the rigging! Walk the plank! Back in 2012’s Baffler No. 21, Christian Lorentzen documented ...

• George Clooney’s latest blockbuster Tomorrowland disappoints at the box office, and the Times diagnoses the flaws in its ambition: “Mr. Bird wanted to offer a more optimistic portrait of the future. But there is a reason studios continue to churn out dystopian fare.” ...

• Over at The Nation, Moira Wegel imagines the effects of digital humanism, or those “digital tools [that] promise to give dusty humanities courses a fresh sheen of Silicon Valley sex appeal for the undergraduates who might not otherwise take them.” Also known as pie ...

• Last week, we scratched our heads over the strange requirements for would-be tenants of the Woodside, California, “Startup Castle”—including prohibitions against multiple tattoos, wearing makeup, and attending political protests. This week, Fusion follows up ...

• Private bus service Leap has been ordered to cease and desist by the state of California, and is shutting down operations while navigating what it calls a final regulatory “hurdle.” For Leap’s unfortunate commuters, it means no more “polished wood, black ...

 • Sister Megan Rice, the 85-year-old nun who humiliated the government by creeping into Tennessee’s “Fort Knox of Uranium,” with bolt cutters and a Bible, has been released from her three-year prison term. The appeals court deemed that “vague platitudes about a ...

• Today in apps: IBM has created a new foodie web app, Chef Watson, which uses “cognitive cooking technology” to suggest recipes that are, well . . . innovative. As Rex Huppke opines in the Chicago Tribune, the app generates “recipes that transform perfectly ...

  • From Henry James’s speculation that Roosevelt’s initials stood for Theodore Rex to the Emperor-like Obama: Is the United States a monarchy? “In the words of one late 19th Century American newspaper: ‘Great Britain is a republic, with a hereditary president, ...