The Baffler

• Massachusetts has appointed Katie Stebbins as assistant secretary of innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship. In an interview, Stebbins tells of her plans to turn the whole state into an innovation district, a la Kendall Square. John Summers saw it coming in ...

• This week in Billionaires: Justine Musk (ex-wife of Elon, the Paypal founder) posted advice on online forum Quora, as is her wont. In the past she has put out such fires as “How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson?” and “What ...

   • Over at the LRB blog, Deborah Friedell reminds us that the way to get into hidebound Harvard is to make it, in the words of its director of admissions, “a happier place.” For one senior Sony exec, the road to happiness is paved with donations “at the $1mm ...

• Nothing seems to baffle the media more these days than the strange and elusive Millennial. Here, from Newsweek, a piece on how the generation full of digital natives is changing “hobo culture.” • Nneka Samuel asks, “Has crowdfunding gone too far?” ...

• Gawker editorial employees are taking steps to unionize. Hamilton Nolan writes that “Generally speaking, Gawker Media is a very good place to work,” but that employees desire greater transparency and fairness in salary decisions. Nolan notes that • The Observer ...

• One Seattle-based credit card processing company is making headlines by raising its lowest paid employees’ salaries to $70,000/year. • Elon Musk’s much acclaimed SpaceX program is off with a bang, sending a resupply mission to the International Space Station, ...

• In an impassioned defense of “unicorns,” Dave McClure, a prominent angel investor, writing for Medium, says that talk about the overvaluation of startups is cheap, and argues that many public companies are also substantially overvalued. • The Broad, LA’s ...

• The Washington Post reports that the NIH is spending $5 million on a campaign to convince hipsters that “styling your sweet mustache” is a good alternative to smoking. • The Baffler’s favorite v-word comes to Grand Forks, North Carolina, where “vibrancy ...