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Daily Bafflements

Severity, Westboro, mana drain

• Over at Medium, Michelle Alexander writes:

Consider this: Philando Castile had been stopped 31 times and charged with more than 60 minor violations — resulting in thousands of dollars in fines — before his last, fatal encounter with the police.

Alton Sterling was arrested because he was hustling, selling CDs to get by. He was unable to work in the legal economy due to his felony record. His act of survival was treated by the police as a major crime, apparently punishable by death.

As Natasha Vargas-Cooper commented earlier this year on the Baffler blog:

The [Graham] test holds that a reasonable officer should consider the ‘severity of the crime’ when using force against a suspect, it’s clear given the tragic deaths of Michael Brown (suspected of shoplifting and jay walking) and Eric Garner (suspected of illegally selling cigarettes), the established threshold for severity is extremely low.

• In response to a Pokémon Go user “claiming” the Westboro Baptist Church using a Pokémon called Clefairy (nicknamed LoveIsLove), the Church has enlisted the remarkably similar-looking Jigglypuff to team homophobia. Pokéstops—places to pick up Poké Balls—include the 9/11 memorial pool, some abortion memorials, and a Church of Scientology building.

• From the New Republic comes news that puppy racketeering continues, more than a year on from Helaine Olen’s labradoodle post.

• “Fuck you martin shkreli you can’t have my mana drain”: A pharma-bro gets into the card game “Magic: The Gathering.”

• The pound is now more volatile than Bitcoin. David Cameron doesn’t care.