Daily Bafflements

• As news rolls in on the president-elect’s cabinet picks and White House staff, there’s not much to smile about. The selections have been described as a “team of racists,” “as bonkers as you thought,” and “a total sausagefest.” Here’s a helpful graphic from the Washington Post that will help you stay updated. We recommend you pair it with a stiff drink.

• As a confused and jittery nation comes to terms with the outcome of the presidential election, we mustn’t, of course, forget to check in on how those last, best hopes of America, our Silicon Valley startup moguls and venture capitalists, are taking the news. Oh wait, no one’s forgotten! A glut of media coverage describes and predicts “what Trump means for Silicon Valley.” Depending on who you ask, the industry may “warm” to his pro-business agenda, or have to “rethink its dreams” thanks to the coming immigration crackdown, or learn to “give back” to a needy society begging it for “a small commitment of corporate resources, a small project initiated within Google or Facebook, or a small allocation from a fund for social impact ventures to quell the fear of innovation and to help impact the lives of those in cities and towns in America that are hurting.” But then again, Corey Pein gave us a clue about the politics of some of these “Dark Enlightenment neoreactionaries” years ago, when he wrote on the Baffler blog that “apart from their reverence for old-timey tyrants, they espouse a belief in ‘human biodiversity,’ which is basically racism in a lab coat.”

• Forbes reports on “the billionaires planning Trump’s inaugural festivities”—which will apparently be somewhat more involved than the party we’d expected: red baseball caps full of cocaine for everybody.