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Daily Bafflements

 

 • 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 level,” or so his leaked emails reveal. On which topic, don’t things get mysterious when we talk large monetary sums? Unless you are steeped in affluence, a “mm” is not obviously a million. (Luckily, Harvard understood, and the Sony exec’s daughter got in. Congratulations.)

• In Dissent, Francesca Mari comments on the assistant economy and the “obliterating personality” of Susan Sontag.  Incidentally, Sontag’s email history is available in its very own digital archive, a confessional step also taken, over the years, by many Danes. Now it’s the turn of French writer Pierre Guyotat to jump in on this “privacy is cultural theft”-flavored trend. 

Well, isn’t this the week for charitable deeds. Good for the conscience; especially good for business. Weigh up Apple’s bid to stop climate change, Texas businesspeople’s fight for gay rights, and Facebook’s “zero-rate” offering of internet.org to chosen developing markets.