Daily Bafflements

• This week’s DARPA Robotics Challenge had us wondering: Why, when have we set the bar so low for them, are robots still so astoundingly inadequate? Case in point, provided by the BBC: One robot, “nicknamed Running Man, was so confident on its second day finish that when it completed the final task of climbing stairs onto a podium, it thrust its humanoid arms in victory, did a little dance and then tripped and collapsed.” In his salvo “Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit,” from Baffler no. 19, David Graeber tapped into our disappointment at the unexciting technological advances of the past forty years.

• Today in Billionaires: When a billionaire dispatches his o’er-porky pet pig off to a vegan farm to slim down, it is not a decision he takes lightly. According to a source close to the family: “Romeo had a room in their house. He was treated like the king of the house, but he got too big, and was sent to a sanctuary in Florida. They even threw a leaving dinner for him.” (Via New York Post.) 

• Thanks to the AV Club for documenting the ex post facto accuracy of Steve Albini’s oracular salvo “The Problem with Music,” which first appeared in Baffler no. 5.

• Uber wants an editor! A “visionary”! Someone to “lead the development of owned content to tell the Uber story”! May we suggest one of Obama’s retiring core team, to keep White House adviser David Plouffe company in his new office?