Daily Bafflements

• The Hungarian referendum on whether to resettle refugees was botched; half the country didn’t vote at all and about 6 percent cast a spoilt ballot. Astra Taylor wrote in to us from Piraeus Port, Athens, on the day after the EU-Turkey deal on refugee movement.

• In the referendum’s wake, Hungarian Jews are concerned that the hate speech directed at refugees is reminiscent of that levelled at Jews in the thirties. Susan Faludi reported on Hungary’s failure to remember its past in Baffler no. 31.

• “There seems to be a correlation between the rise in mass murders and structural expansions in the media with the emergence of the 24-hour cable news cycle,” studies, written up by Pacific Standard, confirm. Alex Pareene wrote about cable news’s glorification of, and reliance on, violence in Baffler no. 28.