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Daily Bafflements

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Daily Bafflements
February 06, 2017
• Mike Pence plans to cast a tie-breaking vote to aid the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. As Jennifer Berkshire wrote after her journey to the heart of DeVos-land, the “DeVosian vision of school reform is the anti–New Deal offensive launched ...

Daily Bafflements
February 03, 2017
• Where were you when the tragic Bowling Green Massacre happened? We can’t remember, but we do know, at least, that Kellyanne Conway was wandering around confusedly in a world of “alternative facts,” most likely nowhere near Kentucky. If it ...

Daily Bafflements
January 25, 2017
• As Democrats roll over and sign off on Trump’s atrocious cabinet appointees, Donald Trump is pressing forward on his campaign promises. Today, his riotous personal Twitter account informed us, is a “big day” for national security. Planning for the wall will ...

Daily Bafflements
January 23, 2017
• Harrisburg “mayor for life” Stephen Reed has pleaded guilty to stealing city artifacts. David Gambacorta followed the case for his Baffler no. 33 report, and he’ll be on call on the Baffler Twitter account tomorrow to answer your burning ...

Daily Bafflements
January 20, 2017
• Today in presidential aesthetics: commentators weigh in on Trump’s selection of (two!) bibles for his swearing-in and an oil painting takes aim at Obama in a bizarre echo of Trump’s promise that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be ...

Daily Bafflements
January 19, 2017
• Betsy DeVos’s hearing was fraught with controversy and moments of complete idiocy—not to mention a brief discussion about bears. The billionaire and education “philanthropist” proved to be incapable of answering basic policy questions, ...

Daily Bafflements
January 17, 2017
• Amid mounting pressure on Obama to pardon whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden this week (update: Manning will be freed in May!) it’s worth revisiting Astra Taylor’s salvo on presidential pardons, and their shady, unofficial ...

Daily Bafflements
January 11, 2017
• When it comes to election 2016, you could say, “when it rains, it pours.” And “pour” it did last night after BuzzFeed dropped a 35-page dossier on what kompromat (compromising material) the Russians allegedly have on ...

Daily Bafflements
January 09, 2017
• Longtime Baffler hand Siddhartha Deb has a books column in 2017! In his first piece, today, he remembers John Berger, and his “principled opposition to the contemporary idea of the writer as entrepreneur.” • “There have always been crazy movements ...

Daily Bafflements
January 06, 2017
• Today in tech: Tristan Harris, a Silicon Valley stalwart with a résumé that includes the likes of Google and Apple, has begun running “digital detox experiments” designed to put an end to the practice of hacking human psychology. According to the Atlantic, Harris is ...

Daily Bafflements
January 04, 2017
• This is for all the ladies out there: Did you know your male partner is micro-cheating and, like, totally getting away with it? On Facebook, he’s reacting to all these other women’s posts with a “love,” not a “like” (no. ...

Daily Bafflements
January 03, 2017
• Forget about the United States for a moment. France has accorded its workers “the right to disconnect,” that is, French companies of a certain size have to negotiate a protocol with employees, so that work does not habitually spill over into free time. In The ...