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Daily Bafflements

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Daily Bafflements
December 19, 2016
• Was the Trump campaign’s decision to spend 3.2 million on badly-designed hats between July 2015 and September 2016 a good one? Over at the Fast Company, Baffler art director Lindsay Ballant gives an insight into why it was indeed. ...

Daily Bafflements
December 16, 2016
• In Queensland, Australia, a horse named Party Till Dawn tested positive for methamphetamine. That makes the aptly-named mare “the only other horse in the state to test positive for methamphetamine was Island Tang in Mackay in October last ...

Daily Bafflements
December 12, 2016
• Pankaj Mishra writes about the new angry world we live in, in which old liberal dichotomies no longer make sense. Quoting Tocqueville, he argues that “people liberated from old hierarchies ‘want equality in freedom, and, if they cannot get it, they still want ...

Daily Bafflements
December 07, 2016
• Dear Bafflers, we offer you a new issue, “The Virtue Cartel.” This one’s dedicated to the virtuecrats—in the words of Chris Lehmann, these are the “policy big thinkers, military strategists, ...

Daily Bafflements
December 05, 2016
• Baffler contributing editor Susan Faludi demonstrates how free speech came under attack in Viktor “The Viktator” Orbán’s Hungary, drawing parallels with Trump’s intimidation of the press. It’s a sobering read, but enlightening: Read it ...

Daily Bafflements
November 30, 2016
• Our lovely readers have weighed in on our Bleak Friday reading list, “Good Books for Dark Times.” Over on our Facebook page, several readers offered their own additions, including: Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, Eric ...

Daily Bafflements
November 28, 2016
• Angela Nagle podcast alert: “Because all of this stuff is so steeped in irony,” she comments, drawing on her Baffler essay on 4chan, “it’s very hard to know what anyone actually means . . . So for example if you see a swastika being used ...

Daily Bafflements
November 21, 2016
• At the alt-right confab in DC last weekend, “while much of the discourse at the conference was overtly racist and demeaning toward minorities . . . the focus was on how whites were marginalized and beleaguered.” We know how this one goes. Susan Faludi ...

Daily Bafflements
November 18, 2016
• 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.” ...

Daily Bafflements
November 14, 2016
• And so it begins. Over the weekend Mr. Trump, when asked how many immigrants he wanted to deport (or jail), threw out a cool three million figure. He gave a top job to Steve Bannon, a man who makes your common-or-garden spin doctor look quaint. We suggest you do not ...

Daily Bafflements
November 09, 2016
There’s an Onion piece from 2002 entitled “Man Blames Hangover On Everything But How Much He Drank.” You don’t even need to read it; we’ve all been there. One has to wonder if the Democratic elite is going to pull the ...

Daily Bafflements
November 07, 2016
• On purges, cigarette-pack warnings, and projectile vomiting: Baffler contributing editor Barbara Ehrenreich provides a medical perspective on the U.S. election. (Thanks, The Guardian!) • Fresh from a Trump rally, Baffler contributing editor Astra Taylor enters a ...