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Daily Bafflements

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Daily Bafflements
February 10, 2015
• Hey, you’re a busy businessman or woman, right? And you want to give your clients and customers the personal touch, but who has the time? Luckily, there is a new, thoughtful service called Bond that lets you text a robot to write people hand-written notes for you. ...

Daily Bafflements
February 09, 2015
• The blockbuster series by the New York Times uncovering the faces behind layers and layers of shady shell companies buying up elite real estate in New York is a must-read. The first part of the series unpacks the owners of the condos at the Time Warner Center, from reality ...

Daily Bafflements
February 06, 2015
• This one goes out to Sady: “When their new $70,000 princess-themed playroom is finished in March, Stella, 4 years old, and Presley, 2½, will have a faux gem-encrusted performance stage, a treehouse loft, and a mini-French cafe. A $20,000 custom carpet with colorful ...

Daily Bafflements
February 05, 2015
• Today in Billionaires: Some tycoons buy mansions, some buy yachts. Some build a Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal through Nicaragua. It’s “an audacious $50 billion plan by an obscure Chinese billionaire to cross Central America and challenge the Panama Canal for the ...

Daily Bafflements
February 04, 2015
• Moshe Marvit writes for In These Times about Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the Supreme Court case that could potentially change the rules that govern how unions are funded, a decision that “could prove to be the most damaging case to labor in ...

Daily Bafflements
February 03, 2015
• An interior design company that is literally called Euro Trash has decorated the Capitol Hill offices of Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) to resemble a specific room from the fictional palatial estate of “Downton Abbey,” from PBS’s dramatic series of the ...

Daily Bafflements
February 02, 2015
• Dissent has a good piece on how tech bros and billionaires are threatening to overwhelm Seattle’s culture of radical culture and politics. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, this $100 million penthouse is getting a 95 percent tax cut. • Today in Labor Strikes: Workers at ...

Daily Bafflements
January 30, 2015
• Today in Billionaires: Unfortunately for the Qatari royal family, a city councilman in London has denied their proposal to knock down houses in order to combine two mansions into a “super-mansion” with “17 bedrooms, 14 lounges, four dining rooms, a ...

Daily Bafflements
January 29, 2015
• Excited for the Super Bowl this weekend? We hate to be a buzzkill, but, participation in youth football now appears to have long-lasting neurological effects. Alan Neuhauser in U.S. News & World Report writes on a study showing that NFL players who also played the sport ...

Daily Bafflements
January 28, 2015
• Today in Oh Really?: British researchers at the University of Warwick “have for the first time provided strong evidence for what conspiracy theorists have long thought—oil is often the reason for interfering in another country’s war.” • Per New York ...

Daily Bafflements
January 27, 2015
• In the run-up to Monday night’s snowstorm, Mother Jones published the results of an extensive series of calculations for how much you should tip a food delivery person during a blizzard. The author came up with the answer of 30 percent. Our answer: learn to cook, or ...

Daily Bafflements
January 26, 2015
• West Virginia Public Radio has an interview with a former radical Muslim who says he was inspired to rethink his views after reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm. He says it gave him a new understanding of “what happens when somebody tries to create a ...