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Author: The Baffler

Columns

Daily Bafflements
January 21, 2016
• Guy Patrick Cunningham wrestles with Baffler contributing editor David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy over at the LARB, concluding that “even if you find Graeber’s direct democracy too radical, he ...

Pounding Sanders
January 21, 2016
There’s something undeniably stirring in the mobilization of America’s Responsible Pundit Consensus. This week finds the liberal lectors of said consensus singing, not surprisingly, from a single hymnal entry, the one called “Bernie Sanders Is Not a Serious Presidential ...

Daily Bafflements
January 20, 2016
• In the Palinian spirit of not pussyfooting too much, The Baffler has moved our print edition to a quarterly publication schedule—that’s right, we’re putting our spurtive past behind us, and being a bit more punctual. On the web we can offer you a little regularity, ...

Texas Foster Care Is an Unconstitutional Snake Pit
January 19, 2016
On January 8, the state of Texas filed to appeal U. S. District Judge Janis Jack’s December 2015 ruling that the Texas foster care system is a place where “rape, abuse, psychotropic medication, and instability are the norm.” Jack’s blistering 260-page report makes for ...

Daily Bafflements
January 15, 2016
• The Guardian’s Gaby Hinsliff writes on the cachet of going offline that “there is no status symbol so powerful now as not having a status—or not, at least, in the ‘look at me’ Facebook sense—at all.” After all, “going off grid is ...

Daily Bafflements
January 14, 2016
• Yesterday afternoon, Al Jazeera America unceremoniously announced the end of all television and digital operations and a massive round of layoffs, to the detriment of another corps of journalists and the delight of a coterie of trolls. • Much like those in the news ...

Daily Bafflements
January 12, 2016
• Chelsea Manning mourns former Baffler contributing editor Aaron Swartz three years on from his death, and reviews a new book of Swartz’s essays. She writes: On January 28, John Summers, Baffler editor in chief, is in conversation with ...

Q & A with Neda Semnani
January 11, 2016
In 1979, Iranians living abroad, Neda Semnani’s parents among them, rushed back to Tehran to enjoy the fruits of the Islamic Revolution—only to find Khomeini an even more repressive leader than the Shah. Nursing a young family, Semnani’s mother gave up politics, ...

Daily Bafflements
January 11, 2016
• The FT recognizes the limits of attempting to humanize Charles Koch over lunch: “Koch would like us to get to know him. Or, more accurately, he has been persuaded that staying silent is counterproductive both politically and, increasingly, for his business.” ...

Daily Bafflements
January 08, 2016
• Today in techies: Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to avenge its earlier, more flaccid rocket by landing one on a drone ship, and Martin Shkreli spoils a blind date’s appetite when he orders a $120 cup of tea. • A private art museum in San Francisco is being ...

Daily Bafflements
January 07, 2016
• In the endless flood of thinkpieces on how Millennials are ruining the robust, cheery economy they inherited, some dubious news: the little bastards are increasing their retirement savings faster than any other age bracket. Though we might consider the source (a Fidelity ...

All the President’s Chums
January 06, 2016
It seems odd, after the media revolutions of the past several decades, to behold one of the worst conventions of the old press order soldiering blithely on: the private, off-the-record presidential briefing. In a curiously noncommittal dispatch for the New York Times, D.C. ...