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Daily Bafflements

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Daily Bafflements
December 12, 2014
• “There were some who took to Twitter to express their disappointment in the absence of a much-anticipated new gown on the final evening of the [royal] couple’s tour” is an actual sentence that appeared in the actual New York Times yesterday. • If you missed it, ...

Daily Bafflements
December 11, 2014
• Good morning! Did Congress just quietly open the door for wealthy donors to give ten times more to political campaigns than they were previously allowed? • Speaking of donors, ProPublica explains the weird legal loopholes involved in “donor-advised” ...

Daily Bafflements
December 10, 2014
• Today in Billionaires: Newt Gingrich has read the New York Times report about a plan by top GOP donors to all decide on a 2016 candidate early in order to avoid a costly billionaire v. billionaire brawl, and no sir, he does not like it. “If I were Mitt Romney, Chris ...

Daily Bafflements
December 09, 2014
• A huge Reuters report on “an elite cadre” of attorneys reveals that “although they account for far less than 1 percent of lawyers who filed appeals to the Supreme Court, these attorneys were involved in 43 percent of the cases the high court chose to ...

Daily Bafflements
December 08, 2014
• “More than a year after federal regulators issued new privacy rules for kids’ mobile apps, online stores are flooded with cute and silly software programs that quietly collect vast amounts of data on the youngest consumers, including a person’s location and ...

Daily Bafflements
December 05, 2014
• Today we celebrate the birthday of Dave Hickey, art critic, editor, gallery owner, and the author of Air Guitar, a 1997 essay collection that has become a classic in the genre. Minou Rafail wrote about Hickey in depth for Issue 14 of The Baffler back in 2001. Hickey ...

Daily Bafflements
December 04, 2014
• This Powerpoint presentation by a Sony Pictures marketing team, obtained by Gawker after a massive leak/hack of the company’s data, is hilariously bad. • The billionaire-NASA dream team’s quest for Mars continues. “All of the challenges that exist are ...

Daily Bafflements
December 03, 2014
• It’s fitting that the submarine that this East Hampton man bought with the proceeds of his elaborate fine-art forgeries is also, it turns out, a fake. • How can we evaluate and address police killings as a country if we can’t even keep track of how many there ...

Daily Bafflements
December 02, 2014
• The Dark #Future of #News #Innovation is upon us, and it’s not found in the massive layoffs at the New York Times: “Vice Media, Knight Foundation and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism announced plans Monday evening for a $500,000 journalism innovation fund, ...

Daily Bafflements
December 01, 2014
• Well, welcome back, Bafflers, it’s Cyber Monday, which means it’s time to explore all of your gadget gift guides! This list of must-haves by the editors at Popular Science includes a $3,000 drone, a pair of mesh and carbon-fiber sneakers designed by Porsche, and ...

Daily Bafflements
November 26, 2014
• “It would have been powerful to see charges filed against Darren Wilson. At the same time, actual justice for Michael Brown—a world in which young men like Michael Brown can’t be gunned down without consequences—won’t come from the criminal justice system. Our ...

Daily Bafflements
November 25, 2014
• A former U.S. attorney writes in the Washington Post about why it’s so difficult to prosecute a police officer: it’s all about the officer’s state of mind. “Federal law sets a very high bar, and essentially requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt ...