Daily Bafflements

• Let’s start this week off right, shall we? The Daily Beast would like us all to know that “2014 is the year of the butthole.” A titilating article, but they are, ahem, behind the times: please see Natasha Vargas-Cooper’s piece in our current print issue.

• Harvard’s HealthMap has gained attention in the previous months for having used algorithms to detect the beginning of the Ebola outbreak in Africa before the World Health Organization did. A big win for big data? Well, not so fast. “It’s an inspirational story that is a common refrain in the ‘big data’ world — sophisticated computer algorithms sift through millions of data points and divine hidden patterns indicating a previously unrecognized outbreak that was then used to alert unsuspecting health authorities and government officials,” reports Foreign Policy. “The problem is that this story isn’t quite true.”

• Read Baffler senior editor Chris Lehmann over at In These Times: “Democratic lawmakers have collaborated on lavish giveaways to the Silicon Valley venture capital crowd such as the laughably mistitled 2012 JOBS Act…. But when it comes to either combating the scourge of economic inequality or holding the nation’s plutocrats to account, the House Democratic caucus, with a few exceptions, has been largely AWOL.”

• Jess Stoner chronicled her time working as a temporary contract postal carrier for The Morning News. Dog bites are only the beginning: she writes about lost wages, being forced to work off the clock, and an all-around culture of threats and fear. (Via Paul Ford.)