Daily Bafflements

• Our reader @divya alerted us to this Independent article about how the CIA’s covert funding of abstract art in the mid-twentieth century and asked if The Baffler has ever been a beneficiary. Next question!

• A man who checked into a U.S. Navy program for alcoholism addiction was found to experience greater withdrawal from his Google Glass than from alcohol, reports the Guardian. As he was being treated, “Doctors noticed the patient repeatedly tapped his right temple with his index finger. He said the movement was an involuntary mimic of the motion regularly used to switch on the heads-up display on his Google Glass.” The patient had been using Glass for eighteen hours a day, and “complained of feeling irritable and argumentative without the device. In the two months since he bought the device, he had also begun experiencing his dreams as if viewed through the device’s small grey window.”

• Bill Gates reviews Thomas Piketty. A random excerpt: “To be clear, when I say that high levels of inequality are a problem, I don’t want to imply that the world is getting worse.” (Via Doug Henwood)

• Yesterday we heard that the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a progressive alt-weekly that’s been publishing for forty-eight years, was being shut down by its corporate overlords. But maybe there’s hope? The San Francisco Chronicle reports: “The paper’s owners ‘have told us that if we can find a buyer, the Guardian can be sold,’ [editor Steven] Jones said. ‘For the members of our community that want to own a progressive newspaper at fire sale prices, contact us.'”