Daily Bafflements

• 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, to be awarded to organizations and individuals around the world,” reports Capital. Vice CEO Shane Smith added, “Hopefully, they’ll come do stuff with Vice. If they don’t, fine. But if they do, even better.” (Via Ian Bogost.)

• The wage gap kills: researchers at the University of California were not surprised to find that income inequality would be linked to higher mortality rates, but they were surprised at just how disproportionately it affected black Americans.

• Anis Shivani writes about how gentrification, tax incentives, and neoliberal oligarchs are destroying Houston.

 • Despite its claims to the contrary, Uber really does not seem to give a crap about its customers’ privacy; a job applicant at the company was apparently given access to the entire database of its customers’ travel records, according to the Washington Post. The applicant, of course, enjoyed looking up his friends and famous people before his access was cut off many hours later. (Via Christopher Soghoian.)