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Daily Bafflements

• We assume by now you’ve seen Scott Dadich’s bonkers memo to his employees about what is and is not permitted in the new Wired offices. In the words of British comedian Eddie Izzard, on the new ban on smoking in American bars in the late 1990s, “No smoking in bars now. And soon, no drinking, and no talking.”

• Way back in 1994, Keith White wrote about Wired magazine in Baffler Issue 6, which he called “technology’s hip face, an aggressive apologist for the new Information capitalism that speaks to the world in the postmodern executive’s favored tones of chaotic cool and pseudo-revolution.”

• Here’s Ian Bogost writing about “The Cathedral of Computation,” or how our current culture’s deification of algorithms amounts to a new, weird kind of theology.

• Today President Obama is proposing the Healthy Families Act, which would include seven days of paid sick leave for American workers. Here’s how a Forbes contributor frames that news: “Obama Proposes To Cut Everyone’s Pay With Paid Sick Leave.”