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Fresh Hell

The Baffler

February 09, 2018

We love picking, make no mistake about it. For the “oddly satisfying” video enthusiast in your life, Billy and Summer Pierce present the Next Big Thing: Pop it Pal™, “the novelty pimple popping toy you just can’t get enough of.” For $19.99, you’ll get a slab ...

The Budget and the Political Imagination Deficit

Max B. Sawicky

February 09, 2018

Today's budget deal sucks for many of our fellow citizens, but it’s still Trump’s world, and we have to live in it.

Russia’s Zombie Election

Natalia Antonova

February 08, 2018

We shouldn’t even be framing this as an election; it’s more like a protracted episode of Tales from the Crypt.

A Serious Man

John Ganz,  Steven Klein

February 07, 2018

If Jordan Peterson really is the “most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now,” as David Brooks writes, we have reason to worry.

The Thou of Zadie Smith

Lauren Oyler

February 06, 2018

In Feel Free, Zadie Smith's first nonfiction collection, the author courts the paradox of infinite subjects.

Surveillance Valley

Yasha Levine

February 06, 2018

If the Internet is truly such a revolutionary break from the past, why are companies like Google in bed with cops and spies?

Faster, Higher, Stronger, More Harmonious

Martin Fritz Huber

February 05, 2018

If sports are capable of “building a peaceful and better world,” they are just as likely to make people act like idiots.

The Reboot of the Elites

Chris Lehmann

February 05, 2018

The Blessed and the Brightest

Ardent neoliberals tend to come into their own political convictions much as Joseph Kennedy III has: as a matter of class inheritance.

Fresh Hell

The Baffler

February 02, 2018

From Tween to Tycoon and You Can, Too! Dream big and learn fast coos Teen Bo$$, the latest in required reading for tweens and teens baptized in the entrepreneurial waters of the free market and ready to build a personal brand. Brought into the world last summer and targeting the ...

Dreams Deferred

Rachel Bryan

February 02, 2018

To be young, gay, and undocumented in Alabama is to understand that "deferred action" means your freedoms are on hold.

State of the Unions

Noah Hurowitz

February 01, 2018

Don't trust any argument that rests more on the feelings of workers than on the massive power imbalance gifted to employers.

Simulacra, Inc.

Jonathon Sturgeon

February 01, 2018

The Immediate Experience

“Disneyfication” used to mean sanitization and infantilization. Now, Disney comes to represent nothing less than the smooth functioning of media capitalism.