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After Truth?
January 10, 2017
Post-blackness has retreated from public discourse. And now "post-truth" has become the latest empty idea in search of a meaning. Both obscure the fact that blackness and truth are always under siege.

Shameless Liars
January 10, 2017
Today, we’re quick to call those who lie too grandly or frequently, or without requisite shame, pathological liars. But psychiatrists tend to mean something more exact. The pathological liar was manifestly not a con artist. For one thing, he didn’t lie for the sake of wealth ...

Daily Bafflements
January 09, 2017
• Longtime Baffler hand Siddhartha Deb has a books column in 2017! In his first piece, today, he remembers John Berger, and his “principled opposition to the contemporary idea of the writer as entrepreneur.” • “There have always been crazy movements ...

A Tax on Shivering
January 09, 2017
If one of the functions of writing is to make the reader see, and see again, here is a brief list of what John Berger made visible. Paintings, photographs, advertisements, motorcycles, swimming pools, the aging body, migrating workers, and mass demonstrations; the intricate ...

Daily Bafflements
January 06, 2017
• Today in tech: Tristan Harris, a Silicon Valley stalwart with a résumé that includes the likes of Google and Apple, has begun running “digital detox experiments” designed to put an end to the practice of hacking human psychology. According to the Atlantic, Harris is ...

The Sad Taste of Success
January 06, 2017
“For a while,” the New York Times recently observed, “it seemed as if slapping the word ‘girl’ on a title virtually guaranteed best-seller status.” There were the mass-market paperbacks, like Gone Girl, as well as the more highbrow ...

Meltdown of the Phantom Snowflakes
January 04, 2017
“Are you a strong woman?” The camera crew wanted a snappy answer. We were filming a short news segment on the beach in Brighton, with a frigid wind gusting around the boom mic and seagulls circling overhead, screaming for chips. I didn’t know how to reply. The issue of ...

Daily Bafflements
January 04, 2017
• This is for all the ladies out there: Did you know your male partner is micro-cheating and, like, totally getting away with it? On Facebook, he’s reacting to all these other women’s posts with a “love,” not a “like” (no. ...

Keeping Up with the Deviants
You've touched on a curious new phenomenon I've been observing: I have recently noticed that more often than not, modern, culturally progressive young people no longer shamefully confess to me their perversions. It's sad, really—I live for prurient gossip, and there's no ...

Sad Dreams of a Sanitized Heaven
January 03, 2017
There are many horrors the incoming administration promises to impose on the disadvantaged in America, and one of the cruelest is a crackdown on a woman’s right to access abortion. It is all the more frightening for already being well underway. On December 12, ...

Daily Bafflements
January 03, 2017
• Forget about the United States for a moment. France has accorded its workers “the right to disconnect,” that is, French companies of a certain size have to negotiate a protocol with employees, so that work does not habitually spill over into free time. In The ...

Humane Billboards
December 30, 2016
Ever pass through a city and feel punched in the face by adverts? Descending into London’s tube network it can seem like I’m the product, one unit among thousands dropping down a human conveyor belt. Here I am presented to corporation after corporation, then a break, and the ...