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Like Uber—but for Dog Crap
July 29, 2016
Late Thursday afternoon, at the close of my workday, a strange subject heading appeared in my inbox: “Pooper. The latest app to push the boundaries of the sharing economy.” Although I read precisely none of the dozens of press releases that flood my inbox each week ...

Treacherous Waters
All right, then—America’s own major-party-anointed oligarch has officially urged Russian cyberspies to hack State Department communications. And his underlying political rationale is enough to give M.C. Escher a throbbing migraine: Hillary Clinton is guilty of grave, if ...

How the Other Half Protests
July 28, 2016
I’ve been lurking in a restaurant in the center of the city, the luxurious kind, with a staff in custom uniforms. They ask you who you are when they take you to your table. When the server comes, he calls you by your name. I paid fifteen dollars for an appetizer salad there. ...

Daily Bafflements
July 27, 2016
• Over at New York Review of Books, Masha Gessen weighs in on the hysteria surrounding Russia’s possible (plausible?) role in hacking the Democratic National Committee. She writes:  Meanwhile, Trump has used this as an opportunity to troll pundits. ...

Waiting in Line at the DNC Barricades
July 26, 2016
Here is how the majority of marches taking place at the Democratic National Convention this week will go: Participants will mill around a predetermined meeting place while organizers figure out what they didn’t prepare for. They will practice some call-and-response. They will ...

Who’s Afraid of a Few Little Boos?
July 26, 2016
Chaos in Philadelphia! Unity shattered before the Democratic National Convention could begin! A fight brewing, a convention divided, a Revolt on the Convention Floor! Hot off a contentious weekend that saw Debbie Wasserman Schultz resign her position as DNC chairwoman, the ...

Daily Bafflements
July 25, 2016
• As the DNC kicks off in Philadelphia, Talia Lavin investigates the 2016 presidential race’s, uh, racier underbelly, the fan-fiction sites where you’re “likely to read about a romantic connection between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz—a pairing popular ...

All Protests Look Alike, and Other DNC Myths
July 25, 2016
There is nobody else on the media sign-in sheet but two kids from a school paper. It’s Saturday, two days before the opening of the Democratic National Convention, and we are at Temple University in northern Philadelphia, where the PowerShift Network, part of the Energy Action ...

The Baffler’s Officially Unofficial DNC Reading List
July 25, 2016
Thirteen months ago, U.S. senator and self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders kicked off his campaign on the shore of Lake Champlain in his home state of Vermont. Sanders wasn’t expected to win—nor was he expected to get this far. And while he may have ...

A Cyborg Speaks of Fearness
There was a moment, late Monday night, as I read about Melania Trump’s convention speech—the passages lifted from Michelle Obama, the Rickroll some wily programmer pasted into her source code—when I wondered if I was dreaming. The catastrophe seemed too elegant ...

Daily Bafflements
July 20, 2016
• Despite Ben Carson’s best efforts to convince the Republican National Convention participants that Hillary Clinton is Lucifer, we know that if there’s one spiritual force involved in the 2016 presidential election it’s actually Loki, the Norse ...