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Facebook’s ‘Injection Tools’
So it’s come to this. After half a century of right-wing invective targeting the alleged scourge of liberal media bias, conservative activists are up in arms over the (unverified) claim that social-media page designers are tweaking impartial news-feed algorithms—in a ...

The Anti-Imperial Emperor
May 25, 2016
The U.S. presidential campaign has provided the “developing” world with a remarkable spectacle. Donald Trump’s antics have served as welcome evidence that political tragedy and disaster don’t only happen down here in less rich countries. But political idiocy coming from ...

Daily Bafflements
May 25, 2016
• Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, seems to have a finger in every pie. According to a report from Forbes, it turns out that the tech billionaire has been bankrolling Hulk Hogan’s, a.k.a. Terry Bollea’s, lawsuit against ...

Daily Bafflements
May 24, 2016
• In Baffler, no. 31 (which is out next week!), Astra Taylor columnizes on the effects of the EU-Turkey deal, supposedly designed to stem the flow of migrants over the sea by sending them into Turkey. Contrary to that agreement, though, the Greeks aren’t willing to ...

Daily Bafflements
May 23, 2016
• “Someone like Snowden should not have felt the need to harm himself just to do the right thing,” says John Crane in a Guardian excerpt of Mark Hertsgaard’s book Bravehearts, about the discrediting and danger whistleblowers face. Also quoted is ...

Interview with Whistleblower Bill Binney
May 23, 2016
Bill Binney resigned from his job as technical director of the NSA in October 2001. The data-monitoring tool he had developed, ThinThread, had been shelved and, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush-Cheney administration chose dragnet monitoring instead. He spoke to Kade ...

Daily Bafflements
May 20, 2016
• Google’s annual I/O conference is “making nerds go outside” this year, its new, open-air venue prompting comparisons to Coachella. • Healthcare for all? A recent study found that HIV-positive cancer patients are less likely to receive diagnosis ...

The Trump Psyche
You know that the Trump distemper in our body politic has risen to a new threat status because our journalistic thought leaders are enlisting the help of mental-health professionals. The new issue of the Atlantic, for one, features a stem-winding cover story by psychologist Dan ...

Daily Bafflements
May 18, 2016
• Over at Current Affairs, Baffler columnist Amber A’Lee Frost takes on the necessity of political vulgarity—or, more bluntly, “rudeness.” One needn’t look further than Donald Trump and the rise of the ...

Daily Bafflements
May 17, 2016
• Matthew Sweet traces the history of research into whether power corrupts, starting in 1870. It’s fascinating, running the gamut from Piritim Sorokin’s view that “the ruling groups are more talented intellectually and more deranged mentally than the ...