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Daily Bafflements
September 25, 2015
• “Your Selfie Sticks Can Go To Hell,” proclaims The Gothamist. They’re not joking. On the eve of Pope Francis’ U.S. visit, the Secret Service offered up their own sermon of sorts—a list of banned items at all papal appearances. Among the ...

Voices of the Village
September 24, 2015
Ronald Blythe is now more than ninety years old, beloved and revered in England as a newspaper columnist, literary critic, and memoirist. But he remains best known for his summer labors of 1967, when he sat down with the residents of a single town in his home county of Suffolk ...

Daily Bafflements
September 24, 2015
• Contrary to papal PR, Catholic universities don’t do any more to help the poor than any other universities. Never fear, though, budding Catholics! Joining the orders is very in vogue. Who needs an education anyway.  • Thanks to The Nation ...

Daily Bafflements
September 23, 2015
• Welcome to the United States, Pope Francis! Francis is the sort of social media celebrity who’s popular enough to bring pope kitsch to the secular world. To this end, Snapchat has introduced a special filter featuring Francis, the Popemobile, and a quote from ...

Daily Bafflements
September 22, 2015
• From Fox News to Breitbart, you’ll be hard pressed to find a conservative outlet without breathless coverage of the “war on cops.” These days, it’s former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Black Lives Matter protesters who are blamed for ...

Daily Bafflements
September 21, 2015
• O-ho! Turns out “Elite Americans are not just middle-class people with more money.” They “display distinctive attitudes on basic moral and political questions concerning economic justice.” Plus, they’re more efficient! “Yale Law ...

Daily Bafflements
September 16, 2015
• “Hitler’s world may not be so far away,” writes Timothy Snyder! “Once standard of living is confused with living, a rich society can make war upon those who are poorer in the name of survival. Tens of millions of people died in ...

Daily Bafflements
September 15, 2015
• Hey, writers, what comes up when we Google your name? “The new first-person economy” writes Laura Bennett, “incentivizes knee-jerk, ideally topical self-exposure.” The result? “On its face, the personal-essay economy prizes inclusivity and ...

Take Your Idealism Out of the Freezer
September 15, 2015
Just before the British General Election in early May, I encountered local candidates hustling for our votes in the neighborhood park. Among them was North Islington’s longstanding Labour MP, Jeremy Corbyn, whom I found delivering a heartfelt defense of the National Health ...

Daily Bafflements
September 14, 2015
• “The chances are no specific event or Svengali-like radicalisation inspired the Tsarnaev brothers to blow up the Boston Marathon,” writes Gary Indiana in the LRB, “The Tsarnaevs were a ‘tight-knit family’ in the most ruinous sense that ...

Daily Bafflements
September 10, 2015
• Happy George Scialabba Day! Today we celebrate the man sometimes known as “the People’s Republic’s answer to Harvey Pekar,” whose boxes of papers, written “when not busy scheduling room usage or checking on the progress of air-conditioning ...

Daily Bafflements
September 09, 2015
• Today in billionaires: “It’s like Nazi Germany,” says a resident of Boca Chica Village, the Texas town Elon Musk’s SpaceX has generously “put on the map.” From its drones to the new checkpoints that have sprung up, to the restrictions ...