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Freedom of Choice Degree Zero
May 26, 2015
Soon there will only be two kinds of ads on broadcast TV: commercials for things that make you sick and commercials for things that cure the illnesses caused by the things that make you sick. That’s why fast-food ads are stocked with images of youth living it up, while Big ...

Daily Bafflements
May 26, 2015
• George Clooney’s latest blockbuster Tomorrowland disappoints at the box office, and the Times diagnoses the flaws in its ambition: “Mr. Bird wanted to offer a more optimistic portrait of the future. But there is a reason studios continue to churn out dystopian fare.” ...

Victor Serge, The Unconquered
May 25, 2015
Some writers are destined to have two deaths—the first in life, and the second in memory. The lucky ones can be resurrected from that second death by cultural circumstance and the aid of overseeing angels, irked by injustice, believing these Lazaruses should be helped from ...

Daily Bafflements
May 25, 2015
• Over at The Nation, Moira Wegel imagines the effects of digital humanism, or those “digital tools [that] promise to give dusty humanities courses a fresh sheen of Silicon Valley sex appeal for the undergraduates who might not otherwise take them.” Also known as pie ...

Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack.
May 22, 2015
This Monday, President Obama joined Twitter. That, clearly, was his first mistake. In short order, a barrage of racist tweets greeted our first African American president. The whole contretemps called to mind the premise of the popular “Obama’s Anger ...

Daily Bafflements
May 22, 2015
• Last week, we scratched our heads over the strange requirements for would-be tenants of the Woodside, California, “Startup Castle”—including prohibitions against multiple tattoos, wearing makeup, and attending political protests. This week, Fusion follows up ...

Stacking the Deck
May 21, 2015
The Boston Bombings have achieved the status of a proper-noun title, reaching that rarified echelon reserved for the high-profile American atrocities that, like total eclipses, occur a few times each decade. With that status comes ubiquity. Everyone is familiar with the ...

Daily Bafflements
May 21, 2015
• Private bus service Leap has been ordered to cease and desist by the state of California, and is shutting down operations while navigating what it calls a final regulatory “hurdle.” For Leap’s unfortunate commuters, it means no more “polished wood, black ...

Hell’s Pundits
May 20, 2015
When the news broke this weekend that a violent biker melee at a theme restaurant in Waco claimed nine lives and otherwise injured 18, there were all sorts of solemn topics available to the interlocuters of pundit discourse.  There was the awkward contrast of the Waco episode ...

Daily Bafflements
May 20, 2015
 • Sister Megan Rice, the 85-year-old nun who humiliated the government by creeping into Tennessee’s “Fort Knox of Uranium,” with bolt cutters and a Bible, has been released from her three-year prison term. The appeals court deemed that “vague platitudes about a ...

Nausea in the UK
May 19, 2015
It still feels like the morning after. People still have headaches, feel dizzy, nauseous, confused. What happened? A party controlled by inept bullies has been swept into power with a parliamentary majority of 51%. Stalwart objectors point out that under the UK’s ...

Daily Bafflements
May 19, 2015
• Today in apps: IBM has created a new foodie web app, Chef Watson, which uses “cognitive cooking technology” to suggest recipes that are, well . . . innovative. As Rex Huppke opines in the Chicago Tribune, the app generates “recipes that transform perfectly ...