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Feeding the Social Media Slot Machine
March 20, 2015
When Andrew Sullivan, the big bearded granddad of political blogging, announced his retirement in February, the Internet was quick to perform an autopsy—as usual, slightly before its patient had died. Blogging was finished, everyone agreed, or at least it was looking wan and ...

Peer-to-Peer Pressure
March 20, 2015
There’s a telling scene near the end of The Social Network. Punching air as they watch the company pass the millionth user threshold on a large overhead screen, the young Facebook founders suddenly resemble the victors of another kind of bubble economy—NYSE brokers watching ...

Daily Bafflements
March 20, 2015
• Referring to a new kind of technology that lets people broadcast live iPhone video to their Twitter followers, Dylan Byers at Politico declares 2016 “The Meerkat election,” writing that the app “debuted at South By Southwest last week and has now firmly ...

David Petraeus Does D.C.
March 19, 2015
It’s easy to get distracted by all the titillating details when we think about the David Petraeus story. There’s the suggestive title of his lover Paula Broadwell’s fawning biography, All In. There’s Broadwell’s penchant for showing off her well-toned arms, and their ...

Daily Bafflements
March 19, 2015
• Lee Fang in The Intercept reveals that “security staff at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota used a fake Facebook account to monitor local Black Lives Matter organizers, befriend them, and obtain their personal information and photographs without their ...

Starbucks’s Race to the Center of Civic Life
March 18, 2015
The next time you order one of those faux-Italian-named sweetened coffee drinks at a Starbucks store, you are likely to receive a cup with the hash-tagged words “Race Together” written on it, just above your misspelled name. If you ask the Starbucks employee what it’s ...

Daily Bafflements
March 18, 2015
• The SEIU is still trying to get a $15 hourly wage out of McDonald’s. Meanwhile, McDonald’s workers in nineteen cities have filed a new complaint against the company for what they say are safety hazards. “Workers cite a persistent lack of gloves for ...

Ban St. Patrick’s Day
March 17, 2015
Last week, I was struck by sheer terror when an online listicle about St. Patrick’s Day Parades caught my eye, and briefly made me think I had been caught out of the house on the dreaded holiday. Luckily, I still had several days to prepare, and hide. It shouldn’t be like ...

Daily Bafflements
March 17, 2015
• Maybe the only good thing to come out of South by Southwest this week: flying cars? (Via John Byrne; see also David Graeber.) • If you haven’t seen it yet, this send-up of Silicon Valley’s thoughtless privilege-and-profit machine, “WellDeserved,” ...

Poor Stories from Brooks and Douthat
March 16, 2015
In the past week, New York Times columnists David Brooks and Ross Douthat have taken on the issues of personal behavior and social norms among people less economically fortunate than themselves. That’s not how they put it, of course. Douthat wants to address “the social ...

Daily Bafflements
March 16, 2015
• The National Journal has a funny little feature on conservative pols’ love affair with Chick-fil-a, the fast food that became a culture-war emblem when the chain’s CEO spoke out against same-sex marriage in 2012. Now, the chicken sandwiches are a must for ...