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Gentrifying the Web
February 20, 2015
An ad recently appeared on the New York City subway—right in one of those above-the-seat ad spots that turns even public transportation infrastructure into a passive #branding vehicle—for “the domain that never sleeps.” This “exclusively for New Yorkers” deal, as the ...

Daily Bafflements
February 20, 2015
• The latest Snowden revelation, published on The Intercept on Thursday afternoon, is particularly devastating. Spies from the U.S. and UK hacked into the computer systems of Gemalto, the world’s largest SIM card manufacturer. “With these stolen encryption keys, ...

Guns, Money, and Ukraine
February 19, 2015
Despite this week’s deadline for Russia and Ukraine to stand down, an end to the fighting is unlikely. And as often happens in situations like this, where no vital American interests are at stake, but there appears to be a “bad guy” doing bad things, Washington ...

Daily Bafflements
February 19, 2015
• Here’s Jessica Roy, US Weekly style, on the preferred diets of the GOP presidential hopefuls, from Jeb Bush’s Paleo to Bobby Jindal’s “whatever” method. • PSA: This Jeb Bush flask is only $35 at the site Millennials for Jeb! The website copy ...

Delhi Needs Another Hero
February 18, 2015
There is something delightful about seeing the chief minister of an Indian state going on protest against his own police force, which is what happened in January 2014 when Arvind Kejriwal, leader of the Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party (AAP), took charge of the state of Delhi after ...

Blaspheming BuzzFeed
February 18, 2015
BuzzFeed isn’t just for listicles anymore, and whoever says otherwise is regurgitating outdated folk wisdom. Or, at least, that’s the prevailing meme ping-ponging around media circles (read: people I follow on Twitter). It’s true, BuzzFeed has changed. The company has ...

Daily Bafflements
February 18, 2015
• Today in Billionaires: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has dumped stock in Exxon Mobil, citing a desire to stop supporting non-renewable energy resources that are threatening our environment. What’s that? Oh, sorry, no, the reason is actually just ...

Propaganda, Power, and Porn in Fifty Shades
February 17, 2015
I may get kicked off the Internet for saying this. But, when you look at it from the right angle, the Fifty Shades of Grey movie is a feminist victory. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, the idea of “porn for women” was a huge and often painful feminist debate. Porn was said ...

Silicon Valley’s Cult of Nothing
February 17, 2015
If Silicon Valley worships anything, it worships nothing. It excels in the manufacture of the immaterial and the incorporeal. It creates ideas to fill Thought Leader columns, TED talks, and conference circuits. It creates stock market flotations based on shareholder belief, and ...

Daily Bafflements
February 17, 2015
• “A survey from the American Management Association found that 66 percent of employers monitor the Internet use of their employees, 45 percent track employee keystrokes, and 43 percent monitor employee email,” reports Esther Kaplan in Harper’s. “Only two ...

The Nuances of Nonbelief
February 13, 2015
The fact that alleged Chapel Hill shooter Craig Hicks is a professed atheist, according to mostly unrequited and pathetic overtures on his Facebook page, has overwhelmed media outlets with giddy fascination. It has also exposed troubling contradictions in how the media often ...

The True Cost of “Hollywood South”
February 13, 2015
It only took Louisiana eleven years and $1 billion to buy the title it’s always wanted—“Hollywood South,” the movie-making capital of the world. In 2013, it surpassed the film industry’s old standbys, California and Canada, by having eighteen major-studio releases shot ...