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Daily Bafflements
February 09, 2015
• The blockbuster series by the New York Times uncovering the faces behind layers and layers of shady shell companies buying up elite real estate in New York is a must-read. The first part of the series unpacks the owners of the condos at the Time Warner Center, from reality ...

The Revolution Will Be Venture Funded
February 06, 2015
Where do revolutions begin? In the streets? On Twitter? In Greece? No! Little did we know, they begin in a Washington, D.C.-based venture capital fund. Aptly named 1776, these titans of entrepreneurship plan to overthrow our bloated and broken system, by replacing it with a more ...

Daily Bafflements
February 06, 2015
• This one goes out to Sady: “When their new $70,000 princess-themed playroom is finished in March, Stella, 4 years old, and Presley, 2½, will have a faux gem-encrusted performance stage, a treehouse loft, and a mini-French cafe. A $20,000 custom carpet with colorful ...

Walker, Wisconsin Ranger
February 05, 2015
When the results of the Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll dropped last week, Scott Walker appeared to have the competition in a chokehold. Walker led the other Republican presidential hopefuls with 15 percent of respondents naming the Wisconsin governor as their ...

Daily Bafflements
February 05, 2015
• Today in Billionaires: Some tycoons buy mansions, some buy yachts. Some build a Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal through Nicaragua. It’s “an audacious $50 billion plan by an obscure Chinese billionaire to cross Central America and challenge the Panama Canal for the ...

Breaking: Moguls Fear AI Apocalypse
February 04, 2015
A funny thing happened on the way to the Singularity. In the past few months, some of the tech industry’s most prominent figures (Elon Musk, Bill Gates), as well as at least one associated guru (Stephen Hawking), have publicly worried about the consequences of out-of-control ...

Anarchy in Exarchia
February 04, 2015
Just down the road from Kolonaki, the most fashionable district in central Athens, lies Exarchia, a bohemian city within a city, home to artists, students, intellectuals, shopkeepers, and, most notoriously, anarchists. The neighborhood is a shrine to the art of graffiti—block ...

Daily Bafflements
February 04, 2015
• Moshe Marvit writes for In These Times about Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the Supreme Court case that could potentially change the rules that govern how unions are funded, a decision that “could prove to be the most damaging case to labor in ...

A Letter to the King
February 03, 2015
Dear King Abdullah, First of all: Hi there! Secondly: I’m very sorry to hear that you are dead. But on the bright side, your relationship with America is the best it’s ever been! In fact, the Department of Defense is currently running an “essay contest” in your name, ...

Daily Bafflements
February 03, 2015
• An interior design company that is literally called Euro Trash has decorated the Capitol Hill offices of Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) to resemble a specific room from the fictional palatial estate of “Downton Abbey,” from PBS’s dramatic series of the ...

The Shrinking Power of Punk
February 02, 2015
Is American indie rock fighting a war it can’t win, or is it just not fighting anymore? It’s too quiet in independent music today, but it wasn’t always so. Greil Marcus introduces his 1989 book Lipstick Traces: a Secret History of the Twentieth Century by discussing the ...

Daily Bafflements
February 02, 2015
• Dissent has a good piece on how tech bros and billionaires are threatening to overwhelm Seattle’s culture of radical culture and politics. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, this $100 million penthouse is getting a 95 percent tax cut. • Today in Labor Strikes: Workers at ...