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Daily Bafflements
October 31, 2014
• Americans are spending $5 billion on disposable costumes and candy this week, $350 million of which will go towards buying pet costumes, reports Kyle Chayka in his piece on the Halloween-Industrial Complex. • Historians describe grass, leaves, bark, clay, and dirt as ...

The Zombie Movie Without Zombies
October 30, 2014
As unlikely as a “zombie apocalypse” remains, earnest discussion of how to prepare for such an event is a long-standing cultural standby. Amid a bloom of supernatural-orientated dramas culled from comics and B-Movies of the 50s, the zombie genre stands out as the most ...

Staying Sane with Rocks In My Pockets
October 30, 2014
In the feature-length animated film Rocks In My Pockets, the macabre and the whimsical collide when Latvian-born filmmaker Signe Baumane tries to track the history of her psychological turmoil, and that of five other women in her family. “In this crazy world, how do you stay ...

Daily Bafflements
October 30, 2014
• Great Idea of the Day: Marco Rubio is stumping and traveling with a professional photographer, and when supporters or bystanders get their pictures taken with him, they’re handed a card that tells them where to go online to download their pictures. When they go online ...

Musk on Mars: Silicon Valley Disrupts the Universe
October 29, 2014
It only took the mega-entrepreneur and fume-drunk Delphic Oracle of innovation Elon Musk six years to win the favor of the federal government and use it to get into space. The turnaround is so fast one wonders if he didn’t just call an Uber. Musk’s galactic start-up SpaceX ...

Daily Bafflements
October 29, 2014
• Business Insider reports on a new sex toy that is apparently “exclusively for bankers.” No, we don’t know what that means, either, but it apparently comes with silver cufflinks and a money clip. Probably a prank. We approve. • San Francisco mayor Ed Lee ...

The “Status Bag” Bubble Won’t Pop
October 28, 2014
Recently, the luxury fashion retail site Net-a-Porter sold out of a thousand $200 Karl Lagerfeld Barbie dolls in a single day. Founded in 2000, the site has since expanded to an accompanying magazine, a less expensive (but-still expensive) kid sister site called The Outnet, and ...

Daily Bafflements
October 28, 2014
• A professor at the University of Southern California is starting an academic journal called BuzzAdemia, for “Buzzfeed-style scholarship” (listicles written by academics) to be published on sites like Buzzfeed, Gawker, and Reddit. “Scholarly merit will be ...

Predictive Policing and Automated Peace
October 27, 2014
If you’re a teenager in Los Angeles planning a party and looking forward to a night of drink, debauchery and chemical highs, you’d better keep quiet about it. The twenty-four-seven “eComm Unit,” a police division established in 2012 as a kind of online patrol squadron, ...

Daily Bafflements
October 27, 2014
• Americans are taking the least amount of vacation time in forty years, reports the Guardian. They’re forfeiting billions of dollars worth of vacation days without getting raises, nor scoring “points with their bosses” for the sacrifice. (Via Jordan ...

Captive Labor, Capitalism’s Best Idea
October 24, 2014
This week brings the interesting news that immigrant detainees in Aurora, Colorado are suing the their detention facility’s owner for violating labor laws. According to Colorado Public Radio, “The federal class-action complaint alleges detainees are threatened with solitary ...

Daily Bafflements
October 24, 2014
• This is great. Pocket Money Loans, Payday Loans for Kids! From the site’s FAQ: “Q: What does APR mean? / A: It stands for Annual Percentage Rate and it’s really confusing and boring. / Q: I’m worried that getting a pocket money loan will put me in ...