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David Graeber vs. Peter Thiel: Where Did the Future Go?
September 19, 2014
David Graeber vs. Peter Thiel: Where Did the Future Go? Once upon a time, in the heyday of social prognostication, many Americans believed that gadget-related knowledge would surely yield immeasurable leaps forward in the progress of the human species. Yet as David Graeber ...

U2, Apple, and the Strip-Mining of Punk Rebellion
September 18, 2014
“Wasn’t that the most incredible single you ever heard?” asked Apple CEO Tim Cook as the last note of The Edge’s guitar died away. He was playing U2’s new single “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)” to the audience at the end of a press conference this month for the new ...

Daily Bafflements
September 18, 2014
• “Millionaire Roger Ver has become a bitcoin bounty hunter. This will not end well.” – Vocativ‘s Eric Markowitz on an Internet vigilante known as “Bitcoin Jesus.” • The Los Angeles Unified School District police officials are debating ...

Hack Attack Goes to Hollywood
September 17, 2014
It was made for Hollywood, this story, with heroic journalists challenging their corrupt peers and government figures, both in the name of freedom. A good story, even though at the end, nothing much really changed, apart from a handful of people going briefly to jail. And so it ...

Daily Bafflements
September 17, 2014
Welcome to the first-ever Good News Only edition of Daily Bafflements! Here we go: • Among the twenty-one MacArthur “genius award” recipients this year is Ai-jen Poo, a labor organizer fighting for the rights of domestic workers. • The Rolling Jubilee, a ...

On Scarcity’s Appeal
September 16, 2014
On a Sunday afternoon in January, with an inch of snow forecast for later that evening, a queue of about fifty shoppers lined up outside the front door of the Downtown Brooklyn Trader Joe’s (DBTJ). The crowd inside had reached capacity. Those waiting outside shivered with ...

Daily Bafflements
September 16, 2014
• Today in Bespoke: Merrill Perlman in the Columbia Journalism Review pops the “bespoke” bubble: “Perhaps not surprisingly, The New York Times used it more than any other US publication in the past three months, according to a Nexis search, with ...

Selling a Celebrity Lifestyle
September 15, 2014
“PRESERVE is all of us, together, championing the goods, makers and legends that instill meaning inside the moments of our lives. The curios that cozy our homes, the threads that define our silhouettes, the foods that leave our bellies happy, the projects that mean everything ...

Daily Bafflements
September 15, 2014
• In Chongqing city, China, cellphone texters get their own “lane” on the sidewalk (via Jennifer 8. Lee). • Brendan James at Talking Points Memo brings us the news that the discerning tastemakers at Urban Outfitters were briefly selling a “Vintage Kent ...

An Army of Eyeballs: The Rise of the Advertisee
September 12, 2014
During a blackout at the 2013 Super Bowl, a bright spark on Oreo’s marketing team had a brainstorm. With one tweet, the snappy insta-slogan “You can still dunk in the dark” inspired a tidal wave of shares amidst the snacking. It was the free publicity coup every brand ...

Daily Bafflements
September 12, 2014
• How adorable: the Guardian reports that two U.S. senators, Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), will live together on a tropical island for six days, and all their adventures “as they spear fish and build shelter together” will be filmed for a Discovery ...

Eminent Bromain: Bud Light Invades the Rockies
September 11, 2014
This past weekend the corporate conquest of cool entered a new phase: expropriation. AB InBev, a $43 billion multinational conglomerate that brews one in four beers sold around the world, executed an agreement with the archetypal ski town of Crested Butte, Colorado (population ...