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Daily Bafflements
September 03, 2014
• “Hofstadter definitely does not see anti-intellectualism as the corrupting serpent in the American Eden. Instead, as he demonstrates, it has been deeply ingrained in the national culture from the very beginning.” – Nicholas Lemann gives Richard ...

Monopolies and Kindly Octopi
September 02, 2014
When is a monopoly a monopoly, and when is it rather a kindly octopus? I know of one example of what economists call a “pure” monopoly first hand, on an all-too-regular basis. It is Systembolaget, the state-run liquor store in Sweden, where I live. There are over four ...

Daily Bafflements
September 02, 2014
• We’ve all heard about how the changes in the music industry are going to be okay for artists in the end. Check out “20 Artists Who Make a Killing Off of T-shirt Sales.” • Here’s a sobering post-Labor-Day reminder that our ...

Labor Day Reading from The Baffler
August 29, 2014
Happy Friday, all! If you find yourself with some extra time over this long Labor Day weekend, why not take a moment to think about the reason for the season? These classic salvos from The Baffler all happen to be from issue 9 of The Baffler, a labor-themed issue we published in ...

The Perpetual Sales Pitch
August 29, 2014
A farmer grows fruit, a carpenter builds a chair. The fruit is fresh or foul, the chair sturdy or flimsy. Either way, the marketplace decides. Relative quality is apparent: the slickest of salesmen will have trouble selling rotten apples if there is decent fruit to be had ...

Daily Bafflements
August 29, 2014
• “Suddenly a generation of lonely basement kids had marketers whispering in their ears that they were the most important commercial demographic of all time. Suddenly they started wearing shiny blouses and pinning bikini babes onto everything they made, started making games ...

Hide the Husbands, Prostitution’s on the Interwebs
August 28, 2014
It seems that every few years, some intrepid reporter feels the need to make the game-changing discovery that a lot of people use the Internet to conduct their business. Though this sounds like an absolute non-story, when the people in question are sex workers and their business ...

Daily Bafflements
August 28, 2014
• Today in Bespoke: Long Island-born duo Cody and Zachary Vichinsky have founded Bespoke Real Estate, an agency that deals exclusively with homes worth $10 million and above in the Hamptons. The real estate slump is over, they say; with a $147 million home selling earlier ...

Back-to-School Shopping with The Baffler
August 27, 2014
Hey kids! Are you excited to head off to college? Maybe it’s time to read Thomas Frank’s “Academy Fight Song” and see if that changes your mind. No? You’re still going? Okay, well, if you want to start the year off right, by impressing your friends ...

A Screen-Only School in San Francisco
August 27, 2014
It’s the start of another school year, and soon the same thought will pass through the minds of many college students: “Where is all my money going?” Ben Nelson, former CEO of Snapfish, is trying to prove that the answer to that question has little to do with education by ...

Daily Bafflements
August 27, 2014
• People don’t like to buy weird-looking fruits and vegetables, so the ugly ones normally get thrown out (tons and tons and tons of them). That is, until a French supermarket came up with a way to make weird and ugly produce fun. • A New York Times article earlier ...

Food is the First Thing: Hunger in America
August 26, 2014
Food is one of the most basic human needs, and feeding people is among the basic functions of any remotely competent civilization. Our ancestors’ efforts to avoid starvation are arguably the reason we have a civilization in the first place. If the Neolithic Revolution in ...