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Daily Bafflements
July 11, 2014
• LEGO sells “police helicopter surveillance” kits for kids aged five to twelve. That is all. (Via Elizabeth Joh.) • Speaking of which, a slightly related Today in Billionaires: “As billionaires and dealmakers descend upon Sun Valley, Idaho, for the Allen & Co. ...

Inequality, the Flavor of the Month
July 11, 2014
Last December, President Obama delivered a speech in which he boldly declared that economic inequality is a “defining issue of our time.” It was a watershed moment — an ambitious speech on a topic presidents rarely address, let alone at such at length. Commenters ...

The “Digital Native,” a Profitable Myth
July 09, 2014
Technology buzzwords, although annoying, often seem innocuous enough. They’re just catchy and trite enough to bleed into common usage, but just misleading and obfuscatory enough as to discourage deep analysis. Two of the most widespread buzzwords and phrases to escape the tech ...

Daily Bafflements
July 09, 2014
• Headline of the Day, from ABC News: “Google Co-Founder Says People Shouldn’t Have to Work So Much.” (Because, robots.) • From Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussein at First Look, a 2005 FBI document instructing spy-trainees how to format internal memos that includes a ...

Daily Bafflements
July 08, 2014
• George Orwell reportedly “could thrive only in comparative adversity.” That may be why he moved to a distant, desolate, and weather-beaten Scottish island to finish Nineteen Eighty-Four. Islanders say he kept to himself and went by his given name, Eric Blair. (Via Roads ...

Daily Bafflements
July 07, 2014
• Today in Broken Records: yet another Forbes columnist helpfully explaining why Raising the Minimum Wage is Not the Answer. We would paraphrase his argument, but it’s too boring to even try to decipher. • Today in Billionaires: Yet another eccentric Chinese ...

Not All Veterans
July 03, 2014
As a veteran, I hate it when other veterans speak for me. I also hate it when they use their veteran status as a way to promote unexamined bellicosity. This kind of appeal to veteran authority has been happening a lot lately. Most of it has been in response to the violent ...

Daily Bafflements
July 03, 2014
• Well, tomorrow is Independence Day, a day to celebrate our great nation with hotdogs and hangovers. Here’s something a little different: the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., an actor will stage a reenactment of Douglass’s 1852 speech, ...

Cigarettes and Climate Change
July 02, 2014
I am a smoker, and I am in denial. It isn’t that I don’t believe that cigarettes will kill me. I do. It isn’t that I don’t believe that I’m addicted. I know I am. Like most addicts, my denial takes the form of dissonance: I rationalize, I procrastinate, I make token ...

Daily Bafflements
July 02, 2014
• Last week the Baffler blog discussed junket journalism—but what about junket policy-making? According to National Journal, new rules in the House mean that lawmakers no longer have to include all-expenses-paid trips they receive from lobbyists or others on their year-end ...

The Village Voice Union Walkout and an Alt-Weekly Obituary
July 01, 2014
On Monday at noon, the employees of the Village Voice who belong to the union UAW Local 2110 staged a walkout and demonstration to protest the management’s new contract proposal. The new proposal would halve family leave time and increase health insurance premiums by $200 a ...