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I Can’t Recall: A Walker Update
June 24, 2014
 Among the documents released last week as part of the John Doe investigation into Wisconsin recall campaign activities was an email from Governor Walker to none other than Turd Blossom himself. The revelation was cause for jubilation for Team Blue here; it looked like a ...

Daily Bafflements
June 24, 2014
• Today in Bespoke: From perfume manufacturer Bond No. 9, a personalized “at-home scent system” that comes with an expert to help you mix your custom blend; a three-year supply of bespoke fragrance costs about $10,000-20,000. “Bespoke and custom blending is the future, ...

Hillary Clinton 2016 and the Folly of the Left-Flank Push
June 23, 2014
The 2016 Democratic primary will probably include a democratic socialist candidate for president. That would be Bernie Sanders, the irascible senator from Vermont, who has spent the past few months telling the press that he is considering entering the race. Michael Kazin, ...

Daily Bafflements
June 23, 2014
Robber barons of yesteryear: Vanderbilt, Field, andGould. / Illustration from Puck magazine, 1879. • Here’s Baffler co-founder Thomas Frank in Salon on Hillary Clinton’s calling our current economy “a throwback to the Gilded Age of the robber ...

The Baffler’s Week That Was
June 20, 2014
Folks! Hawks and doves, boondogglers and Blackwaters, nannies and mommies, debtors and billionaires, indie rockers and Aussies, platforms, platishers, and public university administrators, let’s all take a look back together at the past week on the Baffler blog! • First, we ...

Happy Birthday, Jean-Paul Sartre
June 20, 2014
This Saturday marks the 109th anniversary of the birth of Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, novelist, playwright, and agitator extraordinaire. Sartre is well known today for many things—though fame was never what he was after. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ...

Higher Ed Pays a High Price for Mediocrity
June 20, 2014
The start of the 21st century saw the emergence of a set of euphemisms to describe the class of universities that are prestigious, but not quite in the Ivy League. These schools were dubbed “The New Ivies” in a number of media outlets, “The Little Ivies” in admissions ...

Daily Bafflements
June 20, 2014
• Retail marketers are testing motion-sensing cameras that would record when people pick things up off the shelf, and how long they hold the things before putting them back down or deciding to buy. Digiday says that this information about how customers “interact with the ...

Why “American” Is a Bad Word in Australia
June 19, 2014
In a recent episode of his new show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver featured Australia’s new-ish right wing prime minister, Tony Abbott, in a segment devoted to “Other Countries’ Presidents of the USA.” The show highlighted Abbott’s long history of verbal slip-ups, ...

Daily Bafflements
June 19, 2014
  • We already know that the emails we write and the phone calls we make aren’t private anymore. But snail mail? You too? • A psychological study has found that kids who have less structured time are more independent and are better at setting and reaching their own goals. ...

Knocking Off YouTube’s Populist Halo
June 18, 2014
In recent years, the large tech companies—Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook—have played a great trick on consumers. By disrupting the old gatekeepers out of existence, they claim, they have leveled the cultural playing field, leaving no barriers between people and the ...