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Debtors’ Prisons and Other Catastrophes
June 18, 2014
George Bernard Shaw became a socialist by reading a book. Oddly enough, the book that converted him was not a political tract, but a novel: Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Shaw regarded Dorrit as “a more seditious book than Das Kapital.” The novel centers around the ...

Daily Bafflements
June 18, 2014
• Today in Billionaires: Chinese “recycling tycoon” Chen Guangbiao put ads in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal this week inviting 1,000 impoverished Americans to a free lunch in Central Park. Attendees will apparently receive both food and cash to spend on ...

Domestic Workers, Domestic Cargo
June 17, 2014
The word “slavery” has been so thoroughly abused in the context of American political discourse, that it’s easy to forget that it still means something, even in a nation that ostensibly abandoned the practice a century and a half ago. Yet when Sheila Bapat uses the word in ...

ISIS, Blackwater, and the Billion-Dollar Boondoggle
June 17, 2014
As ISIS, a sectarian Sunni militia so radical that Al Qaeda has disavowed it, pushes towards Baghdad, the situation in Iraq is developing so quickly it may give the impression of appearing ex nihilo. Or, at the very least, the conservative narrative would like us to believe that ...

Daily Bafflements
June 17, 2014
• “Prison labor has gone artisanal,” reports Fortune. Inmates in Colorado, for instance, are working at a goat farm that sells cheese to Whole Foods. “Nationwide 63,032 inmates produce more than $2 billion worth of products a year, most of them sold to government ...

Cantor’s Next Gig
June 16, 2014
What’s next for Eric Cantor? After his surprise primary loss last week, we asked for your best guesses for #CantorsNextGig on Twitter and Facebook. The best or closest answer we get will win a free subscription to The Baffler. The only hint we’ve gotten so far from ...

Democrats Are the Real Party of War
June 16, 2014
Between the fall of Mosul to ISIS militants, the POW trade with Taliban officials and the revelation that almost every phone call made in Afghanistan since the US invasion has been recorded by the NSA, this month has seen politicians and journalists briefly (and perhaps ...

Daily Bafflements
June 16, 2014
• Ezra Klein declares, in a Vox article with the click-baitiest of headlines, that “The single most important fact about American politics” is that Democrats and Republicans [tell Pew pollsters that they] hate each other. Hm. We thought it was something like, dunno, ...

The Baffler’s Week That Was
June 13, 2014
Hey there yogis, foodies, and babies, did you miss this week on the Baffler blog? Well read on, you insurance-actuaries, you truthers, you Norwegian rock stars and zombies. We’ll help catch you up. • This week on the occasion of some #yoga #news (#yoganews), we published a ...

Our Deadly Culture of Overwork
June 13, 2014
By now, you’ve probably heard about the automobile accident in New Jersey last weekend that nearly killed comedian Tracy Morgan, and did kill Morgan’s colleague, James McNair. Morgan remains in critical condition and is expected to remain hospitalized for weeks, and three ...

Daily Bafflements
June 13, 2014
  • Via Electric Literature and Compound Interest, the chemistry of book smells, explained. • Today in Billionaires, and also Today in Startling Headlines, from The Christian Post: “9,000 Police Storm Church Looking for Billionaire South Korean Pastor Yoo Byung-Eun ...

Commodify Your Body Electric
June 12, 2014
Have you heard all of the latest #news about #yoga? LeBron James recently crashed a yoga class, and credited it with improving his flexibility and stamina in the NBA finals. Men’s Journal reports that the yoga craze is finally crossing over to the “dudes,” a ...