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Conservative Family Trees and the Cult of Victimhood
May 07, 2014
One of the most reliably entertaining spectacles in American politics occurs when conservatives play the victim card. A group that is overwhelmingly composed of prosperous white males, conservatives are obsessed with the delusion that nobody knows the troubles they’ve seen. ...

Daily Bafflements
May 07, 2014
• What would it look like if we chose our political representatives not by elections but by lottery? Alexander Guerrero in Aeon describes a “lottocracy.” (See also: “Against Merit,” by Gabriel Zaid, online now.) • Billionaires: they’re just like us! ...

Daily Bafflements
May 06, 2014
“What are you looking at?” / Potrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach, via public domain • Here are some highly enjoyable illustrated Martin Luther insults by Peter Mann, including such timeless classics as, “You stink like ...

Hungry for Success: A Sports Myth
May 06, 2014
Shabazz Napier had the childhood that sports writers dream of. Born in Roxbury, a historically African-American neighborhood in Boston, and raised in the Mission Hill housing projects, Napier led the University of Connecticut Huskies to a NCAA Men’s Basketball title this ...

Pushing Down the Top
May 06, 2014
David Brooks wants you to know that he shares your concern for the poor. That’s always where these conversations must necessarily begin—with a polite acknowledgement that everyone means well and want the best for those wretched, faceless, and largely theoretical creatures ...

Daily Bafflements
May 06, 2014
• Presenting graffiti, the new luxury décor of choice. • Drones of all shapes and sizes have been officially banned from Yosemite National Park. It’s news to us that they were ever allowed? A shame, though: #innovation #stifled • The new CEO of the Bill and Melinda ...

On D.C. “Nerds” and Outsider-Wannabes
May 05, 2014
Members of the press always have plenty of chances to celebrate their accomplishments, or stand in solidarity with one another. In the last month the Pulitzer Prizes and the National Magazine Awards were given out. As for bringing attention to the more dangerous aspects of the ...

Bitcoin for Undergrads, Wall Street’s Next Pump-and-Dump
May 05, 2014
The story was everywhere last week: MIT undergraduates will each receive $100 in Bitcoin when they arrive on campus next fall. The gift comes thanks to an affluent donor and two precocious student entrepreneurs — one a sophomore computer science major, the other a first-year ...

Daily Bafflements
May 05, 2014
• The New Museum, commonly known as the Silliest Museum in the United States, has announced that “Google Glass will be the Lead Sponsor of the 2015 Triennial,” opening next February. “As part of this partnership, the New Museum will launch a visitor engagement app using ...

The Baffler’s Week That Was
May 02, 2014
Guys and gals, ladies and Libor-boys, profs and Pikettys, Rahms and race-baiters, mountaineers and May Day marchers, let’s all take a look back at the past week on The Baffler online: • This week, on the occasion of the locked-and-loaded festival of fear that is the annual ...

The Apple-Samsung Patent Wars and Our Broken IP System
May 02, 2014
The multi-billion dollar battle royale between Apple and Samsung has headed to the jury deliberation phase. To sum up: Apple is accusing Samsung of violating five patents on its iPhone and iPad products, including the ones that cover such features as slide-to-unlock and ...

The Banker Boys After the Crash
May 02, 2014
This weekend’s New York Times Magazine features a very thorough and absorbing piece by Jesse Eisinger (in a collaboration between the Times and ProPublica), “Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis.” It starts with the story of Kareem ...