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Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Wild God”
April 08, 2014
Baffler contributing editor Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book comes out today: Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth About Everything. In this very personal book, she revisits a series of “mystical experience” from her childhood and ...

Daily Bafflements
April 08, 2014
Oroluk Islet, Micronesia. / Photo by Angela K. Kepler • According to the Alameda, California Public Health Department, gentrification is making people sick. Destabilization and displacement of the poor isn’t just a socioeconomic issue, officials say: it’s a public ...

Disappearing Acts
April 07, 2014
Economics is full of wonderful concepts. One of my favorites is “effective demand.” Like a magic wand, it can make billions of people disappear. Suppose a farm can produce 100 pounds of food and there are 100 very hungry people who’d like to eat it but have no money. You ...

The Commodification of Kurt Cobain
April 07, 2014
Over the weekend, Nirvana fans and friends remembered Kurt Cobain on the twentieth anniversary of his death. They wrote remembrances in the local press. They visited a park near where he died, to leave flowers, notes, and beers. Thoughtful think pieces were penned, and the New ...

Daily Bafflements
April 07, 2014
(This man pictured may or may not be on the market, may or may not be a billionaire. It wouldn’t hurt to ask.) / Photo by Alfvan Beem • “Two years after Chicago moved to reform its marijuana laws, a two-tiered system of justice remains firmly in place: while ...

The Baffler’s Week That Was
April 04, 2014
Big doings these days on the Baffler blog, friends. Some salvos and sass from this past week, in case you missed them: • Bet you didn’t expect to see The Baffler have an opinion on Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian, did you? And why not? We have opinions about everything else. ...

Mozilla, Mountain View, and the Mean Ol’ Gays
April 04, 2014
Brendan Eich “resigned” (was forced out) on Thursday as CEO of the Mozilla Corporation and as a board member of the non-profit foundation that owns it, after a mere week or so on the job. In that short period of time, his name had become soiled, when it was revealed that he ...

Why Should “Flash Boys” Shock Us?
April 04, 2014
Media coverage of Wall Street scandals often vilifies individuals or specific practices as corrupt while failing to grapple with deeper problems posed by the financial sector. Missing from most coverage, too, is an examination of the growing role Wall Street has come to play in ...

Daily Bafflements
April 04, 2014
Dorothea Dix / U.S. Library of Congress • Today is “404 Day,” organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups to bring attention to Internet censorship in public libraries and schools. • Today is also the 212th birthday of Dorothea Dix, an activist ...

The Next Phase of the Obamacare Battle
April 02, 2014
Tuesday was a good day for the Affordable Care Act. The administration met its original projection of 7 million enrollments during the first six-month open enrollment window on private health insurance exchanges. That doesn’t include last-minute enrollments on the ...

Dragnet Surveillance and the English Language
April 02, 2014
The revelations over the past nine months that the United States is engaging in various mass-surveillance programs that collect and store huge amounts of information about both Americans and foreigners has rightly invited frequent references to George Orwell’s Nineteen ...

Daily Bafflements
April 02, 2014
A protest against Google buses in San Francisco. Photo by Chris Martin • Mother Jones calls yesterday’s Google bus protest “the most San Francisco thing ever,” and has some excellent pictures to back it up. • From Prison Policy Initiative, a fascinating pie chart ...