, February 11, 2016
Daily Bafflements
The much-mocked standoff between a hungry Oregon militia and the U.S. government has come to an end. / Chris Piascik
• “Holy Shit!” writes Gizmodo‘s Maddie Stone, on the discovery of the gravitational waves originally posited by Einstein in his 1916 general theory of relativity, which ends “a century-long hunt” for the spacetime ripples that scientists hope will soon allow us to explore the mysteries of black holes and neutron stars.
• And then there were none: Three of the remaining armed occupants of an Oregon wildlife refuge surrendered to authorities this afternoon, leaving a lone holdout in the government-owned building. The final crusader, David Fry, surrendered soon after. The standoff, originally met with comic disbelief as the ill-prepared “protestors” released a lengthy list of snack requests, ultimately resulted in the death of one militia member, killed by the Oregon state police.
• Need some advice? The Baffler is pleased to introduce our newest web column, Amber Frost’s “Your Sorry Ass.”
If you’re a megalomaniacal plutocrat seeking still more power, you probably need to know if it’s acceptable to call a professional rival a “pussy” while advocating a regime of unaccountable torture. Or if you’re a ‘Berniebro’ seeking to hound a Hillary superdelegate into submission, are you permitted to use a Tinder account with a female pseudonym?
Amber will be appearing biweekly to answer all of these prickly questions.