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The Baffler’s Week That Was

Drescher illustration

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 very cutting piece about the rise of the yoga industry in America by Jorian Polis Schutz. “The State of Stretching” originally appeared in Issue 22 but we put it online for the first time this week, along with the accompanying illustrations by Henrik Drescher, like this one to the left here.

• On the blog, Brooke Magnanti made her Baffler blog debut with an analysis of the faulty methods that the UK has used to calculate the prevalence and financial impact of sex work there—and why those statistics really do matter.

Ned Resnikoff wrote about the proposed Benghazi Select Committee, which he described as “a Karl Rove campaign ad with subpoena power.”

• Another Karl, the Norwegian literary guy of the moment, was the topic of Kyle Chayka’s musings about memoirs in the age of selfies and social media obsession.

Jathan Sadowski argued that the “Internet of Things” will be a huge boon for the insurance industry, as data scientists find more and more ways to monitor our movements and purchasing decisions (and their bosses then invent more and more excuses to charge us for them).

• Did you know that there’s a “silent, pernicious trend going on” that will potentially affect billions of babies? DIY baby food is a real killer—of the baby-food industry, that is. That’s why Beech-Nut is fighting back, and cashing in on fear, as so many baby-product marketers do. Jennifer Block revealed the long strange history of baby food in her first piece for the Baffler blog.

• Finally, Kathleen Geier explored the economics of reparations and the deadly culture of overwork and sleep-deprivation that is quite literally killing American workers. Sorry to end on a bitter note, but, well, we do that sometimes. Have a not-terrible weekend! Go forth and baffle. Issue 25 is in the mail now. See?