The Best of The Baffler
10+ most popular The Baffler articles, as voted by our community.
The Baffler on Books
The Baffler on Cambridge Analytica
The Cambridge Analytica Con
When a whistleblower outed Cambridge Analytica for the inappropriate use of Facebook profile information for the purpose of influencing US elections, people around the world were understandably outraged. But, as author Yasha Levine explains in his analysis of the situation for The Baffler, this was a symptom of much deeper privacy concerns that involve the biggest tech companies in the world. getAbstract recommends this sprawling article to anyone interested in learning the truth behind personal privacy in the era of big data.
The Baffler on Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is Dead
In cyberpunk, the physical configurations of human bodies tend to express their own utopian political dimension.
The Baffler on Food
A Baker’s Secrets
The recipe of the famed Guerrilla Cookie may be lost forever. But the legacy of its idealistic and eccentric creator lives on in unlikely ways.
The Baffler on Health
Against Resilience | Ajay Singh Chaudhary
Climate change is not the byproduct of contemporary capitalism—our exhaustion and that of the planet’s resources are fuel for the fire.
The Power and Peril of the ICU
Covid-19 showed us what the ICU was made to do—but we must grapple with the reality that it has a dark side too.
The Baffler on India
India’s Beef with Beef
India’s ruling party claims that the consumption of beef is practiced only by foreigners, invaders, and miscreants—but history tells another, more complex tale.
The Baffler on Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley’s Blind Spot
Blind is an anonymous forum used by tens of thousands of tech workers to vent and gossip. Now, its insights are repackaged and sold to bosses.
The Baffler on Society
Real Magic | Lauren Collee
Eschewing any concrete political stance, Transcendental Meditation deals in vagaries: world peace, widespread happiness, perfect government.
Heavenly Bodies | Olivia Church
“The death of my grandma wasn’t funny until I thought about sending her into space.”
The Baffler on Trump
The Look of a Loser
In the wake of electoral rejection, the orange beast of Mar-a-Lago slouches toward another run for the White House.
Popular
These are some all-time favorites with Refind users.
The Despotism of Isaias Afewerki
Afewerki’s attack on Tigray is the culmination of the Eritrean dictator’s ambition to become master of the Horn of Africa.
Rattling the Cage
The nameless protagonist of Henry James’s 1898 novella “In the Cage” finds her counterpart in the modern-day social media manager.
Speaking of Memory
Memories are what we are made of.
«Plato marked the difference between hypomnema (material memory, the importance of keeping a record) and mnemo (remembrance). Hegel used the term Gedächtnis to refer to anamnesis, and Erinnerung to denote the actual things that are recalled. But this is far from the rule.»
Care Tactics | Laura Mauldin
Caregivers and disabled people have been left to hack their way through a world indifferent—if not outright hostile—to their actual needs and desires.
Bitter Fruit | Alessandra Bergamin
The cycle of palm oil production relies on the violence of extraction to succeed.
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