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Who is the American Marx? A new book looks at the revolutionary, the red menace, and the rage against the machine.

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Summer approaches, which means our spring clearance sale is almost over. Hurry up and get a couple of steeply discounted issues of your favorite magazine.

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American Marxism may be cyclical in nature, bounding from reform to reaction. But as Mathias Fuelling argues, it is more than the forces arrayed against it. There may be hope for us yet.

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The new issue of @thebaffler.com is excellent. Give this one a read. A look at influencer boxing. The history, influence of apps and shady promoters, the lax athletic commissions and the death of an "influencer" boxer. Well written and researched. Just great stuff.

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John Tottenham’s debut novel “Service” is full of acidic judgments and mounting disappointment. But as Sammy Loren writes, it also has moments of surprising tenderness.

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"Se as imagens são geradas por máquinas, então a cultura popular é uma ampliação mecânica. Tudo é um produto populista pré-embalado, uma mistura de padrões excessivamente familiares e incontroversos, uma remixagem deficiente em nutrientes." thebaffler.com/latest/anoth...

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"Indeed, the conveyor belt of progress is moving so rapidly that nothing can ever be fixed or taken back or even reconsidered, and our sudden dependence on machine learning has already begun to induce a wholesale cognitive decline that will make this type of intervention even more unlikely."

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“Gimmick boxing” has overrun the sport. But fights like Tyson-Paul make money for streamers and sportsbooks, and so the trend is here to stay.

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Almost everyone agrees that prescription drugs are too expensive. But the solutions that medication coupon companies offer are temporary at best.

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“Hartman adheres to a basic schema: Marxism is a pillar of American political thought—not always as an explicit tradition but rather as the ghost in the machine—a powerful, often oppositional force influencing Americans of all political persuasions.”

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PUTT President Deb Keaveny is quoted saying "smaller pharmacies act as a de facto health hub" (playing a crucial role in their communities that differentiates them from the profit-driven big chains) #PBMreform #PharmSky #MedSky #PatientsB4Monopolies @thebaffler.com thebaffler.com/outbursts/ba...

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Machine-generated visuals are “mean” in every sense: malevolent, meager, mediated, miserly, minor. And this garbage isn’t just poisoning your brain. It’s priming you for a future of ever more extraction and surveillance.

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new piece in the latest issue of the baffler explores why prescription medication costs so much in the US + the inner workings of coupon websites that try to solve this problem thebaffler.com/outbursts/ba...

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Medication coupons help people access life-saving drugs they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. But in our new issue, ‪ @jessmcallen.bsky.social explains how companies like GoodRx profit from the status quo—and may push your neighborhood pharmacy out of business.

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“If you look at the Professional Bull Riders’ official YouTube channel—since last year, PBR events have been available for free on the platform—the ten most-watched videos aren’t championship events or famous rides but wreck compilations.”

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Howard Zinn and RATM staying undefeated when it comes to teens learning about Marxism (shout-out to my history teacher dad who assigned Zinn's A People's History of the United States to his class every summer, and didn't complain when I played Rage too loud in my room!)

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In this photo exhibit from our new issue, Lena Redford captures the uniquely American pastime of cowboy mounted shooting, where men and women dress up in “traditional Western” and fire at balloons on horseback. thebaffler.com/odds-and-end...

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The new issue of @thebaffler.com is excellent. Two for two on the stories I've read. This deep dive into the Professional Bull Riders is worth the time. Observers of the UFC will notice some similarities with the business. It's up to you to decide if that's a positive or negative (it's a negative)

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The US has never had a mass communist party with a viable influence on policy. A new history of American Marxism considers who we’ve got instead: the labor organizers, the theorists, and rogue economists.

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Body building has always been a niche sport, with very few athletes being able to make a full time living from it, and that's especially true for female competitors. thebaffler.com/salvos/humpi...

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“But if a group of pissed-off teachers get their referendum on the ballot next year, it’s going to be hard for anyone—tourists and billionaires alike—to ignore them much longer. Oscar Goodman always said that pro sports would give his city something to rally around and unite behind. He was right.”

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The cowboy has made his pop-culture return, and Professional Bull Riders is ready to cash in on the rodeo renaissance.

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it’s @alinaetc.bsky.social in the latest issue of @thebaffler.com !

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“Formula 1 began to test the limits of Las Vegas’s appetite for professional sports. After originally promising locals they wouldn’t need any public financing for the race, the government ended up footing a $40 million bill to repave the roads.”

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" . . . examples of bungled lethal injection executions are unending, leaving a macabre trail of state brutality visible only to the few paying attention." @charlotteerosen.bsky.social @thebaffler.com thebaffler.com/latest/botch...

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Professional sports used to fear any association with Las Vegas. The NFL refused to run its tourism ads during the 2003 Super Bowl. Two decades later, things look radically different—the city hosted Super Bowl LVIII and has a team of its own. What changed?

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This is an excellent read that goes into a lot, including the low pay and the ways some women bodybuilders finance their efforts.

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In the U.S., lethal injection gets presented as a more humane form of execution. A new book exposes the harrowing, stomach-churning truth of the matter—but ultimately sanitizes the racialized violence of death penalty writ large.

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In New York, many voters rank “public safety” at the top of their concerns. City and state officials have thus opted for a punitive approach to the mental health crisis. It’s a strategy based on fear and not facts.

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The last eight members of Congress to die in office have all been Democrats. In Baffler no. 72, Chris Lehmann explained how we came to live in a gerontocracy.

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Vintage Bafflers are now up to 70% off. Fill the gaps in your collection.

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“The death penalty and the U.S. carceral state more broadly is an apparatus that authorizes and enshrines anti-black violence in an ostensibly post-civil rights age.”

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Today’s protests and rebellions would be wise to take note of the seventeenth-century radical-by-chance who led a frenzied mob against Spanish Habsburg rule and turned a spontaneous riot into an enduring inspiration for the upheavals to come.

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It’s a classic story: young woman from a small town moves to the big city, takes on a fancy job, and transforms herself. Gets crammed in the back of a cab with fellow assistants, gets stuck with a chore designed as a gift.

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Copper occurs naturally in all sorts of places: leafy greens, cocoa, and the earth beneath our feet. But modern life, with all its batteries and pipes and solar panels, demands more and more of the metal. At least, that’s what mining companies say.

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In “Secrets of the Killing State,” Corinna Barrett Lain assesses the well-documented horrors of lethal injection. But as @charlotteerosen.bsky.social‬ writes, it leaves openings for those who wish to salvage capital punishment rather than eliminate it.

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Lots of people are making money off college sports, but for the most part, the schools operating the programs are not. And that’s to say nothing of the athletes themselves.

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With New York’s mayoral primary coming up, will the city chart a different course when it comes to tackling the crisis of mental health? Because the current, punitive approach harms NYC’s most vulnerable individuals—and it isn’t working.

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Earlier this year, Brad Sigmon became the first person in 15 years to be executed by firing squad. The media framed it as anachronistic and inhumane. But Sigmon chose the method over lethal injection. Here’s why.

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“Involuntary treatment can undermine a patient’s independence, a crucial factor in their long-term health, and prevent them from actively seeking care when a court order expires.”

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Many cities have rolled out non-police crisis response teams with much fanfare, but the truth is that police are still responding to the overwhelming majority of mental health crises. Until budgets are reallocated, this will continue––and police will continue killing. thebaffler.com/latest/serio...

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For one week in 1647, an insurrection seized Naples. Squid salesmen and tomato vendors took on their colonialist overseers and triumphed, putting power in the hands of the underclass.

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Baffler no. 79 features new short fiction from @lauravandenberg.bsky.social‬. In “Cake,” every treat is a burden, and every burden is an opportunity.

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In “Secrets of the Killing State,” Corinna Barrett Lain assesses the well-documented horrors of lethal injection. But as @charlotteerosen.bsky.social writes, it leaves openings for those who wish to salvage capital punishment rather than eliminate it.

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“Social scientists like to ask, why is democracy in Latin America so weak? But I think that question, particularly when we look at the commitments of people on the ground, gets it backward. We should ask, how has it stayed so strong?”

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Last month, Representative Gerald Connolly—aged 75—died in office. He was just the latest in a long line of aging Democrats who held onto power until the end. Back in 2024, Chris Lehmann explained how we came to live under a gerontocracy.

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“Even if it were possible to reverse the trend of global warming by producing more solar panels and electric cars, it isn’t just red tape standing in the way of new mines. People who live near proposed mining projects are worried about the impact.”

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“College sports is funny like that—the more money they make, the more they seem to cost.” @thebaffler.com (@dennismhogan.bsky.social) examines “College Sports: A History” by John R. Thelin and Eric A. Moyen: thebaffler.com/salvos/a-new...

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"THING was an avatar of the black, queer culture that ended up providing a basal layer of everyday speech, but it was also a local, gnomic instance of Chicago culture that mattered to a small group of friends." — @sashafrerejones.bsky.social‬ for @thebaffler.com

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“In the Neapolitan revolution there is something to be understood about the primacy of materialism in any insurrection; truly radical political theories are born from the lived experience of humans and only systematized by philosophers later.”

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