Daily Bafflements

Welcome to the first-ever Good News Only edition of Daily Bafflements! Here we go:

• Among the twenty-one MacArthur “genius award” recipients this year is Ai-jen Poo, a labor organizer fighting for the rights of domestic workers.

• The Rolling Jubilee, a project of Strike Debt, has bought and abolished $3,856,866.11 of student debt owed by 2,761 Americans, according to a press release today.

• “There has been a backlash in our generation of leftists against the centralized state socialism of previous generations. This is for obvious and understandable reasons. Since the 2008 economic crash, I see more appetite among the younger generation to engage with policy and to try to change power. You see it with the Indignados movement in Spain forming its own party and running in elections, in Iceland post-crisis, with outsiders going inside on their own terms. You see it at the municipal level with the minimum wage in Seattle.” – Noami Klein in an interview with Indypendent, on the occasion of the release of her new book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.

• Finally, although the great Graeber v. Thiel debate in New York this Friday is all sold out, you will be able to watch them duke it out from afar on a livestream, which will be here starting at 6:30 p.m. EST.