, May 27, 2015
Daily Bafflements
A dementor hulks over the London 2012 Olympics. / CarlosVanVegas
• Tom Hayes, who took the lead in rigging Libor rates (a.k.a. “the most important numbers in the world”) is facing trial in London. The press is celebrating with pirate jokes: Man the rigging! Walk the plank! Back in 2012’s Baffler No. 21, Christian Lorentzen documented the Libor scandal as it broke blotchily through the sun-kissed skin of the “pinch-yourself-fun” London Olympics . . .
• Over on the LRB blog, a note on Joseph Brodsky, who was forced to leave the USSR in 1972, and would have turned 75 last Sunday. “Visiting Russia in 2003, Proffer Teasley was taken aback by a ‘new party line’ aimed at portraying Brodsky as a national hero and a martyr.” The Baffler is cosponsoring a Brodsky event this week, more details here.
• Taco Bell, whose latest advertising gimmick was thoroughly contextualized by A.S. Hamrah on the Baffler blog yesterday, has announced its aim to cut out artificial flavours. As CEO Greg Creed put it: “We have to clean up our menu labels. What people want are things on labels that they can pronounce.” So supportive!
• Unless we’ve missed something, Amazon has decided to start paying (some) taxes.