Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999. Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm/The Kobal Collection END CLASS=”PLAYERWRAP” Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast END ID=”RES459877994″ CLASS=”BUCKETWRAP EMBED_PLAYER_WRAP RESAUDIO CLEARFIX LARGE” Unless you’ve spent the past year or so in an ice cave on Hoth — or have the misfortune…
START “MORE ON” SINGLE STORY BOX v. 2 END “MORE ON” SINGLE STORY BOX v. 2 Firmus Piett’s most memorable scene in the Star Wars series is the moment of his promotion. Standing silently in the background, he watches nervously as his boss, Admiral Ozzel, gets telepathically strangled by Darth Vader, the homicidal sadist everyone…
From Darth Vader coffee mugs to holiday sweaters with Chewbacca in a Santa hat, “Star Wars” has unleashed a galaxy of goods. Cash registers will ring again when “The Force Awakens” hits theaters on Dec. 18. The film could generate more than $9 billion in revenue for Disney and its partners, from cinemas to TV…
After Josef Stalin’s death in 1953, a mysterious note was found among his private papers. It had been sent by Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin’s revolutionary comrade and for many years the Communist Party’s intellectual figurehead, while awaiting execution after his 1938 show trial for numerous imaginary crimes. Using a nickname only known to the dictator’s oldest…
There I was, standing in line on 68th Street waiting to get into the New York press screening of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (a film you may have heard something about) and cursing myself for being the sort of person who follows the rules. I could see other critics, either through ignorance, deviousness or…
(Photos by Nicky Steidel) When Hilly Kristal opened CBGB OMFUG on the Bowery in 1973, he served his special chili—cooked in the presence of the chef’s pet rat, “Hilly’s Chili” contained surprise seasonings like cigarette ashes and bodily fluids. But the venue was known for the music, not the menu—the Talking Heads, Blondie, and The…
Published Dec. 18, 2015 10:27 am Updated Dec. 18, 2015 10:28 am POLITICO Media Margaret Sullivan will conclude her tenure as public editor of The New York Times when her four-year contract expires in eight months, she told Poynter today. “Yes, I am headed into the home stretch of my four-year term,” she said in…
Police say a 15-year-old high school football player was killed by stray bullets as he shielded three teenage girls from gunshots. (Reuters) When the shooting began Thursday night in Knoxville, Tenn., Zaevion Dobson faced a split-second choice: run away and save himself, or use his body as a shield to protect those around him. Nobody…
The Year in Style 2015 By JACOB BERNSTEIN Sometime around the end of 2014, the publicist Alan Nierob received a call at his office at Rogers & Cowan in Los Angeles. The caller was a former client, Bruce Jenner, who explained that after years of gender dysphoria, he had begun the transition to become a…
Last night, after nearly 5 hours of discussion and witness testimony, Austin’s City Council pulled the trigger on an amendment to the city’s code that has far-reaching implications for the future of mobility in American cities. Under pressure from those in favor of the ordinance, the Council chose to enact policy without the due diligence that thousands…