Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Americans today face a profound challenge to preserve our common values and national promise. Wage stagnation at home and our declining influence abroad have left Americans angry and frustrated. And yet Washington, D.C., offers nothing but gridlock and partisan finger-pointing. Worse, the current presidential candidates are offering scapegoats instead of solutions, and they are promising…
Illustration: AP Something really dramatic is happening to our media landscape, the public sphere, and our journalism industry, almost without us noticing and certainly without the level of public examination and debate it deserves. Our news ecosystem has changed more dramatically in the past five years than perhaps at any time in the past five…
Liu et al., “PLOS ONE” A figure from a paper that “PLOS ONE” retracted after its mentions of “the Creator” attracted widespread criticism. But did the open-access journal act too hastily? Some now say it should have let the authors, based in China, correct what may have been a clumsy translation. PLOS ONE, the world’s…
Facebook has announced that its Instant Articles program will be open to publishers “of any size, anywhere in the world” starting on April 12, 2016. And with the free plugin we’re unveiling today, you’ll be able to prepare your self-hosted or VIP WordPress for the demands of this new channel. Install it now from GitHub (it’s…
(REUTERS/Jim Young) It is amazing how little the Democratic race has really changed over the last several months. Hillary Clinton is the odds-on favorite to win the nomination. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) is leading a revolt from the left. Sanders speaks to white ideological liberals and young Democrats. Clinton speaks to practically everyone else in…
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has left the anticipated adaptation of Sandman, citing creative differences between his vision of the film and that of New Line Cinemas. Sandman was a comic series written by Neil Gaiman, about Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams. The series gained a considerable fanbase and critical acclaim over the 75 issues produced between 1989…
As a retired military officer, I watched last night’s Republican debate from Detroit (transcript here) with a special focus on which candidate is qualified to lead the military as commander-in-chief. I knew, of course, that Donald Trump had promised in the past to use torture against America’s enemies (last night, he called them “animals”), that…
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz DURING oral arguments last week before the Supreme Court in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, Justice Elena Kagan noted that she was struck by the clear relationship between abortion restrictions in Texas and the closing of abortion clinics. “It’s almost like the perfect controlled experiment as to the effect of the law, isn’t…
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz told supporters that as the votes are still being counted, “the networks have called the state of Kansas for us.” (Reuters) The Gridiron Dinner is a Washington institution — politicians making fun of one another. But few jokes at the expense of one’s colleagues are this good. From Vice President Biden’s…
According to data provided by Uber to BuzzFeed News, the company received five claims of rape, and “fewer than” 170 claims of sexual assault directly related to an Uber ride as inbound tickets to its customer service database between December 2012 and August 2015. Uber provided these numbers as a rebuttal to screenshots obtained by…