Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
I have said, many times, that the deepening progressive obsession with pop culture minutia is a profound strategic and analytical mistake. It devotes scarce political resources to concerns that are inherently disconnected from the actual lived oppression of most members of marginalized groups. It convinces a generation of young liberal people that the work of…
Polls whiz kid Nate Silver and presidential candidate Donald Trump.Photo illustration by Slate. Images by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images and Ethan Miller/Getty Images. For the past six months, one big question has loomed over the 2016 election: Is the candidacy of Donald J. Trump an amusing bit of reality TV or a terrifying and dangerous…
Following a meeting organized by the Arizona school district where six high school girls wore T-shirts spelling out the n-word (more or less), Don Harris, head of the Maricopa County chapter of the NAACP—who also happens to be white, and Jewish—commented on a reporter’s appearance: “Nice tits!” Tempe Union High School District invited about 50…
John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz take the stage in the Republican presidential debate on Nov. 10, 2015, in Milwaukee.Scott Olson/Getty Images People who call themselves leaders of the Republican Party—politicians, donors, strategists, elders—are panicking over an impending disaster. Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz are about…
Chris Hughes, the soon-to-be-former owner of The New Republic, recently purchased a West Village townhouse for $23.5 million (after unloading his old Soho loft for $8.5 million). According to the New York Post, Hughes’ new lair on West 12th Street boasts, among other amenities, a functional underground tunnel between its main building and a “carriage…
Developer Steven Witkoff is holding off on converting Manhattan’s Park Lane Hotel into luxury condominiums — for now. The owners are contemplating a renovation of the 46-story hotel at the foot of Central Park, Witkoff said in an interview. He led a group that acquired the property from the estate of Leona Helmsley for $660…
Martin Shkreli has recorded a video in which he disses Ghostface Killah and threatens to erase his contributions from Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album he paid millions for. In the video, Shkreli sips from a glass while being surrounded by three masked men. He also plays Once Upon a Time in…
As criminals continue to protect themselves with encryption and anonymization tech, cops are moving to hacking as an investigatory tool. Over the years, the FBI in particular has launched several campaigns to obtain data from suspects’ computers via malware, often using the term “Network Investigative Technique”, or NIT, to describe the software being used….
—- The usual definition of revenge porn is accompanied by an archetypal story: Girl meets boy, girl dates boy, girl consents to give nude photo to boy. A little while later, after girl breaks up with boy, boy turns out to be a monster who posts her photo on the Internet. —- There are stories…
Begin: WordPress Article Content Snapchat is ready to colonize the web with profile URLs that deeplink into its app and let you instantly follow someone. That makes it simple to add friends and celebrities so you fill your feed with content that keeps you coming back. By swiping down from the Snapchat camera to the…