Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Casey Affleck accepting the award for best actor for “Manchester by the Sea” at the Critics’ Choice Awards in December. Credit Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press LOS ANGELES — This was supposed to be the awards season when Hollywood, having been scorched by consecutive #OscarsSoWhite years, avoided tumult over race. Not so. In heated conversations…
Amid a wave of criticism on Monday, House Republicans are reversing course on a plan to kill the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), an independent body created to investigate unethical wrongdoing by lawmakers. House Republican met in secret on Sunday evening and voted to rein in the OCE by subjecting it to oversight from the…
Farmer Challenges French Immigration Laws Cédric Herrou from the Roya Valley near the Italian border is on trial and igniting debate for having helped bring people into France illegally. NICE, France — At times it was hard to know who was on trial, the smuggler or the state. The defendant, Cédric Herrou, 37, a slightly…
The troubled blood testing company Theranos has announced another 155 layoffs, just months after cutting 340 staff in October. In total the company, which was once one of the country’s most valuable tech startups, has cut about 70% of its staff in the last three months. Theranos said about 220 employees will remain in the…
Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Bill and Hillary Clinton have decided to attend the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States, according to two sources with knowledge of their plans. The Clintons will join former Presidents George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, who have also announced that they will attend. George…
tl;dr: An insurance-related startup named EverQuote was accused of misleading consumers. Mattermark investigates. When money is at stake and transacting parties have asymmetric information, there’s opportunity for exploitation. Companies can take advantage of in-the-dark investors, just as investors can pull a fast one on companies. Hence the phrase “vulture capitalists.” Recently, a fast-growing startup’s misleading advertising campaign, timed…
Born to a man who can’t possibly understand, and the woman who chose him over her magic. Born to take care of two brothers who have powers they must, at all costs, hide. Born to leadership. Born to duty. Minerva. Prefect, Head Girl, winner of Transfiguration Today’s Most Promising Newcomer award. Minerva McGonagall is born…
What if, a recent piece of speculative fiction in Vanity Fair wonders aloud, Megyn Kelly isn’t a poisonous bigot and shameless cable news demagogue, but a complex, flawed icon of modern feminism? Like most science fiction, this is a pack of lies meant for babies. Megyn Kelly is just as racist—or cynically willing to play…
Photo: Vice/HBO It’s a fairly paralyzing time to be a guilty white American liberal. With Donald Trump elected on the basis of one of the race-baitiest presidential campaigns in modern American history, Republicans firmly in power, and mounting evidence that progress toward racial equality has been stalled out for years if not decades, it feels…
Image by Jim Cooke Last week, I asked people who voted for Donald Trump to write in and explain why they made that choice. They did! We got dozens of emails from Trump supporters telling us why they voted the way they did, and I have grouped selections of them into general categories…