Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Kenneth Eng is on the other side of viral now, where it’s hard to see him. 11 years ago, in 2007, it was easy to see him. He achieved a brief burst of viral infamy for writing a column titled “Why I Hate Blacks,” inexplicably published by the now-defunct AsianWeek. He had every quality we…
Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel—who secretly schemed to annihilate Gawker Media, a goal he achieved in August 2016, and to force its founder, Nick Denton, into personal bankruptcy—may yet have cause to regret that he has reveled so publicly in his vengeful triumph. The German-born, Donald Trump-supporting (with a $1.25 million campaign donation) Thiel is…
Brendan Fraser wants me to meet his horse. “I got this horse because it’s a big horse,” he says, standing in a barn in Bedford, New York. He removes a green bandanna from his pocket and gently wipes the animal’s eyes. The horse’s name is Pecas—the Spanish word for freckles. Fraser met him on…
Medium has suspended the accounts of Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, and Laura Loomer. Unfortunately, this means that “articles” like Cernovich’s “How I Would Run for Congress” are no more. Links to any of the suspended accounts (or their published works) redirect to the dreary white suspension page, which reads “This page is unavailable.” Screenshot of…
GIF When Ester Ledecká crossed the finish line of this morning’s run of the women’s Super-G a hundredth of a second ahead of reigning gold medalist Anna Veith, the Czech couldn’t believe she’d beaten the Austrian champ. Ledecká, after all, is best known for her achievements in a completely different event: snowboarding, where she’s won…
The French ice dancing team of Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron is our pick to win the event in Pyeongchang, but an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction today threatened to sink those chances, if not for Papadakis’s steely determination. IOC Papadakis told press after the performance that “it was pretty distracting… my worst nightmare happening at the…
There’s a premise built into the structure of the Olympics that pretty much every single Olympian, even those far down the standings, are elite athletes at the top of their game performing at a level most fans could only dream of. Freestyle skier Elizabeth Swaney is an affront to this notion, and her, um, laconic…
January 24, 2018 01/24/2018 4:19 pm By Eric Levitz@EricLevitz Share The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was once an agency dedicated to preventing banks and credit-card companies from scamming ordinary Americans. Now, it is an agency dedicated to protecting potential financial scammers from legal penalties. This rebrand is the achievement of one Mick Mulvaney….
Twitter “Just an Ass-Backward Tech Company”: How Twitter Lost the Internet War Twitter faces more challenges than most technology companies: ISIS terrorists, trolls, bots, and Donald Trump. But its last line of defense, the company’s head of trust and safety, Del Harvey, isn’t making things easier. “Del overcomplicates things . . . and you can…
Image by Jim Cooke, photo by Shutterstock The best thing to do when the dishwasher has finished running is to take out all the clean dishes and put them away. The worst thing to do is to take out just a few clean dishes, and then have someone else come along, get confused, and start…