Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Entrepreneur Elon Musk thinks journalism needs fixing, and he’s got just the answer. Enraged last week by negative media coverage of Tesla, his car company, the tech billionaire proposed a rating system in which the public would vote on the credibility of individual journalists and news sites. As with all things Musk, the sketchy idea…
Earlier this month, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced plans to prosecute “100 percent” of migrants illegally crossing the Mexican border, it became official US policy to routinely separate children from their parents. Already, hundreds of children have been ripped from their families: 658 kids in the first 13 days of the program alone, Customs…
Watching the film Phantom Thread, I kept wondering why I was supposed to be interested in a control freak who is consistently unpleasant to all the people around him. I kept looking at the other characters—his sister who manages his couture business, his seamstresses, eventually the furniture (as a child, I read a very nice…
An image from The Happytime Murders. Photo: STX The first trailer for the hard-R-rated puppet film The Happytime Murders says that the film is “no Sesame, all Street,” and the people responsible for Sesame Street are not happy about it. In fact, they’re suing. Sesame Workshop, the company responsible for the long-running family program Sesame…
Companies hiring for technical positions often slip language into their job postings that appeals to men. They say they’re looking for “ninjas,” who seek to “obliterate competition,” and are capable of “dominating.” By now, these wordings are a well understood form of bias that produces more male candidates than female. But one job in the…
Photo: Mark Wilson (Getty Images) Does Betsy DeVos care more about furthering the xenophobic and racist policies of this administration than she does about educating the children of this country? The education secretary’s latest statement would lead us to believe that is indeed the case, since she basically told schools to call the police on…
Illustration: Gizmodo What’s the most terrifying thing you can imagine an Amazon Echo doing? Think realistically. Would it be something simple but sinister, like the artificially intelligent speaker recording a conversation between you and a loved one and then sending that recording to an acquaintance? That seems pretty bad to me. And guess what: it’s…
Image: Getty This week, Facebook announced that it be would rolling out a new system to combat revenge porn and explicit photos being shared on the site, Messenger, or Instagram. And all the social media network needs to protect your nude photos is…for you to first submit your nude photos. Friends, please do not submit…
Image: Youtube If you were thinking that Spotify’s new “hate content and hateful conduct policy”—which was faulty to begin with—would stop other alleged abusers’ music from being promoted, think again. Only R. Kelly and rapper XXXTentacion (who was charged with battery of a pregnant woman) were initially singled out as part of the policy, which…
After making an ass of himself in an interview with the New York Times during which he defended costar Jeffrey Tambor’s history of verbal abuse toward Jessica Walter (who tearfully recounted Tambor’s behavior), Jason Bateman has released a multi-part (though strangely un-threaded) apology. A Big Fuck Off to the Men of Arrested Development There…