Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Of all the disagreements that drove President Trump and then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis apart, one of the most perilous had to do with blowing up Iranian boats. “Why don’t we sink them?” the president would ask. Acting on an obsession that went back to the campaign, Trump repeatedly asked his national security team for plans…
This past week, we saw the first concrete evidence that Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia — and it seemed as if no one cared. That’s a reason to ask a disturbing question: What if the slow burn of Robert Mueller’s investigation ends with a fizzle, not an explosion? What if Mueller, in his role as special counsel,…
Germany is about to remind Facebook Inc. that the tribulations of 2018 are far from over. In fact, they’re about to get even more real. The country’s Federal Cartel Office intends to ban Facebook from collecting user data from third parties, the newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported. This will also prohibit data sharing between WhatsApp and…
Alden Global Capital, the most reviled newspaper owner in the business, now wants to buy Gannett, the United States’ largest daily newspaper company. As reported Sunday evening by The Wall Street Journal — and then confirmed via early Monday morning press release — Alden, through its Digital First Media/MNG Enterprise ownership, has offered a 23…
What stopped the almost-done McClatchy purchase of Tribune Publishing? Two familiar words: Michael Ferro. Tribune and McClatchy offer competing narratives of what derailed the deal, which had been expected to be announced as early as next Monday. Instead, the Tribune board gave it a thumbs down Thursday afternoon. Was it the threat of an antitrust…
White supremacist congressman Steve King is sorry he gave you all “heartburn” by asking The New York Times what’s so “offensive” about being a white supremacist earlier this week, but that’s about it. King, who just entered his ninth term representing Iowa in Congress, took the House floor today to say he regretted making a…
Photo: Susan Walsh/AP If you’re new on the job and your boss is a tyrannical creep who yells at you that you’re fucking everything up, you could be a personal assistant in Los Angeles. Or you could be President Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who, according to Axios, appeared to have gone…
Nervously, I gave a bounty hunter a phone number. He had offered to geolocate a phone for me, using a shady, overlooked service intended not for the cops, but for private individuals and businesses. Armed with just the number and a few hundred dollars, he said he could find the current location of most phones…
In the three days since President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to the country, you’ve probably already forgotten the significance of his parroted talking points about a border wall, or all that weird nose breathing. If you live in Seattle and were watching it on your local Fox affiliate, however, you probably can’t stop thinking…
A six-hour standoff between police and a 40-year-old man who allegedly splashed gasoline on the floor of a Novato, California, convenience store “while threatening to burn it down” and later fled to a nearby Safeway ended when police defused the situation with a robot carrying a vape pen, the Sacramento Bee reported Sunday, citing reports…