Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
I am on the record as liking Uber. I like its service, which has revolutionized urban mobility by improving convenience, taking cars off the road, and (most likely) reducing incidents of impaired driving. I’m partial to its swashbuckling style, particularly when confronting taxi interests and municipal regulators who are more concerned with self-preservation than the…
Billionaire Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan make for an unlikely couple. This Silicon Valley Billionaire Has Been Secretly Funding Hulk Hogan’s Lawsuits Against Gawker – Forbes. Source: This Silicon Valley Billionaire Has Been Secretly Funding Hulk Hogan’s Lawsuits Against Gawker – Forbes
George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. One year later, he was acquitted of second-degree murder; four years later, he’s no closer to feeling the gravity of his actions. Zimmerman is auctioning the gun used to kill Martin on UnitedGunGroup.com on Thursday and describes it as “a piece of American history.”…
Two weekends ago, after Beyoncé released a mythologically forceful visual album that attached the most significant art of her career to the narrative of her husband Jay Z cheating on her with a woman she called “Becky with the good hair,” the fashion designer Rachel Roy—presumably operating of her own volition—inserted herself in that narrative…
As a young astronomer, Joan Schmelz worked alongside men and the pinups they tacked to the lab walls. She didn’t have a precise vocabulary for the subtle harassment she experienced every day. Schmelz’s supervisor gossiped about her to colleagues and demeaned her, making inappropriate comments that highlighted their uneven power dynamic. When Schmelz, now a…
Female bloggers have a long, sordid history of harassment on the Web.IPGGutenbergUKLtd/Thinkstock In 2014, while still recovering from a very public spat with Google over SEO marketing techniques that resulted in a brief suspension from Google’s search results and an 80 percent drop in traffic to the site, the lyrics and annotation site Rap…
Citation, Appropriation, and Fair Use: News Genius Picks Up Again Where Failures Left Off As an old man of the Internet, I’ve seen several waves of “scribble on top of other people’s pages” plug-ins and web site. Anyone remember Third Voice? It was a browser plug-in that first appeared in 1999. that let you annotate…
Download a PDF of this report. Why investigate ‘trigger warnings’? Waves of media attention tell us that college students are demanding that professors provide so-called ‘trigger warnings’ to flag material that might cause distress or discomfort, or possibly trigger a panic attack in students with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As a cover story in The…
Among critics looking for examples of coddling on campus, no action has been ridiculed more than the “trigger warning,” in which college professors caution their students that the class will discuss a subject that could produce a painful emotional response. But the criticism may have outpaced the pro-trigger-warning activists. A new report says that almost…
“Tulane Students Demand Hoda Kotb Be Dropped As Commencement Speaker, Claim They ‘Deserve Better’” –John Binder, The Hayride Dear Tulane “Elitist” Petitioners, Congratulations. You’re about to graduate from one of the most respected universities in the United States. You’re following in the footsteps of many proud alumni who hold their alma mater in…