Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
A major wildfire near Fort McMurray in Canada has forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate the area and destroyed roughly a fifth of local homes. One of the affected houses belonged to a man by the name of James O’Reilly, who got a uniquely intimate perspective on his home’s demise thanks to a connected…
“[The Amazon Echo] is opening up a vast new realm in personal computing, and gently expanding the role that computers will play in our future,” writes Farhad Manjoo in the Times. Manjoo, like others, goes on to address what makes the Echo remarkable: first, dramatically improved voice recognition and fast response times make talking with…
If you’ve spent any time on social media, I can bet that you might have come across a BuzzFeed piece or two. Originator of the iconic listicle, with over 200 million audience members worldwide, BuzzFeed continues to dominate media in the millennial era. I happen to know first-hand how pervasive this content is to my…
AddThis Sharing Buttons above Written by Victoria Myers Illustrations by Desiree Nasim April 28th, 2016 In 1944, journalist Martha Gellhorn hid in the bathroom of a hospital ship crossing the English Channel and became the only woman to land on Normandy Beach. In 1945, she was one of the first journalists—male or female—to visit and…
The last time my mother and I had an actual conversation was on Mother’s Day 2014, when she told me that I shouldn’t have bothered calling her. Switching between Russian and heavily accented English, she said it was insulting for me to wish her well on this holiday when I hadn’t done anything to make…
Far off in a hidden part of Reddit, a conversation about lipstick is about to turn ugly. The commenters have noticeably girly names, like “PrincessBatman,” “BaroquePrincess,” “KittenBeauty” and (ahem) “MindVagina.” Above them is a banner decorated with a mildly deranged collage, like something a teenage goth would blu-tack inside her school locker. It features…
Photo by MarishaSha/Shutterstock RenderHTML [if gte IE 9]>> Loading… We don’t have data for people under the age of 18. Okay What’s your number? How do I stack up? Don’t worry, we’re not collecting your data. Data based on answers from more than 13,000 Americans in the General Social Survey, 2006 – 2014. …
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 taboos about online porn break down and new generations of singles see dating sites and apps as their first stop in the search for love, marketers have spotted an opportunity. These digital venues have become the next logical place for advertising to grow and reach an expanding audience. In the process, they have changed…
In January, Samantha Wuu quit her job in Boston to move home to New Jersey and support her mother through two family illnesses. To take her mind off her worries, she also took up coloring. She very quickly found it hard to stop. “I was really, really stressed when this was going on,” says the…