Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
A few weeks ago, I went on one of my favorite podcasts — The Ezra Klein Show — to talk about burnout, workism, and our relationship to labor. In our conversation, I invoke the idea of “LARPing” your job, a phrase my partner uses to describe the way we try and show evidence that LOOK, OVER HERE,…
Transformational change cannot occur suddenly — and sudden changes rarely turn out to be transformational. It’s clear that common practices at many of our largest tech platforms must change, but hoping for a shouting-at-the-barricades revolution is unrealistic and possibly unhelpful. While we — representing doctors, health tech professionals, and elements of the policymaking community — recognize and share public dissatisfaction with…
Once you hit the first intersection in town, make a right onto Main Street. Go past the fire station and over the railroad tracks. Make your second right after the tracks. If you see a large metal building with a truck parked in overgrown grass, turn around; you’ve gone too far…” These are part of…
American companies continue to build surveillance tools that are used to violate human rights. Workers who refuse to comply deserve protections. Mr. Poulson is a former research scientist at Google. ImageA protester outside Google’s London headquarters in January urging the company to scrap the Dragonfly project, a censored search engine for China.CreditCreditBen Stansall/Agence France-Presse —…
The coward who gunned down 49 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand left behind a white-nationalist screed rationalizing his mass murder as a necessary act to preserve the white race. The manifesto is striking for its trolling—its combination of fanaticism, insincerity, and attempts at irony. The killer was particularly obsessed with the idea of “white genocide,” a…
“When you hear someone playing a piano, would you ever ask if the piano is the artist?” asks Mario Klingemann, an AI artist whose work Memories of Passerby I recently sold at auction for £40,000. Though his answer is ‘no,’ it may not actually be so simple, since instead of an inanimate machine, his medium…
Brandy Jensen, The Outline’s associate editor, has made a lot of mistakes in her life. Has she learned from them and become a wiser person as a result? Hahaha oh gosh no. But it does leave her uniquely qualified to tell you what not to do — because she’s probably done it. Dear Fuck-Up, My…
More than 100 Microsoft employees have signed a letter sent to CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith criticizing the company’s plans to build HoloLens AR tech for the military, the organizing group said Friday. The development is part of a $480 million military contract that Microsoft won this past November. The group’s letter demands…
Dan Mallory, a book editor turned novelist, is tall, good-looking, and clever. His novel, “The Woman in the Window,” which was published under a lightly worn pseudonym, A. J. Finn, was the hit psychological thriller of the past year. Like “Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn (2012), and “The Girl on the Train,” by Paula Hawkins (2015),…
Liam Neeson is sitting in an armchair with a flask of tea at his side. We are in the sprawling suite of a Manhattan hotel to talk about his latest film, Cold Pursuit. Just as he has in a number of roles since he became an action hero in his fifties, Neeson plays an everyman hell-bent…