Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Photo: faithgoldy/Instagram Long before Faith Goldy became a poster girl for white nationalism, she was one of the most popular students at our all-girls private school in Toronto, Havergal College. A year ahead of me, Faith was larger-than-life, a natural for big roles in school plays, while most of us fought for supporting parts. Our…
SAN FRANCISCO — Google said on Thursday that it would end its practice of forced arbitration for claims of sexual harassment or assault after more than 20,000 employees staged a walkout last week to protest how the internet company handles cases of sexual misconduct. Workers at Google had called for an end to arbitration, among…
ImageCreditCreditPhoto Illustration by Emily Simms work Friend Being a grown-up means being responsible for your choices. Like many grown-ups, you can also decide you don’t need to care. CreditCreditPhoto Illustration by Emily Simms Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, even if you want them…
There is a family friend, a man I’ve known for decades. A highly educated man with total financial security in his recent retirement. A man who always had a good story to tell or an interesting side of a conversation to hold up. Then, a few years ago, he got on Facebook. Reading his timeline…
GMAIL’S “SMART REPLY” FEATURE OFFERS three options in a choose-your-own-adventure game at the bottom of received emails: “Got it.” “Got it, thanks!” and “Looks good!” are common choices. Sometimes the suggested responses are lightly ridiculous. An “I love you” email can prompt “It works!”—perhaps an overcorrection from an early bug when the algorithm was saying “I love…
Imagine if Peter Parker had never become Spider-Man. Instead, he kept getting bullied, yet still had the compulsion to dress in spandex. And he started a band. He would probably sound a lot like Ninja Sex Party. The comedy songwriting pair of Daniel Avidan and Brian Wecht have created the quintessential Internet Band: Their music, first…
Death and taxes may be inevitable, but the business of death is changing.Funeral homes that have been around for decades have been closing around San Francisco as sons and daughters of owners pursue other careers. Morticians are cashing out in the hot real estate market by selling their building sites for bigger housing developments. Duggan’s…
In this newsletter and column, we talk about power a lot: how to get it, how to share it, how to do good with it. And if you’ve been to any journalism conference or workshop lately, they’ve almost certainly touched on diversity. OpenNews is an organization dedicated to supporting newsroom developers, designers, journalists and editors…
I have been entirely agnostic about Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Republican presidents nominate conservative judges, and Democratic presidents nominate liberal judges. This guy sounded like he was entirely qualified for the job. When Dianne Feinstein made her announcement about the super-secret mystery letter by the anonymous woman that she had sent to the FBI,…
As soon as Christine Blasey Ford went public with her accusation that the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when the two were teens, a chorus of conservative political commentators came to his defense. Some of them aimed primarily to sow doubt about Ford’s story, but others weighed the accusations, only to conclude that the…