Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
close shareTools The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have…
Disappointing, but not surprising. (Steve Debenport/iStock) As a follow-up to recent studies on sexism and harassment in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), researchers studied the Internet’s reaction to the evidence those studies provided — and it turned out the way you’d expect, if you’ve ever been on the Internet. Male commenters flipped out. The new study’s results were published…
Many drunken New Year’s resolutions concern losing weight, saving money or quitting unhealthy habits. But in the quiet of our minds, away from the midnight celebrations, many of our unspoken resolutions possess more emotional weight. Get more into the dating scene. Lose that single status by summer. End the relationship that’s been dragging on too…
A tribute at the Place de la Republique, in Paris, to victims killed during the attack at Charlie Hebdo. Credit Photograph by Aurelien Meunier/Getty The murders today in Paris are not a result of France’s failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They’re not about French military action against the…
Hitler’s Cartoon Problem and the Art of Controversy Low’s strategy of making Hitler silly rather than scary pinched a touchy nerve. When the English government was pursuing the policy of appeasement before the Second World War, they found that one of Germany’s demands was that Low stop making fun of Hitler. As Lord Halifax, a…
The internet book world has been abuzz with discussion about the ethics and logistics of crowd funding books. Well, not books, really. They’ve been talking about crowd funding an author’s career. When author Stacey Jay’s publisher declined to contract the next book in her YA series, she took to Kickstarter to fund the project. This isn’t uncommon,…
Is ‘authenticity’ another word for exclusion? The tech and design industries, like Portlandia, are worryingly minority-f… Brooklyn Beta vs. Afro-Futurism — Human Parts — Medium.
Photo Credit Joon Mo Kang close shareTools Amid the bacchanal of disruption, let us pause to honor the disrupted. The streets of American cities are haunted by the ghosts of bookstores and record stores, which have been destroyed by the greatest thugs in the history of the culture industry. Writers hover between a decent poverty…
Previously, from the same author. When my employer called me into his office and granted me paternity leave on the birth of my first child, I had no idea what I was in for. Most of my male coworkers had already left the office at this point, having impregnated willing strangers in order to take…
This Is How We Forget History January 5, 2015 – Features I’m usually patient with new TV shows. I’m a Fringe fan, after all: sometimes it takes a few episodes or seasons for a show to find its legs. So like, I was skeptical about AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire, but willing to give it…