Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
In many cities around the world—New York, San Francisco, London—most people find the rent to be unaffordable. Buying is out of the question. Perhaps that is because your city’s housing stock is now just another fungible financial instrument, like pork bellies. You, the middle class resident of a major urban area, may have complained at…
Gold’s traditional role as a store of wealth has been usurped by contemporary art and apartments in cities such as New York and London, according to Laurence D. Fink, head of the world’s biggest asset manager. “Historically gold was a great instrument for storing of wealth,” the chairman of BlackRock Inc. said at a conference…
One of today’s Pulitzer winners for local reporting isn’t actually a reporter anymore. The Daily Breeze’s Rob Kuznia won the prize alongside Rebecca Kimitch for a series on corruption in the Torrance, California school district. Now the former reporter, who had more than 15 years’ experience covering local affairs, is celebrating the career high in…
In the midst of a historic drought, Californians have no way of knowing who’s guzzling the most water. That’s not an accident. It’s by design, thanks to an obscure 1997 measure that weakened one of the state’s chief open government laws, the California Public Records Act. For the source of this legislation, look no further…
Los Angeles spends more than $100 million a year coping with homelessness, including as much as $87 million that goes to arrests, skid row patrols and mental health interventions, according to a report released Thursday. City librarians, recreation and parks, sanitation and paramedics also devote significant resources to handling homeless people, without clear guidelines or…
Slack announced yesterday that it raised $160 million at a $2.8 billion valuation. The company hasn’t spent a penny of the $120 million it raised just last October. When Slack raised that money, founder Stewart Butterfield said it was enough to last them 60 years. Besides creating a Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool, why exactly would a company take…
Just last year, Ben Bernanke was still serving as the head of the Federal Reserve—the most powerful central banking position in the world. Now, he’s going to work for a hedge fund. Is it possible—just possible—that we have a systemic problem? The “revolving door” between powerful governmental (or quasi-governmental, in the case of central bankers)…
Entry Text It’s 2015, and on average, women still make 78 cents to a man’s dollar. A new report goes beyond that oft-quoted statistic, and examines this discrepancy along racial, geographical and educational lines.The American Association of University Women’s (AAUW) “The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap” report breaks down the wage gap in…
I recently had an argument with a friend about games that require a constant internet connection. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” he kept repeating. “Everybody has the internet.” What’s funny about this is that my friend lives with his parents while attending college part-time and working a low-paid internship; his parents pay…
“Is anyone else freaking out right now?” said Dan Price, the owner of a small Seattle-based credit card processing company, to a room full of his employees after he informed them of his new salary policy. “I’m kind of freaking out.” The New York Times ran a story on April 13 about how Price, the founder and CEO of Gravity…