Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Sleep deprivation used to be a badge of honor: a sign you were busy and important and very much in demand. Snoozing was losing and sleep was for wimps. Now, however, Arianna Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution, a call-to-bed that promises to transform your life, “one night at a time”, is a New York Times bestseller,…
Every year, high school students and their parents spend much time, effort, and money on the college search. By comparison, they spend very little time focused on how they will spend their undergraduate years while in college. Yet a series of decisions that start the moment they secure their spot in the freshman class—from choosing…
In its relentless pursuit for growth, Uber needs new drivers, and many of those drivers need cars. To help them get started, Uber has been offering short-term leases since July through a wholly owned Delaware-based subsidiary called Xchange Leasing, LLC. It partners with auto dealerships, advertises to drivers, manages risk, and even pays repo men to chase…
Photo Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal. It was revealed this week that he had bankrolled the wrestler Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media. Credit Robyn Twomey SAN FRANCISCO — After the news that one of Silicon Valley’s stars secretly funded a lawsuit to bring down a gossip site, the overwhelming response in the…
No major American cultural force is more opposed to examination and more active in suppressing it today than Silicon Valley. So when it was revealed this week that Facebook board member Peter Thiel had been secretly bankrolling a lawsuit to inflict financial ruin on the news and gossip site Gawker, Silicon Valley cheered. The investor…
Defenders of litigation finance claim noble motives: They are merely equalizing access to a legal system that leaves too many on the wrong side of the courthouse doors. (It’s hard not to hear echoes here of Thiel’s claim that he’s spent millions to after Gawker for “philanthropic” reasons.) According to a post at Burford Capital,…
At first blush, the secret support that the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel provided for Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker is a salacious yarn about money, power, gossip and revenge. But it is also about something more important: an aggressive bid by the very wealthy to control the American news media at a time when…
It’s true: Kids Today are more dependent on their parents than Kids Yesterday. At least when it comes to housing. Nearly a third of Americans age 18 to 34 were living with their parents in 2014, according to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center. That’s the highest share since the Great Depression. It…
Peter Thiel offers a case study in the way America’s top tax rate is much, much too low. This week, we learned that Thiel — a Silicon Valley techno-libertarian billionaire who co-founded PayPal, sits on the board of Facebook and is estimated to be worth $2.7 billion — is trying to sue Gawker Media out…
Gwyneth Paltrow’s pop-up shop, goop mrkt, came to San Francisco this week. (Yep, note the very trendy lack of vowels!) Nitasha Tiku / BuzzFeed The shop opened at 140 Maiden Lane, a “stunning small-scale prototype of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of the Guggenheim Museum,” which feels VERY GOOP. At the goop mrkt’s opening party, there was “pizza” from…