Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Photo by Paula Mariel Salischiker For 20 years, privacy advocates have been sounding the alarm about commercial online surveillance, the way that companies gather deep dossiers on us to help marketers target us with ads. This pitch fell flat: by and large, people were skeptical of the efficacy of targeted advertising; the ads we got…
I’ve never quite understood Marvel’s reluctance to introduce a gay character in their movies, mostly because have you seen those movies? They are gay, honey. They are fully on the precipice of coming out. They are so gay that I found pictures of Tom Daley in their search history. But which movie is the gayest? To…
Nearly six months before his death, the embattled 20-year-old rapper XXXTentacion shared an urgent manifesto via Instagram Live. Eerily prescient, his words belied a sense of macabre resignation. “If I’m gonna die or ever be a sacrifice, I wanna make sure that my life made at least 5 million kids happy or they found some…
As the country’s blood pressure continues to rise over the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border, tempers flared Tuesday night on Fox News. On the cable news giant’s evening newscast, former senior Democratic National Committee adviser Zac Petkanas began relating an anecdote of a “10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken…
Comcast and Disney are about to engage in a bidding war for the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox, and analysts tell Axios that Comcast is likely to win because it’s more desperate for what Fox is trying to offload. Why it matters: There is huge pressure on media and telecom companies to compete with…
Left: Migrant children at a Kansas City detention center in 2014. Photo by AP/Eric Gay, File. Right: Donald Trump. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty When the Trump administration announced this month it would criminally prosecute everyone who crossed the border illegally, which meant jailing immigrant parents and separating them from their children, it effectively manufactured a whole new…
Can we stop pretending that the right cares about civility? Whether it’s the faux outrage over the television host Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a “cunt” or the yammering over Robert DeNiro’s “fuck Trump” battle cry at the Tony awards, I’m tired of those on the right feigning shock. After all, they voted in the…
Screenshot: Fox News After teasing that he might make an “unannounced trip” down to the White House lawn for an interview with his bosom buddies at Fox & Friends, President Trump did just that on Friday morning, giving a wide-ranging interview where he adamantly praised the North Korean dictator, repeatedly praised Fox News, and bizarrely…
Reality TV star and former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan, right, whose real name is Terry Bollea, and his attorney David Houston, left, look on as attorney Charles Harder, speaks during a news conference at the United States Courthouse, in Tampa, Florida. Review Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue By Ryan…
When Michelle Wolf says she didn’t pay that much attention to all the hoopla that followed her White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech, in which she called Sarah Huckabee Sanders an Uncle Tom for white women, she is probably being at least a little bit disingenuous. That she has been very busy, though, is true: The week after, she flew…