Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
The latest—never the last—horrifying deadly shooting rampage in America was brought to us by Mainak Sarkar, a disaffected former UCLA student who murdered Professor William Klug over an imagined slight. Before killing Klug and then himself, Sarkar also killed his estranged wife Ashley Hasti. While no one was paying attention or keeping track, Hasti’s murder…
I’m not sure where the idea came from. I was probably tired from working two jobs, or maybe I was getting sick. My main job as a karaoke host means that everyday I handle microphones that have been spit on, rubbed against chapped lips, and Total Eclipse of the Heart-ed into a state of contamination that…
I’ve been trying to write this essay for a few weeks. Every time I sit down to start, only bile comes out. The hurt I want to document goes deeper than a neat thesis statement. I feel betrayed, and betrayal is more like an infection than a broken bone. There is no way to easily…
Image caption “Mahalet and the honeymilk,” by Meg Griffiths, from the series Honeymilk End K2 Item Layout JoomlaWorks “K2” (v2.7.0) | Learn more about K2 at http://getk2.org //MAIN CONTENT SIDEBAR RIGHT //SIDEBAR RIGHT SPOTLIGHT 2 //SPOTLIGHT 2 In late March, Eater published a Hillary Dixler essay, “How Gullah Cuisine Has Transformed Charleston Dining.” The title was clickbait….
On Thursday, the Tor Project quietly announced the departure of leading digital rights activist Jacob Appelbaum from its board. At first, they didn’t say why — now, we know. On Friday afternoon, members of the cryptography community accused Appelbaum publicly of multiple instances of sexual assault against people in the Tor community, and attributed these…
Donald Trump, whose campaign for president has crashed through one barrier after another, has again moved his candidacy into highly questionable territory, threatening to stir more racial animosity in an already divided country and putting at risk his party’s relationship with the nation’s fastest-growing minority group. Over the past week, Trump has repeatedly cited the…
A former Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months in jail because a longer sentence would have “a severe impact on him,” according to a judge. At his sentencing Thursday, his victim read him a letter describing the “severe impact” the assault had on her. Katie J.M. Baker…
Image: Jason Koebler Jewish writers and other public figures have gotten used to seeing their names pop up in forums and Twitter mentions with three parentheses around their name. Yair Rosenberg, a senior writer at the Jewish magazine Tablet, might see something like this: (((Yair Rosenberg))) or (((Rosenberg))). Rosenberg has known for years that…
In the early days of the social web, putting someone’s name in multiple parentheses was meant to give that person a cute virtual hug. Today, it’s something far more sinister. Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white nationalists have begun using three sets of parentheses encasing a Jewish surname — for instance, (((Fleishman))) — to identify and…
A Google Chrome plugin with the seemingly innocent name of “Coincidence Detector” has one sole purpose: compiling and exposing the identities the names in three sets of parentheses — i.e., (((Fleishman))) — on web pages. As Mic detailed in a story earlier this week, white supremacists have begun using the construction, called an “(((echo))),” to…