Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
On polling day, last Thursday, a horde of sunburnt, smiling Labour Party volunteers hit the streets of Plymouth, our medium-sized coastal city near the southwestern tip of Britain. We knocked on door after door and made the case for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union. Knocking on doors in the weeks leading up…
I arrived at naptime at Bethany Mandel’s 2nd floor apartment in Central New Jersey. Evidence of her two children under 3 — toys, toys and more toys — was everywhere. She’s a full-time mom and writer who works from home. And so amid the kiddie detritus is her laptop, open, on the couch. But that’s not…
Photo Credit Bianca Bagnarelli ACCORDING to some prominent voices in the tech world, artificial intelligence presents a looming existential threat to humanity: Warnings by luminaries like Elon Musk and Nick Bostrom about “the singularity” — when machines become smarter than humans — have attracted millions of dollars and spawned a multitude of conferences. But this…
The superiority of experiences has become our era’s reigning banality. Consider last year’s Time profile of American anti-stuff advocates: “Minimalists like to say that they’re living more meaningfully, more deliberately, that getting rid of most material possessions in their lives allows them to focus on what’s important: friends, hobbies, travel, experiences.” We hear much the…
How ironic. The architect of North Carolina’s anti-transgender “bathroom bill,” which took away the right of transgender people to use the restroom that matches their gender identity, compared LGBT rights activists with the Taliban. Just last week, the killer in the latest major attack on the LGBT community, which left 49 people dead in Orlando, Florida,…
View this image › People await word of whether the Supreme Court would rule on the pending abortion provider restrictions case on June 23, 2016. Chris Geidner/BuzzFeed ID: 8987431 WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down two provisions of a Texas law imposing restrictions on abortion providers. The case, Whole Woman’s Health v….
As I taught, I lived in a locked compound under complete surveillance: Every room was bugged, every class recorded. I scribbled down conversations as they happened and buried my notes in a lesson plan. I wrote at night, erasing the copy from my laptop each time I signed off, saving it to USB sticks…
People have been reporting incidents of racism believed to be fuelled by the result of the EU referendum, including alleged racist graffiti and cards reading “no more Polish vermin” posted through letterboxes. Suspected racist graffiti was found on the front entrance of the Polish Social and Cultural Association (POSK) in Hammersmith, west London, early on…
Photo In a photo in Jack Daniel’s old office, Daniel, with mustache and white hat, is shown at his distillery in Tennessee in the late 1800s. The man to his right could be a son of Nearis Green, a slave who helped teach Daniel how to make whiskey. LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — Every year, about 275,000…
Over the last 15 years, there has been a marked surge in performative fandom. What used to be niche or “special interest” (read: known to a vast underground but pointedly unexplored by mainstream outlets) has slipped into the spaces it once never hoped to enter. People now talk about cosplaying and fan fiction – among…