Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
One day in March of this year, a Google engineer named Justine Tunney created a strange and ultimately doomed petition at the White House website. The petition proposed a three-point national referendum, as follows: 1. Retire all government employees with full pensions. 2. Transfer administrative authority to the tech industry. 3. Appoint [Google executive chairman]…
Illustration: Art Handler One night in early April, roughly 20 of the Democratic Party’s highest-profile donors from the financial industry sat down over dinner to discuss how exactly they were feeling about the 2020 presidential race. For the most part, it wasn’t great. Convened by two veterans of liberal fund-raising — investors Steven Rattner and…
On November 8, Mark S. Luckie shared a lengthy memo with his co-workers before leaving his job at Facebook. In his 2,500-word note, which he releasedpublicly this past Tuesday, Luckie wrote that Facebook has “a black people problem,” and that it actively discriminates against both black Facebook users and its own black employees. Luckie, who previously…
White House chief of staff John Kelly and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders listen during a Roosevelt Room event Oct. 31, 2017, at the White House in Washington, D.C. Photo: Alex Wong (Getty Images) I thought white people were evil. I was wrong. Whenever anyone mentions the historical atrocity of chattel slavery, white people…
TORONTO — Jordan Peterson fills huge lecture halls and tells his audiences there’s no shame in looking backward to a model of how the world should be arranged. Look back to the 1950s, he says — and back even further. He tells his audiences that they are smart. He is bringing them knowledge, yes, but…
Lately I have been thinking about one of the first things that I ever wrote for the Internet: a series of interviews with adult virgins, published by the Hairpin. I knew my first subject personally, and, after I interviewed her, I put out an open call. To my surprise, messages came rolling in. Some of…
To a certain extent, we expected it from the men who wear lobster-printed pants, the men from Connecticut, the Young Republicans of America with their gelled and parted hair, their summers in Nantucket, their LL Bean slippers worn on the porches of fraternities, 2pm on a Monday. But when my friend pulls me aside in…
iStock I have a confession to make. I’m black. I’m a black guy with black parents and black relatives and even some black friends. I also work at Morgan State, a historically black university. And since we’re keeping it 100, I’m the political editor at The Root, which you are reading right now, and which…
United Airlines said a man wouldn’t give up his spot on a flight. According to witnesses, he was pulled screaming from his seat by security and back to the terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. (The Washington Post) Before you seek to board a plane, please ask yourself the following questions. Better to ask them before…
Image via Getty. If you enter Ivanka Trump’s childhood bedroom, located on the 68th floor of Trump Tower, you will find, among other things: A clock featuring Madonna’s face. A series of 90210 trading cards. An “homage” to Poison and Mötley Crüe, in the form of several posters. Over here, some artwork that she made…