Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Meet Maggie Goldenberger, who helplessly watched an Internet meme spawn from her awkward adolescent photo. Except, maybe the “Gershberms” girl never existed the way we thought she did? In March 2012, 23-year-old Maggie Goldenberger was in the middle of a six-month trip to India and the Philippines with her then-girlfriend. They were travelling from India’s…
This article, Engineer builds ‘working’ Thor’s hammer that only he can lift, originally appeared on CNET.com. mjolnir.jpg A passerby tries to lift engineer Allen Pan’s Mjolnir. Video screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET In Marvel comics, Thor’s legendary hammer Mjolnir is famous for being able to be wielded only by the worthy. For the unworthy, i.e., literally…
I recently took my Nissan Skyline GT-R to CarMax for a used vehicle appraisal. This is the least likely place you’d expect to see a Nissan Skyline GT-R, except possibly for the member parking lot at your local VFW hall. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s right: I’ve had my Skyline appraised by the good folks…
Everyone knows that the 2015 that Doc and Marty time traveled to in Back to the Future II was so much cooler than our 2015. They had hoverboards and self-lacing sneakers and flying cars and fusion reactors! We don’t have any of that. Instead we have bad fashion taste, global warming, selfies, Internet bullying and…
Pretend you’ve never seen a Target before. Not just Targets, but department stores in general. Now go deeper into this fantasy and pretend the fundamental tenets of capitalism and consumerism have not been established. Imagine that the world is a cold, desolate place where only your basic needs are met through cruel and unsavory methods,…
Fuck. Why are there so many fucking internet stars? Are you really supposed to refer to them as fucking “influencers,” like The New York Fucking Times does? Who the fuck are these fucking people? What the fuck is going on? Fuck. Okay. Okay. This is Tyler Fucking Oakley. He’s one of the biggest fucking YouTube…
Today is a really great day. In this video, HLN anchor Yasmin Vossoughian dials up Jon Hendren, known by his Twitter handle @fart, for a segment on America’s best top fugitive Edward Snowden’s recent appearance on Twitter. Hendren is introduced as a Snowden supporter. He plays it straight at first, when Vossoughian asks him why…
The Thirteenth Amendment forbade slavery and involuntary servitude, “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Crops stretch to the horizon. Black bodies pepper the landscape, hunched over as they work the fields. Officers on horseback, armed, oversee the workers. To the untrained eye, the scenes in Angola for Life:…
Last week, my colleague Adrienne and I examined a digital moral quandary: whether or not to install an ad-blocker. Ad blockers make browsing the web faster, more secure, and less of a drain on a phone’s battery; they also put a significant dent in web publishers’s business. After the newest version of Apple’s mobile operating…
Paris, France-based artist and filmmaker Yoann Hervo has created a bizarre VHS version of The Simpsons classic animated intro. Hervo made the intro with help from artist Hugo Moreno, sound designer Florian Calmer, and musician Valentin Ducloux. This opening is just a small part of a collaboration project made up by Charles Huettner, Ivan Dixon…