Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
In the spring of 2018, I visited the offices of the millennial/Gen-Z-oriented website babe.net, a sunny loft space in Williamsburg, just around the corner from Vice. Babe.net — now shuttered — was then at the frothy peak of its existence. I made sure to wear my coolest pants. The site’s managing editor, Eleni Mitzali, a…
A harrowing scenario analysis of how human civilization might collapse in coming decades due to climate change has been endorsed by a former Australian defense chief and senior royal navy commander. The analysis, published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, a think-tank in Melbourne, Australia, describes climate change as “a near- to mid-term…
A new study suggests suggest publishers only get about 4% more revenue for an ad impression that has a cookie enabled than for one that doesn’t. Photo: Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press May 29, 2019 5:59 p.m. ET Are creepy advertisements really necessary to support the free web? A new academic study suggests they aren’t. Behavioral advertising,…
The Washington Post is taking a proactive approach to digital display advertising issues with a new project that is set to fix bad code, while saving brands from code errors and cross-platform bugs in ad code. The Ad Performance and Safety Protocol (APSP) focuses on accidentally harmful ad behaviors to ensure a better user experience…
AirPods are a product of the past. They’re plastic, made of some combination of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and sulfur. They’re tungsten, tin, tantalum, lithium, and cobalt. The particles that make up these elements were created 13.8 billion years ago, during the Big Bang. Humans extract these elements from the earth, heat them, refine…
One jaw-dropping moment during the Senate’s hearing on Tuesday came when Sen. Ted Cruz asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “Does Facebook consider itself a neutral public forum?” Unsatisfied by Zuckerberg’s response that Facebook is a “platform for all ideas,” Sen. Cruz continued, “Are you a First Amendment speaker expressing your views, or are you a…
The Guardian is a weird newspaper. Most newspapers don’t have nearly two-thirds of their readers coming from outside the country they’re based in. Most newspapers don’t start in one city and then move to another one. Most newspapers aren’t owned by a trust that mandates it promote “liberal journalism both in Britain and elsewhere.” And…
Last July, ahead of its planned launch in the United States, The Correspondent made its first U.S. hire: Zainab Shah, who’d previously been global lead for strategy and operations at BuzzFeed. Ernst Pfauth — CEO of De Correspondent, the Dutch site for which The Correspondent was to be a new sibling — wrote that, as…
The New York Times is again looking to fashion to amplify its own brand. As part of a marketing push around Earth Day, the publisher is teaming with Everlane for a small collection of T-shirts and sweatshirts that riff on its ongoing “The Truth Is Worth It” campaign, but with an environmental twist. Everlane is…
Instagram memers have had enough. They generate the engagement that helps keep Instagram growing—but, they argue, the multibillion-dollar platform doesn’t pay them for their work, or give them any control. So they’re fighting back. And before you write off IG Meme Union Local 69-420 as a joke, the organizers of the collective would like you…