Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Left: Migrant children at a Kansas City detention center in 2014. Photo by AP/Eric Gay, File. Right: Donald Trump. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty When the Trump administration announced this month it would criminally prosecute everyone who crossed the border illegally, which meant jailing immigrant parents and separating them from their children, it effectively manufactured a whole new…
(Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) It’s officially the beginning of Pride month; however, the celebrations at YouTube appear to be lukewarm at best. The video streaming platform, which has long been a haven for independent LGBTQ+ creatives, has recently been accused by users and channels of running advertisements by anti-LGBTQ+ brands alongside creator content. Screenshots and…
Can we stop pretending that the right cares about civility? Whether it’s the faux outrage over the television host Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a “cunt” or the yammering over Robert DeNiro’s “fuck Trump” battle cry at the Tony awards, I’m tired of those on the right feigning shock. After all, they voted in the…
The rising antitrust movement gathered Tuesday at Washington, DC’s gleaming new Marriott Marquis to figure out exactly how to confront the ascendant, unapologetically powerful forces of Silicon Valley. They had a high-profile guest: Justice Department antitrust boss Makan Delrahim. The Trump Justice Department does have some antitrust bona fides, which Delrahim was quick to tout….
Screenshot: Fox News After teasing that he might make an “unannounced trip” down to the White House lawn for an interview with his bosom buddies at Fox & Friends, President Trump did just that on Friday morning, giving a wide-ranging interview where he adamantly praised the North Korean dictator, repeatedly praised Fox News, and bizarrely…
A new study has identified the hotspots of philosophical and religious vaccine exemptions: the paperwork that (in some states) you can fill out in lieu of getting your kindergartener vaccinated. Most are in rural areas, but 15 mid-size cities have a dangerous combination of a large population and a high rate of these exemptions. These…
Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa is drawing scrutiny after sharing a social media post from a British white nationalist who has described himself in the past as an admirer of Hitler’s Germany and a “Nazi sympathizer.” King, whose racially inflected comments on subjects such as immigration and Western culture have drawn headlines for years, retweeted the…
This feels like something from a William Gibson cyberpunk dystopia novel, where the government has become so weak and useless, private corporations have been taking over the basic upkeep of the nation. But it’s not a William Gibson novel, there’s no plucky protagonist with some sort of cybernetic implant, it’s just America in 2018, with…
French Licorne nuclear test, July 3, 1970. Image: Pierre J/Flickr There are currently about 15,000 nuclear warheads on Earth—enough to blow our planet to kingdom come. It’s complete overkill, literally. But how many nukes is enough to deter an enemy? And how many nukes could an aggressor nation drop on an enemy before the effects…
When Michelle Wolf says she didn’t pay that much attention to all the hoopla that followed her White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech, in which she called Sarah Huckabee Sanders an Uncle Tom for white women, she is probably being at least a little bit disingenuous. That she has been very busy, though, is true: The week after, she flew…