Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.05% has struck again. Only this time the internet giant is shaking up an industry it hasn’t yet entered. Amazon’s potential entry into the pharmacy-services industry helped spur CVS HealthCorp.’s CVS -2.94% $66 billion bid for insurance giant Aetna Inc., AET 11.54% according to a person familiar with the matter. An acquisition of a major insurer was among roughly a dozen strategies CVS’s management team…
Executive Summary Numerous reasons have been proposed for why gender inequality remains frustratingly stagnant. One persistent argument says it’s because of differences in men and women’s behavior. But do men and women act all that differently? An analysis of men and women’s behavior in one company suggests that the difference in their promotion rates wasn’t…
“Alexa, I’m depressed.” “Alexa, I’m being abused.” “Alexa, I’m considering suicide.” When Amazon introduced Alexa in 2014, it quickly discovered that users wanted more than traffic reports and Taylor Swift songs. According to the company, more than 50% of interactions with Alexa are “nonutilitarian and entertainment related,” a category that includes professions of love for…
I first met Amy Cuddy in January, soon after she moved into a new office at the Harvard School of Public Health. Cuddy was, at the time, officially on the faculty at Harvard Business School, but she was taking a temporary leave, her small box of an office filled with boxes. As she talked about…
In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets. By then, the opioid war had claimed 200,000 lives, more than three times the number of…
Let’s Examine the ‘Rick and Morty’ McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce Debacle Three 1 oz. packets of sauce sold on eBay for $848. Image: Adult Swim Saturday, thousands of fans of Rick & Morty—a comedic television program that traffics in jokes normies could never understand such as “people with autism like Minecraft” and “Reddit exists”—lined up at McDonalds…
The catastrophic weather in Texas has thrown the spotlight on the federal government’s troubled flood insurance program, which is nearly $25 billion in debt after huge payouts following Katrina, Sandy and other devastating hurricanes. But as Houston starts the long process of recovering, lobbyists in Washington have already maneuvered to slow lawmakers efforts’ to overhaul…
As Confederate statues come down across the American South, there is a question of what to do with them once they’ve fallen. Should these metal and stone colossuses be melted down and broken up? Discarded? Should the wishes of those who, like President Trump, see sentimental and historical value in the statues, be respected? And…
Photo: Getty Congratulations to those of you who used proper solar eclipse glasses and witnessed the phenomenon without permanently damaging your vision. Good job! But now you’re probably wondering what to do with those flimsy pieces of cardboard and black polymer that were basically priceless just hours ago. Fortunately, Astronomers Without Borders has offered to…
Illustration by Sean McCabe Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, wants you to know that he was responsible for persuading President Trump to pull out of the Paris climate agreement. Pruitt has never said that explicitly, of course – he understands that if he wants to keep his job, he needs…