Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
A “hunger cliff” is looming for millions of Americans, with 32 states set to slash food-stamp benefits beginning on Wednesday. The cuts will impact more than 30 million people who are enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in those states, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Among the states…
Strike-busting troops gathered in Colorado in 1914, after the Ludlow Massacre It was spring in Colorado when the National Guard killed the strikers: April, 1914. Workers at John D. Rockefeller’s big interest in the state, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, had been on strike since the previous September, and had long since begun to…
Remind me why, exactly, these guys have so much control over technological innovation? Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Liu Guanguan/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images, gpointstudio/iStock/Getty Images Plus, and francescoch/iStock/Getty Images Plus. If the technological innovation coming out of Silicon Valley is as important as venture capitalists insist, the past few days suggest they…
Did Silicon Valley Bank implode because one (1) of its 11 board members is Black? Or because one (1) of those 11 board members is LGBTQ+? One of the nation’s most prominent economic columnists is wondering. In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler writes: “SVB notes that besides 91 percent of their…
(Reuters) – BuzzFeed Inc said on Monday that most of its cash and cash equivalents were held at Silicon Valley Bank, which was shut down last week. The digital media firm said it had about $56 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of 2022. Startup-focused lender SVB Financial Group last week became…
On Sunday afternoon at the base of the Queensboro Bridge in Manhattan, an elderly man in a fur cap was politely explaining how congestion pricing was going to “kill New York.” The man said that he and his wife were there to join a few dozen others to protest the long-delayed plan to charge fees…
Silicon Valley Bank Is Gone. We Know Who Is Responsible. Credit…Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Elizabeth Warren Senator Warren is a Democrat from Massachusetts. No one should be mistaken about what unfolded over the past few days in the U.S. banking system: These recent bank failures are the direct result of leaders in Washington weakening the…
A lot of the—and I can’t believe I need to use this term, but there really is no other way to phrase it—critics of privacy have this tendency to see privacy only through the lens of ‘threat’. As the threat has built and they can’t reconcile their self-image with popular and consistent interest in privacy…
The subject of online anonymity came up at a house party a few weeks back. One of the people there—a friend I’d known for years—said he couldn’t get over the fact that a privacy reporter like me would use their full name on any social site. I told him that hiding behind an online…
The Biden administration announced Sunday night that all depositors at the failed Silicon Valley Bank would have access to all their money on Monday morning, approving an extraordinary intervention aimed at averting a crisis in the financial markets. Authorities said they were also extending protection to depositors of a second bank, Signature Bank of New…