Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Illustration: Angelica Alzona (GMG) SOMEWHERE IN IOWA—Here is what happened, right before everything began to go to hell: It was June of 2015. The president was Barack Obama. I was a reporter for Gawker.com, a thriving independent media outlet. The 2016 presidential election was a year away, and the campaign season had just begun in…
This feature story is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #111. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for nine dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. ——— In 2008, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, instituted an anti-immigration regime known as the ‘hostile environment.’ In the shadow of…
The coward who gunned down 49 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand left behind a white-nationalist screed rationalizing his mass murder as a necessary act to preserve the white race. The manifesto is striking for its trolling—its combination of fanaticism, insincerity, and attempts at irony. The killer was particularly obsessed with the idea of “white genocide,” a…
As Amazon steps up its effort to show Wall Street it can generate profits, the e-commerce giant is aggressively blocking money-losing products from advertising on its site. In recent months, Amazon has been telling more vendors, or brand owners who sell their goods wholesale, that if Amazon can’t sell those products to consumers at a…
When Alex, now a high-school senior, saw an Instagram account he followed post about something called QAnon back in 2017, he’d never heard of the viral conspiracy theory before. But the post piqued his interest, and he wanted to know more. So he did what your average teenager would do: He followed several accounts related to it…
Founded in 2014, Omni is a startup that offers users the ability to store and rent their lesser-used stuff in the San Francisco Bay Area and Portland. Backed by roughly $40 million in venture capital, Omni proclaims on its website that they “believe in experiences over things, access over ownership, and living lighter rather than…
Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Amazon are all working to keep dangerous anti-vaccination rumors and hoaxes from getting attention. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, unintentionally it seems, is doing the opposite. Dorsey, who has been on a media tear lately, sitting for interviews with lots of podcasters, tweeted on Tuesday that he had a “great conversation” with author…
In 1963, when Carole Whitehead was an unwed, eighteen-year-old mother in New York, she placed her baby up for adoption. This had always been the plan, but she asked for the record to be open so that one day, if her son was interested, he would be able to contact her. “Don’t tell me I…
ImageIf passed and signed into law, the bill would make New York part of a group of states — including Oregon, South Carolina and Pennsylvania — that allow minors to ask for vaccinations without parental approval.CreditCreditSchneyder Mendoza/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images [What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in…
When we last left Roger Stone, he was trying to convince federal judge Amy Berman Jackson to put him in jail in advance of his trial, or at least he seemed to be trying to do that. Berman Jackson gag ordered Stone in February after he accidentally oopsie allowed one of his interns to post…