Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
On March 15, 2002, 15 Saudi girls burned to death inside their school in Mecca. They were not trapped by fallen debris, or unaccounted for by firefighters. The mutaween, Saudi Arabia’s religious police, would not allow the girls to leave their burning school because they were not covering their hair or wearing their abayas. The…
Hide CM floating unit The past year was almost certainly not the worst one ever, but 2016 does seem to have earned some sort of special designation. Barrier Status: ‘none’ A meme is currently circulating on Twitter in which people post two contrasting photos: one is “me at the beginning of 2016”; the other is…
D.C. police detained a gunman on Dec. 4, who had walked into Comet Ping Pong, a popular Northwest Washington restaurant and music venue. Police said no injuries were reported. (Faiz Siddiqui,Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) A feedback loop of half-baked rumors and willful misinformation whips a corner of the Internet into such a frenzy that someone…
There is this thing that people (mostly men) love to do on Twitter, something other than harass women and send DMs of their half chubs. It’s called threading, and it’s one of the many things ruining my Twitter experience. Threading happens when someone has a lot of thoughts or feelings on a particular topic, so…
Today in New York, 20th Century Fox showcased a few of its big genre movies that are currently in production. The one seemingly getting the most buzz is the third Wolverine film, Logan. We’ll have full write-ups of all the footage (which also included War for the Planet of the Apes and Alien: Covenant) soon,…
In my exploration of “fake news”, I’ve found some troubling things. And it’s not just the rightwing news network that’s worrying. I’ve recently gone back and taken a preliminary look at the leftwing media ecosystem, trying to map the hyperlinks between these sites – so I’m not trying to establish causation or assign blame as…
The kinds of people, places and things Trump has insulted over time Charts show a 30-day moving average. Donald J. Trump’s tweets can be confounding for journalists and his political opponents. Many see them as a master class in diversion, shifting attention to minutiae – “Hamilton” and flag-burning, to name two recent examples – and…
Hide CM floating unit Donald Trump’s First, Alarming Week as President-Elect Donald Trump’s motorcade and security staff outside the “21” Club, in New York City, after he told his press pool that he would not be leaving his residence but then went to the restaurant. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY CAROLYN KASTER / AP Barrier Status: ‘none’…
President Barack Obama on Sunday mocked Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for having his Twitter access taken away by his campaign staff, who hope to minimize the real estate mogul’s frequent social media ramblings in the last days before the election. “Apparently, his campaign has taken away his Twitter,” Obama said, speaking at a Hillary…
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s cautionary tale about book censorship, was written as a response to the paranoid political climate of the McCarthy era, but its message apparently still hasn’t sunk in. It’s 2016, and some kids still aren’t allowed to read the book without a permission slip from their parents. Daily Show head writer Daniel Radosh…