Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
At least six people were killed and 140 injured after an Amtrak train bound for New York City derailed near Philadelphia on Tuesday night. Rescue workers on the scene early Wednesday morning told NBC News the death toll could rise higher as they struggled to access people who might be under toppled cars. “It is an…
Who should save the sight of an uninsured South Carolina man who can’t afford eye surgery? That’s the question the Charlotte Observer asks in a story about a 49-year-old Republican who declined to sign up for Obamacare because he “prided himself on paying his own medical bills,” and is now upset that the Affordable Care…
Soon after Tim Armstrong was named chief executive of AOL in 2009, he started reading the management book “You’re in Charge, Now What?” Mr. Armstrong was 38 at the time, a charming, hard-charging Google ad sales executive who had never before been a chief executive, let alone the head of a company in complete disarray….
But Andreessen waved away the criticisms as the ravings of “a self-hating software engineer.” When I persisted, he said, “Ordinary people love the iPhone, Facebook, Google Search, Airbnb, and Lyft. It’s only the intellectuals who worry.” He raised counter-arguments, then dismissed them: technology would solve any environmental crisis hastened by an expanding economy, and as…
Best and worst places for income mobility How much extra money a county causes children in poor families to make, compared with children in poor families nationwide. Manhattan is very bad for income mobility for poor kids. It is better than only about 7 percent of counties. start of article section Location matters – enormously. If…
I woke up this morning to the news that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had announced increased employment law regulation and enforcement in response to last week’s blockbuster New York Times investigation of nail salons, effective immediately. Workers will be required to wear gloves and masks to prevent the spread of skin diseases and protect…
Submitted by Dark Bid In society, exclusivity creates desirability. Whether it’s that special country club or elite college, privilege is defined by the rejection rate. In the previous era, the Ivy League was one of those prized organizations, and McDonald’s was the exact opposite. Now, the New Normal has seized our social convention and turned…
Begin: WordPress Article Content It was an interesting day at AOL.As you probably saw, Verizon has reached an agreement to acquire AOL for $4.4 billion. There’s a general feeling that this deal was mostly about AOL’s ad business (Verizon’s John Stratton said “the principal interest was around the ad tech platform”) — so what does…
I spend most of my time admiring and appreciating Joss Whedon’s writing skills. His feminism I can take or leave, but he’s very talented in the dialogue department: he understands why people like each other, why they love each other. He understands why they care and which parts of a story display humanity. He makes…
Some time in the middle of Avengers: Age of Ultron, I came to terms with the fact that there will never be any more decent Marvel movies. In fact, there can’t be. Some of what I have to say is going to read as genre snobbery. So let me get this out of the way:…