Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
In the grand scheme of things, eight seconds doesn’t sound like much, especially in the context of a long documentary about a complex issue like gun control. But in the current highly-charged political environment, nothing is as simple as it might seem at first, and former TV news anchor Katie Couric is learning that lesson…
Governor Andrew Cuomo and Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Photo: AP From 2007 to the end of 2015, the New York Daily News reports, the New York Catholic Conference, led by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, paid top Albany lobbyists more than $2.1 million to help block legislation, including the Child Victims Act, that would make it easier for…
The biggest near term threat to the stability of nations might not be climate change, terrorism, or nuclear war. It just might be robots—putting millions of people out of jobs. Where will they all go? There are only a few possibilities. The widespread automation of jobs—millions and millions of jobs—is not a sci-fi theory, or…
(Spoilers, and potential spoilers, below.) At this rate, every Game of Thrones character will be dead by Episode 8. In the first half of this season, we’ve lost over a dozen reasonably important characters, as the showrunners prune George R.R. Martin’s overstuffed plots and cut a swelling budget. For the last two weeks, I’ve said…
Some stats in life matter. Some don’t. In the kill-or-be-killed world of Team Kirby Clash, the co-op mini-game in the upcoming 3DS side-scroller Kirby Robobot, your stamina, attack, recovery and team meteor stats matter. But the game’s got jokes and/or hidden profundity. When you level up in the mini-game, the game mentioned upgrades to other…
Claim: A video shows a giant alligator walking across a Florida golf course. TRUE Example: [Collected via e-mail, May 2016] This article reports what appears to be a gigantic alligator on a golf course in Florida. This being Florida, I can see where it might be true. However, this is one huge freakin’ alligator….
Every year, high school students and their parents spend much time, effort, and money on the college search. By comparison, they spend very little time focused on how they will spend their undergraduate years while in college. Yet a series of decisions that start the moment they secure their spot in the freshman class—from choosing…
Few corporations in EVE Online will ever have a reputation like Hard Knocks Inc. More than just a group of elite soldiers, they routinely infiltrate alliances, blow up their most prized assets, and steal everything that isn’t bolted down—and that’s just on a Monday. Their ranks are made of brigands, thieves, scammers, and all the…
In “The Wearing and Shedding of Enchanted Shoes,” Isabel Cardigos, Director of the Research Centre at the Centro de Estudos Ataíde Oliveira in Portugal, wrote, “Shoes are paradoxical objects in that they constrict feet and yet free them to cover greater distances in space.” Indeed, fictional shoes enable “positive” transformation in women’s lives, but the…
What if Annie Wilkes had the internet? Annie, of course, is the antagonist of Stephen King’s Misery, a pre-web story about the dark side of the relationship between fan and creator. When Annie finds novelist Paul Sheldon – the author of her favorite romance series, about a woman named Misery Chastain – in a car…