Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Every day Todd Strandberg wakes up and scans the news for omens of the apocalypse. First, he checks the stock market and the price of oil for unusual activity. Then he checks news sites for an uptick in reports of terrorism, drug legalization, nuclear arms proliferation, UFO sightings, exorcisms, false prophets and signs of the Antichrist. Based…
Peach is dead, four days after its launch. This seems as obvious as the death of Meerkat one month after its debut. One cool aspect of the modern app market is that the hype cycle can now peak in less than 24 hours. A messaging app called Peach triggered a media maelstrom on Friday afternoon, peaked at No. 85 on the…
What a year it has been! In 2015, we celebrated our 150th anniversary. We toured the country with a live show and a documentary film. We published a coffee table–bending 268-page special issue. We delved into our archives with daily explorations of our country’s rich and tumultuous history. Ad Policy Perhaps most vitally, on July…
Twitter is rumored to be considering increasing its per-tweet character count from 140 to 10,000 – a potential move that instantly sent the troubled tech company’s share price into a tailspin. Twitter shares plummeted more than 2% on the news, first reported by Re/code on Tuesday, which seemed to undermine the essential nature of the…
This position paper is a development of a previous article I wrote for Model View Culture, titled: “The Politics of Trending.” Every time CNN points to “Trending” in order to discuss breaking news, we should laugh. That is, laugh at: CNN, journalists, experts, the simulacra. Smirking at the notion that privatized, opaque institutions of selective…
The New Republic, the venerable liberal magazine that many referred to during the Clinton presidency as the inflight magazine of Air Force One, is up for sale once again, Chris Hughes, the Facebook co-founder who bought the magazine in 2012, said in a memo to staff. “I will be the first to admit that when…
This story has been updated. Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, warned Friday that a Saudi-led air coalition that is supported by the United States may have committed war crimes by using cluster munitions in heavily populated neighborhoods in Yemen. The U.N. chief has “received troubling reports of the use of cluster munitions” in several Jan….
The Home Ownership Meme Can Be Very Powerful Most of us are familiar with the concept of the “internet meme.” Someone does something, say “planking” on a fast-food counter, and uploads a video of him- or herself doing this to a public or social media site. Other people see the video, emulate the activity, and…
Photo Credit Esther Lui Economics remains a stubbornly male-dominated profession, a fact that members of the profession have struggled to understand. After all, if the marketplace of ideas is meant to ensure that the best ideas thrive, then this imbalance should arise only if men have better ideas than women. That implication infuriates many female…
Person of Interest – Samaritan UI – YouTube. Source: Person of Interest – Samaritan UI – YouTube