Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
The Argument for Cars Cars has all your Pixar basics: anthropomorphic characters with differing ideologies and clashing personalities that ultimately rally together for the “greater good,” well-placed comedic beats, self-referential jokes, excellent music, and a whole lot of heart. These traits, admittedly, don’t necessarily make a great film. But the common gripes with Cars should…
Jetpack Open Graph Tags Someone stumbled upon a preference of Google’s not to offer “crimes” as a suggested search term following a person’s name. Unsurprisingly, the same sort of folks who think Obama has a secret birth certificate are sharing a conspiracy video. Vox explains why this is silly: Choose any famous American who has…
cache hit 224:single/related:95de6f0b396bd445f3bf6e3dc5d22cd4 empty Sunspring, a short science fiction movie written entirely by AI, debuts exclusively on Ars today. Ars is excited to be hosting this online debut of Sunspring, a short science fiction film that’s not entirely what it seems. It’s about three people living in a weird future, possibly on a space station, probably in a love…
Begin: WordPress Article Content Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy today, according to documents filed in a Southern District of New York court. The filing comes as Gawker’s legal battle with the wrestler Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) drags on. Hogan sued Gawker after the site published a clip of his sex tape and a blog…
Uncanny Silicon Valley The absolutely definitive, supremely authoritative, person-to-person mapping of “Silicon Valley” characters to real tech world personalities. When we say that a television show is “realistic,” what do we mean? Must the drug corners on The Wire resemble the streets of Baltimore? Do the mimetic set pieces on Mad Men engender more cinéma…
Anti-abortion protesters at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse in Houston on Feb. 3, 2016.Eric Kayne/Getty Images In a political gambit to prove that they love fetuses more than anything else in the whole world, Texas lawmakers have put their constituents at higher risk of an HIV outbreak. The Texas Observer reports that since the…
Stanford University.Easyturn/Thinkstock Brock Turner is an odious criminal who committed a heinous act and deserves to go to prison for much longer than his six-month sentence requires. His trial confirmed that both racism and sexism continue to plague America’s criminal justice system, especially where rape is involved. Yet in their rush to condemn Turner’s…
Peter Thiel, the libertarian Silicon Valley billionaire who has waged a secret, decade-long, multi-front legal battle against Gawker Media, has somewhat counterintuitively positioned himself as a guardian of free speech principles. But in response to Gawker’s critical coverage of the technology sector—coverage that Thiel has described as “terrible for the Valley”—he decided the company and…
Sophisticated soda connoisseurs drink Diet Mtn Dew. Average people drink Diet Coke. Then there are the loners, misfits, and weirdos, who drink Diet Pepsi. They’re always hollering about some obscure grievance. What is it this time, Randy? The UFOs again? Or is it a Diet Pepsi thing? Last year, the folks who make Diet Pepsi…
Art by Jim Cooke Today The Daily Beast published an article titled “Anarchists for Donald Trump—Let the Empire Burn” in which the freelance journalist Christopher Ketcham explains the logic of certain progressive voters, including himself, who intend to vote for the presumptive Republican nominee in November. A sampling: What’s needed now in American politics is…