Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Every dollar in Mark Zuckerberg’s private charity is a dollar wrested from public coffers — and democratic control. The media-as-public-relations-machine was in full swing last week, abuzz over Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s public letter to their daughter that contained a $45 billion pledge to establish the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The mainstream media produced…
The freelance life. (Photo by flickr user @eekim, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License) Rachel Northrop shouldn’t have to use her credit card to buy groceries. She’s a successful young professional, after all, freelancing for several trade journals about tea and coffee production after having published a book on the subject in 2013. But…
Image: Mashable composite Flickr, bsabarnowl; 67825670@N07 By The Associated Press2015-12-07 15:44:13 UTC NEW YORK — Keurig, the maker of single-cup coffee machine maker, said Monday that it has agreed to be sold to private equity firm JAB Holding Co. for about $14 billion. The amount is a whopping 78% premium over Keurig’s stock price —…
Earlier this year a young employee at a celebrity magazine explained to me a problem. The magazine was doing reasonably well, as was its website. But both were publishing photos taken from Instagram with increasing frequency. This was fine: the photos were good and people liked them. The problem, this person said, was that it…
A focus still on the desktop Though mobile adblockers may well prove to be a significant issue for news organizations in months or years to come, the outlets we spoke with are still focused primarily on desktop. They’re examining their options to circumvent adblockers, discourage readers from using them, or even prevent users from seeing…
UK-based activist group Brandalism has peppered the streets of Paris with 600 fake outdoor ads meant to expose the hypocrisy of COP21 Climate Conference corporate sponsors. The fake, unauthorized outdoor ads were strategically placed around Paris this past weekend, and were made to look nearly identical to the originals. The ads were prepared by an…
The people having the most success destroying the Wall Street elite these days are not bomb-throwing anarchists. They are buttoned-up investment types who are just less greedy. Traditionally, the Wall Street investment industry has grown rich by skimming off a portion of the astronomical amount of money that passes through its hands. In exchange for…
The decision by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to gradually give away 99 percent of their Facebook fortune is big news not just for the huge sum involved—about $46 billion—but for how the couple chose to achieve their philanthropic goal. Rather than set up a private foundation or charitable trust as Bill and Melinda Gates did, the Chan…
Nearly 7,000 Peace Corps currently serve in about 65 countries. Roughly one in five of them is sexually assaulted during that service, according to the results of a recent anonymous Peace Corps safety questionnaire, obtained exclusively by CBS News. The report also shows that nearly half don’t report the assaults. Pressure to change a culture…
Duration matters: The longer someone was out of work, the more likely it is that they’ve quit looking. Of the total, 55 percent who were unemployed for more than two years fell into the category; 32 percent of those idle for 13 to 24 months and 34 percent out for seven to 12 months had…