Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
These stories do not reflect my life, nor the lives of most of the queer women I know. But life has a frightening tendency to imitate art. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs reported that 2015 had the highest levels of violence against the L.G.B.T. community since 2011, the most frequent victims being transgender women…
Last year, the WordCamp US organizing team asked me to assist them with putting all the selected talks into the grid. It was a lot of fun and a challenge, but I was able to do it because I had a set of personas ready. Personas are regularly used in web design to make sure that…
Wendi Murdoch (left) and Ivanka Trump Source: Ivanka Trump/Instagram By Stephanie Petit @stephpetit_ 08/14/2016 AT 01:15 PM EDT Ivanka Trump is taking a break from the campaign trail to vacation with friends. The daughter of GOP nominee Donald Trump shared a scenic snap with Wendi Deng Murdoch, the ex-wife of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch,…
Polyamory, if you believe the newspapers, is the hot new lifestyle option for affectless hipsters with alarming haircuts, or a sex cult, or both. A wave of trend articles and documentaries has thrown new light on the practice, also known as “ethical non-monogamy” – a technical term for any arrangement in which you are allowed to…
The plus-sized comedian Dawn French would be unlikely to describe herself as a sex symbol, but was she simply born at the wrong time? “If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model,” she once quipped. “Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush.” French…
In a segment on Last Week Tonight that has now been viewed millions of times, John Oliver turned his attention to changes in the news industry. He highlighted the pressures facing journalists who keep elected officials and institutions honest and imagined a future in which investigations like the one dramatized in the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight…
Photo credit: AP My smart colleague George Dvorsky over at Gizmodo published a defense of “radical life extension” this morning. This is a largely pseudo- or quasi-scientific pursuit favored by billionaire parasite Peter Thiel (among others), based upon the idea that, essentially, death is a pathology rather than a natural fact of existence, and thus…
For nearly its entire existence, Twitter has not just tolerated abuse and hate speech, it’s virtually been optimized to accommodate it. With public backlash at an all-time high and growth stagnating, what is the platform that declared itself “the free speech wing of the free speech party” to do? BuzzFeed News talks to the people…
According to witchesthicket.com, one can tell she is a witch if she’s “aligned with the seasons” (pass on nature); “on fire in the summer, sexually and creatively charged and heated” (sure, I’m a Leo); and “in winter… feel[s] the weight and the silence of the dark pressing down on you” (who doesn’t?). Off to a…
GALLERY VERTICAL START “Tinder Date,” Michelle entitled her blog entry. “On Monday I went on a first date with a man I met on Tinder. We met in a pub. After a couple of drinks we moved on to a restaurant. He bought me dinner. We strolled arm in arm on the South Bank. He…