Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Los Angeles — Samuel Talavera Jr. did everything his bosses asked. Most days, the trucker would drive more than 16 hours straight hauling LG dishwashers and Kumho tires to warehouses around Los Angeles, on their way to retail stores nationwide. He rarely went home to his family. At night, he crawled into the back of…
Ahead of tomorrow’s much-anticipated testimony, former FBI Director James Comey has released his prepared remarks. Key highlights include: First Contact: I first met then-President-Elect Trump on Friday, January 6 in a conference room at Trump Tower in New York. I was there with other Intelligence Community (IC) leaders to brief him and his new national…
(via My Pink Soapbox’s flickr) The country’s first freelancer protections against nonpayment go into effect in New York City today, so now’s a good time to brush up on a law intended to help a full third of the city’s workforce get paid on time. To recap, the law mandates that freelancers be…
Reporters and editors at the New York news organizations DNAinfo and Gothamist have agreed to unionize after combining their operations last month. An “overwhelming” majority of the 26 members of the newsroom staffs of the two websites signed cards agreeing to be represented by the Writers Guild of America East, according to organizers and staff…
If there was one thing that 2016 taught me, it was Americans’ widespread ignorance of basic economics. Socialism fails all around the world, but people keep being attracted to it, no matter how many pictures of recently wealthy, now starving Venezuelans are passed around. Candidate Bernie Sanders rallied the troops with talk of free goods…
There’s a saying that is sometimes attributed to Karl Marx or Slavoj Zizek—apocryphally, in both cases—that tidily sums up the existential angst some Americans feel at the start of a traditional work week: You don’t hate Mondays. You hate capitalism. The simple thesis here is that there’s nothing intrinsic to “Monday,” which is just a…
Image via Getty. If you enter Ivanka Trump’s childhood bedroom, located on the 68th floor of Trump Tower, you will find, among other things: A clock featuring Madonna’s face. A series of 90210 trading cards. An “homage” to Poison and Mötley Crüe, in the form of several posters. Over here, some artwork that she made…
On weekends, Colleen teaches fitness classes. Mary builds websites. Luke sells vintage video games. Tony designs and 3D-prints custom Star Wars miniatures. I write for the internet. Among my friends, and 20- and 30-somethings as a whole, the side hustle–the gig you work in addition to your day job–is so ubiquitous that, in April, Glamour…
Robot arms weld a vehicle at the General Motors plant in Lansing, Mich. Automakers are the biggest users of industrial robots, which have decreased employment and wages in local economies. Credit Bill Pugliano/Getty Images Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which…
Image via AP. When a fire broke out on the ninth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York in 1911, 146 garment workers died—123 of whom were women. In the wake of one of the deadliest workplace tragedies in American history, it was the women of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU)…