Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
An armed guard stands at the entrance of the Survival Condo Project, a former missile silo north of Wichita, Kansas, that has been converted into luxury apartments for people worried about the crackup of civilization.CreditPhotograph by Dan Winters for The New Yorker Barrier Status: ‘none’ Steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit,…
Image by Jim Cooke Realistically, there is only one way out of our predicament. We know that we live in an age of staggering economic inequality. The top 10% of earners now take in nearly half of all our national income, a portion that has been rising steadily since the Reagan era. Meanwhile, the average…
There is a reason we live in a golden age of dystopian science fiction: Increasingly, it feels like it is coming true. From “The Hunger Games” to “Elysium,” stories depict a world in which the trend of growing wealth and income inequality continues to its logical conclusion. This narrative seems inevitable because it has occurred…
GTM DataLayer Umbel End Umbel [if lte IE 9]>< ![endif][if gte IE 10]>< ![endif] Google Tag Manager Container In recent months, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has deployed his daughter Ivanka to show that the family has a compassionate side, which, among other things, will push both her and her father to advocate for better lives for working people. Such…
A future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an insurance firm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders. Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance believes it will increase productivity by 30%…
France is asking bond investors to take the long view in what is expected to be a challenging year for the eurozone’s second-largest economy, as the country braces for a bruising presidential election. On Thursday, France will tap an existing 50-year bond that matures in 2066, in the latest sign that investors are still willing…
Herbert Whitehouse was one of the first in the U.S. to suggest workers use a 401(k). His hope in 1981 was that the retirement-savings plan would supplement a company pension that guaranteed payouts for life. Thirty-five years later, the former Johnson & Johnson human-resources executive has misgivings about what he helped start. What Mr. Whitehouse and…
“It’s self-flagellating chef martyrdom at its best,” says Cullen. “Chefs all want to make their own charcuterie and bake their own breads. And if you’re wildly talented and you’re making exceptional stuff, great. But most chefs know in their heart they can buy it from a local butcher or baker and it’ll be at least…
One of the lesser-known casualties of Newt Gingrich’s ghoulish Contract with America was the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a small government agency charged with producing impartial reports for Congress and other officials about issues of scientific and technological concern. From 1972 until 1995, the OTA produced studies, often with the help of academic experts,…