Nobody covered the Wall Street collapse, bailout, and corrupt resurgence better than Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, from giving Goldman Sachs its unforgettable epithet to covering the hearings on the bailouts… Read the rest of the article: Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the collapse of 2008 and things are much, much worse
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK spy agency GCHQ acted illegally when it engaged in mass-scale domestic surveillance of every Briton's electronic communications, a programme… Read the rest of the article: EU's top court rules against the UK mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden
In the years during which the new EU Copyright Directive was being drafted, a variety of proposals were considered and rejected by the EU's own experts, and purged from the… Read the rest of the article: Father of the catastrophic Copyright Directive reveals he didn't know what he was voting for
Angelenos! Bring your teens to the Pasadena Loves YA festival this Saturday; I'm chairing a panel on graphic novels with Mairghread Scott and Tillie Walden; other panels and events go… Read the rest of the article: To do in LA this Saturday: I'm speaking at the Pasadena Loves YA festival!
In 2015, Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti published Zeroes, a wonderful, intricately plotted YA thriller about the discovery by a group of teens (all born in the year… Read the rest of the article: Swarm and Nexus: finishing the Zeroes trilogy with perfect form, as powered teens threaten each other — and the world
When pianist James Rhodes uploaded a recording of his own performance of a Bach composition to Facebook, it was immediately blocked thanks to a match with a recording that Sony… Read the rest of the article: Sony: OK, OK, we don't own Bach
Jack Poulson was a research scientist at Google whose work on machine learning work was used to improve Google's search results; now he's quit the company over its Project Dragonfly,… Read the rest of the article: Machine learning scientist quits Google over plan to launch censored Chinese search tool
This summer, Charter Communications was ordered to leave New York State, reversing its acquisition of Time Warner Cable and selling off the assets; the move came after the cable company… Read the rest of the article: Charter, ordered out of New York State, begs for its life
A study conducted by Douglas Elliman Real Estate found that one in five New York retail spaces is sitting vacant; these spaces are boarded up and attract vandalism, drug-dealing, and… Read the rest of the article: 20% of New York retail space is sitting vacant
A road-rage video went viral on Chinese social media last month, showing a motorist from the northeastern province of Dongbei berating an e-bike rider from Beijing, deriding him for being… Read the rest of the article: Viral road-rage video sparks mob violence in Beijing, revealing deep regional rifts
In 2012, North Carolina's Coastal Resources Commission studied the question of sea-level rise and the likelihood that coastal areas would be inundated by severe weather, concluding that the seas were… Read the rest of the article: Six years ago, North Carolina Republicans voted in a law decreeing that the seas weren't rising
After being hammered by hurricane Maria, the residents of the rural Puerto Rican mountain town of Mariana got tired of waiting for the bumbling, privatized, cash-starved power authority to reconnect… Read the rest of the article: How anarchist organizers in rural Puerto Rico rebooted their power grid after the privatized power company abandoned them
CVS isn't just in the business of operating retail pharmacies: equally important is its prescription administration services, where it buys drugs from independent pharmacies, marks them up, and sells them… Read the rest of the article: "Spread Pricing" transparency reveals the millions CVS rakes in by gouging Medicare and prisons on prescription markups
One of the most repugnant features of international trade agreements, from TPP to TTIP to CETA, is the "Investor State Dispute Settlement" (ISDS) clause, which gives corporations the power to… Read the rest of the article: Trade negotiators are increasingly unwilling to entertain "corporate sovereignty" clauses
After a poll revealed at 54% of her eligible viewers were not registered voters, with weeks to go before the crucial 2018 midterm elections, Samantha Bee set out to do… Read the rest of the article: Samantha Bee, horrified that majority of her viewers aren't registered voters, tries something
Back in July, MGM Resorts — owner of the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas — sued more than 1,000 survivors of the mass-shooting that took place in October, 2017,… Read the rest of the article: Mandalay Bay to mass-shooting survivors: we'll donate $500 to charity if you stipulate that we're suing you
We've been covering the rise and rise of Chinese science fiction here since the early part of the decade, as Chinese authors have been successfully exported to the English-speaking world… Read the rest of the article: This is the golden age of Chinese science fiction
Lobbyists for "creators" threw their lot in with the giant entertainment companies and the newspaper proprietors and managed to pass the new EU Copyright Directive by a hair's-breadth this morning,… Read the rest of the article: Europe just voted to wreck the internet, spying on everything and censoring vast swathes of our communications
Michael Moore's latest documentary is a scorching Trump takedown called Fahrenheit 11/9; next Wednesday, all over the USA, theaters will screen a "People's Premiere" of the movie: just indicate your… Read the rest of the article: To do in America, next Wednesday: See the "People's Premiere" of Michael Moore's Trump takedown, "Fahrenheit 11/9"
The internet is perpetually amused and fascinated by the crazy, corkscrewing duck penis, but commonsense dictates that if fella ducks have crazy willies, then lady ducks will have equally amazing… Read the rest of the article: Use VR to travel through a duck's amazing vagina
