An eloquent profile of Tonya Harding, the former professional ice skater caught up in a scandal at the time of the 1994 Winter Olympics, and subject of the new Oscar contender I, Tonya. The piece encompasses poignant reflections on survival, life after infamy, and subjective views of the truth.
A special issue of Wired contains several strong pieces looking at the complex freedom of speech trade-offs required in the new information era. Pieces include – the web infrastructure company Cloudflare being embroiled in a free speech debate when offering services to far-right extremists, Reddit as a case study for civil discourse online, a startup making smartphone-neutralising pouches, six stories of censorship, and a look at a database of extremists called Whack-a-Mole.
An assessment of the Trump administration’s assault on the Justice department, “the least tyrant-proof part of the government”, by a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution.
A behind the scenes account of Travis Kalanick’s defenestration from his role as Uber’s CEO. The piece provides insights into the delicate power balance between executives and their company boards. Recent events do though help to put Kalanick’s ‘fall’ in context – an investment in Uber by Japanese firm Softbank has recently been agreed, netting him an estimated $1.4bn.
The tale of the prosecutor and witnesses who took on the corrosive power of the ÕNdrangheta. http://bit.ly/newyorker-mafia