Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.
Kirk LaPointe, publisher and editor-in-chief:
An incisive, reflective view of the history of the free press and its challenges to reconnect with the audience that now mistrusts it. - The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-future-of-democracy/how-can-the-press-best-serve-democracy
American in nature and prescription, this essay that examines recent publications has some compelling views on how to defeat child poverty. - The New York Review of Books
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/07/23/how-to-fix-child-poverty/
The speculation about Joe Biden’s running mate has moved from Tammy Duckworth of Illinois to Barbara Lee of California to this look at the qualities of Californian Congresswoman Karen Bass. - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/karen-bass-joe-biden-running-mate/613975/
Hayley Woodin, reporter:
“It’s like trying to beat the casino.” Robinhood lures young, often inexperienced traders with its simple, gamified trading platform. Customers buy and sell riskier products more frequently than customers at other brokerages. The platform glitches and goes down more often. The losses can be staggering. – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/technology/robinhood-risky-trading.html?
Timothy Renshaw, managing editor
Anyone for a low-methane Whopper? If you care about climate change, you'll order it at your next visit to Burger King – Popular Mechanics
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a33313574/burger-king-cows-diet-methane-climate-change/
Some interesting insights into what your neighbours have been up to during the COVID-19 lockdown courtesy of CIRA’s Internet Factbook 2020 survey. For instance:
•only 45% bother to answer their mobile phones "some of the time," which might explain why you have had to leave all those voice messages instead of getting a live response from;
•70% use Facebook as their preferred social media platform; but
•41% rank the news-content parasite as the most toxic social media platform
https://www.cira.ca/resources/factbook/canadas-internet-factbook-2020
Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor:
Fintan O’Toole’s eloquent essay on Trump and the unhealed scars of U.S. history – slavery and the Vietnam War among them – lands some brutal punches against the American “unpresident.” Example:
“All of this unfinished business has made the United States semidemocratic, a half-and-half world in which ideals of equality, political accountability, and the rule of law exist alongside practices that make a daily mockery of those ideals.” – New York Times Review of Books
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/07/23/trump-unpresident-unredeemed-promise/
