“Net neutrality” describes a state of affairs in which the companies providing internet act like utilities, delivering service without favoring or blocking particular content. In the name of preserving this ideal, the FCC has recently unveiled a proposal that will in fact degrade it, according to many, in part by allowing internet service providers such as Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T to create what amount to fast and slow lanes. At the Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal and Adrienne LaFrance offer a primer on the new proposal, and the Columbia Journalism Review suggests five ideas for reinventing internet policy.
Check out this discussion at Music and Literature between two translators of Clarice Lispector and two writers who love her work. Rachel Kushner wrote about Lispector for Bookforum last year.
Watch a trailer for The Essential Ellen Willis, a new book that collects the late writer’s essays on politics, music, and society. “The big revelation to me about women’s liberation was not that women were discriminated against, but that this was a political condition that you could actually do something about,” Willis says in the video. “What the left needs to do is to affirm a commitment to democracy in both spheres, and realize that whenever they’re talking about economics they’re also talking about sexual politics. What this involves is people becoming more radical, not compromising.” Read an excerpt of the book here at Bookforum.
The New York Times’s “verified” commenters—the 478 people who can submit comments without their being vetted, like the rest of the comments, by Times staff—are selected algorithmically according to commenters’ history: ”We require a certain number of total submissions,” the deputy editor of interactive news explains, “and we also require a certain number of submissions over the past few months. Then, in both of those categories, we require a very high percentage rate of comments approved by our moderators versus those rejected.” By the way, the Times has a new video section. And the paper is getting excited about Jake Silverstein, the new editor of the magazine.
The Los Angeles Review of Books is looking for part-time, “volunteer” copyeditors to join their ranks. Does “volunteer” mean unpaid?