Hasan Minhaj, a Daily Show senior correspondent, is collaborating with PEN America to launch “The M Word,” an event series that “will provide a platform for Muslim-American writers and cultural figures to address audiences on their own terms . . . to challenge the prevailing narrow representations of highly diverse Muslim communities comprised of more than three million Americans.” Minhaj will be part of a panel on Muslim comedians on September 21.
The MTA is collaborating with Penguin Random House to launch “Subway Reads, a web platform that can be reached from a subway platform.” The program will offer free digital versions of short stories and book excerpts that can be downloaded using the Wi-Fi service offered in subway stations, with selections sorted by the length of a commuter’s ride. Subway Reads will be available for the next eight weeks.
After firing most of its human editors, Facebook is struggling to convince users that the site’s trending algorithm is ready to fly solo. This weekend, however, the trending section picked up a fake article about Megyn Kelly endorsing Hillary Clinton, among other questionable stories, “including #McChicken, a hashtag that had gone viral after someone posted a video of a man masturbating with a McChicken sandwich.”
After a third sexting scandal, Anthony Weiner has been put on leave from his job at NY1, and his columns will no longer be printed in the New York Daily News. Huma Abedin, Clinton aide and Weiner’s wife, announced that they had decided to separate.
Fox News is currently the most-watched cable network for all time slots, but how long can the network hold on to the top spot? “Half of Fox News viewers are over the age of 68.”
Ursula K. Le Guin talks to the New York Times about her forthcoming Library of America collection, The Complete Orsinia. Although Le Guin is known for science fiction books like The Left Hand of Darkness, she convinced the publisher to compile her more realist early works. “Someone who pigeonholed me firmly will say, ‘What the hell?’ But that’s their problem.”
