The STEM Shortage Myth, Using Vine For Journalism and More #Mustreads

everything happening in your life is unrealized content

— Adrianne Jeffries (@adrjeffries) November 24, 2014

1. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and most of Silicon Valley like to complain about America’s supposed math and science talent shortage. Businessweek’s Josh Eidelson assembled a bunch of research and articles that say this is an imaginary problem, and that it’s likely a ploy for tech companies to minimize labor costs.
2. Though Vine’s biggest stars are mostly slapstick comedians with weird names, the app’s been an instrumental tool for journalists worldwide. The Guardian has a neat report detailing how Vine has been used to cover the Scottish independence referendum and the ebola crisis, and why it’s catching on more widely.
3. Now that more and more women are coming forward with allegations of sexual assault committed by Bill Cosby, a lot of people are asking why these horror stories hadn’t come out sooner. In a column that capably describes the whole controversy, New York Times media critic David Carr points the finger at himself, among others.
4. A bunch of folks — us included — have been talking about the ramifications of the independent contractor workforce that makes up the backbone of companies like Amazon and Uber. The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber has the latest story on this, focusing on the temp work startups TaskRabbit and Wonolo, and how the sharing economy is making the workplace algorithmically driven.
5. Vice’s Motherboard is now running a bunch of science-fiction stories in a special series called “Terraform.” First up is a story by Paul Ford, imagining a dystopian, Uber-dominated future that bears eerie similarity to the present. Also: Motherboard managing editor Adrianne Jeffries wrote a post for The Awl that’s just her text messages to her apartment building’s super, and it’s really funny.