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What are we reading? June 24, 2021

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: We didn’t have Prime Day this year because of the pandemic.
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Photo: fotogestoeber/Getty Images

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:

We didn’t have Prime Day this year because of the pandemic. This author makes a case for cancelling Amazon Prime outright. – The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/amazon-prime-day-dystopian/619265/

An extraordinary look at the world of pets, with a particular focus on what we will do now that we don’t have the same need for them as the pandemic subsides. The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/28/what-will-become-of-the-pandemic-pets

We’re all having, or will have, difficult conversations about the coronavirus vaccine. What can and should you ask, and how? – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/well/family/employee-vaccine-status-questions.html

Glen Korstrom, reporter:

Good to see the NFL finally have an out gay player. Here’s an engaging examination of Carl Nassib’s unlikely rise, given that he didn’t play high school football and only started in the sport as a senior in university. – Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-is-carl-nassib-first-openly-gay-nfl-raiders-11624373589?st=ch5w1omlw49ndjj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

There’s a hot debate over whether the streaming era’s bump in film production is a good thing for the industry. There’s also the challenge in determining what films are actually the most watched. – Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-netflix-world-movie-studios-make-more-movies-than-ever-is-that-a-good-thing-11623864782?st=2b8payl0lussbtu&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

I can’t imagine becoming an elected politician and expecting that I could continue in my job as a journalist. 

Some journalists I know say they don’t vote because they don’t want to feel that they have a bias. 

Certainly not all feel this way, as the Penticton Herald’s managing editor, James Miller, just won a by-election to sit on council, and he plans to keep his day job. – CBC

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/penticton-councillor-james-miller-byelection-1.6076171

Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:

In the interests of being amazed instead of alarmed by everything we read today, consider the evolutionary and engineering brilliance of the hummingbird, the nickel-weight high flyer that can cross the Gulf of Mexico solo during a single migrational leg with a heart beat clocked at 1,200 per minute and wings beating at 200 times per second. – Science Focus

https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/how-the-hummingbird-evolved-the-animal-kingdoms-most-remarkable-flying-abilities/

Meanwhile, back to  being alarmed. Here are some insights into death metal and one of pre-history’s most extensive mass extinctions. – Phys Org

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-geochemical-end-permian-mass-extinction-event.html

And maybe some hope that humanity can come up with a solution, courtesy of University of Cambridge researchers, to one of the world’s many pressing pollution problems. – Inverse

https://www.inverse.com/innovation/vegan-spider-silk-replace-plastics