Here are two things you should read this Sunday

Nov 30, 2014 at 9:30 am

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It's Sunday, and you're probably still recovering from a food coma brought forth by turkey and pumpkin pie, so why not kick back and read a little? Here are a couple stories to get you going.

"A eulogy for RadioShack, the panicked and half-dead retail empire" by Jon Bois — SBNation

RadioShack, the store full of gadgets and few employees, could soon cease to exist. As writer Jon Bois puts it, "RadioShack is a company of massive real estate, and is peddling a business model that is completely unviable in 2014."

Bois spent over three years as an employee of RadioShack, a place he says is a "rotten place to work" in this piece where he recounts various trials and tribulations while at work. The company delivers a heavy-handed response to anyone who potentially could taint its image, he writes. A snip:

But as this company has spent the last decade-plus trying to save itself, the happiness of the employees has always been the first to go overboard. Its store managers are worked so hard that they become unhappy, half-awake shadows of themselves. Labor laws have been brazenly ignored. Untold hours of labor haven't been paid for (when I quit, on good terms and with two weeks' notice, they withheld my final paychecks for months and wouldn't tell me why). Lawyers have been sent to shut down websites that have bad things to say about RadioShack. Employees who make a few dimes over minimum wage are pressured, shamed, and yelled at as though they're brokering million-dollar deals.
"A one-chart summary of every Ferguson eyetwitnesse's grand jury testimony" by German Lopez — Vox

The decision by a grand jury to not indict a white police officer for fatally shooting unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown sparked protests nationwide that are still ongoing. The prosecutor on the case decided to release all of the testimony the grand jury reviewed, a point many observers felt was peculiar, considering a lot of it was conflicting. If you want to understand just how conflicting it was, this chart pieced together by PBS News Hour and later analyzed by Vox's Lopez is a perfect place to start.

There are two key points of near agreement: Brown was facing Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson as he was fired upon, and Brown did have his hands up during his final moments.

St. Louis County Attorney Robert McCulloch has questioned the validity of the eyewitness testimony. During a Monday night press conference, McCulloch said some of the witnesses changed their stories, and that the physical evidence disproved some of their claims.

Have a reading recommendation? Send an email to [email protected] or drop it in the comment section below.

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About The Author

Ryan Felton

Ryan Felton was born in 1990 and spent the majority of his childhood growing up in Livonia. In 2009, after a short stint at Eastern Michigan University, he moved to Detroit where he has remained ever since. After graduating from Wayne State University’s journalism program, he went on to work as a staff writer...