I’m Not Actually Here
As I write this, I’m eating lunch prior to a dystonia support group meeting to be held over Zoom, which has made my life as a dystoniac sooo much easier, if a bit crowded with Zoom events.
As it happens, I have a few “gift links” remaining for this month, courtesy of the awesome Washington Post (owned by the amazing Jeff “NSFW camera roll” Bezos).
Oops! Turned out to be only one “gift link”! Sorry!
Here it is:
How one small-town lawyer faced down the plans of election skeptics.
Yes, I can totally understand what it’s like to be a lawyer who cares about the law actually being followed.
And who hates to see talented people being snookered by people on the internet cashing in on their dreams of fame, fortune, or whatever.
I also don’t think our problems can be solved by Elton John or Elon Musk taking over Twitter.
Here’s the rest (if you’re checking the Post for the first time, you get a few freebies, or at least you did last time I checked, which was so long ago, it might have been, I dunno, two to seven years ago. You know how those ever-changing terms and conditions are. It’s difficult to keep up. So, I don’t. Fuck it.)
However, instead of writing the headline, I’ll use the words from the “slug line” in the URL. You know what the slug line is, right? Any blogger worth his/her/their salt would, right?
Facebook TikTok Brazil Election Disinformation.
What more do I need to say?
Chelsea Manning ReadMe Memoir Review.
You better believe I’m reading that.
I’ve also added this to my TBR list.
How the richest shield themselves from danger-at our expense.
Here’s a quote or two from that one:
Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, “ Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires,”opens with a surreal scene: For a fee equal to one-third of his annual salary as a professor, Rushkoff flies to a luxurious resort to advise five ultrawealthy men on how to survive the collapse of civilization. The unnamed men discuss such pressing questions as how to maintain authority over their private security forces after the “event,” and they brainstorm solutions. Maybe the guards could wear some sort of disciplinary collars? Better yet, what about using robots as guards?
It’s a dark and revealing episode. More terrifying than the men’s Hollywood-derived nightmares is their naive and profoundly antisocial response: They’d rather optimize their bunkers than work to avert the apocalypse. Rushkoff describes their attitude as a “faith-based Silicon Valley certainty that they can develop a technology that will somehow break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.”
While few have the means to indulge dystopian fantasies so lavishly, the men are an extreme instance of a broader trend. Bunker sales in America are soaring, and the market now caters to a range of income levels, from $40,000 starter bunkers to a nearly $10 million Luxury Series “Aristocrat” that offers a pool and a bowling lane. Many people now seem fixated on stockpiling enough money to protect themselves from the rest of the world, rather than considering the sort of world they are creating by making money in these ways.
So fear not! All those billionaires will live to provide more great services to … um … the survivors? The other billionaires and their robots?
In any case, my good pals Mike and Jeff will be just fine.
But, wait! There’s more!
One of the most chilling examples he cites involves the production of cellphones. At the end of the assembly process, workers wipe down each device with a toxic solvent to remove their own fingerprints. The chemical causes miscarriages, cancers and reduced life span, but it maintains the illusion that the phones are created by frictionless magic, not by workers in appalling conditions. Rushkoff sees in this an instance of a more pervasive phenomenon: “Some of Amazon’s most clever innovations exist entirely to shield Prime members from the reality of working for the company,” he writes.
So … how’re you Amazon-exclusive authors feeling now? All you Prime Subscribers? I hope the money or convenience or Mrs. Maisel or whatever was/is worth it.
Yeah, I know. I should talk, right? I got snookered by these guys just like you. But then I just said …
And, yes, I do wish I’d gift-linked this one.
But it’s a review of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires. That’s a link to GoodReads. (Yeah, I know who they’re owned by … grrr …)
You could buy it from my Bookshop bookstore! 🙂 (That’s an affiliate link, because I support indie bookstores and need at least enough money to cover the costs of producing and marketing content the way I do.) Not to mention having the temerity to express an opinion. Let’s hear it for free speech, eh? 🙂
Happy Halloween! Let’s have a song! 🙂
I do believe I recognize a few scenes in this one, as well as the next.
Unfortunately, Google/YouTube knows me a bit too well!
Originally published at http://randomandsundrythings.wordpress.com on October 31, 2022.
