Confession: I Dread Needing To Wear Real Pants Again More Than I Probably Should.
Sweethearts! It’s Friday - may your weekend be restful, your chores completed, and your bingewatching suitably entertaining. Since I didn’t write a Missive last Friday, we’re spanning a couple of weeks of long reads, folks! And I don’t have much to say about it because I actually got engrossed in starting to read a few of these this morning and OOPS, gtg, time to move from personal leisure screen to work screen.
Let’s do it!
Issie Lapowsky, Tech spent years fighting foreign terrorists. Then came the Capitol riot. (Protocol) - First off, major kudos to Protocol for scooping up some of the best tech reporters in the biz right now, including Lapowsky. This piece reminds me that even I’ve been lulled into believing some of the talking points about how hard it is to moderate violent content but that, as Lapowsky points out, we sure as hell don’t have a ton of foreign extremist content served up in our feeds. As the subhead quote says, “Nobody's going to have a hearing if a platform takes down 1,000 ISIS accounts. But they might have a hearing if you take down 1,000 QAnon accounts.”
Dina Temple-Raston, A Tale Of 2 Radicalizations (NPR) - Because case in point, the radicalizing process isn’t that much different here or abroad.
Janice Min, Pinterest and the Subtle Poison of Sexism and Racism in Silicon Valley (TIME) - Engrossing and disturbing and saddening, I encourage everyone inside and outside Silicon Valley to read this.
Robbie Whelan and James R. Hagerty, Vaccinated Seniors Cut Loose—And Take Flak From Offspring (The Wall Street Journal) - I cannot stop laughing at the premise of the piece, while I picture decked-out-for-clubbing grandparents and their aghast children: “After getting a vaccine, seniors are safer from the coronavirus, but some face a new peril: provoking scolding, worry or envy in their adult children, many not yet eligible for the shots.” (But seriously, BE SAFE, Y’ALL!!!!)
Kelsey McKinney, Oh No! Big Boat Is Stuck (Defector) - I live for this piece and want it to be an actual children’s book STAT, and can’t stop chuckling at how it is categorized “Life’s Rich Pageant”.
Stay safe, wear a mask, be kind to each other!
xoxo Amy