Reading List: Hard To Come Up With A Quippy Subject Line About The Death Of Personal Privacy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Darlings! This will be a short Reading List since I have to go to “work” to do the “job” that for the team I “adore” and want to make sure they “have a good day.” And that’s not sarcasm: I have had an insanely packed week but I also work with some amazing people and I genuinely want to do everything I can to make their work days as wonderful as possible. That’s it, that’s the morning gratitude!
Kashmir Hill, The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It (The New York Times) - This was everywhere, as it should be. Because a start-up that is harvesting online images to help law enforcement match images to people in IRL has forced us into a world where we may never be able to walk down the street anonymously. And it doesn’t help our collective anxiety that the CEO of this company previously created a phishing app that spammed your contacts without your consent. And is currently buddies with hate monger Chuck Johnson and was snapped making the alt-right “ok” sign.
Ryan Mac, Caroline Haskins, Logan McDonald, Clearview AI Says Its Facial Recognition Software Identified A Terrorism Suspect. The Cops Say That's Not True. (BuzzFeed News) - Read the above. Read it again. Then read this. Then move to my commune in the woods.
Carina Chocano, Why We Can't Get Enough Celebrity Mom Cookbooks (Romper) - Thanks to friend of the Missive Alexi for pointing me towards this piece, because hoooooo boy it’s definitely something I’ve been wondering about as of late. Especially since some of these women also run productions studio and direct films, and yet I’m supposed to be most interested in their version of a grilled cheese? I mean, Chocano hits it on the head: “what these books really offer — the warm, refracted glow of idealized womanhood — is unattainably expensive.”
Taylor Lorenz, We’re All in the Bathroom Filming Ourselves (The New York Times) - I am just so in love with how Lorenz can boil a small aspect of something I notice and think to myself, “huh, that’s weird that all of these teens are filming in a bathroom, I wonder what the heck that’s all about” and turn it into a well-reported insight into the minds of teen creators. Like, did you know that bathroom tik toks are leading to cleaner bathrooms? I guess going viral’s a pretty good motivation to wash the sink…
Alex Wilhelm, Some tech I love is getting worse, and I’m mad (TechCrunch) - I love it when friend of the Missive Alex gets grumpy, and writes pieces that resemble polished versions of our coffee conversations. Because THIS: “I’m so kitted out I can’t breathe. I have so many tools available to me I mostly just want to put them all down. Leave me alone! Or only show me the thing I need — not everything at once!”
You’re all great. Be kind to each other, and have a restful weekend.
Xoxo Amy