Reading List: Let’s All Drop Acid And Consider The Surveillance State (Or, You Know, Not Do That.)
Darlings! It’s Friday, it’s almost the weekend, the sun is setting later in the day, and we’ve managed to make it through the first full work week of 2020! We’re doing great, fam! And hey NSA, if that subject line concerns you, I promise you it’s just a badly-written “joke” that made me chuckle at my kitchen table this morning, and not a promise to completely ruin my current mental health. Give me that, mmmmkay?
So let’s get to those longform pieces!
Erin Ryan, I Dropped Acid and Saw Into the Future: My Surreal First Time At CES (The Daily Beast) - Yesterday, an anonymous twitter account was created that chronicled one attendee’s experience wandering around the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas after consuming LSD. When shared on Twitter, the fabulous Ed Zitron pointed me to journalist and Hysteria host (and personal lipstick style icon of mine) Erin Gloria Ryan’s 2017 adventure wandering the strip whilst sipping electric kool-aid. It is so very good. You must read it. (did I have to google “euphemisms for acid trips” in order to find that phrase? Why yes, I did. I’m a square and adorably so and that’s why you like me.)
Selena Larson, North American Electric Cyber Threat Perspective (Dragos) - Wanna get spooked? Give a read to the January 2020 current state of “oh heck, we’re all so damned vulnerable to cyberattacks” and remember that our President may have started a war to distract from impeachment weeeeeeeee….
Joseph Cox, This Secretive Surveillance Company Is Selling Cops Cameras Hidden in Gravestones (Motherboard) - Speaking of attempting-to-avoid-FUD-but-OMG-we’re-living-in-a-real-live-dystopia, have you ever worried that a gravestone is surveilling you and sending information to law enforcement? You might worry about that now!
Alec Nevala-Lee, Asimov’s Empire, Asimov’s Wall (Public Books) - I haven’t read this one yet—it’s on the list for my weekend vegging—but let the record reflect that I am one hundred percent here for a Me Too reckoning in the literary world. And now I want to read Nevala-Lee’s book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Rachel Abrams and Cecilia Kang, The Mystery of Teen Vogue’s Disappearing Facebook Article (The New York Times) - Sometimes #sponcon goes awry, and fascinating looks behind the curtain like this article are the result.
Have a wonderful weekend, darlings. Be kind to each other.
xoxo Amy