HAPPY BIRTHDAY BITCH
Friday the 18th marked two years since Extratone's launch, and I'd like to again thank all of our subscribers, staff, contributors, and readers for making this project possible through the highs and lows of its challenges. Unfortunately, last Sunday's Editor's Letter falls far short of last year's long and embarrassingly gushy thanks, and my only birthday gift is our new subreddit - r/trato - which is less lame than it could've been, (so please do stop by and subscribe,) but definitely requires that I brew up something big for year three.
In case you don't have the patience to make it all the way through, know that for a little while, I will personally be devoting more time to my own work about technology and the future until I can figure out a better way to grow this publication. Please note that this should not discourage your feedback, participation, or submissions. I will always respond immediately and be glad for new work, but in the meantime, I'll be knocking out a few things I've been wanting to write, beginning last week with a long piece on the parallels between Google and the 16-century Vatican. This is an argument I'd been developing for years, but some recent revelations about the company's internal "thought explorations" made for a convenient I told ya so. I think you'll find it entertaining, if not startling and/or maddening. Let me know on Twitter or Discord.
As for DIVISION, ART, and MEDIA, I'll be doing my best to resume weekly delivery of this newsletter. If you'd like to support the content you love and help us pay rent this month, please don't hesitate to warm up your PayPal.
David Blue
Editor-in-Chief
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DIVISION
⊚ Autistic Online.
An excellent, beautifully-written essay from our friend Ryan Dell.
"The only reason I didn’t have these experiences in real life, face to face with family and friends, is because at the time I neither possessed the communication skills nor the confidence to facilitate these interactions, or because they required social resources that were not available to me in a space other than the unwieldy and endless trench of being extremely online."
⊚ Tiny Houses as a solution to homelessness.
"If tiny houses in homeowners’ backyards are adapted as an affordable housing solution, this will further relieve city governments of strong-arming luxury apartment block developers into building more affordable housing."
⊚ Snitching Smart Devices from The Marshall Project.
"The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled yet on issues raised specifically by smart homes, but it is about to decide another case that could have a bearing on the issue. The question in Carpenter v. United States is, can the government get historical cell phone location data from your phone company without a warrant? If so, how far back into your history can it go?"
⊚ Reply All speaks to the woman who originated "incel."
⊚ The untold story of the glasses giants.
"On 1 March, regulators in the EU and the US gave permission for the world’s largest optical companies to form a single corporation, which will be known as EssilorLuxottica."
⊚ Billionaire philanthropy is never straightforward.
"It would appear that Zuckerberg was redirecting a fraction of the spoils of neoliberal tech capitalism, in the name of generosity, to try to address the problems of wealth inequality created by a social and economic system that allowed those spoils to accrue in the first place."
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ART
⊚ Dyke Camp.
"It’s a movement directed, for the first time, not by the tastes of gay men but gay women: a specific brand of humor, manners, and sensibilities guided by lesbian identity."
⊚ Rest in peace, Young King Dave.
⊚ Snapchat Ghost Towns.
"The closest thing we might find to something on the internet that is actually secret is not posts that disappear, but rather a website at the end of its relevance, one that nobody cares about, where nobody is watching."
⊚ The Obamas are coming to Netflix.
"It’s a movement directed, for the first time, not by the tastes of gay men but gay women: a specific brand of humor, manners, and sensibilities guided by lesbian identity."
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MEDIA
⊚ Elaine Welteroth on diversity and success in newsrooms.
"You can’t just change the image or the stories, you need to change the storytellers.”
⊚ Maintaining our grip on reality in the Trump Era.
"We are losing the habit, and perhaps the capability, of distinguishing reality from vacuum.”
⊚ Math Men vs. Mad Men.
"By the spring of 2018, Facebook had lost control of its narrative. Their original declared mission—to 'connect people' and 'build a global community'—had been replaced by an implicit new narrative: we connect advertisers to people."
⊚ White House reporter $$$.
"Top reporters can earn between $50,000 and $90,000 for their TV side-hustles, and some seasoned pros — boosted by loyalty and multi-year arrangements — make as much as $250,000.”
⊚ PewDiePie, still ruminating, continues to get worse and worse.
"YouTubers like Kjellberg criticize women for what they wear and how they act on stream. If they are popular, it's only because of their bodies, and if people objectify them for that, that's their fault. At the same time, Kjellberg, like many YouTubers, is not above using the content these women create and putting them in the thumbnails of their own videos for their personal gain. When women do it, they are whores. When men do it, it's criticism.”
⊚ Consumer Reports is a messy bitch that lives for drama.
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