alive girl
plus: shutdown, phone bounty hunters, beto at dentist
Meatspace is Sarah and Lora’s weekly digest of weird/wack/need-to-know tech news — and our warm takes on all of it.
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Dear friends,
"I love you, alive girl. I will show you with my body, and my lips and my eyes, very soon.”
Thus (allegedly) spake Jeff Bezos in one of a string of (allegedly) steamy sexts to former Fox News anchor Lauren Sanchez. Lips...eyes...heads...shoulders...knees...toes….sounds like sexy, normal human behavior.
In a tweet that reeked of PR finesse, Bezos announced his divorce (which sounds more like conscious uncoupling) from his wife of 25 years, Mackenzie Bezos.
Because he has been dating Sanchez, who is also an avid helicopter enthusiast, for months! In a relationship that was nicknamed (allegedly; sociopathically) PROJECT ALEXA.
We were impressed to learn during all this that Mackenzie wrote a novel that received good reviews, and “not just on amazon dot com.”
This 1999 Wired profile of Jeff Bezos, in addition to predicting the future of e-commerce with almost alarming prescience, also offers some rather interesting insights into his approach to romance: (ty to loyal reader Rohan N for drawing our attention to this)
Try as we might, we cannot stop thinking about Bezos and his romantic future. According to Washington law, divorcing couples must split all assets down the middle if they don’t come to another agreement (which the Bezoses might but still). Getting half of Jeff’s $$ would make Mackenzie the richest woman on the planet!
Will she get half his company shares? Does that mean she gets to serve on the board of Blue Origin and control the future of space travel?! (Please say yes). Will she land one of the HQs?
And, finally, how did Jeff get so buff!
(E)NQUISITION
Okay so we know about the affair because the National Enquirer has apparently been obsessively tracking Bezos and Sanchez. We read this extensive Daily Mail summary of it so you don’t have to! More interesting than the details of the affair (read: it seems to have happened/they did expensive things, etc.) are what it all MEANS! Alexis Madrigal unleashed a crisp take about an affair like this in the age of conspiracy obsessions….and he reminds us of the strong link between Trump and National Enquirer.
Ronan Farrow expertly outlined the history of Trump’s ppl and the National Enquirer’s parent company AMI in The New Yorker last year (ty Sam W for the link).
Highlights included that AMI accepted money to buy exclusive rights to stories such as that uh Trump may have fathered an extramarital child. And also that Trump’s longtime bodyguard (who apparently is also Trump Org's COO??) is named Matthew Calamari. He also has a son, Matthew Calamari, Jr., who also works on Trump’s security detail. Yum!
This is all to say: The National Enquirer is not a neutral source. Reasons for potential beefs/desire to dig dirt on Bezos include that he owns the Washington Post and that… Trump’s mad at him for scamming the Post Office?
SHUT IT DOWN
The government is shut down. This really sucks for the roughly 800,000 federal workers currently working without pay. They all still have to go to work, and they are forbidden from striking.
This means that government functions that civilians rely on (including many that you might never think to miss!) are slowed. Without the government paychecks that workers also rely on, elderly renters might lose their homes; domestic violence survivors might lose their sanctuaries; D.C. Uber and Lyft drivers are already losing their business. And, without park staff on duty, Joshua trees are being chopped down!
The NYT is keeping an informative interactive of what is (not) happening: See How the Effects of the Government Shutdown Are Piling Up
Some other highlights of things this is messing up:
The SEC is not processing IPO applications, which may prevent companies like Lyft and Uber from going public on their planned timelines (Inc)
TSA agents have been calling in sick, and quitting. Because of short staffing, one terminal of the Miami airport is closing this weekend. (One of those news TVs in an elevator; also CNN)
A ton of cybersecurity federal employees are furloughed, which is, like, not great for cybersecurity! (MIT Tech Review)
The FDA is reducing food inspections. Note to selves: romaine = playing with fire in these trying time. (Washington Post)
OMG and this man can’t report being scammed by a fake Sugardaddy on Grindr! (Buzzfeed)
U USED TO CALL ME ON MY
Yes, we KNOW our phones are tracking us!! But every day, another story is like, bet you didn’t know HOW MUCH they are tracking you.
Apparently, it’s “bounty hunters can buy your location data” much. To prove this, Joseph Cox, a MotherBoard reporter, paid a bounty hunter $300 to track a phone. T-Mobile and other cell phone companies gladly sold said bounty hunter the exact location data, and also to Cox later, when he also pretended to be a bounty hunter. And that’s only the beginning of this insane story, which also features bail bondsmen and magenta-wearing T-Mobile CEO John Legere (please tell me you also get those bizarre promoted Twitter ads from him). Senator Ron Wyden is now pushing for the FCC to investigate, but remember: the shutdown.
Also, until 2015, users who tagged their tweets with general city-level location were also giving away their precise location. (Wired) We are looking forward to the forthcoming study that proves 71 percent of tweets were sent from the bathroom during a house party.
But despite suggestions to ditch ur smartphone and go for the cheaper, safer, ipod-with-wifi-plus-Verizon-flip-phone option, no one has done this, duh -- perhaps because 53 percent of people between 20 and 30 do not even have to pay for their phone plans, according to one study! Vox pubbed a great explainer on why we shouldn’t necessarily feel guilty for mooching off our parents’ data, and how actually, it’s phone companies’ fault bc they offer family plans. Sold.
(ALIVE) GIRLS RUN THE WORLD
Meet the (mostly women) entrepreneurs deciding to start businesses without VC -- because they’ve been historically excluded from these types of funding networks, because they don’t want to be pressured to expand too quickly only to flame out, or because they just don’t need the help.
Huge tech conference CES banned an extremely sophisticated women’s vibrator from being displayed and stripped it of an innovation award, even though the show has featured sex robots and VR porn in its halls before. “The difference?” writes Emily Dreyfuss in Wired. “Sex robots are for men to stick their penises into—you know, for fun. According to the world’s consumer tech show, women’s pleasure still just doesn’t matter.”
Remember why 20,000 Google employees walked out of their offices in November? TL;DR, after the guy who invented the Android allegedly sexually harassed a female coworker, the company gave him a payout of $90 million. Shareholders are pissed, too, apparently -- and now they’re suing Alphabet. If they win, executives who got buy-outs might have to return them to the company, according to Casey Newton, and Alphabet co-founders’ power will be checked.
The organizers of November’s action affirmed their support of the action in a Medium post, but reminded ppl it’s not enough: “We need to change the way the system works, above and beyond addressing the wrongs of those who work within the system. It is time for oversight, accountability, and for workers to truly have a say in decisions that affect their lives and the world around them.”
And, after getting hit by some other ‘suits from some suits, The Wing opens to all genders.
TASTY BITES
This billionaire paid to have most retweeted tweet (Bloomberg)
Beto goes to dentist swoon // ugh!! (Mashable)
Steve Bannon tried to work as a JUUL lobbyist and they wouldn’t hire him lmfao (The Daily Beast)
Lot of stories came out of CES, but the only thing Sam Biddle (and by extension, us) wanted to read about CES was “an interview with a guy whose job it is to repeatedly intentionally fall off a bike while people watch” (Twitter)
And speaking of falling off, Sarah wrote about the time she did that, whilst scootering! (CityLab)
Hm okay footage from Ring bells were shown not to “AI” but rather to random employees in Ukraine (The Intercept)
Despite everyone being like, Ring is crazy!, Amazon is doubling down on the tech: Now, deliverers can open your garage, too (Amazon.com)
Also, here are all the companies that claim to be the Amazon of “X,” and just aren’t (Bloomberg)
And with that, we will go back to drinking komBREWcha and hoping the b*z*s nudes never leak.
Bye!
Lora and Sarah