Meatspace is Lora and Sarah’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,
Taste….in dwellings, clothes, and milks....there is simply no accounting for it. Some rich men favor vests and allbirds, others suits and ties. In late May, a rare and special convergence occurred: several Silicon Valley titans descended on a teeny Italian town for a retreat with….iconic menswear designer Brunello Cucinelli. Sam Hine, in this v funny GQ piece, outlines how Jeff Bezos and a dozen of his swagless peers came to be meditating on capitalism with the philosopher-king of suits. Several in the bunch bought outfits...but will they also take back valuable lessons about treating workers well? It’s called fashion…..look it up on the search engines this cohort helped create….
Spoiler alert: Cucinelli asks Jeff Bezos what he will see when his soul floats over Seattle five hundred years from now.
But we hope he also considers what he will see above New York, as Bezos just bought a lavish 3-condo spread in NYC (the city with whom his company famously parted ways un-amicably on Valentine’s Day.) Here is a tour. And here is the listing on Streeteasy lol. It’s the biggest deal ever closed south of 42nd street, according to Gizmodo!
There are tons of bedrooms in said condo-palace. Wonder if now, amicably divorced, Bezos will have some roomies move in with whom he will slide down stairs on mattresses Princess Diaries 2-style!
Many Americans (us) live with roomies. Other Americans live in massive co-living projects that structure your social life and also install for your wifi like the one that is getting built in Silicon Valley (Sarah wrote about it!). But increasing numbers of Millennials are living alone. And, Ellen Byron in WSJ reports, companies are targeting them as customers. Apparently what these solo people need are... absolute units of toilet paper rolls, teenier appliances, and pre-made “mug treats.”
Though real estate is usually confined to the meatspace, not the cyberspace, here is a rare crossover h/t Kriston C:
Ah yes, the First Income-Generating Home. And perhaps the last!
WHO DO U LIKE
U ever wonder how Instagram knows so much about what u like? And then serves u ads about those things? Sometimes we are amazed at how relevant the ads are (Hillary Duff glasses sponcon) and other times we are absolutely puzzled (ads for a rave in Monticello, NY; this portable bidet created by the co-founder of Thinx)
After journo Eric Ginsburg tweeted about how to view ur “ad interests” on insta this week, everyone started checking theirs! Including us!
You can also get in on the fun by going to: settings → security → access data → ad interests
Ours were, unsurprisingly, unhinged. We do not know if these were ranked in order, but if so, Lora’s top interest apparently has been identified as “Bibliophilia,” and Sarah’s is “Scorpio” (but she isn’t even!!!). “Natural resource” for Sarah? Truly accurate! “Smoked meats” for Lora? Likewise!
We would love to know what ur oddest ad interests are!! Pls respond here or @ us on Twitter w/ ur top three...we will publish the weirdest/wackest ones in next week’s issue!
In the “access data” section, can also check your past bios and handles, which led to similar identity-questioning. Lora previously had the link to Wikipedia in her bio?? Sarah, painfully, the real sentence “feeling feelings since 1995.” cringe!
Lora also learned that at some point she used the handle @peanutbutternkelley. She has no memory of this but honestly? Nice. (The handle has since been overtaken by someone with the bio “it’s my mouth I can say what I want to.” Nice!)
This is all quite fun and funny but also….not to be like this but….it’s yet another reminder that (even when woefully misguided) our robot overlords are working overtime to build profiles of us all to sell us more things. Xo
As a Facebook lawyer (surprisingly bluntly) put it, There is No Privacy.
PRIDE ROCK
June is Pride Month, which every brand knows is the perfect time to aggressively position themselves as queer allies for one month and one month only. Uber and Lyft are adding pronouns. Restaurants are adding colorful bunting. Lime (yes the scooter company) is encouraging people to “share stories of freedom and inclusivity within the LGBTQ+ community and its Allies” in a hashtag campaign. The NSA is making their building glow rainbow, we think?
But some brands are actively eroding/failing to protect the safety of queer people.
When Vox.com Strikethrough series host Carlos Maza became the target of homophobic and racist harassment and doxxing on Youtube, YouTube sprung to the defense of.. Steven Crowder, the conservative pundit who led the abuse this week and who Maza says has been harassing him for years. Crowder’s gross videos, YouTube said, did not violate company policy bc he was simply “debating” Maza on the merit of ideas -- but the videos were egregious enough to demonetize him -- UNLESS he stopped selling T-shirts (which literally have a homophobic slur on them).
Max Read’s NYMag account highlights how inconsistent tech company policies have been when applied to many of these online harassers/“fake news” conspiracy theorists/racists:
“[YouTube] has a habit of tacking between empty, tedious literalism and broad, sweeping judgment as it moves back and forth in its moderation decisions,” he writes. “This kind of inconsistency and lack of clarity makes it very difficult to treat YouTube’s intricate scaffold of policy — and its endless promises to “reexamine” that policy — as anything other than a cover for YouTube’s actual rule, which is: ‘Don’t do anything that attracts negative outside attention.’”
In solidarity with Maza, San Francisco is considering keeping Google out of its pride parade (usually a who’s-who of Woke Brand Floats). One anonymous Google employee thinks that’s the right call:
Plenty of other Google employees (LGBTQ and otherwise) are similarly frustrated with the company, according to the Verge, but feel like they can’t speak out bc they “fear retaliation from their company, bad faith weaponization of HR, and more doxxing.” We hope Maza and others who experience these attacks can find peace and justice!
OUR INFLUENCE?
Wives have officially saturated our culture. We cannot get enough of the wife guy beat. Here are two of our fave writers on wife guys:
Amanda Hess in the NYTimes
Jia Tolentino in the New Yorker
Also ofc Robbie Tripp had thoughts about his role in the media zeitgeist... (“I’m a creative genius. Today I was featured in The New York Times. I’m a part of the cultural conversation whether they like it or not. ... I’m a Highly Creative Individual.”)
TASTY BITES
RIP itunes :( (Wired)
Teens are Airdropping pics to each other (h/t Jodi K!!) (The Atlantic)
Algorithms are writing local news for this British paper (Financial Times)
Apple watch at last is launching a period tracker (OneZero)
YouTube is recommending soft/hard-core child pornography to viewers who are watching pedophilia (NYTimes)
The time has come...23andme is gleefully planning to mine the DNA database that everyday ppl paid them to create (Forbes)
There is now a website that tracks Elon Musk’s lies (http://www.elonmusk.today/)
Facebook is launching a cryptocurrency codenamed Libra that is set to drop at the tail-end of Gemini szn (June 18) (TechCrunch)
A fun thread of start-ups, dead and alive (Twitter)
Erin Griffith slaying the tech founder profile beat as usual -- pre-IPO, meet the tight-lipped founder of Slack (NYTimes)
Also, meet the two teens running presidential candidate Mike Gravel’s twitter account (NYTimes)
Why Roxane Gay invested in Ethels Club, the co-working space for POC in Brooklyn! (Medium)
Nasa is opening a space station to tourists (we have thus far abstained from reading about the Trump/Mars/Moon situation) (BBC)
This iPhone shortcut automatically records police interactions (Wesh)
Full circle we leave u with this: please take the time to watch some of these Architectural Digest home tours which are SO funny here is one of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard but also this vaguely chaotic-evil Neil Patrick Harris/David Burtka one (thank you Lucas R for introducing us).
Speaking of NPH, he seems to be the newest spokesperson for the MTA apps lol.
#awesome,
Sarah and Lora