Facebook keeps showing me the same ad for a $60 sling bag, over and over. It’s a nice-looking bag, looks like a good alternative to cargo pants and shorts, which I am getting tired of wearing. And $60 isn’t a lot of money.
But $60 isn’t a small amount of money either. And I. Do. Not. Need. Another. Bag.
Quantum computing threatens to trash telecom security — get ready. Cybercriminals are already stealing encrypted data to decrypt once quantum computers arrive — here’s why telecoms need to start preparing now for “Q-Day.” My latest on @Fierce Network
The Woman Who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave
By D. T. Max at The New Yorker:
I asked her what she’d missed down below, and she told me roast chicken with French fries—“the kind where you can soak the bread and the potatoes in the sauce.” The caterer had sent down decent food, but never that. Over all, she insisted, the time had passed quickly: “For me, it was just a moment—a single night. I didn’t have time to miss anyone.” In a vibrant, emotive voice, she spoke about her happiness underground so adamantly, and repeatedly, that it was a little hard to believe.
RIP "Uncle Floyd" Vivino, who hosted the cult "Uncle Floyd Show" starting in the 1970s
Fans included David Bowie, who said in 2002:
“Back in the late 70’s, everyone that I knew would rush home at a certain point in the afternoon to catch the Uncle Floyd show,” Bowie said. “He was on UHF Channel 68 and the show looked like it was done out of his living room in New Jersey. All his pals were involved and it was a hoot.
“It had that Soupy Sales kind of appeal and though ostensibly aimed at kids, I knew so many people of my age who just wouldn’t miss it. We would be on the floor it was so funny. I just loved that show.”
Vivino was 74
I bought a new strap for my computer bag the other day and now I’m on the luggage company’s mailing list. This could be one expensive luggage strap.
DHS memo declares the Fourth Amendment optional. “The DHS is acting as if the US Constitution, a document conservative wingnuts used to demand we revere in its original form, does not apply to them.”
I am on record as being skeptical of the notion that if you shop very carefully, you can make society better. “Conscious consumption” is not a tool for structural change, and any election that requires you to “vote with your wallet” is always won by the people with the thickest wallets (statistically speaking, that’s not you)
— The petty (but undeniable) delights of cultivating unoptimizability as a habit, by Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr