Because chipmunks and hot peppers, duh.
Would you like to tell your mother you appeared in the pages of the Washington Post? This honor can be yours -- yes, yours!! -- for the low low price of your personal dignity. All you have to do is go home tonight, contact three men you have dated/had flings with, and ask them if I could please use their photos to test a facial recognition software. In exchange, you will gain hugely valuable insights into your romantic "TYPE," your mom will be really proud of you, and I will finally have subjects for this impossible blog post. Also, who knows, maybe you'll hit it off again with one of the exes! Plz email for details. </plea> Now the links!
1. Are the things you say on the Internet real? Or does the Internet exist in a state of mysterious limbo, where it's actually A-OK to threaten to kill your wife? That's essentially the issue at the heart of a landmark case on Facebook threats, which the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear. (Now is perhaps as good a time as any to remind you that Supreme Court justices don't even get email.)
2. ISIS is scary-good at Twitter. The Sunni militant group apparently found time to develop a Twitter app, called "The Dawn of Glad Tidings," in between conquering major Iraqi cities. It's all part of a greater strategy -- increasingly used by many militants -- to "recruit, radicalize and raise funds" on mainstream social media.
3. ... and the FBI is scary-bad at it. The agency has an 83-page handbook on Twitter slang. IKYN, it really sucks. (I made that acronym up, obviously, but IITYWIMWYBMAD?)
Dogs react to humans pretending to be dogs. (PSA, this Youtube channel is consistently great.)
Pocketables: When the "gospel of innovation" doesn't work. (6063 words/24 minutes) -- with rebuttals, part 1 and 2.
Postscripts: Slow web. Guilty pleasures. Fashion grandpas. This is how much money you'd need to buy everything in Vogue and this is how much electricity your cable box uses. (... a lot.) Butter vs. margarine. Kimye vs. Leibovitz. The science of: ice cream, romcoms and tornadoes. Why do we even care about emoji? (Because chipmunks and hot peppers. Duh.)
Until tomorrow,
Do you like this newsletter? Please send it to a friend! If you don't like this newsletter, please send it to an enemy.