Just putting it out there ...
There are many markers of professional success in this world, but you definitively KNOW you've made it when people dress their dogs like you for Halloween. This is the great (and apparently bewildered?) position that Ira Glass found himself in over the weekend, when a dog dressed as the public radio star won a costume contest in Fort Greene. (No pressure, of course, but if any of you would like to dress your pups like me, all you really need are a computer, a pumpkin spice latte, and a curly wig. Just putting it out there.) To the links!
1. This is why the tech industry can't attract ladies. Sure, it has something to do with the fact that women aren't encouraged to study computer science in school, or that company cultures often don't make room for them. But it also has to do with straight-up ignorant bullshit like this: a start-up founder gave a female tech reporter a vibrator to "get her attention," and then failed to grasp why that was wrong.
2. Meet "the scariest thing in the history of the Internet." Marble Hornets was a truly rare accomplishment for its time: a web mystery that managed to stay mysterious, a horror film that genuinely freaked viewers out, and a niche, weird-Internet phenomenon that achieved mainstream notoriety. Even better, the Kernel's history of the YouTube series comes ... just in time for Halloween!
3. That time Gamergate partied at a strip club in Queens. And when they say "partied," they actually mean "sat in a club with a laptop out, complaining about those damn feminazis."
Pocketable: The only thing better than Julieanne Smolinski's hilarious first-person review of ManServant, the "Uber for Gentleman Companions," is the accompanying imagery. (3979 words/16 minutes)
Postscripts: Texts from Jane Eyre. News from Facebook. Hate mail from verifiable losers. Why Google wants to redo email and what, exactly, you should next read. The trouble with #OpGamergate, Jian Ghomeshi, and Ray Rice as Halloween meme. OY, is there any good left in the world? (Actually, more than there might seem!)
Until tomorrow,
@caitlindewey
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