Sexting a bot

Peter Thiel, very rich human/Silicon Valley demigod, recently went on the record with his belief that technology stalled c. 1970. Inspired as I am by modern progress in areas like selfie-taking and algorithm-making, I kinda gotta agree with the guy. After all, if the past 45 years never happened, we'd still get a lot of the good stuff -- laser tag, Pong, that whole man-on-the-moon thing -- but without modern menaces like Twitter trolls and ATM fees. (And email newsletters!) Something to ponder. To the links!

1. Gaming sex, feminism and mental illness. Kara Stone is a fascinating character, whether you care about video games or not: The independent artist and interactive designer creates quirky, provocative games that challenge players' conceptions of gender, depression, sex ... and play, itself. Her latest game, "Sext Adventures," involves sexting a bot.

2. Inside the resurrection of Digg. Before Reddit, there was Digg -- the best place on the Internet to find interesting, social news. But then Digg got less interesting and kind of anti-social. The story of the site's gradual comeback isn't just relevant to jargon-loving start-up types: it's also the story of the maturation of the web.

3. The best prank of all time, ever: Manipulate Facebook's already-creepy targeted ads to convince a friend (or enemy!) that Zuck knows everything about him. Mean!

Bonus of sorts: Yesterday's lead link, to a Gizmodo story on the webmasters of a long-gone suicide cult, was unfortunately ... not correct! Here's the real link. Sorry + thanks to everyone who clued me in.

Youtube caption: "Ok, so maybe I'm like ten years late to the game, but stood by silent while cat videos took over the internet. Here's one for the pups." A+.

Pocketable: What is censorship? Hint: RARELY what the discontents in the comments' section think it is. (2884 words/12 minutes)

Postscripts: Thinkables. "Smart shorts." Pop-Tarts, ranked. The future of books and the future of reading. What breadsticks teach us about capitalism and what lolz teach us about linguistics. Do rich people have their own Internet? Did slaves make your computer? Today, in Netflix #content: "albatrosses," solid recs, the only hacks you'll ever need.

Until tomorrow!
@caitlindewey

Do you like this newsletter? Please send it to a friend! If you don't like this newsletter, please send it to an enemy.