Stupid smart home
Sad dads, Insta cults, crypto dating shows, #vanlife, Taco Bell and unburst bubbles
Hi friends. Today is April 22, 2022.
And today I’m writing with a parable we’ll call “the dad, the switch, and the swindler.”
The dad, in this case, is my own: a man cursed — like many of his generation — with a surfeit of enthusiasm for gadgets. The switch — or rather the switches, plural — connected to the internet via a dual mesh network that gave him the power to turn his lights on with Alexa.
Alas, power corrupts even the most true-hearted dads, and mine was soon bewitched. He rigged up smart dimmers. A smart fireplace. Smart string lights. To my endless and undisguised annoyance, only those with the magic voice commands could access them.
This, unfortunately, brings us to the swindler: the maker of the hub that controlled all these gadgets — a company called Insteon. Last Friday, Insteon customers across the country began to report strange occurrences in their various automated fiefdoms. Suddenly, voice commands no longer worked. Scheduled events came too early or late. Most troublingly, Insteon’s executives disappeared the company from their LinkedIn profiles and wiped their biographies from the firm’s about page.
On Wednesday, after days of ominous silence, Insteon blinked to life long enough to explain that the company had been junked for parts. Once a granddaddy in the smart home movement, it had since dwindled to the sort of two-bit operation that didn’t warn its customers their lights would soon go out.
But this, of course, is an old story: Revolv, Insignia and Iris performed similar vanishing acts. iHome just ended its cloud services on April 2. The moral of all these stories is clear: don’t entrust the control of your whole damn house to a single cloud, or maybe turn your own lights on, it’s not that hard!
Nobody’s paying attention, though! Reddit is wretched with workarounds. And I’ve no doubt my dad will — perhaps already has? — resurrected his stupid smart home somehow.
If you read anything this weekend
“Artificial Intelligence is Creating a New Colonial World Order,” by Karen Hao in MIT Technology Review. This is the introduction to a fascinating, dark and deeply reported four-part series on how Big Tech exploits the data and labor of people in developing countries. (Yes, I know — a little light weekend reading!) Karen must have gotten a *big* grant from the Pulitzer Center to report these stories, because they’re all incredibly told on the ground: from the “base camps” of Indonesian delivery drivers to the offices of Māori radio stations.
“A Murder Solved in DMs,” by Jennifer Swann in The Cut. We often hear about armchair internet investigations when they’re running amok. But after the media and the police have moved on, the only hope for some families — including this one — is TikTok.
“The Instagram Guru 'Fucking' His Female Followers 'To Freedom,’” by EJ Dickson in Rolling Stone. If Bentinho Massaro can be a cult leader, then surely anybody can: The Instagram “teachings” on which he’s built his reputation make absolutely zero sense. Still, the Dutch businessman/wellness guru gained millions of followers during the pandemic — despite repeat and well-publicized reports that he abuses his adherents.
“I Lived the #VanLife. It Wasn’t Pretty,” by Caity Weaver in The New York Times Magazine. Based on my cursory Twitter scrolling, this link generally evokes one of two strong reactions: “Caity Weaver is hilarious, I’ll read anything she writes” or “how dare the Times pay this incompetent, entitled person to essentially fail to camp.” I will not weigh in on this particular discourse, but I will say this: Irony is an underrated virtue, even in journalism!
“The Many, Many Beautiful Cartoon Women of Web3,” by Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic. A Pulitzer to the person who came up with the dek “non-fungible tokenism.”
Bonus: Since this story was a news cycle onto itself, I assume you’ve already read it. But if not, here’s “Meet the Woman Behind Libs of TikTok,” plus “Right-Wing Figures Attack Journalist Taylor Lorenz” and “They Know How Journalism Works! They’re Just Against It!”
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from last week’s newsletter was this piece on the “coastal grandmother aesthetic.”
The classifieds
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Food is complicated.
The new podcast "What You're Eating" is here to help. Why is that rotisserie chicken so cheap? How can we reduce food waste? What’s up with plant-based meats? We talk to farmers, chefs and policy experts, covering everything from the why to the how.
Postscripts
AITA, but make it AI. The Bachelorette, but make it crypto. Narcos, but make it PPE. (We could do this ALL DAY, you know.) The start-up bubble that didn’t (yet) burst. “The realities of the working world” in 60-second clips. “Poster’s disease.” TBQ5. A main character we can believe in.
Why Netflix is losing subscribers now. What happens when you claim to be 146. Sleep wearables, counter their marketing, ensure that you “never really rest.” Does Kamala Harris have nothing better to do? (I mean this interview, not the game.) Is MoveOn.org still sending emails? (Yes, and they sound deranged.) Last but not least — because the magazines were really out in force this week — profiles of MrBeast and the former Wolf of Wall Street.
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin