Who's surprised?!
I lovvvvve freak November snowstorms. WHY, you ask? Because freak November snowstorms are the only time it's cool to be from Buffalo, NY. Usually people look at you with muted sympathy when you say you're going home to Buffalo for the holidays. Post-snowstorm, people act like you just enlisted in the army or volunteered to serve on the first manned flight to Mars. (That's right, I just compared my hometown to a planet devoid of life. I mean it nicely.) Anyway, the links!
1. Predicting the fall of Facebook. Facebook may be omnipresent and all-powerful, but at the end of the day, nobody loves it. And the apps people do love -- Snapchat, Pinterest, Yik Yak, Vine -- form a compelling network of networks, one that could someday supplant FB itself.
2. Behold the gangsters of spam. Those messages from Nigerian princes and sellers of low-cost pharmaceuticals don't exactly sound like the work of a sophisticated group. But "organized cybercrime" is actually pretty big business. Especially in Russia! (Who's surprised?!)
3. "TO ME IT'S REAL LIFE." Whether or not you're a fan of Serial, the narrative podcast/cultural phenomenon that is somehow everywhere these days, this rebuttal from the younger brother of the podcast's victim seems like really important reading. "To you listeners, it's another murder mystery, crime drama, another episode of CSI. You weren't there to see your mom crying every night."
Let it snow let it snow let it snow
Pocketable: What fame looks like when you're a living meme. (4431 words/18 minutes)
Postscripts: Text me Merry Christmas. Sext me these odd emoji. Old tweets, Thanksgiving eats and the ever-fruitful polygamy beat. 26 iPhone photos taken by a Pulitzer photographer. 37 proposed emoji. Martha Stewart 3D prints these days and the Times reigns in that whole Brooklyn meme. What Wi-Fi sounds like. What designer hashtags look like. What texting does to the texters' spine. Jaden and Willow in iambic verse. Finally, conclusive proof Uber IS the worst.
Until tomorrow!
@caitlindewey
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