Zomg chill out

I literally almost cried laughing over moms' responses to the New York Ebola patient. CRIED, I tell you. Someone give Gawker a Pulitzer: This is the best crowdsourcing in the history of the Internet, ever. Incidentally my mother is in town (unrelated to Ebola, thank God) so I'm just gonna drop that there and go right to the links. Onward!

1. Mindgeek is basically the czar of Internet porn. It owns production. It owns distribution. It uses more bandwidth than Amazon or Facebook. And yet ... all is not well in the online porn industry! Which says way more about economics than sex.

2. Your next best friend could be a robot. They already vacuum our houses, make your stuff and treat your Ebola patients. (Well, theoretically.) The next frontier? Looking, acting and interacting like humans, which isn't quite as far-fetched as you think.

3. When video games become therapy. Researchers think they'd found a new potential treatment for people on the autism spectrum: video games that mimic real life.

Zomg chill out Dory.

Pocketable: Inside the Ebola wars. [Since I lead with an Ebola joke, I'm basically honor-bound to also include this New Yorker #longread.] (10,397 words/42 minutes)

Postscripts: Emoji masks. Ebola raps. "ACTUALLY, it's about ethics." How Jehovah's Witnesses went viral before viral was a thing and how algorithms will determine our future identities. Martha Stewart throws a "punk party." Internet inventor fears his creation was unwise. Today, in ~fun~ origin stories: straws, candy corn, the phrase "you guys."

Have a great weekend! Until Monday,
@caitlindewey

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