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Southern Enlightenment
With healthy doses of Axl Rose and methamphetamines, two new collections, from journalist John Jeremiah Sullivan and crime fiction writer Frank Bill, call forth the power of place and personal history in the Shallow South.
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Using Facebook to Incite Riots now Punishable by Law in the UK
Two young adult males–Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22–both just received four-year sentences for using Facebook to incite a riot in their Cheshire hometown that never happened. Despite the announcement over Facebook concerning the riots that were purportedly going…
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Sandberg in Silicon Valley
Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, is profiled in the New Yorker. The gender-divided executive culture in Silicon Valley is manifested in the seriously unbalanced ratio of women and men executives. This essay discusses Sandberg’s history and theorizes about…
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Danya Glabau’s Tech Links
Big hack of the day: the CIA, by LulzSec. And they released 62,000 password and login combinations with a challenge to hackers to find out where they work. Now, the security breaches are escalating to an all-out hacker war between…
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French Faux Pas
A twenty year-old French law that sought to keep the news media from promoting commercial enterprises is being newly reinforced. This means that using “Facebook” and “Twitter” on air is strictly forbidden. This seems like a good way to stave…
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #43: Alana Voth in Conversation with Her Facebook Friend, Terry Gearlds
Terry Gearlds and I have never met. We’re friends on Facebook. We share some stuff in common like True Blood and horror movies. Also, anytime either of us see a picture of Bradley Cooper with no shirt on our nipples…
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A Very Good Point
Sam Biddle argues that “Facebook is AOLifying the Internet,” and explains why “that sucks.”
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Lovely Faces
“Welcome to the only dating site that lists real people, sincerely posting their real data and picture. You’ll feel comfortable watching them. Just like in Facebook.” To construct Lovely Faces, the third column in their phenomenal Hacking Monopolism Trilogy, which…
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Look! Look! Feathers
Mike Young’s debut collection sifts through the lives of characters on the fringe, grounding moments of the surreal in a world that is frighteningly real.