Charlie Stross Forget barbed wire, concentration camps, gas chambers and gallows, and Hugo Boss uniforms. That’s the 20th century pattern of centralized, industrialized genocide. In the 21st century deep-learning mediated AI era, we have the tools to inflict agile, decentralized genocide as a cloud service on our victims. Good grief, how depressing. Not necessarily because of what he says, but because of how true it rings.

Jonathan Franzen - NYT: But then when it began to be that every individual person also had to be a product that they were selling and liking became paramount, that seemed like a very worrisome thing at a personal level as a human being. If you’re in a state of perpetual fear of losing market share for you as a person, it’s just the wrong mind-set to move through the world with.

I was creating an eBay listing to sell my Penna Bluetooth keyboard and I thought I should probably make sure it worked first, since I hadn’t used it in months. The batteries were still good and it paired immediately. I started typing on its Cherry MX Blue switches and realized it was so fun and weird and cool-looking that I decided to keep it.

I love video games but I rarely play them. I’m terrible at games. My brain can’t handle complex controls using multiple buttons. I dislike managing an “inventory” of any kind. I have a terrible sense of direction. I don’t learn from my mistakes. It’s a recipe for failure. I bought a Nintendo Switch hoping it would rekindle my interest in gaming, and it did, for a while. Most games are too difficult for me to enjoy.

I’m about to list my house for sale. I’ll be moving into my fiancé’s place the minute mine sells. This is all very exciting, but it’s forcing me to consider what “stuff” is important enough to keep. I’ve lived alone for so long now that I don’t even notice how much crap I’ve accumulated. I basically have a room for every mood, and those rooms are filled with my stuff.

Philipp: There are not that many great feed readers for macOS right now that work with the Fever API and have the Look & Feel of a native Mac app I spent years with NetNewsWire, then Reeder. I switched to Feedbin a few months ago and now I just use the web UI. That was unexpected. Via Michael Tsai

Trent Reznor - NYT: There weren’t a lot of things to distract you, so you’d end up turning inward. I can’t help but think about that lack of access. The side effect was that when you could get something, whether it be an album or a magazine that looked like a portal into a new world, you pored over it, because it wasn’t one Google search away all the time.

This may be why so many people claim to prefer Spotify.

How to Beat LinkedIn: The Game: For those unfamiliar, LinkedIn is a 2D, turn-based MMORPG that sets itself apart from its competitors by placing players not in a fantasy world of orcs and goblins, but in the treacherous world of business. If I hadn’t already deleted my LinkedIn account I’d totally play this.

Remember Y2K?