My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Smartly pointed satire loosely disguised as a thriller. Witty and dark as hell. I loved it.  #Fiction [Link]

Coding

GitHub Copilot investigation

“Copi­lot’s whizzy code-retrieval meth­ods are a smoke­screen intended to con­ceal a grubby truth: Copi­lot is merely a con­ve­nient alter­na­tive inter­face to a large cor­pus of open-source code. There­fore, Copi­lot users may incur licens­ing oblig­a­

The 19th annual community survey

At The 19th, we’re running our annual community survey. If you’ve read a story on The 19th, or if you’re a woman or LGBTQ+ person, or are interested in policy and democracy news that affects women and LGBTQ+ people, we’d love to hear from you. Complete

How the web reads fiction

Last week, I asked you about your fiction-reading habits as part of my research for a personal project I’m working on. I also ran a separate survey on Google Surveys - getting in just before that service shuts down next month - to get a sense of what the

Coding

The Proprietary Syndication Formats

“Guess which format is going to outlast all these proprietary syndication formats. I’d say RSS, which I believe to be true, but really, it’s HTML.”  #Coding [Link]

Kanye West plans to acquire conservative social media site Parler

“Parler was created in September 2018 as a free speech alternative to apps like Twitter and Facebook. The app was de-platformed from Google and Apple's app stores in January 2021, following the January Capitol siege.”  #Technology [Link]

How a Secret Rent Algorithm Pushes Rents Higher

“For tenants, the system upends the practice of negotiating with apartment building staff. RealPage discourages bargaining with renters and has even recommended that landlords in some cases accept a lower occupancy rate in order to raise rents and make more money.”  #Business [Link]

Bakery Creates ‘Pan Solo,’ a 6-Foot Replica of ‘Star Wars’ Hero Made of Bread

“Finally, after a month of work, he was ready: a lovingly wrought 6-foot recreation of Han Solo frozen in carbonite, made entirely of bread. The duo behind the creation, Hannalee Pervan and her mother, Catherine Pervan, called him “Pan Solo.””  #Culture [Link]

Coding

Using the Free Pascal IDE for a week

“I'm not sure what the rationale is for maintaining the text mode FP IDE. It seems kinda quaint in 2022 to maintain a recreation of the old Turbo Pascal editor, but I'm so glad that it's there.”  #Coding [Link]

Voter ID laws are creating barriers for transgender people, women and others

“More than 200,000 voting-eligible transgender Americans may find it difficult to cast a ballot in the upcoming midterm elections because of voter ID laws.”  #Democracy [Link]

Regulating DAOs

“It’s a mistake to defend DAOs on the grounds that code is free speech. Some code is speech, but not all code is speech. And code can also directly affect the world.”  #Crypto [Link]

Tarana Burke on #MeToo progress and reframing the future

“Ahead of next month’s midterms, she said she’s thinking more than ever about survivors as a key part of the electorate. They can be a powerful voting bloc that could help elect candidates focused on changing policy around sexual and gender-based violence.”  #Society [Link]