I was away from the network all weekend and caught up on my reading. Rather than make a bunch of separate posts, I’m just going to dump links here. Definitely a bunch of awesome stuff. I’ll post them roughly in order of awesomeness. -egg

Really interesting academic paper arguing that the core of our cultural ideas about constructing the self and about authenticity are shifting from the consumption of cool to the performance of the self on social media. I think the author gets some stuff really wrong, but a lot of stuff really right.

For those who enjoyed Charlie Stross’ article about gen Y, gen Z, and the extremely dangerous loyalty problem faced by the intelligence community, he’s done an extended version for Foreign Policy.

Woohoo, Cory Doctorow’s written a novella in the same series as _Little Brother_ and _Pirate Cinema_! These are the most compelling politically radical books for kids that anyone’s written in a long time, and this one is about Occupy. Available free online, like the others.

Fantastic article (2009) about the world of ’70’s lesbian separatists.

Scathing and well-written: Some Context for Our Upcoming Bombing Campaign

In A Grain Of Golden Rice, A World Of Controversy Over GMO Foods : NPR

How “cell tower dumps” caught the High Country Bandits—and why it matters

The Placebo Effect Is Real. Now Doctors Just Have To Work Out How To Use It

Good long article about what Sonny Rollins is up to these days.

Twitter ‘Joke Bots’ Shame Human Sense of Humor

Nasdaq crash triggers fear of data meltdown

Also, Bruce Sterling has written a very strange novel. Now that he’s not primarily a fiction writer, he can just write whatever the hell he wants, and that shows through here like crazy. I’m really enjoying it so far.