Will You Commit To Ending Finsta?

Epik fails, the rich divorced boys are mad, and NO new Ozy tabs 😉

A couple weeks ago, hackers released 180 GB of data taken from domain registrar and web host Epik, known for being the company that keeps fascist-friendly services like Parler and Gab online when even the likes of Amazon and GoDaddy find them too icky. So much data was released, according to Mathew Ingram at CJR, that it’s taking right-wing extremism researchers a lot of time to even sort through it. But yesterday Anonymous dropped a new batch of Epik data, and this time it’s full bootable images of the company’s servers. Imagine if someone broke into your house and stole all your stuff, but then also stole the house itself, packed it up in a little suitcase and gave away an infinite number of copies of that suitcase that anyone could unpack and wander around in, looking in your medicine cabinet and rummaging around in your underwear drawer. That‘s what has reportedly happened here. Also:

Senator Richard Blumenthal demands that Facebook end Finsta. Singer Shakiraattacked by a pair of wild boars.” I’m not impressed if there aren’t 28 to 48 more. Franzen season continues in the form of a Vulture interview by Merve Emre that is also the most excruciating conversation you overheard at the grad school wine & cheese mixer. [Pulls Middlemarch off shelf]. Inebriated Turkish man “spent hours helping a search party look for himself.” Sometimes you’re exactly who you’re looking for. Jason Diamond tried 30 mustards, concludes: mustard is good. It’s all going down at the Bronx Zoo.

Elon Musk is trolling Jeff Bezos about who’s richer, and and Bezos is making angry spreadsheets back at him. But while the rich divorced boys have a public slappy fight, Alexandra Abrams and 20 other current and former Blue Origin employees write that Jeff’s dong-rocket emporium “is rife with sexism” and that “concerns related to flying New Shepard were consistently shut down, and women were demeaned for raising them.” Emma Hinchliffe talked to Abrams and five other authors of the letter for Fortune, and Abrams appeared on CBS Mornings today.

And that’s it! There are no new tabs about Ozy today, isn’t that weird? Lol jk, of course there are. In Forbes Jemima McEvoy and David Jeans report that the one part of Ozy everyone was still taking at face value, “Ozy Fest,” was also a Potemkin business that only avoided becoming the new Fyre Festival in 2019 thanks to a fortuitously-timed heat wave. Bloomberg’s Gerry Smith and Clara Molot: “Ozy Staffers Felt Pressure to Take Stock Options Over Pay Raises,” and CNN has even more damning reporting about the company’s abusive work environment, from Kerry Flynn:

One former staffer recalled that in the publication's early days Watson seemed to expect a full-time editorial staff of about four writers and two editors to produce 40 high-quality magazine articles per week.

And for analysis: Ernie Smith made the point that “The problem with Ozy is that it existed to raise up one man’s career,” and Brian Morrissey observed that Ozy might be an extreme case, but “media has long been propped up by shared delusions and a high tolerance for bullshit.” What happens to “fake it till you make it” when making it is impossible and everyone else is faking it even harder than you?

Today’s Song: Saint Etienne, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” (via Emerson in the Tabs Discord)

~ only tabs can break your heart ~

Today: it’s the last day you can get a year’s subscription for just $35. Don’t sleep! (Macbeth has murdered sleep.)

Tomorrow: Heather Havrilesky visits for “Ask Polly and Ask Wolly” (“Wolly” like… "Polly’s Wario?” I mean me, it’s me). We got enough questions that we might do a second batch later.

Right Now: It’s Thursday, log off and go for your stupid little walk. Not me though.

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