Is this where Gibson got the name for F:F:F, I presume?

Future feed Forward: http://futurefeedforward.com/front.php?fid=104

Was apparently a comdeic science fiction mailing list that has resurfaced.

I'd not heard of it until now when I read about it on BoingBoing.

I am guessing Gibson took the abbreviation as a nod to the mailing list.

It's got a stroy about Google annotating every body of every living creature on the planet.

Here is one of their subscription terms:

5. The Subscriber agrees that he or she has absolutely no rights of any kind, whether customary, legal, statutory, or constitutional. In exchange for valuable consideration, including the subscription email service provided by the Company (the "Service"), the Subscriber agrees and consents, wholly and without condition, to renounce all of his or her Human Rights as well as any residual rights assigned to Subscriber as a member of the Animal Kingdom.

Y'all should sign up and the like.

Great find!

Yeah. It's kind of Oniony. with a side of cynical geek or some such.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
Yeah. It's kind of Oniony. with a side of cynical geek or some such.

I love "cynical geek"

And Cynical Geek loves you.

December 9, 2029

Precinct Collapse Disorder Plagues Coastal Communities

MAR VERDE--Like residents in many coastal counties in this
affluent area of northern California, local store-owner
Dwight Henrikson was surprised to discover Thursday
morning that the local sheriff's office had been
inexplicably abandoned. "I got a call yesterday to come
down to the station to give a witness statement," observes
Henrikson, "but when I got here, nobody was around. The
lights were on, the doors were opened, coffee was brewing,
but the place was empty. It was eerie."

The phenomenon, dubbed "precinct collapse disorder" by
social scientists who have studied it, has struck numerous
police, fire, and other municipal agencies along the
pacific coast and throughout the northwestern United
States. "The disorder has placed a particularly intense
strain on the system," notes California Attorney General
Edga Meese. "In many cases, the very individuals who'd be
investigating these clusters of missing persons are
exactly who's missing. We're doing what we can to
reallocate resources, but it's been a real challenge."

The disorder, which has been variously linked to declining
health benefits for civil servants, the proliferation of
employee RFID tags, and the reported health effects of
on-the-job video surveillance, is characterized by the
spontaneous disappearance of all employees at a station or
agency office. Occasionally a stray, uniformed rookie or
two is found sleeping on an office floor or wandering
confused in the vicinity. "We are scrambling on this,"
explains Dr. Penny Gaspeir, an expert on the disorder. "It
appears to have a complex of causes, and there are a number of
hypotheses, but we are working on-the-fly, in the hot zone,
with lots of conjecture and not much context."

Most uncanny to residents in affected precincts has been
their continued ability to have calls to otherwise
abandoned station houses answered promptly and
pleasantly. "The weird thing was, when I found the station
empty, I called 9-1-1," elaborates Henrikson. "I heard a
phone ring somewhere in the back, there, and then somebody
picked up and took down my information."

"Not many people realize that much of their local service
has been outsourced," continues Dr. Gaspeir,
"particularly to offshore call centers, and private
evidence labs and real-time on-the-job video monitors.
There may not be any officers in the station, but the phones
are still answered and much of the work still gets done."

Gibson is good at conveying what extrapolated future trends will *feel* like. Sterling's good at what they'll do.

This:

"We are scrambling on this,"
explains Dr. Penny Gaspeir, an expert on the disorder. "It
appears to have a complex of causes, and there are a number of
hypotheses, but we are working on-the-fly, in the hot zone,
with lots of conjecture and not much context."

is hilarious.

Baby Jeebus in a lunchbox, what a sausage party in here.

How's that? No girls you mean?

May 5, 2016

Paris Hilton Rendered to Offshore Blackshop

NEW YORK--Spokespeople for famed Manhattan socialite
Paris Hilton report that the three-time heiress was
rendered Thursday to an undisclosed, offshore shopping
haven known as a "blackshop." "It was an ambush...we were
overwhelmed instantly," admitted Fred Luchia, Hilton's
tearful head of security. "I'd say six, maybe seven
well-trained guys, dressed in black Prada, head to foot,
balaclavas [...]. She was zipped up in a Gucci body bag and
gone before we knew what happened."

"Rendition," an emerging practice among high-end
retailers and luxury goods companies, involves the
abduction of wealthy, high-profile customers who are
reportedly detained at baroque, unidentified duty-free
camps, often indefinitely and without access to courts,
attorneys, or financial advisers. "There are no clear
numbers on how many have been taken in this way," explains
Brett Horgaus, an ACLU attorney and head of the
organization's human trafficking task force. "We
estimate that as many as 2-3 thousand ultra-wealthy
consumers are being held a half-dozen secret sites
worldwide. The stigma of these abductions, and the secrecy
among the families of those who are targets, lead us to
suspect that this estimate may be low."

Few clues have emerged about the mysterious process and the
far-flung operations network that reportedly supports
it. June reports in Vanity Fair and the New York Times linked
the abductions to a network of unmarked, private jets and
anonymous, mid-western front corporations with names
like "Houston Dataplan Unlimited" and
"Pick-of-the-litter, Inc."

A more recent account from a purported former detainee
includes tales of being forced to shop in stress positions,
dancing to exhaustion in clubs playing music at high
volumes, and being incessantly coddled by teams of
ominous, hooded figures. "For more than 6 months all I heard
was 'spend, spend, spend,'" explains Frank Fetch, the son
of a wealthy Minneapolis publishing family. "They
wouldn't let me sleep. I'd start to nod off, and there'd be
another handler with an exclusive Manolo Blahnik sneaker
or a tray of cashmere Q-Tips. It was exhausting, mentally
draining."

Some investigators have also begun to raise questions
about the practice. "The detainees, until now, have been
classified as prisoners of a hostile, state-less power,"
notes U.S. Internal Revenue spokeswoman Sophie
Ticondaroga, "which affords them favorable tax treatment
for the duration of their imprisonment. Should we find,
however, that the detainees consented to their
imprisonment, or otherwise colluded in their abductions,
we would likely seek remedies on behalf of the treasury."