Michele Bachmann Discovers BuzzFeed, Bitcoin Goes to Disney World and More

Hi!

The Internet is the river Styx, and Re/code is Charon. Your links:

1. For virtually her entire political career, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s antics and gaffes have inspired viral outrage that paid the rent for legions of left-leaning journalists and “The Daily Show” writers. Now that she is about to exit Congress, she (or more likely, her social media manager) posted a BuzzFeed listicle of her favorite Congressional memories. It’s a lovely parting gift.
2. Sam Biddle, who up until recently edited Gawker’s “Valleywag,” is back from a month-long vacation with a longread about his trip to a Bitcoin conference, held near Disney World in a hotel by “an outdoor shopping area that resembles what you imagine the nice parts of Pyongyang to be.” The whole piece is pretty funny, and manages to both elegantly and sympathetically skewer a subculture.
3. Just when you thought we’d run out of opinions on Uber, the Washington Post has a useful article pointing out the hazards of the company’s mountain of user data. Eerie snippet: “A person who had a job interview in Uber’s Washington office in 2013 said he got the kind of access enjoyed by actual employees for an entire day, even for several hours after the job interview ended.”
4. Whether it’s crowding around the TV for “Roots” or the Oscars, America loves a good shared moment. No, that’s wrong. America loves gesturing toward collective experiences, but we’d much rather talk among ourselves about our obsessions that we imagine to be universal, like “Serial,” or that Netflix show you love that no one else watches. Slate’s TV critic, the always-sharp Willa Paskin, says that the Internet is what’s responsible for this “age of cultural mania.”
5. Nieman Lab’s Caroline O’Donovan reports that even though lots of people have stopped using Ello, the anti-Facebook, anti-advertising and pro-nostalgia social network, one unexpected group is still hanging out there — finance journalists. She capably explains why they’re still on Ello, and how just a couple big personalities can keep users in one place.

If you see any stories you’d like to send our way (or have any questions/comments about stories we’ve recommended), feel free to shoot an email to noah@recode.net.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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