Jeff bezos

Selling books through Amazon is now part and parcel of a working author’s life. It would be a brave writer who decided to refuse to allow their work to be sold through earth’s biggest retailer. But that is exactly what Dave Eggers has done with his new book, The Every, which he has decreed can only be purchased from independent bookstores. Sorry, Jeff Bezos; this one’s not for you. It is hard to dismiss his decision to eschew Amazon as simply a quixotic act of rebellion by a washed-up has been Eggers has form in this regard.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos joined the billionaire space race today in his suitably phallic looking New Shepard rocket. Bezos successfully travelled to just beyond the Karman Line: the official boundary between the earth’s atmosphere and the rest of the universe. So what sage words did the billionaire have for the rest of us as he looked out of the window at a sight that only 556 other humans have had the privilege to witness? A philosophical thought perhaps? A rumination on our planet’s beauty or fragility? Or maybe an assertion of mankind’s technical prowess? Alas, we were given none of this. According to the entrepreneur, as he descended on a rocket-powered air cloud, it was the ‘Best. Day. Ever.

Jeff Bezos has built himself a space rocket and it looks like a giant...well you can judge for yourself. Which raises the question: how to go about reporting on this? Is it AP style, do you think, to say the vessel will penetrate the upper atmosphere provided there aren’t any onboard system cock-ups? We can only hope for Bezos’s sake that the rocket isn’t like a typical Amazon product in that it’s smaller in real life than it appears in the picture. Bezos himself will be onboard for the scant 11-minute flight (don’t even get me started), which has drawn the expected gallons of contempt and death wishes from Twitter.

Remember when Donald Trump’s administration courted the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk? What about when the American right was still enamored with Big Tech? That seems a long time ago now. On Friday President Donald Trump tweeted: ‘I am continuing to monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS on social media platforms. This is the United States of America — and we have what’s known as FREEDOM OF SPEECH! We are monitoring and watching, closely!!’ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1124447302544965634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1124447302544965634 Conservatives increasingly accept that Big Tech is a problem, something that stifles creativity and ideas. But will anyone in power ever do anything about it? Sen.

‘Pay-to-play is not OK; we want a public hearing today.’ That was the chant heard at HQ2-Apalooza, a recent event held by Amazon in Arlington, Va., the Washington, DC suburb that will host the Seattle-based internet giant’s second headquarters. The scene might have conjured some unpleasant and recent memories for Amazon. The firm’s search for a place to build its ‘HQ2’, a year-long, highly publicized sweepstakes that received entries from over 200 localities across North America, concluded with the decision to split the headquarters between New York and Arlington, only to see public opposition force Amazon to scuttle its New York plans. Now, the backlash has spread to Virginia.

If reports are true, Jeff Bezos’s penis is on the verge of going viral — waltzing off alone into the great unknown of cyberspace and there, under the glare of a billion eyeballs, having its power as an agent of chaos and shame amplified immeasurably. As you read this, you can be sure battalions of Bezos lawyers are working around the clock to keep the Bezos penis where it has hitherto always been: billeted, shrouded, presumably, in the comfortable privacy of mankind’s finest breathable linens. Good luck to them, for they will have their work cut out.

Regional inequality is perhaps one of the hardest social issues America faces – the sense that a select few prosperous metropolitan areas increasingly dominate the rest of the country economically, culturally, and politically. Every election, the consequences of this inequality become more evident; it was crucial in electing Donald Trump president in 2016. When Amazon announced last year that it would embark on a mission to find its next headquarters, the (naive) hope was that by spreading around its largesse, some of this inequality could be stemmed. From Birmingham, Alabama to Pittsburgh, cities were teased with the prospect of a once-in-a-lifetime influx of economic stimulus.