A Tale of Unwanted Disruption: My Week Without Amazon (preview)
Today we're talking Alex's bad back and scheduling days off work for physical therapy while your boss pretends he has a say in the matter and the Teamsters announce securing Air Conditioning for future UPS package cars. We talk about the merits, possible drawbacks, and address a few of the imaginative responses to this big step towards addressing safety concerns Also: we study the weird, tan, Canadian, "Motel 6 CEO" grandpa who accused a 9 year old girl of being trans during a track meet. Turns out his son (Motel 6 CFO) is also extremely weird Finally, in a story promoted in right wing media as "Amazon locks man out of his smart home after accusing him of racism," we check out the medium post of a smart-device-junkie whose amazon account was briefly suspended. So he couldn't turn on his TV or his lights with his voice I guess. This is what they want to take from you. Listen to the full episode and hundreds more by signing up at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult
Tony, did you hear about the guy, Amazon shut down his entire smart home because they thought he said a racist remark to one of their drivers?
No way.
Is that real?
Uh, kind of.
So that's all.
I mean, maybe, maybe, yeah, maybe I am pro.
Maybe I am pro smart home.
Who knew?
Yeah.
Maybe I do want them to have ring cameras.
Uh, this is the headline.
This is a headline that you can read 50 different ways.
And I don't mean like you can interpret it 50 different ways.
I mean, there are 50 different versions of this headline going around in right-wing media, which is like, I just, this one, for example, from the Daily Caller, Amazon shut down a man's entire house because someone called him racist.
And then the headline of the actual story is, Amazon confirms they shut off a man's smart home because a random guy said he was racist.
Yeah, we're Amazon and we did it because a random guy said he was racist.
Amazon shut down man's entire house because someone called him racist.
He couldn't even poop.
He had a smart toilet.
He couldn't even poop.
They shut it down.
Uh, yeah, this is so fucking funny.
Listen, I'm not pro racism, but everyone should be allowed to poop.
Yeah, it's a natural function.
I don't care if you think it's a racist act.
something we all have to do um yeah another phrase they're using is man was locked out of smart home uh because he was accused of being racist and they won't they won't put like locked out in quotation marks they'll just say man was locked out of his smart home so you're just imagining like rain pouring down on the top of this guy's head he holds yesterday's newspaper over to try and keep some of himself dry uh
frantically uh telling his his ring cam that he's not a racist and please let me in my smart house no No, what actually happened, obviously, is Amazon just turned off his Alexa.
Amazon just was like, oh, we're suspending your Alexa account.
So you can read about this in his Medium post.
This guy's name is Brandon Jackson.
A tale of... This image is amazing.
A tale of unwanted disruption.
My week without Amazon.
I guess this is what the Alexa looks like now, but it's got a chain wrapped around it.
Yeah, it is a locked up Alexa.
Which like doesn't make any sense because it's like just a speaker with a microphone in it.
There's some buds you can press and this chain is impeding on none of this.
It's also a gold chain?
Yeah, it's also like a nice chain.
Which would be kind of fucked up to be like locked up in opulent chains, you know?
Maybe he's thinking that.
It's like the, cause maybe like Alexa has also become the opulent chain.
It's like the gilded cage.
It's a modern update on the gilded cage.
Yeah.
Uh, so this is from Brandon Jackson, uh, who we should say is a black man.
He's a black guy on.
Oh, OK.
OK.
On Wednesday, May 31st, 2023, I finally regained access to my Amazon account after an unexpected and unwarranted lockout that lasted nearly a week from Thursday, May 25th.
This wasn't just a simple inconvenience, though.
I have a smart home and my primary, nobody sympathizes with you at this point, man.
Like even people who are like, oh cool, another reason for me to think that there's white genocide.
Great.
Even those people were like, first and foremost, you are an idiot.
Why did you do this?
Bad move.
Help us do the show for only five bucks a month and you'll get two bonus episodes every week, including a live stream with listeners every Saturday.
