The Discarded
“A dazzling array of metafictions, Colin Hamilton’s The Discarded focuses on the lonely work of a solitary librarian assigned to the discard room. This hidden basement space is piled high with books purged from the stacks above.
From the heap of discards, the librarian salvages his own idiosyncratic collection: a detective novel in which a damsel-in-distress insists she’s been murdered; A Guide to Universal Grasping, the “Ulysses of technical manuals;” a biography of David Markson written in the fragmented style of his experimental novels; an anthology of anthro-reptilian eroticism; a children’s book memorializing winter for those raised in an overheated world; a book of essays, The Hell of Insects, by entomologists who’ve been spoken to by their subjects; and a history of book burning.
With Borgesian panache, The Discarded interweaves stories about imaginary books with reflections on libraries, both real and dreamt. Hamilton’s nuanced collection asks a seemingly simple question: In an age of decreasing literacy, disposable content, and banned books, what do we preserve and what do we discard?”
LESS DOMESTIC SPYING, MORE ACTUAL CYBER DEFENSE, PLEASE.
How cool would it be if our internal security agencies spent their time on protecting us from near-apocalyptic hacking from foreign powers instead of monitoring random Americans’ Facebook pages? Props to hero Andres Freund of Microsoft, though, for doing the job the NSA and FBI won’t do.
Needed Disclaimer for Any Criticism of US Intel Agencies: I am not suicidal, nor do I have information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of Hillary Clinton.
FBI Agent Says He Hassles People ‘Every Day, All Day Long’ Over Facebook Posts
The FBI spends “every day, all day long” interrogating people over their Facebook posts. At least, that’s what agents told Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad when they showed up at her house to ask her about her social media activity.
Three FBI agents came to Abdeljawad’s house and said that they had been given “screenshots” of her posts by Facebook. Her lawyer Hassan Shibly posted a video of the incident online on Wednesday.
Abdeljawad told agents that she didn’t want to talk and asked them to show their badges on camera, which the agents refused to do. She wrote on Facebook that she later confirmed with local police that the FBI agents really were FBI agents.
“Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account,” one agent in a gray shirt said in the video.
“So we no longer live in a free country and we can’t say what we want?” replied Abdeljawad.
“No, we totally do. That’s why we’re not here to arrest you or anything,” a second agent in a red shirt added. “We do this every day, all day long. It’s just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will.”