In the summer of 1998, a man named Steve Shubin was granted a patent for a “device for discrete sperm collection.” It resembled a flashlight topped with a flesh-colored rubber mold. That same year, another man, Jeff Bezos, and his fledgling online retail company, Amazon, began selling music and videos while venturing into international business by expanding its bookselling to Britain and Germany. In 2019, Bezos is now the wealthiest man in the world at the forefront of our new dystopian techno-oligarchy, while Shubin…well, Shubin still is in the business of making silicon vaginas to stick your dong into.
It is also the year these two titans of commerce collided.
Yesterday, Bloomberg Businessweek published an interesting—if unsurprisingly unsettling—investigatory dive into the many legitimate security concerns regarding Amazon’s personal assistant software and device, Alexa. Main takeaway: Surprise surprise, they’re almost definitely screwing us over. Unfortunately, what should have been somewhat bombshell news further confirming our worst suspicions for our corporate overlords was overshadowed by Bloomberg’s art department apparently getting the article’s thesis ass-backwards…
As many on Twitter were quick to note, hypothetically popping open an Alexa to reveal a fleshy orifice that, while yeah, sure, is technically supposed to be an ear also sorta looks like…well, it looks like a “device for discrete sperm collection.”