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Journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher has penned a memoir, “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story” (Simon & Schuster), about her journey as a reporter chronicling the Silicon Valley shenanigans of conceited Web billionaires and their reckless empires.
Learn an excerpt under.
“Burn Book: A Tech Love Story” by Kara Swisher
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I’ve at all times hated the phrase “converse fact to energy,” as a result of it assumes all energy is unhealthy. It ought to actually be “converse fact to energy when the ability is fake or damaging— and even simply plain weird.”
Within the weird camp was when I discovered myself looking at an ice sculpture of a lady whose breast was oozing White Russians, a Kahlua and cream concoction. I used to be a visitor on the child bathe get together for Google founder Sergey Brin and his spouse, Anne Wojcicki, who have been anticipating their first baby in 2008. Naturally, they determined to have a good time with an enormous get together within the manufacturing unit district of San Francisco. Earlier than you might carry a glass to the icy nipple to get a sip, visitors needed to courageous a jungle of dangling child pictures of Sergey and Anne on the door. The membership’s entrance was manned by the sort of preternaturally ebullient and hyper-organized ladies that at all times appeared to encompass the wealthy of Silicon Valley.
“Would you want a diaper? Or a onesie?” requested a younger girl with amazingly swingy blonde hair and a really honest smile, as if the query weren’t even barely f****d up. However we have been in San Francisco, in any case, the place such happenings have been apparently common amongst its residents. I attempt to not decide, even when I’m completely judging.
To be clear: I used to be judging onerous.
However this was worse than a easy case of sexual preferences. This younger girl was asking my baby-wear choice, as a result of that was the “enjoyable” a part of the night time. Company both obtained to put on a diaper with an outsized comical pin, a ruffled child hat that got here with a rattle, or adult-sized footy pajamas accessorized with a teddy bear and a sucker. I declined all of it instantly, which made the swingy hair cease swinging and the smile shift to a frown. “Everybody has to put on one,” she insisted. “Everyone seems to be carrying one!”
Not me! I bumped into the get together earlier than she might lay a talcum-powdered hand on me and located a number of the strongest individuals in tech and media— all decked out as newborns. Brin wore a onesie as he roller-skated across the room. Wendi Deng, then the spouse of Information Corp titan Rupert Murdoch (whom I had taken to referring to as “Uncle Devil”), had chosen a diaper and sucker combo. Deng rapidly requested me how she regarded, which was disturbing since she was carrying some sort of leather-based pants and stiletto boots underneath the enormous Pampers, and that was a freaky disconnect I most popular to not be experiencing at that second (or, frankly, ever). Fortunately, Uncle Devil was not in attendance, so
I obtained to overlook that exact visible. And, simply as fortunately, over in a nook, then Mayor Gavin Newsom, who had grown near the Google founders, was carrying a standard go well with.
Excerpted from “Burn Ebook: A Tech Love Story” by Kara Swisher. Copyright © 2024 by Kara Swisher. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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“Burn Book: A Tech Love Story” by Kara Swisher
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