tldr/tw; White Savior

"Today when people talk about the history of Hopkin's relationship with the Black community, the story many of them hold up as the worst offense, is that of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose body, they say, was exploited by white scientists."

The information in this book about Henrietta herself and the historical use of HeLa cells is worth probably 4 stars. But that takes up about half of the book. The other half is the author, inserting herself into the story- describing how 'difficult' it was to track down Henrietta's family and how they didn't want to talk to her, because they didn't have good experiences talking with the media and the scientists. Skloot has a lot of white lady exceptionalism going on, because she thinks, OH, I'm so special. They'll talk to ME. And proceeded to call and call and call and call and call and pressure and call, and knock on doors, until they finally talk to her. This half of the book problematic enough that I think more attention needs to be brought to it.

John Hopkins didn't give us no information about anything...Idk if they didn't give us information because they was making money out of it, or if they was just wanting to keep us in the dark about it. I think they made money out of it because they was selling her cells all over the world and shipping them for dollars.

Hopkins say they gave them cells away, but they made millions. It's not fair. She's the most important person in the world, and her family living in poverty. If our mother's so important to science. Why can't we get health insurance?"

Just a few hundred pages into the book and I was curious as to how much the Lacks family receives from this biography. Especially since the author and the family have talked about how Henrietta and the Black community have been taken from while white doctors and institutions profited financially and with prestige. So of course, the author MUST give a set percentage of her earnings to the family right? It's only fair considering that the book literally would not exist without the family's participation.

.... Of course she didn't!!!! She did the bare minimum and gets her white saviour moment! Skloot established a foundation which she donates part of her profit to, but she's not transparent on how much, and how often. Plus other people can donate to it- so who knows, maybe she only stuck in the first couple thousand and has never touched it since. Meanwhile her book has been a huge success with TV deals and everything. Additionally, members of the Lacks family must APPLY for grants for things they want or need such as surgeries, dental care, etc. The funds are also available for others to apply. Are you KIDDING ME? What kind of racist bullshit is this that you take what you owe someone and lock it behind an APPLICATION. Oh, my mother just fell down the stairs. Hold on, I need to fill out this application and wait for them to get back to me before I can call an ambulance. It's very "bill gates refuses to give up vaccine patents to the global south so they can make their own vaccines at affordable rates, instead he makes them get western made expensive vaccines because RACISM and $$$$$." There's gotta be a word or phrase to describe this type of behaviour, but my brain is just mad and can't think properly.

Back to how she wrote the story- the way Skloot described the Lacks family, especially towards to end?? Take a Monopoly go to jail care because what the fuck was that and why was it relevant or necessary at all. I ended up not being able to finish the book after getting through 90% of it because the way she was writing about these REAL people without any consideration of their privacy or embarrassment? It made me feel disgusted.

Enshittification- the trend of technology (companies) becoming worse for users intentionally so that tech companies can make even more disgustingly large amounts of money and satisfy their shareholders.

Cory Doctorow is an engaging author and audiobook narrator. While teaching you about all the insidious things that these companies do, there are bits of sarcasm throw in and little jokes followed by footnotes which clarify that yes, they are indeed jokes. The topic itself is well-researched. The first chapter introduces the concept of enshittification and gives four case studies (fb, amazon, apple, twitter) as examples. Chapters two and three discuss history of regulation and the fight back. Chapter four ends with what we can do now. There are many details of how horrible these tech companies are- and I believe that while the book was written recently, many of the lessons learned can be applied for years to come. For example, the transition into everything becoming subscription based, DRM, and "in an app" is definitely a trend I do not see going away any time soon. My one critique is that there should have been a lot more content added on how governments can then use or force these companies to give it all of the spyware and control capabilities so that it can be used on citizens-- ICE in particular has been granted data from social media companies, AI, and facial recognition technology to spy on citizens and non-citizens alike. They also have the power to kill the engines of cars of citizens that are utilizing their rights to follow and track ICE vehicles. So it's not just that these companies are bricking basic functions of devices (which we PAY money to OWN, but apparently not really), but that they can give these powers to governments to disable citizen unrest or organizing.

One of my main takeaways from this book- which blew my mind- was the idea that social media companies should be treated like phone network companies. If you don't like your carrier/network, you can switch to a different one and your phone number and your information will be carried over. Mastodon (which actually hosts Truth Social! Unwillingly and illegally) functions exactly this way. You can choose a server, let's pretend, Facebock, and then hang out there-- but if Facebock fails you in some way (doesn't protect you from bullies or spies on you too much) you can transfer to a different server, let's pretend, Twittock. All of your followers are transferred with you, and you can still see all the people you follow. Just like how if you change phone carriers, you can still call people regardless of what carrier they use. I have a Mastodon account- and I knew how it worked- but I never made the comparison to phone carriers- or emails. Both examples had companies trying to lock in their users into their own companies, but ultimately had to give-in and encode interoperability and compatibility into their products. There's this whole problem where many of us hate these companies and we want to stop using them, but the thing that keeps us there are our communities, our friends. It's just not easy to move entire communities onto a new platform. I know because there are some friends I just can't keep in contact with because they refuse to use any of the new messaging/social apps I use. Another example is that previously Microsoft Office locked its product and made it impossible to share documents with users of other programs, such as Apple's iWork. Apple put its engineers to work- every time Microsoft updated its Office to try and stop users from sharing docs, Apple would reverse-engineer it and make it compatible-- and now we have .docx files that can be opened with Office, iWord, LibreOffice, Google Docs, and even your browser. Of course, Apple didn't do so out of the goodness of their own heart and of course now Microsoft has now changed its strategy to 'subscription' and also 'you don't own the product' and also 'you have to use the cloud and then pay us extra money for it and also now you need it for work and your office is gonna pay us money for it'.

The final chapter on what we can do about it- made me a little hopeful but also not at all lol. Tech is getting more shitty for the users, and we are the product.

sir, put your cock away. leave those poor creatures alone !

My one sentence summary for this book in my notes is, "Paw Patrol for adults (princess version)." I must admit, I'm a big fan of Paw Patrol.

Fun and a little existential, this is a delightful read to slip into your day when you need a breather. Though I have not watched Sailor Moon, the whole magical girl idea as its expressed here made me want to. The page count means that not all of the plot is as fully expressed as the reader might like, but you'll have fun anyways.