Today in Tabs: Facebook Presents Your Year in Tragedy

Silk Roadthe darknet site that blended techno-libertarianism, unexpected pathos, drugs, and that sweet elixir of larceny Bitcoin into what has already been one of recent historys most entertaining legal proceedingsis not done with us yet! Like all Silk Road related news, the charges against DEA agent Carl Force and former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges are incredibly implausible and circuitous, but Sarah Jeong does as good a job explaining them as anyone could hope for. Keywords include, but are not limited to: murder for hire (simulated), intimidation (failed), theft (flagrant), and LinkedIn contact request (regrettable). Lauren Smiley has a step by step guide in Matter for Feds interested in catching the Bitcoin-laundering wave, and Kashmir Hill collected 5 of Forces wackiest side-projects for Fusion.

Facebook is in trouble again for algorithmically dredging up painful memories. Who could have predicted this?

In Pacific Standard, Susie Cagle makes a case that the VC funding system does more harm than good. If youre on the fence about that, please do see this Twitter thread where prominent venture capitalist Harry Potter, from the blue-chip Silicon Valley firm of Egg & Rapgenius, "argues with Twitter user "fart" about the definition of electricity."

April Fools is stupid, but its also the day Carnegie Mellons Association for Computational Heresy holds SIGBOVIK, which is one of those nerd events where there are so many layers of in-joke that you cant exactly tell how much (if any) of it is real, or what "real" might mean in this context, but the Proceedings, at least, are very funny. Notably, Tom Murphy made a portmanteau of every English word, which he calls a "portmantout." Just watch the video, its good.

I enjoyed this Colson Whitehead tab about our narcissistic culture because I love reading about myself. You do you, Cols! Alana Massey is right: "Chill" is stupid. The police must be huge Chris Rock fans! Across the land, the question rings out: Can a gay wedding even have pizza? If you dont already know what that post is about, trust me, youll be happier staying that way. And finally: read this boring tab.

Its intern Averys birthday! Today she turns 27! At 27 I was a married home owner and one year away from the birth of my first child, but being a newsletter intern is great too! Happy Birthday Avery!

Today is my twenty-seventh birthday (please, hold your applause). Two decades ago, on this date, I woke up and found a childs snooker table set up for me in our dining room. Not something Id asked for, but still one of the best gifts Ive ever received.

The popularity of snooker is a weird part of British culture. It hardly seems a thrilling spectator sport, but for weeks at a time in the winter you can switch to BBC2 and watch hours of snooker in the eveningtime slot after time slot of the same old static shot. We even had a bizarre snooker-based game show, Big Break, which ran for ten years.

My snooker table got a lot of use at first, but then I returned to the books one could always find me in as a child. I was not destined to be a Ronnie OSullivan, who is profiled in the New Yorker this week. Its a terrific featurea classic story of a shining talent dogged by vice and familial sin.

I remember looking at my snooker table in the garden with the trash, warped and broken-down by rain. Happy birthday.

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Today in Tabs: Facebook Presents Your Year in Tragedy