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Unauthorized Bread
Narrated by Lameece Issaq
Written by Cory Doctorow
ESL English Listening esl-bits.org :: Adult Literacy adult-literacy.us

In Cory Doctorow's Unauthorized Bread, corporations provide welfare: but only if you use their 'protected' devices: toasters that won't toast third-party bread, dishwashers that won't wash third-party dishes.

It all started with Salima. Fresh out of a refugee detention centre, she's housed in the exclusive apartments of Dorchester Towers. For the first time in months, she has her own bedroom and a bathtub she can almost lie down in. But it's a tower block divided into 'us' and 'them': elevators with a poor-person door and a rich-person door. Even the pettiest amenity is denied to subsidy tenants like Salima - unless the landlord is forced by law to provide it.

Then one day Salima's Boulangism toaster won't accept her overpriced Boulangism-approved bread. So she hacks into the toaster - with its USB ports and Ethernet jacks - to reprogramme and toast unauthorised bread. If she can hack a toaster, then maybe she can hack an elevator.
Now it's a tower block that has decided to fight back . . .

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