This, uh, fucking sucks. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/arts/music/sophie-dead.html
At first I thought this was from @glitchlogos, but in reality, it’s what Twitter shows on the home page when not logged in.
I’ve always wanted social media platforms to pre-register my handle (I am the only person who will ever be known as sillygwailo) and https://earlyname.com/ might just be the thing that does it.
The worst part about the idea is that most of the discussion using decentralized threading will be about how to implement it.
The WordPress-blog-post-to-Twitter-thread feature is interesting, but ultimately lacks imagination. I imagine something a lot more decentralized, where you have threads of posts on your own website, and they co-mingle with replies to/from other websites, including Twitter. I see the downsides, too: a) it would be easy to make it seem like there’s contention or consensus where there is none, and b) what about everybody having to maintain their own content and website?
I miss 43 Things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43_Things
I’m not going to say I’m the world’s leading expert on not getting followers on Twitter, but if the world’s leading experts on not getting followers on Twitter are ever too busy to do punditry on how to not get followers on Twitter, I’m ready to step in.
I can’t stop thinking about this. I wish I remembered it when I got into a pointless argument with someone on Twitter after reading it. https://nickpunt.com/blog/deescalating-social-media/
Nazis.
I have a theory that I don’t know how to Google for, and can’t find the words to elaborate on, but the other “insight” I had recently is that after Nazi Germany, Germany had to ban extreme right-wing groups because they didn’t want people to assume that if you were a German, you were a Nazi. That’s where I landed with police after George Floyd: They have to ban bastards, otherwise people will will assume they’re all bastards (as many do).
I helped organize a virtual event, though I stayed on the fringes, because my heart wasn’t in it. It’s a lot of work, that much I can appreciate.
I listened in on Emily St. John Mandel’s talk. She told us her daughter would make an appearance, and she did, and it was a master class in handling an interruption. She introduced us to her, waited her out, and never apologized. That wouldn’t have been possible in an in-person event.
No, that's not my real name, but I was born with it.