Richard Brynjólfsson @sillygwailo@mastodon.social

We didn’t get enough music from them.

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.

I follow over 500 people on Twitter and Stories are a ghost town. Is this the biggest flop of a software feature copied that was from some other software?

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.

Boy do I ever know how to not get followers on Twitter.

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/

The guy who I fully expected to still be using Peach is still using Peach.

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).

“It’s not hate, it’s disgust” is about as insightful as I’ll get about racism or homophobia/transphobia.

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.

I’ve passed on basically every opportunity to attend a “virtual” event.

Did you know that if you unfollow someone on Instagram, and you’re mutuals, the app will offer to have them unfollow you too?

Some tweets I have to fave with my mind. If I fave them with my fingers, they’ll know I’m still following them, and I’m worried they’ll soft block me.

The main reason I don’t post here often is because I can never remember the name of the app that posts to Mastodon.