Think about it.
Who Watches the Watchmen Watching the Watched?
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The hashtag #ADDcheckin has been active on Twitter since yesterday, when Elon James White started it so people could share their experiences. There’s some great stuff there, but I absolutely have to share this one:
One useful definition of ADD for me is "an inability to accurately conceptualize time." #ADDcheckin
— Brienne of Snarth (@femme_esq) April 2, 2015
I use time-tracking software just so that I’ll know how long I spend on specific tasks. Sometimes it helps me manage my time well, but mostly it just lets me document how long seemingly simple tasks can take me.
To put it another way, as I said to someone just yesterday, “We’ve probably been talking for 10 minutes or so, but if you told me it’s been an hour, I’d believe you.”
Here are a few other resources I’ve picked up today from people tweeting the hashtag: Continue reading
South by Southwest, or SXSW, as it is more commonly known these days (or #SXSW, as it more commonly appears in online references these days) is now underway, with the Interactive portion of the festival, or #SXSWi, having begun this past Thursday. I attended this part of the event as a full-fledged badge holder in 2012 and 2013, and I may do so again some day, but there is also some value in observing the festivities from afar.
One aspect of SXSWi that particularly jumps out at me is the near-total inscrutability of much of its news and gossip, especially with regard to the quest to be this year’s “it” app. Take this headline, posted to Facebook by my friend Jen: “Twitter cuts Meerkat off from its social graph just as SXSW gets started.”
Literally nothing in that headline, or the comments to Jen’s post, makes any sense at all without heaping amounts of context. I initially just assumed that Meerkat and Periscope are companies, or apps, or websites, or programming languages, or something else tech-y. It’s just funny how the tech world has normalized jargon so much. Continue reading
Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo apparently enjoyed some ChiPs reruns on Thanksgiving:
Spending part of my Thanksgiving watching @ErikEstrada & CHiPs on ME TV. Makes me reflect on 21 good years with CHP! pic.twitter.com/MPboANg81y
— Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) November 27, 2014
Then this happened:
@ArtAcevedo hey partner happy thanksgiving to you and yours ..
— ERIK ESTRADA (@ErikEstrada) November 27, 2014
@ErikEstrada thanks brother. Hope all is good with you.
— Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) November 27, 2014
@ArtAcevedo @ErikEstrada I'll bet they based his character on you…
— Allison Blazek (@owlblazek) November 27, 2014
@owlblazek @ErikEstrada I was 13 when he started.
— Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) November 27, 2014
I’m glad to see Austin remains entertaining, if not always as weird as it used to be. I hope everyone had a good holiday, in whatever way they opted to spend it.
UPDATE (11/28/2014): This is somewhat related, and came up in conversation:
We are eleven days into November, and I haven’t actually started on National Novel Writing Month yet. That doesn’t mean I’m out, just that I procrastinate proudly.
For those who are actively participating, and who might be feeling sone frustration, this bit of wisdom from Chuck Wendig might not make you feel better, per se, but hopefully it will remind you that all creative endeavors are painful at some point.
Editing is frequently standing over a corpse with a hammer, a scalpel, a car battery. "I WILL MAKE YOU BEAUTIFUL. I WILL MAKE YOU DANCE."
— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) November 7, 2014
We bring you “Motorboating on Vine,” via Twitter. No part of that sentence would have made any sense just a few years ago.
(Somewhat NSFW, obviously.)
Everyone on Vine Loves Motorboating! Including me! http://t.co/J4WHbhTFky
— True Facts! (@VerusFacts) October 19, 2014
Lack of self-awareness at this level is just…….well, you can’t make this stuff up.
http://t.co/7l1aeMfI8D – this is fantastic! Male gamers of #GamerGate, let your voices be heard. You are: #NotYourScapeGoat!
— Cari (@serencadi) October 21, 2014
This is usually the part where most bloggers note that they haven’t written much about this GamerGate thing for one reason or another. I keep wanting to write about it, but then something new happens and it gets even stranger, and so far I’ve just ended up with an ever-growing list of links that I might one day make into an outline or history or something. The #NotYourScapegoat thing just seems too rich to pass up, though.
Here’s a bit of context, sort of:
GG have now developed #NotYourScapeGoat, so defenceless white men can stand up for themselves. Nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan.
— Daniel Oborne (@NinjaGoat212) October 22, 2014
Everybody? Today's new hilarious lack of self-awareness is called #NotYourScapeGoat – check it out and let the LOLZ begin
— Bob Chipman (@the_moviebob) October 22, 2014
Wow. #NotYourScapeGoat shows Gamergate has nothing do to with journalism. Its a reactionary movement against progressivism in general.
— Wezzuz (@Wezzuz) October 22, 2014
For additional bits of awesomeness, see this Clickhole piece:
Did we get this right? #GamerGate http://t.co/jjz0L0inQp pic.twitter.com/GP1Q67V5Xx
— ClickHole (@ClickHole) October 22, 2014
And this:
People With Gamergate Avs Tweeting The Clickhole Piece Is My New Jam https://t.co/a8IiqMfZGS https://t.co/eRxPVhytzN https://t.co/6sYYEbbiCJ
— Spooky Alex Hern (@alexhern) October 22, 2014
Patton Oswalt Brilliantly Trolls for Twitter Outrage, Chez Pazienza, The Daily Banter, May 7, 2014
If it weren’t so hilarious it would be depressing. A little earlier this afternoon Patton Oswalt began trolling Twitter and the rest of the internet, trying to drum up outrage over nothing. Literally, nothing.
What he did was simple: He started posting tweets that referenced and apologized for tweets he says he deleted because they were offensive, but of course the “deleted tweets” weren’t real. They never were.
Chris McDougall: I Never Meant To Start A Barefoot-Running Fad, Jon Gugala, Fittish, May 7, 2014
In 2009, Chris McDougall published Born to Run, an account of his adventures in the remote canyons of Mexico. From his travelogue was birthed an industry-shifting movement that re-examined everything once accepted as gospel truth about running shoes. Continue reading
The hashtag #libertarianismin4words was trending on Monday, leading to some amusing critiques of what I will charitably call the political ideology, along with some breathless efforts to decry the ignorance of the mockers and some noble attempts to find four words to describe the libertarian worldview that weren’t all either “freedom” or “liberty.”
I haven’t exactly made my thoughts on libertarianism a secret around here, so I don’t need to rehash or go into any great detail here. I will note, perhaps gratuitously, that four words is probably a fair limit for defenders of the ideology, at least since my own experience suggests that it has nothing to recommend it aside from abstract nouns.
Voluntary transaction not coercion. #LibertarianismIn4Words
— Econlib (@Econlib) June 14, 2012
#LibertarianismIn4words Free Minds, Free Markets
— reason (@reason) June 13, 2012
I took the liberty (see what I did there?) of Storifying some tweets that I found amusing. This is by no means a complete set of tweets I liked, but rather just the ones that came up on a quick search of the hashtag:
Here were my thoughts for those who, as always, claimed that the critics just. don’t. get. it:
If you think that we who make light of #libertarianismin4words just don't understand REAL libertarianism – maybe it's you, not us (1/2)
— d.wells (@wellslawoffice) December 31, 2013
(2/2) because it's all based on what self-proclaimed libertarians say. But go ahead and try to backtrack. #libertarianismin4words
— d.wells (@wellslawoffice) December 31, 2013