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The Unbearable Horror of Corporate Instagram Hashtags — Matter — Medium
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“Q: If cryonics works for me, won’t all my friends and relatives be dead?
A: This depends on many factors, including when you are cryopreserved, how long you spend in cryopreservation, how long it takes to develop life-extending technologies, and whether your friends or family are themselves interested in being cryopreserved. It cannot be reliably predicted how many decades (or generations) it might take to develop the technologies needed to substantially lengthen lifespans or to revive patients from cryopreservation. You can increase your chances of seeing your current friends and family in the future by interesting them in cryonics or by making friends within the cryonics community. At any rate, if cryonics works it will give you the greatest opportunity of all — the ability to make new friends (including, perhaps, with your own descendants).
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h/t McSweeny’s
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Stories for machines, data for humans
“Big data is made up of many small acts of living.
So today I want to talk about small-scale, free-range, artisnal data. I want to talk about data, alongside storytelling, as the product of creativity, imagination, frustration and fury.”
h/t Alan Levine
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A Horror Story Constructed Entirely from Actual Sentences in Reviews of the Apple Watch
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Police: Teen shot dead after involvement in home invasion – WSFA.com Montgomery Alabama news.
“We spoke with Gene Handy who lives up the street from the crime scene.
He says he did not know the incident happened until his mother read it on Facebook. He also said he did not know the victim.
However he sees the situation as a wake up call.”
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Social Computing | MIT Media Lab
“We build software that shapes our cities.
More specifically, (1) we create micro-institutions in physical space, (2) we design social processes that allow others to replicate and evolve those micro-institutions, and (3) we write software that enables those social processes.
We use this process to create more robust, decentralized, human-scale systems in our cities. We are particularly focused on reinventing our current systems for learning, agriculture, and transportation.”
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Faxlore: Memes down the line » Cyborgology
” Originating in the 1970s, Faxlore describes the circulation of humorous cartoons, texts, poetry, art, memoranda and urban legends via fax machine. This cultural phenomenon has been well documented by folklorists who aligned it to the folk tradition; notably Michael Preston, and Alan Dundes, who highlighted the ways in which participants formed networked communities and their own vernacular based primarily around humour and shared, often banal, experiences.”
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“Smartphone penetration in Spain is similar to that in the United States, but nobody over there seems to be talking about addiction to technology. They are talking though—to each other, in person.
”anecdotal but still . . .
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Pursuing Truth in Wikipedia – Neckbeard Edition
“There are five “perpetuity”s in the 15 volumes, and definitely none of them are that quote. There are no instances in which “Thoreau” and “beard” appear together, nor any variation of neckbeard. There are only a handful of references to Louisa May Alcott in the set, and none of them are that anecdote. So I think you can consider it conclusively debunked.
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Haterbragging on social media: Jennifer Weiner teaches how to co-opt haters into your own brand.
“When you retweet an insult from a hater, you shift the balance of the audience from the hater’s fans to your own; the person with the most followers ultimately decides the context in which the comment will lay to rest. Weiner has rejected characterizations of her interactions with Franzen as “feuding,” arguing that the term recasts a woman with a dissenting opinion as bitter and petty. But the term is incorrect in another way, because the antagonistic “relationship” between the two authors has been defined largely through Twitter, a universe in which Franzen has no agency. Though he has inspired several parody accounts, Franzen is not on Twitter, and I can’t exactly blame him. In his absence, Weiner and others have molded his persona into a buffoonish caricature. According to the view from the social media cheap seats, he’s just an out-of-touch, bird-watching white dude who thinks he’s better than Oprah—the perfect foil for Weiner’s power-tweeting, Bachelor-watching feminist brand.”
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I’m too old for Instagram — Midcentury Modern — Medium
“I recognize I’m having a #getoffmylawn moment here, but if I was born on Instagram back when it was still called Burbn, doesn’t that give me some kind of implicit property rights? Can’t I live out my old age in serenity, posting pretty photos that I think are kind of modern and arty (if not a little cliché), like David Hockney with his iPad, without the young’uns dancing on my grave before I’ve been cremated and scattered to the ocean?”