🔗 WWW
You Just Can't Tell. Nobody Can.
I love listening to knowledgeable 🎵 people steeped in ‘the lore’, ‘the history’ .. I can swim in it forever. An inevitable question appears somewhere in the conversation .. “did you know it was going to be a hit?”
no clue mate
… is the usual and correct response.
Same with newsletters. You just can’t tell. I keep reading over and over different writers that are surprised when their ‘magnum opus’ falls flat and a ‘throwaway’ goes viral.
My throwaway newsletter from a couple of days ago gave me an equal numbers of unsubscribes and subscribes … no viral accelerator for me .. but after being flat for over a year - my ‘paid subscriptions’ increased by around 10%. Not only that, but the subscription broke a psychological barrier - paid for subscriptions hit ‘double figures’ 🥳
The point is that you just don’t know - right?
If you want to read it - 🔗 you can
History ‘scholars’ weighing in on this 🔗 LinkedIN post .. I can’t be bothered to join in.
For me - YUP … Count me with the Luddites
The point of this post is more about language changing .. over time words get co-opted and they change and come to mean something different .. oft' through more and more people not having the full understanding of the origins. Shame really. I’m all for language changing .. I just wished people wouldn’t change the meaning just because they don’t understand the nuance .. or worse that they don’t know.
At least that footy player said in front of the world that he didn’t know what ‘encyclopedic’ meant.
Maybe he ‘could care less’ (sic) … another peeve.
🔗 George Conway predicts Trump won’t be unanimously acquitted in hush money trial (🍎🗞️)
.. been thinking that myself - and when it happens how THAT will get spun into puke and bile.
🔗 😂 Impeach Nixon! - a lesson from history.
The ‘Tiny Pod’ 🚧
is indeed a thing to 🔗 behold - for those of you that have a watch but don’t want to wear it on your wrist?
I know it’s 🔗 here - but I have to look it up every time. Of course ‘every’ shouldn’t be too many - but sadly - not the case.
🎈146/366 Today Is My Anniversary 🚧
It’s 🔗 Towel Day ( thank you @odd ) - but today also happens to be my 25th Anniversary
Yup - 25 years. Truth be told it had been going on a lot longer - but it was 25 years ago that we actually tied the knot .. and I have had my ‘personal space’ on the internet ever since May 25th, 1999 (Creation Date: 1999-05-25T20:14:36Z).
Now of course, we had known each other a lot longer than that - long before the web in fact, but you know when you first connect you don’t really note the dates do you? It’s like a permanent honeymoon. Hours merge into days into weeks into months … who really knows when ‘it’ really all started?
I can tell you that I first got ‘involved’ with the internet in 1985. I mean it wasn’t what we know today. My own internet experience in those days was email around our international offices .. but it was the internet (ok, ok - intranet - there’s a word you don’t hear much these days.)
Although Google Trends suggests I am wrong …
.. again!
Anyway, I do remember being annoyed that my messages wouldn’t go out to the people I wanted to talk to - you know customers, partners, vendors - all the people a business should be talking to. .. we could only talk amongst ourselves. I mean the Cerne account team could connect to their customer .. why did I have to use Compusurf (sic)? … but that’s a different story.
( .. and no I didn’t do AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve .. they were never for me - maybe even back then I had the innate desire to avoid being locked into a silo.)
Anyway, that’s it … 25 Years with my 🔗 own domain ✅
Onwards.
How will I celebrate? Why - taking my towel down to the beach of course.
No need to bring you up to speed about that google short code to bypass Google’s world of enshitification - except to say 🔗 Ernie at Tedium built a web site to make it ‘easy for all’
I stumbled across this today as I was collecting 🖇️ these. I nearly moved through because ‘Kelly’ - but I am a sucker for Jeff, so …
Holy Crap …🔗 🎵 📼 Jeff Daniels
.. I was under the impression he had only recently written it - but this from 13 years ago - suggests otherwise.
If you are reading this post on my site, the inline video gives an error. Click on the link above. The 'error' is only because the creator wants you to got to YouTube to watch it.
… another two ‘broken links’ .. has something changed?
In no particular order (except for perhaps the first two) …
If you are reading this post on my site, the inline video gives an error. Click on the link above. The 'error' is only because the creator wants you to got to YouTube to watch it.
We all get that broken link message from time to time don’t we? What is particularly interesting on this post is to find EIGHT blocks - I wonder if it is the writers insisting on the block - I don’t think there I any other constant.
🎈145/366 About content.
🔗 📼 😂 Stewart Lee on Social Media (Content Provider)
Don’t worry, it’s not my usual rant. Just a very funny piece of standup that needs to be watched more than it has.
Public Service Announcement
🔗 Daring Fireball: How to Make Google’s ‘Web’ View Your Search Default
Not tried this yet … but I will be . and I know it will be of interest to most people in my world.
Whatever you are doing … stop … and 🔗 📼 😂 spend 5 minutes watching this.
🎈142/366 A Bucket Of Slop
I am well aware that despite my years long campaign to stop people from describing their words, articles, photographs, thinking … beliefs, soul … Intellectual Property even … ‘content’ … they continue to… unabated.
But I am not giving up …
That said - there are people that ‘get it’. (Though I will freely admit that we are also in the minority there!)
Meanwhile the ‘bot farms that have been delivering the real content (sic) to our uncurated feeds and inboxes have been gearing up for the AI revolution - and indeed as reported in many places are already shaping our ‘thinking’. (I use the word loosely.)
Imagine then my delight to read that ‘Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content’.
Sidebar - if you don’t know what a ‘bucket of slop’ is - ‘Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content’.
Perfect.
Slop is also a name given to what is left at the bottom after any of the remotely useful homogenized content that has been stored in a silo has been removed.
The trick now is going to be how readers will be able to spot the slop - given that they already have difficulties separating content from any kind of value.
Read the whole piece …
🔗 Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content
… and hat tip to John Gruber who referenced this post on Daring Fireball.
A Warning For Our Times …
🔗 How DeviantArt died: A.I. and greed turned a once-thriving community into a ghost town.
… now added to my ‘want to’ list (Leaving by Roxana Robinson)
… but separately the piece by Lefsetz is archived into my Readwise … lest I forget.
Gorgeous.
📺 Sugar
Stunning .. great job from Colin F .. but the homage to ‘noir’ yet modern, the direction, the cinematography, the colors, the lights, the nuance … everything. Just so good.
I have read that people loved the mid season ‘twist’ …if we are talking last scene in episode 6 .. yeah no .. I had that scene in my head for a couple of episodes prior, so no twist for me. In fact, it happened to coincide with when I thought the show had finished .. and I 🖇️ even posted that I was very disappointed with the ending (EEJIT I am).
Anyway .. all this to say … loved it. If you have 🍎 📺, whatever else you are watching stop - and go take a look.
Sugar on 🔗 Reelgood
Shed a Tear🔗 - William Gallagher
The DECORATOR stands back to appreciate his day’s work. The entire wall is now painted. Satisfied, he collects his snap-tin, paint, brushes, ladder, etc., lights a cigarette stub and walks off.
While he’s been achieving that painted wall, the film crew cast have failed to do anything at all. So much effort, so much energy, so much time, and nothing achieved whatsoever.
Completely unrelated, I’ve been sitting and typing in this chair for the past few days while four men put up a shed in our garden.
😂😂😂