exodus 2, diamond jubilee

And now for my 75th belated post, some more things I posted on Facebook — and later deleted:

exodus 1

Some things I posted on Facebook — and later deleted:

SNS SOS

The following originally appeared on Google+, Oct 12, 2012.


It's worth carefully thinking through the question of natural monopoly in relation to the so-called social graph (is there really only one, i.e. the social graph?). What makes the question interesting, I think, is that the users of Facebook are not its customers in the sense that monopolizing the social graph is not monopolizing social networking -- but rather a certain kind of advertising. Unless I am mistaken, people don't open a Facebook account in order to be advertised to...

bit of contagion

Jeff Hancock was our guest at today's "Databite." His spiel concerned the Facebook emotional contagion study, about which, justly, many people continue to write. A tidbit fell out of Jeff's talk and caught my attention.

The Facebook study grew from prior work that challenged the contention that emotional contagion, observable in face to face interactions, doesn't happen in text-only situations. You know: no one can tell you're being sarcastic in email! The prior work was undertaken in a lab setting. Subjects would communicate through a text-based chat program. One subject would be manipulated so as to be in a negative emotional state, and then the researchers would measure whether that negative feeling spread to the interlocutor. But! In order to overcome the therapeutic effect wherein simply communicating with someone else helps you feel better, researchers had to devise a means of maintaining half the dyad in a persistent negative state.

sprung

In honor of a newborn niece, I am freeing up some fragments that concern my own baby (my own baby and ears, apparently, both the things and what you do with them), i.e. liberating them from FB and bringing them over here:

Möbius

Why was the strip named for Herr M and not for Johann Benedict Listing?

The following first appeared on Facebook, July 11, 2012.

‎"'Today, 43 per cent of Berlin consists of forest, lakes, parks and agricultural land -- an area of 382 km2 in total, nearly seven times the size of Manhattan Island (57 km2). Twenty per cent of this open space is protected land -- that's 76.4 km2 to be exact, one and a third times the size of Manhattan Island'" (http://verspaetet.blogspot.com/2012/05/cities-cities-cities-cities.html).


PS--Hey, New York City, oddly, come August 2013, I will be living in you again.

offsprings

The following first appeared on Facebook, October 14, 2011.

when, after our midday nap, rjky and i are sitting on our respective potties, facing one another with a basket of magazines between us, rjky always insists on taking Der Spiegel and The Economist for herself, as she pushes Elle été and old issues of Brigitte into my hands...

The following first appeared on Facebook, February 18, 2012.

rjky has added the word "tower" to her vocabulary -- usually in reference to the massive spires that have become her stock in trade when we're playing legos. so i'm teaching her the chorus...a perfect song from a perfect album (an album, what's more, that often dominated my late night, high school joy rides of alienation and boredom): indeed,



"radio waves curve and cross / I stand below them / lost // 
above me is a black obelisk / and the dangers that I risk // here gather the ghosts of the mind / that tear my heart and here I find / all the traps that have been set / everything I would forget beneath / The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower"

seasickness

This post first appeared on cranky dilettante, February 17th, 2009.

In futile symbolic protest of the new Facebook TOS, I’m deleting my one “Note” in Facebook and reposting it here.

March 15, 2008

Yesterday morning I read — mostly sympathetically — an opinion piece on Salon about youth and the Internet (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/03/14/kids_and_internet). One bit of diction pricked me: “Teenagers today read and write for fun; it’s part of their social lives. We need to start celebrating this unprecedented surge, incorporating it as an educational tool instead of meeting it with punishing pop quizzes and suspicion” (emphasis added).

For the last year, since the so-called surge of occupation forces in Iraq, I’ve been taking note of the use of “surge” in the press, on- and off-line, and I believe that its use has increased. Admittedly it’s possible that endless prattle about the surge in Iraq has sensitized me to the word, permitting me to take note, whereas before the word would have slipped past, invisibly, as it were. But I don’t think so. I would contend that, now, everything can be a surge, is capable of surging: profits, hospital admissions, inflation, companies, support for presidential candidates, market demand, unemployment claims, liabilities, interest in an issue, crime, sports teams, prices, emotions, and so on; support for the troop surge itself, if there is any, can be said to surge. Now, “surge” has become so current as to be able to describe the increase in its use: a surge of writers using “surge.”

This is not to say that “surge,” deployed figuratively, cannot accommodate this broad range of uses. Rather, reflecting on the current context of this range, I want to ask to what extent the militarization of the U.S. is accompanied by, or bound up with, a rhetorical militarization. After all, I’ve just written “deployed” in connection with the use of a word.

A friend commented nearly a year later, writing:

Very astute. And not to have elicited a comment. Pearls before swine. I’d like to suggest “seiche” as a possible antidote to the overuse of “surge.” A seiche, I learned today, is a standing wave in an enclosed body of water that, due to its long wavelength, is often imperceptible to the eye  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiche).

I’m thinking that “seiche” could be used to describe long, subtle trends, that go unnoticed to “observers in boats on the surface.” Say, ramping up of law enforcement surveillance after 9/11, or rising rents in NYC.

It is not a sexy, militarized word. The other problem is one of pronunciation. “Pronounced “/seɪʃ/, or approximately saysh)”, it does not rhyme with quiche. Please advise.

horde hoard

The following first appeared on Facebook, Wednesday, July 27, 2011, 6:57am.


the therapist was right.

in any case, as i was throwing away a dossier of notes, jottings, papers, correspondence, etc. from about a decade ago, i came across an envelope filled with fragments that were intended for but never made it online. let's listen in to this younger self:

"The Tile Bar is actually called WCOU Radio, and it still sort of sucks."

written inside an empty matchbook from Circa Tabac, 32 Watts Street: "'The wound is healed only by the sword that smote you.'"

"St. Nick's Pub -- St. Nick & 147 (Sugar Hill beer?) Did I pay for the cab?"

in an increasingly illegible hand: "days go by days go by days go by days go by days go by days go by"

were these fragments and many others wrapped up in an envelope that also contained a plastic shopping bag from gourmet garage? yes, they were.