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I love time lapse videos an unreasonable amount. This one, by Dominic Boudreault shows North American cities and landscapes over the course of a year, combined with an epic score.
Allie Brosh explains a book. Specifically, her book! Excitement!
fuckyeahbreakfast!
I made eggs cooked in a cheese sauce, topped with sautéed asparagus and peppers, served on a ciabatta bun with salsa on the side. I felt very fancy.
Jessica Dovey did not intend to become the epicenter of an Internet-wide discussion about the nature of quotation, attribution, and Osama bin Laden. Yet that’s exactly what happened when Dovey’s Facebook-status sentiment — “I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy” — became entangled with a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote she also posted. Within a day and through no fault of her own, Dovey’s words had gone viral, misattributed to King.
The (Shy) Woman Whose Words Accidentally Became Martin Luther King’s
I think there used to be a video link here but I truly have no idea to what this refers. -Rachel, 2023
I imagine that the actual title of this show is “Kittens Sit in Bowls while a Child Sings an Adorable Cover of a Beatles Song and People Shriek About How Cute it Is”.
American TV, take note.
My battery’s been charging for about four hours. When it started charging it said it had about an hour and half left. When I glanced at it two hours ago, it said 7hrs, and now somehow it’s at 18+? Apple battery does not know how to count. (Count DOWN, stupid!) … Think this is somehow related to the fact that I had to buy a new charger today? (Old charger, why? Why you fry my battery counter? … also how?)
Note from 2022 Rachel: That Battery eventually literally exploded
The CBC and the End of First Year Law
Had I never met the Champagne Socialist, I may have dismissed him out of hand. On February 16th, he wrote:
I used to doubt the usefulness of Twitter because all it really does is replicate one feature of Facebook — the status update. But that’s exactly the difference. Because that’s all Twitter is, and because it’s much more open, it changes the way people use it. [emphasis added]
I can’t stand the comparison between Facebook and Twitter. A truly interesting phenomenon is that people tend to conceptualize the internet in terms of how they use it, rather than as a concrete entity. If I ever do write a thesis, it would certainly be on Internet Philosophy, how each person uses it completely differently and adapts it to their own world view. But the internet, unlike reality, has an accessible actuality. Twitter isn’t just a Facebook status update. Facebook wants your friends to know “what’s on your mind”; Twitter wants to know “what’s happening”. Twitter was intended to reach a wide audience of people you both knew and didn’t know, to be a realtime communication tool. Facebook was intended to let you friends and family, your (non-publicly accessible) peer group, have a glimpse at what you were up to during your day. They are separate websites with separate goals, although they are functionally similar from a user standpoint.
The author of the Champagne Socialist blog is, in his own words, a “recent but enthusiastic convert” to twitter, whereas I am what some would call an early adopter. On the other hand, I came late to Facebook. I had been on Twitter, Blogger, Livejournal, Diaryland, Wordpress, Tumblr, Delicious, etc., etc. … I didn’t see the point of Facebook, and felt that Myspace and Friendster (which I had tried) were lackluster services. I didn’t see why Facebook would succeed where they had failed, and didn’t sign up until some point in 2007. I’m still not a huge fan of Facebook, whereas most people today are what you would call Facebook Fanatics. For me, Twitter came first, and Facebook status updates “imitated” Twitter. For most others, Facebook came first. For the average internet user today, Facebook is where the internet starts and ends. For the average user, then, to say Twitter “replicates” the Facebook status is not only fair, but entirely accurate.
(The rest of that article is good, by the way. It emphasizes the importance of Twitter in the political sphere, something I have only recently come to appreciate. You should read it.)
The point to all of this is that people use the internet in vastly different ways, a fact that has always fascinated me. Moreover, the way each person uses the internet is the way they consider “correct”; I myself am guilty of this, so that when someone says something I disagree with my first reaction is to write a long, rambling blog post.
One thing I have never really been into on the internet is streaming media. I am aware of radio on the internet, but podcasts, livestreaming, and even things like ustream have never really interested me. Youtube only holds my attention for a few minutes a day, compared to the hours I’ll spend reading Thought Catalog. But a few weeks ago this blogger/ tweeter / colleague in law school introduced me to CBC Radio 3 online, and it became not only the soundtrack for my exam study period, but a staple of my morning routine. Now I wake up and turn on the CBC, to hear amazing, independent music which I would never have heard anywhere else.
So now I see the validity in the statement that Twitter imitates Facebook. The CBC was always there, always broadcasting, but for me it didn’t exist until someone forwarded me the link. For most there was no Twitter until they’d already shared with 240 of their closest Facebook friends how they rocked their Psych 101 final. The Internet exists on its own, but it also changes with you, opens and adapts to your purposes. My Internet is different now than it was a few weeks ago. My use of Twitter has changed from following comedians and other things internet to tracking the upcoming election, the progress of my hockey team, and things happening in real life. The first tab I open in the morning is no longer my carefully crafted collection of Google Reader feeds; now I head straight to the Globe and Mail and CBC Radio 3, a window into things that are actually happening.
My internet changed when I was living in a library basement for 13 hours a day. I lost touch with what was going on in the outside world. I didn’t have time to sift through a hundred comics and blogs for entertainment. My iTunes catalogue became a veritable wasteland of uninteresting, overplayed music. When I had to abandon the Internet as I knew it to work harder than I’ve ever worked, live music streaming, news sites, and an adapted purpose for Twitter kept me going. Whether you get there early, late, or with the rest of the pack, the internet meets you where you are in life. As I finished my first year of law school, I turned on the CBC.
The NDP responds to our concerns regarding Usage Based Billing and Net Neutrality.
Recommended… why, exactly?
For the record, Midget Apple and Pear come from the Annoying Orange series, which I have never liked on Facebook. How does Facebook know that I would like them? How does Facebook know how internet I am?
Pretty sure I need to own this. Like, an actual need. Pretty sure the rest of my life will be incomplete without this dress.
go06l3 f@n 6|r1 for lif3
Me: Google is awesome, I am the biggest google fan girl. Google army for life!
@chorkins: you say “biggest google fan girl” as if there are so many out there.
Me: I like to pretend there are. Although a google search tells me there aren’t.
Note from 2022 Rachel: HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED