Returning to a theme I’ve explored previously, I recently encountered two pieces about Twitter and context: Justine Sacco is good at her job, and how I came to peace with her Forced context collapse or the right to hide in plain sight The two pieces explore different aspects of the theme, but both of them […]
Category Archives: Internet
The marvels of social media
I get annoyed when people complain about the banality of social media. There’s been a meme going around Facebook (I’ve seen it twice now, with different things): The idea is to occupy Facebook with {THING}, to break the monotony of selfies, knominations, cat dog pics and personal videos. I have no idea what knominations even […]
Recommendation engines and the uniqueness of dislike
Twitter decided recently that it was going to change its fundamental paradigm and start putting content in your feed that it thinks you want to see, making it the last social site I personally use to try to guess what you want, instead of letting you tell it. It’s an obvious trend; it’s what Facebook has […]
What can I contribute?
Asked of oneself, in the context of being able to contribute one’s non-material resources to societal endeavors, the question What can I contribute? can be taken at least two ways. One is: what resources am I able to contribute, or capable of contributing? The other is: what resources can I offer that constitute a unique and […]
UI things.
I care a lot about design things. It’s part of caring about details, to me, and also caring about user experience. I’m not formally trained, but you don’t need two years of school to figure out that doors that say push, but have a pull handle, are confusing and annoying. (On the other hand, this […]
Because cheese.
Since my Because Reasons post, I’ve been collecting examples. I’m sure a search would turn up more, but I’m enjoying collecting them in their native habitats. “well, okay, maybe not the dairy free part, because cheese” This was a sentence fragment from an online messageboard. “I had catastrophic coverage, but no maternity coverage (private insurance […]
The kinds of conversations on the Internet that recur and recur and never end
How people arrange their financial accounts with their significant other. What kind of car people drive and why they like it or hate it. What personality type people are in some system, and whether that system rocks/sucks/is scientifically valid/is total bullshit. [Added 9/22] What kind of houseware people own, or wish they owned, or have […]
So you got the cURL error:140770FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unknown protocol
Yeah, a lot of people do, apparently. However, if you’re a client (not the server administrator) and you’re pretty much positive that the server isn’t configured incorrectly, you don’t have a proxy server on your side, it’s not supposed to be plain HTTP….you might still be confused after you read all that stuff. I was […]
Two Google reader annoyances
Two things Google reader does wrong (in my opinion): If two of your friends have shared the same post, it appears twice in your shared items. If you follow a blog that one of your friends has shared a post from, you see both the blog post and the shared post. I can see why […]
Dear social networks
Dear Facebook, You know all those people with whom I have mutual friends? The ones you like to suggest I befriend? Did you ever wonder if there might be a reason why I am not friends with those people? Please stop telling me who you think I should be friends with, or suggesting that my […]