You can add me to the group. The new UI is hard to read, difficult to navigate and it's taking forever to load!
I have no idea whatsoever what Google Reader is. To hell with all you computer folk.
I'm annoyed by it. I really liked reading people's shares (and vaguely liked sharing things myself), and the mechanisms for sharing on the other available options make it unlikely I'll avail myself of them.
I thought Google Reader was just an RSS reader.
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Hokey Pokey sent home with diarrhea for yet another week in a row. At least this time we're armed with a shit kit, so we can get a sample and send it in to the lab and prove that this is just how he shits sometimes, nothing else.
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Time/date stamp on 5!
I hit some kind of wall when I was 35ish where I had no will to learn about things like RSS feeds. I think maybe it's a self-preserving instinct.
Everybody shits some fluid sometimes.
Every colon poops some water somehow.
Something in your pamper told me
that sometime is now.
I use Google Reader a lot but don't really care! I will miss Tweety's shared articles, but that was a very small part of my usage. So far the new layout seems a little harder to read but I imagine that's just my eyes adjusting.
5: This is ghastly, of course, but is that going to do you any good? The results from the shit kit will demonstrate that he didn't have diarrhea this week, but that doesn't speak to whether he will have diarrhea next week, in the eyes of the daycare.
Past diarrhea results are no guarantee of future diarrhea performance.
I feel ill.
I didn't read shared articles from that many people, but a few of them posted very interesting things that often spawned very interesting comment threads. It's not the biggest deal in the world, but the pointlessness of breaking it that way is sort of annoying.
Re Hokey-Pokey, a person wonders whether other children are frequently sent home from the daycare with diarrhea. In other words, do the daycare staff need more better training? Is there a daycare supervisor or something who's in charge of training protocols regarding public health for the place? Or however you'd put that?
Go with the shit kit, certainly, but if this happens again in future I might wonder whether the staff's training needs a refresher course. Especially if other parents/kids are going through this as well.
Yeah, I'd be fine if they pushed sharing over to G+ instead of having it be a standalone thing, but killing sharing entirely pisses me off. And the slow loading thing. And the gigantic typeface. And there are way too many kids on my lawn.
Google seems unusually ham-fisted about the whole social network thing. First with the buzz, now with the killing of the reader. Google+ isn't necessarily a bad product, I guess, from what I've heard.
I didn't use the social features, but I find the new UI somewhat annoying. I'm not sure what the change is, but somehow I have to scroll down on my list of feeds more often.
Wait, shit, I can't even share anything anymore? Fuck that. I didn't even notice that. I thought they'd just made it slow and ugly, not disabled too.
I'd stopped using Google Reader over a year ago after I switched my main online identity (main email address) and dumped several of the old ones, then couldn't remember what my old Google Reader login was, then decided I'd deal with it at some point in future if I felt like it ...
Good to know I'd be starting fresh, I guess.
G+ is really weird because it's taken off like gangbusters among mathematicians. Somehow the circles has made it so that people are in each others "math" circle on G+ even if you don't really know each other personally and would never be Facebook friends.
Google seems unusually ham-fisted about the whole social network thing. First with the buzz, now with the killing of the reader.
Also Google Wave. What the heck was that about?
For unknown reasons it's also having a much harder time with basic rss functionality--all day long things I've already read have bene reappearing in feeds, or not disappearing from the unread lists when I read them. That happened once in a while before, but nowhere near this frequently.
Doesn't +1ing something share it to your Plus feed? Also, I still have the widget installed that lets me send items to FB, tumblr, and twitter.
I never ever saw a comment thread get started on Reader -- I suppose if I had there would be something to miss. Also I will miss the Shared Items widget on various people's blogs, mostly Kotsko's.
Oh, wait, you can still share things, it just shares them now in google+ instead of natively in google reader. Meh. I'm fine with that, I guess.
I don't have much of a problem with the new format - the old format was a revision too, we get used to them - but I hate how often it takes forever to load, and that you can't even share something to Plus without plusoneing it.
I hit some kind of wall when I was 35ish
With diarrhea?
I use google reader only for sync and mostly interact with Reeder or Netnewswire so only now did I notice how completely Google broke it. Netflix, Delicious, now this - why do tech companies make a practice of finding what's good about their service and ruining it?
What does "+1"ing something mean, exactly? Is it just sharing? Or the google equivalent of "liking"? Or what?
The second one. Sharing is a further action.
While we're complaining about Google, I noticed a "What's hot on Google+" bar in the middle of my stream* yesterday. No, I don't want to add random people I don't know to my circles, thank you very much. The thing seemed very ad-like, and the strength of my aversion to it surprised me, given that I didn't think I cared that much about Google+.
*I just looked up the term. stream:google+ :: news feed:facebook.
I think internet companies have learned an important lesson from watching facebook the last couple of years. You can do whatever you want to a free service with no real repercussions. People think they're consumers, and if they complain loudly enough they can get a company to change course, but really we're more like ants in their ant farm.
Everyone should just go and play outside.
Everyone should just go and play outside.
Hear, hear.
Google Reader gave me pause: am I okay with Google knowing not just my search history and email correspondence, but also what blogs and posts I read, and which I 'like'? Eh. I mean, I realize that on some level it's all available in some way or another (probably), but I don't need to actually hand it out, do I?
Does Google Reader still automatically convert to "read" posts that are over about 30 days old? That was the behavior that stopped me from using it. There are some people who don't post often and who I check every few months or so and I was losing track of what I hadn't read. I know you could just keep scrolling, but I decided I'd rather have an RSS client that saves post locally. It would be nice if I could sync it, but it's no big deal.
As far as I know everything works the same but the sharing, which was killed. And rm'd! Wiping out the archives of people's conversations is I think what has people sort of bummed.
The new UI is horrible. I get very attached, like a lot of people, to user interfaces and when they change they better have a good reason for fucking with it. I didn't use the sharing features, but the new UI is fucked.
I haven't looked at my GR account in months. Between Twitter, and shared articles on G+ and FB, I've got just about all the sorted access I need.
I just got an indirect link to this on Twitter, though. Two weeks later. http://www.observer.com/2011/10/real-world-occupy-wall-street-mtv-issues-casting-call-for-protesters/
At this early stage, this thread could either become a Google thread or a liquid shit thread. I'm not sure what to root for.
28: There's also a tab on G+ where you can see a list of all the things a user publicly +1ed. I don't think FB has a page to see an aggregation of a person's likes (except for liked pages on their profile).
I've been surprised by the amount of uproar around the Google Reader changes, mostly because it was all about a feature (the sharing) that I'd never tried to use. The UI tweaks are of the same flavor that's been hitting all the other Google properties, so that was clearly just a question of time.
The option that would have been really useful, and seems so completely obvious that I don't understand why they haven't done it, is just to give users the option to integrate reader into g+. I basically dislike having to go to a bunch of different websites to read everything I want to read on the internet every day. I want it in one place. That's why I used an rss reader in the first place--I actually strongly prefer seeing the diverse and often artful layouts of the various webpages I read to reader's bland uniformity, but I was willing to sacrifice that just to be able to go to one website to get the information I need. Why won't google just let you pull all your rss feeds right into G+, and view them as part of your stream? (Or even, totally separate from your stream, a different set of tabs along the left hand side, but still all right there in the same service.)
This seems like a no-brainer, and would at least potentially have made things more useful, rather than less. And yet.
35ish, no will to learn about things like RSS feeds
+1
I decided that unless I worked a bit to keep up, I would be captive to dying media. For a while, I would read those journalists I knew and respected in print and whine that they were hard to find; then I realized that many people were writing intelligently in blogs without editorial interference, usually with a run of a few years.
I haven't found a way to read twitter though, 140 chars is too short to be informative, I'm not that interested in my social circle's "fun" tweets.
I basically dislike having to go to a bunch of different websites to read everything I want to read on the internet every day.
You know it is all on the same screen, if you want it to be.
You're complaining about having to go to different web sites when all the websites come to the same screen after a very minimal movement of your fingers.
I've been left behind by technology too. Know little about Twitter and nothing about RSS feeds. The filters at work don't help, though; lots of stuff is blocked here, including everything related to Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, even embedded stuff. Once I get home I want to play WoW or watch TV or follow up on specific things I e-mailed home to myself because they were blocked at work, or, surprising as it sounds, do stuff in real life sometimes even with real people, not spend my time educating myself on other stuff online out of general interest.
I can't entirely blame work, though. My previous job didn't have this restriction, and I guess I could educate myself at home.
So, RSS feeds. What are they, exactly? A good idea?
It's a wonderful way to save the time it takes to move your mouse 2.5".
Well, it's a little more than that -- I don't use one, which enables my OCD-esque habit of returning to the blogs I read several times a day, in the vain hope that there's a new crumb of text to read there. I'd waste less time if I were using a reader. (Or, the same amount of time differently.)
re: 49
What if you have several hundred websites that you follow?* You're trolling, surely?
* exaggeration, I think I probably only have a hundred or so in my RSS reader
I tried using an RSS reader to replace visiting blogs, but over time I've ended up reading entirely different kinds of things on RSS vs. in a browser. Blogs that I actually *read* on a regular basis, I still end up going to via their website. RSS feeds in a reader are good for high-volume, low-yield things like tips, reviews, blogs of only occasional interest, general news, mp3 blogs. Kind of a method for scanning lots of headlines at once to pick out the bits here and there that I actually want. I also use RSS for downloading podcasts because I hate the podcast function in iTunes.
RSS feeds are seriously not high tech. You click on the little feed button, you add the feed to whatever reader you use, then you read everything all intermixed in one page instead of on a billion different pages.
Sharing was similarly mindless; people would share things (blog posts generally, but of course it varied) and they would also show up in your mix of things. Probably the low-techness of it was why it worked so well. I never actually bothered to manually specify whose shares I read or who read my shares; it just kinda worked automatically.
I didn't even know you could share things on Google Reader, and I wouldn't have cared if I did, not being a social networky kind of person. I just use it to have a unified RSS list across my various devices. As far as I can see nothing to do with that has changed.
Blogs that I actually *read* on a regular basis, I still end up going to via their website.
There are a few photo-heavy blogs that I like reading in their original format, but I still have them in my reader so that I know when there's a new post.
So the new look doesn't actually bother me much. I'm confused by all the people who are like "Yeah! They changed the fonts!" Killing the sharing is the obnoxious part.
I mean, I don't love the new look, but it's not like the old look was so all-fired terrific either. It was workable.
I tried using an RSS reader to replace visiting blogs, but over time I've ended up reading entirely different kinds of things on RSS vs. in a browser.
Yeah (before I fell off using an rss reader anyway), there can be a real advantage to going directly to the blogs you read very regularly: if the blog is part of a larger site, there may well be other worthwhile stories/blogs on the site; and sometimes I find it worthwhile to review someone's blogroll.
It's mostly the numerous small, dedicated single-writer blogs that are fairly low-volume that an rss reader is helpful for. Otherwise you would (I would) forget all about them eventually.
140 chars is too short to be informative
Not when a link is included.
I'm not that interested in my social circle's "fun" tweets.
Right. That's why you should only follow interesting people that you don't know, doing interesting things. Or Blake Hounshell, if he doesn't fall into either category for you.
Anyway, it seems likely that Google killed the sharing in order to force people over to G+. Maybe someone said as much upthread.
60: well, obviously so, yeah. But the way that sharing works in google+ is different and (to my mind) shittier. Also I'm presumably on borrowed time there because of the mind-blowingly dumb real name policy.
He seems pretty easy to avoid. Am I missing something?
I subscribe to RSS feeds because there's dozens of websites I want to keep up with that I don't check every day. And with RSS I don't have to.
There's some debate over whether RSS is going to last. Twitter and Facebook have basically killed their support for it, although twitter clients can pretty much serve the same function. I hate having to go to the Facebook site to see what's going on at Facebook. I know that sounds weird, but it's true. I generally go to websites for long-form writing, things with graphics/photos, things where the layout matters, and if I want to leave or read comments.
Also, I just asw that Gmail is apparently going to a new look too. Part of a Google-wide redesign, I guess. I'm going to stick with the old version until it's forced on my account, just because
And to follow up on 59, I find D2 an effective user of 140 chars.
The real name policy isn't personally keeping me away from G+, though I really hate it and agree with pretty much all of the criticism I've read of it, but I don't want my social media connected directly to my primary e-mail like that. I'm fine having a separate g+ account, but only if it doesn't mean I have to have an entirely new gmail account to go with it.
65: he was a more effective user of even more characters, so it's a shame that his blog is shuttered or invite-only or whatever. (Has anyone been invited?)
63: To me he seems as ubiquitous as Satan in the Book of Job ("From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it").
62: the mind-blowingly dumb real name policy.
Huh. I hadn't realized that. Unworkably dumb, if you ask me.
What if you have several hundred websites that you follow?
I waste enough time on the internet as it is.
You're trolling, surely?
By some definitions, but not really.
67: I asked for an invite and got one; I'd guess that a similar request from you would probably get the same response. It wasn't shuttered due to a change in tone or subject matter or anything, and I believe there's an intent to open it back up again in a few months.
One can declare war by Twitter, apparently.
Man, that's worse than getting dumped by text message.
The bombs are getting dumped by text message.
Or at least, the bombs are being dropped by a process that started with a text message.
I am declaring this the most boring day in Unfogged history. Someone do some trolling or something here.
I could whine about work some more, but it wouldn't be interesting. It's driving me around the bend, though; the last month or so, and looks like the next month or two, are shaping up for the worst couple of months I've had at this job.
This isn't going to make the blog interesting, but what's people's sense on this: I've had a sore throat (swollen tonsil on the left side, painful to swallow) and earache for 3 days now. It waxes and wanes over the course of the day -- increasingly bad in the evening and awful overnight, then chilling out early afternoon for 5 or 6 hours, then setting in again. How long do I give this to take care of itself before I go to the doctor?
Oh, nevermind. I guess I should just go to the doctor. I'm not hearing very well out of my left ear now. Like cotton in my ear.
If it's awful overnight, I'd go now. If you're just sick and not acutely miserable, I'd probably give it another two days or so before going.
I could whine about work some more, but it wouldn't be interesting.
You've mostly whined about feeling like your procrastinating (and a little bit about your supervisor). Is there something particularly annoying about the nature of what you're working on, or is it just the quantity of work?
The bombs are getting dumped by text message Google Plop
80: Oh, yeah, what's set me off is a particularly horrid set of litigations (either four or fifteen depending on how you count it) that's perfectly suited to call up the synergies between things I do badly (like work) and things my supervisor does badly (like manage). Explaining it would be lengthy, boring, and probably impossible without enough detail to identify the whole mess unambiguously, but it's awful.
Today's bright spot was the conversation with my boss when she realized that she hadn't been listening the multiple times I told her we had papers due Monday 11/7, nor had she been paying attention when she wrote it in her calendar. I don't know a more effective way of communicating a deadline to someone than telling it to them and watching them write it down, but I wish I did.
People who run protests should check with a deaf person before they go public with their hand signals. The "point of process" one is the ASL sign for vagina.
84.2.2.last clause you and a whole lot of educators.
85: Heh. Where are you seeing the hand signals they're using, Messily? There was a piece in the NYRB recently describing "wiggling fingers overhead" as assent/agreement, and so on, but I didn't notice "point of process."
Colbert Report had an interview with some people, I don't know how widely used that one is
it doesn't seem like that useful of a signal to me personally, but I only vaguely remember my Robert's rules.
I'd think it would be pretty essential. Proposals are responded to with gestures signaling agreement, or ambivalence, or disagreement or, according to the NYRB piece "the blocking signal -- a severe locking of forearms that, we were instructed, should be used only if you had "serious ethical concerns" with what was being proposed."
Things that get a 90-ish% approval (fingers wiggling) get published in the OWS Journal. I guess as resolutions. Like "we will clean up after ourselves" or sometimes things with more gravitas.
Anyway, if people don't attend to the procedure -- like if a speaker at a General Assembly ignores a severe locking of forearms -- you'd need a "point of process" signal.
And that signal should also mean "vagina".
For all we know, that signal was chosen intentionally, to mean "Think of the children!"
Though I'd have to offer the ambivalent signal about that signal choice.
HA HA HA! It's spelled Virginia, guys!
Until this thread, I hadn't realized how wild the OWS decision making process is. What with the handwaving and signalling and shaking your hands and the human microphones and the 90% consensus thing.
It looks like maybe there are some variations. The one that means vagina is if you make two L with your index fingers and thumbs, and then touch the index fingers to each other and the thumbs to each other.
As in here at 4:07
The versions with more fingers extended don't mean anything in ASL. That I know of.
Diaspora. I'm telling you all.
But then they'll send us all home from daycare.
Wait, is Diaspora a real thing now, not just a rumored future thing? Are people using? I heard about it when it was just, like, a Youtube video about how in the future it would be awesome, but that's all.
God, that Colbert thing about the OWS procedures is both hilarious and totally fascinating. It sounds like you could use the point of procedure move to completely disrupt and take over the proceedings. So many possibilities for ways to manipulate things. I should totally get involved in this.
Mostly, because you can use the point of procedure to claim that someone has deviated from the agenda, which shuts them up! So useful. Also, the "block" move: in a large enough group, you just need to persuade one person to throw out the block move and take the fall, and it sounds like you can stop anything you want from happening.
94: I know. I'm impressed.
The human microphones are because amplification isn't allowed in Zucotti Park (or in most of the other places Occupiers are gathered), but it has a very much more significant effect: people have to be fully engaged with the proceedings, with even full body engagement.
This isn't invented from scratch. Procedures are recognizable from other types of gatherings.
Halford. what are you talking about. I offer you a severe locking of forearms.
Maybe I could start a business advising people on how to manipulate formal decision making procedures for their personal advantage. Now, what would I call what I do . . . .
It'd be hard to get much personal advantage out of OWS. Disrupting, I can see, but personal advantage seems thin on the ground.
No soup for you. Or no bacon. We can offer you a series of dead tires to smash on with a sledgehammer, though. They're ... over there. Wayyy over there.
103 -- It's like you've never even heard of getting laid.
104 -- Actually, my crossfit gym is located a few blocks from Occupy LA. I guess we could go over and do some intense workout sessions with the crowd.
105.1: From here at my desk, the prospect's feeling kind of distant.
I knew it was a mistake to tell the rabble about the communication system.
Sex in a tent is a young person's game.
107: Yeah, you have a good, workable system for open democratic decisionmaking, you want to keep that a secret. You let people know about it, they'll just wreck it.
I suppose it works O.K. if just one of the persons is young.
In re 76 I'm declaring Halford the most boring commenter in unfogged history.
110: Or if it's a really, really nice tent.
I've seen plenty of not-young people having sex in tents.
Is 113 something you should be admitting in public?
109: Totally true. That's why I was a little surprised to read that much detail in the NYRB piece (though honestly, how many people read that); I dunno about the Colbert thing.
It easily invites mockery. And you know, it's not scalable. It's workable only on a small scale. The rather important idea, though, is that you should have to participate in it in order to be a part of it.
Oh wait, you meant at Burning Man. Which means that, no, you shouldn't be admitting that in public.
113 means he had one of those infrared camera things.
You've got to cut back on that Thief of Baghdad-themed porn habit, Tweety.
The founders of google are hip to it, halford.
They probably have way nicer air mattresses than I've ever seen.
I've never actually seen a super, super rich person's tent at Burning Man. I think I would assume they stay in luxury RVs or rock star tour busses, but maybe some of them have insanely nice tents.
I have no clue what 119 means.
Oh Jesus they really do go to Burning Man. Fuck those guys. Can we just nuke the entire bay area already? It's like interlacing circles of hell between the tech people and the hippies.
Translated into Spanish by google, 119 is:
Los fundadores de Google son la cadera a la misma, Halford.
They always say nice things about you.
Halford will be writing Herman Cain position papers by next week.
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"Face discovered in testicular tumour"
As you were.
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124: Who? The google founders? Whatever. Shitloads of people go to Burning Man.
All of whom should be ashamed of themselves.
130: they do, yeah.
Shitloads of very rich people go to burning man, in addition to all the other people, which I must admit I've never been totally comfortable with. But they do fund some rad theme camps.
131: do you ever stand naked in the mirror and just lambaste yourself for the shamefulness of it all? Or maybe you have like a short whip and do like an opus dei self-abnegation thing? Whatever it is, I commend you for going in a very different direction from the typical California self-actualization.
132: Right, that was my understanding. Halford's a little confused about the whole hippie thing, if he things, for example, that OWS is like Burning Man. Or something.
No, no, that's the opposite of what I think. OWS is political and interesting.
If you're naked in the desert, doesn't the sand hurt?
Whereas burning man is just an aesthetic/hedonistic choice, and a poor one.
Anyway, I could only stay naked in the desert sun for about as long as I could stay naked on an ice floe.
Wait, is Diaspora a real thing now, not just a rumored future thing? Are people using? I heard about it when it was just, like, a Youtube video about how in the future it would be awesome, but that's all.
Supposedly there's some alpha testing going on - article here. I donated and got a promise of an invitation within 24 hours, so we'll see.
138: Halford, I get that you've been trolling. But you probably don't know enough about Burning Man -- especially its regional offshoots, which attract fewer of the sparkly super-rich types -- to say, so I'd back off that one.
Way more people go to burning man from LA than SF.
And a lot of the techniques for ad-hoc living that people are employing at OWS were originally developed at Burning Man, along with a lot of other thing Halford probably finds cool.
But, right, punch the hippies, No-Fun League, Esq. That's what the pre-technological cave people did.
Way more people go to burning man from LA than SF.
That's a defense?
originally developed at Burning Man
Also at Rainbow gatherings.
144: yeah, probably there first.
Not that it's a competition. Rainbow has certain strengths, Burners have others.
Anyway, Halford's (mostly) trolling.
There are empirical claims in 142 that I find extremely doubtful. Examples please. But I'll buy the more folks from LA thing, it's a much bigger city.
I mean, I am mostly semi trolling. The idea of hanging out in the desert for days with a nude Larry Page on ecstasy watching someone show off a giant metal rooster built out of old exhaust pipes personally sounds like a living hell, but if that's your thing go for it. Other than a general alternative lifestyle thing, though, I'm not seeing the connection to OWS.
So, can you give like one example, or does that interfere with your fun?
150: no. No.
I mean, it's hard to explain; the minute I saw Occupy Boston I thought "oh shit, those are burners"; white kids living comfortably in a temporary, leave-no-trace way? That came directly from Burning Man (and, before that, Rainbow Gathering). I can't offer you specific examples, but if you can take my word for it, that's where it comes from.
"oh shit, those are burners"
The one in Pittsburgh has a sign that says "No drugs or alcohol." Given that none of it is more than 20 feet from the sidewalk, I can't figure how they would burn much.
I can't speak to Burning Man. I've never gone because, honestly, I'm of Scandinavian extraction, and I like a more lush environment, climate-wise. The desert (and the beach for that matter) doesn't treat me well. Can't handle unrelenting sun for very long. I'm also more inclined toward nature and less toward the mechanical. So Rainbow family is right for me, but I get what many Burners are about. There's a similar emphasis on group endeavor. (I do resist Burning Man for other reasons, and lots of Burners would probably never go to a Rainbow gathering, but that's not important here.)
Mostly it's the group signing-on to a project in which everyone pitches in.
As far as the consensus decision-making at OWS, I have no idea if BM does that in quite that way, but Rainbow certainly does. There's a nightly group assembly with everyone sitting in concentric circles after they've had food from the communal feed, and whoever wants to speak takes the talking stick and stands in the middle to speak or make announcements. No hand signals that I recall. There will be drum circles afterwards, and people discuss.
There was a funny moment seven or eight years ago when the DoD asked a bunch of the people who built the big center camp tent at burning man to come in and give a presentation on building temporary structures that would survive in high wind, because the army tents were failing in the Iraqi desert.
I've never gone
Wait, what? Really? I totally thought you had.
Does being in a circle help the drummers keep time with each other? Or is the circle just the way these things happen?
No idea. Hate freakin' drum circles. So loud.
Rainbow is also fairly different from Burning Man in having a no alcohol rule. There's a so-called "A-Camp" over yonder, another field away, for people who want to yuck it up with six-packs or whatever, and they are to stay over there at night. It's too hard for the community to self-police if people are going to be drunk. Sure, you can get away with a nip or two among the main gatherings, but no hi-larious drunkenness.
158: also burning man is much more car friendly; from what I understand of rainbow gatherings you have to park relatively far away and hike your stuff in. Burning Man you can, as noted, drive a big-ass RV right to your camp.
I don't think I could be comfortable in a large crowd of people unless I was just a bit drunk.
Yeah, I have to say that it seems like you're just describing things you'd find in any alternative, temporary community. I mean, I don't really know, but this particular genealogy doesn't seem very plausible to me (in the sense that we're talking about OWS using "innovations" that derive from Burning Man, as opposed to affinities). The decision making by consensus stuff seems to have developed from a very consciously political model developed by anarchist activists, as best as I can tell from some limited research.
155: Yeah, no. Can't take the desert. I know burners here in the mid-Atlantic -- there's a regional thing here -- and I know miscellaneous burners around the US (who I don't think of as burners particularly, just people I know who have gone to BM sometimes), so I hear about issues and discussions and stuff.
I've never been, but my wife went several years in a row when she was living in Tucson. I think it sounds great, except that my wilt-in-the-heat ginger self would die miserably under that much sun. Rainbow gathering: bugs. What I want is a big, climate-controlled biodome that groups get to take over for a week to do mountains of drugs and fly their freak flags.
Or, better yet, a massive underground sex grotto.
161: oh, the decision-making-by-consensus, yeah, I have no idea. I'm talking purely about physical plant kind of issues.
Mrs. K-sky has been to both Rainbow Gatherings and Burning Mans, and found the former much less together than the latter. A lot of unsanitary action, including a pit full of hippies picking scabs into it. I wish I remembered more details, but the others are just gross instead of colorful and gross. Burning Man habitués are generally very good at propping up a small city in a short amount of time. I'd be surprised if there weren't some exchange between Burners and Occupiers.
That's not to say that the Bay Area isn't a very silly place, bunny parties and all. But inventive times require laboratories.
159: also burning man is much more car friendly
Oh yeah, that too. No cars on-site at rainbow gatherings. Hike your stuff in -- but very often people will help you, kind of an ongoing procession of people trekking back and forth helping everyone carry their stuff in.
Some of the no-cars thing has to do with Forestry Dept. rules, some has to do with safety for children, some to do with minimizing noise. I think it has an overall calming and quieting effect. It seems very different from Burning Man in the end.
I think maybe Rainbow family has been falling apart in recent years. I don't know -- they stay pretty far under the radar.
161: again, I don't think it's a case I can make convincingly. But I know of a lot of overlap, and I know of a lot people who have sort of learned the ropes of temporary autonomous zones (to not-coin an overused phrase) from Burning Man. I am comfortable saying that one has very much learned from the other in important ways.
|| I'm listening to an excruciatingly credulous treatment of crackpot science on NPR's On Point. Why am I doing this?
|>
We got to cold fusion. That really should have gone to the conspiracy thread.
It wasn't much of a walk from car to the Rainbow gathering I attended. Least I don't remember walking much.
||
Huh.
International Patent Application WO9219458
TWO NEW PUNCTUATION MARKS: THE QUESTION COMMA AND THE EXCLAMATION COMMA
Using two new punctuation marks, the question comma and the exclamation comma: and respectively, inquisitiveness and exclamation may be expressed within a written sentence structure, so that thoughts may be more easily and clearly conveyed to readers. The new punctuation marks are for use within a written sentence between words as a comma, but with more feeling or inquisitiveness. This affords an author greater choice of method of punctuating, e.g., to reflect spoken language more closely. Moreover, the new punctuation fits rather neatly into the scheme of things, simply filling a gap, with a little or no explanation needed. Also, the interabang comma if the interabang is available. An example of usage follows. Readers encountering their first question comma in print may silently remark: "Clever! funny I never saw one of those before".
|>
161: The decision making by consensus stuff seems to have developed from a very consciously political model developed by anarchist activists, as best as I can tell from some limited research.
Possible. Though Rainbow family adapted what they do from (unspecified, handwave) native American tribes.
Where's Natilo? Anarchists don't usually do temporary encampments, do they? They do civil disobedience, which obviously OWS is engaged in. People well-versed in both civil disobedience and public demonstrations (which groups go well beyond anarchists) know a lot about organizing communications and movements on the fly.
I'm happy to agree that OWS is pulling together all of these things, and there's overlap among them, but no, I probably wouldn't credit Burning Man specifically.
|| Occupy Missoula and Missoula Water Now are teaming up to march in the Day of the Dead Parade. We will meet at 4pm at the Courthouse Lawn , gather , and head over to the Parade before it starts. Dress up as "Ghosts of Democracy" , Greedy Ghouls, Zombies, etc ( anything you come up with is fine) -- You can carry a sign as well.|>
This keeps making me laugh.
Does being in a circle help the drummers keep time with each other? Or is the circle just the way these things happen?
Yes. Sitting in rows doesn't really seem right, after all.
Drum single file. Drum willy-nilly.
I don't understand how people can hate drum circles, anyway. What's the problem? It's awesome, unless someone's a terrible drummer or something, and is messing it all up.
I've never heard a drum circle, I have to wonder how loud a whole circle of them can be. I would guess you reach a point where adding another drummer doesn't actually make it louder but I can't imagine how that would work for the physics of it.
Drum circles are extremely loud and incredibly annoying. For the record.
If a drum circle isn't trying for a record, it is still annoying?
170: Because you hate yourself. Listening to an NPR general-subject talk show handle science is a recipe for eye-stabbing.
Although, if you're going to listen to an NPR call-in show with the word "point" in the title, On Point is one hell of a lot better than To the Point. I will fight Warren Olney if I ever meet him in person.
Tweety and I will have to disagree on this point. I mean, I don't want a freaking snare drum in my drum circle, and I wouldn't want one right next to my tent, say, but otherwise I've liked most of the ones I've encountered.
173: I kinda like those. I wish I could make them with my keyboard now.
Also, the inventor's name: "Storch." I've never met a Storch.
I mean, I don't want a freaking snare drum in my drum circle
Racist.
More seriously, what differences does the snare make?
Radiation from a line source falls of as 1/log r rather than r^{-2}.
Didn't the free speech movement have a bunch of procedural stuff?
188 is fascinatingly baffling.
187: It's not a marching band. It's too high-pitched. For my tastes. For a drum circle.
But Tweety's dissent has made me recall: yes, it's true, I've heard some really horribly cacophonous drum circles.
'night.
It's not a marching band.
They should see an Ohio State game and learn to do a marching, script word. "Ohio" would probably not work, but they may have more people than a marching band so they could do a longer word.
Intuition about loudness and distance based on a point source doesn't carry over to a line, even a line segment like an arc of a circle. The density of the closest drums closest to the listener will have the strongest effect on loudness.
That makes sense.
Goodnight internet.
The one in Pittsburgh has a sign that says "No drugs or alcohol."
Ha, good luck with that here. Our OWS has loads of the local substance abusers in the tents who love that they can now be in the park all the time whereas before they got routed after dark.
Didn't the free speech movement have a bunch of procedural stuff?
I read something recently (around the time OWS started, and in reaction to it) that said it did, and that that was one reason it kind of faded away once the anti-war movement got going. I forget where I read that, though.
There was a Rainbow Gathering near Chaco when I was there, and several of the participants visited the park. They seemed nice enough, but it was definitely a big difference from most of the visitors we got.
Also, (some of) the Burning Man people do a lot of work installing renewable energy projects for local communities in rural Nevada. That alone endears them to me.
In general, none of these events really seems like my kind of thing, although I do think OWS is great. I definitely find Burning Man more intriguing than the Rainbow stuff, however, and if I were to attend one of them (unlikely) it would be that one.
Though Rainbow family adapted what they do from (unspecified, handwave) native American tribes.
I've talked to a few Rainbowers and AFAICT "adapted from Native Americans" pretty much means, "check it out, we're in the forest with a teepee".
That's generally the way those sorts of things go.
there's a monkey on top of the bus stop here in narnia, halford, is that mildly interrsting? also I am beginning to feel an enervating apathy creep into my ability to care about my children, which makes me think maybe I should be on suicide watch. I'm going to play with them, I have been avoiding them because I feel so sad, but that's stupid. I'm definitely not going to kill myself, though. because I'm not a cruel person and I have a longstanding willingness to suffer on behalf of other people. I better come out of this as mothra, because the whole pupating in an acid of stomach clenching misery thing is starting to get old. it's probably just that I have a fever. it makes you think poorly. I just feel a little like I have accelerated right into the, "look, it's an arrangement of solid forms" stage of depression.
that was probably unduly alarming.I just have a fever but have been doing taxing physical laboranyway. it's just making me feel weird.
it would also appear that I can't type properly on my phone when the taxi uncle is the most swervingest motherfucker in narnia. jesus, dude. you want to yank on something that hard stay home and jerk off; don't touch the wheel of the fucking sonata taxi.
now that I'm home lying in bed I feel better, it's just that when you have a high fever you shouldn't do work in the tropical heat or you will go all "comfortably numb" on some shit. I do feel that the "making me not feel miserable" drugs are starting to fail at their appointed task. my psychiatrist is happy because I'm crying and having feelings! yay! I see the way in which it's potentially working, in that I was able to not blame myself for two things that manifestly weren't my fault today. progress! this better start going a lot faster.
it is useful to tell husband x things to which he reacts with horror, because then I think, oh, yeah, that was horrible, wasn't it? but at the same time it's not pleasant to be looked at that way.
this is why depressed people are boring, because they talk about themselves the whole time. I should be telling you guys what a great party halford throws, and how his place in LA is always totally welcoming and open to any amount of unfogged-lurking couchsurfers. he has a kidney-shaped pool at his neutra house with an incredible view of the hollywood hills! pro tip: cocaine is totally on the paleo diet! because of, like, native americans, and shit. honestly, that last party, I think some of those kids were high-schoolers, but I have to consider whether my own experiences might have biased me against some totally cool, non-coercive relationships with people still wearing braces. anyway, it's california, it's like the rules don't apply, dude!
totally cool, non-coercive relationships with people still wearing braces
I think it's OK if everybody's wearing braces.
On the OP, it is an intensely annoying change for me, because I use Reader to skim lots of headlines, and the new layout has lots of white space and double-spacing, so it includes about half the number of headlines on a single screen.
re: 209
This, definitely. All the pointless white space, and the disappearing/reappearing scrollbars. I have a general aversion to UIs that change during use. Which is why the Microsoft Ribbon is sufficient cause for killing some people. I understand there's some conceptual model underlying this. I'd like to meet the person who came up with it and chib him/her. It fucks with my mouse-fu. Use an application for long enough, all the locations for doing stuff become like arm-macros. I don't want to have to look/think.
208: they really can get stuck together when you're making out, though, so maybe it's better if only one person has them. lots of narnian 20-something girls have them, which weirds me out somehow. I'm not sure why; probably they only just now got the money and are spending it on themselves, whereas is the states it's mandatory that you get braces as a teenager somehow. my brother and I went to the (nearly) free clinic that let GU dentistry students practice on us. kind of like at haircutting schools, but with potentially more disastrous results. my photography teacher gets extra skeevy points for falling in love with me before I got braces. it's bad enough when then chick has braces at all, but hasn't gotten them yet? weak.
whereas is the states it's mandatory that you get braces as a teenager somehow.
So I gather. Mrs y and family didn't get them, so she has irregular teeth (and zero fillings), but apparently she took a lot of shit for this in school. Americans are weird.
They get sold to parents as having some non-cosmetic dental purpose -- that is, you can look at a kid whose teeth aren't that strange looking, and a dentist may say that there's something that needs to be fixed for some obscure reason relating to the teeth in later life. I think this is mostly bullshit, but it's hard to say no to a dentist saying "Your kid has a medical need for this treatment."
I had braces for a reasonable cosmetic reason -- I had an extra tooth-fragment that formed on the center line and made one of my top front teeth grow horizontally forward rather than down, rather like a narwhal. That was past ordinary crooked teeth into something that looked very strange, and probably would have been fixed anyplace. But once I had a relationship with an orthodontist, he spent years moving all my teeth around in ways that appeared to be unrelated to the original problem and also kind of pointless.
213. Sounds like borderline malpractice. Not fixing your tusk, but the rest of it.
211: Having never had braces myself, what should I then conclude about those who find me attractive?
214: Yeah, but I think it's pretty standard -- if you talk to ten Americans who had braces, at least eight of them (numbers from myass.com) will report that the orthodontist was largely concerned with fixing some cosmetically invisible problem.
moving all my teeth around
Is that what the kids called it back then?
I have a friend in her mid-30s who has braces. It's very odd. She claims she had to get it done to fix her horrible teeth, but she had very nice teeth before. Just not perfect-smile-model straight. I think they may have been some minor underlying issue that needed fixed but she decided to get the uber-cosmetic stuff done at the same time. So she now has 2 years of private orthodontic work, which much be costing her thousands.
Having never had braces myself, what should I then conclude about those who find me attractive?
That you're hott and they've noticed? Come on, let's have a bit of glass half full here.
So she now has 2 years of private orthodontic work, which much be costing her thousands.
That must be actually quite worrying. Does she have self image issues otherwise?
216: This is my experience to an increasing degree as well. In most UMC American communities, braces are now almost a given regardless of the condition of the kid's teeth--there's always something that can be made better. It was definitively becoming pretty common back in my day, but not to the extent I saw with my kids and their cohort , nor do I recall adults with braces when I was growing up. In my case I had a fairly significant issue but they came off when that was "fixed" and mine are not nearly as straight as today's standards would dictate.
re: 219.last
Possibly, a little. She's very athletic and attractive looking* and I don't think she's unaware of that. But like a lot of very attractive looking people, she may also have unrealistic standards of perfection.
* not to me, particularly, which may just be because we are friends. But, if someone said she did some modelling, or worked in a very image conscious profession, you wouldn't be surprised. [As it happens she's an ex-academic working in an intellectually demanding job]
When I was 17, I was told I needed braces to correct my bite. My top and bottom teeth only connect in three places. I refused as there was no way I was going to do college with braces. So far, those teeth have worn down a great deal but it hasn't really caused any problems in terms of pain or eating. I mean, I can't bite through thin things, but I've always been able to find a work around.
I have a chip in one of my two front teeth I got when I was 14, sitting on the edge of a pickup off-roading in the swamp. I was right up by the front and when we went over a huge log my head snapped forward and I busted a good third of the the tooth out on the roof of the cab. pete cra/m promised my dad I wouldn't get hurt, too (I was begging to go but dad was skeptical). even though pete was all wasted on (IIRC) bourbon, quaaludes, coke, and hash. but I wasn't monitoring him closely or anything, so. it's been repaired many times, but still has a tendency to become damaged, slightly discolored or fall out occasionally.
I had a rather vain and pedantic lover when I was in grad school who said I shouldn't get it fixed because it was part of what was interesting about me that I was "so attractive without being classically beautiful." he was really a master of the backhanded compliment, with an equally annoying tendency to claim various things were "trivially true" when they were not, in fact, trivially true. but none of us is perfect, I suppose. he was super hot and a logician; chicks dig that kind of thing. OK, and the motorcycle.
But like a lot of very attractive looking people, she may also have unrealistic standards of perfection.
To be fair, there are plenty of unattractive, unrealistic people.
To be fair, there are plenty of unattractive, unrealistic people.
A few months ago at an airport bar I saw a woman who'd clearly had quite a bit of plastic surgery done on her face and who was also quite unattractive (over and above the plastic face thing). I'm used to seeing plastic surgery that attempts to make someone look younger and doesn't succeed, but that wasn't the problem: the woman was just ugly, and seemed to have probably been so before the surgery as well. It was very odd.
I'm sure this kind of thing happens all the time, since surely it can't be that only attractive people get plastic surgery. But being 1. in Boston and 2. mostly in academia, I do not see that much plastic surgery in my everyday life.
In academia, people appreciate how you can be attractive without being classically beautiful.
"so attractive without being classically beautiful."
How did you restrain yourself from replying that he was "so fuckable even with a tiny dick."?
In academia, people appreciate how you can be ugly and wear kinda whatever and it doesn't matter that much because you don't go outside or see other people terribly often.
228 to 226. but, honestly, it wouldn't have been an entirely unfair response. no, fine, he had an average penis. 6 inches at best.
229: sifu, you know you can go to school in california. they have world class institutions there and everything. plus, the outside.
Anyway, I once saw an older academic with very obvious hair plugs. I hope those are the kind of things that start out really obvious but after they take root it isn't so bad.
I did go to school in California. Staying in a lab working all the time (n.b. this does not describe my time there. Mostly I stayed outside drinking beer) doesn't appear to be any different if it's really nice out. Possibly it's worse.
Anyhow, the grad school I'm attending is pretty much the only one that would admit me.
Also, the lab I'm in now has a better view than any of the buildings at my Cali alma mater, oddly enough.
There were a shit-ton of extremely attractive people at the community college I attended in California. They seemed far more likely to get (to have gotten) plastic surgery than they did to shut themselves up in a library for decades.
california. they have world class institutions there and everything. plus, the outside.
And instructions for toothpicks.
white kids living comfortably in a temporary, leave-no-trace way? That came directly from Burning Man (and, before that, Rainbow Gathering)
Is this somehow something different from plain old leave-not-trace camping? Because, um, a lot more people do boy scouts and shit than burning man.
This seems like the right thread to ask: should I be using twitter? I've actually had an account for about 4 years, during which time I've manage to "tweet" two times, and I've probably logged in (but not "tweeted") a total of five more times. I don't understand what I'm missing, but clearly I'm missing something because I don't understand the attraction at all. But everyone else seems to love it.
237: a lot less rugged, yeah.
However, in the cold light of day I don't really feel like defending my assertion any more.
a lot more people do boy scouts
And do they call me Apo the bridge builder? No. But you do just one Boy Scout...
sitting on the edge of a pickup off-roading in the swamp
Sitting on moving pickups - stupidly fun, but also just stupid.
238: If there are people you want to follow on Twitter, if you just read for a while, you'll probably find yourself using it through peer pressure. If not, don't force yourself.
238 -- I'm a fan. Of more or less passive use of the thing. That is, it's not about whether you're sending stuff out, but rather who you are following. Try Blake Hounshell to start, and see if you don't learn something.
241 -- That's how I ended up with a 3 legged dog.
Toward the end of this thread I'm starting to think "Rainbow Gathering" means something other than "Gay Meetup".
But being 1. in Boston and 2. mostly in academia, I do not see that much plastic surgery in my everyday life.
But then every so often academia makes me go to Aspen and I can't avoid seeing lots of plastic surgery. It's... odd.
And some Brits, like Alex, Chris, Matt, D2.
225: Wouldn't the obvious explanation be that she'd started out ugly, had plastic surgery in an attempt to become less so, and it hadn't helped?
Is there a word for the sort of thing where only the failures are visible? Presumably plastic surgery does make people more attractive, or there wouldn't be a market for it, but I've only ever noticed obvious plastic surgery on people where it turned out badly (in terms of my esthetic judgment). But I'm thinking the concept would also include stuff like "Clinton prevented terrible terrorist attacks on New Years 2000." Maybe, but who knows -- you can only really judge that sort of thing by the failures.
Two or three smart local journalists from various media. You'll have a dozen or more to choose from, but it won't be hard to find someone both perceptive and articulate.
I've never set up a Twitter account, but occasionally I'll try to follow something ad hoc by following links from a blog, and I'm always mystified, and not really in a way that tempts me further in. I like my content longform.
I initially misread 247 as describing the named brits as people who've had plastic surgery.
248.1: It could certainly be that, though if so, it certainly didn't seem to have done any good. I wonder if there are successful cases where someone gets plastic surgery to rectify general homeliness. There is "fixing" or refining a particular feature (like straightening or thinning a nose), but I don't know enough about plastic surgery's possibilities to imagine how far it can go in creating an overall more attractive face.
250 -- I'd feel bad about evangelizing you into a new way to be inefficient with your time, but really (1) links; (2) headlines are often sufficient for lots of things (and you can go look for long form if you want); (3) a well turned phrase of snark always lightens the load.
251 -- We'd only know if it failed.
"General homeliness" cracks me up. I think the issue is that there's no such thing as "general homeliness"; there's a gestalt formed by all sorts of specifics about you, and plastic surgery can only change one specific thing at a time. So if there's a feature, or a group of features, such that surgery on them changes the effect of the whole gestalt, then you might get a serious change in attractiveness-level that didn't appear to be limited to the changed elements, but I think that'd be really hard to do.
251. Yeah, I look like Kim Whatshername since the weekend.
What Charley says about links. I use twitter very intermittently, but if there's something big going on it's a great resource to catch unexpected commentary. You can sit there with twitter open in one tab and al-jazz in another and be confident(?) that you're as well informed as CNN.
Huh; come to think, I don't click on shortened links unless I know exactly what it is and where it's going after a couple of goatses a few years ago, so I mostly ignore twitter links. I suppose I need to get over that if I'm going to use it.
Yeah, the 'gestalt' was what I was trying to get at with 'general homeliness'. Not just being plain, and not unattractive clearly due to a particular feature, just somehow generally unattractive.
(I think there are not actually very many people who fit that description.)
241: in my defense, I was only 14. OK, and pretty stoned, but whatever.
I broke my nose for the umpty-billionth time last year on the bottom of my pool and am idly thinking about having it fixed. the thing is, I did so once already, but fucked up on the healing process because I was a wastrel drug addict. but it hurt like a BITCH. now, it'll probably be different when I don't have such a high tolerance for opiates (though you don't totally lose it, unfortunately) but they do whack you right in the face with a hammer. but I had such a straight nose originally! why should I be denied the nose of my birthright by muggers and various times being a dumbass, and stuff?
256. On the other hand you can find yourself being reminded of shit like this, so there's a trade off.
257: no? surely many more people fit the description "generally homely" than have faces with only one or two correctable defects: "would look fine if only upper lip were larger."
boats/flamingoes/south beach/jai alai/greyhounds/drum machine tom-toms
Probably comes down to a sliding scale of what counts as homely. And of course personality is a huge part of it -- for a lot of people the difference between being ordinary looking and spectacular depends on who's wearing the face, and plastic surgery isn't going to do anything for that.
263 -- If only they'd smile more. Maybe someone should suggest it to them.
(That sounds all "Everyone is beautiful in their own way," which isn't really what I meant. More that a general impression of beauty or homeliness has a lot to do with facial expressions and body language. The physical features are a significant part of it, but not the whole thing.)
He pwned me! I stuck my finger in his mouth and he pwned me. (To be read in a cute, childish British accent.)
Okay, charley, now I'm following a few of your suggested people. Which I'll admit is a marked improvement over an empty page. I'll see. I'm definitely still a long way from sold.
if there's something big going on it's a great resource to catch unexpected commentary
It's things like this that I hear all the time and that make me interested, but I confess I still don't get it. Unless, say, you're following hundreds of people or something. The "trends" box is currently mostly asinine shit like "#WestfieldSexTape" and "DEMI DESERVES A GRAMMY", and that's what it's looked like every time I've logged in that I recall.
surely many more people fit the description "generally homely" than have faces with only one or two correctable defects
I was counting the "generally homely" category as distinct from just being plain: actively unattractive, as opposed to not being noticeably pretty.
It's funny how different connotations of words are from one person to another. I hear "homely" as sort of positive, meaning something like "really seriously not pretty, but nonetheless pleasant looking." People with strange craggy faces where it sort of works for them. "Plain" sounds more, rather than less negative, more like "Boy, I can't pin down quite what's wrong with them, but not a pleasant sight."
257. Meet Edward Gibbon, HC Andersen, and JP Sartre.
I think one thing worth considering is how to regard a typical person, whether they're interesting to look at and think about. Stuart Pearson Wright has done portraits of ordinary people to make this point with paint.
Is HC Anderson considered unattractive?
If the benefit is links, then why not tumblr, which skews young and flakey rather than 140 chars of "serious" or wanting attention? But a suggested starting point for using the thing is nice, the pointers are useful, thanks.
Okay, explain tumblr. I mean, there are a couple of tumblrs I read, but they're blogs. With more pictures, but you can put pictures on a blog. Why is tumblr a different thing rather than just a different brand of blogging software?
268.2 -- Agree completely on the trending crap. I mean (and guess chris means) stuff linked by people you've chosen to follow, because they say/link interesting things.
272. Yes, not helped by being a sensitive misfit with a well-developed sense of personal tragedy.
274. Honestly I don't know; maybe since the activation energy for populating a tumblr is lower than setting up a typepad page? Perhaps like the difference between adjacent neighborhoods.
But the technical limitation of a headline and the pseudo-syntax of twitter prefix characters hasn't impressed me when I've seen links into it, like a bar with an enforced upscale casual dress code.
Oh, urple, Roger Ebert too. Great within his expertise, perceptive outside of it.
I'm on twitter if people want to follow me, but it's largely i) moaning, ii) retweeting of others links. I'm [reversed for google proofing] f_tikialg
The difference between tumblr and regular blogs is basically culture.
I've been on Twitter for years and never gotten anything out of trended topics.
Presumably plastic surgery does make people more attractive, or there wouldn't be a market for it,
I'll half-heartedly recommend American Plastic by Laurie Essig, here. It doesn't directly answer that question, and it's kind of an odd book.
But reading it definitely changed my thinking about plastic surgery. Specifically it made me think differently about the ways in which class affects interest in plastic surgery.
Looks interesting. Does she talk at all about Brazil or China?
I don't log in to twitter anymore but I do catch up with individual people, either humorists or opinionated blog people.
If you've been disappointed to see that some blogger or other has stopped blogging more than once a month, it may turn out that he's actually tweeting about 450 times a day, unbeknownst to anyone who checks his blog or other website. This includes D. Davies, A. Kotsko, T. Burke.
Having taken LB's advice and actually asked the guy for an invitation, I am now well situated to state that dsquared is still blogging regularly.
Does she talk at all about Brazil or China?
No, just the US (which, I suppose, might be suggested by the title). She does talk about the various ways in which plastic surgery gets financed, which is interesting.
Presumably plastic surgery does make people more attractive
In her mid to late forties, my mom got a mild face lift. Eyelids too, maybe? It didn't take away her crow's feet or anything. It mostly made her look the same, but with a good night's sleep. But, for the next fifteen years, she looked like herself in her early forties. She looked fantastic next to her friends. Then, she sort of caught up to her friends and went grey, and now looks like her age peers.
From this, I developed my theory of face lifts. You only get one. Her friend who got a second looks like a death's head. If you get it at a good time, it can look fantastic for a decade or more. A mild face lift doesn't change your features or make you look odd. It just makes you look rested and smoother.
If you count this as "plastic surgery", then yes. It can totally work and look good, and you would never notice, except that that 58yr old looks much younger (but not twenty or thirty).
I think 286 gets it right. The best plastic surgery is the kind you don't notice.
But being 1. in Boston and 2. mostly in academia, I do not see that much plastic surgery in my everyday life.
Both Bostonians and academics are not exactly known for their looks, no.
Okay, having now wasted half of a day that really didn't need to be wasted goofing around on twitter, I still think I must not fundamentally not "get" it. What's the point, exactly? Is it basically a link-sharing service? That's how most people (that I'm following) seem to be using it. Just links, with very short/sometimes vague gestures towards the content the links contain. It's like an everyman's instapundit, I guess. Maybe that's valuable.
If you've been disappointed to see that some blogger or other has stopped blogging more than once a month, it may turn out that he's actually tweeting about 450 times a day, unbeknownst to anyone who checks his blog or other website.
Yes, and it's so disappointing! Tweeting is like bleating every few minutes; I mean, anyone can do that.
||
People who like stories about local government machinations might enjoy this one.
|>
287
The best plastic surgery is the kind you don't notice.
Same for many kinds of craftsmanship and management. And, according to Futurama, godhood.
290: That guy sounds like a real piece of work. What a bizarre thing.
288 -- It took me a while to get converted.
Yes, he does seem to have a very narrow viewpoint. Looks like he's on track to lose a whole bunch more money.
There are only twelve other landowners. You'd think he could have mowed enough lawns and given out enough cookies if he'd wanted to go about it nicely.
They should amend the bylaws to suspend the eligibility of any trustee more than six months in arrears.
Now that they have their own lawyer again, I bet they could do that.
I guess because I consider twitter a real-name environment for me, it hadn't occurred to me to follow people from here. Well, except for when someone I follow has mentioned them and then I've thought, "oh that person is on twitter? I should follow them."
In other non-news, I think I've become imprudent in my facebook use. Nothing salacious, just some complaints that I probably can keep to myself just fine (true of most complaints). I've got the privacy restricted, at least.
I wanted braces to fix my two buck teeth. And my jaw is small. I sort of wonder if braces might have opened things up enough to prevent my sleep hypopnea, because I hate the damn CPAP machine.
It is a bit harder to brush/clean one of the teeth.
I had a professor with braces in her 30's.
I still kind of want invisalign.
Both Bostonians and academics are not exactly known for their looks, no.
Don't go knocking my tribe, Halford.
getting braces because you actually need them seems a sensible thing to do. the invisalign ones are good...there is a kind on the inside of your teeth, too? plus they make retainers you wear only at night?
