"Planning to make a joke on Twitter about bombing something? You might want to reconsider: According to a
report from Britain, two tourists were detained and denied entry into the U.S. recently after they joked about destroying America and digging up Marilyn Monroe. That the Homeland Security Dept. and other authorities—including the FBI—are monitoring such social media as Twitter and Facebook isn’t surprising. That these authorities are willing to detain people based on what is clearly a
harmless joke, however, raises questions about what the impact of all that monitoring will be."
* [more inside]
posted by ericb
on Jan 30, 2012 -
98 comments
"You know how annoying it is when you're sitting on the train with a magazine and the person sitting beside you starts reading over your shoulder? Welcome to every single moment of your future. Might as well get used to it. It's an experience we'll all be sharing." --
Charlie Brooker on sharing, and why the world is doomed
posted by bardic
on Jan 29, 2012 -
101 comments
Arduino + servos + laser + phosphorescent surface + Twitter =
Fade Away 1. A thoughtful art project about the "permanence" of the Internet.
posted by pashdown
on Dec 24, 2011 -
7 comments
I live online as much as I live offline. Often, I move around in the world staring into a device as I walk, sharing bits of one realm with the other. The morning I went in for my first mammogram, I felt nervous. I would tweet this new thing, like I do with lots of new things, and make the unknown and new feel less so. Maybe by doing so, I thought while I was driving, other women like me who'd never done this would also feel like it was less weird, less scary, more normal and worth doing without hesitation. I'd crack some 140-character jokes. I'd make fun of myself and others. I would Instagram my mammogram.
posted by cgc373
on Dec 10, 2011 -
18 comments
Twitter
has launched an entirely overhauled version of Twitter, today, including a new version of its website, its apps, and TweetDeck (now native on Mac, rather than using Adobe AIR!). You currently need to download the latest version of the Android or iPhone app to see the new version of the website. Dan Frommer offers some good
first impressions.
posted by gilrain
on Dec 9, 2011 -
68 comments
Women journalists confront harassment, sexism when using social media You come to expect it, as a woman writer, particularly if you’re political. You come to expect the vitriol, the insults, the death threats. After a while, the emails and tweets and comments containing graphic fantasies of how and where and with what kitchen implements certain pseudonymous people would like to rape you cease to be shocking, and become merely a daily or weekly annoyance, something to phone your girlfriends about, seeking safety in hollow laughter.
posted by modernnomad
on Nov 22, 2011 -
39 comments
Maria Popova may be the best curator of Awesome on the Internet after the blue's own hivemind. Her site,
Brain Pickings, has been
mentioned a
few times, but no-one appears to have pointed out her
Twitter feed or her contributions to TBWA's tumblr,
Curiosity Counts. Some recent posts of note: a piece on
digital parasitism and the business of culture, Terry Prachett's self-documentary
Choosing To Die, her selection of
the best children's and picture books of 2011. Also, the best of Brain Pickings from
last week and
2010. When not doing all that, she's writing for several magazines,
organising the effort to
restock the Brookyn OWS library after its destruction by police, and
curating physical objects, sent as gifts every quarter.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Nov 21, 2011 -
20 comments
The Best of #OccupySesameStreet. Since its launched two weeks ago, the #OccupyWallStreet movement has gone national, spawning copy-cat demonstrations in far-flung locales like Tulsa and Boise. Its members have serious concerns--about income inequality, the influence of large corporations in our political system, and their own financial futures. The #OccupySesameStreet movement? Not so much.
posted by sweetkid
on Oct 4, 2011 -
30 comments
Mr. Destructo (
previously) discusses the
inscrutable twitter bot named
horse_ebooks, a Russian spam account that communicates entirely through snippets of ebooks and is more hilarious (
1,
2,
3,
4), confusing (
1,
2,
3,
4) and philosophically poetic (
1,
2,
3,
4) than any non-spambot on the internet.
posted by cobra_high_tigers
on Sep 23, 2011 -
34 comments
Meet Karl Welzien. He lives in Grand Blanc, Michigan. He is recently divorced from Ann, and lives with his buddy Dave. He loves drinking cold ones, driving his Sebring, maxing out some karaoke, and knocking back some Chili's hot wings because they have big bold flavor. He's a big fan of Guy Fieri, and loves the occasional "toilet nap" during his workday. Karl is a fictional character that exists only on Twitter,
@DadBoner.
[more inside]
posted by jbickers
on Aug 16, 2011 -
44 comments
The Elusive Big Idea "It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock — to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief."
posted by bitmage
on Aug 16, 2011 -
92 comments
Fifty years after British colonialism, ten years after military rule, Nigerians are free. Not economically free, not yet, and we see the effect of that lack of economic freedom in the kinds of crimes that are committed. But they are free in important ways. You can live where you want, associate with whom you want. You can sue people in court, gather to practice your religion, under the leadership of whichever holy man or charlatan you prefer, and you can marry and divorce as you please. This is a major thing. This is modernity, and to tell these stories, to give the protagonists of these losses even that little bit of attention, is to honor the fact that they are there, that their life goes on.
On his
twitter feed, novelist Teju Cole has been taking the French literary tradition of
faits divers and adapting it to
"bring news of a Nigerian modernity."
posted by villanelles at dawn
on Aug 12, 2011 -
11 comments
William Lawrence Cassidy has been
indicted for a series of threatening tweets directed towards Alyce Zeoli, aka Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, the leader of a Buddhist organization known as Kunzang Palyul Choling (KPC) to which Cassidy had belonged. There is however a small problem that federal prosecutors are employing a
vague anti-stalking law that makes 'intentional infliction of emotional distress' through the use of 'any interactive computer service' a felony, rather than focussing more narrowly upon the outright threats.
[more inside]
posted by jeffburdges
on Aug 1, 2011 -
34 comments
