Woke up this morning to find that my neighbor had already shoveled the iguanas off my driveway. That’s the neighborly way we roll here in Miami.
— Dave Barry (@rayadverb) January 30, 2022
The mister is outside assessing the damage from last night’s hard freeze. Our banana trees and elephant ears got whacked, he says, but they’ll be back. I hope everyone in the areas that really got blasted with the cold and snow is safe and warm.
Also, shout-out to whoever it was who recommended “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell in a recent thread here (can’t remember who or where). Wow, what a gorgeous book. Thank you!
Open thread.
debbie
I just started reading Yonder by Jabari Asim, an author who’s new to me, and I can tell I’m going to like him very much.
germy
germy
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Never thought I’d see a Jackass clip posted here.
Classic!
Yarrow
How hard was the freeze?
My favorite Florida iguana story:
geg6
Hamnet is a truly beautiful book. Loved it!
For those curious as to what we chose to watch last night while curling up against the cold, we found a CNN doc, Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago. Highly recommended! I am a huge Terry Kath fan and it was very good.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: It was in the 20s for several hours. The water in our birdbath froze!
germy
@mrmoshpotato:
The man who throws the golf club at them reminds me of the guy who moved in across the street from us. Always a polo shit and boatshoes. Inherited a dealership and wants everyone to know about it (“It’s in my DNA!”). Racist who stares at POC. etc.
germy
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: That’s wild.
cope
Here in sand pine uplands, the freeze was pretty minimal. I did cover my baby Fresno pepper plants but beyond that, our thirty plus years living in the Sunshine State have led us to the point where we don’t have any outside plants that need covering. “Freeze ‘em all and let the gods sort them out”.
MagdaInBlack
@germy: Cowards always kick down.
Baud
@germy:
Who taking the video though?
germy
germy
@Baud:
I thought they always worked in pairs.
eclare
@germy: ROFL!
zhena gogolia
@germy: Truth.
MattF
Timothy Snyder’s WaPo essay demolishing Putin’s rationale for aggression towards Ukraine. Worth reading on its own, and also good for deconstructing RW support for Putin.
Starfish
@Baud: It could go either way here. It could be an anti-masker thinking dude is standing up for justice or a coworker thinking “no one needs to be treated like this at their job.”
Baud
@germy:
I have no idea. So this bit of assholery was staged for the TikTok?
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Yes, most likely.
germy
I like this bird a lot:
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: OMG, that is COLD for Florida! Definitely a hard freeze. Hope all your plants are okay.
Yarrow
@germy: All I can think watching that is, “Don’t do that! Those white people on the golf course have guns! They’ll shoot you!” I don’t think I would have thought that when Jackass first came out.
germy
@Yarrow:
Yes, I don’t know if Allen Funt would make it nowadays. He’d try “Candid Camera” and a bunch of people would start shooting.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: I’m in the northern half of the state (too far north for iguanas), so freezes aren’t unheard of, but yeah, it was a long cold night! I’m just glad the mister hadn’t planted veggies yet. That has happened before, and we have to wrap them up, which is a giant pain in the ass. Sometimes he jumps the gun. ;-)
Skepticat
Only about 16 inches of snow on this part of the coast of southern Maine, but the wind-sculpted drifts are impressive. I was able to clear the small porch and steps and start a path to the car through waist-deep (well, I’m short) snow, but my cardiologist would have a heart attack if she could have seen me. Usually the only exercise I get is pushing 76. I was happy to see the plow man arrive–until he plowed a couple of feet of now-packed snow over the only space I’d already shoveled. He did manage to leave all the snow between my car and the street. However, it’s a beautiful, sunny day and all of 12 degrees. I’m going to take this job in small bites; there already have been ambulances needed at several houses on the street. I may be dumb, but I’m not totally stupid. You can only imagine how I miss my home in the Bahamas. However, if this snow is my worst problem, I’ll take it.
germy
Yet!
trollhattan
Just another sunny day in the middle of our evidently cancelled winter. Cancel culture run amok, I tells ya. Will it hit 65? Experts disagree.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: and whoever did that thought it was very clever and persuasive
trollhattan
@germy: They know where you live.
Kind of enjoy the whole gecko thing, in Hawaii. But reptiles don’t necessarily freak me out–exception carved out for those that rattle.
germy
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: But no snow? Poor Pete (and Badger) miss their chance to see snow.
Sure Lurkalot
Andrew Kaczynski’s brand new baby
For those not familiar with the story, their first daughter “Beans” died of brain cancer and they have shared her story to advocate for treatments and cures.
Totally not sobbing.
Betty Cracker
@germy: Had to retweet that one, hilarious! I lived near a golf course when I was a kid, and we would play obnoxious pranks occasionally too. Never had an airhorn though!
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: Nope, no snow. They’ll have to see it on a road trip.
Suzanne
I was going to go to yoga class, but it is snowing. So I will stay home and do Peloton at some point. Probably while dinner is in the oven. I am making Jamie Oliver’s chicken with tomatoes and basil. This is absolutely one of my favorite recipes, as it falls in the low-effort/high-payout corner of the graph.
Yarrow
@germy: That guy just looks so dumb, like his brain doesn’t work right. “Why won’t my hand go through this sheet of plastic? I’ll try again. Duurrrrrrrr….”
The plastic sheets can be good in some situations and stupid Covid theater in others and downright make things worse in certain situations, but there’s no way they are the fault of the clerk. We live in a society of the worse sort of teenagers.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: Oh, yeah. Gardening in such changing weather is a challenge. But if you don’t get the vegetables in early enough it gets too hot. Challenges!
MomSense
Finally started watching All Creatures Great and Small on PBS and it is a wonderful series.
mrmoshpotato
@Sure Lurkalot: That picture on the left. Who’s a grump? Yes, you are!
schrodingers_cat
OT: Today is the 74th death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Unfortunately, the ideology that led to his assassination is on the ascendant in India right now. His assassin is celebrated among the circles that Modi and his inner circle is drawn from. Though even Modi has to hypocritically invoke Gandhi when he is abroad.
V.D. Savarkar, one of the indicted co-conspirators of the assassination plot is the intellectual father of the hard right Hindutva that currently rules India. Here’s hoping that enough people wake up to the fact that this ultimately a road to ruin soon.
Here is a song from the 1950s movie, Jagriti (Awakening) that pays a tribute to Gandhi and describes his contribution to the freedom struggle.
De di hame azaadi bina khadga bina dhaal ( (He) gave us independence without a sword and shield)
Sabarmati ke sant toone kaar diya kamaal (St of Sabarmati you performed a miracle)
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Is this a new series or a recycled earlier one?
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat: I watched Attenborough’s movie last night. It’s always sobering, but especially so in the current climate.
japa21
@WaterGirl: New. This is the second year. Last week’s was unbelievably good.
ETA: I just wish they spoke proper English like we do in Chicago.
Another Scott
@Suzanne:
ICYMI, SNL Weekend Update last night. (first 0:15 of 2:14)
Cheers,
Scott.
BlueGuitarist
Bob Dylan:
”it was January the 30th
and everybody was feelin’ fine”
clothes line saga, the basement tapes.
schrodingers_cat
@prostratedragon: I am not a huge fan of the movie. Its a tad simplistic. And it uses white people as narrators so feels very orientalist to me. It deifies Gandhi at the expense of everyone else.
But flawed though it is, it is an important movie. I saw it when it was released in the theaters our school did that as a field trip
I have watched it at least two more times after that.
brendancalling
@Betty Cracker: You would not like Vermont at all. The HIGH today is 16F—the low is 4. Yesterday the wind chill was approaching -20 to -30.
Suzanne
@Another Scott: I like the Peloton.
Alison Rose
It may have been me because it’s my favorite book of all time and I will scream about how amazing it is any chance I get. So glad you loved it!
oldgold
Tweets from Maine’s State CDC Director:
1/Welp, I spent last night continuing my research into the #blizzard2022 #hoax.
Thankfully, @Twitter and Facebook have helpful algorithms that pointed me in the direction of *real* experts who helped me think through this.
2/I studied poignant, analytical memes from leading thinkers in finance, technology, and art sales.
To my surprise, their insights actually CONFIRMED all of my pre-conceived notions about this storm.
Thanks for the research help
@twitter!
3/All of this research has led me to conclude that the hype around #blizzard2022 is being driven by the weather-industrial complex.
In short, it is all #propaganda.
4/This morning, my neighbors said I needed to put salt on our shared sidewalk to keep THEM safe!
But putting salt down is inconvenient. Why should I be inconvenienced to help others in my community?
Can’t people who are vulnerable to slips and falls just stay inside
5/Get this: my town implemented a “parking ban” too. They say it’s to help them keep roads cleared.
But it really amounts to the government telling me, a taxpayer, what I can and can’t do with my own private property. Didn’t we fight a war against England to prevent this?
6/This is a blatant violation of the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment to the
@usconstitution.
It also violates the Declaration of Independence.
A lawyer I chatted with last night on Facebook says this could go all the way to
@SCOTUS.
7/And these so-called meteorologists have no clue what they’re talking about.
Earlier this week, the forecast was for 10-20 inches. Then it changed to 8-12 inches. And now they’re hyping it up as a “blizzard”!
I challenge @KeithCarson
to debate me publicly on this.
8/I also find it deeply suspicious that their “models” change all the time. I thought this was “science”, which does not change (see, e.g., gravity).
9/Who pressured them to change the models? My hunch: follow the $$$ and we’ll find out.
10/Now I am watching the @weatherchannel and they’re telling people to wear gloves if they go outside.
Do we know what the long-term side effects of gloves are? How do we know that gloves won’t cause skin infections? Or vitamin D deficiency?
We need randomized trials. #facts.
11/ And gloves DON’T WORK!
The “experts” say that good gloves help prevent frostbite. That’s nonsense.
I know a guy who got frostbite even though he was WEARING GLOVES. #CHECKMATE!
12/Plus, I did the research and frostbite only happens about 1% of the time.
And my buddy who got it was FINE after his ER visit and skin graft.
13/Honestly, this “wear gloves” thing is ridiculous.
What’s next? Telling me that I won’t get service in a store unless I’m also wearing a shirt or shoes?
We need to stop living in fear, #sheeple!
14/Here’s how I see it: I don’t need gloves.
Treatments for frostbite are SO GOOD now. I’ll be fine.
I am warm blooded and have a skin system that is perfectly capable of keeping me warm, thank you very much. #Factsnotfear
15/I went out for a drive this morning and the entire town is on lockdown!
This is a completely ridiculous overreaction to something that is seasonal, and will literally melt away. It will assuredly be gone by Easter. #bliz
WestTexan70
@Yarrow: It sounds like you get the show!
japa21
@oldgold: That is so good.
J R in WV
So glad to hear Cole is getting better on the late night thread he posted, great news.
Last night, while it was 12 degrees out here, warmer than usual lately as we’ve seen 3 and 4 degree lows, the furnace started blowing cold air when the thermostat called for heat. The fan was working, but the burner was not.
This I discovered at bedtime, around 10:30, after I had taken my bedtime meds. Yawn! I turned things off at the thermostat, and carried up a load of firewood, just in case. Also turned on the kitchen range, two taps and the oven. We have a gas detector for both methane and CO near the range, so not as dangerous as it might seem.
Fortunately, after I got firewood up from under the back porch, when I turned the thermostat/furnace back on, HURRAY !!! heat happened, and is still working ok. Dunno what happened, just glad. The wood stove is hundreds of pounds of heavy duty steel, but the gaskets are nearly 30 years old, and not tight any more, so wood burns pretty quickly. I would need to feed one large log at a time every so often, which is a royal pain from 11 pm (bedtime) til 9 am when I typically wake. Nothing I haven’t done many times before tho.
I will say, carrying loads of firewood around when you are arthritic and 71 is not a fun recreational thing any more! Oh, well. Dogs continue to retrieve deer pieces, yesterday was a pelvis with leg dangling… yum they all say, laying in the snow chewing. So cute, but farm woods dogs thru and thru.
Best wishes to everyone who got the blizzard, which we did not, just cold.
BlueGuitarist
@schrodingers_cat:
Thanks for this.
I’m sorry not to have seen this, or known, before posting a Dylan quote about the date.
UncleEbeneezer
If you love tennis, but slept through it, turn on ESPN2 now for the Australian Open men’s final replay which was truly EPIC!!!
oatler
@BlueGuitarist:
I’m a sweet bourbon daddy and tonite I am blue
Please Mrs Henry won’t you pump me a few?
@Alison Rose:
The Hamnet character appears in Gaiman’s “The Books of Magic”. also a Sandman comic (the one based on Midsummer Night’s Dream, can’t remember the title).
WaterGirl
@oldgold: I was wanting to put that up in a post today, but I didn’t want to post 15 tweets. :-)
Did you put that together manually or is that on-line somewhere in this form?
Suzanne
@J R in WV: We didn’t get the blizzard here in PGH, but we have some snow now. Are you getting it? I think it’s a perfect day to stay inside. Imma make a crockpot of soup later. I love soup.
MagdaInBlack
@J R in WV: I’m quite familiar with the retrieved deer parts. We had a leg that kept re-appearing, no matter how far it was tossed, thrown or buried. The Ghost Leg
Eta: same dog also once brought home a fully freezer wrapped beef pot roast.
debbie
@MattF:
He had a half-hour interview on The New Yorker Radio Hour.
Steeplejack
Clear and sunny in my part of NoVA, but brr! cold—27° now, mid-teens at night. But it’s supposed to get warmer this week, up into the high 40s.
I was thinking about going over to Sighthound Hall tonight, lured by the promise of gigantic BLTs, but apparently even bacon can’t dynamite me out of the bunker. And a little more Omicron isolation probably can’t hurt. Maybe I’ll turn over a new leaf with the Chinese New Year. I’m always a sucker for symbolic milestones.
trollhattan
@MagdaInBlack: Friends’ golden once brought home a neighbor’s purse. Guessing that was an awkward conversation when they returned it.
MagdaInBlack
@trollhattan: My husband said ” Good dog, find more.”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@germy:
Golfer throws golf club at them
Johnny Knoxville: “You lost your club.”
Will never stop being funny. My other favorite skit/stunt thing they did (might have been in the second Jackass movie) was when they did Pennyfarthing BMXing
Steeplejack
@Skepticat:
Condolences on the snowplow. Threadkill Lane is parallel parking, and whenever it snows (not often, thankfully) a pickup with a plow comes through and does a lane and a half down the middle (into the cul-de-sac and back out), which leaves a ridge of snow right next to the driver’s side of all the parked cars. Depending on how much it snowed, it can be formidable. Fortunately, I usually don’t have to go anywhere and can just wait it out. But there have been a few times when I’ve had to dig my car out. First World problems.
oldgold
@WaterGirl:
Despite being a professional procrastinator dedicated to my craft and inherently indolent, I confess, I put this together piece by piece.
Why? My skills are circa the Flintstones.
That expressed, why not just copy my comment? Yabba Dabba Doo!
trollhattan
@MagdaInBlack: :-)
“We kept the drugs, but your money’s all there.”
WaterGirl
@oldgold: I wanted to provide a link to the put-together thread. Why can I not think of the name for that? It’s thread-something. :-)
edit: I applaud you for pulling it together!
Spanky
@J R in WV: Last week our furnace started putting out cold air too. Or more precisely, the thermometer kept dropping even when we would bump up the thermostat. That’s when I decided to check the filter, and yep! Clogged.
So if you think your furnace isn’t keeping up, you really want to check the filter first before calling the heating guys, who have about a hundred folks in line ahead of you, many of which will be fixed by one expensive filter change.
schrodingers_cat
@BlueGuitarist: No worries and you are welcome!
trollhattan
@Spanky:
Heh, our filter frame is a crappy design and the filter will pop out if I don’t stuff something in to take up the extra space. And if it clogs it auto-uninstalls itself.
But in our case, our furnace was still broken the last time I discovered the wayward filter, and we had no heat for ten (or as it twelve?) days, starting December 30. Used the last of the firewood on the day the needed blower got installed. Spectacular electricity bill running those space heaters we rushed out and bought.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Curious timing! Not twenty minutes ago I ordered the DVD of Philip Glass’ opera Satyagraha, without realising the anniversary.
Steeplejack
@prostratedragon:
According to my voluminous files, this is your birthday, isn’t it?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
We are living in the worst timeline:
John Lennon’s son takes the Beatles into the metaverse with NFT
I’ve lost a lot of respect for him, using his father’s legacy to make money with a scam
Jerzy Russian
@WaterGirl: Thread Reader (or something like that)?
Regarding twitter: Suppose I am a twitter user (which I am not). I get the urge to tweet out stupid shit. Do people who “follow” me see that stupid shit right away? Also, suppose I “follow” 200 people. Do I see stupid shit instantly from them whenever they tweet? If so, based on what I have seen in tweets embedded here and elsewhere where the users either have hundreds or thousands of followers and in some cases follow hundreds or thousands of others, Twitter must be full of stupid shit going back and forth. I don’t see how anything gets done, given the time it takes to tweet stupid shit, and to read all of the stupid shit that is coming in to the feeds of the users.
MomSense
@oldgold:
Thank you for posting that!!
zhena gogolia
@Jerzy Russian: These are my feelings. And I’m pissed that they’re getting ever more restrictive in allowing nonmembers to read tweets. I always thought that it was great that you didn’t have to be a member in order to be a passive consumer of whatever useful info was on offer.
MomSense
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Given what his father put him and his mom through, I think he’s got a right to monetize whatever he can.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
“Start by finding the last tweet in the thread that you want to unroll and reply to it. Here, tag ‘@threadreaderapp’ and type ‘unroll.’”
Personally, I find it easier to just link to the first tweet in a thread, and then you can read them in order.
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer: Thanks! I DVR’d it but only set it for an hour of extra time.
different-church-lady
@Jerzy Russian:
You’re completely missing the point of Twitter.
JPL
@Sure Lurkalot: Talia could not ask for better parents. I have to admit that when I saw the news, I shed a few tears of joy.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@germy: Howard Stern interviewed Johnny Knoxville this week. It was about 2 hours. Good stuff. I have loved Jackass since it 1st aired in MTV. I watched a bit yesterday as it was airing all day. It makes me laugh always.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MomSense:
I don’t have a problem with him making money, just not using a scammy technology that’s bad for the environment is all
Steeplejack
@Jerzy Russian:
That’s why I pretty much don’t have a Twitter account and just dip in (semi-)judiciously with my browser. I have a few favorite nyms that I check regularly, and I branch out from there or from Twitter’s “More Tweets” aggregation.
ETA: Depending on your platform and browser, Twitter might try to coerce you to get an account, but there are ways to skirt that.
NotMax
Hands, those who did not see this coming. Anyone? Bueller?
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
It’s pretty easy to work around their restrictions, but I don’t think you’ve shown an interest in that before.
PaulWartenberg
Noooooooo Howard Hesseman, Dr. Johnny Fever, passed away this weekend.
Someone get me Tim Reid’s phone number. I gotta thank him for teaching me the atom on WKRP before it’s too late.
PaulWartenberg
@NotMax:
I hope to fcking GOD trump is found guilty and in a jail cell before 2024 rolls around.
Jerzy Russian
@zhena gogolia: Putting aside the restrictions, and acknowledging that not all tweets contain stupid shit, I just wonder about all of the time involved. To pick a random example of someone whose tweet was featured in the COVID thread, Eric Topal has 616.2K followers, and himself follows 535 others. He seems to tweet on the order of 10 times a day. Assuming the people he follows are equally thoughtful as he is, that is still on the order of 5000 tweets coming his way each day. Does he read them all?
Steeplejack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Julian was famously disinherited by his father in favor of Yoko’s son, Sean. He’s got a legitimate beef, IMHO.
WaterGirl
@Jerzy Russian: Yes, thread reader!
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia: It’s easy to join Twitter without revealing any personally identifiable information.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
So, I guess this answers the question of whether Trump is going to run again in 202
ETA:
Then again, there’s a lot of “ifs” in his speech: “If I run….”
NotMax
F is for flop.
;)
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: True, but then people have to click to see the whole thing. And I’ll bet a ton of people don’t click. Especially now with twitter flipping everyone off if they don’t have an account.
Ruviana
@MattF: I came here to see if anyone posted that. Timothy Snyder is wonderful!
different-church-lady
Welp, this storm dumped a lot of powder, which is relatively easy to deal with — I’ve worked much harder shoveling far fewer inches, and I was able to clear most of it in half an hour yesterday.
As far as I can tell it remains that way today because the temps are staying well below freezing, so dealing with the rest is going to be just as easy.
I say “as far as I can tell” because I haven’t gotten out of bed yet.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Oh, plus I see that I would have to have a twitter account and be logged in to be able to do that.
Gin & Tonic
@Jerzy Russian: You can be a Twitter member without tweeting stupid shit.
NotMax
Media note. Check out an unusual 35 minutes on Netflix, Camp Confidential. Trailer.
Steeplejack
@Jerzy Russian:
I’m not a Twitter “user,” but I think there are multiple ways to manage the message flow on your account.
Gin & Tonic
@Jerzy Russian: No.
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: i Just finished listening to that word salad mess of a rally. He has really lost it. It was several hours of drunk at the end of the bar rambling
Eta: He isn’t capable of running for Prez again. Won’t happen.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Steeplejack:
I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t surprise me. Still, he didn’t have to go the NFT route, which is what I have a problem with
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
Oh, I see, you’re talking about posting it here.
raven
@PaulWartenberg: Ever see “Gridlocked” with him, Tupac and Tim Roth? Really good movie about junkies trying to get help and being “Gridlocked” by the system. Hessman plays a blind Vietnam Vet.
different-church-lady
@NotMax: That’s a very forward-looking design. For, say, 1962.
debbie
@Jerzy Russian:
Oh, you have no idea.
raven
How Gridlock’d exposed America’s broken healthcare system
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: Assumes facts not in evidence.
debbie
@NotMax:
I heard that and thought that by 2024, most would have already served out their sentences.
different-church-lady
I don’t wanna click on WaPo: who else has joined Neil and Joni in the Spotify walkout?
debbie
@Jerzy Russian:
I’ve noticed that some do for a couple of comments, but then no more. I’d bet most don’t, though. I don’t comment, only read. Now and then, it does turn into a time suck, but some posters really are worth reading.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different-church-lady: Nils Lofgren. And I think I saw on twitter yesterday, Barry Manilow.
and Harry and Megan are rethinking the podcast they haven’t produced yet.
debbie
Answered.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack:
I used to follow Aaron Rupar’s Twitter feed regularly, but just in the past few days it has started to cut me off abruptly after I see the first three or four tweets. A shame, I like him a lot but I will not join Twitter for the sole pleasure of reading him.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’ve noticed that happening to me too. It’s very annoying when you’re just trying to read the comments
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Never read the comments.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: What is your primary objection to opening a Twitter account, if you don’t mind sharing?
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
66 here now. The temp and the famous road the same…..
MagdaInBlack
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t know what you’re using, but after I set my chromebook to not allow twitter to set cookies, I can read all twitter comments.
Steeplejack
@different-church-lady:
Nils Lofgren, that I know of. (Guitarist for Crazy Horse and Neil Young collaborator.)
Starfish
@Jerzy Russian: No one reads them all. Twitter algorithmically hides things from you. If you interact with certain people, you will see more of them. If you do not interact with people, you will see less of them. It is like Facebook in that algorithms will make people disappear, and you generally will not notice. Facebook was weird though in that it would amplify conflict. Twitter doesn’t, generally, do that.
Being a completionist on any of these platforms is futile unless you keep the number of people you follow down to something really low.
Any of the platforms screwing up time ordering and manipulating your timeline in any way will not let you live your life as a person who completes reading things.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
It might vary a bit according to your platform and browser, but what works for me is, in my browser but not on a Twitter page, to go into the settings and delete any Twitter cookies. Then I can go back to Twitter pages and navigate without problems.
ETA: Someone else suggested opening Twitter in “private” mode, which might accomplish the same thing.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Talk about buying votes……
Geminid
@Jerzy Russian: If you are selective, you can find a lot of smart stuff on Twitter. @Magi_jay would be a good example. I’ve also run into a lot of very articuate, committed Democrats through @eclecticbrotha (Ragnarok Lobster). These folks don’t tweet stupid shit, they refute it.
I also find a lot of good smart stuff through @Betty Cracker and @Cheryl Rofer. So I guess I’m saying that Twitter is what you make of it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Advice to live by
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: I don’t find it that easy. I do the incognito thing when I’m desperate but it’s a pain
trollhattan
@PaulWartenberg:
:-( Loved Johnny Fever. r.i.p. Mr. Hesseman, and thanks.
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
Our heavy skiff of snow is mostly gone now, high this afternoon supposed to be 43, won’t be that warm here in our little hollow. I’m just very glad the furnace decided to fire up after I shut it off for a few minutes. Computers are all the same… “Did you turn it off and restart it?” is always the first thing to try.
We have used the wood stove to keep warm in deep freeze times, but I was much younger then. I contemplate chicken and dumplings, or else a meatloaf with the pound of ground lamb I have.
J R in WV
@MagdaInBlack:
” I’m quite familiar with the retrieved deer parts. ”
We call them Bambi Bits. The most disgusting was one morning we woke up to an eyeless head of doe on the back porch — yuck!
Jerzy Russian
@Geminid: Yes, there is a lot of good information on Twitter, which is probably a tiny fraction of all tweets. I wonder overall if the upsides of Twitter (for example it is a good way to put out timely announcements, like “the next round of JWST data is now available on the archive”) outweigh the downsides (decreasing attention spans, distractions from important issues, etc.). Yahweh knows I don’t need another time sink (in addition to the one I presently have here).
Starfish
@Jerzy Russian: If you don’t need another time sink, then you are probably right to avoid Twitter. Yes, it does decrease attention span. There are ways to reduce those aspects.
For example, turning it, so you do not get notifications from people you don’t know, helps. Muting particularly stupid people helps. BlockParty App helps you avoid extended fights with stupid people.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
I understand.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jerzy Russian: Twitter is worth it for the ongoing beef between Richard III and Henry VIII.
Geminid
@Jerzy Russian: Yes, it’s easy to waste time on the internet, and I would probably get more done if I just turned off my device 23 hours a day. But it’s a slow time of the year for me and I’ve kind of given in for now.
The short format of Twitter has it’s advantages. Considering how visual material is so predominate in people’s media intake, Twitter may not be lowering attention spans so much as hitting them where they are already. It does make for concise argument, at least for those who know how. I think that if I were a political communications professional I would spend some time with the better amateur polemiscists on Twitter, particularly the commited Democrats, and take notes. Political advertising has to work on as an short attention as span as allowed for on Twitter, maybe even shorter.
But I get my best information reading reporting from national, state and local reporting. I usually look it up on my own, but often I find it referenced on Twitter accounts. @Cheryl Rofer is good that way, and @Betty Cracker is good for Florida politics.
schrodingers_cat
@Jerzy Russian: Twitter is indispensable for me when it comes to keeping track of what’s going on in India. I follow several people who tweet in Marathi and Hindi.
Block and mute and pick and choose who you want to follow.
HeartlandLiberal
Here in South Central Indiana, we have finally had temps for the past two weeks that sometimes got below 15 F, at which point we close the cat door. With cats inside, of course.
Two nights ago, at our house the temp got down to 1 degree F, but weather service says it got to -1 F at the airport. But we have had no real snowfall to speak of, just a couple of episodes of snow showers that did not stick, and may three times with half an inch accumulation. Indiana has been in a “snow hole,” with all the major snow falls bypassing us to the north or south. Take that, Kentucky.
satby
@Geminid: I love Twitter. Fun, smart stuff to find all over it.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@MomSense: Isn’t the casting of the woman who plays Helen wonderful?
MagdaInBlack
@J R in WV: Oh, you definitely win the Creepiest Bambi Parts award.
MomSense
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
So good. The whole cast is perfect, including Ticky Woo.
Geminid
@satby: @Susan Vermazen! @(((Buffalo Meg)))!! Women seem to lead the flock.
J R in WV
@MagdaInBlack:
It was horrific, a bright sunny morning, there it was — not staring at us!
MagdaInBlack
@J R in WV: ??
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat: I could see what you mean while I was watching —in fact you can’t miss it— but in the end the subject, by which I mean more than the person, still comes through.
At the end, Mankiewitz recounted something of the difficulties Attenborough had to overcome to get backing. Whatever his own concept might originally have been, I doubt that it would have been easier for him to have pitched a more centered perspective, let’s say.