Things that amuse me: sitting at an outdoor concert, wearing a My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult t-shirt and my Mercury hoodie…singing along to all the songs the Abba cover band is playing. 🎶🎵😆
Seattle judge blocks release of blueprints for ‘computer generated’ 3D printed guns: Good. Hopefully this temporary block becomes permanent.
The Maps That Show That City vs. Country Is Not Our Political Fault Line: “The key difference is among regional cultures tracing back to the nation’s colonization.” Interesting look at how historical regions may have affected recent (and, potentially, upcoming) elections.
Linkdump for July 16th through July 30th
Sometime between July 16th and July 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- Is there any anti-abortion talking point that isn’t based on a lie?: "As I’ve investigated both sides of the abortion debate, I’ve become honestly curious to discover if there is any anti-abortion argument that isn’t based on a lie (or lies). I’m going through the most popular current US anti-abortion talking points and giving each a Politifact-esque truth rating. Let’s investigate!"
- Meet Mike Cernovich: Right-Wing Provocateur Who Got James Gunn Fired: “Cernovich didn’t dredge up Gunn’s old tweets out of a genuine care for women, children, or LGBTQP+ people. He didn’t write this as a feminist or left-wing activist hoping for a more productive dialogue surrounding trauma that gives these issues the seriousness they deserve; Cernovich directly accused Gunn of being a pedophile for these tweets, and Disney submissively just bent to that and fired him.”
- What it’s like when Nazis infiltrate your conference: Interesting look at how nazis trolled and attacked the narrative of a hacker con. Worth considering and keeping these techniques and brainstorming ideas of how to combat them effectively when planning for conferences/conventions these days.
- The 9/11 Country Music theory: "MY HOT TAKE: with very few exceptions, including goodbye earl, before he cheats, and daddy Iessons (side note – all women!) 9/11 ruined country music." Sounds about right to me. Country's never been my primary genre, but what I do like is universally pre- (usually very pre-) 9/11.
- “People like to think that Hitler came straight into power with ‘Kill the Jews y/n?’ and all the Germans were like ‘yeah totes’ but it’s just not how it goes.”: "No, the defining moment of this timeline was that people didn't show up to vote the Nazi Party out in the one last chance they had. The one last chance they had before the power grab was up and the whole thing was too far off the rails."
Another move away from Facebook
Well, crud. Just got an email from WordPress with notification that Facebook has notified them that “starting August 1, 2018, third-party tools can no longer share posts automatically to Facebook Profiles.”
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been working (not always successfully, but it’s been the goal) on reducing how much content I post directly to Facebook’s walled garden. Instead, I’ve been using various services to automatically pipe text and link posts from Twitter and my blog and photo posts from Instagram (which, as it’s owned by Facebook, I’ve been scaling back on) and my blog to Facebook. That way, I own my content, but all of my Facebook contacts can still see it.
With this change, though, it looks like that’s not going to be an option as of Wednesday. My options will likely be:
- Post things to Facebook. Pro: Facebook contacts can see everything. Con: Posts don’t exist outside of Facebook.
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Manually cross-post anything I post outside of Facebook to Facebook, either by copy-and-pasting everything, or manually posting links to the outside source. Pro: Posts exist in both places. Con: Takes longer to post anything, royal pain in the butt.
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Post things to the non-Facebook sources as I have been, and they just don’t show up here. Pro: Easiest and means I have control over my content. Con: Facebook contacts won’t see it unless they actually follow me on Twitter and/or check my blog (either manually or through an RSS reader of some sort) (and unfortunately, for many or most people, learning how to follow people outside of Facebook just isn’t a priority; if it’s not on Facebook in some way, it doesn’t exist).
Right now, I’m thinking there’s a non-zero chance that my Facebook contacts may start seeing less from me on here because of this change. I’m sure I’ll still be reading through, liking, and commenting (for the near future, at least), because the reality is that, for good and for ill, this is where most of my connections to many of my friends near and far exist. Posts from me may be increasingly rare, though.
Some reminder links:
My blog is my primary online home.
The easiest way to follow my blog (and many other blogs and news sources) is through an RSS reader; for ease-of-use and low cost (it’s free to start and offers mobile apps), I recommend Feedly.
I’m on Twitter.
I’m also on micro.blog (a “microblogging” site that conceptually is somewhere between Twitter and traditional blogging, with the focus on short-form posts, but also with the ability to include long-form posts and optionally mirror them to WordPress blogs, which is how I have mine set up).
And with this, I’m once again putting out a call: Do you exist online outside of the Facebook walled garden? Give me your non-Facebook links (blog, Twitter, Tumblr, whatever) so I can keep up with you there!
“There is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’.”
This thread about the ridiculousness of humans in the Star Trek universe (“…to everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.”) always makes me laugh. 🖖
My niece, after seeing my new tattoo on my calf: “People with arm tattoos are bad!”
Me: “You mean, like this?” As I pull up my sleeve to show her my first tattoo.
Niece, eyes wide: “…unless they’re family. Then they’re okay.”
YATP (Yet Another Test Post): Facebook has apparently changed their API, so direct micro.blog > Facebook cross-posting isn’t working. This is to see if an IFTTT > Facebook applet still works (after the micro.blog > WordPress step).
Lost my keys today. The worst part isn’t even losing the keys—that was an annoyance, but took less than two hours to fix—but, silly as it sounds, losing the key ring. I’d had that same key ring for around 25 years, and it was dad’s for years before I got it. Sad to have lost it.
Book thirty of 2018: The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi. 🌟🌟🌟🌟
