I don’t normally do stuff like this, but I reckon it would be a Good Thing™ to stop by BurningBird’s place and give her a little of that downhome weblog-lovin’. If we really are a community (and the recent outpouring of goodwill for Marek and Rageboy in their various hours of need would indicate to me that we are), then when someone is feeling like sh-t, I think it’s the right thing to do to go tell ’em some dirty jokes or something.
Scoot!
It boggles my mind the things the American people are allowing Shrubya and his cohort of ratbastards to do to their once-great nation. It’s sad, and somehow seems inevitable. Decades ago, when I gleefully predicted the implosion of America as a result of the rot at its very core, I never actually thought my predictions would come true!
Steve invites you to strap on the armband, don the brown shirt, and join in the Happy Fun Fascism Parade. Can I dob myself in for my UnAmerican activities? Will they have McDonalds at the labour camps?
[Background here, and here (thanks, Bb) if you’re lost. The Sydney Morning Herald notes, mildly : “Historically, informant systems have been the tools of non-democratic states.” Now that’s comedy gold.]
Edit : Eeksy-Peeksy spoke recently, in his elegant way, about something tangentially related in Poland, which I was going to mention. Now seems like a good opportunity.
There’s an article up on kuro5hin at the moment entitled ‘To Work in Korea, Part I’, and it’s actually pretty good, other than the stunningly bad advice that one go through a recruiter.
The author promises another on Korean culture soon, to which I look forward. Worth having a look if any of you, my faithful and devastatingly good-looking readers, despite my Korea-related screeds and rants here, are at all interested in coming over to the Land of The Morning Traffic to pick off some of the low-hanging dollars.
See – I’m not necessarily a bad person or incompetent! This is an enormous relief to me.
A big buncha UBlog wannabes, these folks. Who the hell’s ever heard of Oxford?
With the help of the mighty Burning Bird, the old ‘bottle is porting over to a MySQL database backend. Some oddness may occur. Please stand by.
Edit : I am aware that the recent conversations sidebar thingo is busted at the moment.
There are almost certainly more refugees from Metafilter than there are people who actively participate, these days. The registered user count is up over 14000 at the moment, but if I recall correctly, Matt recently said that the server logs indicate there are only (only) a couple or three thousand registered users that hit the site on a regular basis. All indications, based on the numbers, at least, are that Metafilter continues to be a robust and roaring success. Matt has recently purchased some new hardware, and there are days and threads when I would defy you to find anything smarter or more amusing anywhere on the iNtARwEb.
But everywhere I turn, there is a constant keening lament about how bad the site has gotten, as compared to its long-past Glory Days. It is typical of these things, I suppose, but amuses me anyway that some disgruntloids insist that the golden age ended only recently (with a raft of calm, reasonable, and highly respected old guard users quietly calling it quits) while others point to the beginning of this year (when there were some high-profile, I’m-taking-my-ball-and-going-home departures). Still others glare and hurl imprecations (though mercifully stop short of screeching and flinging their poo) at the huge upsurge in registered users following September 11th last year, and yet other others pinpoint the date that everything went to sh-t as November 16, 2000, a day of infamy that was marked by the first appearance of a certain wonderchicken on the #006699 scene.
Michael Sippey, for instance, lamented in Swiftian style
almost a year ago!
A while back, I spent some time (way too much time, compulsively hitting the refresh button, wirehead monkey at the joyjuice hotbutton) hanging around with some folks who splintered off a long time ago from the grandpappy of Metafilter cult threads, 1142 (folks I miss, but in order to actually accomplish anything with my time must continue to hug from a distance – *waves*), and amongst all the other things that were talked about, they spent a lot of their time bemoaning how bad Metafilter had gotten. These were, are, some of the smartest, most creative people I’ve ever spent time with, virtually or otherwise. The few months that I spent a lot of time there were almost a year ago.
Since then, some of them have stopped appearing at all on Metafilter, although the occasional Special Guest Appearance leads me to believe that they are still watching, still disapproving, still shaking their heads in dismay at the decline of the Mothership.
Another gang of Meta-refugees with whom I hang out, the wacky kids at 9622.net, another MeFi splinter site that was birthed from a cult thread (9622 this time, duh), although much more concerned with having fun and being silly, also note occasionally, between flinging poo and screeching, that Bad Things are happening these days.
Recently, jpoulos (one of the admins of 9622.net) has been talking about his disenchantment in more direct terms in the comments attached to this post : Why Metafilter Sucks Ass. I find myself agreeing with him, with some reservations.
jpoulos doesn’t participate at Metafilter anymore, and is missed.
Many many words have been spoken and typed about the Metafilter and how it has changed over the past year or two. Hell, I’m adding to the wordcount now, and I can’t seem to stop myself. Nick Sweeney said a few months ago :
Nick doesn’t participate at Metafilter anymore, and is missed.
For my part, I’ve written defenses both impassioned and tongue-in-cheek of the place in the past. I’ve said
and other things, more embarrassingly and openly in love with the place.
I personally think the exodus started when Jason Kottke posted this Metatalk thread not long after the massive influx of users after September 11th, which seemed to be a continuation of a real-world conversation that he and Matt had been having. Matt commented in the thread that he was tired of it all, and thinking about folding the tent. Much consternation ensued, and I honestly think that some people who might have stuck around and dug in their heels to try and make the place better and lead by example threw in the towel at this point.
There were other things – the rise in chattiness, the rise in incivility, the decline in collective intelligence, the increase in jokiness and pointless IRC-esque chatter (in which I admit my occasional participation) – most of which were probably as a result of the massive influx of new users.
Whatever the reason, even though there are many voices still participating that I enjoy hearing, lots of people with whom I enjoy interacting, I’ve got to agree for the first time in public that the Mothership is not what it once was.
What to do? This is the $64,000 Question, of course. I still enjoy the place a lot, and will continue to participate until Matt bans me permanently for conduct unbecoming a wonderchicken, but I am starting to understand a little better the complaints that I’ve ignored or argued against for so long. To some extent I wish that I’d paid them more heed a year ago.
(Should I mention my theory about the disenfranchisement of the A-List now? No, perhaps not. Not until my secret plans for World Domination have been hatched, my pretties. Not until then.)
It has been said, and truly, ‘it’s only a website’. Can you love a website? Is it internet-era pathological behavior to say ‘I love that website’?
I dunno.
But some days it feels as if my love is turning into common street trash before my eyes, and no matter how well-documented my weaknesses for common street trash, that’s just not the girl I fell in love with.
This late evening, reading AKMA, who was messing around with a lovely, famous phrase from the good Doctor W, made me want to make this. Just for fun. I like playing around with stuff.
Edit : While I’m at it, I also took some words from one of his recent posts and made this for Rageboy today, for Gary’s collage, because though I’ve never met the man, I love him, and it would seem that he’s very unhappy, and I have no idea what else I could possibly do.
This what a million US dollars (which is about 3 billion CA$) looks like :
As Kent recently intuited, I’ve been rereading Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher and Bach recently, in part in hopes that a rereading will illuminate corners that I missed the last time through, and in part because good books in English are very difficult to find here, and prohibitively expensive when I do find them. There are no libraries of which I am aware within a two hour radius of my home, and even if there were, they would not have any books in English. This situation is particularly unhappy because I am and always have been a voracious reader, getting through an average of two or more books a week. Needless to say the tomes that comprise the meager collection I brought with me when we moved here from Sydney are well-thumbed and dog-eared by now.
Bitch, moan.
Anyway, this anecdote from GEB struck me, and I thought I’d share it with you.
Johann Bolyai and Nikolay Lobachevskiy independantly and to all appearances simultaneously discovered non-Euclidean geometry in 1823. Euclidean geometry, of course, is based on five postulates, four elegant and one perhaps a little less so, and had stood proudly for about two thousand years.
The first four postulates :
(1) A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points.
(2) Any straight line segment can be extended indefinitely in a straight line.
(3) Given any straight line segment, a circle can be drawn having the segment as radius and one end point as center.
(4) All right angles are congruent.
and the fifth, which lacks a little of the concision and elegance of the first four
(5) If two lines are drawn which intersect a third in such a way that the sum of the inner angles on one side is less than two right angles, then the two lines must inevitably intersect each other on that side if extended far enough.
Over the intervening centuries, dozens of attempts had been made to prove that the fifth postulate was in fact part of ‘four-postulate geometry’, all unsuccessful.
One of the people who had attempted to do so was Bolyai’s father, Wolfgang, who was also a mathematician and a friend of Gauss (who is part of Graham’s mathematical family tree, synchronicitously enough). The elder Bolyai wrote to his son, in an attempt to steer him from the black sinkhole of depair that was Euclid and the Mathematical Life :
This passage astonishes me. Even allowing for floweriness of language, that a man could so deeply feel his life ruined and wasted as a result chasing a mathematical proof somehow sets me back in my seat, a-wondering about how we have changed, or if indeed we have. It may not have a similar effect on you, and if not, I beg your indulgence.
I’m not sure if it’s fiction or memoir, but this piece from Catfish on the Table, a blog I recently found though my recent referrers gizmos down in the righthand sidebar, is well worth your time. Puts me in mind of the memoirs of Frank McCourt, and as well written, ’tis.
Also : “Have you ever tried to get into a girl’s pants when her main intellectual influence is Steinbeck?” Mad, hilarious, brilliant sh-t from Alex.
Some things I’m angry about :
Joey (aka the Mighty Accordian Guy) has some pics of the fallout (literally) from the garbage strike in Toronto.
I empathize, cap’n. This is the way my neighbourhood looks all the time. Lovely Bugok, vacationland of the rich and famous. Damn right I’m angry.
Here’s some amusing crap old and new to divert your attention from the fact that WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!
No, really.
Scrollbar racing.
A brief history of the codpiece. (I tried to start a fashion trend (being the trendmonger I am and always have been *snort*) when I was in university to Bring Back the Codpiece. It failed.)
WebCollage: Exterminate All Rational Thought
The power and the beauty of Crazy Drunk Guy. Have you accepted Crazy Drunk Guy as your Personal Saviour?
Hope you enjoyed that. I sure as heck did.
When you get sick in Korea, with anything, the doctor writes you a prescription. Not that that’s unlike the west, of course. The drug companies worldwide make sure that the medicowhores push chemicals on their patients relentlessly. But in Korea, this is actually a new feature of the medical landscape – until recently you were able to just walk into a pharmacy and say “I’ve got this pain right here,” and the pharmacist would load you up with armloads of drugs.
The law was changed a few years ago, and the pharmacists kicked up a big stink. To no avail, happily.
But no matter the illness with which you have been diagnosed, you always get the same number of pills. Five. Regardless of whether you have cancer or a common cold, ulcers or an ear infection, you come away from the pharmacist with a string of little sealed wax paper packets, in each of which is 5 pills, of various colours and sizes. Without fail. I’ve never actually checked to see if these variety packs of pills change depending on the illness with which you are currently stricken, but I am curious as to what they might be.
My good buddy the mighty Bearman (why not go say hi – he’s one of the friendly ones!) has sent me a screenshot illustrating the sort of problem that yhbc was talking about here, on IE 5/5.5, with the new layout. I hope I’ve corrected it, but I don’t have access to that browser. If you’re using an older version of IE and things look messed up, please leave me a comment. Thanks!
I posted this over here a few days ago, to resounding silence, which could be due to the fact that a) it’s bollocks, b) no one cares, c) no one read it or d) a combination of the three. But since I’m nothing if not pigheaded, and it gelled a couple of things for me in my mind about both the questions of identity that were doing the rounds recently and the cross-blog conversations idea that I’ve gone on about before, I’m going to cross-post it here. Because I can, and because I like feedback, even though I am a little gunshy tiptoeing through the backdoor back into Smart Person Land. Still, forward!
I’d add to what Shelley and David have said about ThreadNeedle and blogs, just off the top of my head, my take on it : that in the online ‘asynchronous discussion communities’ that Dan mentioned below in /m106, you have represented yourself through the things you say and have said in that community. There may have been an additional body of work, but this was secondary to the text-representation of yourself that accreted, word by word, as a result of your participation. My personal example of this would be my participation at Metafilter over the last couple of years.
This is a trivial observation, I know. But your avatar was effectively yourself as you chose to represent yourself via your comments and conversations.
When we talk about a weblog, though, I think it’s profitable to talk about two separate entities created as an adjunct of our online presence, at least the one that derives from the weblog itself : the (for lack of a better word) publication and the person.
Now certainly, the ‘publication’ is a mirror, to whatever extent, of the person writing it. We see many weblogs that stop here at this point, that have no commenting systems enabled, or that pay little attention the ‘community’, that are traditional web logs (ie collections of links with minimal commentary) or diaries or photoblogs or warblogs or god knows what…but that are intended less as manifestations of the person behind them than publications about that person or their interests.
Another dimension, though, comes in with weblogs that have comment threads, that encourage and participate in conversations with other weblogs/webloggers. In this situation, the weblog not only becomes a publication about something (which might, in the case of more diarist-type blogs, be the person who is writing it) but a representation, an avatar of that person. The weblog itself becomes an active extension of the weblogger’s identity (I wish I’d thought about this during the recent conversations around the blogs about ‘identity’. Ah well.) The weblog is something that is carried with them (or is an extension of their identity online…? I’m not sure about this bit at all), and the cross-blog conversations that occur as a result of this, in posts and their comment threads, are in a way a new and larger version of the sort of discussion types we’re historically used to, that Dan mentioned in his earlier post. A version that carries a body of work, a more deliberate one, along with the community member.
Does this make sense? I’m riffing here, and I have to admit that I haven’t read David’s book yet, so the sort of thing I’m trying to get a handle on (and communicate at the same time) might be old news.
Anyway (*takes a breath*) – I see these weblogs, the blogs that are not only ‘publications’ about something but also representations of the personality behind the words (and are this way because the weblogger has comments threads and/or engages in cross-blog conversations in their main posts and/or blogrolls people (the use of the word ‘people’ here is deliberate) as an acknowledgment of community), avatars that engage in conversation, to be the audience at which Shelley‘s ThreadNeedle is aimed. And I think (hope) that the service might be a major step forward, if it reaches critical mass.
(Also, don’t forget to add your two bits to the conversation about Threadneedle still going on here.)
Like Graham said : The coolness of this thing just blows me away. Here’s a picture
(popup, 75k) of the web of blogs related to me, according to Google, 3 deep. Fascinating. You can double click on any of the other blogs, and the app will go and find the cloud of sites googly-related to it, in turn. One surprise would be the absence of Burningbird, but I seem to recall her excluding the Googlebot from her domains some time ago, so that makes sense after all. Interesting too, that my strongest connection through to a cloud of Metafilter bloggers is via jonmc’s View From The Counter. I would have expected 9622.net to be on there…
This makes the propellor on my beanie whiz at a frightening speed.
