Modern Quill |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2009 08:18 AM PDT  Conan O’Brian does a bit called Twitter Tracker. In a nutshell, he scans through celebrity twitters, finds the most asinine possible, and retweets them as absolutely mindblowing. You know, “meaty tweets.” “Bird bacon.” I view this as something of a turning point. On the one hand, any new technology is going to be savagely parodied. Dane Cook was making references to Friendster all the way back when people thought Dane Cook was funny. On the other hand, we don’t usually see someone using that technology to facilitate. . . . . . I can’t even use the word “self-parody.” It’s more like “Dadaist exposé.” This is what we’ve signed up for. When Miley Cyrus wrote her sushi tweet, she sent it out to over one million twitter users. I’m going to assume that not even half of them were thrilled. Of course, this is just proof that Miley is “doing it wrong.” I’m convinced that the biggest mistake Twitter ever made was asking “What are you doing?” instead of “What are you thinking?” But no matter what it asks, it puts the creation of content into the hands of common people. And we love it. Community access television: no. Twitter Tracker: yes. Of course, not to pick on Miley, this can be ok. This can also be grating. Miley posted a tweet that read: Of course, Miley forgot one very powerful word from that quotation. That’s the kind of thing that bugs me occasionally. Whenever I open up my Google RSS Reader, I’m greeted by the ever so familiar (1000+) tag. I have over one thousand unread RSS articles. Most of them come from Daring Fireball, Wired, and Macworld. Here’s a hint: when Apple releases a new iThing, each one of those websites will have at least one story on it. Wired is a really insightful read, but they post roughly one mole worth of new posts each day. I’ll probably keep Daring Fireball and scrap the other two. When Facebook came around, college freshman everywhere discovered that now the Internet was now simple enough that even your Mom can use it. Twitter is simple enough that now even your boss can use it. In fact, my boss just gave a presentation about Twitter to the division chiefs! She’s also smarter than the average bear by a long shot, but it’s still a long way from the old days of “Sue, how do I print my emails?” Those days were less than ten years ago. I don’t want to say that we’re at an upper limit of content saturation, because we’re not. However, we have wonderful systems in place for handling the content of data, almost all of which is ephemera. We just haven’t had the chance to keep up with it, management-wise. In a few years, I bet we’ll look back and think “I can’t believe we handled all that duplicity back then.” I cannot wait for better automatic threshing tools to help us separate the wheat from the chaff. The sweet tweets and the weak tweets, if you will. |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2009 07:12 AM PDT In a long-overdue website update, I added three wonderful blogs to the blogroll. I still hate that word. Kuz’s Tunes is from Andy Kuzmin, who moonlights working at Big Heavy World sorting through the Vermont music scene. Molly at the Loving Spoonful is just about to start her career as a 1L and is a generally interesting writer. Chere at Teasingly Diverse is first-class and thoroughly insightful. I had updated my Google Reader a while back, but not the blogroll. |
| Posted: 26 Jun 2009 11:33 PM PDT Not too long ago I really railed against apricot beers. Dogfish Head’s Aprihop promised to be a better Magic Hat #9, but ultimately I was most impressed by Milly’s Tavern (Manchester NH) and their Bold Horizons: a raspberry Berlin Weissbier. So I was hanging around the beverage warehouse when I found a bottle of Dogfish Head Festina Pêche and I thought I had found it. After all, Dogfish Head crafts one of the most widely respected beers in America. With their creativity and resources, surely they could blow away a unique but mostly OK beer from a brewpub. And Beeradvocate would seem to agree with me, as the brew has a B overall and an A- from the Bros. I couldn’t handle it. The sour “notes” were so powerful that the peach was a lingering afterthought. I cried a little. The sour didn’t posses the yogurty slightly-sweet and super-clear sour I desired. If the beer tasted the way it smelled, I would have been delighted. Ultimately, the overwhelming sourness forced this one down the drain. Don’t get me wrong, I love all things sour. But what was supposed to go down smooth was really just undrinkable. Thankfully I had a Stone Brewing Arrogant Bastard Ale (Oaked) to help me forget the pain. What a shame, because I really like the 90 Minute IPA (as I am human) and Midas Touch. |
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