I hate twitter so much. I find it tiring and irritating to follow -- I tried for a couple of weeks and then dropped it, feeling a great deal of relief. But it's become an integral part of the other things I want to be reading online, so I'm always running into things that are too much work to figure out. Like, whatever JMM was doing in that hostile tweet below? Yes, Israel/Palestine something, but I just don't want to piece together the full story of who he was responding to in what context. It feels like listening to half a cell phone conversation.
If you're not following darth, you hate all that is right and good in the world.
LB, my sister, I hear you. You follow some people, ignore their conversations, scan their links to see if you want to read, and you're plugged-in-enough.
Also, this isn't the twitter hot or not thread. It's the who should I follow thread.
I agree with 1.
Also, I really like Jacobin. It's not perfect at all, but it's very good and has been a big part of my slow move towards going full Socialist. Grantland is unreadable except for Jonah Keri.
@fireland is probably the best current thinker about political events in the middle east and space and you know deep shit like that.
Josh has the spirit, but fails to tell me what the feed is about it.
Oh, I know that's the way I should be using it; I just don't have it in me to just follow the links and ignore the incomprehensible yammering.
Sifu describes, but forces us to copy/paste. I'm not asking for the moon here, people.
RealCarrotFacts is your best source for real carrot facts.
Oh, no, I am definitely in this to be helpful.
Following DeLong is a little exhausting but is maybe slightly less exhausting than following the forty or fifty other wonky types he regularly retweets.
Congratulations, Sifu, you've graduated to rick-rolling.
Looking through those I follow, none of them are really essential - most are conduits to get interesting links, health policy stuff, and humor/sliceoflife. Some good comedy ones are @HonestToddler and @aparnapkin. I also like Kot/sko for eroding my procedural liberalism.
@zunguzungu, who's an editor for the New Inquiry and also very funny and links to interesting people.
Honestly I don't really follow many people and I don't think most of them are general-interest. William Gibson's pretty fun? Might be an acquired taste? I think maybe that's what the question marks mean?
I find it tiring and irritating to follow
Yeah, me too. I go occasionally to read my son's feed because he's funny, but beyond that? Barely ever.
However, billmon (remember billmon?) is always worth reading and rarely shows up anywhere else.
And Megan Amran is hilarious ("I saved a bunch of money on bleaching my butthole by eating Crest Whitestrips!!"; "Once you go black, that toe's gotta come off."; "Apparently he loves me not. I wish this butterfly had more wings :(" )
Is zunguzungu tweeting again? I thought he took a hiatus after Jacobin spent thousands of words taking him to task for a joke he'd made.
Mostly I follow soccer tweeterers. @NutmegRadio, @runofplay (Brian Phillips, every nerd's sportswriter crush), and @FutbolIntellect are my favorites at the moment.
I used to follow @Africasacountry (the account for Africa Is A Country) which is great for African music and a better perspective on African issues than you get in western media, but I had to stop because there was too much Israel-Palestine stuff. And that was years ago, long before the latest Gaza thing.
I found zunguzungu's twitter feed obnoxiously hard to take. YMMV!
Is zunguzungu the earnest sanctimony guy? I guess there's more than one.
7: Fucking amazing Photoshop humor and (lately) dog pics. He or she started #hugadog.
21: I guess it's safe enough here to admit that I didn't like the feed either, although he's a personal friend and of sterling personal qualities.
Yeah, I followed zunguzungu and had to give up on him pretty quickly. I'm probably 99% in agreement with him about the things he tweets about, but I just can't take him in large doses.
"Earnest sanctimony guy" is a pretty good summation.
I hate twitter too! That Josh Marshall tweet you linked to led me to look at his feed. Seeing him trying to explain Lincoln's views on slavery and race in tweets was just pathetic.
On the other hand, I did just find out Ellen DeGeneres and Portia DeRossi are playing Scrabble tonight. If that's the kind of thing you'd like to know I recommend following @TheEllenShow
27: John Hodgman does move-by-move live tweeting of scrabble games with his wife, if that isn't hardcore enough for you.
I've always assumed that @moscaddie was ogged's account.
Follow more people than you can possibly pay attention to and make yourself comfortable missing tons of stuff. Be wary of people who dominate your feed during quiet hours, and take a look at the "no retweets by this person setting" - some people's feeds seem to be mostly retweets and @s.
Or to put another way: the following will continue until morale improves.
32 is right. Twitter is a firehose, and trying to get everything out of it is unwise. Be willing to unfollow. If you're not sure if you should unfollow someone, mute them for a week (it'll automatically unmute in the web interface, I think) and see if it makes you happier.
@panphil and @ChinaFile
for China. @JEPomfret too. @agripulse and @grist for food/environmental issues, neither fantastic, but both point to stuff that I wouldn't have otherwise noticed-- the relaxed chicken inspection protocol being proposed failed recently.
@schneierblog and @csoghoian for software/secrecy/security.
The biggest structural problem to me is that lots of good writers write a few longer pieces, more suitable for themed RSS or something, scientists especially. I still use delicious to keep track of stuff like that myself, but I don't think it's popular. I never switched to the equivalent pinboard, does anyone use that site in anything but private mode?
Oh, favorite musicians and porn stars on twitter, of course.
@PhillipPullman is the only essential twitter, otherwise would miss out on Jeffrey & Belinda, not good. Otherwise I generally use it to track music, dance, writing, film and other things happening that I strongly suspect wouldn't be of interest to ogged or possibly even anyone else here, but it is a pretty convenient way to do this. The PFA twitter feed for example is quite useful.
Thanks for reminding me I don't follow @ChinaFile. Rectified.
I follow the OED and the Chicago Manual of Style on twitter. Let's see. Various musicians who hardly ever ``tweet''. Mike Konczal. Dsquared. Anagramaton, obviously, and Pentametron.
What I can't figure out is why politicians and celebrities love Twitter. I mean, I've given it some thought and there are some obvious answers (cheap self promotion, of course) but the medium is so ridiculous and politicians and celebrities and athletes seem to really love it, way way beyond the cheap self promotional value. Sometimes I think I feel like an old person past my time in thinking about Twitter, but then it's old politicians and professional athletes who would barely have known what a "blog" was in 2007 who seem to get the most use out of the medium. It makes my head hurt.
40: based on observations of the most heavily self-promoting person I know, who is also the biggest Twitter advocate I know, I'd guess it's because they get lots of adoring messages from fans in a way they wouldn't through other media.
You're overthinking @RobbieH: attention whores gonna attention whore, especially when they can do it under cover of "engaging" with their fans (and it doesn't require them to be literate).
@DrunkHulk
@SavedYouAClick
@Fafblog
40. The illusion of speech, with a measurable if disinterested "audience," but without any substance. Like a neverending talk show without having to stop talking for the other guests, or even to actually speak yourself-- you can just have a staffer tweet for you.
For the already-famous, it's DFW's videophone mask, basically.
I just got addicted to twitter. Maybe for the last 3 months.
It is good to find new things.
Not twitter related, but I really like all things d.
apo, thanks for the link to billmon.
Is this "All Things D"? I'd never heard of it before, and it now seems to be defunct.
@mallelis from The Toast who is on the right side of the crazy-hilarious line. She links to (and writes) the Art series (Monks Invent Western Art; Women Not Smiling) as soon as it's published so you can be the first to laugh at the paintings/texts. She also did the Texts From [Various Famous People]
Some biology/scicomm people that are interesting @realscientists (changes authors but scientists from around the world tweet about their science and life); @edyong209 (science writer with a lot of links; @ehmee ("Host of TheBrainScoop", posts many awesome pictures of cut-up stuff from the Field Museum)
@nprmonkeysee for pop culture and light snark
Oh also just follow astronauts. When they're boring, they're boring but sometimes you get pictures from space sent to your phone which makes you realize you really are living in the future.
I tweeted once, for work, and felt dirty for weeks after.
Fafblog was there all along. (And has been tweeting a fair bit since the Gaza thing started up again). I also have been following Billmon.
Speaking of old bloggy times not being forgotten, Jim Henley is still pretty good. Someone should get that guy a blog.
Jeet Heer is pretty good too in the tweets about Canada, Canadian politics, world politics, comic books, Robert Heinlein, and random shit category.
And Florida Man, in case you find yourself with an excess of faith in humanity.
There's always #bringbackourgirls to illustrate the effectiveness of Twitter activism.
I looked at who I'm following and was surprised how Irish it all was, very little I could recommend to ye. Some of the Crooked Timberites are there. Otherwise I like @tressiemcphd, @caitlinmoran, @bengoldacre is the Bad Science guy, and of course Ogged might like to follow @lucymangan.
18: "Mr. Gorbachev, turn down for what."
was surprised how Irish it all was
Between you and my Swedish friends, half the time when I wake up in the morning my feed is full of languages I don't actually understand.
I read a Lucy Mangan column recently. She married a Tory and they have a kid and are thinking of homeschooling.
Another endorsement of @realscientists - it's good stuff.
I get annoyed when I have insomnia that I don't have more active online European and Asian and African and Australian friends.
FWIW, @realscientists is run by Australians, so it tends to get a lot of Aussie scientists.
It wasn't all that likely that she was going to marry you.
It was enough to know she was there, ogged. Plus I was disappointed on your behalf.
I like the song about the super taster better.
You should all obviously be following me.
The best Here Comes Science Song is surely "Photosynthesis." It's so weird.
The Mesopotamians is another fun educationalish song.
If you watch the DVD of Here Comes Science, there is the funniest little bit of dialogue preceding Photosynthesis.
I've only ever seen bits of the DVD, but listened endlessly to the songs.
Noser used to stumble out of his room and put it on in the morning until Bonsaisue and/or Rilee woke up.
Meet the Elements is, bar none, the best song related to the periodic table.
Or from what I understand about Lehrer, he wouldn't give a shit.
Kind of not that good of a song (Lehrer's song).
@DAVID_LYNCH starts all of his, infrequent, tweets with "Dear Twitter Friends,"
@elonmusk
@histoftech tech historian
@hxa7241 speculative CS theory
@manovich UI theory
@kirstyevidence international development
@cascio futurist
@bengoldacre Bad Science / Pharma
@aescifi SF mag
I drop anyone that does undirected tweets more than about a dozen times a week. Twitter probably wouldn't make any money if everyone was like me, but lots of people like blathering in real time apparently so I can ride on their coat tails.
Twitter is still a kind of gateway to blogs and email to me.
I don't like list songs either, that is why ROYGBIV is the weakest song on that album.
I memorized Lehrer's Elements at one point, although some I only really knew the song pronunciation and couldn't spell unless I looked them up.
@MaraWritesStuff for whimsy and progressive Millennial* politics from a former child actor (Mara Wilson of Mrs. Doubtfire fame)
@Baratunde for general good politics
@ConradHackett (Pew researcher) for a steady stream of interesting trivia and charts. (92-95% accurate/honest framing from what I can tell)
@Zeynep for Zeynep Tufekci, all-around smart writer and thinker on tech, Turkish politics, and world events
@inteldump if you're nostalgic for Phillip Carter's Bush-era national security blog.
@honesttoddler no longer quite so funny, but still sometimes very on-point
*I hate this term. She's under 30, let's put it that way.
Twitter has just helped me confirm, catching up on Doctor Who, that I'm not the only person who thinks Peter Capaldi totally looks like an older Arthur Darvill. So there's that.
Seconding BillMon, @ConradHackett @RevRichardColes for his lives of the saints, @leVostreGC for middle english, @profJeffJarvis which is still pretty funny - I know someone who thought for a long time it was meant seriously - for sparky pissedoffness, @DawnHFoster and well-informed middle Eastern pessimisim, @Brian_Whitaker
But the only way to make twitter manageable is with rigorous use of lists. I can't imagine just dipping into the firehose and getting anything out.
27: in fairness to twitter, which I have no real use for, the full blog post wasn't any more interesting.
You know who has a Twitter account? (This is a long bow, but whatever.) Kim Dotcom who also has a political party which will, like, get 1-2 MPs on current polling at the September election, and has gone into an alliance with the indigenous sovereignty/far left Mana Party, and poached a socialist ex-MP for a figurehead leader. And apparently there's Glenn Greenwald-esque Five Eyes revelation that's going to be revealed the week before the election, but there's also rumours that the ruling centre-right party will knife KDC with some brutal personal allegations before then.
Anyway. That's New Zealand politics on twitter.
Didn't you say you had mutual acquaintances with KDC, Sifu?
Oooh also politicians love twitter because cargo cult. I think.
91.last: yeah. I think I met him once. He used to show up at hacker cons and so on. There was a whole big thing where, if I recall, he was narcing on people.
Small world etc...
Yeah, he's become a weird cult hero in NZ since the raids, put out a truly awful album, turned out he owned various bits of Nazi memorabilia including an autograph copy of Mein Kampf, and so on and so on.
He was narcing? To like, the US law, or just generally not very great at keeping it quiet?
The paranoid but maybe accurate belief is that there was some elaborate conspiracy to get Kim Dotcom into the country against Immigration's wishes in order that the GCSB could surveil him & then the cops could round him up easy and ship him out to the USA. All this on the orders of Hollywood, of course.
He was narcing? To like, the US law, or just generally not very great at keeping it quiet?
I'm not sure about what country's law? I don't remember where he was living at the time, but anyhow, yes; he got busted for something, or was worried he would get busted for something, and sold out people he knew online to keep from getting in trouble. I wish I remember the details, but my vague memory is that it was even shittier than that, like he sold them out for shit that he actually did. There are rumors he did the same thing with various of his filesharing competitors in the time before Mega got shut down. Anyhow, his folk herodom seems like a good thing mostly, I guess? But the guy is definitely an asshole. Have you seen any of his appearances in Gumball 3000?
Here is a contemporaneous warning about him trying to get on to Amiga warez BBSs.
I think he came to Defcon in 1998 or '99 or something (which is where I either talked to him or just had him pointed out to me) and the older-school people were sort of aghast that he'd show his face and not be worried about getting the shit kicked out of him.
Late to the party here. I like Jamie Kenny of B&T's twitter feed, very sharp political insight on a multitude of fronts and deep into China:
https://twitter.com/jkbloodtreasure
And @dick_nixon is lot's of fun, and was the subject of a profile in Newsday today:
http://www.newsday.com/business/technology/richard-nixon-alive-and-well-on-twitter-1.8999177
I'm still finding this very amusing
https://twitter.com/dick_nixon/status/444619675151122432
He's got the tone and content of Nixon down pat.
That's three links, I'll probably be moderated for more but for something completely different check out Twine game designer Porpentine's twitter @aliendovecote - just really out there delightful whimsy if you're into that sort of thing.
95-8 fascinating. Yeah I think my belief is the guy's an asshole but he's doing good things pretty much by accident and out of sheer self-interest, so good on him.
Something, something, goodness of the baker, something, something, brewer, ibid.
99: That was my general perception as well. And he's entertaining to boot. Ironically, I think the number of countries with citizenship-for-investors programs have increased since he went to NZ.
I mean really, it's not like Hollywood has ever done anything for New Zealand.
PFA just reminded me via tweeter that Ray's The Chess Players is on Sunday night so I got tix and we're going. Totally useful!
Jamie K nearly always excellent reading.
Audio nerds check out Women's Audio Mission for wide-ranging and interesting links, also pictures of adorable schoolgirls building speakers out of paper cups, getting their mitts on a console, etc.
Is it too late to chime in and tell you to follow @Bro_Pair? Hilarious, great politics, and seems like a mensch. I've also gotten great literature recommendations from him.
I lost my draft comment.
Twitter brings out the best of the the 'reduce this public figure to their essential tropes' genre.
Jeff Jarvis Media 3.0 Thinkfluencer is seconded, and Fake AP style guide and the like have their moments.
@dick_nixon really inhabits the character and is much more than a flip impersonation.
I'm surprised @NeinQuarterly is not essential reading.
In watching an American baseball game, one is tempted to see it as a metaphor. But only when your team is losing.
@om is one of the better tech industry pundits.