The thing about microblogging is, it’s fundamentally boring. Conflict and sensationalism make it more interesting, but it’s so fucking passive, it just sucks away part of your life and doesn’t give all that much back. People rationalize it differently, but that’s all they are doing. SecondLife blended chat, fantasy, and live action in ways the world had never seen before. Some universities still use it.
@shoq microblogging is only boring if you find reading boring. In my decades of experience on the web the majority of people just want to consume, not create. Some of us use it to chew on ideas, but we’re rare birds. Not really different than offline life. We need to stop expecting online interactions to be different than offline ones.
I’m considering being a mentor to a very sharp 17 year old Black woman here in Fort Lauderdale. I didn’t realize how much I missed teaching until we had an introductory google meet yesterday with her and her mom. I never had children, so maybe that’s also a factor driving my interest now. I’m still a bit fearful of committing to it. Lots of responsibility.
@shoq just remember what you do and how well you try you'll fck something up. IMHO teaching is kinda like parenting - you do the best you can with the tools you have and no matter what it will be imperfect. So my vote (which doens't mean shjt) is - go for it.
For the next few days we'll be on the road to #Canada 🇨🇦, our new home. Bear with me for not replying w/ more than a "like" & for not live-posting the #TrumpTrial.
@GottaLaff Let the adventure begin! Safe travels and see you on the flip side.
PS - I'm traveling back to CA (flying) today so I'm feeling an odd sort of connection. Next week I'll be driving x-country, with two cats, back to Michigan. Hope you enjoy the road
We went out for a long walk this afternoon. Before that I’d done a couple of nice mellow gongfu steeps of some adolescent Fuding white tea, so I dumped the leaves into the tea jar and poured in boiling water before we set out.
By the time I took the first sip maybe a half hour later, the liquor was like some overboiled vegetable, not really drinkable. Should’ve stuck with short steeps!
@babelcarp@tea I've tried various flasks for tea and the VERY best I've found is this insert for a Contigo West Loop thermos. You can easily remove the strainer after steeping and it's got it's own little container to catch the drips.
@RickiTarr being obscenely financially secure without earning a bit of it and can do little to change it. Deal with it - I hide the fact of it most of the time. I try to practice mindful generosity.
@lakelady I can’t speak for @galad, but in my view, the evidence is in the fact that 100% of their very public ire and rhetoric is aimed at the US and Israel, rather than the biggest obstacle to ending the violence: Hamas. I have not yet seen a single exception. It may exist, but I haven’t seen it.
@galad@shoq Honestly I've heard VERY little about what various groups have called for other than some very vague reporting of "divesting". The reporting on the student positions by the MSM has been abysmal.
My #Mastodon home timeline is amazing, so much good and relevant stuff, much better than either Twitter or Threads. It’s just there’s too much of it and there’s no way to figure out what’s top.
The other problem, which is also discovery related, is being able to see content break through existing spheres.
See? Same problem as Hamas itself. When people don’t actually want to resolve the conflict, they make demands that can never be met. And that is precisely why so many Israeli hardliners feel justified in doing whatever it takes to destroy Hamas. Even if the death toll sickens some of them. They see it as their only option with an enemy that lets uncomprising terrorists lead them to only more death and destruction.
Some celebrites have really gotten outraged over these senseless deaths in Gaza, which is curious given how many other senseless deaths have surrounded us. Did those tragedies have more sense to them, or could Jews being demonized be a reason for this sudden outbreak of concern? I have questions.
Whenever someone tells me about their totally “awesome community” on any platform (often one that hasn’t existed very long), I look at their time and all I can figure is that community for them is a few dozen people who like their posts. I guess that’s fine, but it feels like a pretty low bar for “awesome” to me.
I am getting the sense that if this is encouraged to build any larger, all that will be achieved is a lot of commencements, if not graduations themselves, will be delayed or canceled outright, denying tens of thousands of students that hard-earned once in a lifetime moment.
#alivelshi While many of these protests started out sincerely enough, this has morphed into performative political stunts by a) opportunistic grifters who show up at any fire to throw gasoline on it, and b) foreign adversaries who know how to skillfully enable and program them.
There should be a special (often postumous) Darwin Award for people who stand their ground, capturing killer tornados not more than a half mile from their position.
@shoq tornados tended to leapfrog over my hometown so I've been around them quite a bit. Yes they can zigzag and go up and down but if you know the direction of the front and the stormline you have have a general idea which way they're heading. Hell you could be a half-mile behind where it's already been. They rarely backtrack