Another Five Things

Digital, Film, Physics, Politics, Short Stories, Uncategorized 1 Minute

It isn’t easy being a troll. Hand Me Downs is a short story by Maria Haskins.

“We Handed A Loaded Weapon To 4-Year-Olds.” Developer Chris Wetherell built Twitter’s retweet button. He tells Buzzfeed why he regrets what he did to this day.

Rosie Fletcher at Den of Geek suggests the 2 hour 45 minute running time for It Chapter Two indicates that the horror genre is moving into the mainstream. And that’s a good thing.

Over at Aeon, Matthew Stanley recounts British astronomer and physicist, Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington’s attempt to test Einstein’s theory of relativity. It’s worth reading not just for the challenges Stanley faced, but also the way in which he managed to craft the subsequent narrative into a symbol of post-war German-British solidarity.

And finally, Alastair Campbell has left the Labour Party and asked Jeremy Corbyn to seriously consider whether he’s really up to the challenges ahead.

Published by Paul

Reader of books, watcher of films, player of games. British father of three, now living in Belgium and making a living from building interfaces.

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8 thoughts on “Another Five Things”

    1. Indeed. I have accused Twitter of being a rage machine in the past, but hadn’t thought too deeply about the mechanics of how it got like that.

      It’s interesting how such a small change can have such a significant impact.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I never gave it that much thought as when I see the endless retweets without comments I just get bored and leave. Here’s my take:

        I only retweet occasionally and usually with comment but find it a less effective way to share (as I don’t really have the same kind of dialogue as I do on the blog in my twitter feed). If I do retweet without comment it’s because the tweet is self-explanatory (ok, some of the humorous animal clips are so cute and don’t require comments…). But I share interesting articles and comment re the author because I like giving credit where it’s due. Note: most people on twitter do not do this.

        At the vary far back corner of my brain I’m remembering typing RT somewhere for retweeting…but I really don’t recall the exact terms or applications I was using then.

        Glad you posted this Paul.

        Now, I have a question about tygpres.com (but we don’t have to do this here on the blog…we can chat elsewhere if you want).

        Like

        1. Although I have a Twitter account, I haven’t looked at it for several years and, these days, use Mastodon for all my microblogging. In terms of functionality it’s much the same as Twitter, right down to the retweet (or “boost”) button.

          I will retweet self-explanatory posts or jokes but for anything that requires a bit of context, I will respond to differently.

          What I have noticed on Twitter and similar platforms is that there are people on there posting links far faster than they could possibly have read the linked articles.

          Obviously, posting and reposting links based on the headline alone is possible without a retweet button, but it’s interesting the extent to which the button encourages this behaviour.

          I will go and read your post on Tygpress now 🙂

          Like

          1. This retweet or like or thing in twitter before they could have realistically read the text happens on my blog occasionally. They like 6 blogs in a row and it’s doubtful they have even read the title, much less the content.

            I hate that. Should I block them?

            Looking at some of the teenagers around me, I think it’s about likes. I think it’s about accumulating the like stats. But the guy who did it to me just recently (liked a bunch of posts in less than 30 seconds) will not even get a visit to his blog to look around. I’m not interested in him.

            Does this make sense?

            Like

          2. I know what you mean. I have always assumed that when people do this it’s a rather crude attempt at making their blogs appear more popular than they are.

            The thinking would be that every time they like a post, that creates a link back to their own blog which will make it look popular to Google and thus improve their blog’s search engine rankings.

            I am sure that if this is the case, they are wasting their time because their is no way Google’s rankings can be games by such a blatant stunt.

            I keep thinking that I should block these serial likers but I can be quite lazy at times and really don’t want to spend any of my time trying to work out who is or isn’t being spammy.

            Liked by 1 person

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