Twitter

"All of the Anons and the Feds have moved to Twitter." - sapphoq reviews

I never understood the appeal of writing blurbs that use 140 characters and spaces (or less).  The rest of the world disagrees with me as I found out recently by shoulder surfing someone near and dear who tweets.  For the uninitiated, "tweeting" is what the folks using Twitter do.  And "tweets" is what they write.



What I haven't found is folks detailing the minutiae of their mundane lives.  What I did find was a lot of news bullets from Al Jazeera, the F.B.I., and AnonOps.  Some notable personalities hold court at Twitter as well: The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Penn of Penn and Teller, P.Z. Myers, and Jesus With Issues.  There are  rather interesting exchanges between Team Jesus and Team Atheist, little bites from President Obama and Connie Rice (or their press agents), and a bunch of "women" whose sole purpose is to get you to click on a link to porn videos.  The latter are rather annoying.  First they follow all new folks.  Some new folks will follow them back, not realizing their game.  Pretty soon, they post a link to a vid that they "just made."  The Twitter interface does have the option for a tweeter to block someone.  But the naughty women arrive in droves.  As soon as one account is suspended, at least five more sign up.


The Twitter interface is a bit jarring at first.  There is the difficulty of finding any direct messages to the tweeter and then there is the difficulty of finding out how to throw the messages into the trash.  Twitter uses @ in front of the two syllable names of the users (with no demand for something that resembles a name).  The new tweeter is then transported to a page where they can agree or decline to import their entire address book from their e-mail client in order to find known people in the mob.  The other way to find folks to follow is to type in an interest using hash marks.  Thus one can search for #news, #anon, #anonops, #occupy, #science, #evolution...and so on. A successful search of a #interest will yield the top twenty five tweets of that interest.  To follow one of the tweeters, one clicks on their tiny icon and is presented with the last three tweets.  The option exists to see more of their tweets.  To block a tweeter, such as the spamming video ladies, one selects "block @so-and-so" from the drop down menu.  Icons across the top of the page denote one's profile page, one's usually non-working mailbox, and "write a new tweet."


Twitter is a gift for folks with short attention spans.  The A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. adult can gleam a decent idea of today's current events and click on the shortened links, embedded U-tube vids, and pictures to find out more.  The feed runs rapidly enough and times flies even for the most mercurial.  Over each tweet are options to reply or re-tweet.  Re-tweeting is like sharing on Google+: it's what one does if one wants to spread the word to one's own followers.  A tweeter also has the option to "favorite" a tweet.  The tweet is then stored in the "favorites" section of the profile.


And yes folks, the anons and the feds have all moved to twitter.  It is easier there to sign up as an organization and there is no silly demand for your wallet name or for a name that resembles wallet names.  Unfortunately, Twitter-- like so many other services these days-- has yielded to self-censorship in order to aid governments that censor.  If something is not allowed to be viewed in one's host country, one is now made aware of blocked tweets.  The oldies at Twitter complain about the interface changing.  I can't speak to that as I have only shoulder surfed one relatively new user.  Twitter does work if one is behind a proxy.  And unlike G+, many of the tweeters actually do care about those activists who are not allowed Internet access in the traditional manner.  G+ users will say, "Oh but this platform is not written with those people in mind."  Tweeters have a hashed interest for using Tor to help folks behind the aluminum curtain.


sapphoq reviews says: As long as the radicals remember that the Feds and other watchers are also on Twitter, Twitter can be a useful and somewhat enjoyable tool for keeping up with the news and having some pithy discussions.  Worth a look for those who are curious.  Just don't forget to check on your followers periodically and block all the sexpot ladies.

2600 Meeting

Almost all 2600 meetings happen on the first Friday of the month at 5p.m. unless otherwise noted in the 2600 meeting list.

I got to the meeting shortly after 5 p.m. and I was pleasantly surprised by a sign on the table which said "2600."  I had been wondering if I would have to wave an issue of the magazine around the coffee shop in order to identify the group and gain admission to the table.  That was not necessary.

Occasionally an F.B.I. agent "undercover" is sent to?/assigned to?/takes it upon himself or herself to? infiltrate or otherwise spy upon such a meeting, it is alleged.  I immediately was drawn to a man sitting nearby with a laptop who looked like Chris on The Sopranos but in spite of dorky jeans I took to be a suit.  At any rate, nothing illegal was talked about at the meeting and in a general way such talk is discouraged at 2600 meetings.

There was a small group of us gathered around a table, a few with laptops out, with coffee mugs and animately discussing techy things.  Someone threw out a package obtained at a grab bag and invited anyone to take a look and take it for their own if interested.  Someone else showed off a homemade router, and a third a holder for a laptop (also homemade).  The conversation traveled through Gentu vs. BSD, learning C or Java, Hackerspace, conventions and contests, taking things apart, classes, LISP machines and Solaris.  Although the folks there obviously had much more knowledge than I possess about techie stuff, I felt almost instantly at home.  At last, a whole group of people locally who thought about and did some of the things that I think about and do.  We had a good laugh over the ThinkPad (IBM, no copyright infringement intended blah blah blah) that I blew up once.  Someone located a vid showing a floppy disc driver spitting out spinning floppies across a floor and up a wall.

Midway through, a Luddite showed up under the guise of wanting to work with us regarding getting an article of his published in 2600.  I pointed out that he didn't "need" us to submit it and another fellow told him that we were just a bunch of folks who read the magazine.  The Luddite talked about some Mars simulation purportedly happening in either the Arctic Circle or Antarctica (I forget which he said) and seemed to be proposing that we all enter his group's contest (for which funding was supposedly turned down) in order to possibly win creating a challenge for this simulation thingy.  We rather crudely informed him that we were pretty much mavericks in our style of working on projects and that we just weren't interested in his proposition.  He was also told that 2600 and Make and Ted were all available at the bookstore.  Someone suggested that he or his group publish his idea on Word Press.  He started talking about disabled people using what he called solo-switches but he had never heard of R.J. Cooper nor of the computer services available at M.I.T.  He ignored my reference to M.I.T. but wrote down Cooper's name to look up on the web "later."  When he realized that money was not forthcoming from any of us for his cause and that we were in fact techies, he feigned having to go back to his wife who he had left alone to watch the grandkiddies and split.

After he left, I said, "Dude wanted to fly off to Mars or something or what?"  It was then that it was revealed that the dude was indeed a Luddite and a member of a known Luddite-type organization as his website which he had mentioned (and that I will not, sorry Luddites) was indeed ludditious (or perhaps even ludicrous) in outlook.  The particular organization in question proposes that the members rocket off to Mars upon burning up the Earth and then live happily ever after in non-technological bliss.  I figured that dude was at the bookstore asking for copies of Make and 2600 and Ted and Word Press.

After three hours of enjoyable stimulating conversation, I left with plans to make 2600 meetings part of my regular haunts.

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Google Takes at Least One Step Backwards with the New Google Plus

I've been trying out Google Plus [commonly referred to as Google+ or G+] and it's okay.  I like the circles, how everyone's +1's show up as one feed so I don't have to go site-hopping in order to comment, and the photo albums.

I don't like and I seriously object to the idea that we are supposed to use our given legal names in order to use Google + .  There is no anonymity on the internet anyways.  That I know.  Why I find Google +'s policy on this to be pigheaded [in my opinion] is for several reasons.

(1).  Google has a ton of personal information on us, its' users.  Any information we provide is theirs for as long as they exist.
(2).  There is no allowance for the use of a pen name.  Folks who operate on the internet under an alias for
whatever reason-- folks who have been stalked, folks who are hiding from abusive partners or family members, folks who don't want an ex-boyfriend to find them, folks who are writers (as I am), folks who are members of Anonymous and who need to network in that fashion) can be kicked off of Google Plus.  Anyone whose name is not believable to the Google employee or committee who goes through "the name people used to sign up list" also risks being kicked off of Google Plus and will have to prove their identity in order to be reinstated.  Google + is not a service that we pay for with money (yet?) or credit card (yet?) which is the only reason why I can understand the demand for a legal name.
(3).  If Google has decided this on the basis of "a kinder gentler internet" or some such rubbish that folks who use their real names will somehow not be (gasp) cyberbullies-- that's just stupid.  If Google has decided this on the basis of their marketing needs, desire to sell our names to mailing lists (hey, the V.A. does it) then we should have the option to opt out.
(4).  If someone is looking for my legal name, I want them to have to think about it first for at least a minute.

So Google Plus, you fail.
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We Interrupt these Irregularly Scheduled Blog Rants

Censorship is bad, m'kay.      sapphoq reviews

Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa, Richard Grant

Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa, Richard Grant.  New York: Free Press, 2011.  paperback, 336 pps., incl. index.

     I first encountered Richard Grant through an earlier book of his called God's Middle Finger which narrated his trip through the Sierra Madres.  I was delighted to find Crazy River on the shelves of my local bookstore.  Although different in tone from his earlier work, Crazy River immediately drew me in.  I haven't been to Africa (yet) but this book transported me to a very different world.

     The Malagarasi River, dotted with small fishing villages between the wild places, is full of pissed off hippos and crocodiles and bandits.  Grant skillfully interweaves the stories that the river has for him into the histories of other adventurers, politicians, and the East African peoples.  The crew that Grant hires in Tanzania is composed of men who each have their own story to tell.  Crazy River carried me away from my reading chair to a place I had never been.  I was there as Grant made his way through checkpoints and red tape, as prostitutes tried to pick him up, as children demanded money.  I was also there on the river itself with the tsetse flies and passages of choking weeds.  And there as Grant actually got to view the source of  the Nile itself. 

     By the end of Crazy River, I had a visceral sense of the horror of genocide and specifically the genocide that took place in Rwanda.  Grant tells the story of some two thousand people that took refuge in a Catholic Church in Nyange.  The priest there, one "Reverend" Athanase Seromba, was more than compliant in the slaughter of those seeking sanctuary in his church building.  He arranged to have his church building bulldozed.  He let the drunken militia in with their grenades.  He then pointed out any survivors who were then killed off with bayonets.  The priest did this because the folks hiding in his church building were the wrong tribe.  The priest himself belonged to the other tribe. 

     Crazy River is a most excellent book eluding a real sense of place.  This book is a definite keeper and the finest example of the modern travel essay.

sapphoq reviews says: Highly Recommended.