Hard to disagree with this: Threads not launching in Europe is pure gold.
Oh, dear. So sad. Too bad.
Anyway…
Twitter is burning, Bluesky is smug. Where is the best place to do your pathetic doomscrolling?
[Guardian cartoon.]
Just did the emergency security update on my Mastodon instance (to v4.1.3), and still have most of this cup of coffee left.
That was much easier than I was expecting.
Twitter is becoming a feature rather than a product:
- Substack has it, via Notes
- Instagram has it, via Threads
- The Fediverse has it, via Mastodon
- The Web has it, via Micro.Blog
That’s why I don’t think there will be One True Twitter Killer.
Chances of Threads ever getting an API for general use?
I’d imagine they’ll be about 0%.
My initial take on Threads: suprisingly good, but with a lot of missing features - and a huge data grab.
I think Bluesky is the first social network I’ve not been able to get onto. Not been able to wangle an invite anywhere, and still stuck in the invite queue.
The real danger for them, is that I increasingly don’t care - and it’s literally part of my job to be paying attention to these things.
What to know about Threads, by the founder of Mastodon.
And it’s live. I’m on Threads. No choice, really, given my work…
Is the second-hand bookshop disappearing? Perhaps not. 📚
Adrian Bell on newspaper experts:
I have been suspicious of them ever since, years ago, I met a gardening expert who wrote for a London paper. ‘And where is your garden?’ I asked innocently. ‘I haven’t got a garden. I live in a flat, he replied.
📚
So, I’m now on t2 (Twitter alternative from ex-Twitter folks). Anyone else on there?
Staurt Ian Burns on Marvel and its impact on the film industry:
Also, there’s no point blaming a studio which turns out two-four films a year for “ruining cinema” as though the audience is a sheep like mass. Hollywood has had its own hand in this by producing so many average films which strain for mass appeal to the extent they don’t appeal to anyone.
Utterly brazen.
These two muppets are amongst the richest people on the planet, with a global impact on human relationships. And then they do this.
The phrase “deeply unserious” is becoming a thing, isn’t it?
One of those meme-like phrases that we’ll look back on in five years and think was “so 2023”.
Nice work of the day goes to the cyclist who literally rode into me while I was trying to shepherd children across the road on a green man at traffic lights - and then shouted at me.
I love cycling, but…
That’s it. Time to quit Outlook and call it a day.
I’m just not looking forward to a hot train ride home…
Every year, while I’m supervising journalism MA students' final projects, I miss being a commissioning editor. I love the feeling of working with talented journalists to make their copy better.
Recreation is valuable in proportion to the intensity of its experiences, and to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life.
— A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold 📚
Winning at Wordle…
Found a nice coffee shop to while away the hours while my daughters are on a Guides and Brownies cinema trip: The Laughing Dog.
Perception, in short, cannot be purchased with either learned degrees or dollars; it grows at home as well as abroad, and he who has a little may use it to as good advantage as he who has much. As a search for perception, the recreational stampede is footless and unnecessary.
— A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold 📚
Broadly speaking, a piece of scenery snapped by a dozen tourist cameras daily is not physically impaired thereby, nor does any other resource suffer when the rate increases to a hundred. The camera industry is one of the few innocuous parasites on wild nature.
— A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold 📚