Top best blogger Arianna Huffington. Arianna Huffington, founder of Huffington Post (silliest news website)
My younger self got an email saying there were brilliant people online. There was also strong long-form blogging.
When I was a lot younger, I remember getting an email saying there were all kinds of brilliant people online. Young people indeed made collages honoring their favorite musicians during the era. As for long-form blogging, which I’ve done a lot as well, I think it was strong too, and it still is, though perhaps less widely adopted than podcasting.
Maybe this is the time that is time for a change.
Content is king, and if you’ve got a good understanding of SEO you can get on the first page of a search if you’re very lucky.
I think it helps mental clarity to write ideas in long form, and the only reason I publish blog posts that might make sense is that there’s vanity to them.
WordPress usually pitches itself as being benign on the Internet, as in inclusive, for example. I think it’s the only social media I do much of that is somewhat sane if I had to get to the point.
If you understand SEO well, you can be on the first page of a search if you are very lucky. Content is the tried-and-true way to be creative online. Generally speaking, you need to be blogging with a lot of focus, speaking in terms of the niche you want for your blog, and you need to have good timing as it really is most likely going to work out if you’re also researching what Internet traffic wants from long-form blogging.
I really don’t know why I do this. It is simply a personal blog with a social purpose. I don’t think pursuing better available themes for a blog would be much better, as I like writing what is supposed to feel like essays to people who don’t really get into it.
It’s interesting to see what might respond from the long-form blogging corner of the Internet.
Connections made between people can be valuable for several reasons. In a personal blog, you might engender some goodwill if your posts are relatable.
It’s a waste of time when writing can be monetized. However, I think connections between people are sometimes valuable for several reasons. If it’s for constructive reasons, it can be rewarding, for forging networks, and friendships.
I like some of the designs I put into long-form blogging, and that’s another valid reason to publish blog posts, as just writing the text and filling it out with images isn’t really much use, unless it’s published. It won’t necessarily get much traffic, but if you’re sincere, you might engender some goodwill, if your posts are relatable, if you have a personal blog.
I haven’t written anything too spontaneous in quite a while. I’ve done consistent microblogging, but it’s been feeling strange now that the politics and the algorithm of Twitter have altogether changed. The way I need to be sensitive now is to consider that I quite possibly should have stepped down, so I won’t waste other people’s time. I have to put enough work into posts that they could provide value of some kind to people who give up their time to look at what I’ve posted, which will more and more feel like shouting into the void, I fear, but with AI tools it is easy to justify spending only the half the time on a post into which comprehensive editing and design are going.
Learning is part of the journey.
The AI non-art that has a disconnect, like what I’ve done myself, usually with Runway, for imagery and with the help of WordTune, to keep my writing rewritten better than I might have thought through without the help of AI. I had a story idea come to me that is probably like sci-fi ideas others have using AI. In one scenario, informing an AI girl that she is becoming real and then being stalked by her could be one plot.
Experimental escapism — “Last year escapism became a dominant theme in graphic design, as creatives sought to draw viewers into mesmerizing, imaginative worlds. The trend is still going strong into 2023, but now escapism is getting experimental.
“Much of this experimentation is inspired by recent advances in technology, as 2022 witnessed the viral emergence of AI-generated art, the Metaverse, and the interstellar images made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope. These have left their mark on the creative industry. Designers are taking inspiration from these technological experiments and merging them with their creative expertise…
“The result is exploratory compositions that feel like windows into the digital psyche. This brand of escapism has darkness and moodiness to it, containing impossible landscapes that are artificial yet still conceptually adventurous. This year, designers are leading us deeper into the artistic unknown than we’ve ever been.“
Yesterday, POLITICO Magazine published an opinion piece by their Possin laying out his views (which do not necessarily represent the State Department’s).
“In the spirit of constructive dissent, let’s take a look at Possin’s arguments.“
In short: “the U.S.,” he writes, “is at risk of blowing its approach to the next generation of the internet. When it comes to formulating digital asset policy, we need to embrace the internet’s inevitable evolution. We need more technologists, fewer lawyers, and less bias in favor of financial sector incumbents.”
Those are experts, art critics, and a futurist. I am giving journaling this way a go with prompts written by Robert Duff, Ph.D. He’s a psychologist, self-help author, and podcaster known by @duffthepsych
Twitter users are to be applauded for their tact. Thanks to the platform, I can share impressions and keep track of what happens as it makes it to Twitter. Regarding many of the users who follow me, I am generally very pleased that I can be on the periphery of their consciousness. My Twitter username is @findingenvirons
fr13d0kr4 is the username of a friend I met through TikTok when it became clear to both of us that we have no dissimilar tastes in music. He’s a Florida gentleman with a good sense of humour who continues to be a friend to me with the likes he offers (and which I return) and friendly comments. I am grateful for the TikTok feedback I get from him
The relationship I have with a sweetheart is a great situation. Despite our relative challenges in 2020, 2021 and now 2022, I am grateful that we have a level of commitment to one another that is what could be characterized as both “safe” and as caring. I’m thankful for the bond we have with each other.
The security I have as an Internet user I am grateful for as it could easily be another story. That I have as much power in my desktop as the most brilliant in past generations is always excellent. It is good fortune. I am grateful for this right to wield knowledge.
Needy as it is, I suppose, I am grateful to the government ministry that provides me with disability assistance. My physical health is mostly fine, it is just that, years ago, I took to a doctor with concerns about anxiety and that kind of thing. The woman, looking at me with sympathy, helped arrange a pension for me, even in my youth, from which I could springboard a life that didn’t require me necessarily to pursue a forty-hour workweek. I’m thankful for the opportunity to have sought after my own way of life and interests.
Later in life, starting in 2012, my father asked me if I would help him with a family business he was eyeing to give himself a hobby in his retirement. I have contributed a fair bit of work to that. It is Maple Lawn Cemetery, and we’re on the world wide web:
If the subject of Facebook enters the conversation, my mom likes to say she isn’t on it.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a Facebook account in my dad’s name, and I think my mother also thinks that the two of them, my mom and my dad, have the same outlook, and disposition. By that logic, I take it that an account apiece isn’t necessary for them. Comments they leave are usually attributed to one or the other.
I have a small Facebook account. But despite having a humble reverence for the David Fincher-directed 2010 film The Social Network, my pleasure in being on Facebook is helping to run a not-for-profit business. For example, this very morning, a woman let me know, with an email to the Facebook page for the business, that she finds the business very beautiful, and you’ll understand why in a moment.
In 2007, at the sales company where I worked, Facebook on the desktop computers was blocked, so that entrance-level employee couldn’t enjoy it. At that time, even for a young man like me, Facebook was a lifeline. In 2012, Facebook App Center, an internet-based portable store, was carried out onto the market.
The store at first had 500 Facebook applications. which were. for the most part, games. I remember wondering why was this happening. Why were so many users playing games?
Around this time, my dad did kind of a noble thing, when, after years of helping manage the municipal cemetery for his job, he came across a little cemetery on the other side of town. Their trustees were hoping to share the burial ground with the district he had worked for.
My father acquired the cemetery and welcomed me on as a partner in 2012. For a nonprofit, as a retiree might characteristically enjoy working at, presently we require one day a week, ordinarily.
Louth United Church
I am not sure I suggested it myself, but it was probably me who did–making a business page on Facebook for the cemetery, so interested people could easily get ahold of us, like the woman did this morning. My dad had wanted a website for the cemetery, and this extra measure was one more step, a Facebook page
I compose posts that flow data about characteristic concerns we have. You see, I research and blog. I am an amateur writer.
I’ve composed a few brief tales, however, I don’t have the standard novel or screenplay that an essayist frequently has. I’m really an amateur blogger with family business ties. The business page on Facebook has nearly a hundred accounts of people who “like” it, and most of the control of the page falls to me.
One friend of the business, an elderly lady, I got to know a little during her brief visits to the cemetery, and also when the two of us interacted together on Facebook, had advice for me that I continue to apply on the Facebook business page.
My mother may never have signed up for Facebook, but I think she is pleased to think I show the initiative to manage the page. My mom worked for a small business for many years, as a clerk. We actually argue about many matters, but as long as I show a commitment to my dad’s retirement business, I continue to hold some cards in the game, between the three of us.
Nowadays Facebook has a significant draw, yet what we would never have expected are the losses Facebook has had to confront. Remember the lead-up to the appointment of 2016, when it was discovered that Facebook was utilizing Cambridge Analytica? That information firm gave Hillary Clinton a benefit, as her position was greater for Facebook than Donald Trump’s pass into the White House would have been.
It was trouble. Trump’s since been banned from Facebook, as well as from other social media. Granted, Maple Lawn Cemetery’s a small page, and we don’t handle cash transactions there, so the Cambridge Analytica scandal didn’t impact us much, although the distrust in the air that grew for Zuckerberg did have a toxic impact on how people used Facebook, compared to how they used it before the 2016 scandal.
Two days ago, in the early hours, CNET Tech, when reporting on Facebook going against the British Parliament, discussed online one Damian Collins, a member of parliament. Even now, Frances Haugen, CNET reports, is preparing to speak to British Parliament. It was Collins who took Cambridge Analytica to task in 2016, across the pond, and he is quoted as saying, “There needs to be greater transparency on the decisions companies like Facebook take when they trade off user safety for user engagement.”
The issue is that Facebook utilizes information about its customers to maneuver them to invest more energy, again became a national topic Sunday when Frances Haugen, a former Facebook worker, showed up on TV to clarify that Facebook is investigating strategies for better compelling and ultimately how to benefit from kids helpless against Facebook fixation.
Facebook has been successful this week demonstrating to the European Union that Facebook has adequate privacy protections in place, but they remain dodgy. Frances Haugen did them no favours, however.
You know, I don’t think my mother thinks about those kinds of things.
My mom has the perception that people are talking to each other when they are posting on Facebook. You can say that’s true, however, I think she sees those individuals “talking” rather than the more accurate description that anyone, when Facebook posts are public, can cooperate with those posts. The explanation for this is those messages from Facebook, about those individuals that you have been cooperating with, is not that those individuals posting have chosen companions to send messages to (ie my mom, I suppose).
What I mean is that when my mother is happy to leave a comment on a post, say, composed by a cousin of hers or by an aunt, with my dad’s account, the reason emails from Facebook come back to him with reminders is that my mother has initiated contact, with his account, with those family members, it is not because those family members want emails sent to him and to her (my mom and dad).
The drawback I personally have run into on Facebook is that I have that one friend who reacts to lots of the posts I do put up. He’s bizarre. I know there’s a cliched perception that if your mother is reading what you are posting on Facebook, you are dealing with trouble, but to that end I don’t remember too many times that the account that my mom and dad use came back with reactions to my posts.
My mom is good that way. Lots of times, I am dropping posts with little to no engagement, although I have an idea what works to at least merit a little bit of a reaction.
Many people prescribing what’s called a dopamine detox suggest staying off social media. Sometimes they say they never felt better after getting away from Facebook for a while (better, or clearer-headed).
I don’t think my mom ever felt Facebook was a problem among me and my brother and my sister. We aren’t children.
My mom doesn’t like me eating too much junk food, but she doesn’t raise objections to too much Facebook use. It just isn’t that Facebook is the problem its detractors say it is.
I doubt that Zuckerberg is the disrupter that Jesse Eisenberg plays him as in the David Fincher film. That really is great cinema. The brilliance of the ambiguity of the conclusion of the film leaves you with the knowledge of how the film’s events next played out in the real world and leaves the audience to ask an existential question, about the value of what Zuckerberg has done.
Jessie Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg is the Nietzschean overman who makes a brave journey, a very satisfying ideology. I find Facebook pleasant and harmless. Occasionally if I come on too strong, for a stranger’s liking, I get rebuked, but usually, I pick safe moves that don’t rock the boat too much.
The Social Network
Compared to both Facebook and Instagram, where the drawbacks are becoming ugly to discuss, I retain an optimistic view of Twitter, and I respect the measures Jack Dorsey has implemented to deal with hate speech, which while known to be a problem on Twitter, doesn’t engender the same conversation that I know of that it does about Facebook. Twitter is actually getting so it can conceivably warn you if you are writing an incendiary tweet. It is a changing attitude for the service, for sure.
About Facebook, people say things like hate content will earn more views and that is probably true, although I don’t know why. Facebook is being blamed for allowing this. I think that a person can be more attractive if they aren’t focused on material that is hateful.
A spiritual outlook is better, I think, say, like to believe that there is good in everyone, if it is only nurtured. Hate is a terrible quality to define a person by. There is vast beauty in the world, and to spend your time on Earth consumed by hatred is not a fine way to live life.
When I was a little kid, my mother would say the cliché, “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do the same?” It’s not quite the same thing, as my mom doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with Facebook. I don’t, really, either, despite the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016, and now the Frances Haugen 60 Minutes debacle.
Perhaps those people with whom my mom chats on Facebook, though they may understand Facebook better than my mother does, do like having comments from her, and like having their posts viewed. That my mother can mentally translate Facebook use into a “chat” that is organic in the sense that people are having a catch-up lets me know that there are probably many people who view Facebook, and Facebook Messenger, the same as that.
The mental concept of Facebook automatically translates into a natural style of conversation instead of being too robotic, which is old hat for anybody who can remember the days that Internet chat was a chief part of the Internet’s function, whether that was AOL or MSN Messenger, or, these days, Facebook Messenger.
Perhaps my participation in services like MSN Messenger back in the day helped elucidate for my mother how it is that Internet chat goes, but it is more likely that talk with my sister Kaite is what educated my mother into an understanding of Internet chat, as Kaite thinks of herself as an early adopter of Facebook.
Like a feedback loop, my sister’s instruction to my mother brought round for me insight into how people view Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Other people must have similar reactions when they are becoming familiar with it. While I would have understood it regularly given my experience on MSN Messenger as everybody had in the 2000s, I too feel that I am right as rain about how it is to be on Facebook, but not at the expense of how I feel it is to be part of a community inside Facebook.
The problem is the question of whether Facebook will keep a good enough reputation for itself among most Internet users around the world. Though my mom’s understanding of Facebook is probably largely due to my sister’s help, I think my mom is right that she sees the use of Facebook in a simple but useful light. None of that would be going on without my sister’s words of explanation for my mother and father.
I should remember that when I am writing emails to Kaite. Respect due, Kaite is married and has a little one at home, and has been working in the city of London, England, where their family resides.
My mom may discourage junk food, but Facebook is right by her. I remember my high school librarian who referred to many works of fiction as being “ice cream reading,” meaning they weren’t high-value books. Funny how that is.
You’re welcome to like this post, follow my blog, and leave comments. All the best, especially if you are on Facebook. If you want to contact me by email, you can, at the personal email patrickcoholan@hotmail.com
My personal Facebook account is https://www.facebook.com/findingenvirons Don’t think you can be affected? Give it a go. I hope you have a great Halloween this season.
These days papers like the Washington Post say things like how confusing deepfakes are. As Twitter became X, what was a notable social media turf suddenly was revealed to be populated by bots as much as people, speaking generally, and it felt very much more, at least in my case, to be of a fringe opinion, not the same user I was. Like a Phish concert but with more grievance, this is what it’s like at a Trump rally
The issue made of TikTok‘s conduct is that TikTok is a doorway for China to collect unwarranted data on TikTok users.
The perspective on the deal moving TikTok from China to the U.S. was rounded out by someordinarygamers, whodid videos about it. The emcee at someordinarygamers:
What people say on the Internet, so many people communicate on the Internet about fringe. Mutahar, called someordinarygamers on YouTube, is into things like PC gaming, but he also looks at Internet issues. Mutahar has a sense of humour, whether perhaps navigating Minecraft gravel or a cringe X thread.
You can see the difference between an ambitious young TikTokker aiming for fame and a fringe TikTokker just kind of shouting out to whoever. It isn’t a subtle distinction.
Do you enjoy Star Wars? The first film I watched with Disney+ was The Empire Strikes Back.
Star Wars, the highest-grossing film of 1977, can be quoted with, “It was as if a million voices cried out in pain/And were suddenly silenced.”
Obi-Wan laments this to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker aboard the Millennium Falcon, as they search for Princess Leia. The Imperial Sith Lord Darth Vader has already kidnapped her. At that moment, the Death Star, under Vader’s and Grand Moff Tarkin’s command, has just destroyed her home planet, and Obiwan feels it, thanks to The Force.
“oh no!”
That’s how it would have been if the Trump administration had succeeded in banning TikTok. One issue is that the Chinese government is trading off U.S. security issues. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, in China.
In Silicon Valley, Facebook was like the best idea in the world in 2004, something that had an impact on people’s behaviour all over the world.
David Fincher’s 2010 film The Social Network is masterful. Fincher’s film may not contain an account of the devastation of the planet of Alderaan, but with The Social Network, you get an appreciation of how Facebook has the capacity among people, around the planet, to be for them an addictive experience.
When a gallant Jedi Knight, Darth Vader was tempted, turned into a Sith Lord, and drove the Empire’s annihilation of the Jedi Order
Orwellian means normal for the works of George Orwell, particularly regarding a future extremist state. An algorithm is a mathematical formula, and when used in the context of social media, the term refers to a method of delivering content to targeted audiences.
Whenever a voice seeks to communicate itself, it appears to be reliant on that. Without autonomy, it would be, in my opinion, a boring billboard.
There is a surplus of goods consigned and the ordinary. Should news info be professionally packaged, light on ads, accurate and not misleading, and properly researched and based in reality?
Every individual who likes YouTube encounters this hiccup. Trying to make a living as a YouTuber…: when creators on YouTube aren’t getting through, the views on their videos slow down.
The most valuable currency on the Internet is data. Nonetheless, stipends should be provided to a periphery that is entitled to speak equally freely with the dominant media.
“oh no!”
We all should practice diligence using social media.
“oh no!”
the substance should be: consistent, helpful, appropriate, extraordinary, excellent, new, educative, client- and organization-driven, captivating, intriguing, to change, not difficult to scrutinize and share
If you are interested, you can “like,” “follow,” or comment. Good luck if you blog.
WordPress Discover has returned for April 2020, and this week the writer Michelle Weber has taken Discover bloggers on a wander, with a word every day, to get bloggers looking at shared encounters. Today’s word is “bite” and, while I don’t like to offer advice, one phenomenon I have observed is that, by the time you are responding to somebody’s food on the Internet you know that you’ve reached a rhythm where likely the best you can do is effect what positive change that person contributed, and go from there. I would prefer not to seem as though I’m presenting a false rationale.
It’s a perception given the fame of those sorts of delineations. The inclination I have is to connect cautiously when nourishment is in question, and I’ve had the experience of family, kinfolk mentioning objective facts on the Internet of what they’re keen on eating, individuals that you could never avoid, and even with them, I attempt to evade a lot of input on their dishes.
Adage
Suit yourself. Ideally, you’re not inhabiting a scene of the TV show Survivor. However, a decent approach is to sit about and eat.
You don’t have to do a huge amount of that. A drink may improve the pot, yet not to the degree you’re under the table, I’m certain, and there ought to be openings where no such cure is important.
I’m a hopeful person. I wouldn’t deliberately steer you wrong.
As today’s Discover essay points out, it’s a Saturday, and while it doesn’t touch on the holiday, you probably know that it’s the Saturday before Easter Sunday. Trouble or not, I am making my usual jaunt tomorrow, to my mom and dad’s house, to celebrate our faith. It will take us faith to get through this.
Sometimes, to write a blog post, I turn to a random generator to help develop an idea.I am steadfast of the belief that “everything is a remix” and go from there.
Several years ago, when my godmother was visiting, she observed that “it’s all been done.”
Her mom, my grandma, a long time back, each year, on New Year’s Eve, would keep an eye on us while my folks were celebrating the New Year. As I am the oldest, I enjoyed the privilege of staying up with my grandmother and watching the ball drop at Times Square.
We would have a cup of tea together. It’s been over twenty years since she passed on.
I was reading a blog Monday night, by an NYC blogger, Beauty Beyond Bones, who reflects on everything Jesus does for her.
The Beauty Beyond Bones blog goes live three times a week, I believe, both Monday and Thursday evenings, which are her regular event, and Wednesdays, her recipe-sharing. Good eating is one serving of Beauty Beyond Bones’ expertise. I doubt she would have it any other way.
Monday, the Beauty Beyond Bones blog pointed out that while, characteristically, astrology and the Law of Attraction tend to pull in people who are searching for answers, that may not be The Way, to put a Taoist label on that kind of struggle.
Beauty Beyond Bones put up a link Monday to an awesome webcast where she typifies her biography. You may see her blog for yourself:
It did occur to me that, if anybody noticed how I was handling myself, there was a good chance that I would not know that person much longer. I presume, regardless of how much development I appreciate, I will consistently have that sense to want to be a crypt keeper.
When I was a boy and had a different sense of the theatrical, I liked to be the Dungeon Master. There is no shortage of folk interested in games like D & D. The game’s monsters, the undead, and Medusa.
Whether I can accommodate various aspects of my mental self-portrait with what is most critical, presently, is something I think about. I am trying to put this in more simple terms than is easy, in pursuit of something intangible. It’s not an idea that comes easy.
If you blog and you’re on WordPress, that’s wonderful!
One of the defining phenomena of the present times reshaping the world, as we know it, is the worldwide accessibility to the net. This phenomenon has not only yielded explosive growth in social media and digital technology awareness but has also created a wide variety of new tactics for potentially easy manipulation and diversion for political gain. However, Big Tech’s monopolization over digitized activity does add an interesting dimension to our present-day socio-political scenarios globally – especially in America!
In Canada, the Globe and Mail reported on JUNE 21, 2020 that TikTok, and devotees of Korean popular music, the once swelling participation at a not exactly full field at U.S. President Donald Trump’s first political meet in quite a while held in Tulsa, Oklahoma was checked when Trump’s team later denied TikTokkers had anything to do with the lackluster turnout for the rally. They did speak to the possibility that, in 2022, TikTok may hold the key to a more comprehensive understanding of Generation Z, compared to Google.
J. Clement, September 4, 2019, One of the defining phenomena of the present times reshaping the world as we know it, is the worldwide accessibility to the internet. The lovechild of the World Wide Web is social media, which comes in many forms, including blogs, forums, business networks, photo-sharing platforms, social gaming, microblogs, chat apps, and last but not least social networks. In 2019, the global social penetration rate reached 45 percent, with East Asia and North America both having the highest penetration rate at 70 percent, followed by Northern Europe at 67 percent.
Could you call Web 1.0 the grassroots of the Internet?
The real threat to western democracy isn’t Russia, Facebook or Cambridge Analytica. It’s us. Because so-called “cyber meddling” only works if a nation’s population has zero media literacy skills. No one is “hijacking” our democracy. We’d already abandoned it.
The initial release of TikTok was in September 2016. By 2020, TikTok had been downloaded more than 130 million times in the United States, and 2 billion times worldwide —en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok
TikTok outperformed Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram to become the world’s most downloaded iOS application. “The biggest trend in Chinese social media is dying, and another has already taken its place,” CNBC said –Tuesday, September 18, 2018
The Internet in China was altered, and there is an evident issue of whether determined weights are adding to control at TikTok. At the point when the Cambridge Analytica embarrassment started to require that web-based media be inspected and maintained, it made sense that TikTok could by and by be under a similar kind of increasingly unavoidable restriction. Even so, today the U.S. Senate is asking if they should be mad at it.
I am really still kind of a proud creator on Facebook and respect the firm.
Regardless, it is discussed what Elon Musk has presented about his own Twitter‘s suppression of information in 2020, it seems that Twitter is far from blameless. Big Tech is always treated with suspicion. Musk’s attitude seems to be that Facebook is them and X is us, but they do seem to compete over who is richest.
TikTok is home to countless videos, so it isn’t shocking that the government in Canada and in the U.S. has unrooted what you might say are ostensibly difficult censorship issues.
If 2030 sees social media dead and buried, that’s some of the best opportunities and liberties on the Internet fallen by the wayside.
Like
most, I remember the years of maturity coming into adulthood,
reaching your late teens, and then beginning your twenties, I
remember experiences of those years more favorably than other times.
I sometimes remember those years more favorably than, indeed, they
may have been.
I remember one night, the summer of the year 2000 it could have been, that I decided a change of scenery would do me good. I sneaked off to Toronto for a night of bands and the like, being then a smidgen wilder then than I am today.
The
night was unique, for different reasons, but wouldn’t you know that
when the witching hour was upon me, I had begun to make friends with
a couple of other young guys, cool to me for their moxie–would you
say there’s a three-letter-word for that? The two young gents told
me where we could get something to drink, to keep the night lively.
For nothing too expensive, we could keep having a good time.
We
were enjoying another band, where I’d never been, with a glass of
moonshine and the two of them the same, until one of the boys told
me, awfully, that some other patrons had brought a gun, and we should
go. That unnerved me, unfortunately, so caution prevailed.
Photographer: One Idea LLC
I bid the two a polite goodbye, leaving them with my number back home in the suburbs, this being only the year 2000 I recollect. It was my parents’ number, for a later time to summon me to meet again.
The
last few remaining hours of the night I spent, sadly, like a
derelict, waiting for the morning transit. What is memorable,
though, I twenty years later is that of the times I made a commute
like that, this night, the one I am recounting, and some other nights
like that, are typical of what shape my favorite memories of that
time in my life.
It’s a brief story–you might not believe it. However, I think I could recall, maybe, a thousand specific experiences from those years. It is interesting what people interpret as memorable. I wanted this morning to touch base with those folk I connect with on WordPress.
While the protests and the petition signatures were clear, the directive to restrict copyrighted material, known as Article 13 in the EU, received a “yes.”
Video on YouTube will likely no longer include “remixed” content once individual nations of the EU establish how they’re going to legislate protection for mainstream media, its images, film clips, and music. For years now, the Internet has taken liberties in the name of freedom, to borrow from established media and then return to it transformative work, for the purpose of review, satire, parody and other kinds of humour. This will likely end.
On YouTube, content filters for video uploads could become stodgy, and uninventive. Removing freedoms to speak with ideas recycled from mainstream media inhibits Internet creators’ ability to articulate. These come in the form of memes, even when it is an upset to the original, and identities in solidarity with views closely held to championed archetypes. In the face of traditional media protected by Article 17 in the EU, emerging voices can and will fall by the wayside.
School bus pausing at Louth United Church, St. Catharines
If the nations of the EU no longer can upload or view content that contains copyrighted elements, for YouTube, a platform that facilitates hundreds of millions of hours of new and original video every day, doors are closing for what is a livelihood for hardworking creators.
In addition, the possibility that social accounts would be charged fees to link to web pages is a terrible limitation for small bloggers, with pages that have no hope of affording such a privilege. This was the spring, of 2019, when Articles 11 and 13 became Article 17. There is every possibility that the restrictions on uploading copyrighted content in the EU will drift into the same freedoms available regardless of where the Internet is accessed and overtake them.
A content filter is complex; it could be, despite how valuable original content is for Google and for Facebook and Twitter, that content filters will only function effectively if they are applied universally, and not just in the EU. This could be a matter of months or years from now, but the challenges facing the EU, by creators on YouTube, and users enjoying social, and the right of Google to chart the world as it’s understood online, should be informing you. You should at least consider the possibility that you need to be informed.
Article 17 will heavily favour the promotion of mainstream media. Independent voices will lose the opportunity to include portions of copyrighted media, and this could mean a “talking head” style of video on YouTube rather than video containing the freedoms we enjoy now. All art and video would be required to be free of copyrighted material, which I think is a practical impossibility.
There are creators who thrive on the “remix” of media images or industry music or PC games. Formerly, they were smart enough to make a living doing that, and exceptionally. Their opportunities are going to disappear.
The outcome of Article 17 in the EU is only just beginning to take shape, but there will be changes for Facebook and Twitter and YouTube that Article 13 is necessitating, the requirement to filter content video users upload. Users on the Internet, with the support of the infrastructure of YouTube and Google, will have to strategize differently once Article 17 goes into effect. It is a sea change.
You are welcome to “like” this post, follow the blog, and/or leave a comment. Whatever your age, if you are interested in tech, you stand alongside the brightest minds challenging the narrative of the mainstream media.
By video research, I mean watching video content to gain information about a topic. To render the inscrutable meaningful, I am trying to re-envision specific ideas I have about video research. To try to make this fun, I am re-envisioning 15 ways that the progress I try to make utilizing video research actually makes an impact (for me).
This will include examples of why it is I am conjecturing the phrase video research isn’t dropped onto the page constantly.
The first thing that I am focusing on is when I actively became aware of the possibility of video research. You might say the stars aligned (nearly) and I think it was when I was compelled by my younger friend B. pointing out that I could listen to youths crying out with the Internet. This is so sensitive. In my defense, I both saw I could get into hard-to-tackle specifics with a computer, and also I discarded the idea to pursue B.’s style of research, which is a misnomer, as it wasn’t video being researched, it was more like gamer hack-and-slash. In B.’s defense, he became a teacher for a living. [I hope he is still doing that. He dropped off Facebook a long time ago (without an explanation).]
With an awareness like that, it has to be tempered with the recognition that humans require respect. Interesting uses of Internet video express things which are unfathomable and also perhaps too sensitive to extrapolate. The very most interesting experiences with the Internet, I think, and when outside elements of the world beyond the Internet enter and, I suppose, reflect the viewer experiencing the video, which is hard to concisely explain. If there is a simple explanation for this, perhaps from lecture halls or elsewhere, and you know of such a thing, forgive me. Leave me a comment if you like. On the simplest level, people can leave user comments for a creator who responds. I am pretty sure I have a few variations of that straightforward element of the Internet.
I think in 2018 WordPress turned 15 years old, didn’t it? A technique for growing your blog readership, if you’re on WordPress, is to leave user comments on other bloggers’ work. The point is that if you do this respectfully and consistently, eventually sympathetic or otherwise interested bloggers who you have contacted will reciprocate by interacting with you. Now you may ask me, and I am prepared for this in the eventuality it happens, “How do you know that? You don’t seem to have much readership of note.” “Yes,” I will reply, not impudently, “but I simply have not devoted the focus to constantly read blogs and interact with them. My blog, as yet, is an amateur effort.” At that point, I hope you do not disappear abruptly, although if this is the case, that is fine, as I hope to better strategize in 2019 than I have in the past.
I hope to pursue this as long as it is a possibility. What I’ve observed is that WordPress techniques are not the same as those on a more characteristically “social” platform. I would argue that during what I’ve learned, I’ve enjoyed the process. I am tempted to leave this point there and then, but even with confirmation bias indicating that if I am predisposed to a set of beliefs that highly values an “art for art’s sake” attitude, the argument I want to make is that this specific confirmation bias is perfectly fine and I want to run with it in 2019. How then, what can you, you might ask, do to make your blog more readable? Well, you can take it on Facebook and ask people you’ve met to read it. That’s a tactic that can help you start a blog and potentially get results that are interesting for you.
We’re beginning to talk about video research, but the first thing I think of trying to approach something that’s sensitive is some obvious problems coming up right away. These fifteen points are geared to getting your attention away from what you should do with the video you watch, and what you are already doing with your blog, or how it is you could start a blog. The conclusion that can be drawn, and it’s not science, but a method, is that you can draw on video research to formulate something that you’d like people to read and you can put it on WordPress.
I had quite a bit to say just to introduce this, so I am ending this post shortly below and picking up in the next blog post.
This first part of the 15 ways has been about a few generalities that have worked for me and a few tips that could apply to what you are doing.
These first five points are trying to get to the point, saying you can take video, turn it into blog content, get a running start with your blog, and go from there. I am going to return with what shall be two more posts, aiming to illustrate ten more ways that you can do something more with video than just watch it.
Thanks for reading.
When I last asked my niece to let me have a photo, she was in high gear to play a frivolous game of Candy Land. She suggested I show her in the midst of unpacking the enduring board game. My niece is in the third grade.
“Tea parties” have been at the forefront of The Little Mermaid blog the last five months. These are blogging challenges that span the entirety of each month. These are free and encourage participants to blog on a specific theme along with the rest of those joining in.
This month The Little Mermaid has asked her participants for their thoughts on travel. Where have you traveled? the Little Mermaid asks. What’s the best part?
What’s the worst part? What tips might you offer up to someone grappling with wanderlust?
The furthest-reaching of my travel experience was done in my life in the nineteen nineties. I have traveled to the United States, to the United Kingdom, to France, and to Belgium. These are the countries where I have gone, done in my adolescence and later in my early twenties.
The best part was the excitement of going to locations completely new. For example, when I was going to the United States, passing through Detroit, seeing Walt Disney World in Orlando (and cheating a touch by going through Universal Studios, too). Spending a little time in Chicago, staying with family in Nashville, visiting a friend in Portland, Maine, lodging in a traveler’s stop in Memphis, visiting New Orleans, visiting New York, all this was great. I was seeing a little more of the world.
One of the happiest times in my life was my twenty-first birthday, an important birthday if you are an American, in Memphis, Tennessee.
I would say I was taking a “walkabout” on that birthday, and it made for several nice weeks. My father’s brother-in-law thought of the label for what I’d done. He mentioned it to me at the wedding of one of my cousins, at the reception. The gentleman, my godfather, mentioned to me what he said was spoke about by aboriginals in Australia, a country I’ve never seen.
Years earlier, spending days at Walt Disney World in 1991 was a fine time. The members of my particularly as my immediate family went aboard “Star Tours,” an interactive cinematic ride like being in a Star Wars spaceship.
It was very exciting as come 1987 I’d got to VCR-record a tenth-anniversary television presentation of Star Wars on Fox. At that age, ten, Star Wars was my favorite film.
The worst part of travel, I’d offer to say, is the end of the “moment” when the time for travel ends, as it generally does, and it becomes time to return to more ordinary things wherever you are spending your life. For me, I live life in the gritty small town of St. Catharines, in the Canadian province of Ontario.
What I know at my age, which is something like an unfulfilled forty, is that if you are in the midst of wanderlust, you should listen to the word itself and observe what is the best part of life in most circumstances–the people you meet and how they take to you. I know I have not had the luckiest of experiences in my travels. I felt unprepared for Nashville, my handsome friend in Portland eventually killed himself, I believe, despite his promise and ambition as a musician, the lodge in Memphis finally burned to the ground, where I’d left friends behind, my idea to hustle in New York led to me being escorted out of a nightclub where I had thought to pose as an NYC resident.
These weren’t great times, especially when I returned to St. Catharines from New York and my girlfriend was angry with me when I told her how it had gone.
When I saw London, England, though, in 1999, when Y2K was only months away, it was exciting, but even with my experiences in America under my belt, I felt quite the novice with only a little money in my pocket and quite clearly to locals a foreigner. My embarrassment deepened in Paris, the City of Lights, when I realized I was in my youth and seeing the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile. I knew it would never come again, and I’d been learning French since the third grade and could barely communicate in it–it was as if my aspirations were quickly coming to naught, and I was overwhelmed by the absurdity.
Photographer: Bruce Mars
I didn’t spend much time in Belgium, but I liked it a little better than France, enjoying chocolate and also seeing grim war trenches from World War I when Belgium soldiers defended their nation from Germany.
Eventually, my younger sister married a Belgium gentleman. That was a nice occasion. Here is a photo I took at the wedding ceremony.
My sister’s wedding
The photo of myself I am showing is of a time in 2003 in a hotel in St. Catharines. I was meeting up with the friend who had introduced me to MySpace (before it blew up to become entropy) and speaking, as intended, of American writer Charles Bukowski, the beauty of whose work she wanted to impress upon me.
She and her boyfriend were gracious visitors. It was, again, a “moment.”
Image: Julie Rippl
I am grateful to The Little Mermaid for thinking of these tea party posts that are interesting for me and for other bloggers on WordPress to organize new blog posts. If you are a touch keen on this, feel free to “like,” to follow, and/or to comment. I wish you well if you travel yourself, and, what’s more, I wish you luck if you have a blog.
The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 