Irish Class, February 29, 2016
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Fadas: áéíóúÁÉÍÓÚ
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| Tá saol an mhadra bháin aige. | He has it made, he has it easy. | “He has the life of the white dog (old dog?).” |
| An té a bhuailfeadh mo mhadra bhuailfeadh sé mé féin | Love me, love my dog. | “He who would hit my dog would hit me.” |
From Popularity for Purchase:
- signs and symbols did indicate something real – a message from a friend or family member whom you see and care about
- signs and symbols indicate a false reality – the early stages of Facebook, when people would beef up their friend count with casual acquaintances and friends of friends, and use Like and Follow to build up a “social network“
- Signs that are not backed up by any reality. One hires ad hoc workers to write posts for one’s Facebook page, blog, Twitter feed. One appears to be a prolific writer, well versed on news and culture. One’s friends (the real ones!) are impressed, and notice one’s growing social circle. Then one hires other ad hoc Workers to Like, Follow, and Comment on the material written by the first lot. Your Google Analytics look great; you rank high in the search engines because you hired writers who are good at SEO. Many people leave comments on your site
- One day you wake up to find that (a) no one is interacting on your site except your paid workers and (b) the content you paid for was scraped to other sites and is being used by your new paid workers to write new-old material.
The Internet once again confirms Sturgeon’s Revelation.
Why the revolution will not be tweeted, via Slashdot.
This reminded me of something a friend wrote last summer:
Facebook connected me to current friends, old friends, old non-friends, current non-friends, concert venues, my library, and dozens of other people. But these were, as Umair Haque phrased it so well, “weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.” Following all these people takes time and attention, but I have as much connection with a person who used to share deep conversation with me as I do with someone who was a passing acquaintance: not only thin, but impersonally thin.
From Despair, Inc. via Monastic Musings
Lee-Valley/Veritas® announced the Variable Gang Saw, the latest of their innovative woodworking tools announced annually on this day :-)>
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If social networking servers crash during inauguration, fine by me
There is a fear that when Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th American president on Tuesday, our population’s addiction to instant communication will cripple the networks we use for messaging.
To prepare for Inauguration Day, wireless carriers have beefed up their networks. Twitter has added servers and so has Facebook, as it hopes the increased bandwidth will prevent a crash if too many people watch and chat at the same time on its social network.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 