The Memes Disperse
[air horn] [air horn] [air horn] [emergency siren] [emergency siren] We've got two big announcements about the Real Future Fair in the Bay. We'll be joined by Edward Snowden (perhaps you know him) and astronaut Mae Jemison, the first woman of color in space. Snowden is going to be talking about new things! Mostly augmented reality and democracy in virtual worlds. Jemison is going to talk about her amazing life and career. Get tickets. [air horn] [air horn] [air horn]
"An audit of the drone program, performed by Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General and released last year, suggested that money spent on the drone program could be used better on ground-based sensors and radar towers than on drones, which cost nearly $20 million each and $12,255 an hour to operate."
2. There is a whole new digital infrastructure for white supremacists now.
"Some of the most controversial social media moments of the Trump campaign have a provenance that can be traced directly back to hardcore racists like Anglin. The process goes something like this: Anglin plies 4chan waters like a fascist tastemaker, surfacing memes for his core audience. From there, the memes disperse to a more 'mainstream' conservative readership, often through transfer points such as Breitbart, a top destination for readers leaving The Daily Stormer. During the course of the election, Breitbart has styled itself as 'the platform for the alt-right,' as Bannon boasted this summer."
3. Nobody who has ever actually used emoji would want them to be realistic depictions of objects.
"Arguably the biggest reason for emojis’ success has to do with their lovable weirdness and limitations — the constraints that forced its users to get creative and turn emojis into a language of their own. Emoji originated in Japan, and its culturally specific character set, with inscrutable inclusions (at least to non-Japanese users) like a video game controller, two (two!) compact discs, a bunch of fax machines, and lots of plugs and microscopes and envelopes with arrows all over them made the glyphs feel like a cool, weird discovery."
4. People were also drunk all the time, horses only occasionally.
"In 1896 Alfred Sennett warned, 'We should not overlook the fact that the driving of a horseless carriage calls for a larger amount of attention for he has not the advantage of the intelligence of the horse in shaping his path, and it is consequently incumbent upon him to be ever watchful of the course his vehicle is taking.' Distracted driving is the number one cause of accidents today, so maybe it wasn’t a bad point. Although he was forgetting automobiles actually had brakes, unlike a horse and cart—and they didn’t scare."
"Many scientists, like other professionals, say that there aren’t enough hours in the day. ('My cohort, we feel exhausted,' said one Generation X scientist, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his career.) In the past two months, López-Honorato says, he has averaged four hours of sleep per night. He and other early-career researchers are 'in a stage where our kids and partners need us the most at home,' he says. His second son is now eight months old."
1. nytimes.com 2. highline.huffingtonpost.com 3. buzzfeed.com 4. timeline.com 5. nature.com
The Memes Disperse