135 - Tweet Roundup 🗨️🐤
Hey there, !
COVID has been a slog but we better now - just have a lingering tiredness and bit of a cough but much better now - thanks everyone who checked in! I feel the road to full recovery is going to be long but we'll get there!
Anyway, on to the post.
Do you ever stop to think that different social media have different vibes?
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Facebook is like a dirty BBQ - you don't really want to touch it but sometimes you gotta knuckle down and use it so that you can hold events.
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Instagram is like a really cute puppy that needs your attention at all times, and you can't bear to put it down because when you do it makes another fun sound or endearing face so you just...stay with the puppy for as long as you can.
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Snapchat is like a fashion runway with hot people flitting by but when you look a bit closer they're actually not that hot? Like it's so fleeting that if you stay with it too long it gets weird.
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TikTok is the water slide with no end - it just goes on and on and on and on...
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Linkedin USED to be like a really shiny suit, but is now just a old-style tuxedo that you put in a display case in a Hard Rock Cafe that some people frequent like... a bit too much. Everyone else is hanging out somewhere else - probably with puppies.
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Discord is like the underground goth friend you have that introduces you to a lot of new substances but then leaves you alone to explore Berghain at 1:30am in the morning.
Twitter, on the other hand, seems to be the over-intellectualised university library where people bitch and moan about manufactured internet drama, but you also kinda get to learn stuff?
I use Twitter as my social media balm when I come up for air after strong Insta binges or before I sleep because it has 10% less dopamine hits and is therefore infinitely more boring than any of the other ones I spend all my time on. Which is great for weaning myself off my phone.
Thought it might be interesting, therefore, to share some of the bookmarked tweets / threads I've found - like I'm handing you Dewey decimal codes for this library that will help ace your exams.
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A visualisation of airborne COVID - a very disgusting and provocative look at how the air you breathe / cough into the air move around rooms and outside aeras. Watching what masks can do in such a visceral manner was fascinating.
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21 Thoughts to bring into 2022 - by Tim Urban (author of the great blog WaitButWhy). I especially like the first tweet - yes, you've missed out on lots of opportunities in the past, but you have just as many opportunities in the future to git gud.
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Graphic Design tips from Tiktok - I only interface with Tiktok on non-Tiktok social media so that the Chinese government can't steal my data. Learn some graphic design stuff!
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List of People who have lived in Airports - the 'DepthsofWiki' account finds really random stuff on Wikipedia, including this guy who has lived in the airport for 14 years. Honestly, what the fuck.
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The boardgame explainers nightmare - just FOCUS omg.
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Cadbury's Gorilla ad - EXPLAINED - such a good story, I learnt so much from this thread! The power of advertising is so strong when you get it right.
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Male and Female words - this was a fascinating thread about words that are more 'male' and others that more 'female' - anecdotally, it's real!
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NYTimes Star Trek / Wars fun crossword - a set of clues where both Star WARS and Star TREK were valid answers! Imagine coming up with this insanely cool set of clues.
Hope you find something fun!
Chat soon :)
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✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - written and directed by Guy Ritchie, found on Netflix - a movie about small-time criminals trying to repay their debts, dripping with the ambience of grungy, underworld London and hilarious 90s situations and styles. It starts slow with a lot of storylines that don't seem to have any meaning or connection to the main plot, and to be honest isn't edited super nicely (random cuts that are pretty jarring). However, the story weaves its way stealthily together to come to an incredibly satisfying ending. Have fun with this one!
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Encanto - a fantastic Disney film that I only just got around to - a great premise, a lot of catchy musical numbers (written by Lin Manuel Miranda!), and a fun story. You have to slightly turn off your brain as it's a children's movie - there were a few times where I definitely questioned some of the plot and story decisions but it's so visually beautiful that I ignored them. With this and Turning Red coming out one after another, a lot of inter-generational family trauma is being dealt with, hey?
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Playing with DALL-E 2 - readers last week mentioned DALL-E in real life to me so I thought this would be an interesting follow-up - exploration of the AI from people have got access to it. Some of them look really good, but text generation seems difficult - I love how the styles of the pictures can be ported across to all manner of things. What is art going to be like in the future?
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USB-C Hubs and my slow descent into madness - this showed me that you can essentially just buy anything you see branded for much cheaper on AliExpress, because that's probably where they've bought it anyway. The markup on branding is...insane?
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Some tiny personal programs I've written - these kinds of posts are inspirational because it's what I want to do with code - just little adjustments here and there in my life to help control the world around me. I've written little scrips that help re-map things on my keyboard, or do little batch-jobs for me, but I feel like without being an actual coder / dev I'm still limited with how much time I spend on these things...