I wonder what William Thackeray would think if he knew that his seminal 19th century novel was now being used to hock pop culture magazines, paper napkins, and underwear.
Reverse Turing tests
I’ve been watching FailRace‘s Survive the Hunt series recently, and it’s fascinating. Dennis and his friends have invented a fundamentally new kind of hide and seek. They start by jumping into GTA 5, an online game with a convincing simulation of a busy city. They turn off the map, names, and other indicators that show where players are. Dennis gets a head start, changes his clothes, finds a new car, and tries to blend in with the AI-controlled traffic and pedestrians going about their business. His friends team up and try to find him.
Most of them grab cars and race around the city, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious or out of place. A few find helicopters and blimps and take to the skies, tracking the action from above. They communicate in a group voice chat, coordinating their search and calling out sightings: make and model of car he’s driving, clothes he’s wearing, where he’s headed. Continue reading
OH: “I stopped eating pork because I followed a pig on Twitter and then I felt bad.”
5 year old had two nightmares last night. First: falling off a tall cliff. Second: unicorn with a broken horn. 😂 🦄
Okay, so I am a millennial, but I am an elder! Elder millennial! Wizened. Sage. Yes, gather ’round the Snapchat, children. I’ll tell you the tale…of the landline.
A few days ago, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter, added them all to a list, and I now read that list instead. It’s shockingly better. Only their own tweets and retweets, in order. No ads, no “liked by,” no “people you may know,” no engagement hacking crap. It’s glorious.
Even better, when I inevitably end up in the home timeline anyway, it only has my own tweets and ads, nothing interesting. No dopamine outrage bullshit cycle to get caught up in.
Shh, don’t tell, I’m afraid some low level product manager at Twitter will discover this and “fix” lists like they “fixed” the home timeline a while back.
There are a couple drawbacks. I lost a few people I followed whose accounts are protected; I need to find and re-follow them. Also this evidently makes it harder for people to DM me, somehow. Not sure how, I don’t use Twitter DM much.
Still. Glorious.
5 year old: “You can’t just get into a spaceship and blast off to the stars. You have to ask your parents first.”
‘Do you have cash on you?’
‘I never have cash on me.’
‘We’re thinking of taking away cash.’
‘No, you can’t take away cash!’
‘But you don’t have cash.’
‘But if I want cash you should have cash.’
‘But you never have cash!’
He leaned back and smiled. “You get into a kind of cash twenty-two situation.”
I’ve discovered one of my superpowers at work: shippable bad ideas.
Not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed. Sorry…not sorry?