What 80s Hits Do Sarah Palin's Tweets Remind YOU Of? @3:31 PM
This is why Sarah Palin is the best at what she does: In a simple, 140-word burst of text she can evoke both the beginning of Whitney Houston's "So Emotional" and that Berlin song from Top Gun, all while distorting what Nancy Pelosi actually said. Admit it, the gal's a pro. 15
King And Queen Of France Latest Victims Of Internet Experiment @10:00 AM
You may have seen some news concerning French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, who are supposedly both having affairs (perhaps delivered with the headline, "French People Being French"). How did this fascinating story become a worldwide sensation? READ MORE 6
"37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter." @11:50 AM 7
"According to Don Ambrose, a Rider University professor who studies creative intelligence, incubation is most effective when it involves exposing the mind to entirely novel information rather than just relieving mental pressure. This encourages creative association, the mashing together of seemingly unrelated concepts — a key step in the creative process…. A random scrap of information can trigger just the right conceptual collision. It’s hard to know which scrap might do the trick, but that’s the beauty of social networks — they constantly produce potential sparks, for free."
—Wired's Brendan Koerner tries to convince you that you are not wasting your time when you mess around on Facebook and Twitter. Or The Awl, for that matter! @2:10 PM 10
Great Moments In Jewish Comedy @2:18 PM
Ha, the folks at the Israeli embassy in the UK have a terrific sense of humor! They are actually talking about the results of a tennis match, but the joke is that you are supposed to think they are admitting to a highly controversial assassination that has caused a major diplomatic altercation. See, this is why everyone says the Jews are a funny people. 6
The Brightest Minds of Our Time Leave Messages for the Ages @9:20 AM
What happens if, after the machines take over, or we just blow ourselves up, the only record left of our society is the servers that hold the planet's Twitter output? What then? 7
Cory Booker Shovels Wrong @1:35 PM
Our verdict: insufficient alcohol lubrication prior to shoveling. 5
The Gangs Of Twitter @11:30 AM
Call me when they start using Foursquare: "Tech-savvy gangsters have long been at home in chatrooms and on Web sites like MySpace, but they appear to be gravitating toward Twitter and Facebook, where they can make threats, boast about crimes, share intelligence on rivals and network with people across the country." 2
Snapshot Of A Moment In Time @2:00 PM
Trending topics on Twitter, 1:48 P.M., Wednesday, January 27. What an age in which we live! 2
Five Things To Do With Twitter When You Suspect You're Doing It Wrong @11:35 AM
This morning, someone asked: what the heck should one do with my Twitter account? She was afraid she was doing it wrong, that it had gone all stale or whiny or boresies. (That may be the case, but really, only you can decide if you are doing Twitter wrong! Let your conscience be your guide.) We have a few pro tips on shaking things up. READ MORE 34
How much of Alec Baldwin's character on "30 Rock" is based on former GE head Jack Welch? Here is some evidence that says "quite a bit." @1:30 PM 4
Apparently there was some kind of kerfuffle over an article about Twitter in Vanity Fair? Gawker's Doree Shafrir addresses the controversy and its implications for 21st century feminism here. [Be warned, though: This post also includes spoilers for Leap Year, Daybreakers, and the first episode of the new season of "Lost" (Hurley dies).] @3:10 PM 34
The End of the 00s: Noted, Without Noteworthiness, by Rob Walker @3:31 PM
Just the other night I was watching Anderson Cooper's variety show on CNN, and right before a commercial break, Mr. Cooper showed about seven seconds of wobbling and grainy footage of a burning truck speeding down a highway. "A burning truck on a highway," he said (or words to that effect). He looked, and sounded, very concerned. "We'll tell how it happened, and where, right after this." READ MORE 22
The Terrible Story Of Shellie Ross (And Everyone Else) @1:10 PM
Conor Friedersdorf has a thoughtful post up at The Daily Dish about the angry reaction to that awful story of Shellie Ross, the Florida blogger who tweeted the drowning death of her two-year-old son just 34 minutes after it happened. READ MORE 96
Cheery Talking Head Delivers Sad News, 00's Version @10:00 AM
Why Journalists Should Think Hard About Their Twitter Wallpaper: A small but excellent point! 9
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: Sister, You're A Poet @12:10 PM
So last Sunday I read an op-ed in the Times, where some dude argues in favor of Catholic priests saying Mass, while facing the direction opposite of the congregation. Now, this op-ed was most wacky to me not because of anything inherently awkward about facing away from the people you're talking to. (But, yes.) Or because Kenneth J. Wolfe assumes that there is very much of a congregation these days not to face. (Ha, I think.) But because I remember learning back in high school that the Catholic Church had already reversed this practice once before. READ MORE 9
New Album Title Sends Internet Into Hideous Racial Tailspin @4:15 PM
So a new Tyga mixtape is coming out (he is a rapper!), called Black Thoughts, and then it became a Twitter tag, and then someone made one called #whitethoughts, and now the ENTIRE INTERNET is mad at each other. (Except most of the Internet, who is laughing their asses off.) I'm not saying anything here, but I'm just saying. 21
Neil Patrick Harris Is The Best Person @12:30 PM
So I am obsessed with Neil Patrick Harris on Twitter. Now, he's no Black People when it comes to the sheer awesomeness of the topics or as suspiciously organized as Mommy Bloggers but him and his majorly adorbs Dr. Horrible avatar has been on there for a day and a half, has 108,683 followers, follows only five supernerdly but crazypopular people like Felicia Day who has 1,562,018 followers and then this one guy from Atlanta, Georgia, named Dodd Vickers who I'm pretty sure NPH follows because they're Internet friends brought together by a mutual love of magic. HEART. 13
Sarah Palin Is Moving On @4:05 PM
Mark it down in your RSS readers! I sure hope she keeps all the tacky design elements from the original. 11
Whatever your feelings on the "shitmydadsays" twitter feed being developed as a television show, can we at least all agree that the phrase "Twitcom" is unacceptable? Thanks. @12:20 PM 8
Twitter Trends Last Night @9:00 AM
Yesterday, some people had questions about Twitter trending topics and their volume. Here is an overnight chart of data from four of last night's topics, in percentage of total Tweets. (The remaining number of Tweets were pretty much about cats, how annoying housecleaning is, Joss Whedon and things people wrote on the Huffington Beast.) 5
What Were Black People Talking About on Twitter Last Night? @9:34 AM
At the risk of getting randomly harshed on by the Internet, I cannot keep quiet about my obsession with Late Night Black People Twitter, an obsession I know some of you other white people share, because it is awesome. The only reason that White People Twitter knows about Black People Twitter is because when you white people wake up on the East Coast or when you go to bed late on the West Coast, the trending topics are hilarious chat-memes, ruling the trending topics, and yes, last night's was the very funny #uainthittinitright. There was even for a time a blog devoted to racist backlash to Black People Twitter that, unfortunately, stopped publishing this summer. See, now, MySpace and Facebook and (LOL) Friendster didn't have anything to bring different worlds together. Your "social network" was only yours, and there wasn't enough chaos in the system to bridge networks—you never know what's going on outside your stupid little bubble. And Black People Twitter isn't the noise in the signal that Twitter is trying to leach out—it's huge, organic and it is seemingly seriously nocturnal. Except it's really not. READ MORE 47
Sunny Day, Sweepin' The Clouds Away @9:49 AM
Good morning indeed. And don't worry, #thingsdarkiessay is not meant to be racist! Because it's South African, and you know how that works. Maine, on the other hand… 7
Muttonhead Vandal Collared by Oz Fuzz: Krylon-Huffing Idiot Twitter Fingers to Blame. @3:50 PM
I have a soft spot for graffiti artists. I realize I am one of maybe four people who still give a shit about the art form but I genuinely adore a few of them and take great pleasure in their stories and perusing through their piecebooks. And while I'm sure a couple of them really are vile fingerless glove wearing derelicts who are bloated with street cred while starving to death on building stoops, stinking of diseased pee and dithering about how real New York was SO REAL, others have gone on to becoming brilliant fine artists, making stupid amounts of money, owning property, and having lots to lose. And yet the tie that binds is that there will always be this COMPULSION to get up. Especially when out of town. Especially when out of continent, like if you were being flown out to melanoma land a.k.a. Prison Island a.k.a. Australia, where it feels like law doesn't exist since people are too squat in discipline to say "afternoon" instead saying webbed-toe shit like "arvo." I think it's sort of excusable to think their vandal squad maybe hadn't figured out how to follow you on Twitter. But man, I wish REVOK hadn't Tweeted his exact when and whereabouts. Especially about going to the airport right when he was going to the airport. He could be back in California stuffing his face full of Tim Tams. Stupid fingers. 5
Chris Brown Defends His Pants @3:30 PM
Here is the cover for Chris Brown's new album, Graffiti. Needless to say, it has been subject to much ridicule. Here is what Chris Brown himself says on the Twitter. (My favorite part is the lower-case second sentence.) 
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Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: The Big Book of Friends @4:21 PM
So remember how someone clever-ish wrote that with respect to social networking, Facebook is like your home and Twitter is a bar? That is, Facebook is for friends, family, Farmville and Mafia Wars. Twitter is for David Carr and Rainn Wilson tweeting movie titles, but with one letter off. You know: "Annie Hell" instead of Annie Hall, or "Chafing Amy" instead of Chasing Amy. Or "The Frying Game." (Spoiler alert: the egg has two yolks.) The possibilities are, like with any good bar game, endless. And also like This or That, Will It Float?, and Categories, the possibilities are also only funny or fun if you're hammered, or if you're Sarah Silverman. Somehow "Children of the Coon" works at all hours coming from her, and doesn't work coming from me.
But lately Facebook has been turning into a bar too—specifically, a bar the night before Thanksgiving. READ MORE 44
