{"id":3575,"date":"2009-09-18T18:30:53","date_gmt":"2009-09-18T22:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3575"},"modified":"2009-09-18T18:30:53","modified_gmt":"2009-09-18T22:30:53","slug":"friday-various-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3575","title":{"rendered":"Friday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tonight, I&#8217;ll be attending a live taping of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thegreenespace.org\/thegreenespace\/events\/2009\/sep\/18\/sound-young-america-jesse-thorn\/\">The Sound of Young America<\/a>. It&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maximumfun.org\/2009\/09\/17\/tsoya-live-8pm-eastern\">streaming live<\/a> at 8 PM Eastern, if you&#8217;d like to watch too. I expect part, or all, of the show will eventually find its way into the radio show and\/or podcast.<\/li>\n<li>So how is the World, Dubai&#8217;s string of man-made paradise islands for the \u00c3\u00bcber-wealthy and famous, doing? Not too surprisingly, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/travel\/news\/article6831481.ece\">not too well<\/a>. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cynical-c.com\/\" title=\"Cynical-C\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Are Twitter users &#8220;well on their way to becoming violent, idiotic vagabonds hell-bent on destroying the world&#8221;? We can only hope! Every time I read <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5354369\/facebook-makes-your-brain-big-twitter-doesnt\">a story like this<\/a>, or one bemoaning the rise of social networking sites in general, I really don&#8217;t know how to respond, since their fears almost never match up with how I (or, I think, most people) use these things. [<a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanavan.blogspot.com\/\" title=\"Gerry Canavan\">via<\/a>] As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/one-nation-still-more-or-less-under-a-groove,32173\/?utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_campaign=feeds\">Noel Murray writes<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>This is a common critique of Twitter: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to know what a bunch of strangers had for lunch.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And yet that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so far removed from the way I use the service that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m unsure where to begin refuting it. Personally, I only follow a small group of people on Twitter, and I have a limited circle of friends of Facebook. Most of these are people I know\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor at least know <i>of<\/i>. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking to each other about things we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re presumably all interested in; we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re sharing quick thoughts on movies, TV, kids, and the petty annoyances and subtle joys of a passing day. The other day one of my Twitter-followers\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsomeone <i>I<\/i> don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t follow, I hasten to note\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcomplained that he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like me having a six-or-seven-Tweet exchange with a friend and thereby \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cluttering up his feed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And all I could think was, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dude, following me is not compulsory.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what critics of Twitter often fail to understand. Though some may use Twitter and Facebook as one big \u00e2\u20ac\u0153look at me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the majority are just trying to stay connected with friends, old and new.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvsquad.com\/2009\/08\/04\/how-did-the-scooby-gang-get-together-anyway\/\">A live-action <i>Scooby-Doo<\/i> prequel<\/a>? And here I was, thinking nothing could make me nostalgic for the Matthew Lillard\/Freddie Prinze, Jr. versions&#8230; I don&#8217;t have a problem with the movie in theory &#8212; it would be ridiculous to think <i>Scooby-Doo<\/i> has any kind of canon that needs protecting, and I remember genuinely liking <i>A Pup Named Scooby-Doo<\/i> &#8212; but in practice, this looks pretty dire.<\/li>\n<li>And finally, there&#8217;s got to be an easier way <a href=\"http:\/\/homepage.mac.com\/joester5\/art\/gmail.html\">to avoid ads in Gmail<\/a>&#8230; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.waxy.org\/links\" title=\"Waxy.org Links\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight, I&#8217;ll be attending a live taping of The Sound of Young America. It&#8217;s streaming live at 8 PM Eastern, if you&#8217;d like to watch too. I expect part, or all, of the show will eventually find its way into the radio show and\/or podcast. So how is the World, Dubai&#8217;s string of man-made paradise &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3575\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[27,44,54,37,28,9,62,17,32,10,39],"class_list":["post-3575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-internet","tag-mail","tag-new-york","tag-news","tag-personal","tag-pop-culture","tag-radio","tag-tv","tag-twitter","tag-various","tag-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}