Phillip Winn @pwinn@social.cleverlibre.org

I want one of those hats from Korea’s Joseon period, but not enough to pay what I see them for online. Maybe I should watch less K-drama. Or maybe I should buy a hat.

#KDrama #thoughts

I have mixed feelings about the American holiday of Thanksgiving, but as in most situations, I ultimately come down on the side of joy. Repurpose the holiday! Celebrate with family and friends, and if you really want to have a good time, make sure you celebrate with immigrants!

My fondest Turkey Day memories mostly involve Indian and Chinese university students experiencing their first American Thanksgiving.

There’s also the time my family had a spread set up in the backyard for several dozen church friends, but since it was in the Philippines, and late November south of the equator, it was so hot the butter melted.

It is never bad to be thankful for life. Spending time with family and friends doesn’t undo tragic injustice, but avoiding celebrations doesn’t either.

This year I’ll be in Auckland, New Zealand, this Thursday. And that’s fine too! I can still tell the immigrants I live with I’m thankful for them, and I don’t even have to eat any sweet potatoes.

#blog #thanksgiving

One last batch of photos for today, still from Auckland, New Zealand.

I know very little about flowers, but these remind me of flowers from growing up in San Diego. However, I took these pics today in Auckland, New Zealand. #photography #auckland #NewZealand #AlbertPark #flowers

A few architectural details from Albert Park in Auckland, New Zealand. Plus a pigeon. #photography #auckland #NewZealand #AlbertPark

In the airport early for a flight to New Zealand, enjoying the semi-public art. #photography #art

#nerdery #blog #twitter

I'm trying to avoid focusing overmuch on the drama over at Twitter, but it's exceedingly difficult. It's too much! What follows are some thoughts I've had during discussions with friends over the last few days.

1. When I say "Twitter is dying," I'm talking about a difficult-to-define inflection point. I mean, myspace.com still exists. digg.com still exists. slashdot.org still exists. It's not a question of whether or not the website will still exist, or still carry ads, but of whether it will occupy the same place in the mindset of the vast majority of people. I think it's clear that it will not.

2. The idea that "something" will replace Twitter seems misguided. People talk as if facebook replaced myspace which replaced friendster, as if those transitions weren't incomplete and messy. Some people never left, other people went elsewhere, and each of those has had more users than the previous, so they didn't "migrate" from anywhere. Assuming Twitter survives in some form, some people will continue to be there, and probably elsewhere also.

3. Social media has already become far more balkanized than it once was, and the idea of everybody belonging to a single social network seems quaint to me. I haven't had a Facebook account in years, and many young people never have. One of my kids has a Snapchat snapscore under 1000, while another has a snapscore of more than 100k. One frequently sends TikTok links to a family iMessage thread that others have to then describe for the sibling who refuses to click on any TikTok links. My family uses iMessage threads primarily, while my spouse's family primarily uses WhatsApp. I use Telegram to talk to my friends in Ukraine, and WeChat to keep track of my friends in China. It is probable that no one thing will replace Twitter, but that many people will spend more time on YouTube or Discord or TikTok or Instagram or something else, or several somethings else, while others start to spend time on a mastodon server or similar. Even my once Facebook-addicted mother spends more time on YouTube than anywhere else these days. It's not always a mass migration all at once.

4. But in this case, it sure seems to look like one. Mastodon servers have collectively grown by quite a lot in the last few weeks, despite putting their worst foot forward, so to speak. The onboarding is the single worst aspect of the mastodon user experience, and it's the first thing people encounter. The fact that any of us make it though is remarkable, and the fact that more than 500k have in the last week is staggering. If you can read this post, but haven't yet joined the bewildering service that is mastodon, you're welcome to join me here. https://qoto.org/invite/H4qMWSGv

5. Then again, Twitter has almost 400 million users, half of whom use the site on any given day, so mastodon's 7 million isn't putting a lot of pressure on Twitter in absolute terms. The site I pulled that stat from also says that "Twitter has 8.85% of the world's overall social media user base," suggesting the balkanization might already be farther along than I realized. https://backlinko.com/twitter-users

6. It was easy for me to forget what an engineering marvel Twitter is. The "fail whale" of the days of Ruby are long gone, and Twitter is supporting unparalleled levels of traffic even now. If every single employee walked off the job, leaving only its new owner standing in the lobby looking for people to pose for photos with, I'm not sure how many developers would feel comfortable with their ablity to come in and keep things humming at scale, and have the skills to back up their comfort level. And that's just to keep it running, not create "Twitter 2.0." There are not very many companies in the world operating at Twitter scale. Twitter's engineering blog is a good reminder that it takes than your average smart developer to keep Twitter running smoothly.

7. It will take some time before I trust any deep dive into What Went Wrong™, but it seems like a few things are obvious already:

7a. Advertisers are not as easy to impress as "nerds with money."

7b. Software is not hardware.

7c. There may be no end of people willing to put up with just about anything to work on rockets or electric cars, but that may not be true for large-scale web services with a reputation for toxicity.

I've managed to make it this far without saying anything negative about a single oligarch, so it seems like a good place to stop.

When I talk about "stuff" on women's faces being produced by MidJourney, this is an example of what I mean. I'm not at all sure what's happening with the figure on the left.

When I was reviewing images before the -v4 option launched, it was nearly every image featuring a woman's face. It's not quite as bad now, but it's still marring far too many prompt attempts.

But hey, I don't want to complain, so I'll add a second image. This one actually had some facial marring when it first popped in one quadrant, but when I upscaled it, the face cleared up.

#AIart #midjourney