My newest guilty pleasure is Dogecoin. It started out as a parody of Bitcoin, but people are having a good deal more fun with it:
It doesn’t feel like the early days of BTC, where everyone was overly serious and freaking out about every tiny bump or dip, where scam sites were popping up left and right, and no one trusted anyone. There was a level of pretentiousness and defensiveness that was a lot of things, but it was NOT fun.
Dogecoin is more like digital play money, and the community around it is consequently more generous and jovial.
Mining works the same way as with Bitcoin. I downloaded a mining program on Tuesday evening and signed up at fast-pool, and so far have mined about 1,600 coins using a fairly standard desktop machine in the night hours.
If you missed out on Bitcoin, now’s the time to get into doge, although probably not for the same reasons. The most earnest attempt at a back-of-the-envelope analysis I’ve seen so far estimates the eventual value of 1 Dogecoin to be $0.20 USD on the high end. Perfect, in other words, for casual online tippage.
Antarctica has you beat. New record of 135.8 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. I admit that is about a hundred degrees colder than I ever want to experience. (Link)
I’ve released two podcast episodes over the last two Saturdays: The Way Back and The Infinite Aleph, about fourteen minutes long each. Click through and have a listen if you haven’t already.
I was up until 3 am on Saturday morning finishing that second one. That was one of the few times I sat down and completed most of the process in one session; I started editing my very-rough draft at 10:30 pm, was recording at midnight, and probably started editing at about 12:30 am. If a podcast has only one or two music cues, editing goes a lot faster, but both of these were a bit more complex.
I originally envisioned closing out the Aleph episode with Iron & Wine’s Walking Far From Home, since the verses fit the episode’s theme perfectly — in fact it was while listening to this song that the pieces for this episode first began to connect in my head. But the song is also, shall I say, sonically fussy; it demands your complete attention and doesn’t play nice with any atmosphere but its own. So I ended up leaving it out, but if you want a little bonus material, you should give it a listen.
This adult anticipates it each year! Perhaps it’s because it cheers the drab of winter – and we can’t push winter off every other year. Were there no seasons, I could see holidays becoming monotonous.
It also helps to see holidays through the eyes of the next generation and join them in their appreciation. Their wonder and joy at the twinkling lights, the scent of fir, the anticipation of gifts, and the story of Jesus is refreshing to the wizened soul.
Every year at Christmas I find myself thinking “What? Christmas again already?”
When adults open their mouths about Christmas, it’s almost always to repeat some variant of Can you believe they’re putting up decorations again? Or, I can’t believe Christmas is only three weeks away!
They almost never say Yay, Christmas, my favourite time of the year!
I don’t think this is because we grown-ups are deep-down cynical about Christmas. I think it’s just because time passes way, way too fast after you’re fairly through your twenties. As such, it may be that once a year is too short of an interval for certain major events to seem special anymore.
Related: you never hear adults say, “What? The summer Olympics again? Already?”
It might be worth scheduling Christmas for every other year instead of celebrating it annually. Practically, of course, I’m not sure anyone would ever do this. But it seems clear to me that the Christmas season just comes around far too often for most adult brains to be able to fully appreciate it.
One of the first things I did yesterday morning was to delete the Facebook and Twitter apps from my phone, as I said I would do. Actually it was the first thing. I’m mildly embarrased to admit that.
My thoughts on the experiment after the first day or so? The holiday season, when everyone is sharing so much common good sentiment, is possibly the worst time to leave Twitter1. Not only is one keenly aware that the party is going on in one’s absence, but all that give and take, that accelerated cross-pollination of links and new ideas: pffft, gone. Twitter is a stimulant, like caffeine, so if you’ve ever gone off coffee and felt that life-is-horribly-dull pit in your amygdala in the wee hours after the fateful decision, you have an idea what it’s like to leave the social internets on Thanksgiving.
No surprise then, that (as far as I’m aware) no one else has gone blog+newsreader-only for the holidays who wasn’t already doing so. The micro-trend will remain micro for the foreseeable future.
One other immediately noticeable effect of turning off the Twitter spigot, though, was to mitigate The Dangerous Effects of Reading (do read that article — I advise this without irony). There are so many interesting things to read out there that, before you know it, your brain is optimized for input, constantly sponging up new ideas.
By drastically cutting the amount of interesting reading I come across, I’ve created more space for my own thoughts. And it turns out that having one’s own thoughts is kind of a prerequisite for creativity. I guess that should have been obvious.
Later today I’ll be recording my next podcast. Look for it early Saturday morning.
I don’t miss Facebook. Well, I really do miss it a lot when Jess posts an exceptionally funny picture of our four-month old. But I can always read the comments and likes over her shoulder. So let no more be said of Facebook. ↩
Episode 95 of the 99% Invisible podcast gives further examples of how the popular idea of computer interfaces evolved from levers and buttons to glowing, backlit glass.
Star Trek: The Next Generation didn’t have as much money for set design as did the original series, which had panels wired with jewels and glowing buttons. Instead, they cut out film and put them over glass panes.
I’m going to try something different this year, just during the holiday season. From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve, I’ll be off Facebook and Twitter and back on the social networks we used to use in the early 2000s: personal blogs and news readers.
My social network will consist of:
Blogs — I’ll be posting to this one, of course, and keeping up with my friends through an RSS reader. (I’m going to give The Old Reader a try.)
Podcasts — listening, as well as continuing to record my own.
This social network won’t be any fun without other people, so I’m hopeful that some of you are still blogging, or that you might even join in. If you want me to subscribe to your blog1 over the next month and a half, email me a link. I’ll post links to my subscriptions here soon after I start.
I’m also going to remove the Twitter, Facebook2 and Tumblr apps from my phone, and block those sites from my desktop browsers. My posts here will still be posted to social media, but that will happen automatically; I won’t be checking or responding to comments or likes made on those sites.
It’s interesting to think back to the time before Facebook and Twitter made sharing links and short status updates so easy. Back then, every time you wanted to share something with friends online, you basically had to sit down and write a paper. It didn’t have to be a long paper, but it was going to be an Official Post By You, with a title, a date and a permanent link, and it was going to sit at the top of your front page for awhile. I don’t know where I’m going with this.
Anyhow, it used to be that the Paragraph was the smallest currency of thought exchanged among friends online, and that “sharing” and “following” were much more deliberate actions3. That’s no longer the default setting on the internet and I’m Cool With That, Really, but I’m also thinking: maybe there are out-of-the-way avenues where that old kind of networking and exploration can still be experienced. Maybe it’ll be rejuvenating to take a break from the streams of pithy zingers, bumper stickers, and targeted ads that Facebook and Twitter are becoming. We’ll see. (I do love me a pithy zinger.)
So: maybe give it a shot with me. It’ll be like the Scenic Route of The Internet: not the quickest way to get what you want, but a change of pace that might be good for the soul. The rest of you: I’ll see you in 2014.
If you know me from a long time ago and you used to have a Xanga or Blogspot blog that is now gathering dust, there's a good chance I’m still subscribed to it.↩
I’ll be keeping Facebook Messenger on my phone, since my friends and family seem to rely on it more than anything else for coordinating events.↩
It’s hard to imagine things “going viral” in that environment; I can’t really remember, but I’m not sure they ever did. Not really.↩
One of the earliest pieces I wrote on this site back in 1999 was a satirical editorial called Why America Should Conquer Canada. I still get occasional hate mail from Canadians who don’t realize it was satire.1
I probably wouldn’t write such a thing again today, even as satire. It’s not because the Canadian and US dollars have been at par for a couple of years now, nor because 32-year old me understands better than 18-year old me how a weak dollar can actually by good for an economy. And — you’ll have to trust me on this — it’s not even because I’m married to a Canadian.
Would a merged Americanada be a stronger economic power? It depends on your frame of reference. For perhaps a decade we would be weakened by the instability and inefficiencies of the merger. It might pay off after that. Or the whole thing could accelerate a devolution into ten or eleven different countries that may have been happening in slow motion for several decades now. It’s an interesting parlour-table game to play. 32 year old me hopes it stays that way.
And I don’t fault them. Good satire starts from a basically sound position, with good points to make; this wasn’t very good satire.↩
