I Have Come Out of My Hole
Internet round-up for the week of March 27, 2023
Happy Friday, friends!
Welp, it’s official! I signed my severance agreement this morning and my WARN notice has ended. I’m a free little birdie! (For funzies, pop on “Free Bird” and then listen to the full 9 minutes of it to experience just about how long I was employed at Google.) Now, who wants to hire me to write dumb, fun things instead of technical documentation??
Actually — the last two months have been pleasantly productive — I’ve written and published three satire pieces, finished editing a couple chapters of my novel, and am about 95% through with what I’d consider a very solid draft of the first TV pilot I’ve written in years, and it feels amazing!
For a really long time I’ve been tossing more and more projects into the “Hope I get to this someday!” pile, and I’m finally getting an opportunity to start digging out a little bit. It’s been fabulous, and I can’t wait to see how far I can get before I start job hunting again later this year. Now if I can just get myself on a regular workout schedule, I’ll be unstoppable…
In lieu of exercising, I’ve been binging old seasons of Survivor. Which is great, except that all of a sudden like every TV show I love has come back on?? We’re talking Ted Lasso, The Mandalorian, Picard, Yellowjackets, Succession — there are so many shows to watch again! I can barely keep up, but also, I love it?? Plus I haven’t even started the new season of Love is Blind! It’s too much and yet it’s never enough!! I need one of those night people from Rick and Morty just to catch up on TV.
And as always, I’ve spent lots of time on the world wide web this week. So, here’s what I’ve got for ya:
High Art
I swear didn’t pose for this, so how did this artist manage such a fantastic portrait of me??
Wholesome Fun
This is such a great bit! Also I have a very cool SSN too so…I feel seen.
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This is who I aspire to be in all aspects of my life. I’m printing a picture of this guy out for my vision board.
El*n M*sk
Sigh. I keep saying I’m going to stop talking about him, but then…well, he’s at it again.
This week, Twitter announced that “legacy” (read: original, accurate) blue checks would be going away on April 1st. Which renders any check utterly useless at this point, other than to prove that you’ve paid money for Twitter. So now we’ll have no way to tell if a celebrity or a company (cough, Eli Lilly, cough) is actually who they say they are. Hilariously, they’re also working to allow Twitter Blue users to hide their checks, because now it’s like embarrassing to have a blue check instead of cool. Absolutely perfect. No notes.
Plus, only folks with Twitter Blue will be able to vote in polls. Convenient time for him to re-run the “should I stay on as CEO” poll that he didn’t abide by. Must’ve been bots on that one, right? 🙄
They also announced that companies and organizations would have to pay $1000 a month to verify their accounts, except that after announcing that they then said oops never mind, the most 10,000 followed companies can be verified for free. Seems like a good way to make money.
Finally, the “For You” tab will only feature Twitter blue subscribers starting April 15th, so like…okay? I guess I’m just not going over there. It said it’ll also feature people you follow, but those are in the Following tab? So…okay…?
Here’s how I see the impact of this going: if you don’t pay for Twitter Blue, it’ll be nearly impossible to have a small number of followers and have a tweet go viral. There will be no “algorithm” where your tweets could be seen, because it will be full of Twitter Blue subscribers. Basically, little to no opportunity of your tweets being seen outside your circle unless you pay money.
Fine, I guess, but no other social media site functions in this way. In theory, we’re supposed to be the product that advertisers are paying to access. Not the customers. I have no desire to pay for access to a glorified bulletin board. Also I have no desire for any of my money to benefit Elon Musk.
And so, Twitter continues its slow, inevitable march toward death, and it’s sad — but the worse it gets, the less I like the site, and the more time I spend elsewhere, which I guess just sort of contributes to the site dying.
I guess, like — enjoy your $44 billion dollar purchase that’s now worth less than half that. 🤷🏼♀️ Elon knows best!
FYI
This prompt on Twitter this week has people talking about little-known facts about their professions, and I wanted to share one from a former profession of mine:
Companies can pay to have “spam” flags removed from their phone numbers.
So, yeah — those call protect apps that you install to flag numbers that incessantly call you? Kiiiiind of worthless.
In the case of an actual spammer, it might work temporarily, but they’ll probably just spoof another number and call you right back. In the case of an annoying company that makes money from cold calls and glorified telemarketing — well, they can pay to have the flag removed, and then just start calling you again.
Fun, huh?
Also — if you have a cool fact about your job/industry that you want to share in the comments, please do!! I love learning about other people’s jobs!!
Randomly Selected Animal Cutie(s)
You gotta click through for the vid of this little scaffolding heist mongrel. I’m obsessed with him.
And just look at our favorite girl Fiona!!
She is thriving!! Gorgeous! Perfect!
Who’s taking me to see her?? I’M NOT EMPLOYED. I HAVE PLENTY OF TIME.
Okay, that’s it from me this week! Hope you have a great weekend. I’m going to toast to my Noogler hat this evening and then put it into a time capsule* where it won’t be seen for a thousand years**! Later!
K
*rubbermaid box
**until Christmas when I forget what’s in there and accidentally open it looking for decorations.
omg thank you for the SSN video, I hadn't seen it!