Microposts
Oh, here’s The Guardian talking about the government’s mass text:
UK mobile firms asked to alert Britons to heed coronavirus lockdown
As I imagined, it’s not like there’s a massive database with everyone’s numbers. They just asked the operators to send it to all their customers.
I just got a text from the government about the new regime. I assume everyone did. I didn’t know they could do that. It just has this link.
Some thoughts on using Instapaper, from Dan J: Doubling Down on Instapaper – Dan J’s IndieWeb Headquarters.
Quite similar to my own experience (though with more note-taking).
In General Election 2019: the news media failed profoundly — but not in the way you think, Adam Tinworth buries the “lede.” Probably deliberately, as the whole piece is worth reading.
The key point is that the Reuters research showed that people spent only 16 minutes a week on average reading news during the election.
That’s a ludicrously low figure.
Also odd is that the Shortcut that I used to create this post pulled this text out as the title: “The Media & the 2019 General Election: trusted, but little consumed.” Which would be better in terms of not burying anything, but I can’t see where it came from. The <title> tag, I’d have to guess, but you don’t really see those on a phone. And not that much on a computer, once you’ve got more than a couple of browser tabs open.
FotoFebruary, as some on Micro.blog are calling the February Photoblogging Challenge. Day 1 theme: Open.
Why not join Micro.blog and take part?
Deviate. Hesitate. Repeat. 😟
I joined the Fabian Society recently, mainly so I’d get a vote in the Labour leadership election (I’m not rejoining Labour, at least for a while). So today I’m at the FEPS-Fabian New Year Conference 2020. Or #FEPSFAB20, as they’d like us to tweet.
I ate the last piece of our Christmas cake today. Christmas is now definitively over. If there was ever any doubt of that.
I don’t know if online petitions do much good, really, but with Trump trying to drag America into yet another war in the Middle East, the very least we can do is try to stop the UK from getting involved.
Jolyon Maugham QC and the Good Law Project are petitioning Johnson to ask the EU to allow us to have associate EU citizenship, as part of the exit negotiations. I can’t imagine it’ll do much good, but there’s no harm in signing.
On one level I think they’re trolling Johnson: suggesting that he might want to — or suggesting that there’s any chance he would — appear statesmanlike.
From The Guardian‘s piece on what we learned in the election about the media:
One Labour MP who nearly lost their Brexit-backing seat told the Guardian that on doorstep after doorstep, people brought up Corbyn’s connections with the IRA after seeing memes and images on Facebook: “It was never used by the Tories in the campaign but there was a separate election going on, which was a Facebook-orientated campaign.”
Maybe this explains the hatred for Corbyn which so mystified me.
The next paragraph is astonishing:
The MP suggested constituents are increasingly overwhelmed by information and unsure what is real and what is not, assuming there is some sort of editing of what goes on Facebook. “People have a sense that some of this stuff is probably wrong but they have no compass. They would say: ‘But it’s on Facebook – how can there be something that isn’t true?’ They think there are gatekeepers but there aren’t.”
Emphases mine. Oh my god. How can anyone think that after all that’s happened? I realise that not everyone is as deeply into tech and politics as I am, but still.
We never had a chance, did we?
It’s 4 in the morning and Gove is telling lies on the telly. This has become masochism — actually it did several hours ago — I’ll just listen to wee Nicola, and then go to bed.
Jeez, Jo Swinson loses by 149, in my old stomping grounds. Actually I think the constituency was West Dunbartonshire wherein I grew up, but close enough.
I think Corbyn’s stepping down (as he should) — or maybe it’s only at the next General Election? Strange phrasing.