Facebook Pet Peeve #1

Pet peeve: people who post a picture or a link with the words: "no words." "No words" is not no words: it's two words. It's perfectly permissable to actually post a picture or a link on Facebook with no words. People do it all the time. If you're sharing another person's post, Facebook actually offers you a shortcut to share it right away, with no words from you added. Saying "no words" doesn't make you seem more sensitive or witty or whatever: trying to draw attention to how sensitive or witty or whatever you are only makes you seem less sensitive or witty or whatever.

If you actually are sensitive or witty or whatever, don't worry: people will notice!

If you don't agree with this Facebook pet peeve of mine, don't worry about that either: I've got plenty more.

Dream Log: FB Meet-Up in the Mountains

Last night I dreamed I was meeting face-to-face for the first time with some Facebook friends: mostly friendly, non-judgmental, leftist, pro-science Christians.

Our meeting place was in a mountainous region. We parked in a lot surrounded by shops selling things like candy and tourist-y knickknacks. From there we had to keep going up on foot, up a very steep slope. We had the choice of climbing the mountain slope itself, or taking some stairs which were enclosed in sort sort of white plastic. I started to climb these stairs, but as they went higher the white plastic enclosure got closer, and very soon I became claustrophobic and climbed back down.

Then I noticed that there was another set of stairs. These were in a very spacious and sturdily-built stairwell of the kind one sees in fine early-20th-century public buildings in large US cities.

In the dream, the stairs were not entirely enclosed from the elements. It was very cold, there was snow on the ground, I had left my winter coat in my car, and after I had climbed a great distance, I realized that I should not have. As I climbed the stairs back down, I reflected that all of this physical exercise was good for me.

At the top of the stairs, we made various remarks about how this or that person was either just like this or that one had pictured him or her, or entirely different. After that sort of talk had died down, there was a lull in the conversation which seemed like it might last, but soon several lively conversations were going on on a variety of topics. I ended up talking about the stairwell with a young married couple. The young husband (there was a husband and a wife in this couple, in the traditional manner) went on for a while about the stairwell and the turn-of-the-20th-century American public architecture which it represented. In the dream, he seemed to be making many profound points, but now, awake, I can't remember any of them.

I mentioned that none of what he had said explained why this stairwell was semi-exposed to the elements, while most stairwells of its kind were fully enclosed within buildings. I hadn't meant to upset him with this remark, but it seemed I had greatly upset him. He turned away and didn't seem to want to talk any more. Then I woke up.

Watches

I've learned a fair amount about watches I can't afford: mostly made in Switzerland, although not in every case; and mostly selling for over $1000, although it may be that recently, increased competition by a huge number of new brands, most of them Swiss too, is driving down the cost of what you can legitimately call a top-end item. Or perhaps that is not the case, and all of these watches which have caught my eye recently and which sell for 3 figures -- still out of my price range -- are not really in the same class with the other stuff. I'm still learning.

If you want an example of a good watch in my price range: this is my Seiko 5:

There are many others like it but this one is mine. While one may not actually be able to call it a luxury watch, still, it, and by "it" I mean the particular Seiko 5 which I own, the one in these pictures, which cost me around $55 including tax, may just be the very coolest watch in the world. I love my Seiko 5.

I've learned that if I click on "suggested posts" on Facebook (ads which are positioned to make them look as if they were actual posts written by people), I will get to see more "suggested posts" of the same sort.

I used to comment on some of these "suggested posts" which advertise fine watches, and click on the links, taking me to ads from Omega or Jaeger-Lecoultre or whom have you. But lately I've gotten aggravated by many of the comments from other Facebook users: seems sometimes like most of the comments are either asking how much the item in the ad costs (If you can't find that out for yourself with 2 mouse clicks or so, it's probably not for sale) or complaining about how much the item costs. It's really getting old. I'm hoping that I'll still get these "suggested posts" from makers of fine watches if I just click on the ads and ignore the comments altogether. Maybe I'll get better "suggested posts," because the watchmakers will respect me for ignoring all of the comments.

Right now, both the 2017 Leipzig Book Fair and Baselworld 2017 are happening. The Leipzig Book Fair is one of the world's premier trade gatherings for book publishers; Baselworld is the main trade show or trade fair for Swiss (and other) watches. I've been interested in the Leipzig Book Fair since before 1990 when it was overshadowed by the Frankfurt book Fair. This is the first time that I've been aware of a Baselworld while it is actually happening.

Surely it's just a coincidence that the Leipzig book Fair and Baselworld are happening at the same time? They're not INTENTIONALLY keeping literati and watch snobs separate, are they?

I don't think I've ever been in a trade show except for an auto show or two when I was a small child, in a time when metal-flake paint was new and exotic.

I suppose it's just possible, if I continue to learn more and more about watches, and if I manage to write about what I learn in a less-than-utterly-senseless way, that I may one day actually attend Baselworld as the official, paid and expense-accounted correspondent and official watch snob of Cosmopolitan or the Detroit Free Press or Hot Rod or some other fine publication. Stranger things have happened -- to me personally. Maybe I shall become the first official Baselworld correspondent of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

I Like Cookies

I'm talking about HTTP cookies, the bits of information which companies collect when we're online and then trade with each other. The ones which some people think are part of the way that we will fall under the Total Control of capitalists, or possible even of The Machines Themselves.

And maybe they're right. After all, what do I know about information technology. But the thing is, cookies can also lead to me being informed about really cool expensive watches because companies think I might be a billionaire. For example: yesterday, I posted this picture on Facebook:

That's a wristwatch. The thing is, it's a wristwatch which costs several hundred thousand dollars. So today, I saw ads for other watches which cost even more. Including even some brand-new, retail available pocket watches. Like this one,

made by Audemars Piguet, the company I mentioned a few post back, in the post that started out being about LeBron James and then veered off into another post about watches. Audemars Piguet make the Royal Oak, possibly the world's heaviest production-model wristwatch, won by LeBron on the cover of Sports Illustrated and by Jeremy Piven on "Entourage." The pocket watch in the picture there is the Audemars Piguet 25701, which comes in a variety of styles and materials and seems to cost from a little under $800,000 to over $900,000. The one in the picture has a rose-gold case. I'm assuming that it weighs even more than the heaviest of all Audemars Piguet Royal Oak wristwatches.

But I have to assume. Because the Internet is made by people very much unlike me. If it were made by people like me, and catered to the interests of people like me, I would have easy access to information about the exact weight of every conceivable sort of watch, and I would have found out about extremely-expensive brand-new production-model retail-available pocket watches without accidentally having advertisements for them put onto the Internet pages I visit because yesterday I posted a picture of Hublot MP-05 LaFerrari on Facebook. The MP-05 is the watch in the first photo in this post. It's a manual hand-wind wristwatch. Its face is intentionally made to resemble the engine of a Ferrari. When it's wound up all the way it will run for 50 days, the longest of any watch of which I know. If the Internet catered specifically to my interests, I would know for sure whether or not there is a watch somewhere which runs for longer than 50 days after being wound once. But it's not. And so I just have to guess about some things. And I apologize for that.

And I also have to guess whether more pocket watches in the $1000-to-$1,000,000 price range are being made and offered for sale than a few years ago, or whether I'm simply aware of a few more than I used to be. Partly as a result of dogged online searching, and partly completely by accident because of things like posting that picture on Facebook yesterday. I'm really whacky about pocket watches. Wristwatches are nice, sure, but I like pocket watches a lot more. And only mechanical watches interest me: the kind you wind up by hand, or, slightly less interesting, those watches which are known as automatic or self-winding: they have innards (called movements) which are similar to those in the watches you must wind by hand, but the automatic or self-winding watches are also wound by being moved around as someone wears them on their wrists. The ones with the quartz batteries, they don't interest me much at all, and if I'm looking at a watch or a picture of a watch or a watch on TV, and I realize that it runs by quartz battery, I'm always very disappointed. Why? I don't know why. I think that almost any rational reasons why anyone would be interested in having any sort of watch at all disappeared years ago, when things like smartphones and clocks on microwaves and car dashboards and what have you became ubiquitous.

Why the $1000-to-$1,000,000 price range? Not because I can afford a $1000 watch. I can't. But because the Watch Snob wrote that you have to spend at least $1000 to get a really good watch, unless you get a pocket watch which is 100 years old or so, and take it to a good watch repair person. How would one find a competent watch repair person? I don't know. Maybe I will stumble across that information someday too.

So: in this case, cookies did exactly what they were intended to do: gave information to someone, me, about things he is interested in, ridiculously-expensive brand-new pocket watches. Now, if cookies could go one step further, and help that person, me, obtain enough money to actually buy the things in question -- now that would really be something. That would really be a miracle of information technology.

Heute Auf Facebook Geblockt

Einer, der erklaert -- waehrend Krieg tobt und Kinder verhungern -- dass Halbaermelhemden fuer Maenner "verboten" seien. (Waehrend hungrige Kinder modische Kleider in Sweatshops naehen.)

Zwei, die einen Video von Philipp Moeller, einem deutschen New Atheist posteten. 77 Posts zum Thema New Atheists. Und hier der 78ste: es ist schrecklich, dass jetzt Deutschland seinen eigenen New Atheism entwickelt: Leute, die -- ganz aehnlich Modetyrranen und Moechtegern-Modetyrannen -- sehr wenig bis nichts zu sagen haben, und es unaufhoerlich sagen. Leute, die vollzeit, berueflich, neben jede Menge Quark auch das sagen, was sich in ein paar Minuten sagen laesst: "Es gibt kein Gott oder goetter oder Geister." -- Entschuldigt mich bitte. Von wegen Minuten, das laesst sich leicht in 3 Sekunden sagen -- und grosse Menschenmengen die ihnen dabei zujubuln und sie genial nennen. Als ein eigentlicher Genie kraenkt mich letzens besonders.

Noch jemand, die denselben Video postete, blockte ich nicht, weil ich mit ihr seit 15 Jahren oder mehr befreundet bin. Aber es ist erschreckend: eine kennt mich seit 15 Jahren und begeistert sich immer noch fuer solches. Soviel Zeit, so wenig Wirkung!

Aus der Sicht der Modetyrannen sind die meisten New Atheists Modesuender. Wenn die zwei Gruppen aufeinderquatschen koennten, und den Rest von uns verschonen!

Random Thought

I've blocked a lot of people on Facebook -- no, really: a lot. No, really, you don't understand: A LOT.

If I were to unblock all of them right now, would traffic on my blog increase? (I link my blog posts on Facebook.) Would it increase enough that my lifelong dream of being a professional writer would come true?

There's one way to find out!

PS: 3 hours after I started unblocking people and 1 hour after I finished -- like I said, there were a LOT of them! -- the results are still inconclusive.

A False-Alarm Anxiety About One Of My Favorite Facebook Groups

Over the past few days, it has seemed that one of my favorite Facebook groups has been almost entirely inactive.

But then I remembered: I block a lot of people. A LOT. No no, really: Lots and lots and scads and an amazing number of people.

Some Facebooks groups I've been in tend to generally try to discourage blocking of other group members. Others don't allow blocking at all.

And one particularly nightmarish group not only forbade all blocking but also required all members to answer all questions posed to them by other group members. In normal civilized society, even the parts of it which disallow blocking, one can end a long and fruitless argument by walking away and letting the other person have the last word. Usually, not answering can be understood and accepted as a answer.

There was simply no way I was going to last in that group.

So anyway, probably that group I like, which I mentioned at the beginning of this post, has been pretty lively over the past few days, with all of the people I like chattering away in threads under OP's posted by all of those New Atheists, fundamentalist Southern Baptists, Elisabeth-Foerster-Nietzscheans, anti-vaxxers and others who have joined the group recently, whose contributions I decided I did not wish to see, much less wishing to comment upon them.

I hope they're having fun. I'm pretty sure they are. I'm pretty sure the parts of the group I can see will liven up again eventually.

My Theory About Why Facebook Is Phasing Out Comment Counters In Discussion Threads

I'm picturing a scenario somewhat like this:

"Mr Zuckerberg, the gals and fellas in IT have been on this for months like stink on a -- well, like stink on an IT guy who hasn't left his cubicle to shower in months. They've been interfacing with my guys and gals from finance daily, sometimes there's been two or three large-scale meetings about it per day. The algorithms and other thingies they've been applying to this -- well, you know me, Mr Zuckerberg, I'm just an old dinosaur bean-counter, I can't begin to keep up with all the math, and I shouldn't pretend that I can. One time during this process I made a remark about Boolean algebra, and the whole room exploded in laughter. It's okay, it's okay, they were right: the old man was frontin'. Tryin' ta sound hip. They caught me! When I'm with these kids I need to talk less and listen more, who knows, I'm might even learn something! Heh, heh. So. Bottom line. The kids are confident -- I'm talking about both the IT people and my finance kids -- and hey, how often do they ever agree about anything, am I right?! -- they've both looked this front to back and top to bottom again and again and again, and bot IT and finance are highly confident that if Facebook phases out the comment counters in the threads, long-term, it could shave 3 cents a day off of our operating costs. Highly confident. ...Oh. And, yes, also, you could throw a sop to the environmental nuts, tell 'em that we're using less electricity and saving the rainforest, bla bla bla. You know, the usual environmental bullshit. So, Mr Zuckerberg, should we go ahead and phase out the comment counters?"

"Uh -- YUHH!"