Mama Cat came up and was being aggressively affectionate

[conuly]

Which was unusual for her! Sitting in my lap, nuzzling me, nuzzling my desk, headbutting, kneading - the works.

Not that she's unfriendly, but I'm not her person.

You can imagine my relief when I got up and she ran downstairs to her food dish. Mystery solved!

~~~~~~~~~

The Y Chromosome's Still-Uncharted Regions

The Librarian at the Nexus of the Harlem Renaissance

Want to fight crime? Plant some flowers with your neighbor

Although they can’t tell us about it, infants can reason

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States.

How Smithsonian Helped Solve the Twitter Mystery of the Unknown Woman Scientist

The Woman Who Crashed the Boston Marathon

Drip And Drive

The People Who Pretend to Be Wolves

You want to quit Facebook, but will you really click the button? These folks tried.

How Facebook made it impossible to delete Facebook

The Terrible Teens: What’s wrong with them? (Noticed that apparently, the New Yorker style is to hyphenate the word "teen-ager". Seriously?)

Energy efficiency is leaving low-income Americans behind

Land Conservancies Enter Unfamiliar Territory: the City

Why Outer Suburbs in the East and Midwest Have Stopped Booming

Senate intel committee creates 6-step plan for election security

Where a River of Life Became a Border of Control

Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women

The Third Education Revolution

Inside IBM’s Purge of Thousands of Workers Who Have One Thing in Common

This man is trying to rebuild Mosul. He needs help – lots of it

From 'Unabomber' To 'Mad Bomber,' A Look At Past Serial Bombers

How treating gun violence as public-health issue could help children

What happens to children who survive school shootings in America?

Fired FBI official authorized criminal probe of Sessions, sources say

Why the FBI Fires People for 'Lack of Candor'

The community of 2,000 people with 151 cases of sex crime

Trawling the murky depths of conspiracy theory in the wake of personal tragedy

Who owns water? The US landowners putting barbed wire across rivers

Comments

[author_by_night]

Facebook, the many friend networks we’ve made along our paths through life converge and create a unique kind of emotional infrastructure that’s impossible for some people to fully separate from, because it means cutting off the only remaining ties to parts of their pasts, or to previous places they have lived, and even to some family members and friends. To many of the Facebook users you leave behind, walking away from Facebook will send a message that you don’t want to cultivate ties with them — because for many people, Facebook is the only place those ties can be cultivated.

Yep.

And the thing is... people don't keep in mind that not everyone has their family and friends within a block of each other. I know a lot of people like that, but then you have people like me, who don't live anywhere near most of their friends and family. Or my friend whose parents and in-laws live across the country - facebook is how they know what's going on with their granddaughters.

Granted, we all managed before Facebook, it was just harder. My cousin also lives far away from everyone, and when people have said "it's so hard to stay in touch with you, you're not on social media", she'll tell them that it's SUPPOSED to be hard. So that's a point to consider. But it's also how I communicate with some groups, both virtual and community. And how I post things to my work facebook.

But here's another point to consider: Aside from the parts of Facebook that are useful (whatever useful is to the individual), how productive is it, really? How happy does it make you feel? When I think about it, I still don't interact THAT much with my long distance people. One of them is always posting pictures of herself in the city she lives in. That's it. I know she lives in a city, like millions of people across the globe. Some friends only post publicly, and they're not always on subjects I want my entire feed to see me commenting on. I sometimes get frustrated when I feel my posts are ignored, or I comment on someone's political post and they get upset because I didn't simply add to the echo chamber, even when I'm AGREEING WITH THEM. That's happened before. So I unfollow those people, because I refuse to comment if I'm just supposed to say "I agree" in creepy monotone, except... what's the point in even keeping them friended if I don't read their posts anymore? Moreover, I'd say most of my time on Facebook is looking for something that I CAN add to, CAN enjoy, CAN engage with someone in.

I just said this the other day (on Facebook, because where else?): Really, if Mark Zuckerberg's direction was planned, he's a genius con artist. Because Facebook is essentially a con. It draws people in, gives them reason after reason to stay, so that even when they know they're not totally content with things anymore, they stay because it's either where everything is, or where they THINK everything is. So well done if this was his plan, because man, it worked.

[conuly]

Moreover, I'd say most of my time on Facebook is looking for something that I CAN add to, CAN enjoy, CAN engage with someone in.

Yes, this.

I just said this the other day (on Facebook, because where else?)

...here?

So well done if this was his plan, because man, it worked.

It's not going to work forever, though.

[firecat]

I don't think we all did manage before FB. Isolation can kill.

[conuly]

True, but there's lots of studies suggesting that FB doesn't reduce isolation and can even increase loneliness in isolated people.

[rachelkachel]

I'm naturally antisocial, which I think makes not being on Facebook easier. I miss news about extended family occasionally. My parents generally pass on the important stuff.

I'm sure they have a ton of my data anyway, what with being embedded into every site everywhere. And I did once have an account (in 2004), and even back then they didn't really delete things without, like, a letter to their offices.

[greghousesgf]

I liked the flower-planting article but my neighbors can't even be bothered to close the building door.
I love wolves, they're one of my favorite animals.
I have a scrip to the New Yorker and it's a fascinating magazine but the weird verbal anachronisms like putting hyphens in "teenager" and "ice cream" drive me fucking nuts. (They also spell "cooperation", "coordination" and "reelection" with umlauts and say "seeing" instead of "having sex with"!!)

[conuly]

(They also spell "cooperation", "coordination" and "reelection" with umlauts

Those aren't umlauts. They're diaereses. An umlaut indicates that the quality of the vowel has changed. A diaeresis indicates that two vowels which might form a digraph are to be read separately.

[greghousesgf]

I'd never heard that before. I still think it looks stupid.

[conuly]

*shrugs*

There is no spelling for cooperate that doesn't look stupid. Either you're adding a hyphen, adding an unusual (in English) diacritic, or it looks like you should read it "coop er ate".

[greghousesgf]

the unneeded hyphens and saying "seeing" for "having sex with" look stupid too, though.

[archangelbeth]

ObStarTrek: co'operate

O;>

[wendelah1]

Great links.

One of my sister's close friends was laid off from IBM a few years ago. He was 60, had worked for them for years and years. They eliminated his entire department--told him he could apply for other positions, yada yada.

[conuly]

Ugh.

[archersangel]

ah, cats.