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25 posts total
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 Here’s a cool and exciting community media initiative in Worcester, MA that was fun to report on. For anyone nostalgic for alt-weeklies and video stores, this place is making both work: Amazon has, for some reason, changed the release date for the Lurking paperback from Feb 21, 2021 to....March 7, 7431 anyway, please consider picking up a copy from Bookshop dot org or your local independent bookseller https://bookshop.org/p/books/lurking-how-a-person-became-a-user-joanne-mcneil/10354946 WRONG WAY is out TODAY! I put my heart into this novel and it's been my greatest joy to see responses like this on Goodreads and social media. Please order a copy from your local independent bookshop https://www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9780374610661
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 @jomc It landed on my e-reader early this morning and I got to read a bit before work. Looking forward to the rest! I've been working on this podcast for over a year now and the first episode is finally(!!) about to drop(!!!!) For anyone interested in the history of the web and social networks (and overwrought emo music, among other things): Here's the trailer for Main Accounts: The Story of MySpace  @jomc AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WordHack is this Thursday! Come on out!! :blobcat_mlem: *browser extension that changes all mentions of "ChatGPT" to "Sam Altman and company's no-longer-nonprofit whimsical mega-model pattern recognition predictor"* *viral academic voice* it's interesting how often new users begin requesting Mastodon features after they sign up. even if the requests are sometimes phrased in an entitled way, it shows they understand the experience is flexible and users/developers have more control. Compare this to Instagram, where just about everyone would love to be able to post links. But there are no campaigns for URLs on Instagram bc there's no one visible to complain to about it. I spoke with @abundance about World Ending Game, their brilliant new tabletop game. (w/ a cameo appearance by @endingsummary / @jplebreton ) https://filmmakermagazine.com/117752-everest-pipkin-tabletop-rpg-world-ending-game/ see a toot: "In the rush to replace Twitter, let's not act hastily and dismiss the many ways that algorithms empower users. The benefits of engagement metrics & content curation are oft misunderstood. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater" click on bio: "Founder and president of the Surveil-Ya-Face Corp, YC class of 2016"
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Short science fiction story that I wrote on gentrification in New England, old online communities & old laptops, which first appeared in the Terraform anthology book. Now free to read online! https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7vj38/wpo-science-fiction-terraform The whole book is amazing https://www.mcdbooks.com/books/terraform  @jomc just saw this and haven't read but the pitch here is basically irresistible for me i try to keep self-promotion here minimal but if anyone happened to be interested in *the rise and fall of various social networks* 👀 my book was remaindered recently and it's not hard to find a copy for less than the price of a large coffee eg https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/lurking-how-a-person-became-a-user_joanne-mcneil/20162454/item/51374935/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyLeY3PW4-wIVGajICh175wZsEAQYASABEgK2c_D_BwE#idiq=51374935&edition=21457363 I hate how expensive book are and my own personal library is like 1/5 things i found in Harvard Book Store's remainder basement so i'm happy to share this news that hundreds of copies are available for cheap rn wow!! that batch is already sold out. thanks everyone!! here's another place you can try w/ prices at $1 + shipping https://www.alibris.com/Lurking-How-a-Person-Became-a-User-Joanne-McNeil/book/45424705?matches=79
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please let me know what you think!! I might have a few changes to it...not sure if i'll blast this out on Twitter tomorrow morning or not (feels like everyone over there has has moved to despair/acceptance...) It was originally written for Wired so the voice was a little stuffy (and I tried to unstuff it a little bit with the final changes I just made) It would be great if we did actually have more organizations devoted to this topic (and amply funded) instead of say, a dozen orgs that seem to serve as retirement communities for ex-Big Tech execs to pretend they care about cleaning up the mess they made announcing some big exciting news tomorrow morning (after a few years of hardly talking about it with anyone) and i'm a) nervous b) exciting and c) about to burst either way eeeee! ahh...and the news is up on the birdsite now. i could count on both hands how many people knew i wrote a novel up until....thirty minutes ago. (this probably explains the past two years of neurotic posts from me around these parts). and now i feel nice and grateful and calm (which almost certainly will not last but enjoying it for how ever long i've got it). https://twitter.com/jomc/status/1517167438311346177?cxt=HHwWgsCylebvh44qAAAA oooh noes i'm writing about the m*t*v*rse and forgot just how annoying Snow Crash is to read. and here's my m*t*v*r*s*/wtf neal stephenson piece... https://filmmakermagazine.com/112869-joanne-mcneil-metaverse/ i can't stand most writing about internet aesthetics because it's usually trend-spotting/It Girl-stalking dressed up with pointless allusions to "the algorithm." but this is good and gets at what's missing from the dumb think pieces ok....i can do this...i'm trying to come up with the perfect pretentious Seaport Boston history-fetishizing yuppie apartment complex name like "The Emerson" or "One Paul Revere Place" etc yes, i just googled "apartment complex names" for help in naming an apartment in this story. and yes, this list helps because all are so bad anything i come up with is immediately better lol  @jomc I have a soft spot for the ones where some guy born in 1930 was like "I don't know, name it after a broad, what do I care, I have a cigar to smoke" next week, my friend is letting me stay at her mother's house—empty at the moment—to get some writing done. It is right around the mills where DEC had their old offices and I hope there is some exploring that I can do around there. I had no idea that it was the state's largest employer in the 80s. But I recently asked my dad about them and he said DEC tried to recruit him to work on their private airline but he didn't trust them bc they were off-putting big spender types 12
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Gregory's Server
@jomc This is in my neighborhood! It's so cool. #Worcester #MAPoli