CSotD: Who knows where the time goes?
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You can always get a larger version of the strips here by clicking on the image, but today's xkcd provides a much larger version off its own site, and I think you'll want to go there and examine this in some detail. It's always worthwhile to go there for the mouse-over joke that I can't reproduce here, but, in this case, there are a lot of small notations on the map, some very funny, some informative.
For example, Facebook aficianados are fond of claiming that email is dead, but when you realize that the main map here, in which Facebook is huge, is yet only an inset of a much larger map dominated by email and texting, it puts the laff to that claim.
It's also interesting to look at the blog inset to see the respective sizes of the progressive and conservative communities, and also the respective sizes of entries within that group. For all the influence that Arriana Huffington seems to have, Huffpost is a pretty small piece of the entire puzzle, while, for all the bile being strewn around at other sites by conservative and libertarian trolls, it seems they don't have much to say over on their own signature site, Townhall. Meanwhile, the Daily Beast just signed Howard Kurtz away from CNN, and yet is a tiny piece of the puzzle, at least in terms of inspiring commentary from visitors.
And it's important to remember that this map was scaled by interactivity rather than page views, so it doesn't matter how many people visit HuffPost or Townhall if they aren't commenting there. And there are more readers than commentators, particularly at the more crowded pubs: The main story at HuffPost, as of 6:30 this morning, already has 3,155 comments, so any sensible reader knows that adding a comment there is like pouring a Coke into the Atlantic Ocean in hopes of changing its flavor from salty to sweet.
And I got a real chuckle from the small entry on the Island of Twitter, "journalists trying to find the cutting edge." I still haven't quite figured out, aside from instant updates during election night and the NFL draft, what real value Twitter has for news coverage over other forms of electronic communications, particularly in a setting in which there is such a sea of tweets that "OMG missiles headed for US!" is going to be muffled in a sea of "Just 8 a cheezbrgr," "bristols DWS dress is a disaster!" and "bored bored bored."
This is a fascinating piece of work, and I suspect whatever inaccuracies it contains are largely proportional. And thank god I have screened "Farmville" postings off my Facebook page.
Which brings us to the headline for today's entry, a very charming classic I'm hoping to carry around in my head as an earworm for the rest of the day. Yes, even to my dentist's appointment, which is where some of the time is going.
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