Ara wrote:And Lady Arwen, it's true that Facebook has never been a great platform, but I used to see a lot more original content from people, taking pictures and talking about their life. But alas, a dreaded tide (which we will not speak of here) has drowned about half my feed and the other half is all people resharing memes and recipes.
The dreaded tide washed over me on the facebook front. A friend asked for some information about a social economic issue, so I replied, and one of their friends thought it would be time to be rude and jump down my throat for not having sources that were good enough. Well, they have sources now--but nearly all of them are academic papers from highly reputable economists. Basically, these are very long, and they aren't things you skim. Part of me feels childish for going to the source extreme (aka being petty), but the rest of me just feels proud of the fact that it looks like I was able to use numbers to get a rude person to shut up.
That said, I'm probably done explaining socio-politico-cultural things to curious people in semi-public forums for a good while. I'm ok with non-personal stuff when people are polite to each other and it is actually a discourse. I don't like fights and I don't like reshares (aka, memes). I love seeing what people are doing in their real lives.
Also, some of us are just awful at posting our pictures...it was nearly two years after I moved out of Europe before I realized I should actually post my pictures from living there.
I had posted a little bit (like food pictures, or funny pictures), but really not that many interesting pictures at all. That was part of what got me back into blogging. I figured if I was gonna post them, I might as well post them nicely, and with the stories that went along with them.
So, our heater broke again.
This time, however, apparently the owner of the company that fixes ours found out that we've been having to have someone out at least twice a year (once for the heater, once for the air conditioner: it's a combined unit), and he got on the phone with the company that made it, and got them to replace it for free! We didn't ask for that, but he very kindly took care of it all for us, and we're hoping we can go a lot longer without doing any work on it. It's sad when you have to plan on having it serviced so regularly when you budget expenses.
Anyway it was a bit funny, because I was at work most of the day, and come home to find a moving van in our driveway. No one had told me anything about the goings on (other than that it wasn't working), so it was a bit of a surprise.
Jo, please let me know what you think of
Hidden Figures. I'm thinking about requiring some of my students to see it.
Staying on the history note, our local Historical Society and Museum, along with our Chinese Benevolent Association, is opening a large exhibit on our area's Chinatown tomorrow, timed with the Lunar New Year. I'm hoping to be able to go after church, if I can find someone to drag along with me. I don't like going to events on my own, and there are supposed to be Chinese historical authors there, which means there will be books, which means...well, I'm not allowed to go to bookstores unsupervised, due to the damage that usually turns up on my credit card.
We'll see how it goes. One of my friends is part of the lion dance, so I should probably turn out to support her, anyway.