Mike Wolf

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Scott made a comment at Beyond Labels this morning about a brilliant thought he’d had in the shower. That reminded me of reddit and the ShowerThoughts subreddit. For those of you who don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, I’ll explain.

First: Reddit is an entertainment and social news networking site. I think of it as kind of the anti-Facebook.

On Facebook you identify yourself by your real name. You get a “news feed” with posts from people you know — “friends” — and people you don’t know but who you “follow.” The stories range from personal tidbits, to links to interesting articles, to long written pieces. You can decide who gets to see each post — from just family, to the world. People who can see a posts can comment and discuss. Some of the content and discussion is interesting. Most is pretty bland.

Reddit is different. People who use Reddit are called redditors. Redditors don’t use their real names. Instead they pick handles  — like  HandyAndy136, or curmudgeon_lyfe — and use them. Reddit is divided into subject areas, called “subreddits.” Subreddits are open to everyone — but most are moderated so that discussion doesn’t get out of hand. Any redditor can start a topic thread in a subreddit by posting a question, or comment, or a link to online content. Other redditors comment and comment on the comments. They can upvote or downvote the original thread, or individual comments. Reddit will show you the topics and comment threads that have the most votes. Everything is public for everyone to read.

Facebook is useful. Reddit is awesome. Facebook tends to be about who you know. Reddit is about what you know, how smart you are, and — through the upvoting and downvoting system, how cool everyone else on reddit thinks you are.

I think the average reddit IQ is 10-40 points higher than the average FB IQ.

Here’s the first reddit thread  I ever came across. It was just after the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision, and someone posted a link to it that ended up in in my G+ feed. My favorite comment:

Confederate flag removal, Obamacare subsidies upheld. Now gay marriage is legal everywhere. Somebody better call and put the entire south on suicide watch.

My very favorite subreddit, the one that prompted this post, is Showerthoughts, “A subreddit for you to share all those thoughts, ideas, or philosophical questions that race through your head when in the shower.” Examples are toward the end of this post.

Another favorite subreddit is Neutral Politics. It’s a kind of 24/7 online Beyond Labels with people who are sometimes smarter and funnier than the smartest and funniest of us.

Another one I like is ELI5 which means “Explain Like I’m Five Years Old.” Here’s an ELI5 for the question “Why is Trump Doing So Well in the Polls” It’s got some interesting insights and some very snarky, and sometimes vulgar humor. Which, of course, I like.

Here are the top topics on Neutral Politics right now, with links to the discussion.

And here are some of today’s funnier and less tasteless ShowerThoughts. Sometimes the discussion is even funnier than the topic.

You can read this online here.

The fivethirtyeight.com web site, created by the brilliant Nate Silver, has a page called the “Swing-o-matic” that analyzes the voting behavior of five demographic groups: college-educated whites, non-college-educated whites, blacks, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian and other, and projects election outcomes.  You can see it (and play with it yourself) here.

If you get this in email, you may want to read it on the web, here.

For those who missed our Pi Day meeting and want to attend in spirit, or who attended and want the in-depth reading list, here it is.

Yes, today was Pi Day, and I sadly forgot to mention it. Technically, it’s the whole day, 3.14, (European style.) Those who are orthodox Pi Day celebrants will initiate festivities on 3.14 at 1:59:26. Last year, some celebrated on 3.14.15 at 9:26:54. One of my daughters celebrates it every year with geeky friends. There are typically a dozen or so pies for pi day.

Back to our meeting.

We started with, (and circled back later to) trash. That was because of the “Talkin’ trash” meeting at the library last Friday. Some details on the specific issue are here. Review article on the economics of recycling from the Economist, here. Glass recycling facts, from the glass packaging institute. Closed Loop Fund created by a bunch of big companies to supply low-cost loans for recycling.

Conversation moved to Iceland, because one of our members had recently visited there. Lots of interesting factoids and anecdatata. Did you know that there is an official body in Iceland that creates new Icelandic words, rather than accepting loan words. So what do you call a computer in Icelandic? According to this article “Icelandic Has the Best Words For Technology.” it is:

tölva—a fusion of tala (number) and völva (prophetess) that adds up to the wonderfully poetic “prophetess of numbers.”

Other cool Icelandic  words:

Telephone is “simi,” from an ancient word for thread. A jet plane is a “thota,” from the verb “thjota,” to zoom. Even “video,” which has become international coinage, did not last long here, quickly yielding to the locally evolved “myndband,” or picture band.

Did you know Maine has a state drink? I didn’t. Now I do. It’s Moxie. According to this list of  state beverages.

Also to be found in this list of state foods, which tells us (among many other things that we don’t need to know) that the Maine State food is the whoopie pie.

Should Blue Hill have a town fairytale? Here’s a video of Julie Nicholson’s book, “The Rock, The Prince, and The Mermaid.” Disclosure: I had a hand in producing this, but I neither endorse nor oppose Blue Hill having this, or any other town fairy tale, unless it’s a story about Moxie and moon pies. Then, maybe.

Are all Republican delegates bound to their candidate. This one says all are not.  This is the letter sent out making the argument. The fine print is “not all.” Many are bound, at least on the first ballot. More details here.  Full array of delegate allocations, here.

The Democrats have the superdelegate system which trumps (sorry) the democratic election of delegates. So this is politics in America today. The Democrats are not democratic. The progressives are against progress. And the conservatives oppose conservation measures.

Yeah, I know I’m taking liberties with the language. I guess that means I either am, or am not a libertarian.

Speaking of which,  from the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank, “The Libertarian Case for Bernie Sanders.”

Question: Is it even legal to use “Sanders” and “Libertarian” in the same sentence without “is not a” or “is unacceptable to a” between the two words?  The author, Will Wilkerson either makes the case or breaks the law this way:

1. He takes the list of freest countries in the world, from the Fraser Institute, described as a politically conservative and libertarian think tank.
2. He notes that the United States is not among the top ten. But Denmark, Canada, and Sweden, three countries that Sanders would like us to emulate, are on the list.

Then he concludes:

The libertarian case for Bernie Sanders is simply that Bernie Sanders wants to make America more like Denmark, Canada, or Sweden … and the citizens of those countries enjoy more liberty than Americans do. No other candidate specifically aims to make the United States more closely resemble a freer country. That’s it. That’s the case.

Indeed, it might be argued, some of the candidates would like to make America decidedly less free.