In The L.A. Times, I just read a touching article by YA author Amy Goldman Koss about her efforts to offer reading material to the homeless. Her program is in a Glendale, California homeless shelter, but I was reminded of the role libraries play in the lives of the homeless, as well.
In local libraries, I’ve encountered the homeless on nearly every visit. Continue reading
I just had to share this brief but fascinating article about a study that demonstrated internet trolls are in fact sadists. Check it out here.
Okay, I’ll admit it: there are better ways to spend my time. But for some reason, I have recently become obsessed with the following question:
Until recently, I never paid attention to the social network shares on my articles. I paid attention to the comments so I could monitor and respond to them, but I didn’t watch how many people “liked” my article, tweeted about it, or whatever. I guess something happened when I finally joined FB myself.
First, I found myself comparing the rates of “likes” vs. comments on my Tablet articles, then I noticed the same discrepancies on other people’s articles.
I get that it’s easier to “like” than to write a whole comment. I do. Also, “likes” get shared with other people readers think will enjoy or appreciate the article. And that explains why some articles (the most recent one I wrote, for example) have a “likes” to comment ratio that far favors the “likes.”
What I don’t get are the stories that move in the opposite direction (including one of my other articles). What makes someone comment, but not “like”? Because they’re mad at me? Because something I said incensed them? Is that it?
This week, The New Yorker book blog published a post by Kenneth Goldsmith about the proliferation of rather un-poetic “poetry” spreading across the internet. He writes:
[T]he Canadian media scholar Darren Wershler…has been making some unexpected connections between meme culture and contemporary poetry. “These artifacts,” Wershler claims, “aren’t conceived of as poems; they aren’t produced by people who identify as poets; they circulate promiscuously, sometimes under anonymous conditions; and they aren’t encountered by interpretive communities that identify them as literary.”
…It’s not uncommon to see blogs that recount someone’s every sneeze since 2007, or of a man who shoots exactly one second of video every day and strings the clips together in time-lapsed mashups. Continue reading
Rebecca Klempner 